by Aaron Davis
It doesn’t always happen this way, but many times when I pray for people to be healed, my hands tingle. As I prayed for the man, my hands began to tingle. I asked him if he felt it, and he looked at me in excitement confirming that he did. We just continued to pray and thank God for healing his knee for a few minutes, and during that time, the man started moving his knee, bending it further and further, until full mobility was restored . . . where only moments before he could only partially bend it before experiencing pain.
After he realized the increased mobility, he stood up and put weight on it and started laughing. Then he looked at me and said, “The pain is gone!”
I handed the man his crutches, and he said, “I don’t need them!” He walked out of the church, a first-time guest of our ministry, with his need met by the power of God!
To add to my excitement surrounding what had just happened, my regular soundman was out that night and a young interim soundman was handling our recording for the evening. He stood next to me during this entire event in observation.
Afterward, he looked at me and said, “Pastor Aaron, that was so awesome! I’ve never seen God heal anyone before!”
I turned to him and said, “Lenny, that’s the way it’s supposed to be when we are establishing the kingdom of God in the earth. This shouldn’t be the exception; it should be the rule!”
I will be the first to say I have prayed for people and not seen the healing manifest like I did with this guy on Wednesday night. But had I looked at the man with the crutches last Wednesday and remembered that I prayed for a man with a similar injury two months ago with a seemingly opposite result as he walked away in pain, I may not have exercised the faith to confront this man’s injury in authority.
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know why sometimes there is an immediate breakthrough and other times it seems there is a progressive breakthrough.
I don’t know why a deaf minister I know prays for deaf people all the time who miraculously receive their hearing restored, while he still remains nearly completely deaf.
I don’t completely understand why Jesus prayed for one man who was immediately healed, then prayed for another who needed Jesus to pray for him twice before he completely received his eyesight.
I’m not sure why another man was prayed for by Jesus and walked away, seemingly still sick with leprosy but received his healing “as he went.”
I don’t have all the answers, but I’m not content to allow what I don’t understand to be a catalyst for my not walking in the authority that God created me to walk in, or not pursuing clarity in establishing His kingdom on the earth.
The way I see it, I have two options as it pertains to how I’m going to view God and His Word: through eyes of faith or unbelief. I choose to pursue that which will open doors and provide the possibility of breakthrough and advancement.
I like how Jay Haizlip, pastor of the Sanctuary Church in Southern California, said it:
Unbelief will rob you of what God desires to do through you. If you allow unbelief to get in you, it will cause you to rationalize what God is capable of doing and what you are capable of doing in Christ. Rationalism is an enemy of faith and causes people to take on a mindset that says, “If I cannot prove it, if I do not understand it, then I cannot accept it.” The reason many people do not see the power of God operating in and through their life is because they are bound in a mindset of rationalism, and rationalism facilitates unbelief because intellectually we all have different capacities; therefore we all have certain limitations. There are going to be many times in your life where you will have to understand that God will desire to do things that go beyond your intellectual capacity and you’ve just got to be willing to step in faith and go with it.120
Jesus said to do it, and I’m just doing it! And as a result, I’m seeing the results that line up with what the Bible said would be the signs of those who believe as I lay my hands on the sick and see them recover.
FAITH IS NOT NECESSARILY A FORMULA
The extension of faith is an interesting subject. I’ve heard a lot of different perspectives on what it means to do it or how to do it.
I grew up in the eighties and nineties, during the boom of the Faith Movement, during which time many of the leaders would teach, “If you are extending faith, then you only ask once and then release faith by thanking God for it being done.” This became the “faith formula.” But many found themselves discouraged when they asked God, then didn’t experience what they expected when they continued to “thank God” like the preacher said.
Hebrews 11:6 (NLT)
And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.
Others taught that if we don’t receive our miracle, then we just didn’t have enough faith and it is our fault. I’m not sure it is that black and white either. Although I am convinced that the extension of faith is a catalyst for breakthrough in many cases, I’m not sure that it always has to be the faith of the person needing the miracle. I wonder as I have proposed earlier in this book if maybe it is my responsibility to have my faith built up so that I can stand in the gap for you! In the body of Christ, functioning as it should, if I cut my leg and am bleeding out, I will use my hands to tie a tourniquet around the injured body part. When I consider this perspective, I wonder if it is not the responsibility of the rest of the body to step it up in the arena where you are lacking when you are hurting.
