Heal the sick! is a commandment of Jesus, not an option
Jesus healed many sick people just by laying his hands on them. Also in the Book of Acts we read that the disciples healed by laying on of hands.But we do not read how much time Jesus and the disciples took for this. The everyday hustle and bustle that we know today certainly did not exist back then.
One thing is quite certain: We must confidently leave the fast pace of today behind us when we consider spiritual healing and healing miracles.
We should always keep in mind: It is not we humans who heal, but God heals. He is the Eternal, the Almighty. Healing, then, is not a matter of time. Rather, it is a truth, a fact.
Healing can be very fast, but very often negative beliefs or hardenings are anchored in the hearts of the people affected, which must be dissolved beforehand. Healing is a holistic process that includes scars and wounds of the soul as well as physical and organic effects.
In particular, when disappointments, unforgiveness, traumatic experiences and other bitter roots have hardened the human heart, healing can also become a prolonged project.
Perseverance and patience
When we, as faithful Christians with little experience, pray for the sick, we often expect a tremendous change within a few moments. If nothing happens, we begin to doubt and lose our faith.
Quite a few brothers and sisters report that they prayed, nothing happened and then they gave up. Later, the people for whom they prayed met them in good health and told them that they were healthy the day after the prayer or even a few days later.
In Mark 16:18 we read that we lay hands on the sick and they will be well.
But we also read in several other places in the Bible that humility, meekness, patience, longsuffering, and steadfast endurance are spiritual qualities that are indispensable to our life with the Lord.
Unbelief is a sin before God. Let us remember Moses. Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land because he struck the rock twice until water flowed from it. Although God had commanded him to strike once.
These facts certainly allow the following conclusion:
Laying on of hands and the healing connected with it is especially in our time also a question of patience as well as sometimes a question of further prayers and laying on of hands.
God has promised us healing when we lay on His hand. So we do not need to ask for it. However, we may give thanks for the healing as well as praise and glorify the Lord for hours and days until it has manifested itself experientially.
The Lord likes to test our perseverance as well as patience and long-suffering more often in order to train us.
Our guide is the truth of the Word
Let us hold fast to it:
- God wants to heal and God heals
- We have the command from God: Heal the sick!
- Everything that happens in our physical world has a cause in the spiritual world. That is why illness and infirmity always have spiritual causes.
Because we are almost blind in the spiritual world, when we meet a person, we never know his history.
Spiritual causes can be:
- Sins of that person, unforgiveness or unbroken curses on that person
- from up to 4 generations back or if there were Jews in the ancestral line, even up to 10 generations back
- Bitter roots or a hardened heart
- Thought strongholds that the devil has built up in the person in question.
- Unforgiveness towards oneself or other people
- Demonic possessions
- Unregenerated thinking
All of these things must be fathomed, broken down and dissolved by us with the help of the Holy Spirit.
- Jesus bore our sicknesses and took our pains. He was pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; punishment was upon Him that we might have peace, and by His wounds we were healed.
- He became a curse for us that we might be free
- And he has forgiven us.
But all these things must be accepted by us in faith and manifested in the physical world. No human being should expect anything to be put upon him without his intervention.
Therefore, if we practice or expect to practice laying on of hands and healing in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, we need above all a humble attitude and an ear for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Moreover, perseverance, patience and long-suffering are required. We gain time through persistence and patient intensity.
