FOLLOW OUR PODCAST ON (search opentheword):

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• IHeartRadio
• Listen Notes
• TuneIn
• Podchaser
• YouTube Music Podcasts (audio)
• Amazon podcasts

Podcast notes:

• ESPAÑOL: ¿Tienes uno de los dones de sanidad?

Hi my name is Dean Smith, and in this podcast, I want to talk about the gifts, yes that’s in the plural, gifts of healing. 

One thing that defined the early Church was Holy Spirit power. There were healings, deliverances and even on occasion angels stepping in to break people out prison and eliminate nasty political leaders. 

And in the midst of this Luke describes some of these miracles as extraordinary. 

It seems the early church had two classifications for miracles. There were the regular, everyday miracles, like the healing of a man who had.been lame from birth. 

Then there were the extraordinary ones when people were being healed and delivered from demons by handkerchiefs and aprons touched by the Apostle Paul while he was in Ephesus recorded in Acts 19. 

This was normal Christianity in the early church. 

Yet, it is certainly not happening today, at least in the West. I believe a large part of this is due to the rampant secularism and rationalism that has swept our culture that denies the miraculous. 

It’s not that we don’t see incredible miracles from time to time, but they don’t seem to happening to the same regularity as we see in the early church. There are two healing miracles that I have always found intriguing because they were not, I need to repeat this, they were not performed by some TV evangelist.

The Holy Spirit used everyday believers, like you and me.

The Healing of Barb Snyder

The first is cited by Lee Stroebel in his book. The Case for Miracles. Stroebel was an investigative journalist and atheist when he decided to study Christianity after his wife became a Christian. That led to him, becoming a believer in 1981.

In his book, Stroebel discusses the healing of Barb Snyder who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis by the Mayo clinic. Despite treatment, she ended up in respite care, with doctor’s orders not to resuscitate.

Barbara’s body was constricting as she lay in the hospice bed. She was nearly blind and needed tubing for breathing and nourishment.

She was waiting to die and at this point, a friend contacted a local Christian radio station being operated by Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute asking people to pray for Barbara.

According to Stroebel, at least 450 people prayed for Barb because that is how many letters were sent by people stating they were praying for her. 

But things took an unusual turn one Sunday afternoon, when friends decided to read some of these letters to Barb. 

Because as they were doing this, a voice from the corner of the room uttered these words,  “Get up, My child and walk.”

But Stroebel noted there was no one in the corner of the room where the voice came from. Immediately, upon hearing these words, Barbara ripped off her tubing and her atrophied legs filled out and she stood up completely healed.

The Healing of Sharyn MacKay

Or take the case of Sharyn MacKay, a pastor’s wife in Newcastle, Northern Ireland who was healed of a rare form of kidney cancer. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, but despite treatment it spread to her lungs and the doctors stopped treatment and basically sent Barbara home to die. There was nothing more that could be done. 

According to an article in the Belfast Telegraph, entitled, Medics Baffled as Mum’s Killer Cancer Disappears, Barbara was given a year to live. 

But God had other ideas. 

Sharyn and her husband were aware of Jesus’ healing ministry and particularly the promise in Isaiah, where it reads, “And by His scourging we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5 NASV)

Because of Christ’s death on the cross, divine healing was available to everyone. 

Based on this, Sharyn, her husband and members of their church congregation began praying for Sharyn’s healing.

In April 2004, Sharyn returned to the doctor for a further scan to determine how long she had to live. But this scan showed a startling change, it revealed that the cancer had completely disappeared. 

According to the Belfast Telegraph, the doctor showed Sharyn both scans one revealing the cancer, and the second one showing it was now all gone. 

In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Sharyn said:

“The doctors were astonished and said it could not have been due to anything they’d done.”

“Four radiographers studied the scans and none of them could quite believe it. The tumours had gone and I was told to leave the hospital and live a full life. The cancer has never come back and I have never felt better.”

When the Telegraph interviewed the doctors overseeing Sharyn’s care, they attributed her healing to a spontaneous reaction by her immune system.

Sharyn gave her side of the story stating, “The night before that scan I wrote in my journal: ‘Thank you God for healing me. I know I will get clear results tomorrow.’

As a I mentioned none of these healings were at the hands of TV evangelists, these were just ordinary everyday believers, like you and like me.

Now there is nothing wrong with faith healers, but this is not what God wants. God doesn’t want a handful of believers healing the sick, he wants an army of healers. 

We know this is true because of what the Apostle Paul wrote about the supernatural gifts the Holy Spirit hands out to believers in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11.

He says that every spirit-filled believer has been given at least one of these gifts which includes tongues, interpretation of tongues, discerning of spirits, prophecy, word of wisdom and word of knowledge, gift of faith, miracles and of course gifts of healing. 

This means that provided everything is proportional and I am not sure it is, then in a church of 300 people there should be at least 33 people with the gift of healing. The actual number is probably significantly higher because the Holy Spirit usually gives multiple gifts to people.

