Jesus, according to the New Testament report and the witness of the Holy Spirit, healed all who came to Him and all who were brought to Him for healing. He refused no one. “He healed all who were sick” (Matt. 8:16).
Everything of God has in it healing virtue. Everything of creation: earth, water, fire, air, sunshine, minerals, food, and herbs—under guided, intelligent use have in them something of the health and healing of God. Everything of His Spirit and presence and nature is marvelously healing. So are the fruits of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”
Enough love will heal anything; and everything else combined with love is health and abundant life giving.
God heals with doctors, without doctors, and sometimes in spite of them. The whole power of God and of the universe for healing as well as for salvation is in Jesus Christ and is immediately available to us through Him and His Spirit. As Saint John saw, where Jesus now is and is visible and in full charge, all sickness and all the causes of sickness have vanished. They cannot exist in such good company.
Saint John saw this heavenly city and its divine order coming down to earth in fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer and ministry to bring heaven to earth, for God’s will of love and good will and good sense and good health and all else to be done in earth as it is in heaven.
In answer to the question, how can we best co-work with Him, for our own healing and for the healing of others, these are some of the ways:
1. Repent of all the sin and sinning you know of, and pray to know all of the sins you have committed against your body, mind and soul as well as against all others and the whole of life.
I never did come to satisfactory health and abundant life and almost super-endurance until I chose to let go the denatured foods, which I class among the subtle sins of civilization against the body, and began to feast upon the things as nearly as possible as God created them and as nature grew them. God made things wonderfully well and man has denatured them and paid heavily for it.
2. Among the sins against our mind and soul are unforgiveness and resentments.
Freely forgive everyone as Jesus Christ has forgiven you and as you would like to be forgiven by others, and go to radiating love and good will and good cheer to all.
3. Seek the forgiveness of all who have anything against you and cease everything else until you do your best to get your brother reconciled and back in love with you (Matt. 5:23-24) .
Every hindrance to love and joy and fellowship must be removed. All covered inquity needs to be uncovered that it may be taken out of the way.
Years ago a young man who came to me seeking healing for his body was healed quickly when he went to the man for whom he had been collecting and confessed he had kept back some of the money he had collected. His employer reemployed him.
4: Recognize, and strengthen your faith by saying to yourself and others that all that Jesus Christ did when He was here in the flesh He can do now, and ever more.
One of my Manifest Victory friends, Mr. Kirby of Huntington, West Virginia, told me before his healing that he was all crooked and twisted from rheumatism and arthritis and also deaf.
Life seemed to have so little meaning for him he decided on a certain Friday to put an end to it by committing suicide, but before he attempted it he heard a voice saying, “God is life.” He said to himself, “Well, this cures me of the temptation to take life, even my own.”
A few days later, when reading the New Testament, he read one of the accounts of Jesus having healed someone whose physical condition was as bad as his own. He then said, “Jesus, if you could do it then, You can do it now.” Instantly, he says, he rose up well and even ran upstairs.
Sometime later there was a strong leading to attend a certain prayer meeting. One voice said, “What’s the use of going when you can’t hear anything.” The higher voice said, “You’ll be a good witness for Me, because the people will see that whereas you had been crooked and bound, you are now straight and released.” When he went he heard so well it was sometime before he realized he had not always been hearing.
5. Say to Jesus Christ and to yourself and to the one prayed for, “It should be easier for You (Jesus Christ), to do what we are asking of You, than to have done the more difficult things You did in Galilee.”
When I was at Warrenton, North Carolina, January, 1947, conducting a spiritual retreat in the Methodist Church there, the leader of the choir had a very near relative who had had one kidney removed at Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the time he was prayed for he was on the way to the boat to go back to Hopkins to see what could be done for the other kidney. In the prayer I said something like this—”Precious Jesus, if You could make a kidney, of course You can heal it, since it ought to be easier to heal or repair than it is to create.”
The relative caught faith when these words were spoken and had the witness that the young man of her deep concern was healed. He also about this time felt so well that as soon as he reached the boat, ordered a big meal and ate it and digested it. He had a good night.
When he got to Hopkins and was examined he was told that “something wonderful” had “occurred.” The last report from him is that he is well and back at work.
When I was at Avondale, North Carolina, in the autumn of 1947, Friend Ben Lee Ray, pastor of one of the Baptist churches there, took me to see a Mrs. Flynn who had suffered much and for a long time with a kidney out of position. In the prayer for her we said to the blessed Lord Jesus, “It ought to be easier to put a kidney where it belongs than it is to make it.”
