Isaac, our 10-year old son, bought a book last week from the New Wine bookshop. It was all about healing. Written for kids about his age it gives some bible teaching on the subject and tells stories of God’s Spirit touching lives today, especially of children. There’s also space to write down you own thoughts and prayers, as well as you own stories of healing. It’s good and he’s finding it interesting.
We’ve chatted about the book a few times this week and it’s encouraged both him and me to look out for more opportunities to pray for healing. Here are two examples.
A couple of days ago when the tide was very low Isaac came limping out of the sea. He’d trodden on something sharp down there – not sure what – maybe some fish or sea creature buried under the surface. Anyway the result was that he had a red sore big toe and was clearly uncomfortable. So we both prayed. We very gently laid a hand on the toe and told the pain and swelling and redness to go, in Jesus’ name. Within less than 5 minutes all the pain was gone and he was fine. It’s now recorded in his book!
Then there’s my own toe story too. I stubbed a toe on my left foot yesterday afternoon whilst playing some beach games. When I inspected it last night the toe had gone a lovely shade of purple. So at bedtime I got Isaac to pray for it. He rebuked the pain, the soreness and the bruising and spoke healing over it. It was a great prayer and I was expectant of a similar healing to his. But to be honest not a lot changed – and as I woke up this morning, it was still as sore as ever. So we keep praying!
Such is the mystery of healing. Some get healed, and some don’t. But that shouldn’t stop us praying. If anything it should encourage us to press on for more, trusting as we do that it’s God who does the healing, not us. So when someone gets healed, he gets the praise. And when someone’s not healed, we don’t take the blame. If anything, that’s his problem more than ours. Our job is to be obedient to our call as disciples – and pray (Luke 9:1-2; Luke 10:9). Because that’s one thing Jesus told us to do. God will honour the obedience. The rest is up to him.
Discipleship Blog 
Recently i went out with the Healing on the Streets Team. It was a very exciting experience and one that I felt really Praised God. We spoke with a couple people who declined prayer for healing but they all engaged freely in conversation and went away feeling happier than earlier. When we told them that “God loved them” everyones reaction was positive and accompanied by a smile. I could have been discouraged that we didnt see any physical healing but they all experienced the love of God. It’s important to focus on what God has done rather than on what we think he hasn’t done.