The following teaching is the sixth in the series, Empowered for Ministry, presented by the Rev. John W. Howe. The title is, Gifts of Healings. 

For the last several weeks, we've been studying the ministry of Jesus as a model for our own ministry. And the point that I've tried to make over and over and over again is that Jesus ministered not out of his divinity. He was the Son of God.

But it was not as Son of God primarily that he was ministering but rather out of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And we see that. He was the Son of God from before his conception.

He was the Son of God for the first 30 years of his life but he didn't begin his ministry until the Holy Spirit came upon him at the time of his baptism in the River Jordan and at that point he never went back to the carpenter's bench. He operated supernaturally in ministry out of an anointing from the Spirit of God. And we've seen that over and over again.

We've been going through the list of gifts of the Holy Spirit that are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, and we've been looking at Jesus ministering those gifts or manifesting those gifts, And in every single case, it's been a matter of the anointing of the Spirit of God coming upon him and enabling him to give words of wisdom. Beyond anything that was human wisdom, it was an anointing of the Spirit of God. Words of knowledge, just as we were hearing about.

Things that he could not have known, didn't learn, but God gave him as a gifting from the Spirit. And then we saw how he not only exhibited the gift of faith himself, but also exhorted us to do the same thing. To grow in faith and to use the faith that we have, however little it might be.

Each one of us is given enough. It's not how much you have, it's what you do with it. We come now, if you're following that list in 1 Corinthians 12, we come to the gift which I suspect most of us find most interesting, perhaps most important, most relevant.

I said some time ago that the most important gift is the one that's needed. But I amend that. I suspect that most folks have a higher degree of interest in the gift of healing than any other.

I need to correct that immediately. What it actually says, what it literally says, is not the gift of healing, but gifts of healings. It's a double plural.

Gifts of healings or cures. Charismata Iematos. Gifts of healings.

You may have heard the story of two blind men formerly blind men who met each other in the city of jerusalem and they got chatting and they realized that they had both been blind and that indeed jesus had healed both of them supernaturally and the one of them said to the other well well tell me how he did it and the other one says well he just spoke he just said be healed and i was healed and the first guy says no no it can't be that way he's got to spit on the ground and make clay and rub it on your eyes, tell you to go wash in the pool of Siloam and go present yourself to the priest. Because that's the way he did it with me. Right?

See? There is no single pattern. Gifts of healings.

Gifts of healings. Not a gift of healing that I will always manifest this way. but gifts, giftings for healings, okay, in the plural.

It does not follow a single pattern, even in the life of Jesus. Sometimes he lays hands on the sick, and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he simply speaks, be healed. Sometimes he speaks to the person, sometimes he speaks from afar.

tells the father, go home, your little girl is well. Right now. It takes quite a long time for the father to get home.

His servants meet him as he's returning. He inquires as to what time she was healed. She was healed at the very moment that Jesus spoke the word, even though obviously there's a considerable distance between them.

He doesn't even need to be present. Sometimes he sticks his fingers in people's ears and says, Be opened, Ephrathah. Sometimes he doesn't do that.

Sometimes he goes to the person. Sometimes he doesn't, as we've already seen. He just speaks from a distance.

Sometimes he does, indeed, spit, either on the ground and make clay. Sometimes, once at least, he spat on the man's eyes. Sometimes he casts out a spirit of infirmity to say, this illness is demonically produced.

And in order to deal with the symptoms of the illness, we've got to deal with the root cause, which is an evil spirit. He casts out a spirit of infirmity. Other times he doesn't do that.

Not all illnesses are demon-caused. Sometimes he rebukes the illness and simply commands it to leave. Sometimes he does say, go and tell the priests.

Sometimes he declares, your faith has made you well. Sometimes he first forgives sin and then deals with the illness which seems, at least to me, seems to imply that there may be a connection. That maybe, he doesn't say so, but maybe the implication is that there was some sort of pattern of sin that brought about this particular illness.

And yet other times he explicitly denies it. The disciples say, Lord, who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind?

And he says, no, no. It wasn't that he sinned. It wasn't that his parents sinned. It was simply that the works of God might be made manifest.

Once, at least, he prayed, and the guy got partially well, and he had to pray a second time. You remember that? I see men, they look like trees walking, and Jesus prays a second time.

Once, at least, he lets the guy die so he can raise him from the dead. It's a fairly dramatic way of healing him. Let him die first, wait four days, and then raise him from the dead.