This was Saturday afternoon. On Monday Mrs. Flynn felt a movement of her kidney and the movement was without pain. Soon after this she went to the specialist who had been seeking to help her, and when he made an x-ray of the kidney he said, “It’s back where it belongs, and I didn’t put it there.”
6. Do your part as best you know and the best you can know by praying and obeying and trusting Him to do His best.
The miracle that the Lord wrought in putting the kidney where it belonged so increased the faith of Mr. and Mrs. Flynn that Mr. Flynn anointed with oil in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ a black sore on Mrs. Flynn’s face, supposed to be a cancer, telling the Lord, “I’m doing all I can and I am trusting You to do all You can.”
It was not long until the black sore dropped off and left the face without even a scar.
The last time I was in Avondale, Mr. and Mrs. Flynn were so very happy and grateful that they were praising the Lord aloud in the Baptist church and the church liked it.
7. Invite Jesus to come in and reign, and be all in all in the ALL of you; particularly in the most needy and diseased parts. He is knocking to do this, and only needs to be wanted and invited. The insane have become sane after they were persuaded to ask Jesus to come into their minds and spirits and brains and bodies and affairs.
Mrs. E. J. Moore, in October, 1942, was healed suddenly of paralysis when she invited Jesus to come in the all of her spirit, mind, soul and body, and especially the paralyzed parts. She told me that while she was praying and being prayed for she felt the power of the Lord, as holy electricity, and was soon aware that she had been made whole. I saw her two years after the healing, and she was still whole.
I find the following type of invitation always opens the way for Him to bring an increase of His presence and quickening and healing power: “Precious Jesus, come in and be All in All in the All of me and of my affairs. Let Thy perfect joy be in me and make my joy full. Let Thy perfect Spirit be in my spirit and make my spirit perfect; let Thy mind be my mind, and make my mind perfect; let Thy perfect Body be in my body and make mine perfect. Be bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, heart of my heart; be perfect salvation with health and healing for every bit of me, including every organ and function of my body, as well as every faculty of my mind and capability of my soul.”
There is nothing He does not heal, if and when He is allowed to enter, control and use.
Desire and dedicate yourself for fruit-bearing, identification, union and marriage with Jesus—for the Kingdom of God to triumph in you and in all, to find health and healing and all else necessary for living His life of love and for doing His will and work.
A friend of many years—W. M. Robinson—had such defective sight that it was necessary for him to use powerful bifocal glasses, until he commenced seeking, wholeheartedly, for the Kingdom of God as a present experience. Later when he went to put on his glasses, he says he was supernaturally restrained and looked over at the difficult writing that his work required him to read, and found he could read it without the glasses with perfect ease. This was about ten years ago, and he told me recently that his sight, at seventy-eight, is still good.
The colored friends, near Macon, Georgia, at the time of the outpouring of the Spirit upon them, were healed of all manner of diseases, simply by the presence of the Spirit.
At the Camp Farthest Out, Lake Koronis, in the summer of 1945, a rare colored girl, who asked to be prayed for that she might receive the Holy Spirit, was instantly healed of a serious back injury, without asking for the healing, and without expecting it. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there are miracles of healing, even when not asked for or expected.
Go after the highest, and you get the highest and all that goes with it. Seek less than the highest and you may not get it, and if you do you will not be satisfied with it, for you are made for the highest of all, and nothing less than this will satisfy you. As Henry Drummond put it, if you seek first the kingdom you will have problems, and if you seek anything less you will have nothing but problems.
8. When you ask for healings or other gifts from Jesus, He says, “Believe that you receive them and ye SHALL have them” (Mark 11:24). “And this is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us: And if we know that He heareth us—we know that we HAVE the petitions that we desired of Him” (1 John 5:14-15) Often we find that the things we ask are manifested while we are asking. If not manifested at once, if they are according to His will (and everything that is best for us and everybody else is according to His will), they are on their way, and are sure to arrive. So we can be very happy while awaiting their arrival. The first Christians, while they were tarrying for the Holy Spirit, were in great joy and in the high certainty of receiving.
9. Dedicate to seek and to find and to give yourself to the best life, the best work and the best services He has for you, and that you have for Him and for others.
Moody Wright, one of the missionaries in South Africa, received a marvelous healing over twenty years ago, when he was told, and believed it, that he could not only get well, but could go as a missionary to Africa, in obedience to a call that had been made years before, and which up to that time he had not had faith enough to believe could be answered.
