The Difference Between A Miracle & A Healing

We all wish that we could lay hands on the sick and see them instantly recover. We love it when we lay hands on a person who has palsy, make a command in the name of Jesus, and then see them stop shaking immediately. This awesome miracle recently happened to us.

A lady got in the wrong line and Charles laid hands on her for diabetes and when she fell under the power I said, “Charles, no, that’s not diabetes, that’s Parkinson’s Disease.” So while she was on the floor, we made the electrical frequency command which you learned about in this book and she looked right up at us and she said, “I’m healed because I stopped shaking!” She got up off of the floor, held her arms up in the air and where she had been violently shaking before, there was not even a slight tremor!

This brought the whole audience to their feet in a standing ovation to Jesus because it was the first healing of the evening and so it was a real, real special time! How we wish they could all be like this!

A lady came to a recent meeting of ours who said she had been in an automobile accident thirty-six years before. For all those years she had suffered excruciating pain day and night with no relief. She said she had slept very little in the thirty-six years because the pain was so intense. She had been to doctors, she had been to chiropractors, she had been to every source you could think of; and she said, “I have not lived in thirty-six years. I have just existed.” Her face showed the pain she had been through.

A simple command was made, and how we wish there had been a camera to catch the expression on her face! She was totally shocked to discover that “suddenly” (and that’s how quickly it happened!) the pain disappeared a hundred percent. She bent over, she ran, she walked up and down stairs, she did everything you could think of and there was not one sign of pain left in her body!

These are the kinds of healings we wish happened all the time but don’t get discouraged when they don’t, but be excited when they do.

A little boy came to our service with rheumatoid arthritis. He was nine years old, and his parents told us he had never had a day without pain. This is really difficult on a child because it made it impossible for him to play or participate in any games with other children, but their great faith brought him hundreds of miles to come to the service. His healing was quick because children are easily healed since their faith is so simple. We made the usual command for rheumatoid arthritis and suddenly he looked up with simple childlike faith and said, “Do you know I don’t have any pain in my body at all?”

He immediately began feeling his knees and feeling his feet and feeling his hands and he looked at me and said, “I don’t have anything. I don’t have a bit of pain anywhere!” Then he took off and ran down the aisle of the church to tell his mother that the pain was all gone.

This is the kind that, of course, excites the person prayed for, the person who did the praying, and an entire congregation! How we wish all healings would be that way and we believe some day they will! The instant one is the miracle healing!

But there is another wonderful kind of a healing that takes place over time. Many people when they come forward are praying and hoping and expecting their healing to be an instant healing, but what happens if they don’t get healed immediately?

Don’t let the devil steal your healing from you! The power of God has gone into the person prayed for and the power of God will continue to work in you! Many people, if they do not get an instant healing, make the mistake of going back to their seat and saying immediately, “I didn’t get my healing.” This is allowing the devil to steal what happened to you, so don’t ever listen when the devil tells that to you. When we’re laying hands on the sick we need to encourage people to continue to believe for their healing.

There has been a lot of comment both pro and con by the Word Faith movement which taught that all you have to say is, “By His stripes I am healed,” and you will be healed. This has worked for many people and we don’t want to discourage you from standing on the Word of God. Our pastor, John Osteen, taught his congregation an incredible truth which we think helps a lot in this situation.

In Romans 4:17 it says that we can call into being those things which be not as though they were, but Pastor John said, “You cannot call the things which are as though they are not.” In other words, if you have cancer, you cannot stand up and say, “I do not have cancer in my body.” The provision for your healing is there, but you are not healed until you are healed. You cannot deny that you have cancer.

We have heard many people say, “I’m not going to go to the doctor because by His stripes I am healed.” One case that particularly stands out in my mind of someone calling something that was as though it were not was a woman who had a huge breast cancer. I asked her if I could lay hands on her and she said, “What for?”

I said, “I heard you had cancer.”

She said, “I absolutely do not. I am healed.”

