Authors: Praying Medic
He gave them authority over all the power of the enemy:
“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”
LK. 10:19
He revealed a few of the things His disciples would do:
“And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the ”
MK. 16:17-18
After He was resurrected He told them they would receive power:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
ACTS 1:8
He gave His disciples assignments for healing, deliverance and raising the dead, and He gave them the power and authority to do them. Now let’s have a closer look at the kind of power and authority He gave His disciples.
Faith isn’t the only factor involved in healing. Some healers have great faith, but lack an understanding of their authority. The word for “authority” which is found in Luke 10:19 is the Greek word,
exousia.
I looked up this word in
Strong’s Concordance
and found the following definitions:
1. power of choice, liberty of doing as one pleases
2. the ability or strength with which one is endued, which he either possesses or exercises
3. the power of authority (influence) and of right (privilege)
Faith and authority are two of the keys to healing, but there is a third key we must understand – power. Jesus gave power to His disciples. What kind of power did He give them? The Greek word translated “power” in Acts 1:8 is the word
dunamis. Strong’s Concordance
gives the following definitions:
1. Strength, power, ability
2. Inherent power, or power residing in a thing by virtue of its nature, or which a person or thing exerts and puts forth
3. Power for performing miracles
The authority we have is the legal right to do the things Jesus commanded us to do. The power He gave us (the anointing) is the operation of the Holy Spirit in us. These definitions speak of power and authority that reside with the individual. While our authority is ultimately tied to the authority of Christ, it is given to us and it may be exercised by us in whatever way we choose. The power for healing is a manifestation of the kingdom of God that permanently resides in us. Once we’ve been given power and authority to heal the sick, we never need to ask God to do it. We have the power and authority to heal them ourselves. This power and authority is how Jesus and the disciples healed and it is no different for us today.
We’ve noted that some people were healed when power left Jesus as He passed by them. The woman healed of the bleeding disorder is one example. Some people feel heat or tingling sensations when I pray with them and some feel nothing at all. Yet many of them are healed, whether they feel anything or not. Some people feel power leaving their body when they pray for others, but I do not. The only thing I feel is the presence of God around me.
We must understand that the power to heal resides with us. It is true that the power does not originate in us. It comes from God. But it comes to us and is released through us by the power of the Holy Spirit operating in us. We are something like portable power stations walking the earth. How marvelous it is that He has placed His treasure in these very earthen vessels.
Before we close this chapter, I wanted to share one more point about authority. The Bible says that believers have been seated (past tense) with Christ in heavenly places (see Eph. 2:6). It also says that Christ is seated on a throne in heaven beside His Father (see Eph. 1:20). If we have been seated with Him, then we are also seated on a throne in heaven – which is
our
seat of authority. We rule and reign beside Him.
Rulers who reign from their throne do not engage their enemy directly in battle. They simply make declarations from their seat of authority and their declarations are carried out. It is the fact that they occupy a seat of established authority that allows their spoken commands to be carried out. It’s not the individual, but the seat they occupy that grants authority. If they were not seated on a throne, their commands would not have the same effect. Once we understand how to occupy our seat of authority in heaven, and how to rule from it, everything we do takes on a different dimension. The exercise of our authority is not limited to healing. It extends to all areas of life.
Most of us have been taught incorrectly about prayer and healing. We haven’t been informed about our power and authority. I don’t want to be too critical of church leadership and this isn’t meant to be a book on theology. But there are some erroneous things being taught in the Church that need to be corrected.
Many of us have cried out to God to do something for our loved one as they lay dying of cancer. God has already done all that He needs to do. He paid for their healing and He gave us the power and authority to heal them. The thief comes to our house to steal, kill and destroy the people we care about. If the tongue holds the power of life and death, then your mouth is a loaded gun, a weapon that destroys sickness and disease. Isn’t it time you started using it? If you haven’t begun to exercise this power and authority, there’s no time like the present. Go ahead, step out of the boat and watch the power of God begin to work through you.
H
AVING LOOKED AT HEALING AS
matter of faith, authority and power, we now turn to the presence of God and healing. I’ll ask you to be patient with me as I share a few things in this chapter that you may not be familiar with. Some of the things we’ll discuss might seem at first glance to be obvious contradictions in thought. But by the end of the chapter, I hope you’ll see that the things which seem to be contradictions are not really contradictions, but a revelation of God’s nature in a way you may not have considered before. I’ll do my best to carefully explore the subject of God’s presence and clarify misunderstandings before we’re through.
After the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit had been released and the disciples became filled with God’s Spirit, they continued the healing model Jesus had given them. They became very adept at healing and casting out demons. Word of these miracles spread throughout the region and people began bringing their sick friends and relatives into the streets hoping they would be healed:
And believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.
ACTS 5:14-15
This passage says that people brought out the sick hoping that the shadow of Peter might fall on them. The passage doesn’t actually say that the sick were healed by Peter’s shadow. It says that people
believed
his shadow had healing power. Why would they come to this conclusion?
