One of the things we did in Peru 2023 with Overseas Missions was hold medical clinics, which, being a nurse, I play a role in. The clinic process usually involves seeing patients, assessing their needs, giving medications where possible, then sending the problem list (written on a piece of paper with their name) to the prayer team to pray for the problems. The results are pretty fantastic—almost everyone who goes through the clinic and gets prayer gets healed. Because we are in a non-English-speaking country, however, that means we have to use translators because most of the team doesn’t speak the local language which, on this trip, was Spanish. Our leader made some arrangements with locals he is in relationship with, and one of the translators, Jonathan, was the son of a local Iquitos pastor.
He did a fabulous job translating for us the entire time we were in Peru. And although Jonathan was a pastor’s son, he wasn’t accustomed to praying for the sick (to be fair, I am the son of an Episcopal priest and I wasn’t raised to pray for the sick either). So, while most of what the nurses in the clinic did was identify and treat physical problems and send people to the prayer team, I had a few times I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to have us pray—so mostly I had Jonathan do it. He was uncomfortable at first (he told me, but it was pretty obvious even if he hadn’t said anything), but he did great and was willing to push himself out of his comfort zone. It probably helped a bit that for everyone he prayed for, their pain gradually left as well, so he could see the results of his prayers in real-time.
Now, when it comes to praying for the sick, I have a bit of a mental algorithm I go through in my head while talking to the Holy Spirit and just trying to be generally aware to spiritually discern what God is saying and doing, so I made sure to tell Jonathan my process, and I’ll share that here as well.
First, when it comes to heal the sick I begin with a prayer of command. Something simple like, “All pain, leave now in the name of Jesus.” You see, in Matthew 28:18-19 Jesus told his disciples that He had received all authority in heaven and earth, then delegated the disciples to go and exercise that authority on His behalf. So, when praying for the sick the first thing I do is engage my authority and release power to heal, and expect it to be done in faith. Then, where possible, I have the person test it out and see if they can tell a difference.
After praying, one of three things will happen: it will get better, get worse, or stay the same (or they may not be able to tell, so in that case I assume it has remained the same).
- If it gets worse, it’s a demon, so then I cast out demons.
- If it gets better but not all-better then God is actively healing them in that moment and I pray again.
- If it stays the same then I pray again because even Jesus prayed twice (Mark 8:22-25).
- And if it gets all-better then they’re healed. Give them a hug and let them know God loves them.
The rest of the prayer session tends to continue in a similar manner, with me praying then identifying what is happening, then adjusting from there. If we hit blockages where nothing is happening after praying multiple times or if they have been gradually getting healed and it stops, then I cast out demons. Once I have done that if it still plateaus, then I am talking to the Holy Spirit to see if there are emotional issues or curses or something else that are interfering with what we are praying, deal with that issue, then ideally go back to my prayer process again until they are fully healed.
Since Jonathan eventually plans to be a doctor anyway, I taught him this algorithm to him since it’s largely based on how I problem-solve as a nurse anyway, and figured it would be a good fit for him. Then, as we prayed for people, I coached him through the process, asking him what he saw, what he thought we should do next, etc. Finally, in keeping with the prayer of power and authority, I continued to remind him that he is a son of the Most High God and that Sons of the Kingdom don’t ask for creation to obey us—we command it to.
We practiced this healing prayer process both during the clinics infrequently with patients and also at a few healing prayer services we did while in Iquitos. While praying together, Jonathan and I saw God heal blindness, deafness, and a number of other less-problematic conditions, but the last patient we saw on the last clinic day was a pretty special circumstance that beat out all of those.
On the final day of the clinic, we spoke to a young woman who’s main complaint was knee pain. Seeing that she was the last patient, I had Jonathan pray for her, and the pain left instantly. After praying for her knee and giving her antiparasitics for her family, vitamins, and some other medications, I observed that her ankle looked really strange, something she hadn’t mentioned anything about. It looked at first glance like she had broken it sometime in the past and it had healed very poorly, as it was swollen and misshapen. Upon asking her, it turned out that she had an ankle tumor. I mean, I would have led with that, but people can be funny.
Now, while I inspected her ankle I noticed something that was impossible to miss because of how glaringly obvious it was. This young woman’s ankle and the tumor on it were absolutely covered in gold dust! We had seen other patients in the clinics and everyone whose skin we inspected for a skin problem had supernatural gold dust on their skin problem, but on this woman’s ankle it was thicker and just more somehow. I showed Jonathan and then showed the woman—and explained it was a miracle from heaven (milagro de cielo) and a sign that God wanted to heal her body. With that, we began to pray.
As you can probably guess, I had Jonathan pray for her. I began by having her rate her pain and move her ankle so we could observe how much range of motion she had (another way to evaluate change when healing the sick). Jonathan liked to pray long, flowery prayers with a bunch of “Father Gods” thrown in there so I told him to pray a super short prayer this time. I had him say “Pain, leave in the name of Jesus.” He prayed, and some of the pain left. After praying she said it felt like something was “grabbing her ankle,” so I had him command “Demon get out and all swelling go in the name of Jesus.” He did, the demon left, the rest of the pain went, and as we continued to take turns praying over the next few minutes, the swelling visibly reduced to about half the size! Her pain was gone, and her range of motion in the ankle had improved significantly.
We had to close up right after this as it was getting dark, or I would have continued to pray more because God was actively healing this woman’s body and removing the tumor and its effects! And while I preferred to continue praying, I could also trust that God would continue the work that He had started to begin with. After all, covering her tumor in gold dust wasn’t my idea—it was His. This precious woman was crying by the time we were done because she could tell that God was touching her body. It was so beautiful to see her moved by God’s gift to her, and I simply extended my faith in trust that God would finish the work over the next few days.
That miracle was pretty awesome, but almost as awesome to me was helping train up another Son of our Father to heal the sick and destroy works of darkness. After all, if in a week’s time Jonathan saw the sick healed, blindness and deafness healed, and he even saw a tumor shrink at his prayer of command, what else is possible when partnering as a Son with our Heavenly Father? Nothing is impossible with God!
