Power for Healing

Luke 5:17
One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick.

As we were discussing this passage in our group the other night it suddenly occurred to me that there was something in this passage that I had not noticed before in spite of how many times I have read this passage. This is the richness and the mystery of the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit that we can read the Bible every day and still derive new insights that are ripe for our needs of the day.

I looked at several commentaries to see if someone had noted what I understood for the first time and I found that it wasn’t covered in any of the six tomes that I searched.

This passage in Luke is early on in the earthly ministry of Jesus and so He is keeping somewhat of a low profile as evidenced by the previous verses where He instructs the man whom He has healed from leprosy not to tell anyone of his healing except for the priest. Apparently, the priest has no qualms about sharing the news because all of a sudden there is a congregation of Pharisees, Scribes and teachers of the Law that have come from far and wide to listen to Jesus’ teaching.

Here is what struck me. “And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick.”  This verse seems to imply that if the power of the Lord was present at this time for Him to heal the sick, there must have been other times when that power was not present. What this tells me is that Jesus, while establishing the beach-head for the Kingdom of God, was as subject as we are to the here and not yet of the Kingdom.
Just previous to this passage we learn that Jesus disappears from the scene to go and be with the Father. The significance of that is twofold. First it means that He had received His marching orders from the Father. He very clearly tells us in John 5:19 “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”  Second, when we take these Scriptures in their totality, it means that He derived His power from the Father.

We also need to carve out the time to be alone with the Father so that we can receive our marching orders from Him and so that we can also be imbued with the power to carry out His directives.

At JesusChurch Pastor Karl has put forth three models of praying for the sick. The first model is simply asking God to heal the person you are praying for. You pray believing and trust God to heal. The second model is more aggressive in that you speak healing into the person’s life. The third and most aggressive model is where you command the sickness to be gone in the name of Jesus.

These of course are models and there is no right or wrong way to do it.

So, how would we decide which model to use? Is it dependent on our faith? I would suggest that it is totally dependent on the Holy Spirit who communicates to us the will of the Father. There are times when people come and ask me to pray for them out of the blue and I have no direction on how I am to pray. I always take a moment to pause and ask God how I am to pray. If I don’t hear anything specific then I am obedient and I use the first model and I trust His will be done.

Most of the time, when I am praying for people it is usually during ministry time after the service and I am aware of the authority that the Lord has given me and I speak healing to the person I am praying for. I speak directly to the area affected and I speak healing to it. It might sound something like this, “Jesus, in your name I speak against the soreness in the arm and I speak healing to the arm.”

However, there are times when I have heard from God and I can sense the power of the Holy Spirit to heal and in those instances I command the healing. There are instances in the New Testament where we are told to pray for the sick and instances where we are commanded to “heal” the sick. He is sovereign and the results are always up to Him. Our responsibility is to be obedient to the Father. Jesus communicates the Father’s will through the Holy Spirit. The only way for us to know His will is to ask. The best way for us to ask is to spend time alone with God away from all the distractions.


Sometimes the power of God is present to heal, the question is, are you present to obey?

Comments

  1. criscocashDecember 10, 2013 at 11:31 AM

    This is strong testimony. I am concisely defining, "heal", and what qualifies as a "healing". A mother sings her crying baby to sleep? A severe arthritic knits a blanket, or dances competitively? Or is healing a severed head the validity threshold? What could I do?

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