HEALING PRAYERS

Healing Prayer


In many churches (from Presbyterian to Pentecostal), just before the morning prayer, people are asked to mention concerns they would like the rest of the church to pray for. What you'll find is that most prayer requests are for healing, sometimes emotional healing but mostly physical healing. Everything from colds to cancer are mentioned.

It doesn't matter their tradition, or even lack of tradition people care about their physical and emotional well-being, and healing naturally becomes a topic of prayer. Yet a lot of misconceptions circulate about healing prayer, and we are wise to clarify some matters before we enter into this type of prayer.

Healing Happens

Let's deal with the doubters first, those who wonder whether prayers of healing are a waste of time.

Because we live in a rationalistic age, in which science and medicine do "miracles," it is tempting to think that healing prayer is now pointless. In other ages, when people had no other recourse, they prayed to God for healing. Today, the argument goes, we shouldn't pray to God for healing; we should see a specialist. Well, it doesn't have to be an either/or situation. We can pray for healing and go see a doctor. Yes, most of the time God heals through natural means, through the work of able physicians and through the body's healing capacity. But sometimes God goes beyond natural means to bring healing, even today.


Another common doubt is this: Sometimes we're tempted to think that prayers for healing are nothing more than a form of positive thinking, of visualizing. In other words, we might think that prayer is psychologically useful, but not necessarily spiritually powerful.

Again, it's not a matter of either/or. Of course, prayer is psychologically powerful. After all, God has created us in such a way that almost anything we do has a psychological affect on us. But in prayer, more than psychology is at work God is at work, too.

How can we "prove" this? Well, healing prayer is not subject to proof in a scientific sense. In fact, the most important things of life can't be "proved." For example, my wife loves me. Though there are lots of indications that this is true, none of them is absolute proof: She could be lying to me and putting on an act for some ulterior motive. Then again, I know she loves me, and I know that as surely as I know that I'm typing at a computer now.

Healing prayer works like that. You can't prove it, yet you know it's real. The only way to talk about it sensibly is through stories. Let me tell you about the experiences of two people, one who was healed physically and one who was healed emotionally. I picked them not because they are unusual, but because they are so typical. You'll find such stories in many Christian books and periodicals, including Guideposts (the source of the second story) and Christian Reader (the source of the first).


Physical Healing

As he sat in his Phoenix, Arizona, home in late November 1996 (the Tuesday before Thanksgiving), Rich Payton began shivering unexpectedly. Chills ran through his body so hard that his teeth rattled. Rich, an administrator of the Boys and Girls Clubs, thought to himself, "This is the worst possible time for me to be coming down with the flu."

It became increasingly clear, however, that the problem wasn't the flu: Rich didn't eat or sleep much for the next three days, and he began feeling pain in his right arm and left leg. When his right arm swelled and became hot and sensitive to touch, his wife, Heidi, rushed him to the emergency room.

After running tests, the doctor announced to Heidi that Rich had a rare disease, a group A strep bacteria called necrotising fascitis, also known as "flesh-eating" bacteria. This bacteria had already entered his bloodstream, and it was killing off muscle and heading toward his vital organs. If it reached them, he had no chance of survival. At it was, the mortality rate was 70 percent, despite aggressive treatment. In any event, his leg and arm would have to be amputated.

Doctors rushed him to the operating room and tried to clean out or "debride" the affected tissues. They stalled on the amputation as they became increasingly convinced that Rich's chances of survival were nil. They told Heidi to contact Rich's parents and to prepare for the worst.

For Heidi, preparing meant prayer not only her prayers, but those of friends and church members. For the next two weeks, she sat with her husband who was so drugged on morphine to kill the pain that he remembers little of that time and tried to encourage him. "Sleep sound in Jesus," she whispered, quoting a line from their daughter's favorite lullaby. Heidi struggled with grief, but her shock and mourning slowly turned to peace as she became assured that God was in control.

And then things began to turn for Rich, so much so that by the middle of December, the doctors announced that somehow the bacteria had disappeared from his body. They said they had no idea why it was gone, but it was gone. They said that Rich was a walking miracle.

Doctors don't completely understand how this bacteria works normally, and there's no question that the medical procedures helped. But those involved directly in the event seem to agree with Heidi, who says, "I knew that heaven had been bombarded with prayer and had retaliated with volleys of peace, strength, and healing."

Psychological Healing

This is an older story, but one of my favorites. You'll see that it parallels so many stories of addiction that we hear about these days. Harold Hughes was a man who would go on to become governor and then a senator from Iowa, but in his early years he was addicted to alcohol, and drinking was ruining his life. Harold drank on the job (he ran a small association of truck drivers), and on top of that he was in the habit of verbally abusing his wife and children at home. He promised his family dozens of times after each binge of drinking and abusive behavior that he would quit drinking, but he never managed to break his addiction.

