Frequently, I like to ask my friends or people I meet the question: “when was the last time you heard a complete sermon on healing, miracles, or gifts of the Holy Spirit?”. If you’re mulling over your response right now, there’s a high probability it’s either, “never” or “I can’t remember”. Note that I said a complete sermon, not a passing quip about how “we believe in healing in this church” or “Haleluyah, our God is a Healer!”. The entire sermon, not a bit part of one.
So what’s my point? It is that if healing is not taught, there will be no faith for it and there will be few, if any healings in your church. Remember how in Hebrews 1, “God testified to it (His Word) with signs, wonders, miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit…” Elsewhere, He says “I am watching over my Word to fulfil it.” If there’s no word on healing, there’ll be no performance of it, no matter how many tears you shed corporately at the alter. If you preach salvation constantly, you’ll get salvation; if you preach healing, you’ll get healings. Often, it seems we want to plant rice and harvest corn.
The funny thing is that pastors of Charismatic/Pentecostal churches in my observation, rarely teach healing-related sermons either. Why is this? I believe they just assume “Hey, we’re Pentecostal, we already have it, we don’t need to preach it!” Of course the results are usually as scanty as in evangelical or denominational churches, the difference is just more dust is raised in the process.
Why pastors don’t don’t regularly preach healing with the masses of sick in their churches is utterly beyond me. Or perhaps not. They generally don’t believe it, instead they possess mental and verbal assent, which is not even a distant cousin of faith. More of this in my next post. How often is healing preached in your church?
