What if You’re the Minister and Someone Comes Forward with a Healing Request That You Know Is Beyond Your Faith?
First, I would seek the Lord about it quickly under my breath. He may want to use you in the “gift of faith,” and you would then be supernaturally be able to believe for a healing that is way beyond something you would be comfortable praying for in faith. If you didn’t at least ask, you could miss out on the greatest miracle you’ve ever seen!
I was preaching under a tent in Costa Rica in a dangerous, drug-ridden area where someone had been killed outside that very tent only weeks ago. (They told me that after I agreed to preach there!) I preached in Spanish (without an interpreter) a message entitled “Jesus Heals Everything!” Everything I describe went on in Spanish but I will write it in English so that you can understand it. I laid hands on a lot of people. When I thought I was done, a woman came up with her baby. Everyone was watching, as the other people were no longer in line. She showed me her baby and said that she wanted the baby to have straight, normal feet. I looked and saw a very strange birth defect – the baby’s feet had grown out at right angles to her legs, not straight ahead like everyone else’s. I almost panicked. I knew this case was way beyond anything I’d ever prayed over, and in desperation I talked to the Lord under my breath and asked Him what I should do now that this lady actually believed my “Jesus Heals Everything!” message. I couldn’t tell her that I was wrong and that He doesn’t really heal everything, because that would make Him out to be a liar. His Word says that with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). And after all, she believed what I preached!
I’ll never forget what happened next as long as I live. The Lord told me to grab the baby’s feet and straighten them out! So I did. In a matter of seconds, the baby’s feet were facing forward like everyone else’s. I figured that ought to satisfy that dear woman, but it didn’t. She examined her baby’s straight feet and said, “There are no arches. I want arches!” She was right; the baby had flat feet. I figured that this would not be a good time to share with her that I have flat feet, too, but I just don’t care because I’m used to being the way I am and it doesn’t cause me any problems that hinder anything I want to do, except having to avoid certain footwear with pronounced arches! At this point, it was one of those “in for a penny, in for a pound” situations. I asked the Lord what to do and He told me to put my fingers where the baby’s arches should have been and press up! I did, and God instantly put arches in that baby’s feet!
That apparently excited another woman nearby who also had a baby with archless feet, and she came up so that her baby could get arches! The Lord had me do the same thing, and her baby got instant arches as well!
I saw a similar miracle in our church in Maine years later; a woman whose arches had collapsed due to an accident was able to run for the first time in twenty years. And my feet are still flat!
It can be tough on your mind and flesh when someone has a “difficult” request. Wait until someone without arches wants them and you’ll see! Your “archenemy” will try to whisper in your ear that you will look like the biggest fool when nothing happens. You have to decide really quickly if you will listen to Him or to the Lord. Sometimes you just have to press the “mute” button on your head (so to speak) and just let the rivers of living water flow out of your spirit.
But now you should be wondering, what if someone comes up with a really difficult request and you DON’T sense a manifestation of the gift of faith or any assurance from the Lord that anything will happen?
I’ve been there, too! I remember a woman coming up who was missing several teeth, and she wanted God to give her replacement teeth on the spot. That was frankly beyond what I was willing to believe for, especially since I sensed that she was trying to get me to do the believing because she wasn’t in faith herself.
I think the best thing to do would be to just be honest and tell her, “That’s really beyond what I feel I can believe for right now. But if YOU can believe for that, according to YOUR faith be it done unto you!” I forget exactly what I said at the moment, but she did not get any new teeth.
If God were moving differently, perhaps the “gift of faith” would have risen up again and she would have gotten her teeth. But there were no “working of miracles” or “gifts of healings” or “special faith” manifestations happening. If anything were to happen, it would have been her faith plus my faith. We love it when the Holy Spirit moves in a special way, but we don’t control His manifestations. Most of the time, it will be “according to our faith” that things will be done (or not done).
Having a deaf person come up used to scare me. That was before one of them started to hear. Now it’s not so scary anymore and we’ve seen quite a few deaf ears healed. Some of them were in our hometown, which made it even more special. Our faith grows as we spend more time in the Word and see God honor His Word in front of our eyes.
That doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t get a dental miracle. I’ve believed God to keep a tooth myself! I used to play golf with a man who received a filling during a service and his dentist “chewed him out” for seeing another dentist when it was actually the Lord’s doing. So why didn’t God just give him a new tooth instead of a filling? I don’t know. (It’s okay to admit that you don’t know everything.) God COULD give someone new teeth. I had a friend who called a healing line and had someone who was missing three teeth come up because he wanted to receive new teeth – not fillings, as the teeth were completely gone. My friend laid hands on the man in the name of Jesus and God put new teeth in his mouth on the spot. God is unlimited. The issue is never what He can do, it’s what we can believe (Mark 9:23). As we grow, we should be able to believe for more things and see greater miracles even when there is no special manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
And remember that the God whose power flows through you does not consider any condition “harder” to heal than any other condition. That perception is strictly at our end.
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