I could see the size of this cancer which was about the size of a grapefruit. It was still there and although the provision was there for her healing, she had not been healed yet. She died.

One of the things that we want to encourage you to do is always pray first. If when you pray you do not get healed, and you pray again and again, then there is a time to go to the doctor. Charles and I have never hesitated to go to a doctor. All of the incredible healings that I have had have been because I went to a doctor and found out what the problem was, came home and told Charles. He prayed for me and I got healed because sometimes we can pray amiss or we can command amiss.

At this point, we really want to share something right from our hearts. Once in a while you will pray and you don’t get healed and the condition worsens and worsens until something has to be done. Don’t get upset.

Several years ago I had to have an artificial knee replacement in my right leg. I believed up to the very last minute that God was going to give me a new kneecap and even insisted before I went to surgery that the doctor take a last minute X-ray, but God did not put in a new one.

Now what do I do? I had believed for my healing, but I didn’t get it. I have more new parts than I have original parts but the knee was not one of them. I didn’t intend to hobble around crippled the rest of my life so I just said, “Thank you, Jesus,” and we asked God to guide the surgeon’s hand but I did not say, “I have received a new knee.” I suppose I could have said that because up until that time I had been walking bone on bone and it really hurt but when I had the knee replacement put in, the pain totally disappeared. I did have a new knee but not the kind I had expected.

Well, Frances, aren’t you ashamed to tell people that you had to have a knee replacement? No! God can take any mess and make a miracle out of it. The doctor who did the surgery accepted Jesus as His Savior and Lord; we ministered healing all throughout the hospital as people came into my room when they heard I was there and we have our video tapes on HOW TO HEAL THE SICK in the doctor’s waiting room. Hallelujah!

So you see, if you have to submit to an operation, get healed one way or another. You might say, “Well, didn’t you fail to get healed because you lacked faith?”

I don’t know. Ask God. I don’t understand why I didn’t get a new knee, I don’t understand why I did get a new heart supernaturally.

Let me explain healing in this way. Most of us have a thermostat in our house for various reasons. Sometimes we need our house cooler and sometimes we need it a little warmer. When we went to Russia it was a real cold day and I said, “How do you get the room warm?”

They said, “Close the windows.”

That was a shock to me so I said, “Well, how do you get it cool in the summertime?”

They said, “Open the windows.”

They don’t have thermostats over there but most of us do.

Pastor Osteen, in the same sermon, said that when you come in from the cold and maybe it’s snowing outside and maybe your thermostat is set at sixty degrees and it’s as cold as can be. What is the first thing you do? You go to the thermostat and turn it up. Now, what is the second thing you do? if it doesn’t immediately jump to seventy-two degrees, do you kick the thermostat and say, “Well, it doesn’t work, I’ll just break that thing because it doesn’t work?”

No, that’s not what you do at all. You are perfectly content to wait until the temperature goes up and we all know it takes a little time to get a thermostat from sixty up to seventy-two so all we do is patiently wait.

The same thing is true of healings. Sometimes you get an instant healing but sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes healings can take place over a twenty-four-hour period. Sometimes it might even take a month or two before the healing is complete but we always recommend to people that you keep thanking Jesus for the healing while it is going on. Don’t let the devil come in and rob you with doubt and unbelief about your healing but keep thanking God and saying, “Thank you, Jesus, I know my healing is on the way.”

if I were you, right now I would set my thermostat at seventy-two for whatever is wrong with your body. if you’re down to fifty or forth degrees it might take you a little while to get up to seventy-two but remember that you are on the way.

The testimony of Gene Lilly is a perfect example of what if you don’t see your healing instantly.

He did not believe in healing because he had never been in any church where they taught healing but God directed him and his family to move to Orlando, Florida. When he got there he went to a large Full Gospel church and he couldn’t believe what he saw because people were clapping their hands, praising the Lord, and singing. Something began to happen on the inside of him. Then the pastor made a statement, “If you’re sick, the Lord will heal you. If you’re broke, the Lord wants to prosper you. If you’re lost, He wants to save you.”

