Ordinary People, Extraordinary God: Reflections on Different Types of Healing

by Taylor Smith
Fall 2015

For the past eighteen years, I have been experiencing healing through prayer. I have received prayer for numerous problems and issues, and I have prayed with and for men and women — old and young, rich and poor and in the most diverse settings. I've found myself praying for healing in taxis, during concerts, on planes, in restaurants and in the middle of stressful work meetings. From Francis and Judith MacNutt, I have learned about the four types of healing: physical healing, emotional (inner) healing, deliverance from evil spirits and spiritual weaknesses/strongholds. Over the years I have been privileged to pray for all four types. Interestingly, the common denominator of all my experiences has been a dichotomy between the discernible presence of the Holy Spirit and the lack of my control on the outcome of the prayer.

My journey with healing prayer began in 1996 when the Lord healed our son, Taylor Jr., following a normal Tuesday open prayer session at Christian Healing Ministries. His doctor at the Nemours Clinic in Jacksonville later confirmed that the physiological change was inexplicable (the details of his healing were previously shared in Healing Line Spring 2014 edition). Our son's experience created an immediate shift in my belief regarding healing. Overnight, I was converted from someone who believed that healings were a "thing of the ancient past" to someone who had empirical evidence that healing still occurs in the present age. Moreover, I observed that the Lord uses normal everyday people to deliver His healings.

I am not sure if I was more impacted by the healing of our son or by the fact that the Lord would use normal people as His conduit for healing. It seemed too easy. I read and understood Jesus' promise of a Comforter and that the Holy Spirit would know how to pray for us (John 14:16 and Romans 8:26–27) with new insight, but I was still amazed by this new reality. The Creator of the universe could be actively involved in my son's personal well–being!

Almost immediately, I became acutely aware of healing testimonies among my friends and acquaintances — as though I was hearing about healing as a current event for the first time. It was as though a spiritual veil had been lifted from my eyes and ears. The testimonies were backed by evidence and were credible. They were also similar to our experience in that the Holy Spirit was present during the healings, and yet the prayer ministers were generally very normal people. In fact, many years later, I learned that healings were a key evangelistic catalyst in the early church and greatly contributed to the spread of Christianity during the period leading up to Emperor Constantine's conversion. Those healings also involved ordinary people who prayed for healing with extraordinary results.¹

After my first experience with healing prayer, I began to pursue this type of prayer for myself and for my friends. It seemed as though every week, my wife Kathi and I found ourselves at CHM on Tuesday evenings. Eventually, after several years of not only receiving prayer, but also receiving the excellent training of CHM in how to pray, Kathi and I began to pray for healing for others. This was a big transition for me — to switch from someone who regularly received healing prayer to someone who prayed for others. The process was a slow and cautious one, as I did not (and in many ways still do not) feel worthy or prepared to serve as a prayer minister. CHM's schools are a wonderful and safe environment to learn how to listen to the Holy Spirit. As I learned and began praying for people, I saw the Holy Spirit consistently showing up and healing the prayer recipients. Today, after many years of praying for healing, it seems to me that the Lord is always present, usually heals at some level and is not influenced by my attitudes or efforts during the prayer sessions.

I remember one encounter in Waterloo, Belgium, when Kathi and I joined a youth group to pray for a young man in his early 20's who did not have use of his arms or his legs, and had been in a wheelchair his entire life. The room was dark and warm and there were probably fifteen people laying hands on the young man's shoulders and legs as he sat in his wheelchair. After twenty minutes, Kathi asked if he was experiencing anything unusual. He replied that he had a sensation in his legs for which he had no words to describe. Because he had never had any feeling in his legs, the sensations of touch and movement in his legs were both foreign concepts to him. Kathi asked him if he wanted to try walking, to which he responded with a tentative "yes." The next few moments were "other worldly" — he rose from the wheelchair for the first time in his life and then impossibly walked about four steps. The young people praying were astounded and euphoric and their iPhones flashed repeatedly while they recorded the miracle in front of them. It is hard to explain the feelings in the room, but all of us were 100% certain that the Lord was present and active in this young man's healing. The prayer ministers were untrained, ordinary teenagers.

Another time during a prayer session at a CHM conference in a nondescript hotel boardroom, a young woman received inner healing and was also delivered from years of demonic oppression that had, as far as we can tell, originated through severe wounding in her childhood. As we prayed with her over the course of two hours, she had an encounter with Jesus, during which time He not only set her free from her demonic oppressors but also healed parts of her mind — especially an overriding fear. Her transformation was visible, and the event brought Jesus' words to life for me: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free…" (Luke 4:18, NIV). Again, the Lord was present in that boardroom, and yet the prayer ministers were ordinary lay people.

One of the most unlikely healings I have been privileged to see occurred with a colleague who, during a short impromptu prayer session, received a desire to repent from an addictive sinful habit that had been enslaving him for years. Through a short Spirit–led confession, he was 100% freed from his addiction. This was an amazing example of the Lord's healing through confession between believers, which James probably experienced himself before encouraging others to do the same (see James 5:16). Confession as a pathway to healing was a normal part of early church life and has remained relevant in varying degrees throughout church history, serving as a spark for many revivals and church movements.²

What I have been privileged to learn is that healing occurs, not by the strength or effort of the prayer ministers, but by the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit. I've learned that every time we pray, something happens; the Lord responds to us, showing His personal love and care to both the prayer recipient and the prayer minister. I've learned that ordinary people, when led by the Holy Spirit, can participate in the extraordinary love of God.

¹For an excellent exploration on this subject see Yale Professor Ramsay MacMullen's Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100–400, Yale University Press, 1986.
²For example, confession among believers was a fundamental part of John Wesley's Spirit–filled weekly "band meetings" and were foundational to the Methodist revival in the eighteenth century. For more, see Pursuing Social Holiness by Kevin Watson, Oxford University Press, 2014.

Taylor Smith is a member of CHM's Board of Trustees and speaks at many of CHM's schools and conferences.