Developing Your Gift of Healing Harry McKenzie says that, when we are given spiritual gifts, we are given them embryonically or in seed form. Another way of describing it is that, when we are given a spiritual gift, it’s like learning to ride a bike. The spiritual gift is the bike. But, once you have it, you have to get on it and learn to pedal, and you will probably fall off a few times before you learn to keep going. The more you practise the gifts that you have, the more effective youll become in operating in them. Some people say “If it’s God’s will, He’ll give me the gift of healing”. That’s a bit like saying “If it’s God’s will He’ll give me the gift of playing the piano” and thinking that, if you sit down in front of the piano, it will all just happen. (Harry tried that with the guitar and it didn’t work.) With healing and other spiritual gifts, you actually have to step out and practise. The first few times it can be really hard and intense. As you do it more and more, it becomes easier and easier. But as it becomes easier, God will provide you with new challenges so as to provide opportunities for you to grow and develop. Harry suggests that we have to seek God and ask Him again and again and again for a gift of healing. Its not a one-time-ask. He says that he has had huge success with seeing bone-related problems healed, in growing legs, in healing backs, and he has had good success in healing thyroids and food allergies. He has also experienced wonderful success with infertility problems. However he has had minimal success in healing eyes. He says I have prayed for hundreds of people’s eyes and for people’s eyes hundreds of times. But only one person has showed a marked improvement in their eyesight. And similarly with deafness. I don’t have a huge amount of success in praying for people with deafness. I don’t understand it. I believe God wants to heal them and indeed heal them through me. But somehow I’ve just not got there yet. However Im going to continue to pray for people with bad eyes and deaf ears until God answers. Lessons we can learn : 1. John Wimber said that, in order to grow in a gift of healing, it was important to keep praying for sick people and then to think about it. He explained that by think about it he meant integrating new information on healing, continuing to read books on the subject of healing, talking to other people who are doing healing, and sharing the things that we are learning about it. 2. Harry reminds us of the story in Luke 11;5-13 where a man knocks on his friends door in the middle of the night and gets the answer Get lost, We are all in bed. The man keeps knocking on the door and eventually his friend says Here you are. Here’s the bread you want. We’ve got to keep knocking. The main reason we do not have is that we do not ask. 3. There are some areas where Harrys church has seen very little progress to date. He believes an important aspect of prayer for healing is the aspect of contending for breakthroughs in new areas of healing. Harry says that he is now seeing food allergies being healed in much shorter timeframes - that is to say in 3 to 4 months - rather than taking nearly a year, which was how long it took their first case of food allergies to be healed. 4. Bill Johnson says that one of the principles of the Kingdom of God is that increase comes through use. Correctly stewarding what God gives us is the way we obtain more. Harry MacKenzies sermon entitled “Healing” given at Northridge Vineyard, Australia is available at northridgevcf.org.au/podcasts/13_09_01_Evening.mp3
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 06:57:42 +0000
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