A month or so back, I blogged about what to do when healing doesn’t come. Some of the options I dwelled on, places I have personally experienced, included taking a break from healing prayer to grieve and process the present reality. But what about those who want to keep praying for healing? Who feel called to persevere and need help knowing how?
These sorts of questions arrive in our Global Awakening inboxes frequently. Questions about what to do when your loved one continues to suffer? How to pray with faith when you’re filled with doubt? How long to pursue healing prayer when it doesn’t happen? Whether you can or should pray differently to experience healing prayer?
Recently, Dr. Randy Clark began sharing a devotional series on his own personal healing prayer experience. In fact, he wrote a book about it, titled The Thrill of Victory/The Agony of Defeat. You would think someone known for healing ministry would have experienced the anointing from birth—the child, teen, or young adult known for great faith and great miracles. And yet, his words reveal an ordinary man who arrived at the healing ministry he has today through the grace of the Holy Spirit and his own blood, sweat, and tears.
His words have moved more than me to tears. All week people have been writing in:
“Thank you for this message, Randy. I’ve experienced failure far too often… I pray that I will have the courage to start praying again.”
“I needed to hear this… Thank you, Randy, for these words that express my heart.”
“Thank you for sharing this. It really encourages me. I find it very frustrating, as well as heartbreaking, when someone is not healed because I see so much healing. Perseverance is definitely needed in the healing ministry, and encouraging yourself as well as being encouraged by others like you.”
“I needed to be reminded of this today. Our church was praying for people with cancer, and four people have died after many prayers. However, we must persevere; He is still a healer.”
I want to distill and simplify his message for you here. For anyone wondering, “How do I keep praying for the healing?” read on.
1. RECOGNIZE THE COST
Dr. Clark prefaces his devotional series by saying, “Healing ministry is costly. When you receive impartation for healing, you commit yourself to embrace suffering.”
If you’re here, you may already know that. Perhaps you’ve mentally counted all the people you have prayed for who have not been healed. Perhaps you’ve experienced the disappointment in someone’s eyes if you lay hands on them and nothing happens. Perhaps you have been actively praying for a dear one—someone close to your heart—witnessing daily the pain that hasn’t gone away.
For three devotionals in a row, Dr. Clark recounted stories akin to these. Some were from his earlier years in pursuing healing prayer; many were from a crisis point before a breakthrough in healing prayer. His life exemplifies, in fact, how the cost of healing ministry steepens when you become known for it.
Dr. Clark recounts a story where a little girl with Parkinson’s, the youngest in the States, approaches him for healing after hearing him share a Parkinson’s testimony. He prays for her session after session. “I could see her hope dwindling,” he writes, “and she moved into despair and began crying, and her nose started running. Somebody gave her a handkerchief, and she was struggling to try to wipe her own nose. She stayed there with her mom and dad—all remembering the testimony I had just told about the Parkinson’s healing—and yet she was not healed. How do you handle that?”
Healing ministry requires picking up the cross of emotional suffering. The closer you come to people asking for healing prayer, the more acquainted and emotionally attuned you are to their need, the greater the loss if healing doesn’t happen.
If you’re feeling the cost of pursuing healing ministry, Dr. Clark validates that. It is the reality of the call, and he and others on our team have shared your pain.
2. DON’T STOP UNTIL YOU’VE PRAYED FOR 200
Despite the intense cost, Dr. Clark emphasizes that we can’t give up on healing ministry until we’ve prayed ourselves for at least 200 people. He writes, “How many people would you be willing to pray for who don’t get healed to see a 49-year-old woman losing her mind to Parkinson’s be totally healed and given back to her husband? How many people would you pray for to see a little boy whose nerves were gone be totally restored? How many people would you pray for to see a mother who is in her 20s dying of an inoperable brain tumor be healed by God?
The first, clearest step towards experiencing a breakthrough in healing prayer is that simple: don’t stop. We must commit to at least 200.
3. USE YOUR DESPERATION
As we continue to pray for people and bear the emotional cost of not seeing any, many, or every person healed, we may experience desperation. Dr. Clark reached this crisis point as people began recognizing that he was anointed for healing. Parents began bringing their terminally ill children to him, full of hope for their healing. He saw many healed by God, and yet remembered only the ones who weren’t: the girl with Parkinson’s, a child born with no brain, a teenager with a terminal disease, a boy with spina bifida.
