Time to Grow up

A wise man once said "faithful are the wounds of a friend." I need to tell you something that may hurt a little, because I care about you as a friend.

I think it's wise to seek prayer from friends for our problems, whether they're health-related, relational or whether they fall into some other category. Prayer is a powerful thing. But there are problems that cannot be resolved by the prayers of our friends alone.

I have many friends who suffer from chronic aches, pains and illnesses and I have other friends whose relationships have been blown to pieces. When everything seems to be falling apart, there's a temptation to cry out to friends to pray for our problems to be fixed once and for all. Let me reiterate that I am not against prayer, because what I'm about to say next could be misinterpreted as that.

Many of us have not yet learned how to stand against the enemy in our battle against recurring sickness and most of us are responsible for our own recurring relationship problems. Let's take a look at sickness first.

The battle against recurring sickness is something like how we might deal with a criminal who repeatedly breaks into our home. Jesus used this illustration when teaching about how and why demons return to a person after being cast out of them in Luke chapter eleven. (See Luke 11:21-26)

When a burglar breaks into our home, we have a couple of ways in which we can respond. One option is to stand by helplessly and let them take our property and beat us senseless while waiting for the police to show up. An untrained and ill-equipped believer who relies on friends or the anointed "man of God" to pray for them is like a defenseless homeowner at the mercy of a burglar.

Evil spirits are opportunistic, just like burglars. They size up their potential victims and evaluate their defenses. A burglar looks for signs of vulnerability. They look for alarm systems, ease of access, unlocked doors and windows, the absence of a dog, and the likelihood that the homeowner will be armed. They look for homeowners that are the least likely to fight back. Demons do the same thing. They look for points of entry into our lives, through things such as anger, unforgiveness, pride etc.

The first part is allowing the Holy Spirit to remove the things in your life that allow the enemy to have access and influence over you. The second part is to learn how to go on the offensive against intruders when they come around. People who refuse to be trained in spiritual warfare or who never learn how to exercise their authority over the enemy are like homeowners who refuse to secure their homes or fight back against an intruder. They make themselves easy targets for evil spirits and once word gets out in the demonic community that they're an easy target—they can expect to be harassed by even more evil spirits. That's the message Jesus illustrated in His teaching in Luke chapter eleven.

When it comes to healing, many of us are content to let someone else deal with the bad guys. It's easier to find the anointed man of God to pray for us than it is to learn how to withstand the attacks of enemy ourselves. The problem is that Jesus gave every believer the power and authority they need to defeat the enemy, without going to someone else for help. Recurring problems with sickness and disease are the result of us refusing to take our responsibilities seriously.

You can plead with your friends to pray for your healing all you want, but if you never learn to exercise the authority God has given you over sickness, you're never going to remain healed. The spirits that bring  sickness will continue to assault you until you learn to take authority over them yourself.

I have a friend who once asked the Holy Spirit "How do you see cancer?"

The Holy Spirit replied, "I can't see cancer because it's under my feet. I want it to be under your feet."

The enemy is going to continue to beat us up until we learn to put him under our feet once and for all. I'm preaching to myself here as my wife and I don't always do this ourselves, but we're learning.

My wife was recently healed of back pain when she finally understood that the things she thought about herself , about her symptoms, and about God's desire to heal her were allowing the enemy to continue to attack her and keep her in pain.

The first problem was that she couldn't bring herself to believe she was healed as long as she still felt pain. This is a bit of a murky problem because sometimes people feel pain in response to a physical problem, while other times the sensation of pain is due only to the presence of a spirit.  To further complicate things—she had an MRI that showed two herniated discs. You might think that as long as she has herniated discs, she must resign herself to living with the pain, but we know of people who have MRIs showing herniated discs but they had no symptoms of the injury. My wife began to ask, "If some people have herniated discs and don't have pain, why can't I be one of them?"

She also wasn't completely sure at that point that God wanted to heal her. One day she decided to believe that God really did want to heal her and she entertained the idea that perhaps she was already healed. She accepted the fact that it was her beliefs and not God's reluctance to heal her that was the problem. So she chose to believe that she was healed. She also chose to see the pain she was experiencing as a lie from the enemy. Once she got her thinking straightened out, it removed the power the enemy had over her and the pain immediately left.

