Praying Medic's Blog, page 126

My Angel Story – Richard Murray

By Richard Murray. Originally posted here.

I once went on a prison ministry several years ago. I got routed to a section of several Muslims who just wanted to argue. A man, who I assumed was with the prison ministry but had not seen previously, came over to me and told me that I needed to go to another area of the prison. I was relieved because I was getting nowhere fast with the Muslims. He then walked me down numerous corridors PAST numerous “armed to the teeth” guards and into the maximum security section.

When I entered the room where this group was, an inmate came over as though he were expecting me and led to me a sleeping giant of a man whom he said needed the gospel. He lifted up the end of the man’s bed about three inches and slammed it down intentionally waking this huge man up. He awoke startled and mad, glaring at me. He eventually calmed down. He started talking to me. I then shared the Gospel and he received The Lord in tears. I then ministered to several others, but this giant was whom I was sent to. His heart was so receptive.

Suddenly, the guards came in and rushed over to me demanding to know how I got in there. I said I walked right past you with the man from the prison ministry. They accused me of lying and wanted to know who led me there because nobody had the authority to take me to this maximum security wing. I then thought back to the man who had originally led me there. I could remember that he had a baseball cap on and was wearing a lumberjack type of shirt, but I couldn’t remember thing ONE about his face, EVEN though I had looked right at him when he saved me from the close-minded Muslims. It was like my memory was somehow supernaturally clouded about his face. Now, they really thought I was crazy.

I was taken to an office with the warden and the head of the prison ministry. They both said there was no man anywhere around the prison ministry with a cap or shirt as I described, much less anybody who had the authority to lead me where I ended up.They ultimately let me go but were angrily astonished I was able to walk right past maximum security with nobody seeing me. On the way home, I checked both ministry buses looking for the mysterious man, but, needless to say, he was nowhere to be seen. I truly believe this was an angel. God wanted that sleeping giant awakened to righteousness THAT day! And he was.

Leaving 99

I was thinking last night about how Jesus said the good Shepherd will leave 99 sheep to go find the one that is lost. It might seem like a simple statement — nothing terribly deep here, just a nice assurance that the Shepherd is always on guard, willing to rescue us if we get off track.

What struck me last night was a revelation of how He actually goes after the lost sheep. I’ve heard testimonies of people who have had face-to-face encounters with Him when they were at the point of suicide. I heard a story from a friend who struggled with depression who tried to kill herself by driving into a tree — only to have an angel yank the steering wheel out of her hand, allowing the car to miss the tree.

I know Jesus sometimes uses angels and occasionally intervenes in person. But have you considered how often He chooses people like you and I to rescue the ones who are lost?

People are healed when we lay hands on them and release the power of God. They are set free of demonic oppression when we cast out their demons. The Lord has placed in our hands the responsibility of being His hands and feet. In the same way He sets people free through us – He also asks us to come alongside other sheep who have lost their way.

It’s easy when we see someone caught in deception to warn the other sheep not to make the same mistake. But do we realize that it may be our words of wisdom that will help them see their error?

It’s easy to point fingers at sheep who have fallen into sin, but wouldn’t it be better to pick them up out of the mud, clean them up and get them back on the road to their destiny?

Jesus often uses His sheep to set His sheep free and keep them from ruin. When He leaves the 99 to rescue the one— He may choose you as His hands and feet to perform the rescue mission.

 

Fire on Your Head with Praying Medic — Podcast

I had the pleasure of spending several hours talking with my friend Steve Bremner about the topics I wrote about in my book Divine Healing Made Simple. One of the subjects covered in this podcast is why people lose their healing. Listen in as we talk about healing, blogging, Facebook friends, bacon and a whole lot more. This is part one of a two part interview.

If you’d like to subscribe to the Fire On Your Head Podcast, visit their directory in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, or visit FireOnYourHead.com for more subscription options.

If you’d like to subscribe using another podcatcher, please use this feed: http://fireonyourhead.libsyn.com/rss

Experiencing God’s Abundance & Blessings

I was asked by a friend to explain how we can experience the reality of God’s abundance and His blessings. I have a few observations I’d like to share on this subject:

The first is that God’s abundance and blessings seem to be all around us, even though most of the time we are unaware of them. Many of us have experienced the exact opposite, so let me explain what I mean.  (What I’m about to share may sound like an endorsement of what has been called “The Prosperity Gospel”. I’m not a fan of the prosperity gospel and this isn’t an endorsement of it. So bear with me as I outline a view that may have a few similarities, but is different in many ways.)

