Recently, someone asked: “Is fasting required for a person to move in the healing ministry of Christ?” The person was trying to understand healing. Is there a fixed set of steps to take to ensure healing happens—if not always, at least often?
But miraculous healing isn’t really about our performance or works—what we do or don’t do. It is about belief and trust. We have to get to the place of believing what the Word says about God’s heart, about Jesus’ healing ministry and about the Spirit’s empowerment for us who believe.
Healing happens when we take God at His Word.
One of my favorite illustrations of someone wrestling with “what do I need to do to be a part of this [the healing ministry]?” comes from Art Thomas in his 40 Day Paid in Full Healing Ministry Activation Manual.
He says in Day 1 of the book that he heard Todd White teach from Mark 16 that “these signs will accompany those who believe.” One of the signs is to lay hands on the sick, and they will be well.
According to Art, Todd said, “So if these signs don’t accompany you, then there must be something up with your belief!” Art wrote that “Todd’s words angered and frustrated me. I was a youth pastor who had credentials with a major Pentecostal denomination” that believed “firmly in God’s power to heal! And yet I prayed for hundreds of people without seeing results. I had to face reality: Todd was talking about me.”
This was in the past. Art Thomas, today, is a wonderful Christian healer and teacher of healing. But he points to the very essence of what’s needed to move in healing—trusting God means what He says. In Exodus 15:26c, God says, “For I am the Lord who heals you.”
People who minister healing are often ordinary people who are not perfect, who don’t have every bit of theology or behavior just right. But they believe God and hunger to see healing.
Likewise, those who get healed are not always believers. Often, it is unbelievers who are more open to a miracle happening for them. And when it does, they hunger to encounter the one who brought the miracle.
In this same book, Art Thomas comments on his movie Paid in Full and says that one of the scenes he loves the most is when two young men encounter a training street evangelist named Tom Fischer. One of the young men has a bad back, and the other, his cousin, has a detached knee cap. They are prayed for, and both are healed. The one with the detached knee cap is so amazed and delighted, he does flips in the street.
Immediately, Tom begins to present the gospel to these two young men, and they are open to it. Art Thomas notes that one of them begins to reach for his cigarette but just as quickly waves it away. He is so spiritually hungry because Jesus healed him, an unbeliever. And nothing else matters then.
For more about the goodness of Jesus and His healing ministry, listen to this episode of Rooted by the Stream on Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}
Dr. Pam Morrison is a pastor who has both led churches and also ministered in the inner city and elsewhere with recovering addicts as a pastoral counselor and as part of a healing rooms ministry. She has seen much physical and inner healing. Pam loves ministering overseas and has had a special relationship with people in Cuba for many years. She is the author of Jesus and the Addict: Twelve Bible Studies for People Getting Free from Drugs, available in English and Spanish. Her website is pammorrisonministries.com. Her podcast with Charisma Podcast Network is called Rooted by the Stream. You can email her at [email protected].
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