In this last installment of this series on Healing Prayer I want to talk about how we pray for healing. How we pray has a great deal to do with how we view God and how we view his willingness to heal.

I have to admit that when I began to pray for supernatural healing I did so with great uncertainty. I was uncertain about God’s willingness to heal and whether my standing with God was sufficient to merit his response to my prayer and whether my prayer was adequate for healing. Part of my uncertainty came because I still tended to separate what I saw in Jesus from my understanding of the Father and the fact that there seemed to be very different views of healing in different denominations. Basically, I was confused and because I was confused I was uncertain.

Here are the things about which I am now certain.

• God by nature is a healer and so he is always willing to heal when it does not violate his own spiritual laws regarding healing or answered prayers.
• God has the same heart for healing that we see in Jesus because those who have seen Jesus have seen the Father.
• When I pray for healing I do not need to end with the disclaimer “If it be thy will.” It is his will.

Since God is good and always willing to heal I don’t have to persuade him, nag him, coerce him or impress him when I pray for healing. I don’t need to get loud, quote scriptures for an hour, or impress God with my faith. I also don’t need to impress him with how much the person for whom I am praying deserves to be healed. Most of the people Jesus healed probably didn’t have a resume of righteousness and good works to attach to their application for healing. Jesus healed them because he had compassion on them not because they were righteous.

When we pray then how do we pray? I think we pray simply and confidently and we do so in the name of Jesus. We can certainly invite Jesus or the Holy Spirit to come and heal although that is not what Jesus told us to do. He told us to heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons in his name. The first way of praying suggests that we have no authority to heal and that all we can do is appeal to Jesus and hope that he shows up. I don’t think that is a bad prayer because we do need him to show up. The difference is how we view our part in the equation. Biblically, I think Jesus does show up through his Spirit and his Spirit heals through us.

We, then, should probably begin with a prayer asking Jesus to be present. We do that more for the one over whom we are praying than for ourselves. I think we should ask Jesus to show us anything that might hinder the healing we are asking for and then spend a few minutes to discover if there is unrepented sin, unforgiveness, demonic activity, sins of the Father’s to be dealt with, etc. If we discover anything then we should deal with it by the blood of Christ and our authority as believers. Having done that, we can simply command healing in the name of Jesus as we lay hands on the person and anoint them with oil if we feel we should. We can command eyes to see, ears to hear, legs to grown, cancer to leave, tumors to shrink, blood chemistry to submit to the Lordship of Jesus, muscles to be strengthened, pain to disappear, etc. in the name and authority of Jesus.

I believe we can quote a few scriptures to encourage some faith and to align our thinking and expectations with the word of God and simply pray what is on our hearts for the person. The entire prayer might be thirty seconds. Check out the prayers you see in the New Testament for healing. They typically are very brief and take the form of a command. We can pray all we want in our prayer closet for healing gifts or the healing of a loved one but when we minister healing, the examples are brief, confident, commanding, and in the name of Jesus.

If we begin to labor in prayer over the sick person then we easily slip into the mindset that we must persuade God to do something he really doesn’t want to do – which undermines our first premise that God loves to heal because it is who he is. We may need to pray several times or on several occasions but our assumption must be that God is willing. Because God partners with his people, our prayer and our faith release his power for healing and it only takes a word.

I hope this short series on healing prayer has been helpful.