|
Gifts
of the Holy Spirit 3
Gifts of Healings
by Pastor John Hamel
We are studying the
three Power Gifts. The three Power Gifts do something.
This study will
cover the Power Gift called the Gifts of Healings.
The Gifts of
Healings is a Supernatural power that comes only from the God of the
Bible.
This Gift supernaturally removes sickness, disease and even
injury without the help of the medical field.
Modern medicine and
doctors are wonderful. Their wisdom comes from God. Christians who are sick should make good
use of them while they are building their faith for Divine Healing.
However, medicine and doctors are unrelated to the Gifts of Healings.
Modern medicine and doctors operate in the natural realm.
The Gifts
of Healings are entirely Supernatural.
Notice also that
this Power Gift is called the Gifts of Healings – plural, not
singular.
“And God hath set
some in the Church…gifts of healings…” (1 Corinthians 12:28)
Some say there are
thirty-nine Gifts of Healings. They believe that all human disease
falls into thirty-nine categories.
Others believe that there are
twelve Gifts of Healings. They believe that all human disease falls
into only twelve categories.
However, the Bible does not say how many
Gifts of Healings there are. Therefore, we should not say how many
Gifts of Healings there are.
What we can say is
as follows. There is absolutely no sickness, no disease and no injury
that God is unable to heal.
We also know that
one person may be used more specifically than another with Gifts of
Healings.
For example, one might have great success praying only for
growths and tumors. Another might have great success praying only for
blindness, etc. Only Jesus had a 100% success
rate in praying for all sickness, disease and injury when people
believed. (Mark 6:1-6) This is because He had the power of God on His
life without measure. (John 3:34)
No one has power
like Jesus had healing power. Individuals of the past such as
John Alexander Dowie, John G. Lake, Lillian B. Yeomans, Kathryn Kuhlman, William Branham, Jack Coe,
Oral Roberts and
others, certainly tapped into the power of God and saw astounding healing
miracles. But no one ever had or ever will have healing power
available to them in the way that Jesus did.
This is because no one can
handle the world throwing themselves at their feet in the way that only
Jesus could.
However, the Body
of Christ worldwide and corporately share the power of Jesus, I
believe.
By this I mean that the power that was on Jesus when He
walked in the Earth is now upon His entire Body as they walk in the
Earth.
This would be the reason why one person operates in certain
Gifts while another operates in completely different Gifts.
A
New Testament Example of the Gifts of Healings
“Now Peter and John
went up together into the temple … A certain man lame from his mother's
womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple … Who
seeing Peter and John … asked an alms. And Peter, fastening his eyes
upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them,
expecting to receive something of them. Then Peter said … In the name
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he took him by the
right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and anklebones
received strength. And he leaping up stood … walking, and leaping,
and praising God.” (Acts 3:1-8)
This is the Gifts
of Healings in operation. This healing was entirely supernatural and
instantaneous. It had nothing to do with doctors,
medicine or human means.
It is not wrong for
Christians to use doctors, medicine or technology. However, when the Gifts
of Healings are in operation, it is not a natural manifestation. It is an
entirely supernatural manifestation.
Peter and John did not heal this man. The Holy
Spirit came upon Peter to heal this man.
Also,
when the Gifts of Healings
are in operation, the healing is always instant or at least near
instant.
The end result of
this man’s healing was the salvation of thousands of individuals.
You will discover that by reading the whole chapter.
Normally the Gifts
of Healings operate on behalf of the lost people of the world, not the saved
people of the world, for just this reason. The Gifts of Healings draw
people to salvation in Christ like moths to a flame.
Not one human being
healed under the Ministry of Jesus, through the Gifts of Healings, was Born
Again in the sense that they had made Jesus the Lord of their lives by
believing God had raised Him from the dead and confessing His Lordship.
(Romans 10:9-13)
Jesus
had neither died nor
risen yet.
The Gifts of Healings
were, and are, frequently used by God to draw
attention to Christ so that people will accept Him as their Savior. This is
confirmed by the Ministry of Jesus.
"And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in
their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all
manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And His fame
went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto Him all sick people that
were taken with diverse diseases and torments, and those which were
possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the
palsy; and He healed them. And there followed Him great multitudes of people
from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and
from beyond Jordan." (Matthew 4:23-25)
Notice how when the
Gifts of Healings went into operation in Jesus' Ministry, the end result was
great multitudes following Him from all the regions round about.
This is why Gifts of Healings are
often referred to as “the dinner bell to salvation.”
A
Present Day Example of the Gifts of Healings
Although the Gifts
of Healings commonly operate on behalf of the lost people of the world to
get their attention, this is not to say that the Gifts of Healings never
operate amongst the saved.
The Gifts of
Healings do occasionally operate on behalf of God's children, but not nearly
as frequently.
This is because once a person is Born Again,
God expects them to seek healing by getting into His Word, discovering and
personally believing all of His Bible promises
concerning healing. God wants His children to
develop personal faith in His Word and not live simply by faith
in miracles or the
Gifts of Healings.
God wants His children to
develop the habit of studying His Word and going to it for everything, as
opposed to putting all their confidence only in spectacular
manifestations.
However,
again, the Gifts of
Healings can occasionally operate on behalf of God’s children. I will
share a few examples below from my own life and Ministry.
My
wife once had an internal problem that caused her great pain at certain
times. Many times I would awake in the night and put my hand on her,
praying for her to be healed.
Month
after month after month I would frequently wake up and do this. We
knew from the Bible it was not God’s will for her to be ill.
I was not going to let the devil talk us out of it.
Though
it seemed senseless at times, I persisted.
One
night as I laid my hand upon her once again as she slept, there was a
literal explosion as the power of God shot out of my hand like rifle fire.