I once thought that God was holding back some (or most) of His blessings from me for reasons that I didn’t understand.  The more I read about others people’s experiences and the longer I walk with God, the more convinced I’ve become that He has already provided all that we will ever need in the way of resources and power, but we’ve failed to perceive and appropriate them.  This is a huge issue that most Christians have yet to fully understand and I’ll admit, I struggle with it myself quite often . Yet there’s ample evidence to support this idea and I think it’s time to shift our thinking and begin to see things as they really are.

Most of us tend to think (because it’s what we experience) that God has not given us the fullness of His blessings. We tend to believe that he has not released the full power needed to heal the sick or adequate resources to fund our ministry projects. There are many other things we would like to see released into our storehouse, and we pray for their release, but the fact is — most (if not all) of it has already been released.

In his book The Veil, Blake Healy wrote about seeing churches that struggled financially while in the spirit, at those same churches, he saw piles of gold and silver heaped up all around them. The poor were unaware that they sat in the midst of great treasure. They believed that God was holding out on them, but the reality was that His financial abundance was all around them — they merely failed to perceive it and appropriate it.

Healy also wrote about seeing angels with containers full of healing oil that were present at worship services for the purpose of delivering healing to the sick, but often the angels didn’t release the healing they carried. God’s healing power was present. He was not holding it back. But for unknown reasons, the people who needed it were unable to appropriate the power, though it had been made available to them.

John Wimber was given a vision where God told him that He had provided enough healing power to heal every person on earth and that the problem of failed healing was not that God was holding anything back — the problem was our inability to receive what He had already provided for us.

If the facts are established by the mouth of two or three witnesses, I think we have enough evidence to believe that God is not holding back what we need in order to live in His blessings. The problem is our inability to perceive and receive what He has already provided.

From my limited experiences with this subject, the blessings of God tend to follow my obedience to His call upon my life. When I say His call I’m referring to the destiny each of us has been given, which was written on the scrolls of our lives in heaven. It’s the destiny God planned out for us before we were born, and some would argue, the destiny we agreed to before we came to earth to live in a physical body. Many of us have yet to learn what that calling is. If this describes you,  it would be wise for you to find out what your destiny is.

Whatever God has called you to do and to be — when you discover that calling and follow it you’ll notice divinely ordained relationships beginning to develop and you’ll experience divine provision appearing seemingly out of nowhere. God arranges things according to His will for each person. His favor and blessings follow us as we follow His plans. This is what is meant by the phrase, “Where God guides, God provides.” There is blessing in obedience and there tends to be lack when we are not living in obedience. If we aren’t experiencing His abundance and favor — it might be because we have yet to find our divinely ordained destiny or if we have, we’ve gotten off the path.

Part of experiencing His abundance and blessing is a matter of training our heart and mind to think according to His will. “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” Our thought patterns have a great ability to influence the things we experience. In a very real sense, we are what we think. One problem in receiving God’s blessing is often a matter of wrong thinking.

This might sound cliché, but I’ve found that taking my thoughts captive and submitting them to the truth about God is a helpful exercise when it comes to defeating a poverty mindset, unbelief, fear or any other pattern of thinking that’s destructive or counter to God’s call upon my life.

Whenever I find myself thinking in a way that is negative or when my thoughts take on a perspective of unbelief or fear — I mentally stop for a moment and consider if what I’m thinking is true from what I know about God’s character, His kingdom and His call upon my life. If what I’m thinking is not true, I discard the thought and meditate for a moment on the truth that I know about that issue. If I’m not sure what the truth is, I either ask the Holy Spirit for understanding or search the scriptures to find the truth . Once I know what the truth is, I allow it to sink in to my heart and mind for a while and eventually, it will replace the lie that I believed. This is how the mind is renewed and brought into obedience. If you do this often enough it can become a habit.

Habitual renewing of the mind is one of the keys to perceiving and receiving the blessings God has provided.

