Firstly, I believe God’s will is for everyone to be healed.
He’s a good father who gives us good gifts – there’s no evil in him, and if Jesus has already paid the price for our healing, then why would God want to dishonour that by making us pay again? Jesus was enough.
So the issue I believe is us learning how to pray for and receive our healing.
I have discovered there is no formula.
Things that have worked for me in one situation didn’t work in another. I prayed for myself as a teenager and was instantly healed and then prayed those exact same words for others and they weren’t.
Our example is always Jesus, and he healed people differently – for one man he spat in the dirt to make mud which he then put on the man’s eyes, sometimes he laid hands on people, other times he spoke the word from afar.
So it’s not about a formula, it’s about a relationship.
Jesus is our healer – the Bible says in Isaiah 53:5 ‘by His wounds we are healed’. We have to look to Jesus. We need to know who we are in Christ and the authority and mandate he has given to us to heal for the sick, such as, we are born of the spirit (John 3:6) and a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). We’re seated with Christ in the heavenly places. (Eph 2:6) Jesus said ‘I’ve given you all authority over the power of the enemy.’ (Luke 10:19) We’re also commanded to heal the sick. (Luke 9:2, Luke 10:9).
Jesus delegates authority to us so that’s why we always pray for healing and command sickness to go ‘in Jesus name’, because it’s his authority given to us. He’s the one that conquered death and sickness, not us.
Jesus also said that he only did what he saw his Father in heaven doing. Today the Holy Spirit reveals to us what God is up to so that we can partner with him to see His power released on earth.
So it’s about relationship with Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the one who can reveal things that need to be prayed, decreed, released or broken over a person in order to receive their healing.
He can show the root cause and any blockages that need to be dealt with for healing to come.
If we’re open to the Holy Spirit he can guide us in using his gifts, such as the gift of faith.
When our kids were little they were lactose intolerant and had to have lactose free dairy products.
After listening to a message on healing, the Holy Spirit brought to my mind our kids lactose intolerance, and coupled with it was this incredible faith and just “knowing” they were going to be healed the moment I prayed for them.
I went into the bedrooms and laid hands on them and prayed while they slept and just knew they had been healed, even though there was no immediate evidence. I believe it was a gift of faith for that particular situation. The Bible says to eagerly desire spiritual gifts, so we can ask for them. You can ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of faith.
Back to the story...the next morning I gave both the kids a full glass of normal milk and shortly after my son comes to me and says his tummy is hurting.
My heart sank and I was really puzzled because I “knew” that they had been healed. Straight away I heard God say that the symptoms were from the enemy mimicking the sickness so we would give up on the healing.
So my next point is… Sometimes you have to fight to keep your healing.
The Bible says the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy - and that means your healing too. Stand against him and believe what God says instead!
So with my kids I just pushed the doubt away and kept thanking God that he had healed them. My son’ tummy pain stopped and they’ve both been healed ever since. So in that case it was a very short lived battle, but be on your guard as you may need fight to keep your healing, especially early on.
No set time frame either
As nice as instant healings are, healings in my experience have sometimes been a journey because it’s about relationship and there’s often things God needs us to grow in or to address along the way.
My daughter started having seizures and losing her hearing when she was 5 years old, and we were told by the specialists that she probably had a degenerative disorder which is terminal.
After a few days of my head spinning, I was finally able to get quiet enough before God to hear him say he was going to heal her. I’d seen instant healings before and although I didn’t have the gift of faith operating at this point, I still believed God could heal her instantly. So when I asked God about her healing and the first thing God said was anoint her each day and pray over her for the next 3 months, I knew this was not going to be a quick fix this time.
Probably because my first prayers for her were along the lines of “God don’t let her die”! There was little faith or peace at that point, I was just praying from fear, which is basically agreeing with the enemy.
So the next principle is praise. Praise is so important in the healing journey because it puts God in His rightful place over our problem. We start to see God as bigger than the diagnosis or the physical evidence. It can be so easy to focus on our problem or sickness that we actually magnify it, instead of the creator of the universe. Praise helps us get our perspective right again, with God over everything.
Praise helps us move from a place of fear into peace, where it is so much easier to hear God’s voice and follow His leading. For you it might not be fear, it might be a place of discouragement or sense of helplessness; you still need to magnify God in your situation and change the atmosphere in which you pray. Praise can break strongholds and it changes us. God wants us to praise Him because he knows that’s what we need. We are continually changed through praise encounters with God.
So back to my daughter, it was months of praising God. One way I did this was to go for walks every morning and night whilst listening to worship music. I came to a place of complete peace about the situation because I kept my eyes on God and kept my expectation positive through praise and worship. When we received her test results nine months later, they were all clear. The seizures had also stopped.
At that point I would say my daughter was partially healed, but she still had 2 deaf ears. For another 2 years we kept trusting she would be healed of her deafness and kept doing and praying everything we felt led by the Holy Spirit to do, and I believe this obedience led us to God’s ‘divine set up’ for her.
On Sunday night, the 20th August 2017, our daughter went forward in a response for prayer. My husband and I were sobbing even before she was prayed for, because we “knew” this was it. We had been fighting for 2 ½ years, praising God and letting him speak into our situation, so our expectation was high and we “knew” this was the moment her ears would be healed. And one ear was miraculously fully healed that night! However, the other was still deaf.