Suddenly Gene Lilly became aware of the fact that God was still alive today and that He could heal him.

He had been sick for nineteen years with an extreme case of multiple sclerosis. He had scar tissue on the brain, diabetes, high cholesterol, high triglycerides and the doctors had told him that he was dying.

He said, “Someone gave me a copy of the book, Since Jesus Passed by Charles and Frances Hunter. I read it and it really ministered to me. I thought, ‘Well, if the Hunters would pray for me because they’ve had a lot of great healings in their ministry (not because of the fact that they had healing power in them, but because of the fact that Charles and Frances had seen people healed) they would have the faith I was looking for. It would be easy for them to believe and pray the prayer of faith.’

“I found out that they were coming to Orlando. I knew that was my night to be healed!

“There were no steps in the building where I was going to be healed, so I didn’t even take my walker!

Phyllis and Doug helped me out of the ear and half dragged, half carried me into the building. The Holy Spirit had revealed to me that when I went to be prayed for, it would be no different than when I prayed the sinner’s prayer – I would be made whole! I had no doubt about it! There was no reason to think the Bible was not right; it was right and meant what it said!

“People were getting healed all over the place. A man just four or five seats from me was healed of a deaf ear.

“Praise God!

“A lot of people I knew got healed, and I thought, ‘Hallelujah! this is my night!’

“We stood up then and started singing and praising the Lord. When I stood I got such a severe pain in my back I didn’t think I was going to be able to sit down. Here came the word from the devil. He said, ‘You’re going to have to leave because you can’t sit down.’ I just believed God and said, ‘God, you wouldn’t want me out of here; even if I wasn’t going to be healed, Lord, you wouldn’t want me to leave here. This is too beautiful.’

“I did sit down, and as soon as I started to sit the pain left.

“I wondered when it would happen to me. The service continued and nothing happened to me. The service ended – and still I wasn’t healed.

“But I knew this was my night to be healed.

“Could I have been wrong? ‘But Jesus, it is in your Word and I believe it.’ They dismissed the service. Then Frances said, ‘If anybody has come with a need that hasn’t been met, we want you to come forward. We’re going to pray for you.’

“When Frances said that I got up out of my chair and started making my way to the front, one row at a time, hanging onto the chairs because I didn’t have my walker and nobody was taking me up. I finally got up there. Frances said to me, ‘What’s your problem?’

“I’ve got multiple sclerosis, scar tissue on my brain, sugar diabetes, high cholesterol and I’m dying.’

“At that point I got the biggest surprise of my life. She looked at me and said, ‘Praise Jesus!’

“I thought she had to be the most hard-hearted woman in the world to say something like that to somebody dying, but then I looked into her eyes, and for the first time in my life I saw somebody who believed that I could be healed. She very simply, excitedly, said, ‘What you need is a Jesus overhaul.’ She placed both of her hands gently on the sides of my head and said, ‘Jesus, overhaul him!’

“My faith ignited – she didn’t limit God!

“She didn’t ask God to keep me from hurting. She didn’t say, ‘If it be thy will.’ She didn’t limit God at all! She said, ‘Jesus, overhaul him!’

“She was the first person, I believe, who ever prayed for me who didn’t limit God!

“I began falling backwards. I hit the floor like a ton of bricks. I fell under the power of God. I didn’t know that would ever happen to me, but it certainly did.

“As I lay there on the floor I remember hitting someone behind me and he went ‘oaf’ and I hit the floor. I later discovered it was the usher catching me. I had gone backwards harder than he expected.

“I knew I had been touched by the power of God.

“As I lay there on the floor it was like there was a great blinding light came before me. It felt like God had a blow torch on the scar tissue on my brain at the back of my head and it was burning. There were waves of light that went over me. Then it was like my spinal cord was a piece of rubber and someone took it and shook it and flopped it around. I don’t know how long I was under the power, maybe five or ten minutes or more. I started feeling healing.