I have seen people with both the gift of prophecy and word of knowledge. They have two gifts working together.

So it goes without saying that the Holy Spirit has given many of you listening to this podcast the gift of healing, whether you realize it or not.

So how do you know if you have the gift of healing?

There may be some indications. Oddly enough one of the signs is that you are listening to this podcast. What I mean is that you have an interest in healing and seeing people healed miraculously? That interest may be sparked by the Holy Spirit residing inside you.

So what are my first steps? So what should I do if I think I have the gift of healing?

You are a Conduit of the Holy Spirit’s Healing

First you need to understand how the gift of healing works. In the story of the woman with the issue of the blood, we read how she pushed through a crowd of people congregating around Christ and touched the hem of the Lord’s garment and was instantly healed.

As soon as this happened Jesus asked who had touched Him, because, “I perceive that power has gone out from me” (Luke 8:46 ESV).

This woman’s healing didn’t drop down from heaven, it came from the Holy Spirit resident inside Christ. Since Jesus had set aside His deity and was functioning fully as a man at this point, He was demonstrating how healing works. This shows us that healing comes from the Holy Spirit resident inside you. The healing flows out of you when you pray for someone.

The Holy Spirit is the source of healing and you are just a conduit for this.

Not Everyone Will Be Healed

Secondly, we know that not everyone will be healed when we pray for them. John writes that Jesus received a full measure of the Holy Spirit in John 3:34. 

But even with this, we read that Christ could not heal many people in Nazareth because of their unbelief in Matthew 13:58. Many despised Jesus and looked down upon Him because He grew up there and they didn’t believe He could be anything significant.

Even the Apostle Paul, who Luke said performed extraordinary miracles, had to leave his traveling companion, Trophimus at Miletus in 2 Timothy 4:20 because he was sick. I and sure Paul prayed for Trophimus, but he wasn’t healed.

Though, I have never felt the Holy Spirit’s power leave me as Jesus did, I remember a similar thing happening when I laid hands and prayed for an individual. Suddenly, I felt a surge traveling back up my arm. 

This was so strange and I had no idea what was going on, but I felt the Holy Spirit say the word “backwash.” Backwash occurs when water is flowing in one direction and hits a cement wall as an example, causing it to bounce off and surges back in the opposite direction. As I was praying for this man, the Holy Spirit was flowing out of me, but there was something in that man’s heart that was blocking it, resulting in the flow bouncing back up my arm.

There can be blockages in people’s lives that prevents them from receiving healing. In Acts 7:51, Luke writes that there were people who were literally resisting the Holy Spirit. This still happens today.

But that may not be the only impediment. Since the healing virtue flows out of us, we can also create blockages that hinder or even prevent this from happening.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:19 and 20, Paul warns about not quenching the Holy Spirit, literally putting out the fire, which he connects to despising prophecy. In Ephesians 4:30, Paul adds that we can also grieve the Holy Spirit, which in the following two verses he explains can happen when we are unwilling to forgive others. 

Even though you have the gift of healing, you can restrict this healing power from flowing out of you.

Healing Can Happen in a Variety of Ways

Finally, it’s important to realize that healing can happen in a variety of ways. Jesus healed most often through laying on of hands as we read In Luke 4:40:

Now while the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and He was laying His hands on each one of them and healing them.

But there were other times, Jesus simply commanded a person’s healing or spit on mud and put it on a person’s eyes. So don’t become stuck on just one method.

The Gifts of Healing

Now as we read 1 Corinthians 12:9, Paul writes that the Holy Spirit gives, “to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit.”

Gifts is in the plural. In other words, there are multiple gifts of healing. Now Paul does not tell us how many gifts of healing there are or even explain exactly what this means.

But we may have an example of this when Philip was ministering in Samaria. We are told that, “many who were paralyzed or lame were healed” (Acts 8:7).

At the outset it doesn’t seem that unusual until you ask the question: Why was Philip only healing the lame and paralyzed?  Does this mean that there was no one in Samaria, who was sick, blind, mute, deaf or had an injured arm that needed healing?

Or does it suggest that Philip was having the most success healing those who were lame or paralyzed? I think the latter is the most probable explanation. It seems that Philip’s gift of healing specialized in those who were lame. 

We have specialists in physical healing such as cardiologists for the heart and oncologists for cancer. We may have the same thing when it comes to gifts of healing.

So in closing, we desperately need the power of God in the Western church today and I am convinced, that the Holy Spirit wants to release the gifts of healing. 

So I encourage you to start praying for the sick and don’t stop if the first person you pray for isn’t healed. One person said that you need to pray for at least 100 people to be healed before you can determine if you have the gift of healing or not. 

Remember, you are simply the conduit for the healing. The Holy Spirit is the one who heals. I was listening to one person who was talking about the gift of healing. He used a basketball analogy to describe it. He says if you are not taking any shots, you won’t make any baskets. 

You need to start praying for the sick. Thanks for joining me on this podcast and I will catch you again.