Are They All Healed When You Pray?Everyone in
healing ministry experiences failure when praying with others for healing. "Failure" in this connection is simply not seeing healing happen that you prayed for. "Failure" in prayer is never absolute because God always recognises our genuine efforts.
But we can reduce percentage of failures by giving attention to possible causes. This article briefly discusses some of causes and suggests some solutions.
1. Faith The disciples once asked Jesus to increase their faith (Luke 17. 5). His reply may seem somewhat obtuse. He certainly did not respond to them as they expected, telling them what they could do if they had even tiniest amount of faith.
Is there a lesson for us here? Most certainly! It is, perhaps, twofold. Firstly, we use what faith we have got at time. An obvious implication since Jesus did not do what they asked. Secondly, we need to improve quality of faith we have. Another clear, perhaps even clearer implication of Jesus' response.
How? Not easy to give a short answer. But look at life of someone like Smith Wigglesworth. (Never heard of him? You really do need to get down to your nearest Christian book shop!). Reading biographies about create considerable enthusiasm in oneself - at first. Then you might begin to get frustrated after first four or five. Why? Because none of writers (can?) tell you how he came to have such great faith. He certainly did not start with it!
In conversation recently a lady pointed to real reason: "I felt disgusted with myself," she said, "because of great love he had for Lord". That is ultimate key.
2. Time We do not, however, love God in isolation from his people. In his first letter, at 4. 20 John tells us that a person is a liar who says he loves God while hating his brother. Indeed, he says that anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot claim to love God, whom he has never seen.
We need to love those we pray with enough to spend whatever amount of time is necessary to get to root of their problem and so pray effectively for them. Failure here is an important cause of nonhealing.Yet Jesus has commanded us that: anyone who loves God must also love his brother.
3. Unfocussed Prayer In fact, this follows from last point. We need to spend time making an adequate assessment of what is wrong with person only so that we can pray specifically into that situation. This is something my wife and I lay considerable stress on in our book "The Keys To Praying For Healing". Is importance cannot be overlooked.
