Healing Prayer Is God’s IdeaParaugs

Jesus’s ministry of healing arose from God’s Spirit and was signaled by His deep yearning that we fallen broken ones be made well. We don’t often draw the dots closely enough: Jesus did this action as a direct result of being infilled by the Spirit. That Holy Spirit imparted the needed power to accomplish that healing. It is the Holy Spirit who imparts gifts of healing. He also transforms our attitudes and our desires and transfigures them , turning our yearning emotions into focused intercession. The Spirit of the Lord grants not only power but also a singular purpose that saturates our praying: we pray in the Spirit as our intercessions are shot through and permeated with the unselfish love of God. Matthew tells us of Jesus’s compassion for the throngs of sick, weary, and wounded souls that caused Him to tell His disciples to pray for God to raise up more workers for the harvest. After this, Jesus told the disciples to pray for more workers to carry out the ministry that was growing and expanding beyond the limited capacity of a single person. That request included the ministry of healing. Right after Jesus was moved with empathy for the crowds who were sick, suffering, and afflicted, He gathered the Twelve to send them out in ministry. They were the first “more workers” in answer to His prayer—and one role they played in this context included praying for the sick. In the mind of Jesus of Nazareth, healing prayer was God’s idea! He told the new workers to pray with a clear goal in mind—ask God to send even more workers to care for the multiplied thousands of the sick, the lost, the helpless, and the demonized. In this case, Jesus acted to answer His own prayer, sending His disciples out two by two. Let’s be clear: Jesus of Nazareth sent them out as an extension of His ministry. That ministry included a blunt proclamation of the kingdom of God breaking through to this fallen world. The disciples (strangely, even Judas Iscariot) were sent out with authority to heal, as an extension of Jesus’s healing ministry, in direct response to His prayer for more workers to be raised up to heal the sick.