Pick up your Reins to Pray and Heal
During the two years that we did not meet for our annual retreat, I took the opportunity to try to learn more about effective prayer and specifically, prayer for healing. I have always had a longing to see people healed by Jesus when I pray for them. Many years ago in a prayer group that met at Millie’s house and included Lisa from the Beacons, I prayed and asked God to let us see miracles of healing. Well, many years went by and I didn’t see what I desired.
However, during the pandemic, I renewed my cry to the Lord and I began to see online that some of the prophets said that the Lord revealed to them that miracles, signs and wonders were coming soon. Also, there were many prophecies about a world-wide harvest of a billion souls that would include miracles, signs and wonders.
Just recently, Lana Vawser discussed this in a word from the Lord that she called “Welcome to Health” recorded on May 5, 2022. This was aired on YouTube. In this word, she said that the Lord told her there would be many supernatural divine alignments take place in physical bodies, and not just for one health issue, but for many. Hearing these things has really given me hope, expectation and an increase in faith for healing. In fact, I am excited!!!
Recently in my ponderings, I realized a couple of things:
- In my role as intercessor coordinator for Refreshing Winds, I’d say that about 90% of our prayer requests are for healing.
- In the gospels a very large part of the ministry of Jesus was healing people from every illness along with deliverance from demons.
As our theme for the retreat is to “Give Up Your Reins to Reign”, I have given some thought to how this impacts our ability to pray for others and to ask Jesus to heal others. In giving up our reins, we are submitting to our King Jesus to follow His guidance in humility and obedience. Our goal in this quest is, of course, to reign alongside Our King as it says in 2 Timothy 12a, which states “If we endure, we shall also reign with Him”. And another broader scripture from Revelation 5:9-10 says this:
9 And they sang a new song with these words:
“You are worthy to take the scroll
and break its seals and open it.
For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 And you have caused them to become
a Kingdom of priests for our God.
And they will reign[a] on the earth.”
Now, I’m just wondering, how many times do we forget all about being a kingdom of priests in our day-to-day lives? We are a kingdom of priests because we have chosen to follow Jesus. But do we give up our reins to God and allow Him to guide each step so that we can reach others with his gospel, healing, deliverance and encouragement? Is our ear tuned to the Holy Spirit and our eye to looking for someone in need?
I am going to take a short detour here and talk about my experience with COVID and a few up close and personal things I learned about prayer. To set the stage, I need to mention that my younger brother, Patrick, who was Down’s Syndrome and 48 years old, died in September 2020 in the hospital in Cody of pneumonia and he was negative for COVID. However, before he died his heart stopped and they ended up intubating him because his pneumonia was so severe. I was in the room when this happened, and it was traumatic to me.
In October 2020, about a month after Patrick’s death, I came down with COVID. I was one of those whose lungs were almost immediately compromised, and so I was doing daily phone appointments with my primary care physician. My oxygen levels were dropping lower and lower, and he encouraged me to go to the hospital. My memories of Patrick were so strong that I did not want to go. Finally, my oxygen dropped to the mid-70’s, and I knew that if I did not go, I was definitely going to die and I might die anyway. So, my husband Al took me and dropped me off in a waiting room with no one around (he was not allowed to stay with me) and I was more than a little nervous. I told my husband that I did not want to be intubated, and I have to tell you, at that point I was ambivalent about everything else.
No sooner did they take me back to a room than they began using different pieces of equipment to try restore my oxygen level. On the fourth machine my oxygen finally went from mid-70’s to mid-80’s and they let me be for a while.
Al had called the church to let them know I was in the hospital, and I began to receive scripture verses from my pastor and the church secretary. I don’t remember anymore who sent which one, but these are the ones that brought me comfort in my hospital stay.
Psalm 30:2-3 O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you restored my health.
You brought me up from the grave, O Lord. You kept me from falling into the pit of death.
Psalm 107:19-20 “Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them, snatching them from the door of death.
Ezekiel 37:9-10 – Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, O breath, from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again. So I spoke the message as he commanded me, and breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet – a great army.
Psalm 118:17 – I will not die; instead, I will live to tell what the Lord has done.
Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.
The last verse caused me to have a vision of a deep gold hallway with filtered light, and I could see at the end of the hall was Jesus, sitting in a chair, and sending comfort my way. It gave me great peace, just knowing that He was there and I could see Him.
The only reason I share this story is because I want you to know how powerful it was for me to receive those scriptures at that time. I was alone since no one was allowed to see COVID patients, and these verses meant more than I can say. If you ever know someone in the hospital, don’t hesitate to send them a scripture.
During 2021 my sister-in-law, Patty, had a blood disorder that had been controlled for many years by medication. Suddenly the medication stopped working and her platelets stopped producing as well as her red blood cells. I was frantic to pray hard enough and long enough that Patty would be healed.
During this time, I heard Dutch Sheets speak on healing methods on Give Him 15. He was puzzled by some warts on his hands that were eating into his nailbeds and why they had not been healed. He had received prayer from (a) the elders in the church as seen in James 5:14, (b) prayer of agreement as seen in Matthew 18:19, and (c) laying on of hands as seen in Matthew 19:13, Mark 5:23, Mark 7:32, Acts 9:12 and Acts 28:8. As he puzzled over this and asked the Holy Spirit why he had not been healed, the Holy Spirit told him there were four methods of prayer for healing and he had only had three of the four. He told Dutch that the fourth method of prayer for healing is (d) praying the scriptures as seen in the ones I quoted from my pastor. He suggested that Dutch find several scriptures and pray them repeatedly every day until he got his healing. Incidentally, it took 6 scriptures prayed at least 6 times per day and two weeks of this method before he began to see results. Eventually he was totally healed with no scars remaining.