At that same instant my hand and arm were forcefully propelled back and away
from her body, landing behind me on the bed.
Such
an overwhelmingly bright flash came out of my hand it actually lit up the
darkened room to where I could see the flash of light through my closed
eyelids. It was the Glory of God in manifestation.
The
explosion was so loud, I had the thought of the neighbors hearing it and
possibly calling the police.
My
wife, Barbara, never even woke up.
I
was acquainted with God’s power flowing out of my hands into the sick, but
never like this. This was a literal explosion as I finally connected
with God’s power through the power of
persistence and the Laws of
Contact and Transmission.
God’s
power in the natural world is called “electricity.” God’s power
in the spirit realm is called the “anointing.” (Isaiah 10:27; Acts
10:38)
Having
finally connected with the anointing, the next morning I explained to my
wife what occurred and said to her, “Watch what happens in the next two to
three days.” Those words just seemed to come right out of my
spirit.
Lo
and behold, two days later she showed me a large tumor. It was approximately
three inches long, an inch and a half wide, a half an inch thick with
hundreds of tentacles attached all around it.
The
tumor had
been supernaturally dislodged by the explosive anointing of God, causing it
to literally fall right out of her body.
The
painful problem my wife had experienced for so long was finally over.
She
had been set free by the
anointing of God in manifestation
through the Gifts of Healings.
Additional
Present Day Examples of the Gifts of Healings
I
was once conducting a series of services for a Pastor in Virginia. Hundreds
of people were being prayed for and set free from sexual addictions, demonic
manifestations, suicide spirits, emotional
afflictions and physical sickness and disease. There were many operations
and demonstrations of the Holy Spirit in manifestation.
One
night as I moved down the prayer line praying for people, there was a woman
with her hands lifted. I laid my hand on her head to pray for her when
suddenly she began to fall under the power of God.
As
the woman began to fall I noticed there was no usher behind her. I grabbed
her wrist to keep her from hitting the floor too hard. Having done so,
I realized
I had apparently grabbed her bracelet as I felt it break into pieces under
my grip. She fell to the floor and I took a moment to look for the pieces of
the heavy broken bracelet. Because there were other people lying on
the floor around her I was unable to locate the broken bracelet. I
moved on to the next person who was awaiting prayer.
Later,
once the service had ended, the woman came walking up to me in the lobby as
we were saying good night to the congregation. I recognized her and
immediately apologized for breaking her bracelet. I explained how I
tried to take a moment to see if I could locate it but it was just
impossible to find.
She
then said to me as she held up her wrist, "I didn't have a bracelet
on. But I did have a walnut-sized tumor that had been growing on my
wrist for quite sometime now. When I regained consciousness I noticed it was
gone. Praise the Lord!"
What
I thought was her bracelet breaking under my grip, was the tumor being
supernaturally shattered and dissolved.
When that occurred it felt to me as if I had shattered a heavy
bracelet.
Through
an operation of the Gifts of Healings the Holy Spirit had shattered and
instantly dissolved the walnut-sized tumor on her wrist.
In
that same series of services another woman came into the healing line. She
was a heavyset woman who later told me she had been in our prayer line many
times before but was unable to receive. She was afraid the power of God
might knock her down and she would be unable to stand up again.
Each
time I would pray for her she would resist the power of God coming upon her
for fear of falling and shaming herself.
She
also explained to me that she had finally made the decision to stop
resisting the power of God and hindering her healing.
Once
she had made that decision, the next time she came into the healing line I
prayed for her and the power of God hit her, rendering her unconscious. She
later told me that when she was falling it was like a feather floating to
the floor. She lay on the floor having been rendered unconscious by the Holy
Spirit for a few moments. I then laid hands on her husband and he fell
on the floor beside her.
The
woman explained to me that when
she regained consciousness, she put her hand on her throat without
thinking. At that moment she discovered that four goiters hanging on
the front of her neck for over forty years had instantly disappeared. She
grabbed her husband's hand as he lay beside her on the floor, placing it on
her neck, exclaiming to him, "They're gone. All four goiters are
gone."
He
responded, "I know. I can feel it. They're gone."
My
wife, Barbara, the woman with the walnut-sized growth on her wrist and the
woman with the four goiters on her neck had all been instantly or near
instantly healed by a manifestation of the Gifts of Healings.
So
we see that the Gifts of Healings can still occasionally operate amongst
God's children.
However, God’s
children are required to meditate on His
healing Word and allow God to decide how they will be healed.
This
will happen either through the recovery process, as they expose themselves
to the healing Word (Mark 16:17,18), or through
instantaneous Gifts of Healings.
But again, God
decides how His children will be healed. Either way, if the child of God will
keep the healing Word before their eyes, healing is guaranteed to come.
(Proverbs 4:20-22)
Jesus is alive and
these Gifts of Healings still operate today. I have witnessed them in
manifestation many times.
I also once prayed for a man who was instantly healed from radiator explosion burns on
his entire front upper body and face. Read “Peculiar Ways Jesus Heals” for more details
of this additional supernatural testimony concerning Gifts of Healings in operation today.
We need to see
these Gifts more in the world as well as in the Church.
It is my
personal belief that we are soon to see a tremendous manifestation of all
the Power Gifts in our midst.
In
these last days God will use these demonstrations to turn millions of people
worldwide to His Son, Jesus Christ.
Remember,
God is the Blesser. Satan is the
damner.
God never makes
people sick. Satan does that and blames God for it.
In
our next lesson we will study the third of the three Power Gifts, the
Working of Miracles.
Be Blessed … John and Barbara Hamel
How
to Be Born Again (Receive Christ as Your Savior)
How
to Receive The Holy Spirit & Power
|
