In Mark, Chapter 16, and we read here at the Great Commission. We're commissioned to go into the world, which is full of sickness and demonic oppression, and it says we're to preach the Gospel about how people can come to Christ, come to God, come to know the Lord, and walk in His kingdom, but it says - notice this - it says in Verse 17, these signs shall follow them that believe. In My name, they'll cast out devils, so if you can believe for it, when you pray, demons will come out of people. You have to believe it'll happen, not doubt, or wonder whether it'll happen. It says in the last one, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. They will lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover, and that means gradually, or progressively, come to a state of wholeness. So when we think of praying for healing, we tend to think of it all being instantaneous. That was kind of like a mentality I had, probably seen it in one of the movies or something, I had this idea you pray, there's this immediate miracle, everything's just exactly back to normal. I realised actually in real life, God does not seem to operate that way. He operates in different ways around the healing area.
So for a gift of healing, at a moment of time, you just know in your heart when I pray something's going to happen. That's a gift of healing. The rest of the time, we just pray by faith. In other words, we follow the scripture: you lay hands on the sick and they shall recover, so sometimes you get a miracle, the healing is immediate. The transformation takes place immediately, like if deaf ears open it is immediate, they hear or they don't hear, but it can come in a couple of stages, where they hear a little, then it comes complete, and they hear the whole. Same with the eyes; the eyes are either not seeing, or seeing, and if they're not seeing, you pray and they start to see a little, then pray again, and believe for it to be progressive. So I have noticed that sometimes, the majority of times I've prayed, I've had to persevere in prayer, and believe that this would work, and then they break through, and they get the miracle. Sometimes I've seen cataracts healed, just gone. People couldn't see, and then suddenly they see, but it took praying a couple of times to push through the barrier and resistance that was there, same with hearing of ears.
I began to grow faith for walking sticks, for people on walking sticks to be healed. Initially I just hated praying for people with walking sticks. I'd want to run the other way, because I never got any results. [Laughs] I just didn't like that, but I made a decision I'd persevere, and believe God I could get breakthroughs, and so I started. So now most of the time when I'm in Asia, if I've got any evangelism meetings, I will look for people with walking sticks when they come in. I'll look for them, and I'll ask for them to come up, and give it a go. I had one meeting, I had about 45 people get off their walking sticks and walk, but that - faith is grown for that area. I found sometimes I'm getting better results in some areas than I've done before, but you can grow in this area, so notice what it says: They'll lay hands on the sick, so God called 'laying hands' is to identify with a person, so we lay hands on the sick person and pray for them. They may get a miracle immediately. It may be progressive, and they recover over a day, two days, three days, four days, so you need to take into account you may not see anything immediately happen. It doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
I found when I first started to pray, it used to so put me off, because I'd pray and nothing would happen, I'd feel discouraged, and not even enquire later on whether anything happened. I've found since then, you can't believe the number of people I've prayed for them on Sunday and Monday they were well, that when they walked away they weren't well. It didn't seem like it anyway, but actually something had been imparted to them, and it began to manifest. The healing gift manifested, so instead of thinking of it cut and dry, yes it happened or not, learn to just persist in prayer, and sow in prayer, and believe in prayer. A gift of healing, you just know it, and when it comes the person's going to be healed straight away - but the rest of the time, we pray by faith. So here's a few simple things. The first one is, it's helpful to lay hands on the person, lay hands, identify, connect with the person, and let the Holy Spirit show you where to lay hands.