Healing 101

It’s time to talk about the nuts and bolts of how we go about healing the sick. In my own experiences and in what I’ve learned from those who have successfully ministered healing over decades, a common message comes forth: To operate successfully in divine healing it’s imperative to establish a strong, active relationship with the Holy Spirit. All that we do must be led and powered by the Spirit of God.

As we minister healing to others, we’re not primarily about the business of healing. We are ambassadors of heaven, facilitating new relationships with those who may not know God. If we don’t know His ways, we can’t share Him with the world. Establishing and maintaining the relationship is the first order of business. The authority to heal comes from being a disciple of Jesus. If you’re not His disciple yet, become one. Ask Him to come into your life and the Holy Spirit will come and reside in you. Then you will have the power and authority to heal the sick and raise the dead.

My next bit of advice is to get rid of daily distractions and seek the face of God in solitude. Unplug your television and use the time to rest in God’s presence. Sing, worship, pray, let God give you visions and dreams, do some fasting, and get acquainted with Him in ways you haven’t before. As your relationship with God grows so will your faith for healing.

The following advice comes from a friend, Brian Fenimore, who has been healing the sick for decades. Don’t ever try to heal the sick while remaining detached from the presence of the Holy Spirit. You can heal the sick on faith or authority alone and many people have done it. When we do this, we start to believe we can heal the sick without the direct involvement of the Holy Spirit. We’ll build a kingdom for ourselves, and eventually the healing dynamic will collapse. After a successful run, we’ll find that people aren’t being healed and wonder what happened. The failure comes because we left the Holy Spirit out of the encounter. Always invite the Holy Spirit to participate and lead the healing encounter and allow Him to do with the person what He wants done. Ministry with the Holy Spirit is a dance. He leads, and we follow.

The vast majority of divine healing comes through faith. It’s that simple. Children can be used in healing because they haven’t been poisoned with doubt. If you have doubts about God’s desire to heal the sick through you, replacing doubt with faith is critical. One way to build faith is to lay hands on anyone who will let you. At first, you may not see many people healed, but eventually, you will. It depends on the level of faith you begin with. I had to overcome a lot of skepticism, but you may not and you may see miracles immediately. As I prayed with people my faith grew and the frequency of miracles increased. You should expect the same results.

When I began in healing, I found every passage in the New Testament that had to do with healing and I studied and memorized them. Then I went through the Old Testament. Reading Scripture passages about healing is a faith-building experience. Study, study, study, then rest in the Holy Spirit and let Him apply it to your spirit. One thing we all need is to have our minds renewed to the truth of God’s will concerning healing and exercises like this can help.

If you need healing, find someone to do it. My own healing made a profound impact on my faith to heal others. I suffered from months of aggravating shoulder pain. One day I went to a meeting where a man prayed for me. After he prayed I felt nothing. It wasn’t until 24 hours later that I felt the pain leave and realized that I was healed. Pursue your healing until you receive it.

Many people have been successful in healing before you. They all have lessons you can learn from. If you know people who operate in healing, go with them when they minister. If healing is happening at a certain place make a point to be there and witness it firsthand. Bill Johnson said, “If you want to kill giants, hang around giant-killers.” There’s a lot of truth to this principle. My daughter and wife have become proficient at healing because they’ve been around me when I do it and their faith has grown alongside mine.

Read books, watch videos — especially testimonies of healing and instruction. Many people who operate in healing have mp3s and podcasts you can listen to. I have a lot of resources on my website and part of my own training came from reviewing material I wanted to publish. Devour all you can, then rest in the Holy Spirit and let Him sort it out.

I receive a lot of requests for healing by e-mail. Some of the more amazing testimonies came from these long-distance requests. A number of friends do healing through an application on Facebook that utilizes the chat feature. They’ve amassed thousands of healing testimonies in just a few years. Thousands have been healed over Skype prayer sessions. Be open to healing over distances, particularly if praying for people in public is just too frightening for you.