As his heart began to break over these people who weren’t healed, he went on several fasts, determined to receive more healing power from the Lord. He testifies: “I never saw any stroke victims healed until after twenty years of praying for stroke victims. It took years to see an AIDS victim healed, and then we saw three in one year. It took years to see a paraplegic person healed. Years after seeing my first deaf person healed, we’ve now seen 80 healed in one month. It was more than 25 years before we saw the first blind person healed, but now we’ve seen 20 blind people healed in one month. And it wasn’t just me. I only prayed for a couple of them; our ministry team prayed for the rest.”
I don’t think Dr. Clark means we have to go on a fast to receive a breakthrough in healing… though certainly do that if the Lord tells you to. Rather, we should let our desperation drive us towards God. What is it He wants us to do? Do we need to take a course, go on a trip, pray at a Walmart every morning at 8 a.m., or get in the Scripture? Do we need to pray beside someone else who has been seeing breakthroughs to catch their faith? Do we need a greater understanding of God’s heart for healing? Of His own desire for people to be healed?
Sometimes seeing a miracle requires another step—specific to our walk with the Lord.
4. KEEP FAITH, NOT EMOTIONALISM
Faith can be as small as a mustard seed. Dr. Clark recounts taping one to his bible to remind himself daily that that’s how small his faith can be in order to witness a miracle.
He writes: “This sort of faith is grounded in remembering that it is God who does it; you can’t do it. You don’t have to try to work up your spirit to get it to happen. If you try to pray by working yourself up, four things may happen: One, you get tired more quickly; two, you wear out; three, you lose your voice yelling; and four, you may miss a word from the Lord in the midst of your emotionalism. God will not move more in bold emotions. Instead, we pray with confidence and speak to the condition, knowing that healing is a grace gift from the Father, one that He wants to give, and not the result of our own effort.”
How do we know if we have the faith we need? We choose to pray. At the very least, we pray for someone to be healed—even if we feel nothing, believe nothing, expect nothing; at the very least, we lay our hands on them and pray. That, Dr. Clark emphasizes, is enough faith.
5. PAY ATTENTION TO ANOINTING
There are anointed people and there are people who feel the anointing. Dr. Clark gives various examples of this in his book. Some ministers become known for healing. Perhaps, like me, this is how you discovered Randy Clark—someone known for seeing healings and for healing ministry. Others experience something sensible that clues them in to what the Spirit is doing. For example, they might feel heat or oil on the palms of their hands and know God wants to heal.
“This is illustrated by the woman who touched Jesus at the hem of his garment,” Dr. Clark explains. “Jesus turned around and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ He realized that power had gone out from him because He could feel the healing anointing. Even if you aren’t an anointed person, there may be times where you feel the healing anointing.”
If you experience something like this, that is beautiful, and something to pay attention to! It’s not a theology, but a sign of the Spirit. And if you don’t experience anointing, God can still use you. As Dr. Clark confesses, “I myself don’t feel the anointing when I pray for healing.”
6. BE DRIVEN BY COMPASSION
If at the end of the day, we pray for 200 people, and none of them receive healing, yet they feel the love of God from or through us… it is worth praying for healing. This is a truth emphasized by the ministry of Global Awakening.
If you feel God’s heart for someone, pray for them. And if you don’t feel any love or compassion for the person in need of healing—if you’re burnt out with compassion fatigue—pray still, holding in your heart the knowledge that there’s a God who’s never stopped feeling compassion for them or for you.
CONCLUSION
Dr. Clark writes that, “If I could give you anything to take away, it would be to reassure you that the key to seeing more healing is pressing in. It is important to learn how to have faith, to recognize God’s anointing, and to have compassion for people in all situations. And yet, even when you lack all those things, if you just keep praying—even past the 200th person who doesn’t get healed—you will see healing. How do I know this? Because God wants to see healing even more than I do… that was and is the essential quality of His Son’s ministry on earth.”
If you’ve been drawn to the healing ministry and want to keep pursuing it, or if you’re feeling discouraged in pursuing it and want the encouragement to keep trying, may Dr. Clark’s testimony and words fill you with hope. I believe you will see healing… test out this wisdom, and as he says, at the very least keep praying. You will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
READ MORE:
Clark, Randy. The Thrill of Victory, The Agony of Defeat. Self-published, 2017.