Thursday, April 16, 2015

The Holy Spirit’s Power for Healing Through the Laying On of Hands


The Holy Spirit ‘shows up’ very unexpectantly sometimes...
BATTLING a prideful, ambivalent spirit at a pastoral retreat, we were asked if we needed prayer. (“I don’t want to do this, Lord,” was my heart.) Then it was asked of others who had not opted to be prayed for, if they would gather around and pray for those who needed prayer. I said, “Okay, Lord, I’ll do it.” I prayed for a pastor who’d been in pastoral work twenty years — double my time; someone I also look up to in the blogosphere.
The moment I placed my hands on his shoulders something happened in my spirit!
I prayed, and I prayed words that were not mine. Immediately the hardness inhibiting my soul was replaced with a spirit of peace, if not, levity. Soon it was a case of euphoric laughter at the funny things the speaker was saying. I felt like I was even laughing like I’d taken laughing gas. I didn’t even care if I was silly so long as I wasn’t laughing inappropriately, because normally I’d laugh in some sort of reserve.
The Holy Spirit worked to heal me even though it was my pride that predicated my willingness to pray for this man of God. Isn’t God good?
The next day, in a better frame of mind, I had the privilege to pray for a pastor who I have enormous respect for. God has been working powerfully in his soul for what seems a millennium of months. His life has been tropical. Again, my words were not my own, praise God. Prayer works.
The Holy Spirit can do anything He wants, despite us at times.
***
These two examples of simple, ordinary obedience, even in the mode of sinful pride in the first case, illustrate that God is never far away from healing us if we’ll let him.
The Holy Spirit, through the laying on of hands — mine on another person — healed me! It is most usually the other way around. Rarely, if ever, have I encountered such a transaction of God’s power coming through a person to me as I prayed for them.
Believe!
Even in the case of aiding in another person’s healing through prayer, the Holy Spirit can heal us, who are praying for them.
The power of prayer is such that the laying on of hands becomes the conduit for God’s healing power.
God’s Spirit is doing the unexpected. There is power for healing through prayer.
***
Power comes through and lands,
Healing by the laying on of hands,
The simple faith of prayer,
God’s power through rarefied air.
Awesome experience of wonder,
Splits all of hell asunder,
Prayer breaks Satan’s yoke,
God makes Satan a joke.
But there is no need here for pride,
Just let the Spirit by prayer to ride,
No fear that Satan will steal,
When the Spirit gives power to heal.
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.

No comments:

Post a Comment