Assessing a person’s illness or injury is something I do routinely as a medical practitioner, but it’s also helpful in healing. I ask questions of the person before I begin. Part of this is to establish the bridge of relationship:

1. Ask about the onset of symptoms – when and how the sickness or injury happened.
2. Ask about the severity of pain on a scale from 1 to 10, with ‘1’ being almost no pain and ‘10’ being the worst pain imaginable. This is helpful in evaluating the progress of healing. If the pain was an ‘8’ at the start and a few minutes later it’s a ‘3’, you’re making progress.
3. Ask about limitations in activity or range of motion.
4. Ask how long they’ve had the symptoms.
5. Ask about any treatment they’ve had. Antibiotics damage the immune system; so commanding the immune system to be healed may be in order. Radiation and chemotherapy also damage the body. You may need to command that damage to be healed. Don’t be discouraged by what you hear. It’s just information so that when they are healed, you’ll know what they were healed of.

Healing doesn’t happen unless you get started. Lay hands on anyone who will let you; friends, family, co-workers, and strangers. When I order food at a restaurant or coffee shop they usually ask, “Is that all you need today?” Sometimes I’ll reply, “That’s it…. unless you know someone who needs healing.” I often find people with headaches or other things to heal. When I’m shopping I look for canes, casts, immobilizers, splints, wheelchairs, and people hobbling along in obvious pain. These folks are usually open to healing. Introduce yourself, build some trust and ask if you can help them by getting them healed. If they say no, bless them and keep going.

You’ll find many different methods of healing out there. Most of them work. Some are better than others, but none are foolproof. I saw an approach that I liked so I borrowed it then adapted it to fit my personality. It works for me but it doesn’t work for everyone. Don’t get hung up on following a certain method. Develop your own, as I did. In fact, you might consider using different methods at different times. Jesus used a different method nearly every time and had great success.

Among my friends who have the highest success rates in healing – there is agreement on one approach that seems to work best. It involves commanding sickness or pain to leave and commanding healing to take its place. Don’t beg or plead with God to heal anyone. The most common mistake people make is begging God to heal. The second is quitting too soon. Persistence brings breakthrough. You’ll have to get used to a little embarrassment. You may look a bit foolish repeatedly commanding a broken leg to be healed when there is no outward sign that it’s helping. Yet the vast majority of healings I’ve seen came because I stood there looking like an idiot, repeatedly commanding an injury to be healed until it finally was healed.

One of the ways we can heal is by laying hands on the sick. If you’re able to physically touch the sick person, it may help, but it isn’t always necessary. Often times I don’t touch people and they are still healed. Command sickness, disease, inflammation, pain, darkness, depression, or unclean spirits to leave. Next command organs, blood vessels, nerves, ligaments, tendons, bones, cartilage, muscles, and other anatomical structures to be healed. Yes, I said command spirits to leave. One of the things I’ve learned is that there are usually demons hanging around sick and injured people. I didn’t say these people were possessed by spirits, but spirits are often found around sickness, disease, and trauma. I’ve had a number of experiences where I commanded a knee or ankle to be healed and nothing happened even after 5 or 6 attempts. In some cases, I closed my eyes and God showed me a spirit that needed to be removed and in other cases, I assumed a spirit was there and commanded it to leave. In almost every case, the next command brought complete healing. Remember that when the disciples could not heal the boy with seizures, Jesus removed the spirit that caused the sickness. Once the spirit was evicted, the boy was healed. If healing is going poorly consider the possibility that a spirit is present that must be removed.

Don’t be discouraged if nothing happens the first time you command healing to happen. Do it again. Don’t be discouraged if nothing happens the second time. Do it again. Don’t give up if nothing happens the third time. Do it again. Keep commanding the affliction to leave and command the sick or injured body part to be healed.

When I started seeing people healed, most of it came after 4 or 5 times of commanding healing to happen. Be persistent and don’t quit. If you see any change in symptoms or severity of pain after 4 or 5 times, keep going. You’re making progress. If you see any change at all, you can eventually get it to go away completely.

In the Christian community where healing and miracles are common, a distinction is made between a healing and a miracle. When a person is healed through a gradual process, it is said to be a healing. When a condition disappears immediately, it is said to be a miracle. I tend not to make the distinction myself, but if you discuss healing and miracles with certain groups of people, you’ll find that many of them insist on using the correct terms.

In the practice of healing, patience is worth its weight in gold. Some people will only be healed after an hour or even several hours of battling against the disease. Would your time be well spent if it took two hours to get someone healed of diabetes or blindness? Would you consider it a good use of your time if it took 15 hours to get someone healed of Lou Gehrig’s disease? And would you be content to pray for a resurrection for 24 hours if that’s what it took? As your faith grows, healing will take less time and the frequency of miracles should increase. As my faith has grown in the last year, most people are being healed after just one or two commands.