“The first thing I noticed was that my feet began to hurt! My feet had been numb for years and I couldn’t tell whether my shoes fit or not, but suddenly my shoes began to pinch my feet! I knew something was happening because there had been absolutely no feeling there for years. Praise God, they were actually hurting!

“Then feeling began to come into my legs! Then in my anus!! I started rubbing my ann. I could feel my hand on my arm as I lay there under the power of God. I was not unconscious – I was aware of what was going on and I knew a lot was going on!

“The next thing that happened was, to me, the most exciting part of the miracle God was performing.

“I got up by myself!

“The most difficult thing for an M.S. victim to do is to get up once you are down. Your equilibrium has been lost. It’s almost like you’re drunk.

“There had to be a great healing!

“I got up!

“I could get up unassisted!

“I knew I had been healed!”

While Gene Lilly felt healing in his body, the results were not visible to anyone else. He crawled and/or hung on to the chairs to get back to his seat and I said, “I’m not moved by what I see, hear, feel, taste, touch or smell, I am moved by what the Word of God says. The Word of God says when we lay hands upon the sick they shall recover and I believe it! He may not look like it, but the healing power of God is working in him.”

It was not until twenty-four hours later that his walking improved but it took five weeks of battling the devil before he was healed!

Gene Lilly ‘c Answer to “What Follows Healing?”

One of the questions most often asked about healings is, “Do they last?”

The same question can be asked about salvation, “Does it last?”

The same answer can be given to both questions, “Not if Satan can prevent it.”

But God’s Word is true and Jesus made full and complete arrangements while he was visiting earth for our eternal salvation and health.

On Thursday night, December 13, 1973, I was healed of multiple sclerosis, sugar diabetes, scar tissue on my brain, and excessively high cholesterol and triglycerides.

I woke up the next morning, December 14, 1973, with a new experience! I got up feeling good. Glory to God! I cannot remember during nineteen years of sickness, getting up feeling good. I got up whole. I never knew what it was like to feel whole. I had a little spot of pain in my back, but it was like a sore muscle, nothing serious. The whole weekend was real good and so was Monday.

I wanted to get in touch with the doctor. I wanted to find out about my sugar, but he was out of town. Charles and Frances had said during the miracle service that if anyone healed was under the care of a physician or on medication prescribed, to continue the medication until the doctor examined you and let him tell you what to do.

To those who are not familiar with sugar diabetes (Diabetes Mellitus) let me explain a little about it in language I understand. When you have diabetes, the sugar content gets too high in your blood.

In my case, the highest measurement was 639 when it should have been between 80 and 120. This was a severe case of diabetes. The symptoms and reactions I had were weakness and nausea and I would perspire heavily. At times I would pass out (faint). My doctor had me wear a metal bracelet, on the back of which was engraved “diabetic.” This was worn so that if I was found unconscious or helpless, I would be properly treated for diabetes. Time (in receiving treatment) is important when this condition exists. I cut the bracelet off the night I was healed!

Diabetics are generally taught how to test the sugar content of the blood so they can regulate the intake f sugar into their blood. A little test tape is inserted into a urine sample and the tape changes color, thus identifying excess sugar. Insulin is the medication nominally used to cause the excess sugar to be stored in such places as the liver and muscles; then the sugar is returned to the blood in small quantities. Proper dieting, rest and other care is needed for survival. Too little sugar can cause serious reactions just as well as too much, so you have to maintain a proper balance. I was instructed to drink orange juice and eat candy or other sweets to raise the sugar, and to take insulin along with a restricted diet to lower the sugar content.

When I was not able to reach my doctor the morning after I was healed, to have him examine me, I did what Charles and Frances suggested. I took a pretty large dose of insulin. In about two hours I started getting shaky and weak. I knew this meant I had too little sugar. It meant something had happened! It meant my sugar diabetes had been healed. It was gone! I was excited because this was the first identifiable evidence I had seen of this part of my healing. My faith ignited again! To counteract the effect of the insulin, I started drinking orange juice and eating candy bars, and still felt most of the day like I was going into insulin shock because the sugar was gone out of my blood stream. Praise God. It was gone!

