What Do You Do If You’re Ministering and There Are “Brick-Heads” Who Won’t Receive the Anointing When You Lay Hands on Them?

Unfortunately, some people are like bricks.  In other words, you would feel just as much flow of power if you laid hands on a brick as you would if you laid hands on them.  You will find that many of these people are church-wise folks who have been around a long time.  In general, new believers and unbelievers are easier to minister to because God has mercy on them and doesn’t expect as much from them given where they are in their walk (or lack thereof) with Him.  When I first started laying hands on the sick, I asked God “to heal people” and He did.  Today I would command sickness to leave in Jesus’ name, but I know more now than I did then.  If a baby is a year old, no one will object to him saying “Ga-ga.  Goo-goo.”  People will think it’s cute.  But it is NOT cute if a 31-year-old goes around saying, “Ga-ga.  Goo-goo.”  You expect more from a mature person.  So does God.

So what do you do?  Above all, be led by the Spirit.  I have only a few suggestions, and these are definitely “So say I, not the Lord” ideas.  I will be the first to tell you that I have no specific Scriptures on this, other than to say that in general, when there was community unbelief (which isn’t what is being discussed here) at Nazareth, Jesus just went to other villages and taught rather than wasting His time where there was unbelief.  At least a few people were healed through the laying on of hands, though apparently nothing else happened at Nazareth.  If all you have are brick-heads, you can look for somewhere else to preach.  If you’re dealing with one or a few brick-heads in a group, here are my suggestions.

1.   Try to start with people who are visibly ready to receive.  I don’t know how you describe knowing that someone is ready.  It usually shows on his face, but not always.  Paul was able to discern that a man had faith to be healed in Acts 14:7-10.  If the “brick-heads” see others receive, they may be encouraged to receive themselves and let their walls down.  No one says you have to start at one end of a line and work down – unless the host pastor told you do to it that way, in which case you need to follow his instructions.

2.   If you have a small number of people in line, you can sometimes get in some quick teaching or exhortation from the Word before you finish with someone.  Sometimes it helps; sometimes it doesn’t.  You can’t tell the person everything there is to know about healing while you’re standing in front of him.  The idea is to tell everyone about faith and healing in your message.  Still, some people doze off on you or don’t pay attention.  Such people will probably not be healed because they do not do what the crowds did around Jesus – hear and be healed.

\3.   If it’s not an assembly line kind of healing line where the ushers scoot the people out to replace them with more people down front, you can tell such people that you will come back to them and keep going.  This can help to keep the “flow” of the anointing going.  Spending too much time with too many people in a row who are in no position to receive tends to ruin the flow of the anointing.  Of course, keep your word and come back!  I’ve seen a couple services where the minister did this but then forgot and never went back.  Oops!

4.   You can go back to a good receiver for a little while.  At one point, I came across someone who was like a sponge and was very open to receiving from God.  I practically needed someone to catch me because of the way this person hooked up with the power.  Then I had to pray for others who were not receiving as well, and the flow of things was broken.  I went back and laid hands on the first person some more!  This person “pulled” on the anointing some more, and the “flow” got going again.  It was sort of like getting a jump-start.  Anyway, that seemed good at the time.  If you think you have a better idea, I’m open to suggestions.  (What would you have done?)  I also suspect that I have seen some other ministers do the same thing for the same reason, which is where I got the idea.

5.   DON’T FOLLOW this piece of advice a minister once gave me: “If you push the first three people down, the rest of them will fall over, too.”  Don’t ever play games with the anointing.  If the power’s not flowing, it’s not flowing, so don’t try to con people into thinking that it is.  Never put on a show.  That’s just plain dangerous and it’s a good way to end up having evil spirits get involved with your ministry, particularly if you minister in prophecy and “grope” for “personal words” to give people when there is no anointing flowing for that.  You cannot make the Holy Spirit do anything.  You aren’t there to “use” the Spirit; you’re there to allow the Spirit to use you!  Don’t buy into the “fake it until you make it” advice either, which is actually given out by some ministers too!  If there is no manifestation of the Spirit, just preach and teach the Word.  People who believe the Word can get healed without any special manifestation of the anointing.  It doesn’t mean that you’re ill-prepared or in some secret sin if there’s no flow through special manifestations of the Spirit.  God just doesn’t move the same way in every service.