E. N. Reedy, 229 N. W. 43rd Street, Miami, Florida, was lifted up from the jaws of death when he told the Lord he did not know how to pray for healing, but he did not know of any one who needed it more than he did. He was asked of the Lord if he would go as a missionary. He replied that he would go to the ends of the earth. Then the abundant life and healing of Jesus came upon his head and descended through his body, even lifting up the sunken veins with new life and strength, extending to the tips of his fingers and toes.
Give yourself to the highest you are here for. Treat your body as the temple of the Holy Spirit; put yourself under His guidance, and every disease can be healed, every obstacle removed, and everything turned to your good.
10. You may find it advisable to get two or three in touch with Jesus to join you in prayer for your own healing and the healing of others and for some of the number to keep in continuous prayer until the healing occurs.
The October, 1948, Reader’s Digest reports the miraculous healing and the saving of a leg of young Dwight D. Eisenhower by one member after another of his family keeping the prayer vigil for the saving of the badly infected leg as well as his life. The physician who had insisted upon the amputation of the leg, when he saw that the prayer of the family had achieved the seemingly impossible, made a prayer of his own—a prayer of thanksgiving.
11. Stop looking at, and feeding upon your diseases; and look to Jesus and feast upon Him. I had a friend, with a cancer on her nose, who called a prayer-group together, to anoint her nose in the name of the Lord, and to pray for her healing. A member of the group commanded my friend, in the name of Jesus, to forget her cancer and to keep her mind upon Jesus. The friend tells me that she did forget it. When she did look at her nose some days afterward, every sign of the cancer had disappeared.
At the Macon Hospital, years ago, I was called over to see a man who had been scalded in a railroad accident. His body gave the evidence of such intense suffering that I looked away from it, to God. When I opened my eyes I saw a smile on the man’s face; the pain had gone.
Beholding, as in a mirror, the glory of Jesus Christ as achieved perfect everything, we are changed not only “from glory to glory” but we are also healed.
Moses understood the secret of looking away from the trouble to the Deliverer and Healer when he commanded the children of Israel, when bitten by the fiery serpents, to look away from the serpents and the bites, and look to the brazen serpent, typifying the lifting up of Jesus Christ as the Saviour and Healer of the world.
No matter how large and poisonous the serpent, those who looked to the brazen serpent, getting their minds and eyes off the evil one, were healed, while those who looked at the serpent or bite, died. We are healed by the right look.
12. Stand on His promises to you, as well as His promises in the New Testament.
A friend was used for the healing of a terrible cancer when she put one hand on Mark 16:18 and the other upon the cancer, and told the Lord that she was obeying as best she knew, and that it was His work to heal the cancer. Instantly the cancer disappeared, and the woman was given a new nose without even a scar upon it.[*]
13. Seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit as to how to pray for healing. He is making intercession according to the Will of God, and will enable you also to do the same.
14. Take yourself and your problems and those you would help, to Jesus. There are no failures with Jesus. He never finds anyone so sick that He cannot heal him nor so dead that He cannot resurrect him.
15. In the Name, the Spirit, of Jesus Christ, as a true follower of Him, pray the prayer of command, as well as the prayer of intercession, thanksgiving, affirmation, denial and victorious realization. Even Jesus, knowing that the maiden and Lazarus were not dead but only asleep, awakened them from the dream of death only by His command to awake. No silent treatment, even by Jesus, raised the dead. And the longer they had been dead the louder the command. It takes a courage that only the loving and humble have, to pray the prayer of command. Anyone loving his movement or his reputation, more than he loves the dead, will shy off from this type of praying.
Sometime ago friends now living at 5871 Drexel Road, Philadelphia, were called to go to pray for a pastor of a religious group. The pastor had suffered intense pain, and a heavy dose of a sedative had been administered that was expected to keep her asleep until sometime the next day. The lady associated with her and caring for her became alarmed lest she might die without awakening. I was asked to accompany the friends who were called to pray for her. It was made known to me to pray first of all for union with Jesus. When we reached the home of the pastor, she did seem beyond human awakening. When the friends prayed, a measure of power came upon them.
The Spirit spoke several times through me, saying, “Read My Word.” I spoke aloud the words of Jesus, “The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.” “I am the resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” A little later the guidance came to call the sister by name and to ask her in the name of Jesus to awake. Away beyond my faith and to my surprise, she woke instantly with great light and happiness upon her face, waving her arms and praising the Lord, praising in other tongues as well as in English. She looked like a girl in her twenties, and she is a middle-aged mother. She was so much in the heavenlies that she reflected the realm or country where they never grow old. The next day she phoned us that she awoke the next morning without the least trace of pain, feeling so well that she went to her work. Sometime after this, she told me that she was really resurrected. “Spiritually or bodily?” I asked her. “Both,” she replied.
