It is easy in the ministry of healing to get a bunch of people healed by depending on the gifts of the Spirit and the sovereign grace of God. From the minister’s perspective, it would almost be like a scattershot approach, which makes for a good meeting and encourage people to have faith — this would be our broad purpose in a meeting. But when we want a specific person to receive healing, such as yourself or someone you care about or responsible for, then the only reliable way is by faith. And the way is not to beg God or even to ask him, but to take it from him. This is just like how we do not ask God to send Jesus to save us — and then wait, and check, and wait, and check if we feel different — but knowing that he had already sent Jesus, we receive him by faith. There is no wondering about the will of God — the word of God is the will of God, and faith in our hearts is God applying his word to us, so we know it is his will to save us.
When we receive by faith, sometimes we have to fight — or rather, insist on resting in what Christ has done. One preacher who had heart disease took some time off from his church and studied the subject, and he became convinced that healing is an accomplished fact according to the word of God. So he never begged God to do it, but he simply kept insisting, “Jesus took my infirmities and carried my sicknesses, so I am healed. The Lord is the strength of my life.” He was repeatedly attacked with symptoms for a while but eventually became completely free from heart trouble. In fact, even when someone receives by the gifts of the Spirit, the sickness would sometimes try to return — this is why some people get sick again. Critics claim that these people were never healed, or that if God had healed, the sickness would not have returned, but both of these assumptions are false. When someone receives by the gifts, in an instant, very easily and without much faith or knowledge, I found that I have to hurry to teach him faith, lest the sickness returns before he is prepared, and then he would become discouraged and think that he imagined the whole thing in the first place. Jesus said that when we cast out an evil spirit from a man, the spirit might return and bring seven other spirits more evil than itself, and the final state of the man would become worse than the first. Thus when he healed the people, he continued to teach them, and to warn them from sin.
My advice is to become convinced about what is available to you and the way to obtain it, so that you can be certain of it, and take it directly from God’s word, and not from me or anyone else. You cannot believe in healing just because you want it. You have to believe that it is what God’s word teaches. Discuss this with as few people as possible. Talk about it only with people who are more established in healing than you are. Do not ask many people to pray, if anyone at all. Most people do not truly believe that God heals. When they pray, they will in effect curse the sick person instead. Jesus at times removed the sick person’s relatives and even most of his own disciples out of the room. More people does not mean more power. Listen to people who truly believe in miraculous healing. Jesus taught the kind of faith that “does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen.” There is no room for retreat or despair. Faith is the reality, the conviction, the certainty, of what you hope for and what you do not see. Always remember that there is nothing to lose when you have faith, but everything to gain. People are hurt only when they mistake presumption and wishful thinking as faith in God. Nevertheless, only those who have faith can judge wishful thinking. Those who reject miracle faith in their theology cannot judge, because they are so inferior that they have not even attained to wishful thinking.
From: email