When my doctor got back, I told him I had been healed. He wanted to know who healed me, and I said, “Jesus!”

“Jesus who?” he snapped. He assured me that the Lord couldn’t do anything for me and that I was just going to die.

That was when a battle began within me. Satan really got in the door by putting doubt in my mind. God had been so complete in teaching me what His Word said about healing. I believed it! Then He healed me and gave me positive evidences of my healings.

I would periodically check my urine and the test would at times be positive, showing it contained sugar. I would rebuke it, speak the Word, and in ten or fifteen minutes test it again and there would be no sugar! It just doesn’t work that way. You either have it, or you don’t have it!

It was a demonic presence. I never took any medication for any of the illnesses after that one insulin shot the morning after I was healed. It was interesting to me because at the time of each attack, I had a chance either to pray and battle the devil or accept the sickness. “Submit yourself therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7 KJV.)

I had a choice each time to confess this powerful promise of God – a choice of submitting myself to God and resisting the devil – or of submitting to the devil and his symptoms and resisting God. Praise God, He had made my belief in His Word so solid that Satan could not shake it. That’s why Jesus said it was so important to study the Word and hide it in our hearts. An hour or more each day meditating in the Bible and talking to God is more vital than I thought my life-giving insulin was. I could have died without the insulin, but even more real, I could have died without the Word! It kept me alive with each attack!

I was sure of my healings. They were just like the Word said, “But the negative power of Satan is strong and simple, but very deceiving.” He put “doubt” into my mind; it became so strong at times that I was tempted to listen to him. I almost believed him! “Almost thou persuadeth me to be sick.”

My life had been directed around sickness for nineteen years, and around my infirmities. My mind had been filled with belief in sickness. The devil is not going to let go of his teachings easily. He wants you to believe, knowing that if you believe him you will succeed in accepting his inflicted physical, mental and spiritual sicknesses.

Believe me, Satan is going to always put up a battle when God is doing a work. My life had revolved around something that belonged to the devil, so he wasn’t going to let something happen that would give credit to God, if he could prevent it!

But God’s army is ready to do battle against Satan if we will believe in God and listen to His voice. God will always win if we will do our part. He even wins by allowing us to go through trials, difficulties and problems. He makes our faith stronger. He never allows these tests to come just to see if we can fail. He wants us to win, because when we do, it’s easier to have faith to believe in Him once we have won the battle.

He allowed me to be severely tried, but I learned to distinguish the silent, soft voice of His Holy Spirit from the boisterous, enticing, deceiving voice of Satan. The symptoms of “his” diseases (I used to call them “mine”) came back time after time.

I had been asked to give my testimony at church on Wednesday night a week after my healing. Just before I was to speak, I broke out in a heavy sweat exactly like I always did when my sugar was too high. I almost soaked my clothes in the pew. As I sat there, I got so weak I thought I wasn’t going to be able to getup. But I rebuked those thoughts and in my mind I kept thinking, “I’m not going to receive this because the Lord healed me, and I know He healed me because the sugar is gone from my bloodstream. The diabetes is gone, and so I’m not going to accept it and I am going to testify to the church of my healing.

As soon as I got up to testify, all of the symptoms left!

I had heard the very apparent voice of Satan say, by the symptoms and accompanying thought of fear, that I wasn’t healed. Doubt came because of the symptoms. But the Word of God had taught me that fear, doubt and sickness all come from the devil. I had received the Word of God in my mind and heart and believed what it said. AU the healing scriptures were a part of my inner belief and memory. They were my source of stability and I let them become my thoughts at the time of the symptoms.

I had recorded Psalms 118:17 in my mind and it was available to my memory with each attack of the devil, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. “I boldly, quickly and frequently declared the healing of the Lord to everyone I could, but perhaps of more importance, I declared it to myself – in my own mind as thoughts.