There is no one pattern. There's no one pattern. I would urge you to be very wary of insisting that he always do it the same way every time.

Listen, we're dealing with a God who is constitutionally unable to make two snowflakes alike. think of it it offends it bores him to make two snowflakes alike and you're going to tell me that your healing has to be exactly like mine you realize that in all the people who ever lived there have never been two fingerprints alike not even in one person gifts of healings one and anoints him for this particular healing at this particular moment in this particular way and it may have some similarity to some other but please don't try to reduce it to a formula Jesus didn't gifts of healings so when it comes to healing I urge you to be very wary of of generalizations. It was George Bernard Shaw, I think, who said no generalization is worth a damn, including this one, right?

Nevertheless, I want to try to make three statements which I think stand up in the light of Scripture. And the first is that here again, as has been the case with all of the other gifts so far, Here again, we have explicit evidence that it is not primarily out of his divinity, but it is indeed by an anointing from the Spirit that Jesus exercised this particular ministry. You might want to turn with me to Acts chapter 10.

It's a very, very important statement. Peter is preaching the gospel in the home of Cornelius. He's been asked to come there.

Spirit of God sent a messenger to Cornelius and said, go get Peter and have him come and explain the gospel to you. And Peter comes, chapter 10 of the book of Acts, and we read in verse 34, and Peter opened his mouth and said, truly I perceive that God shows no partiality. This has to do with the fact that Cornelius was a Gentile, and God had to really deal with Peter to bring him to this point of seeing that the grace of God is about to be made available to Cornelius, even though he's not a Jew.

Truly, I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent, God sent to Israel preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ he is Lord of all the word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil for God was with him. Isn't that a great statement?

You know what God did. You've already heard a little bit about this, Cornelius. God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power and out of that anointing he went about healing the sick and doing other miracles.

You see that? You with me? I hope that really encourages you because our birthright as Christians is that we too can have that anointing of the Spirit of God and we can exercise exactly those same gifts and ministries as the Spirit of God enables us.

God anointed him and he went about healing. Jesus healed, at least so far as the evidence indicates, everyone who asked him. if there was anyone who asked who was not healed the new testament does not record it there may have been but there is no record of that every single time that there is a record of somebody asking for healing jesus healed them and in fact more than he was asked a friend of mine did a study and he he counted up that there were 23 specific instances of people asking for healing and that Jesus, in fact, healed on at least 26 occasions that are recorded.

So in other words, he didn't always even wait to be asked. Sometimes he took the initiative. And yet, and yet, he didn't heal everybody.

When he went to the pool of Bethesda, remember? A multitude of invalids, all there for the same reason, hoping that they would be healed. and yet he just singled out one man who had been lame for 38 years.

When he went home to Nazareth, it says he could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief. Just a few healings. Underscore few.

One has the sense he would have liked to do more. Alright, so hold that tension. Jesus was evidently more eager to heal than people were to ask him and yet he didn't just clear out the hospital.

Okay? Pool of Bethesda is the hospital. He didn't heal everybody in the hospital.

He healed one guy that day, at least as far as we know. It's the only record we have. That leads me to the second statement.

First is that Jesus operated in this area, just like in all the others, by the anointing of God's Spirit. Secondly, I believe that based on this evidence, based on the evidence of Scripture, we can say unequivocally that God's ultimate will is for our total health and well-being. His ultimate will is for our total health and well-being.

Salvation means, literally, health, wholeness. In Isaiah 53, you probably all can quote it back to me, by his stripes we were healed. I believe that's metaphorically true.

That is spiritually true. That is psychologically true. That is physically true.

Jesus took our diseases and our infirmities upon him as well as our sin. And healing is part of the salvation that he provides. Okay?

I believe that it is unequivocally true that God wills our healing. And yet, not everybody is healed. Or at least not immediately.

Or at least not in the way they wish. And sometimes not in this life at all. You say, that's a self-contradiction.

I don't believe it's a self-contradiction. God's will is that everybody go to heaven. Isn't it?

Not everybody's going. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should receive eternal life, and yet some are perishing. God's will is that you and I don't sin, and yet I suspect you may have.

You might even do it again. And so do I. So that God's will is not always fulfilled in the now, but His ultimate will. will be fulfilled.

And we sang about that earlier. When every knee bows and every tongue confesses and we see him as he is, we'll be made like him and we'll come into our inheritance as the children of God and every sickness and every infirmity and every tear will be wiped away. The implication of all that, if you can hold that intention that yes, some folks are not immediately healed or they're not healed in the way they wish.