One of the major lessons we've learned is that the enemy only has the power over us that we allow him to have. Being healed and keeping the symptoms from returning is a battle. Most of the warfare is done on the six inch battlefield between our ears. Now let's take a look at problems with relationships.

Many of us cry out to our friends or to God to have our relationship problems fixed, rather than take an honest look at ourselves and admit that we're the ones responsible for our problems. God is not going to take away the consequences of our bad decisions. As we sow, we shall also reap, and many of us are reaping the consequences of manipulation, co-dependency, selfishness, immaturity and a failure to walk in our God-given identity.

Relationship problems are cyclical. The habits we've developed over our lifetime create the same dynamics (for good or bad) in all our relationships. When the same problems arise repeatedly, instead of  blaming others or crying out to God to fix the other person, we need to look at why we are bearing bad fruit. The fruit of our relationships is determined by the condition of our heart. It is only by changing the way in which we relate to others that the cycle of relationship problems will end. It's a sign of spiritual immaturity to blame others for our problems or to expect someone else to fix them. We must be the one who makes the change.

Most of us have a lot of growing up to do. It's time to take the training wheels off and learn how to live as mature children of God.

Spirit-led Healing

I was asked by a friend whether we should always wait for the Holy Spirit to show us who He wants to heal before praying with a stranger. This is one of the most common questions people have about healing.

Being led by the Holy Spirit is always our goal, and we need to cooperate with Him in every healing or deliverance encounter. 

While it's true that He will sometimes highlight certain people for healing that we are not aware of, it is not necessary to always wait for Him to highlight people for healing. The question of whether we should wait for Him to show us certain individuals arises when we are uncertain about whether it is God's will to heal all people or only certain ones.

It is difficult to pray with faith when we are uncertain about God's will for healing. We can know with certainty His will toward healing by looking at the New Testament. The gospels give us a clear understanding of the Father's will through the ministry of Jesus who healed multitudes of people of every kind of disease and demonic oppression:

"When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick." (Matthew 8:16)

Jesus never refused to heal anyone who came to him, in fact, it is likely that He spent entire days doing nothing but healing people until He was exhausted. The will of God for healing was further revealed when Jesus commissioned His disciples to heal the sick and cast out demons making no exceptions about who was to be healed:

"Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give." (Matthew 10:8)

We see the disciples doing this exact thing in the book of Acts after Jesus ascended into heaven:

“Also a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all healed." (Acts 5:16)

The scriptures give no indication that there were any exceptions to healing in the ministry of Jesus or the disciples. If it is the will of God to heal all who are sick and demonized, then being Spirit-led is not an issue of who can be healed, but how they should be healed.

Looking at the model Jesus gave us, we see that with one person, He told them to arise and walk. For another it was a touch that healed their blindness. For someone else it was a little mud in their eye and with another, He told their friend to go home because they were already healed. Jesus used different methods for healing each person based on what the will of the Father was for their unique situation. This is what He meant when He said, "The son only does what He sees the Father doing." (John 5:19)

Being led by the Spirit has to do with the particular method God wants us to use to heal each person. Sometimes it will be a touch, sometimes a command, sometimes we'll ask them to get up from their wheelchair and attempt to walk. Just as Jesus was led to do certain things to release a miracle, we must learn to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in how He wants us to bring healing to each person we encounter.

Power, Love & Truth - Steve Harmon

My guest blogger today is Steve Harmon

Two years ago I met a Satanist on Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco where the start of the hippy movement began. God taught me a lot in that experience about how people get set free. It basically works with three components, and it was these three components that Jesus used in His ministry.

So this guy asked me for a cigarette and I told him I don't smoke. I began a conversation with him. He told me he was an Iraq war vet, in the marines. He's homeless and apart of the "Occupy Oakland" movement. We talked for about 20 minutes then he told me that he had a torn rotator cuff that needs surgery. I asked him if I could pray for it to make it well. He said, "No, no...I'm a Satanist bro". He proceeded to tell me all of his beliefs about God and the world. I just listened to him. I then said, "I'm not like other Christians you've met. I love people and I see value in you. There's love in you. There's a big heart that has been covered and people don't see it, but I see it."

He then told me that he has two daughters living in Oakland and that last week he celebrated his 12 year old daughter's birthday. He gave her a birthday cake which was "hash brownies" (Marijuana laced brownies). She got so excited and was jumping up and down saying  "You're the best dad in the whole world!", and he said he started crying when she said that. I actually started crying myself just because the situation was so messed up, but in that, his daughter showed him a form of love and it moved him so much. Up to this point, I just wanted to hold this big guy because he was starving for love.

He told me that he nearly beat a man to death for raping his daughter's friend. He served 5 years in prison for it. He was pouring out his life to me. I asked him again if I could pray for his shoulder and at this point, he felt more comfortable with me and he said, "Sure". So I laid my hands on his shoulder under the signal light on the corner and started to command the infirmity to leave. I prophesied as well, then I told him to check out his shoulder. When he moved it, the pain started leaving. I prayed again and it was completely gone. He was swinging his arm and couldn't get it to hurt. He was shocked because he also had been a shaman and he would heal people, but could never be healed himself.

From this point, I just laid into him the good news of Jesus in a way he had never heard. He was no longer objecting to it. I told him "God has a plan for your life." He started crying  because his mom used to tell him that when he was once a pastor! His mom told him recently that all the seeds he sowed into people's lives, (ten or fifteen of them) had gotten off drugs and were walking with God now. He cried telling me all that and said, "Now look at me. I'm homeless and an alcoholic?"

I told Him, "The Lord is still saying 'yes' to you," then I asked if I could pray the Holy Spirit on him. He said "yes".

I told him, "When I touch you, you're gonna feel something that cannot be compared to any other drug you've had." I put my hands on him and prayed for fire and love. His eyes were closed and tears were coming down his face.

After I was done, he opened his eyes and said, "That was intense!" We talked more and I just kept pouring the love of God into him. After I was done, God told me to tell him that tonight Jesus was going to visit him in a dream. He said, "Okay!" He told me that 16 years ago was the last time he felt God. I told him "16 years from that day God came and touched you again because He loves you".

On the corner where rebellion against the establishment was birthed in the 60's, God showed up in love and in power to tell a prodigal son to come home.

I didn't engage with him and argue all of his outlandish ideas about Jesus and the Father. I ignored it, changed the subject, and told him about the love that I saw in his heart. I kept hitting that point until he finally softened. He was changed from a hardened Satanist into a sensitive puppy dog. Here's how it worked:

Love brings down the walls. Power brings validity to truth. Truth sets the person free. When I first met the guy and he found out I was a Christian, he immediately put up a wall to me. My goal was to get the truth into him, but I couldn't because of that wall. So what did I need?

Love.

Love brings down the walls. It makes the person realize you're not a threat. Once the wall was down, he let me in and then I could display God's power through the healing. Once the power was shown to him, when I spoke truth, he was more open to believe it because the miracle testified of the truth. Many people have walls up and it's because they've been hurt. Trying to display God's power and speaking truth to them can be difficult. Love should be the thing that begins every encounter.

For some people, you'll have to display love to them for a very long time before you'll have a chance to display God's power or speak truth to them. This is because their walls won't come down easily and until the wall is down and they feel safe with you—there's no way they will receive the truth. At the same time, you can't only work in love and expect that everyone will change. Mother Teresa did a lot of loving throughout her life and yet thousands died in her loving arms, scared, depressed and fearful. When love and truth is shown without the power, you can have a person who believes in the existence of a supernatural God, but they have very shallow faith that is shaky and can waver.

The moral of the story is: you need all three.

Divine Healing Made Simple - Free on Kindle

My book Divine Healing Made Simple is free today (Friday June 14th) on Kindle in all locations.

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I've received many testimonies from people who have tried the things I suggested in the book and guess what? They worked.

I owe a huge thank you to all my friends and readers for helping spread the news about the book. If you'd like to do me a huge favor, let your friends know about the sale so they can pick up a copy. Post a link or send it to anyone who might want to know about it. If you've read the book, and you have time to leave a review on Amazon, I would be grateful.

Thanks,
PM