When I depended on mind control tactics to baffle diseases, I declared to a mirror, “I am well, I am well, I am well.” But I didn’t declare the works of the Lord. I was now able to testify boldly that it was the Lord who did it. Where I once confessed my infirmities, now confessed His Word, “By His stripes, l AM healed.”

I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit when I was in the church. It was there that God had first removed the symptoms as I stood to declare the works of the Lord. The church daily became my intensive care room and my recovery room during this recovery period. I needed a place sterilized by the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, to be away from the polluted atmosphere of Satan’s deceiving symptoms and lies. Almost every day for the next four or five weeks I went to the church, knelt at the altar alone and talked to God for ten to fifteen minutes. Most of the time, nobody knew this. You have probably seen a cartoon of a dog chasing a cat as fast as they could run, and suddenly the cat jumped behind a tree and took a deep breath or two, then the chase began again. That’s the way I felt. I would go to the church, take a deep breath of the presence of God, and then return home.

I asked others to pray with me when the battle got rough. It got so bad at times after the first week, that I spent the biggest part of that five weeks in the Word, in prayer, and testifying about my healing.

I would, at times, get numbness over my whole body. It would come like waves over my body and then I would rebuke it and say, “I won’t receive this; by His stripes I am healed and I know I’m healed. Because I have been healed, I won’t accept it back.” Right away feeling came back as the numbness left. The numbness would not go immediately, but gradually would go away while I was saying to it, “I won’t receive this; by His stripes I am healed!”

There were times when the devil attacked me with this numbness and other symptoms that we met in a full battle in the bathroom. I don’t mind telling you I really got to shouting the Word at him a few times because, you know, he has a lithe problem with his hearing. I know there is nothing in volume. It is the authority of Jesus by which the devil is defeated, but it helps me when I use a little volume!

These symptoms were just as real to me as the actual diseases. I believe I had every symptom of every illness with which I had previously been afflicted. The pain of the scar tissue on my brain returned as intensely as before. It used to be so strong that I would black out. It was somewhat like somebody thrust a knife right down through my skull into my brain where the scar tissue was growing. The pain shot into my brain. The scar tissue was a growth on my brain which became inflamed at times. It’s like a swelling condition of the brain. As it grows, it causes this intense pain. The pain that came after I was healed felt just a little different, but it appeared the same. I learned to identify the difference in the feeling. I learned to quickly recognize the voice of Satan. I knew the difference between the way Jesus spoke and the way Satan spoke. I learned after my healing that the devil and all his helpers talked to me just as real as when I talk to my family. As soon as I had this pain, here would come a whole flood of doubt and fear into my mind, just as plain as if they were saying, “You know you’re not really healed.”

The whole five weeks was a battle of; “Am I going to believe what God said He had done, or am I going to believe all this other gossip that is coming into my head?”

I constantly prayed, praised God and testified of the healing.

These attacks went from very severe the first week to less and less and less until at the end of five weeks there was hardly any trouble. It seemed like the devil let go gradually, or else the Word became so much more real to me, and the victory became so much more real that I didn’t hear what he was saying.

Even after years had passed, once in a great while I’ll have a short visit from the devil. Recently a wave of numbness flowed over my body and the devil said, “See, you’re getting sick again; your healing of M.S. was just a remission.” I prayed, rebuked it in Jesus’ name, and went on about my business for Jesus, and it left right away. If a symptom of stiffness or something else related to the signs of MS or a thought about it comes into my mind, I quote the Word, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. “I go right on with what I am doing at the time and have no more trouble.

Another portion of scripture that has been important to me when these thoughts come into my mind is II Corinthians 10:3-5:

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (KJV).

The attacks by thought have been as severe as the attacks by symptoms of illness, but by the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, I have brought into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Every thought the devil has put into my mind has been replaced with what the Word of God says.

The prayers, the Word, the fellowship with those who believe in healing, the praises to God and the confessing of the healing, giving the glory to God, are so important.