Commanding healing is a strong place to begin, but there are other ways to get people healed and some diseases don’t respond to commands. Resist the temptation to rely on this approach exclusively, even though it works well. I see healing as a battle and like real warfare; we have a variety of weapons at our disposal. Sometimes an assault rifle is the weapon of choice. Sometimes a grenade is better, and once in a while, a 2,000-pound bomb is needed to get the job done. If you’re having problems getting someone healed, ask God for the right weapon.

Commanding healing is like engaging in close combat with the enemy. It’s effective in most cases, but it has limitations. At times, Jesus engaged the enemy directly. But at other times He did not. Consider the paralytic whom Jesus told to take up his mat and walk.

Jesus didn’t command him to be healed or cast out a demon. He didn’t touch him. He gave him a command to obey, which he couldn’t obey unless his body was healed. His body obeyed the command and was healed so that he could stand up. In this example, Jesus didn’t even acknowledge the disease. He commanded the man to do something that required healing to happen.

Recently, the Lord has been training me to use a similar approach. In September of 2011, I received two prayer requests via Facebook for healing of tumors within a couple of days. One was a brain tumor; the other was a thyroid tumor. Both patients were about to undergo surgery within 24 hours. In both cases, when I closed my eyes to see how the Lord wanted to proceed, I saw a throne. Most of the revelation I receive about healing comes through visions.

I know from past experience that when God shows me a throne, He wants me to make a declaration as a king would. This approach doesn’t involve commanding the disease to leave. I make a declaration that requires healing of the disease in order for the declaration to come to pass, just as Jesus told the paralytic to stand up. In both cases, I declared that the doctors would find no tumor when they went into the operating room. I didn’t command anything to leave or ask God for anything. It was a short declaration and nothing more. In order for the declaration to come to pass, the tumors would have to disappear. In both cases, I received a message the following day that when the patient was taken to the operating room, the surgeons could not find the tumors.

This is equivalent to a 2,000-pound bomb being dropped from heaven. It’s quick and clean and doesn’t require direct engagement of the enemy. This is just one of the many ways you can see people healed. There is one passage in the New Testament that instructs us to pray for healing:
“Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” (Jas. 5:14)

It seems that if you are in the position of a church elder, praying for the sick may be a good approach along with anointing the sick person with oil. I have some anointing oil and I occasionally use it, but it’s more for myself than for others. I’m not certain if James taught that oil was to be used symbolically or if he knew of its medicinal properties.

Many recent studies have proven that cinnamon oil has powerful antimicrobial properties and is effective against bacteria like e-coli, streptococcus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, or MRSA. I use a blend known as Thieves’ oil. Legend has it that during the Middle Ages, thieves were able to rob the bodies of those who died from the bubonic plague without becoming sick because they used this oil to prevent sickness. Thieves’ is a blend of clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus and rosemary oils. If you decide to use oils, be careful to use them as directed by the manufacturer. Some essential oils must be diluted before use.

Another way to heal is to speak words of healing over the person who is sick. I’ve had several dreams and visions where God instructed me in this approach. In these experiences I saw lights grow brighter when certain words were spoken. They were words such as “Hope, Love, Peace, Power, Spirit, Life, Healing, etc.” Jesus said, “The words that I speak are spirit and they are life.” (Jn. 6:63) We also know that the tongue holds the power of life and death. (Prov. 18:21) We’ll look at more unique methods of healing in the chapter on street healing.

Healing has limitations. It’s not the ultimate answer to life’s problems and it’s irrelevant to healthy people. When you find yourself surrounded by a crowd of people with no healing needs and healing is your only weapon — you have nothing to give them.

Personally, I love the prophetic life. It’s a gift that can be used in any situation with anyone. Who wouldn’t like an encouraging word from God? Biblical dream interpretation is another great tool to have in your arsenal. Consider other gifts God might want to use in your life. Remember my advice on building your relationship with the Holy Spirit? If you’re tuned in to what He’s saying, you’ll know which gift He wants to use and how He wants to use it.

And now a word of caution: If anyone claims to have figured it all out concerning healing and they tell you not to bother learning from anyone else – beware. They have an agenda that you don’t want to be under. These people are out to gather a following and they probably have a desire to control others. Be open to different teachers and different approaches to healing and you’ll never stop learning about the ways of God.

This is an excerpt from my book Divine Healing Made Simple. Click on the link or on the image below to learn more.