Well, I took this right to heart and began to pray intensely for Patty. I found 8 scriptures for health and healing that I began to pray for Patty, and I shared these with Patty, my sister, Jenna, and my mother as all these ladies are prayer warriors too and instructed them to pray several times a day. We did this for about a month when something changed.
Long story short, Patty did not make progress over about 6 months in spite of 3 blood transfusions a week so the doctors decided to change her medication to something stronger. She was dead within 24 hours from a brain bleed due to low platelets.
This outcome devastated me, and I really wanted to be angry at God, but thinking about God’s word reminded me that all of our days are numbered, and He had called Patty home to be with Him. It’s hard to argue with that.
I am a practical girl, and sometimes I need a little interpretation to understand exactly HOW I am supposed to do all of these things I learned from the Bible and my other studies. I have been frustrated when the Lord did not appear to answer my requests for healing or deliverance and I discovered I had a few stumbling blocks to effective prayer which I will elaborate on shortly.
I am also a lover of God’s Word and I love to hear teaching from people that I trust because sometimes it takes a teaching from someone else to penetrate my hard head. So this year, in my quest to pray more effectively, I approached the problem by studying in every possible way:
- Jesus’ healing in the gospels
- Online healing school with Joan Hunter’s Healing School
- Read and studied books on healing by some of the successful healers,
- I also researched scriptures on healing in the Old and New Testaments, of which there are many.
And what I loved most about these teachings were the examples given by these people who were or are very successful in their healing ministries. This means that I can learn how they approached healing and try to incorporate their strategies when I pray. All of the books looked at the same scriptures, but their ability to apply those scriptures is what made the difference.
One of the main things that transformed my healing approach for prayer was understanding that Jesus gave us the authority to heal in His name. Now I knew that scripture, but I did not understand how to apply it. I was timid about how to utilize the knowledge. However, the books as well as Joan Hunter’s videos did an exceptional job of explaining this concept which really helped me to understand that I was not applying the Word in the best way.
- For example, it is really not necessary to ask Jesus to heal when he has already delegated that task to us in Matthew 10:8 NLT, which says:
8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons. Give as freely as you have received!
He has commanded us to heal AND a few other things. So instead of asking Jesus to heal as I did for many years, we should command healing to occur USING HIS NAME. So, for example, we should say something like, “Eyes be healed in Jesus’ name”. Or maybe “In Jesus’ name, eyes be healed”.
We should have faith along with an expectation for healing to occur, because of Matthew 21:22 NLT
22 You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.
- Now this was another stumbling block for me, because when you haven’t seen much in the way of miraculous healing, you don’t really have an expectation or faith for it. So, before I pray now I remember the story of the father whose son had a demon that threw him into fire and water. This is in chapter 9 of the book of We’ll look at just two of these verses 9:23-24:
23 “What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.”
24 The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”
- Another stumbling block for me used to be – what if Jesus doesn’t want to heal this person right now? Well, there are lots of scriptures to support the fact that Jesus wants everyone healed, and it does not matter if they are saved or not. Here are two of my favorite verses on that subject. From the Old Testament:
Psalm 103:3 He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases.
And from the New Testament:
Matthew 12:15b – He healed all the sick among them.
(4) Another stumbling block that I had in the past was about casting out demons because I was intimidated. In the interest of saving time, I am going to read a direct quote from Robert Prakash’s book entitled “Proclaiming the Gospel with Power”.
When you confront demons, you must perceive them as weak, feeble, and powerless – unable to resist your commands.
You resist the devil based upon your spiritual position established in Christ Jesus and then he flees from you.
We bind the darkness, command its works to be destroyed, and give orders of eviction because they have already been bound, destroyed, and evicted in heaven – the spiritual realm. We bind the devil because he has already been defeated, crushed, and made powerless! Your faith reflects on earth what has already transpired in the spiritual realm.
Devils, you are defeated; Jesus crushed you and humiliated you. You are weak and powerless; come out right now. I bind you and crush you in His mighty name. You cannot remain or resist me; in Jesus’ name and authority, I evict you! Your works are destroyed; you have failed and cannot prevail. Powerless devils, be gone now! The Father has delivered (Person’s name) from the dominion of darkness; therefore, you have no territory or dominion here. Jesus is Lord, and you are evicted! The blood of Jesus is over (Person’s Name), and you have no power here. I command freedom in Jesus’ name!
In conclusion, I would just like to say that in order to be more effective in prayer and healing, we must submit ourselves to the authority of Jesus in humility and thereby “Give Up Your Reins to Reign!”, but we must also accept the responsibility of authority given to us by Jesus and PICK UP OUR REINS to pray for all who need it in our sphere of influence. We must NOT be timid, but we must speak with the authority and anointing that have blanketed us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Lord Jesus, I ask that you would give all of these precious ladies the self-confidence they need to pick up their reins for you. In Jesus name, Amen