I believe if a person is healed, he should do everything possible to be around believers, especially during the early period following the healing. He should be in church where healings frequently occur so he will be in an atmosphere of belief. My friends and my church stood close by me during my first trying five weeks. Sometimes a family will not even believe when the evidence of healing is present. Little do they realize that their unbelief may cause their loved one to return to suffering and death. Jesus saw unbelief at work when He returned to His home town. He only did a few miracles because of unbelief.

When a person gives his life to Jesus and is born again, his priorities change. He can go on, like I chose to do, and serve Jesus, or he can return to his old ways of sinning, like I did so many years. Priorities of desires, activities, habits and environment must change or the devil will come to steal and kill. He wants to defeat our healing the same way. But Jesus is the winner if we do our part!

The night I went to the Hunter meeting, I knew before I went that when I was prayed for, I was going to be healed. I also knew that it wouldn’t be any different five weeks later, because I knew that was what the Lord had for me. I had read it in His Word, and I believed. I still believe and always will, because, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. “*

If you have never read Dodie Osteen’s book, Healed of Cancer, it is a must for everyone who is battling cancer. “Dodie was diagnosed on Thursday, December 10, 1981. John Osteen was told the following devastating news. The doctors said, ‘Pastor, your wife has metastatic cancer of the liver. With or without chemotherapy, she has only a few weeks to live. We can treat her, but it will only slightly prolong her life.’

“However, we cannot find the primary tumor,’ he said. ‘We don’t know where it is. In fact, it has really baffled us. Usually a primary tumor signifies the beginning of cancer and then it spreads to the liver or kidneys or some place else. But we cannot find one. With your consent, we would like to do exploratory surgery or a colonoscopy to try to locate the tumor.’

“John couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘Doctor, I am going to take my wife home. We are going to pray and seek God, and then we will decide what to do. We believe in miracles, and we believe in the Miracle Worker.’

“The doctor said, ‘Well, Pastor, you’re going to have to have a miracle this time.” Dodie went home on December 10, 1981 and never went back to the hospital. John anointed her with oil the day after she got home from the hospital! As they were both on the floor in their bedroom, face down before God, he took authority over any disease and over all cancerous cells in her body.

Dodie says, “As far as I’m concerned, that’s the day my healing began.” Dodie fought the symptoms and the attacks of the devil for five years – five long years, but her faith never wavered and even though it was not an instant miracle it started on the day when she and John made a covenant that her healing had started. Don’t get discouraged. Today, fifteen years later, she is a beautiful woman, a picture of health.

One of my favorite stories about Dodie Osteen’s healing is this:

“When I was sick, I would look at two pictures of me in radiant health – one in my wedding dress and one riding a horse on a ranch. They bolstered my faith and helped me keep a positive attitude – especially when I was feeling so sick.

“I kept looking at those pictures and saying, ‘Thank You, Father, that You will restore health to me and heal me of my wounds. I thank You that I’ll feel like I did when I married at twenty-one. I’ll feel like I did when I was twenty-five riding that horse. I thank You that You will restore me to health, Father.’

“When I started feeling good again, I said, ‘Father, thank You that You have restored health to me.’ I repeat this often – even now!”

It was a miracle of God regardless of how you look at it!

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see an instant miracle. Some miracles happen the moment you lay hands on the sick – but other healings take time. Tell the person to whom you are ministering that the healing has started once you have laid hands on them. Do everything you can to keep people from becoming discouraged. Build their faith – and yours – with every sentence you speak.

We do not lay hands on the sick when we feel like it. We lay hands on the sick at every opportunity! Some of the greatest healings we have ever seen have taken place when we were sick or completely exhausted. Don’t wait for a feeling – do it now!

When God opens a door for you, go through it. He always has something special for you on the other side. Freely you have received, freely give!

If an opportunity to lay hands on someone occurs – go for it – regardless of whether you feel anything or not.

You’ll be in the miracle ministry, too!

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1902