In the gospels, Jesus encountered and healed 19 individual cases of sickness and disease. It seems like there is more and in one sense there were (John 20:30-31). We don’t have the ‘all the books cannot hold’ cases of healing to examine that John refers to. What we have is nineteen individual cases spread out through the pages of the gospel. Since this is what God gave us, these nineteen cases should be studied to see what can we learn about the ministry of healing. Here are three questions generated from the healing ministry of Jesus.

Gifts of Healings: Jesus Encounters 19 Individual Cases

• Jesus touched people and healed them – the leper in Mark 1:40-45
• Jesus had people touch Him and they were healed – Mark 5:24-34
• Jesus just be spoke the Word to some – the centurion in Matthew 8:5-13; the man with the withered hand – Mark 3:5
• How did Jesus minster to blind people?
• Jesus used clay with one man – John 9:1-7
• Jesus used spit on another man and laid His hands on him – Mark 8:22-26. Notice the extra lessons in this account: He led the man out of town before He prayed for Him due to the unbelief in the crowd; He laid hands twice on this man. The man received some of his healing the first time, the fullness of it the second time.
• How did Jesus minister to deaf and dumb people?
• Mark 7:31-37 – He sticks His fingers in the deaf man’s ears, then spits, and touches his tongue. Notice the extra lessons in this account: He led the man away from the crowd before He prayed for Him again because of the unbelief in the crowd; He did not allow the crowd to dictate the healing method, that is lay His hands on the man, – instead He uses a different healing method – fingers and spit.

Question 1: Which Method of Praying for the Sick Should One Use at any Given Time?

• It depends on the Spirit of God – you have to hear Him.
• You cannot separate walking by faith and being led by the Spirit – these two things go together. How you exercise your faith is based on how you are being led.
• People separate these two and they are not to be separated. People fail to check-in with the Spirit of God, who has many ways and methods of doing things and they instead cookie-cutter their approach.
• Store this statement away – write in your Bible – tack it on your refrigerator – whatever it takes do not forget this – you exercise your faith in a particular area according to what He says to you about that situation.
• Now, you will lay hands on the sick quite a bit because the Word does say ‘Lay hands on the sick and they will recover’ (Mark 16:18). But, that does not mean that you should not check your spirit to see what the Holy Spirit is saying at any given moment.
• To every manifestation, there is a God-ward side and a man-ward side.
• Your part is to check in with the Holy Spirit and do what He says.

Question 2: Why are There so Many Healing Methods?

• Reason One: Not everybody receives on the same level and since you do not know what level people are on when you encounter them – you have to trust Him to tell you.
• Reason Two: If there was only one method, there would be no faith exercised at all. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him.

Question 3: How Can I Receive from Him On A Personal Level?

• This statement about not separating the Holy Spirit and faith works in the realms of prayer and prayer requests. Faith and the Holy Spirit are together – Word and Spirit are hand in hand.

Mark 11:23–24 (ESV)
23 Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Romans 8:14 (KJV)
14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

• Understand that the ‘Whoever’ and ‘whatever’ of Mark 11:23-24 connects with the ‘As many as are led’ of Romans 8:16.
• This answers some of the ridiculous things that people have come up with in the name of ‘you can have what you say.’ Jesus taught this to the disciples in an encounter that He had with them. ‘Whosoever shall say unto this mountain – be removed and cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart but believe that those things that he says will come to pass – he will have whatever he says.
• So here is the person who says, ‘Well since I can have whatever I say and I will just go out and order some exotic car or some other expensive thing all the while saying that I can have what I say. When the item arrives and must be paid for, of course the individual does not have the money and so angrily wonders why that scripture does not work. It does not work because there was no leading of the Spirit in this area.
• This introduces an element into spiritual life that many of us are not comfortable with – TIME! It takes time to be led.
• It takes TIME to ascertain what method to use. It takes TIME to check in with God as to how I should pray. After I have believed God for a particular need, what does the Lord want me to do. What direction do I go?
• You have to ascertain these areas and that takes time.
• Now, in a church service there are other logistics involved. Be careful here. We take our model for manifestations of the Spirit based on what we see in church. What you see happen in church is not the model for your personal life. It is the model for church.
• In a church service, you do not have time to wait 45 minutes to pray with one person, you just do not have that kind of time. Additionally with an altar full of people, one person cannot physically hold up that long even if he did have that much time.
• The manifestations of God work differently outside of church than they do inside of church. You do not go inside of a busy mall and start acting like Kathryn Kulman. They will show you the door and they should!

Call to Action:

Understand that these days in which we live are critical days. It is time for Jesus to encounter planet earth in His Second Coming. How vital it is for His people to be ready and responsive to the gentle leading of His Spirit to be understanding of His methods and His ways. The glory will manifest on planet earth, every eye shall see and experience it, and many will come to salvation in that day. That’s the plan of God – that’s the Holy Ghost train track we are on.

Question: Have you read these nineteen individual cases? Mark them out in your Bible and share a comment on some lessons you learned by reading these accounts. Please leave your comment in the comments section below.