Healing Prayer

“Pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” - James 5:16

This Wednesday night Wesley will continue its series teaching on the Holy Spirit and will focus on the desire and ability of God to heal people.  

At the end of the service, lines will form where you can receive prayer for any kind of healing you might need — that can be emotional, physical or otherwise. We believe prayer is powerful, so we encourage you to receive prayer Wednesday night.
 
If you’re a little skeptical or maybe a little discouraged, check out the answers the questions below.

Is this a real thing?

All throughout His ministry, Jesus healed people. He healed the lame, blind and mute. The paralytics and the lepers. He healed people of “all kinds” of sickness and disease. {Matthew 4:23}

Healing people was a fundamental part of what Jesus did while He was on Earth — and it remains fundamental to what God does in the lives of people today.

It’s easy to glaze over all the passages throughout the New Testament where Jesus brought healing to people and think, ‘well that was just how Jesus worked on Earth then. He’s not here now, so that doesn’t happen anymore.’

But if God, who is unchanging, healed in the time of the disciples, why would He not do that for us now?

Although Jesus isn’t here to touch the eyes of a blind man and make him see, instead we have something just as powerful and what Jesus said {in John 16:7} was even better for us than His presence on Earth — the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit enables us to pray for healing and see it happen. In 1 Corinthians 14, the Bible explains to us there are gifts that come from the Holy Spirit, who resides in us, that should be used to encourage and instruct other believers and ultimately glorify God. One of these is the gift of healing.

You can see the healing gift of the Spirit at work throughout the book of Acts after Jesus has already ascended into Heaven.

For example, in Acts 3, Peter tells a poor beggar to rise up and walk in the name of Jesus. In Acts 5, many sick in a crowd of people are healed by the disciples. In Acts 9, Peter even raises someone from the dead.  
 
But it wasn’t the disciples that were special. It was the treasure inside of them that was.
We have the same Spirit inside of us as the disciples did, so we have the same authority to heal and see people restored.

What if I don’t get healed?

Maybe you’ve been asking for healing for something for a long time. Or maybe you’re avoiding asking because you aren’t sure God will answer.

Let me encourage you by saying, we don’t ask for healing with faith in the outcome. Instead, we ask with faith in who God is.

Healing is part of God’s character. God revealed himself as Jehovah-Rapha to the Israelites in Exodus 15 just after He delivers them out of the hands of the Egyptians and through the parted Red Sea. In Hebrew, Jehovah-Rapha means “our God who heals.”

This is why we pray to God to heal someone — because He wants us to ask Him, and He is someone we can trust.

Many of the healings Jesus performed not only restored people’s physical health, but also were used to strengthen the faith of the people desiring healing and to jump start or increase the faith of people around them.

God oftentimes has a bigger purpose for healing than we understand, and sometimes He doesn’t answer prayers for healing in the timeline we wish He would.

Healing can be a process. If things aren’t good yet, realize that He isn’t done and be persistent in asking for healing because you can trust in who He is.

There’s a story in the New Testament that can teach us a little bit about persistence in asking God for healing.  

In Mark 8, a blind man is brought to Jesus and he and the people with him beg for his sight. Jesus lays hands on him then asks if he could see.

Because Jesus just laid hands on this guy, you would think he could see — but he can’t. At least not fully. He tells Jesus, he can see, but not very clearly, and people look like trees walking around to him.

In response to the man’s honesty, desire for full healing and trust in Jesus, He lays hands on the blind man once more and his sight is fully restored.

In this moment, Jesus fully intended to heal the man completely — but Jesus allowed the man to display his trust and faith first.

When we pray for healing, we must be persistent, and trust in who God is rather than in the results we are presently seeing.  
 
Author | Lindsey Conway