16. Ask Jesus to show you how to co-work with Him in your own healing. When a brother was in great need I sought in vain from health specialists and doctors as to what would be the best thing of all for him to eat. Then I lifted up a prayer to Jesus and asked Him. Instantly my tongue was taken, and “grapes” was spoken. Several weeks later I found out from a health expert, that grapes are the best food of all in cases of low blood pressure, and this was one of my brother’s troubles. Jesus knows a great deal more about food than anyone else. He also knows the best exercises. He often gives us His answer through others who know better than we do. He first manifested Himself to Saul of Tarsus, and then sent Ananias to him as a helper. But when Jesus has no one present to help Him, He, Himself, will give us directly just the help and the guidance we most need. Of course, you should gladly let go everything that made you sick and that is keeping you sick, and remember that temperance is the special virtue required for bodily health, just as love is required for spiritual health. As it has been well said, by a colored brother, “Too much is the worst thing you can eat.”
Socrates would not give the medicine that was said to be the infallible remedy for a headache, until the patient became temperate. Next to temperance, and eating things as nearly as possible as God makes and grows them, one needs the exercise of going about doing good.
Everything that works harm is unhealthy; everything that works good, and only good, is healthy and healing. Even love requires that you stop spending your money for things that are not good for you and for others. As Emerson saw, if you want to be truly inspired, drink nothing stronger than water, and he prayed for “the wine that never grew in the belly of the grape.”
If you eat things all alive, and discard denatured foods and even get your spiritual and mental food as direct from heaven as possible, feasting on Jesus Himself and being guided by the Holy Spirit, you will find yourself hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and looking up and eating like the birds, rather than looking down and eating like the swine.
An Atlanta minister, some years ago, after having been sent from sanitarium to sanitarium, ending up with Mayo’s, and after getting worse rather than better, went into his room, locked the door, and said to the Lord, “I feel I am as ready to go to heaven as I will ever be; and if I am to be this expense to the Methodist Church and this burden to my wife, let me come on to heaven. But if I can be healed, so that I can continue my ministry, I would prefer this.”
In his letter to a Macon minister, who read it to me, the Atlanta minister said that he also told the Lord, “You can heal me either by a miracle or show me how to get well; I will take it either way.” He went on to say in the letter, that he knew instantly it was the Lord’s will to teach him how to get well. It involved going to work with his hands. His wife thought it would kill him. He obeyed anyway. The second day of the work the poisoned condition began to go, also his nervousness, and he said, at the end of two weeks he could do as much work as a railroad hand and preach as much as any of the other Atlanta ministers. Sometime after this I saw him, and he appeared to be a well man.
17. Seek perfect union with Jesus, let His love flow in freely, and flow out freely to everybody and everything. Jesus longs for this union, and when you invite it He sees to it that it becomes reality to you, in you and through you. He comes into us because we are so poor and He is so rich. After He comes within, by His enabling, we then are to put off and let go everything unlike Him, and put on Him and His likeness, and let His perfect everything flow through us to everybody and everything. He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. He was also manifested to take away our sicknesses, and in Him, and in His presence there is no disease. “Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses” (Matt. 8:17). When the union is complete there will be no disease among US. 18. See Yourself, and See Others, As Perfect and Complete in Jesus Christ. As Saint Paul says, “Present every man as perfect in Jesus Christ,” not outside of Jesus Christ, nor apart from Him, but in Vital Union with Him. Outside of fruit-bearing, identification, union and marriage with Jesus, we are imperfect and incomplete. We are as branches severed from the vine, fit for nothing but fire, unless quickly grafted back. In marriage with Jesus, we are already perfect and complete. To know this, and to stand by it against every foe, evil, and limitation is the perfect “treatment” which brings the perfect “demonstration.” To affirm perfection, outside of marriage with Jesus, is an effort to make something true which is not true; while to affirm it in union and marriage with Him is to affirm that which is already true, needing only recognition to bring it into manifestation. The seeing and the affirming of the Perfect Spiritual Idea and Creation is not enough. It is Jesus Christ Himself, the Ideal made actual (the Word made flesh) and the Actual self-offered, raised up and glorified in Manifest victory and perfect triumph who brings perfect healing and victory over death and all that causes death.
Footnotes / Endnotes:
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- * This case should not be confused with the case referred to under number 11.(↩)