They may not even be healed in this lifetime. And yet I can be absolutely confident that it is God's will for their wholeness that enables me to pray expectantly. Have you heard people, maybe you've prayed this way yourself.

You've asked God, Oh Lord, please heal so and so. And you really get all worked up about it and then you come to the end of the prayer and you tack on nevertheless, what? not my will but thine what are you saying you're saying it's in question whether or not it's god's will for that person to be whole and you are disemboweling your own prayer you are short circuiting your prayer i can pray absolutely confidently that it is god's will that someone be healed even though i'm not absolutely confident that he will be immediately or in the way that i wish he would. Do you follow what I'm saying?

That will inform your prayers in a mighty way. I think there's also another consequence of it. I believe that it is a total mistake for us to claim our healing or to urge other people to do so.

I see nothing of that in the scripture. We pray for folks to be healed, and if they're healed, they're healed, and praise God that they're healed, but you don't have to go claim it as if it were some kind of magic formula and you just manipulate it into being. I find no warrant whatever for saying to somebody who is still suffering with illness, well, you're healed, you just have the symptoms.

I mean, that's a very common teaching. I've been healed, you know, I still have all the symptoms, but I'm healed. No, no. But we'll pray for you to be healed and we'll be expectant that God wants your healing and we'll see if He will show us what it is that's blocking that or how we're to pray more effectively.

Maybe there's something that we need to do in order to release that healing. Do you follow what I'm saying? Pray confidently and expectantly.

If the healing doesn't come immediately, pray persistently. Jesus told at least two parables about that. about the importunate widow who kept pounding and pounding and pounding on the door until the guy gave her what she was asking.

Not suggesting that God is not eager to give us, but that we sometimes need to be persistent in prayer. Ask God to reveal if there is a blockage. Is there something that I need to do?

Maybe there's an unconfessed sin that is hindering the work of God. We've already seen not all illness is the result, at least one-on-one, of sin. It's not because I sinned this sin that I've got this illness.

Sometimes it is, but not all of it is. But if it is, wouldn't it be good if God could show me that? Either in my own life or as I'm dealing with somebody else, to put his finger on the problem that needs to be dealt with in order to release the healing.

The key, it would seem to me, is to discover what the Father is up to. in this instance, in this life, in this illness? What is the Father up to?

And that, I think, is where many of us are really being stretched and encouraged and blessed by what we learned when David Pitches was here a couple of months ago and what we're learning from John Wimber's teaching on videotape. I want to just reiterate something. For some of you, you've heard this several times now, for some of you, it still needs to be said.

I think what John Wimber has distilled for us is a simple model of prayer the primary value of which is that it enables us or at least it partly enables us it is a tool that helps to enable us to discover what the Father is doing see when I said don't try to reduce it to a formula you might think that what I'm about to give you is a formula it is not but it is a model by which we can discover what it is God is doing in this particular circumstance and so I want to say it again okay some of you have heard it some of you have not heard it but I want to say it again we some of us had a meeting last Saturday we had a kind of a clinic or a workshop and we went through this model and it was tremendously helpful and God did mighty things in the Undercroft. It went on for hours in some cases. People were there well after the meeting was officially dismissed.

But five steps. And I would urge you to begin to use these and allow God to move through this model, if you will, in your family, in your shepherd group, here at the end of a service. There will be an opportunity to do this tonight.

You may have a need. Maybe you need to be prayed for. Or maybe God would put it on your heart to come and pray for somebody else.

At the close of tonight's service, at the close of a Sunday morning service, there are five steps to the model that John Wimber has developed. They're very simple. The first is the interview.

Just to ask in a very few questions what it is. You know, what is the problem? We're not going into a lengthy history and getting all the facts of this person's whole life, but what is the problem?

As you understand it, you may not understand it rightly, but what is the problem? My back hurts. You might ask a question or two about how that happened.

You know, when did that begin? You know, if there was a physical injury. It's remarkable to me how often somebody has a problem that begins to hurt them physically, and there was not an injury per se, but a question or two will reveal that maybe something else went on in relationships.

And the two are connected in a way that we don't even necessarily understand. I can't tell you how many folks I've prayed for who had a pain in their neck. who had somewhere in their life a pain in the neck.

Really? Really? It sounds funny, but it's true.

Can't tell you how many people I've prayed for who had an aching back for whom there wasn't an injury or an illness that they were aware of, but there was a burden that came into their life. A psychological burden, a spiritual burden, a relationship burden. They suddenly were carrying a load, and their back started hurting.

Now, that's not always the case, but, you know, I've heard medical doctors, not necessarily Christian, I've heard just secular doctors say that about 90% of the time illnesses are what they would call psychosomatic. That's not to say they're unreal. is to say that there is a root cause coming not out of the physical, but out of the spiritual or the psychological or the relational.

So the interview, we just ask a couple of questions to begin with, just to find out what it is. If you don't know the person, you might begin by asking their name. You know, just establish a little bit of relationship.

And then the second stage is the diagnosis. As you begin to sense what it is, you're going to center in on this. okay, well, let's pray for that hurting back.

Let's just pray for your back. Or it may be that in those questions, you've come to understand that maybe there's something else that needs to be prayed for first. Maybe we need to pray about your relationship with your boss, and then we'll come back to your back.

So let's just pray for that relationship that you've mentioned. And then thirdly, this is the exciting part to me, this is the part that for many of us is new, is simply ask the Holy Spirit to come. Holy Spirit, come.

And he comes. Larry Glasner was doing the workshop last Saturday morning, and he's had a lot of experience with this, both here and in Tulsa and out in Anaheim, and he said never yet in his experience when he's asked the Holy Spirit to come, has he not come? Wimber has said that over and over and over again.

Every time we ask the Holy Spirit to come, he shows up. David Pitch has said that. Every time we ask the Holy Spirit to come, he comes.

But you know, when he comes, he has an agenda that may not be our agenda. It may not be on our timetable. And so we move into the fourth area, and that's just watching to see what he's doing.

Waiting, allowing him to do what he's doing. Now some very practical advice here. Again, this is not a formula that you have to rigidly follow.

It's just been helpful to a lot of folks. If you're praying for somebody, they can be in any physical position. They can be sitting, lying down, can be kneeling.

But it's proven to be enormously helpful in most circumstances to ask the person to stand and with body language just to be in a receptive kind of a posture, to put out your hands as if to receive from the Lord whatever he wants to give. It's also been helpful to say to somebody, now, you don't even need to pray. Don't pray.

Don't ask God to do anything. We'll do the asking. Don't you ask him to do anything.

You just, in your heart, be welcoming to the Holy Spirit. Just welcome the Holy Spirit to come and do in you, for you, through you, to you, what he wants to do. Close your eyes.

Open your hands as if to receive and be welcoming in your heart. Now the thing I think that a lot of us are having trouble getting used to is that while we tell the person being prayed for to close his or her eyes, we don't. We want to keep our eyes open. Why?

To see what he's doing. How many of you are having trouble with that? We've been taught to bow our heads and close our eyes, you know, and screw up our whole face and, you know.

That's okay. That's fine. God can use that.

But if we're asking him to move now, and we want to see what he's doing, how are you going to do that unless you look? And the Holy Spirit sometimes just clobbers people, but more often than not, he's very gentle. Remember Elijah?

God was not in the whirlwind. God was not in the lightning or the fire or the thunder. Still small voice.

Flutter of angel wings. So we're looking. We're waiting.

Holy Spirit, come. And sometimes you begin to see some physical reaction in the person. Eyelids fluttering.

A flush comes on their face. Maybe they begin laughing. Maybe they begin crying.

Maybe a little tear comes down their face. You see that the Holy Spirit is touching them. That's a great encouragement.

That encourages you as you're praying. You ask the Holy Spirit to come. Now you see He's coming.

It also is a tremendous encouragement to them because you can say, the Holy Spirit is on you. You say, He is? Yeah, the Holy Spirit is touching you right now.

Maybe they begin to just do a little bit of this. It's not weird. You don't have to do that.

There's nothing occult about that. But sometimes there is an actual physical sensation of having the Holy Spirit come upon us and we begin to just lose our balance just a little bit. Sometimes a whole lot.

Sometimes people can't stand. You know, I could not imagine that for years. I mean, I've seen it, you know, but I couldn't imagine it happening to me.

And when I was in England at David Pitch's church, we were praying for each other at the close of one of the services, and I was just really getting into it. And Chuck Irish was standing next to me and began praying for me. And I wasn't paying any attention to him at all or anybody else that was around.

I was just worshiping the Lord and just receiving whatever he wanted to give. And I had, for the very first time in my life, that sensation. I could have easily given into it and collapsed.

I didn't particularly want to, but I could have. There was a sense of the Spirit of God being upon me. Larry gave us, I thought, a very good piece of advice last weekend.

He said, have people stand as long as they can to receive all that they can in that position. And then if the Spirit of God overwhelms them and they just can't stand, they need to sit down or lay down, then that's fine. Sometimes people will go out.

Sometimes they call it being slain in the Spirit. I don't like that term very much. Resting in the Spirit.

I don't really know what's going on. The Holy Spirit is dealing with them. And most folks after that experience report that there's been a very deep kind of an inner healing going on.

God is ministering to their spirit. They may not be able to put it into words very well. Okay?

Interview, diagnosis, ask the Spirit of God to come, and then see what He's doing. And if He begins to move on somebody, all we've got to do is bless it. Lord, we just bless what You're doing.

We just agree with what You're doing. We don't even know what You're doing, but we agree with it, Lord. We just bless what You're doing.

Sometimes we ask God, send more of your power, Lord. It's obvious that something's happening. Lord, more of it. Complete what you're doing.

We just pray that God would do it. I don't know about you, but I find a tremendous sense of liberty in this. Because it's not me, friends.

It's not something I'm doing. I don't even know what's happening most of the time. But God is the author of what's happening in this person's experience.

Sometimes he begins to give us a sense of what it is in a variety of ways. Sometimes he'll give us a word to speak, a word of knowledge. Sometimes some words of wisdom that would relate to this situation.

The Lord will begin to give us a sort of a prophetic sense about it. Sometimes one person last weekend had the experience, a lady, I think it was a lady, had actually collapsed, was laid out on the floor, and they were praying for her. Several people were around her praying for her, and in various parts, not touching her body, but just kind of being above her body, heat was radiating, literally radiating.

You could feel it coming off of certain parts of her body, not all over, everywhere. You sense that the Holy Spirit is touching her in this particular place. And we just bless that.

Just bless what you're doing there, Lord. And also, in this regard, I think it's enormously helpful to have the encouragement that you don't have to actually lay your hands physically on the person. You can kind of come near, but trust the Holy Spirit and allow the Holy Spirit to do that.

And then there's no manipulation. I'm not pushing the person over. I'm not massaging their body to create the heat.

God is doing whatever he wants to do. Okay? This is very practical.

Very simple. And fifthly, there may be, as the thing comes to a conclusion, some sort of follow-up or almost a debriefing. It may be that you have a sense that God has done something.

It's not complete. Whatever the anointing was seems now to be dissipating. It might be that you would say, well, if that's been helpful to you, come again next week.

We'll pray again. It might be that the Lord would put something into your mind by way of a suggestion that this person would read a certain passage of Scripture. Diana shared that that psalm had become particularly meaningful to her as it spoke about God opening the womb of the barren woman.

Maybe if we're praying about a problem of infertility, the Lord would bring that psalm to mind, and we'd suggest that they might read that psalm and just dwell in those promises, and that the Word of God would create faith as they read it. Do you see what I'm saying? It may be that you need to make an appointment to follow up in a specific way.

It may be that you would want to suggest to them that they keep an inventory of what happens now. We've prayed. God has started something.

Let's see what he does. It may be that God has done something very profound, and that person needs to bear witness to it. I think that's a very important part of all this.

And if God has touched you or is in the process of healing you, I would really encourage you somewhere you need to talk about that, in your shepherd group or on a Friday night or whatever. You need to bear witness. You need to tell others, and that confirms it in you.

Suggestions that we're trying to follow are to pray together in small groups, and the Lord is beginning to put together little teams. We don't want that to be an exclusive kind of thing. We want you to feel free to come and pray for folks, but God is beginning to put us into relationships with folks that are kind of in a partner situation and praying together, beginning to be able to work off of each other.

And also I think it's enormously important that if you're praying with somebody of the opposite sex, that there be another person of that same sex to come along and be part of that ministry. Well, those are just some suggestions. I think the Lord has much, much more to teach us along this line.

But I am just so excited to see how much he is already teaching. He's not restricted to doing it this way. But what a lovely tool to allow the Spirit of God to come into a situation and to move in whatsoever way he wishes.

Jesus healed by the anointing of the Spirit. It did not follow a single pattern. There are gifts of healings.

And he wants us to move into experiencing that same kind of an anointing and those same kind of giftings for the folks around us. Let's bow our heads together. there.