Author's Preface.

Author’s Preface:

Healing is a vast subject.

God’s desire is that we live in health, in wholeness. But we have an enemy whose desire is to destroy, to make miserable, to cause to suffer in what ever way he can. Through the introduction of sin into the experience of mankind he has been able to do this.

As a result mankind suffers in many ways. There is sickness, wars, accidents, relationship breakdown, sin and all sorts of other causes of pain in our lives.

Just looking at personal suffering, there are several causes of suffering.

• There is physical sickness caused by disease.
• There is physical disability caused by accident or degeneration.
• There is mental and emotional trauma and torment.
• There is spiritual sickness in our human spirit and this may be or may not be related to sin.
• Added to all of these there is direct attack on us by the enemy in the form of demonic sickness and suffering.
• There is also sickness and suffering that are brought about by elements in our lifestyle – things such as broken relationships, wrong diet, lack of exercise and so on.

 All of these are, in themselves, vast areas of teaching and understanding.

The difficulty lies in the fact that these different factors all interact with each other. The teaching of the Bible on the nature of man is that we are a complex unity in which all sorts of factors interact and bring about negative results in our lives. The medical world are having a field day discovering what the Bible has taught for over 2000 years – that much physical sickness is caused by relational breakdowns, wrong actions or attitudes, emotional trauma and so on. The effects can work back the other way. A purely physical problem - such as a broken bone that does not heal - can lead to emotional, mental and spiritual sickness. We are complex beings. Spirit, soul and body interact in ways we do not fully understand.

Because of this complexity it is often hard to find healing for a particular person and condition. At times a particular condition in one person responds to a simple prayer for healing. With another person the same condition requires deep inner healing or deliverance from evil spirits. One size does not fit all – one model of ministry does not necessarily bring healing to all sufferers – even if the complaint appears to be the same. When we say things like: “All cancer is caused by….” “All homosexuality is caused by…” then we run the risk of falling into spiritual abuse. We end up trying to minister a model of healing that may not be appropriate.

Added into this is the complex nature of faith. Faith is simple – but at the same time it eludes many of us.

It is my intention in this blog to examine some aspects of the doctrine of healing. The focus will of necessity be narrow and it is my vision that, in the future, I will be able to write other posts looking at more and more aspects of healing. 

My interest in the Healing ministry has been over many years. For the past 20 years I have been involved, on and off, in various healing prayer ministries - mainly in the area of inner healing. Recently I got involved in a healing prayer ministry where the focus was more physical healing and I have been blessed to see God heal, through my prayers, several people of physical ailments. As a result of this involvement I felt God wanted me to get informed about Healing so I read, in 2012 over 30 books on healing and then followed that up with about 20 books of deliverance. I have also read widely on aspects of inner healing or Christian counseling. This blog will be a summary of this reading - rewritten in my own way. The difficulty is that I often forget where I read a particular rthought - even if I take notes I can lose the source when reediting on the Computer. So what you find here is a mixture of my own thoughts and what I have read. For this reason if you want to use any of the information here you are free to do so - but beware, if you reproduce it in a form for sale you may cross copyright regulations without being aware of it.

Francis McNutt in his books, and John Wimber in his also, talk of four different types of Christian healing that seems to cover the range of human need. They are physical healing, inner healing – that is emotional and mental healing, spiritual healing and deliverance from demons.

I have no hope of covering the whole range of Christian healing in this blog. I just don't have all the answers So by virtue of necessity I will have to limit my attempt. My aim initially will be to do lay out a Christian understanding of healing. I will talk about the provision of God for healing. The Bible says, “My people perish through lack of knowledge.” Many people are suffering things they don’t need to suffer simply because they are unaware that God has provided for their need. My desire firstly then is to establish the facts about God’s provision for our need.

The teaching of this first section will lay a groundwork of understanding for all types of healing but the emphasis will be primarily on physical healing.