In the previous installment of this series (here) we looked at emotional triggers, their relation to soul fragments, and some basic means to work with them on our own when there aren’t prayer ministers conveniently available to help us work through our triggers. Now we (finally!) get to the part where we do the actual “stuff” –the physical healing.
This is the part everyone wants to learn and get good at, but I have become increasingly convinced it’s not as effective if we don’t do the stuff I’ve been talking about before it. Yes, there are many situations that don’t lend themselves to this depth of prayer work and sometimes all we have is a one-minute emotional-healing prayer, but equally as often we are around friends and family members who are contending for healing over time and simply are not getting healed regardless of how much we pray. While inner healing, fragments, deliverance, etc. can work for acute problems, they work particularly well for chronic issues that often didn’t appear overnight and have been unhealed for a long time. If healing prayer doesn’t work, once those other issues are addressed, return to praying for physical healing.
Physical healing has a number of components to it, and it is possible to be effective with any single component, but it works best when they are used in concert with one another. Faith, power, and authority are major keys, as are casting out demons from the site of the injury. In the same way that demons attach to emotional issues, they attach to physical ones. It is exceedingly rare that I don’t find a demon involved with a physical problem, and with any condition that includes pain I often find the person’s pain decreases significantly once I cast demons out.
One of the difficulties of our modern-day, western, industrialized, scientific minds is that people can get freaked out by the idea of demons. Many people believe in them but try to avoid them, and get spooked when we openly address them. Often I will simplify things, especially when praying with someone I don’t know very well and don’t know how they will respond to me praying about demons. I will pray something like this: “I command every hindrance that is preventing this healing to leave now in the name of Jesus.” I know what I am praying, and so do the demons. They know they are being evicted and they have to skedaddle. If I don’t feel them gone, I simply repeat the prayer. The other person may be able to put two and two together, but at that point their pain is usually lessened (if it’s a condition involving pain) and I’m moving on to the next part of the healing process.
Faith is a key component of healing prayer because faith is the connection between heaven’s power and this earthly realm. Our job as emissaries of God is to become the point where heaven and earth converge–to do that requires faith. When I pray for someone, I will oftentimes pray lengthy, flowery, wordy prayers. I do this for a few reasons, and not mostly because I like to hear myself talk, although that might be what it sounds like to some. No, I tend to pray long prayers because I am actually doing something in the midst of the prayer itself–building faith for them and me.
When I pray, I usually speak scripture verses that help engage my faith in that moment and have the potential to build the other person’s faith as well. In some ways my praying is more declarative than petitionary in that sense, but it helps me put my mind “in the game.” Faith as a whole is a dynamic substance–and yes, it is a spiritual substance. Faith is a creative spiritual force that causes spiritual power to function. When our faith is engaged, we have greater results than when it is not because as a force it sets spiritual power into motion.
Long-term, it is far more important that we cultivate lives of faith-building than it is to know how to stir it up in the short-term, but both have their place. Regardless of whether I have cultivated faith over time through the things I listen to, hear, and focus on, there will come times when I need to activate faith in the moment. I believe it is important for all of life, but it is extremely helpful with healing prayer to be able to activate faith on the spot.
We exercise our faith every day without realizing it. When we sit in a chair or touch a light switch, we don’t spend time wondering whether the chair will hold us or whether the light will turn on–we expect that it will operate as it is supposed to and we act accordingly. What we believe deep down is what we tend to manifest, so when I pray to enhance and activate my faith, it is to take certain beliefs I hold and in that moment give them greater priority and prominence than any limiting beliefs I still hold. I find this practice to be effective, so I continue doing it. Someone else may have other ways to stir up and engage their own faith in the moment, and if another method works well, then by all means use it.
The other thing about faith is that many people believe they have little faith, but what they don’t realize is that the problem is rarely the quantity or size of their faith, but rather what they put their faith in. Doubt is not actually a lack of faith, but it is faith that the thing we are believing for will not occur. The reason why doubt is so limiting is because it undermines the faith we engage that the thing we believe for will occur. In my book “The Gamer’s Guide to the Kingdom of God” I use this illustration:
“Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, really, but rather it is faith in the negative. It is belief that the very thing we are looking at will not happen. To give an illustration, doubt is a little like a man who has a carriage and four horses. He attaches the front of the carriage to two horses, then sets the other two horses up as well–on the back end of the carriage facing the opposite direction. He climbs in the carriage and gives the command for the horses to begin pulling him. After all, he has places to be! After only a few moments he observes them going nowhere. He gives the command again and hears the clopping of hooves, but still feels no movement. Getting out, he gets angry with the horses and begins to whip them, urging them forward. As we all know, if at the end of the day the man doesn’t change the way he ties his horses to the carriage, he will continue to get nowhere. This man needs to repent, which doesn’t mean slinging snot and tears before some holy man or in some church or temple. That idea is incorrectly based off of the thought that repent comes from the French word repentir which means to be sorry for crimes and sins. Rather, the word used in the Bible is the Greek word metanoia which literally means to change one’s mind. All the man would need to do is change his mind about how he manages his horses, line his actions up with that different thought by moving two of the horses, and he would get different results (250-251).”
“Knowing that doubt is actually a form of faith manifested in the negative helps us to understand how faith is hindered. The most common way that faith is hindered is through our own unbelief–usually through the information that we feed ourselves in the external world and through our inner self-talk and our verbalized statements. In other words, we sow doubt into the field of our mind and then wonder why we reap a harvest of unbelief (251). ”
If we want our faith to be effective, and we want to see people healed, we have to transform our minds and change our focus. If we believe, as many still do, that God may or may not want to heal someone, it will be difficult to have faith that God will heal them. We need to understand that Jesus already paid the price on the cross one time for all creation to remove sickness, disease, pain, weakness, poverty, lack, and every other unhealthy and destructive force, and in their place releases constantly upon all of us His abundant life-giving power. To believe that God does not heal or might not want to is probably the single most effective method the enemy has used through the ages to prevent us from walking in resurrection power and to heal the sick. No, we must be willing to change our own thinking in this area and refuse any belief that says anything less than healing for everyone, every time, all the time, for all time.
In the final installment of this series we will look at how to heal using the power and authority we have been given in Christ Jesus, and cover a few tips for better results on-the-spot when praying for physical healing.
Divine Healing that Works- The Complete Series
Part 2 – Demons and Deliverance
Part 7 – Triggers and Healing Fragments
Part 9 – Power and Authority For Healing
Related Posts
Power and Authority For Healing – Part 9 of Divine Healing that Works- Triggers and Healing Fragments – Part 7 of Divine Healing that Works
- Emotional Healing – Part 6 of Divine Healing that Works
- Casting Out Demons – Part 5 of Divine Healing that Works
- Limiting Beliefs – Part 4 of Divine Healing that Works
- Fragments – Part 3 of Divine Healing that Works
