He may show you to lay hands on the head, may get you to put your hand on the part that's - if it's appropriate - on the part that's sick or not well, or He'll put your hand on top of a person's hand, whatever seems appropriate. The second thing you need to consider is, maybe you need to cast out a spirit of infirmity. If you have a look in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 13 and Verse 10, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and there's was a woman had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years, and was bowed down and could not lift herself up. She had a back condition that was caused by a spirit. It was a demonic spirit that caused the problem. Medicines could not fix it. It required deliverance, so if there's a spirit of infirmity, praying for the sick person won't set them free. You have to cast the evil spirit out. You've got to speak to the spirit, and command it to go, so you notice when the girl was standing there, I spoke to the spirit, commanded it to go, and as soon as it left her, she just fell over straight away, and then there's a change in her condition in her back.
So when you're praying in this area for people who are sick, think in two dimensions; think one, it could be a spirit that needs to be cast out; two, it could be just a weakness in the system, a virus in the system, a degeneration in the system, or it could be some kind of thing that needs healing to take place. If it's degenerative, it needs a creative miracle for God to restore. If it's just something damaged or broken or whatever, it needs God to heal, so keep thinking in terms of: one, I may need to cast a spirit out; two, I may need to pray and release God's healing power into their life. A third thing you need to learn to do, is to command, to speak to things, like they are living. In our western culture, we're not used to doing that, but if you look in Acts, Chapter 3, Peter and John went up to the temple - Verse 1 - about the ninth hour, and a certain man, lame from his mother's womb, was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple called Beautiful, to ask alms. He saw Peter and John going into the temple, and asked for alms. Peter fixed his eyes on him. He must have got a gift of faith for the healing, must have got a gift of healing then, because he knew something was going to happen, so notice what he did.
Silver and gold have I none, but what I have - so what did he have? The gift of healing - such as I have I give you. Now notice how he did it. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. That's not namby-pamby stuff. You've got to learn to speak with authority. These things resist. They resist wellness, they resist health, so learn to speak firmly - not loudly. Shouting doesn't do it - with authority from your spirit, fully believing what you say would happen. Notice how he's prayed: In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. See? So he didn't even go talking about the curse, or the spirit, or whatever it was, just said rise and walk. Now notice what else he did. He took him by his right hand, and he helped him up. Now notice this, when the miracle happened, immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. When did they receive strength? When he got on his feet, see?
So if he had stayed on the ground, he would not have walked. He had to be helped up onto his feet, and when he got him onto his feet, that's when the miracle happened, so it doesn't always happen immediately when you pray. Sometimes you've got to take an action of faith, that precipitates the miracle happening. If you study Jesus' miracles, many times miracles happen when the person did something, or when He did something, so for example, remember he told the guy - the blind guy to put a mud pack on his eyes, and said walk through the town and go to this pool, and wash and you'll come back seeing. So the guy walked from when Jesus spoke to him to the pool, and he was blind all the way, until he washed his eyes. When he washed his eyes, he could see, so Jesus required a faith action of him. The lepers, He said: go show yourself to the priest. Now they were still lepers when they walked away from Him, but as they walked, they were healed, so when they did what was physically impossible, when they did what they could do, God did the rest.
There's another guy standing there, and he's got a crippled hand, and Jesus is getting him to stand up in the synagogue - not very nice to make a handicapped man stand up in front of everyone, but he gets him to stand up. He says: now stretch out your hand. Now that's physically impossible, but when he began to stretch, suddenly the power of God came. Now it's helpful for you to understand, sometimes you've got to get people to do things, so I had one person for example, a lady had a shoulder, and her shoulder was a lot of pain, so I prayed for her. I said any improvement? She said just a little. I said: well then, why don't you move your hand. She said: oh, it's a pain, it's hurting, it's hurting, it's - oh, it's gone! [Laughter] So it was as she ignored the pain, and took the faith action, that's when the healing power began to flow, and she got free, and got the miracle. If she hadn't taken a faith action, nothing would happen, so many times when you pray, don't just think God will do it all. Often you need to get the person to give some feedback to you, what's happened, and then get them to take a faith action. So if I pray for someone and there's no immediate result, I will pray again, and try to get them to do something they haven't done before, and it's often in that that you get the breakthrough.