Even though God wants us healed and whole, we have an enemy who doesn’t. We had to contend and fight for her other ear for 6 months, gradually seeing her hearing improve in that ear until finally, both ears were completely healed.
Sometimes we have to fight for the fullness of healing. Sometimes we only see a partial healing - but God doesn’t do half miracles! Keep fighting for full healing and keep praising and magnifying God in your situation.
If you’re on a journey of healing, be careful who you let speak into your life.
I had a well-meaning Christian friend who asked for an update on our daughter early on and, after telling her about the possible degenerative disorder, said to me: ‘I knew a guy who had a degenerative disorder who was believing God to heal him, but within a few years he was dead. Degenerative disorders are horrible things and sometimes life just sucks.’
At this point I could literally feel fear wanting to take hold of me. I quickly left, rebuked the fear and said ‘I am not coming into agreement with that word. My daughter is going live!’
After that I deliberately avoided that friend and surrounded myself with friends who would encourage me in what God was saying, would stand with me and fight and, above all, speak life into the situation, not death.
We need to carefully guard our hearts and minds against negative words and have people around us who are listening to the Holy Spirit and speaking truth into our lives. I’m not saying to surround yourself with people who will only say what you want to hear, but to make sure those around you are listening to what God is saying first, and that they are not filtering it through their own perspective or experiences.
When you pray, keep your language focused on what you believe God can do, rather than reeling off a list of what you see the enemy is doing. When you’re up against something, it can be very easy to pray from a negative stance.
For example, try not to pray things like ‘God, my daughter is so sick, the doctors have given her no hope, she’s so scared, we don’t know what to do’, and so on, because this is focusing on and advertising what the enemy is doing, and building him up in your situation.
Instead, pray from a positive stance such as, ‘God, we may not understand what’s going on but we know you are in control and our hope is in you.’ Instead of repeating the negative diagnosis, you can say ‘…regardless of what the doctors say we thank you that you have a hope and a future for our daughter. We bind the work of the enemy and speak life into her body in Jesus’ name.’
Instead of stating that someone is full of fear you would declare peace over them.
Don’t give the enemy airtime. Declare heaven’s perspective and what you want to see happen in Jesus’ name. Speak life!
How do we fight for healing?
You fight by taking every negative thought captive and instead choosing to think about what God has said, either in the Bible, or to you specifically for that situation.
You fight by declaring healing Scriptures over the person, or verses the Holy Spirit gives you. We made a poster with healing scriptures and promises and got our daughter to help decorate it with pretty butterflies & stickers, and we put it on her wall next to her bed. Every night we would pray those promises over her whist tucking her in.
Declare words of prophecy that person has been given. We had several people give us words or pictures about our daughter being healed. One was a stranger who didn’t know us or our daughter! Not only were these words incredibly encouraging for me, but they also became weapons in my hand that I could declare over her.
I would pray over her in tongues while she slept.
I would praise and sing worship songs over her, some of which were just magnifying God in the situation and letting my heart trust in him, and some were full on battle songs, coming against the sickness and declaring God’s victory and breakthrough over her. Praise is such a powerful weapon against the enemy.
Sometimes while singing the battle songs I would march around her room, just like the Israelites marched around Jericho! I did a lot of things that were symbolic and felt a little foolish at the time, but I was going to do whatever I felt the Holy Spirit put in my head to do, because symbolic or prophetic acts the Holy Spirit are incredibly powerful in the spirit realm. We need to trust and obey the Holy Spirit. Once again, it’s about relationship!
I also changed my language
When talking about my situation with people, rather than saying ‘she’s slowly dying’ I would say ‘the doctors think she’s going to die, but I believe God has said she’s going to live.’ And with our daughter I would always remind her that while she was deaf for now, she would one day be able to hear again.
Speak life into you situation, because Prov 18:21 tells us that ‘the tongue has the power of death and life’.
Fight for your healing whilst being Spirit led.
If someone has given a word of knowledge about your condition, that is God encouraging you that he wants to heal you.
If you don’t get healed when you’re prayed for, don’t give up. Ask God what the next step is you need to take.
Ask the Holy Spirit to show you if there any blockages. With our daughter, it was a deaf spirit that needed to be dealt with first, and that’s when her first ear was healed. We see examples of Jesus casting out spirits in order for people to be healed.
Unforgiveness towards others can be another blockage to healing, because you’re giving the enemy legal right to attack you through the unforgiveness. If you can’t forgive in your own strength then ask God to give you his strength to forgive, because it’s really about freeing yourself from that bondage.
Ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of faith.
Ask God for words of knowledge or pictures to guide you in your praying.
Ask God if there’s a root cause, such as a childhood trauma or a particular event that has triggered the sickness, and pray through that/those first.
Ask God if there is a lie you are believing about Him or yourself, and instead come into agreement with God’s truth.
Keep listening to Him and fighting for healing. But if you’re too battle weary or sick to fight, then get others to fight for you. I’m still fighting for other family members and friends for their healing.
Remember though, it’s about relationship! Keep talking to God and keep going, because God absolutely wants to heal you.