Certainly, in an ideal scenario, we would be encouraged and strong enough in our faith that when something—anything—comes against us personally or one of our closest family members that we would exercise great faith and see breakthrough. But let’s be honest, as was addressed in the opening chapters of this book, when the pain is your pain and you are the one bleeding out, it is difficult to focus on anything other than the pain! I wonder if this is when and where the rest of the body should be taking up the slack. And maybe this is also why the Bible says,
James 5:14–15 (NLT)
Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well.
Maybe, all things being as they should be, the elders would be mature in their faith and experiences to the point where they have seen God heal before, understand their authority as mature believers, and simply exercise and release the “prayer of faith” into your circumstances on your behalf because you are too weak or tired to exercise the faith in the state of pain you are currently in. Is that possible? If so, as a leader, this places a significant responsibility upon me to pursue the growth and establishment of my own faith so that it can be exercised on behalf of those whom I lead. Furthermore, this would also necessitate me as a leader to instruct, encourage, and replicate my understanding of faith into the lives of my subordinate leaders, otherwise the weight can become more than I can bear alone.
As I have pursued a deeper understanding of kingdom-establishing principles and our authority as believers in the kingdom of God, I have come to a greater realization that I am not “special,” and those who are seeing the miraculous taking place in their lives and ministries are not special. They are simply willing to do and continue to do what others are not willing to do.
Many hear the scripture “Ask and you shall receive.” Then they ask, and when they do not receive, they assume that God must not have wanted it for them. But I don’t believe this experience is necessarily what God wills in the situation.
Matthew 7:7–8 (NKJV)
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
HOPE VERSUS FAITH
Matthew 7:7–8 above is an interesting scripture as it pertains to faith and the release of it. As a pastor, I have had man
y opportunities to pray a lot of prayers. Being honest with myself, there have been times when I prayed and what was released in my prayer was more hope-based than faith-based. In these times, I prayed and hoped that God heard me and would answer my prayer. Frequently in these times, I would ask once, maybe twice, and then when I didn’t get the desired answer, I simply wrote it off as God declining my request because I did what the Bible said in Matthew 7—I asked, I sought, I knocked, and nothing happened so “God must not be home on this one.”
But as I have studied this, I think maybe at times there is more.
James 1:5–8 (NKJV)
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
Here we see in James 1:5–8 that asking God in faith plays a part in how we receive. In earlier chapters, we discussed a seemingly similar teaching from Jesus Himself when He cursed the fig tree in front of His disciples and then explained that in like fashion, if they would speak to the mountain and command it to be cast into the sea and did not doubt, that whatever they said would be done for them.
It seems that extending faith is much different than extending hope. When we hope, there is often an element of belief but also an element of doubt. When we extend faith, it seems that doubt is less of a factor.
So let’s go back to Matthew 7:7–8 and look at the same scripture from a more expository translation. In the New Living Translation (and several other translations), we see that this same scripture doesn’t simply say to only ask once but in the proper interpretation to “ask and keep on asking.”
Matthew 7:7–8 (NLT)
Effective Prayer
“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
LOUDER THAN WORDS
As I taught this scripture recently, I had a bit of a revelation as it pertains to faith and the expression and release of it.
Actions reveal a lot about what we really believe. If you told me to come to your house and knock on your door and you would give me a $100,000 check, if I came to your house and knocked and you didn’t answer the door, how I responded after that would reveal a lot about what I believed.
The first few times I knocked, I might still be hoping that you were going to do what you said you would do by answering the door and giving me a check for $100,000. If I turned around after a few minutes and stopped knocking, disappointedly assuming that you were not going to answer and not going to give me the money, it would reveal that I hoped you would do it but didn’t necessarily believe you would.
But what if I kept knocking . . . if I didn’t stop? Even if the neighbor came to me and said, “He must not be home; you’ve been knocking for hours,” and I just kept knocking . . . that would convey a completely different message about what I believed. My actions are saying, “You told me you would be home. You told me if I knocked you would answer. You told me you would give me a check, and I believe it. I expect you to do what you said you will do!”