We don’t know for certain, but it seems as though the sick were healed as the disciples passed near them. We also know that on a few occasions, power went out from Jesus as He passed through a crowd and the sick were healed. The power (or anointing) upon Jesus flowed from Him to them. I believe the disciples carried the anointing of God just as Jesus did and when someone needed healing, power left them and the sick were healed, often without their knowledge. I believe the same thing is happening today.
Some of us carry the presence of God in a way that releases healing on a regular basis, often without our awareness and without a single word being said. I became aware of this phenomenon a few years ago, when some of my patients mysteriously began getting better during transports in the ambulance. Some of these transports were nothing short of miraculous.
On one transport, a comatose patient with very low blood pressure who was expected to die had an unexpected increase in blood pressure and came out of his coma before we got to the destination. I was so busy providing medical care that I didn’t have time to pray for him. At first, I shrugged it off as wishful thinking, until the night I had a dream that revealed something I wasn’t aware of.
In the dream, I transported a man who sustained crushing injuries in a car accident. I didn’t provide any medical treatment or pray for him.
When we arrived at the hospital, the doctor asked what I did for him. I told him I didn’t do anything, but I thought he was healed. And in fact, he was healed. In the dream, I knew that the presence of God had come into the ambulance and had healed all of his injuries, without my direct involvement. I just sat in my seat and did nothing. This dream was God’s way of letting me know that He was in fact healing people through His presence, even though I wasn’t always aware of it or directly involved in the process.
This begs the question: Why would God sovereignly heal someone that I didn’t pray for, while other people I have prayed for did not appear to be healed?
First, there are many people I’ve prayed for who did not manifest healing while I was with them, but were later found to be completely healed. This isn’t always the case, but it happens often enough to make me cautious about assuming someone wasn’t healed.
In September of 2012, my wife and I traveled to Australia to teach on healing and deliverance. Part of our time was spent ministering to men and women who lived in shelters and hostels. One night we received a testimony from a man who was healed of a toothache as he stood next to me while I handed out sandwiches. No one prayed with him. He said he could feel a “presence” around us that he noticed as soon as we arrived.
Bill Johnson has seen many people healed by sovereign acts of God. There are many testimonies of people receiving their healing as they walked through the doorway of Bethel’s prayer room, before receiving prayer. Johnson believes the sovereign acts of healing are God’s way of leading us into greater things. What God does sovereignly, He does as an example for us. He wants us to pursue intentionally, what we see Him do sovereignly.
In 2011, I transported a man from one hospital to another hospital after his fingers were crushed in an industrial accident. When I picked him up he was in severe pain. While interviewing him I learned that he also had chronic back pain from bulging lumbar discs and that he was presently having pain in his lower back. I asked if he wanted to be healed of the pain in his back. I had a lot of faith for seeing back pain healed but much less faith for traumatic injuries, so I chose the one I had greater faith for as the starting point.
He said he wanted to be healed so I invited God’s presence to come into the ambulance and I placed my hand on his left side. I shared with him the dream I had about God’s presence healing the man in the ambulance and a couple of recent testimonies of healing. I didn’t ask God to heal him or command his injuries to be healed. I just shared the stories with him and waited for God to make His move. A few minutes later he said, “You’re freaking me out. The pain in my back is gone.” After the pain in his back was healed, I commanded his heavily-bandaged fingers to be healed. Before we arrived at the hospital, the pain in his hand had subsided enough that he wanted to go to sleep. I was not able to see if his fingers were completely healed because of the bandages.
I often ask God to bring His presence into the room or ambulance while ministering healing. The concept of God’s presence puzzles some people. A friend once asked, “If God lives in us, and we are one with Him then how can He also be apart from us?”
In order to answer this question, I’d like to do a brief survey from the Bible on the operation of the Holy Spirit and God’s presence.
Some leaders teach that the Holy Spirit no longer rests “upon” God’s people as He did in the Old Testament. They believe that as a result of the new birth, because the Holy Spirit lives
inside
of us, we no longer need the Holy Spirit to rest
upon
us. This would seem to make sense, but let’s look at what the Bible says about how the Holy Spirit operates today.
In John chapter 14, Jesus taught the disciples about the relationship they would have with the Holy Spirit:
“I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.”
JN. 14:16-17
Here we see two different relationships that believers can have with the Holy Spirit. He can dwell
with
us and
in
us. But there is a third relationship Jesus said they would have. In the first chapter of the book of Acts, He commissioned them, saying they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came
upon
(epi) them:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
ACTS 1:8
This third relationship with the Holy Spirit is noteworthy for a couple of reasons:
1. Jesus tied the power for ministry to the new relationship they had not yet experienced. “You will receive power –
when
the Spirit comes upon you.”
2. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came to rest ‘upon’ Him, and remained there (see Jn. 1:32). The baptism of Jesus was the point at which His ministry began. He received the anointing and power for ministry through the same experience He later told the disciples they would have.
In Acts 2:3, the Holy Spirit manifested as divided tongues of fire resting “upon” the believers. In Acts chapter 8, Peter and John went to Samaria to assist the new believers in receiving the Holy Spirit, as described in the following passage: