Miraculous Healing and some insight into how it works.

In this post i will attempt to teach in small measure on how miraculous healing works, to the best of my ability to know through my own prayer time, studies and experiences. If anybody has questions, please feel free to ask either in the open forum or in im.

Let it be made clear that i have yet to meet anybody with a 100% success rate for praying instant healings in Jesus name, myself certainly included, an imperfect record that was true also of the disciples in the bible. To the best of my ability to discern, disciples both then and now seem to have been given different levels of giftings, anointing, authority against the enemy, faith for miracles, etc from the Lord based on many factors, which is to say that some disciples have higher success rates than others.

Some apparent factors seem to include our level of obedience to the Lord and faithful abiding in Him, including our desire to crucify sin in our lives, the ways in which we have faithfully stepped out and stewarded the gifts we have been given (as in the parable of the talents), our level of experience operating in the gift, our level of love, thankfulness, worshipfulness, hunger, thirst and passion for the Lord as opposed to a stoic (passionless) relationship, our desire to be a blessing to those around us, etc.

For example, one disciple might have about a 10% success rate with instant healings, another 50% and another 80%. As well, a particular disciple might have an 80% success rate for instantly healing pain in the body in Jesus name, 30% for blind eyes and 10% for multiple sclerosis, while other disciples have widely varying success rates in praying healings for different types of ailments. Instant deliverance from depression, anxiety, anger, fear, etc works similarly, some disciples having more success than others and each disciple having more success with certain afflictions than others. A good and exciting aspect of this is that every genuine disciple of the Lord Jesus should be able to do these things, at least at some level if only they will step out in faith, believing that this is part of their identity in Christ :).

As painful as it may be for some to hear this, especially since it has been abused by some leaders and not handled delicately, there are sometimes factors blocking healings from within the recipient, including very important examples such as unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, pride, rebellion, anger, etc that they are holding onto. The idea is not to make the person feel guilty over their unrepented sin, but to help them to choose with their free will to let it go so that they become much more likely to be healed and also to open themselves up to blessing in many other ways.

The cliche excuse often cited by some frustrated healers who experienced a failed attempt to heal is that the recipient's faith was not strong enough, and this is an interesting point to address. I have prayed a lot of successful instant healings (and deliverances) for unbelievers who had absolutely no faith whatsoever to be healed, but since they had an openness to let me pray anyway i believe the Lord used it as a sign and a wonder to stir their belief in Him. The willingness to open ones heart to receiving the prayer, even if only a little bit is an important factor, whether for unbelievers or believers and hardness and closedness in this way can certainly block blessing.

It is also important to note that the Lord has given His servants a crucial part in helping people to get healed and delivered, having commanded us to "heal the sick and cast out devils". He did not say "do nothing and wait for me to do it all". He has given us free will and wants us to use this free will to reach out and help the people with the spiritual authority we have been given to help them. Many people will say such things as "if God wants me healed, He will heal me in His timing and i don't need anyone to pray for me in order for this to happen", which makes them reject the idea of receiving prayer for an instant healing like the ones we see throughout the book of acts and the ones that have been prayed by the millions today. Imagine the man in Acts on the synagogue steps being approached by Peter and saying, "i don't need you to pray for me, if God wants me to be healed i will be healed in His timing and without any help from any of His servants". What people don't realize is that this posture today is every bit as ridiculous and self sabotaging as it would have been then.

Finally, there seems to be something about direct prayer that works much more consistently and effectively than indirect prayer for instant healing and deliverance miracles and that God in His infinite wisdom has set it up this way. This is not to say that God never heals without His servants directly praying the healing, because He certainly sometimes does, but as a general rule, instant healings happen the vast majority of the time through direct prayer and this is absolutely consistent with what we see throughout the gospels and the book of Acts. This can be in person with or without the laying on of hands or this can also be done very effectively over the telephone or skype, but it can't be distant anonymous prayer that takes place without the recipient's participation and agreement.

Part of what i believe is happening is that the faith of the recipient is stirred when hearing the prayers. As well, it is very possible that the oppressing spirits of various kinds including pain and infirmity that are of limited (finite) capacity need to hear the voice of the servant of God commanding them to leave in Jesus name and that they are not able to hear the voices of all 7 billion people across the globe or somebody a mile away. People who reject direct prayer in favor of prayer in which they will not participate are once again self sabotaging, just as would have been true for the man on the steps of the synagogue and it is amazing how popular this idea is today, with the common quote, "you can just pray for me on your own later, i'm sure God will hear you".

While it is true that God will hear us, it does not appear to be the primary way He wants His disciples to "heal the sick and cast out devils" and the percentage of those instantly healed and delivered takes an extremely heavy hit when the prayer is not direct. Those who operate in the gift of healing know this to be true and many who don't are unfortunately quite oblivious to this... and sadly this is to their own detriment since they reject and block the chance to receive an instant healing miracle exactly like the ones prayed by servants of God in the bible in exactly the way they were prayed.

Additionally regarding faith, i do believe that where miracle healings are concerned, God uses a sliding scale and that He expects to see a great deal more faith from Abraham, Moses and any mature believer, than from a typical unbeliever or immature believer. Therefore, the faith of a mature believer being prayed for can certainly become a very important factor in the breakthrough for his or her own healing. I fully acknowledge that the accusation that "you didn't have enough faith to be healed" has been abused by some and it is not my intention to defend anybody. The plain truth however is that unbelief does sometimes factor into whether or not an individual will receive a healing and scripture records that even Lord Jesus was "unable" to perform many miracles in a certain region "because of their unbelief". Matt 13:58, Mark 6:5.

Hearing God more clearly in the area of who is ready to receive healing and who is not would also factor into whether or not miracles will happen when we pray. For example, a hard hearted religious leader today who is amazingly and uncannily similar to the pharisees of 2000 years ago (while being completely blind to this of course), who adamantly does not believe that servants of God can pray instant healings today... or the many who have become indoctrinated by such an individual... would be very difficult candidates, where the chance of praying a successful instant miracle without deep repentance first taking place would be highly unlikely, whomever is doing the praying.

This scenario becomes a modern example of what was going on in Matt 13:58 and Mark 6:5, however blind those are today to the reality that they are doing the exact same thing those with stubborn unbelief were doing 2000 years ago.

Receiving words of knowledge or having discernment as to what might block somebody's healing and hearing or discerning whether the person would be willing to lay this down at the feet of Jesus would certainly factor in as well. If the Lord speaks to His servant one way or another and reveals "this person is not ready to be healed because of x, y and/or z", the servant should help the recipient to work these things out before praying. Of course in most instances the servants are not being given such clear specific guidance and they follow the general instruction of the Lord Jesus to heal the sick and cast out devils, sometimes with success and other times without.

Matthew 10:7-8(NASB)

7 And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.

The more insight from God we have into a specific situation, the more likely we are to be able to help facilitate a healing miracle in Jesus name. If a servant of the Lord consistently received words of knowledge as to who would get instantly healed through that servant's prayers and who would not, it follows that such an individual could theoretically experience a 100% success rate by always knowing who to pray for and who not to. I expect Lord Jesus was exceedingly exceedingly exceedingly strong in this area as in all other areas of Holy Spirit gifting and it is my belief that His prayers for instant healings were indeed 100% effective. The nearest thing to a recorded exception being that He had to pray twice for one blind man, though i still consider this to be an instant healing miracle when the miracle takes place at any time during the overall prayer session.

Sometimes healings are prayed with instant success (seemingly), but the next day the pain has returned. I see this as a war being fought between the holy and unholy realms, the unholy realm using any open doors it is allowed to use to re-oppress an individual who had received a healing. Unforgiveness, hard heartedness or other sin whether known or deeply hidden are very big factors in such instances. As well, sometimes an individual needs to receive an inner healing deep in his or her soul before being able to receive a physical healing, sometimes stemming from a trauma incurred in childhood or at any other time.

One day when these bodies stop breathing and our spirits ascend to heaven, we can perhaps get all of the answers then as to how it all works. In the meantime, through what the scriptures say about "factors in healings" which is highly limited (for the essence of this truth please see John 21:25) and through our own experiences in this area as well as learning from the extensive experiences of others, and always filtering everything through the Holy Spirit, we can draw up our best idea as to how this all works and do the best we can to serve the Lord and those around us in love, freely giving that which we have freely received.

Immediately after writing about the importance of unforgiveness as a potential obstruction to healing, i noticed a youtube healing video that specifically addresses this very point. The servant of God prayed for (instant) physical healing and it was unsuccessful... then he asked the recipient about unforgiveness in his life and once the unforgiveness was addressed and repented of, the healing was immediately able to manifest. Hopefully it will be obvious to all who see the video that if this man had not repented of unforgiveness, the pain in his shoulder would still be there and it would clearly be due to the unforgiveness in his life. I have had multiple similar experiences with people, having prayed a failed healing, followed up by helping the recipient to let go of unforgiveness, followed immediately by a successful instant healing.

I believe overwhelmingly that unforgiveness, anger and other unrepented sin open the door for the enemy to oppress us in various ways, in this case by causing pain in this man's shoulder among other possible unknown torments going on within his soul. Note that God truly does work in mysterious ways since the woman's knee was instantly healed through the servant's prayer before her own unforgiveness was dealt with, so given this example and multitudes of others, there are apparently no absolute black and whites of how it all works where healing miracles are concerned.

To follow is the approximately 10 minute video. Tom Fischer: instant healings caught on video and unforgiveness shown to be an important factor:



May all who read this enter even more deeply into the rest that the Lord Jesus provides and more deeply into the fullness of His abundant and unspeakable peace and joy that surpass all understanding!