Mark 8:22-26 How To Pray For Healing page 1

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This sermon is two weeks overdue. Even some of our esteemed train companies couldn't manage a delay as extreme as that.

However, there is good reason. A fortnight ago when I should have preached this final sermon in the series on healing we were faced with our own trial, namely with our daughter Rebekah's health. You can be sure we prayed many prayers for her healing that weekend.

Now, with her restored to health, I return to this subject of how we pray for healing. We have thought about a number of issues connected with healing in these last two or three months. There was an overview; we discussed physical healing, the healing of emotions and memories, the healing of relationships, and of course we tried to face the issue of why people are not always healed in response to our prayers. As I look back I realise that there is at least one other thorny subject I should have squeezed into the series, and that is the difficult one of the demonic.

But whatever the deficiencies of what I've tried to share with you, in the end the rubber has to hit the road. The theories must just be the foundation for practical action in prayer.

And so I have chosen this passage from Mark's Gospel about one particular healing incident. I find it encouraging that even in this story Jesus himself doesn't see an instantaneous healing of the blind man, it takes him two goes!

And it's also an unusual story. Jesus spits on the man's eyes. At other times Jesus simply speaks a word of command and someone is healed. There is no single set pattern or technique Jesus uses when healing someone.

And therefore as we think this morning about how we pray for healing, I am not offering a technique. What I am offering is a series of five steps to follow when praying with someone who needs healing. But these five steps are not a technique: I'm not saying, "Do these five things and certain results are guaranteed." Rather, they are steps in a process that reflect a procedure, a process. Thus they reflect a relationship between the one seeking healing and those praying, and also between these people and the God who heals.

I have taken the five steps of this procedure from John Wimber's book Power Healing. Some Christians argue with certain detail in Wimber's teaching, but I find these five steps to be both sensible and spiritual.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.