HEALING
FOR TODAY
By
Jack W. Hayford
How
do we pray for health, healing, or deliverance?
Is there a balance between faith and presumption?
Who can wonder
why people don't pray?. If healing is a wild goose chase, then let's
forget it. So often, prayer for healing ends up as a last-ditch
proposition, an expression of resignation to fate, an assignment
of blame to the Creator. So who needs it? The only reason to pray
under these circumstances would be to placate a God who taunts us
from on high, to kneel before a vicious deity lest we further incite
His wrath. This is the prayer of the heathen, groveling before
gaudy idols, hoping for a little luck in exchange for incense burned.
Let's get three
things straight:
First, God
is a good God. Second, sin and Satan- flesh and hell- have fouled
up God's intended processes for mankind. Third, the redeemed-those
who have received God's gift of life in Jesus-are His main channel
of His dealing in grace and goodness on this planet.
We must smash
the image of a frowning God, brooding in anger, perched on the edge
of a 10- mile-high cliff, and ready to hurl a quiver of lightning
bolts at the unsuspecting and the helpless. The beauty of the Fathers
personality was so perfectly mirrored in Jesus, that the Savior
declares, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father' (John
14:9).
God is good.
God does good. He cannot even be tempted to do otherwise (James
1:13). Further, it is the will of God to heal and deliver the sick
and tormented. All sickness and pain are adverse to His will.
But the Father
has appointed multiple havens of refuge from sickness and pain:
- through
natural recuperative processes;
- through
climate and diet;
- through
the charitable efforts of mankind
- by hospitals,
doctors, and medicine;
- and through
the divine means of healing gifts distributed by the Holy Spirit
and ministered in the Name of Jesus.
Sin and Satan
work disorder and destruction. God doesn't. He shows us how to surmount
our heartbreaks and our tendency to fail, and helps us to overcome
the slings of satanic fury bent on death and destruction.
You and I can
help decide which of these two things-blessing or cursing-will happen.
We can determine whether God's goodness is released toward specific
situations or whether the power of sin and Satan is permitted to
prevail.
Prayer is the
determining factor.
I believe in
the power of Jesus Christ to heal the sick and afflicted and to
break any bondage of satanic sorts when His Name is invoked in any
circumstance. I believe His power is as consistently available today
as during His own earthly ministry and that, through His Cross,
He has provided the grounds for us to expect and receive healing
and deliverance as surely as we may receive forgiveness and sanctification.
Prayer can
change anything. The impossible doesn't exist.
His is the
power.
Ours is the
prayer.
Without Him,
we cannot.
Without us,
He will not.
Because I believe
this I accept the ministry of healing as a part of the Lord Jesus
Christ’s commission that the Church go to the whole world with
the Gospel. This includes proclaiming God’s will and power
to heal, and in Jesus’ Name instruction that the prayer of
faith be offered, that confession of sins be made unto deliverance,
that elders anoint with oil, and that hands be laid on the sick
that they may recover.
I believe in
the power of God’s Word and Spirit to sustain and supply health
to those who walk simply and humbly before Him in faith. I believe
the fruit of such faith will be manifest in love and patience.
So I reject
any system that produces lovelessness or induces guilt when a believer
in Jesus does not seem to be able to receive physical healing or
personal deliverance from sickness or any other torment.
Committed to
these beliefs, we can withstand every evidence of pain, suffering,
sickness, disease, bondage, or torment, convinced that the good
fight of faith will prevail unto health. And we can be equally convinced
that, in cases where victory is not apparent in the way that we
wish, a victory of another order is being brought about by the divine
grace of Almighty God.
How then can
we be healed and bring about healing in others?
I believe in
divine healing- not in faith healing.
What is the
difference?
"Faith
healing" is a catch-all phrase generally used by the media
and others who are without discernment- who cannot tell the crucial
differences between spiritual phenomena which emanate from the human
spirit, the Holy Spirit, or some hellish spirit.
The differences
between faith healing and divine healing are vast.
Divine healing
has as its focus the person of Jesus Christ, while faith healing
looks inwardly to human potential or outwardly to some human agent.
Looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith (Heb. 12:2),
we make Him the center and source of healing gifts and miracles
from God. Faith healing finds its energy in self-generated, personal
dynamism which claims to tap hidden resources within the individual
or released through the "healer."
Divine healing
is ministered by the power of the Holy Spirit through divinely ordained
promises, provision, and providence. God’s healing grace and
goodness span the realm of the medical as well as the miraculous.
Because God’s Word holds forth resources of health, healing,
and deliverance, our first point of appeal when sickness strikes
should be to come to Him. Divine healing is never a last resort
for a final crisis- but a first resort to request and receive the
Father’s touch and wholeness in Jesus’ Name.
Divine healing
comes about in balanced living without fanaticism. Our victories
come through faith in Jesus Christ without pride over our "faith-power."
In rejoicing, we receive God’s provisions without legalistic
insistence on human formulas or devices.
Divine healing
comes amid praiseful worship to God, the Author of all gifts of
healing, who is glorified as the giver of health and power. Faith
healing, on the other hand, glorifies some human personality operating
at the center of a healing or miracle.
As we pray
for divine healing, remember that God’s healing never postures
itself in such a way as to deny or impugn a person who seeks medical
counsel, treatment, or help.
As a recipient
of both miracle and healing graces over the years and as a teacher
of the truth of divine healing, I encourage a bold belief without
falling prey to an uncompassionate or critical "faith-ism."
We should always be people who pray in faith for others without
becoming people who push faith on others.
Assuring and
affirming those for whom you pray is the truest manifestation of
the Spirit you can offer when you stand beside someone who is sick
or in pain. Friends who suddenly begin exhorting or challenging
the quality of faith or the quality of living in the afflicted one
are generally more of the spirit of Job’s "comforters"
than of the Spirit of Christ.
Sick people
need your acceptance more than they need your analysis. If God gives
you discernment as to a sick person’s spiritual lack or need,
take it as a directive to private prayer, not necessarily as an
occasion to barrage them with words.
We also should
always be people who know the receiving of medical help is not a
rejection of divine healing. There is an unmasked fear still blinding
some dear saints who want to "receive God’s best"
and who somehow have deduced that the employment of professional
physicians is a renunciation of the Great Physician. And as surely
as I am convinced that sickness should be brought to the Lord first,
I am not convinced that "real" answers to praying faith
preempt the involvement of a doctor.
There is a
notorious imbalance in some segments of the Body of Christ today,
arrogantly reasoning that God would call men and women and equip
them for medical ministries, then designate them "second best."
I praise God that He has enabled man to learn something of how to
alleviate pain, mend bodies, and save lives. And I praise Him that
being under a doctor’s care is neither a retreat from faith
in God nor a removal from being under His healing, sustaining hand.
We should always
be people who know the difference between our human frailty, redemptive
grace, and the divine will of God.
The same imbalance
is found in the proposition that "God sometimes wills the sickness
for the good that it will accomplish." I reject that idea because
it smacks more of human philosophy than of biblical revelation.
I hasten to add that I do believe sickness is normative to a fallen
race. But so is sin. I don’t think you’ll find perfect
health in this lifetime any more than I believe you’ll attain
sinless perfection. Yet I do withstand both- sin and sickness- on
the grounds that the salvation we have been provided in Christ brings
dominion over the curse incumbent upon us in man’s fall.
The fact I
may not master the use of all the keys of the Kingdom in this life
doesn’t keep me from taking them in hand and trying the locks.
Often we can discern how to release His power and, even when the
sickness prevails, we can experience the entry of His grace redeeming
the afflicted situation- lessons are learned, understanding is gained,
and people are touched.
"All that
glitters isn’t gold," observes the old proverb. Similarly,
all that manifests in healing isn’t necessarily divine. Wisdom
prescribes that we keep our focus clearly on Jesus Christ, God’s
Son, and that we remember the power flow emanates by His Spirit
according to His Word through Jesus’ Name and authority.
Wisdom requires
that we view the full balance of God’s healing through natural,
medical, and miracle means, and understand that any healing must
culminate in adoration of Him. |
Jack
Hayford Ministries
14800 Sherman Way, Van Nuys, CA 91405-2233