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.

The very short answer is: don't write at all unless you have to. The short answer is: in numerous different ways. A somewhat longer answer is: find way that best suits you - that comes only from experience.

But, one might reasonably ask, what different methods are there which can be tried in order to get started? Well...

Don't Wait For Inspiration But don't take that as an absolute which suggests that one should not be inspired at all. Of course, we all want inspiration. Yet if we wait to be inspired for whole poem, most of us will have taken very short answer given above and we shall write very little and very infrequently.

You probably know old adage about any form of art being ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. It's mostly like that with poetry. The very short answer above is saying: write only when you feel moved to write and have something urgent to communicate. But don't expect inspiration to carry you through whole poem. On some occasions it will but, at least in my experience, that will not happen all that often.

Inspiration can come in various ways. At one end it can come as a complete poem; at other, it comes simply as an idea, a concept or a way of looking at something. Then poem has to be built around that in some way.

How To Build A Poem This is getting to nitty gritty of question. The answer to How do I build or write a poem depends to some extent on what you are starting with. Suppose you have just had an idea, a concept, a way of looking at something. One might, for example, have a sudden flash of inspiration that a person's life could be summarised by array of cups they have in kitchen. Okay, how might one approach development of that?

First is to have some idea of probable length of poem. The cups/life idea might be interesting but it's not going to stretch to length of The Rhyme of Ancient Mariner. It's going to be quite a short poem. In fact, with an idea of this kind short becomes very important. Trying to stretch it out will probably result in loosing any potential for impact.

So one is thinking of a few lines, and probably quite short ones. Next is syllabic or rhythmic structure of lines. A great deal can be said about these aspects and so we can say very little in this short article. The way lines are constructed should be contributing to overall impact or impression made by poem. Lines may have same number of syllables, or some lines may be long and other short. Verses, like lines may be all of same or of differing lengths. These aspects may be part of a deliberate overall scheme, or they may be due to way you feel poem should evolve. Experience will usually contribute to development of these kinds of instincts.

The poem may also be one without thyme, or with rhyme at end of each line, or with rhyming lines alternating or rhyming every third line and so forth. Alternatively, lines may have internal rhyming in that two words rhyme within same line.

Consider following poem as an example.