One night, when his wife had scheduled them to attend a dinner party, Harold stopped into a bar on the way home to have "just one drink." When 11:00 rolled around, he was drunk and depressed. He came home to an empty house and lay down on the couch, his head pounding with nausea and guilt. The years of abuse and lack of control suddenly assaulted him. A sense of shame and self-loathing sank deeper into him as he lay there.

"What was the point of living?" he thought. "I've failed everyone who has ever meant anything to me; I'm a disgrace to my town. I'm a hypocrite. I can't do anything right. I am an evil, rotten drunk, a liar. And what should happen to evil men? They deserve to die."

He got up and went to the closet where he kept his shotgun. He slid three shells into the magazine and pumped one into the chamber. With tears streaming down his face, he lay down again and put the shotgun on his chest and the muzzle into his mouth. He then got up and moved to the bathroom because, as he remembered thinking, it would be easier to clean up.


An even more terrible sadness now filled him, and the thought came to him that he should explain all this to God, who could then at least forgive him for this final sin. He knelt and prayed, "Oh God, I'm a failure, a drunk, a liar, and a cheat. I'm lost and hopeless and want to die. Forgive me for doing this," and then he broke into sobs. "Please take care of Eve and the girls. Please help them forget me. . . ." He slid to the floor, convulsing and sobbing. He was totally exhausted, and he lay drained and still.

He didn't know for how long, but in the quiet, something happened: "A warm peace seemed to settle deep within me, filling the terrible emptiness, driving out the self-hate and condemnation." Harold felt that God was reaching down to him, and joy suddenly filled him.

He looked back at that as the moment when the healing of his alcoholism had begun. He still had to regain the trust of his wife and children. He had to change his patterns of behavior. He had to learn not to run from but to deal with his crises. He began attending Alcoholics Anonymous and reading his Bible. And he began praying.


Two Misconceptions

Such stories are sometimes criticized for their predictable plot and for their superficial treatment of the human condition. I'm not suggesting that such things happen all the time, or that they'll happen to everyone who prays. But if we accept them for what they are simple testimonies of people who have been remarkably changed by healing prayer then they speak volumes.

Many people have tried to determine the key to healing. They want to figure out what they have to do to guarantee, or at least improve the chances of, their healing. This has led to two misconceptions about healing prayer that I would like to clear up. As is the case with so many things, there is some truth in each, but there's also a lot of misunderstanding.

1You Have to Have Enough Faith

It is clear that faith is a key to healing. Jesus himself told people he had healed, ''Your faith has made you well." But many people take this insight a step too far: They think they are responsible for manufacturing this faith, that they must work up some sort of supreme inner confidence in God. Furthermore, such teaching implies that if they are not healed, the fault lies with them: They simply didn't manufacture enough faith.

This is patently false. There was no person with more faith and confidence in God than Jesus Christ. And he prayed to God that he would not have to be crucified, but God didn't answer his prayer. We can hardly chalk up that "failure" to Jesus' lack of faith.

The type of faith that leads to healing is not a form of positive thinking that we work up, but it's the receiving of a gift that comes from God. Sometimes when people face a personal crisis, immediately a sense of peace overtakes them. They are confident from that moment on that everything will work out. This is not faith working up to peace, but a gift of peace that brings faith.


2 You Have to Pray in the Right Way

That means praying "in Jesus' name" and/or anointing with oil and/or the practice of laying on of hands and/or whatever. In this case, a prayer help has become a prayer requirement, almost a magical formula.


Let's be clear: All these practices can certainly help. To pray "in Jesus' name" simply means to pray by his power and in his will. The laying on of hands in prayer is an ancient practice, in which people place their hands on your head, shoulders, or arms and pray for you. Anointing with oil (a symbol of abundance and blessing) is also an ancient practice: One person wets his thumb with oil and makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of the person who is being prayed for.

Such practices speak to us in inexplicable ways, deep into our souls and psyches. This is why God has ordained their use. But healing prayer is not a magic formula. Healing does not depend on such practices. Healing is a gift that can come through prayer, but as a gift it is not something we control.


Instead, healing is something we can open ourselves up to. That means always being open to the possibility of miraculous healing, and even praying for it. It might also mean arguing with God when he doesn't heal. It means, as you might have guessed, entering into a conversation with God about even those parts of your life that need healing, looking for his blessings, thanking him when it comes, and still trusting him when it doesn't.

Trusting God when there is no answer, of course, is not always easy. People who do not get healed wonder if God really exists. Other begin to doubt that he cares about them. Still others become bitter at him. You'll find these and other reactions all through the Bible, and you'll discover some fuller explanations for unanswered prayer in "Dealing with Doubts: No Answers." For now, suffice it to say that when God denies a request, even a request in which life hangs in the balance, it does not mean he no longer cares or does not exist. The one who felt utterly abandoned Jesus at Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion, when he prayed to be delivered from death was still God's "beloved Son." It is a mystery this business of suffering (including unanswered prayer), but it is a mystery finally bathed in love.