As I considered this position, it hit me—maybe many times when I asked, sought, and knocked, I quit knocking before what I hoped for actually transformed into an extension of faith! I think especially when we have not been exposed to the provision of God’s kingdom on the earth, we start out hoping that God will answer our prayers. As we continue to pursue God and His Word, not just because we have seen it but simply because He said it and we believe His Word, when something happens, we slip from extending hope to extending faith in the response to His Word! Maybe the first few knocks are “hope knocks,” but when we knock and keep on knocking, the very action expresses our belief and becomes its own release of faith.
Many of us have lost faith and become discouraged because of what we assumed was God’s failure to meet our need. But even in my own experiences (as I look back over a lifetime of prayers, many seemingly unanswered), maybe there have been many times that I simply never entered a place where I (or someone in the body of Christ who should have been there on my behalf) released faith for the scenario because I stopped knocking before my actions and beliefs would have reached the place of actually releasing faith. And maybe, this isn’t a scenario where God is “holding out on us,” but maybe it is actually just an experiential part of a kingdom law that isn’t activated until faith is released.
From this perspective, I don’t look at your or my experiences and deny the legitimacy of what happened to us and the disappointing feelings associated from not receiving what we asked for; I just deny that it was absolutely what God intended. To put it another way, I don’t deny your experience that seems to contradict what God says He desires for His children; I just deny that what you have experienced is right!
Again, this takes me back to the “perception determines reception” lesson from previous chapters. If we don’t know there is more (or don’t perceive there is more), then our lack of knowledge can be the very thing that keeps us from pursuing what may liberate us if we did. Just like praying for the man with the messed-up knee, had I not pursued the knowledge of the kingdom of God before ever meeting him and not perceived that God wants to heal us, I would have never extended my prayer of faith toward his healing and the man would have left my service as broken as he was when he came in.
This entire book has been an exercise in opening your mind to the possibility of receiving and believing things about God that you may have never understood before. To close it out, I want to deposit one more lesson about who you are intended to be in the kingdom of God in hopes that it will unveil a revelation that encourages you to seek the establishment of the kingdom of God in and through your life in ways that you may have never understood was possible!
FAITH EXPLORES WHAT REVELATION UNVEILS
Oftentimes, we will read the Bible and because of our lack of experience or depth of perception, what we read is just bigger than our minds can easily comprehend; so we quickly read past it and go on to the next thing. I believe this is the case with this next scripture on what God actually intends for us.
Ephesians 2:5–10 (AMP)
Even when we were dead (slain) by [our own] shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ; [He gave us the very life of Christ Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him, for] it is by grace (His favor and mercy which you did not deserve) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation).
6And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him] in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
He did this that He might clearly demonstrate through the ages to come the immeasurable (limitless, surpassing) riches of His free grace (His unmerited favor) in [His] kindness and goodness of heart toward us in Christ Jesus.
For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God;
Not because of works [not the fulfillment of the Law’s demands], lest any man should boast. [It is not the result of what anyone can possibly do, so no one can pride himself in it or take glory to himself.]
10 For we are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made r
eady for us to live].
In this scripture, in verse 6 we see we were “raised with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenly sphere,” which (as is elaborated upon in verse 10) was so that we could do the “good works” God preplanned for us.
Many will look at this and read it quickly and say, “That’s awesome. God made a way for us to go to heaven, and it has nothing to do with our works but because of what Jesus did for us.” But that is not all that was accomplished or all of what is being conveyed here, but is actually the very justification for why we can experience and establish heaven’s principles here in the earth. This is also pointing out that Christ restored the authority that man lost when he relinquished it to the dominion of sin, further solidifying many of the other scriptures we have referenced throughout the other chapters in this book. But what does the Bible mean when it says we are “seated with Christ” in verse 6?
This is where things get very exciting! Let’s go back a chapter in the Bible to Ephesians 1 to get more clarity.
Ephesians 1:18–23 (AMP)
18 By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones),
19 And [so that you can know and understand] what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength,
20 Which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His [own] right hand in the heavenly [places],
21 Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named [above every title that can be conferred], not only in this age and in this world, but also in the age and the world which are to come.