Healed of Cystic Fibrosis

Healing as Seen From the Spiritual Perspective

My pal Nor’west Prophetic came to visit me in November but he forgot to bring shorts. I broke my coffeemaker a couple days after he arrived so a trip to the Goodwill store was in order.

After a few minutes of browsing through the store he found his shorts, I picked up a slightly used Mr. Coffee and we headed for the checkout. Wouldn’t you just know it — the woman in front of me at the checkout stand was in a wheelchair. I made small talk with her before she left and I thought, “This would be a good opportunity to teach my friend about healing.”

Now, it’s not like he’s never seen anyone healed — he  has. He just hasn’t had as many opportunities as I have and I promised him a one-on-one healing lesson which I never made good on before I left Washington. So here was an opportunity sitting right in front of us.

We followed the woman outside and introduced ourselves. I told her I was teaching my friend about healing. (Great cover story by the way – and it’s not a lie.) We asked if we might pray with her for healing. She was delighted that we asked. It turns out she was diagnosed with polio more than 60 years ago. We prayed for a few minutes, but she showed no outward signs of being healed. She thanked us and we went on our way.

On the way to the car I told Nor’west, “We just tossed another log on her fire.”

He replied, “Tell me more.”

(He says that a lot.)

We had a discussion in the car about the process of healing. I explained that contrary to what most of us have been taught — healing is not usually a “one time” thing that happens to us. It is generally an ongoing process. Even the miracles of healing we occasionally witness are not usually what they appear to be. Let explain what I mean by that:

I read a comment the other day on a Facebook thread that someone made about healing. They said, “All the healing in the Bible was instant healing.”

I didn’t correct this person, but if you really want to know the truth about how healing happened when Jesus and the disciples prayed for people, I would suggest reading the healing accounts from scriptures carefully — without adding your own perceptions or preconceived ideas to the text. You’ll probably notice that not all the healing accounts were instant miracles. In the vast majority of cases the bible simply says Jesus healed a multitude of people. There is no description of how most of these people were healed or if the healings were gradual or instantaneous. The lack of details about how they were healed leaves this issue open for discussion.

Most of us perceive miracles of healing as something that happens to us once, which never needs to happen again. While it is true that a broken bone for example, might be healed miraculously and the individual may never have a problem with it again. But cases like these are probably in the minority. If your condition happens to be asthma, insomnia, or irritable bowel syndrome, you might be healed of the condition once, only to have the symptoms return a few months later.

It is my belief (this is a belief that I’m flexible on) that many of these conditions are caused by evil spirits, while things like broken bones are not. The fever that Peter’s mother had which Jesus rebuked seemed to be an example of a sickness caused by a spirit (see Luke 4:39). (If the fever were not some sort of spirit, why was it rebuked?) Once we have been set free of a spirit of illness, there is no guarantee that the same or a different spirit won’t return later to afflict us. The return of the spirit brings a return of the symptoms. The return of the symptoms requires another round of prayer — which is why I see healing more as an ongoing process than a single event.

Healing is much like the process of sanctification, which the Holy Spirit does not accomplish in us all at once. The transformational work of God, which creates Christ-like character is gradual process. While there are are often dramatic events during the work of sanctification like an alcoholic whose desire to drink is removed instantly — the entire work that the Holy Spirit accomplishes in a person takes time. His work of healing is much the same way. We might have an occasional instant breakthrough in one area or another, but the greater healing process is always being worked out over time.

Few of us are able to see God’s supernatural work of healing as it happens. And because we can’t see it — we often assume nothing is happening when we pray for someone who shows no outward signs of healing. But if we were able to see in the spirit, we would be amazed.

When we pray even the smallest, most feeble prayer for someone — we release a measure of God’s glory upon the one we’re praying for. Angels are released to combat evil spirits, wounds inflicted by the enemy are visibly healed in their spirit and the countenance of their spirit is visibly changed, even if nothing appears to be happening outwardly. I’ve seen these things happen when I pray for people. Blake Healy’s book The Veil  confirmed the things I’ve seen and it gave me a better understanding of what actually takes place when I pray.

If we only knew the mighty and wonderful things that were taking place in the spirit, we would not think so little of our prayers.