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Saturday, May 2, 2020

A Faith Healer Tells How God's Healing Gifts Work Through Us



A Faith Healer Tells How God’s Healing Gifts Can Work Through Us
 
The Scriptures tell us that we who believe in Jesus are authorized to heal the sick through the Name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.  (Matthew 10:8, Luke 10:9. James 5:14-16, 1 Peter 2:24, Mark 16:18) Jesus calls us to extend the love of God and His healing to the lost and the sick and those in bondage. But how does this happen?  Dr. Randy Clark, a Christian faith healer, tells us what he has learned in his many years of praying for the sick.
 
We learn from Scripture that faith is the main way that healing is received from God and passed on to the sick.  But, of course, God is sovereign and is also able to perform healing outside of the box. According to Dr. Clark, the faith to heal is different from “saving faith” which enables us to believe that Christ died for our sins and through faith in Him we receive eternal life.  Healing faith has its source in God and not in the person praying. The person praying is the conduit for God’s supernatural healing power to flow through.
 
The faith to heal is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:9. Also Jesus speaks of “mountain moving” faith.  Jesus said: “Have faith in God.” (or Have the faith of God)  Jesus said: “ For I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.  Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” (Mark 11:22b-24)
 
Dr. Randy Clark believes that in the Scripture we just quoted, (Mark 11:22b) that Jesus may have actually said: “Have the faith of God.”  Dr. Clark thinks that Jesus is commanding His disciples to make an effort to acquire, take hold of, or to seize the faith of God, which suggests acquiring the faith that comes from God. Or in other words, being led by God.
 
We don’t have to work up our own faith.  The contents of this faith involves receiving revelation or a word of wisdom or hearing the Holy Spirit’s still small voice – maybe as a strong impression or a knowing that something is God’s will to take care of. It is a gift of grace, enabling one to believe or have faith for a specific outcome in a specific moment. Here below is an example of hearing God’s voice and direction and receiving healing.
 
Years ago, I had a skin disease on my hands.  For five years my hands had had painful blisters and bleeding cuts all over them.  I went from doctor to doctor but none of the doctors could diagnose my problem.  Some of the doctors told me that I must be nervous, and my hands were breaking out because of my nervousness.
 
  Finally, one day as I was driving to work, I was in so much pain with my hands that I stopped the car by the side of the street and took a few minutes to pray.  I held my cracked and bleeding hands up to God and cried out to Him to heal them.  I must have had forty- five or fifty bleeding cracks all over my hands at that time. 

 Right away I had the strong impression that I should drive across the street to the corner drug store and go in and buy a tube of athlete’s foot medicine and rub it on my cracked hands.  I did that and after four or five weeks of rubbing athlete’s foot medicine or fungicide on my hands, finally my hands were healed. Praise God!   I believe that God gave me a word of wisdom or an answer as to what to do to heal my hands. My hands have been healed ever since.    
 
Jesus associated faith and hearing God’s voice with being Abraham’s children. (John 8:39-47)  The Scriptures say that “those who believe are the children of Abraham.”  (Galatians 3:7) And according to Scripture, the pattern of Abraham’s faith was hearing God’s still small voice and believing and trusting God and obeying whatever God was asking him to do.  (Genesis 12:1,4,15:4-6,9-10,23-14:22:2-4) 

 Abraham was willing to obey God’s small voice to lead him - even when God was leading him to places that might be dangerous or difficult or inconvenient.  God called Abraham to leave his home (civilization) and travel to a new place - to far away Israel, the Promised Land. But Abraham left his comfortable home, not knowing where he was going, but following God’s leading.
 
 Perhaps many of us never reach this level of faith that Abraham had, because we may not be willing to give the Holy Spirit that much control of our lives. What if the Holy Spirit leads us where we don’t want to go?  Really how willing are we to follow God anywhere, like Abraham did? Because Abraham believed God, God blessed him and his children mightily.  But I believe that part of Abraham’s faith was his willingness to go wherever God led him, or to do whatever God asked him to do.  He totally trusted that his loving heavenly Father knew best.
 
There is a story in Mark chapter 17 of the disciples not being able to heal a boy with epilepsy and then Jesus healing the boy.  The disciples asked Jesus why they weren’t able to heal the boy as Jesus had given them His authority to do that.  And Jesus answered them saying that the reason they didn’t heal the boy was: “Because you have so little faith. I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you.”  (Matthew 17:20)
 
So, it seems that Jesus is saying that all we need is just a tiny bit of faith to pray for something that God wants to give us, and it will be given. As a child of God I can ask my loving heavenly Father for anything I need and He promises to give it to me if it is in His Will and if I have the faith of a tiny grain of mustard seed.
 
But then the faith that is related to the operation of healings and miracles, signs and wonders, our faith healer, Randy Clark is saying is different from our own mustard seed faith.  It is a faith that comes from God as a gift – a situational faith gift for the moment.

  Bishop David Pytches, an Episcopal Charismatic says of this kind of faith: “This gift is a supernatural surge of confidence from the Holy Spirit which arises within a person faced with a specific situation or need whereby that person receives a transrational certainty and assurance that God is about to act through a word or action.” Then when the pastor prays for the sick person, the healing takes place.
 
 In another week, in my next blog we will go over some of these healings that happened when pastors and priests and faith healers received this faith gift for a sick person. The nature of faith can seem complex, but God calls us to heal through His Name.  God is intentional about healing, and He is calling us to partner with Him – to let Him use us to heal other through us and to bless others. 

Those first Christians were used by God to heal the sick as well as to save souls. And we are called to do the same.  Scripture says: “At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people: and they were all with one accord.”  (Acts 5:12) 
 
Most of this blog was taken from Dr. Randy Clark’s book: “Authority to Heal”.     
 
 
 
 
 
    


 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
    

  



 



   
 
 
 
 
 
    
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
    
 

























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