5 steps when praying for the sick

hello everyone welcome to the wonderful world of remnant radio my name is joshua lewis and today we are continuing our series on to be continued a new podcast that we have here on the remnant radio where we address uh subjects specific to the gifts of the spirit across the interweb here i have michael rountree there in the studios i have michael miller there in the basement denver colorado and i am here in my daughter's room because we have just a few more days of quarantine uh and then the basement i like that yeah denver bro i think my question is i mean we're talking about healing and how much authority do you really have to talk about this issue i mean considering you got the rona bro well um just as much authorities you have to tell people to repent of their sin um no just kidding no that was so good that was so good dude so uh today in our video guys we're gonna we're gonna be talking about michael we're gonna be talking about uh the five-step model that wimber gave in praying for the sick we're talking about this this five-step model let's talk uh if you guys would help me introduce this subject and talking about what this is and what this is not um i don't want people to look at this as a replacement for the prescription of scripture that tells us when you pray for the sick you know have the the sick come forward have the elders pray the prayer of faith uh they will recover if they have sin haven't confessed that kind of thing and they'll be forgiven let's talk through some of this opening what is this model where did it come from uh what is this and what is it not i'll toss it over to you guys and let me know what you think yeah for sure totally totally agree with you on the importance of we get real uh cautious about the five-step model or four thing you know four keys to a new life three you know pivotal i don't know essentials about prosperity this is not that okay um miller i know that you have actually you have some experience with some of like the development of the history of the of john wimbers five-step model that he used uh why don't you talk through that a little bit uh i i don't have anything any history with the development i i wasn't uh i was sleeping around i was probably i wasn't born yet when this stuff came out no i i had a conversation with blaine cook uh maybe about two and a half years ago and i was just i don't remember how it came up but somewhere in the conversation he mentioned how uh he and wimber had developed this model he said that um they started seeing the sick kid healed and they were praying for the sick and the question came up over a lunch you know how do we how do we teach others to do this and so they just sat there and and got one of the the beverage napkins from the table and began to write out what became known as the five step model for healing so it was never meant to be a formula as this is how it's done it was meant to be a model that you can kind of use to ask the right questions and to be thinking the right way about uh what's happening when you're praying for the sick so it's meant to be a flexible model where you're actually relying upon the holy spirit to pray for each person and treat them each as an individual yeah you know for me personally it was really helpful because it you know like when uh when jack dear started at wellspring uh church where i'm uh where i passed her he was like you know he would talk about you know we want to train people in prophecy we want to train them and how to pray for healing and so on and i would i went through the like the training and the theological foundation everything for the prophetic ministry and i could see that like um but when it came to training for how to pray for healing i didn't really get that at first i was like well you just pray right like you just lord please heal that person what else is there to it and when you've been around healing ministry for a while as it turns out there can be a lot more to it there's questions like is there uh an inner healing tied to this outer healing is there a demonic influence here and so on i don't want to get too far into the five-step model but uh but you can really see this i mean there's i think an experiential component to this where it's like we just started to see certain thing or i think i know wimber you know he started to see some things and started to put that together but there's also a scriptural component uh and i don't know which of which came first for him i don't know miller do you know how how that came together i don't i have no idea okay well let's jump into it let's jump into it people are somebody that thinks making fun of me because of my lumberjack look you know what if i want to look like a lubberjack i can look like a lumberjack actually michael dresses up for most of the remnant episodes that's that's actually what he usually wears at home is the rubber jack outfit i just it's really cold here in texas right now we had a huge cold front come through and i literally despise cold like i actually have long johns on under my lumberjack shirt so um anyway enough of that so let's jump into the five-step model who wants to um josh why don't you read off to us the list of the five the five steps and then we'll kind of walk through them one by one yeah so we've got the interview is the first step uh the uh diagnosis is the second step the prayer selection is step three uh step four is the prayer engagement and step five is post prayer direction those are the five steps in the five-step model miller are you playing dice over there what's what are you what are you doing sorry i forgot to uh i forgot to mute it when i was typing okay sorry just sounds like you're rolling something across the table you've got lost keyboard i didn't do this i don't know i should have just left you without a keyboard okay you did it first don't you remember that's right okay so let's talk about the interview interview sounds so formal when i've taught my congregation it i i i just call it listen just listen to the person but it is it is kind of an interview but i just it's it's not an interrogation that's for sure um but um where this comes from is uh you take like mark 10 51 where jesus says what do you want me to do for you he's he's talking to a blind man like what do you think he wants you to do right but like this is a human interaction and uh and it's like um i i enlighten it a little bit too well you take like matthew six where jesus uh where jesus says your father knows what you need before you even ask him but he still wants us to articulate it and the way i kind of think about is like when my kids were really little uh i would uh i would teach them to use their words to ask for something so that instead of just like it which is what they wanted to do at first part of becoming a mature human is you don't just look at things and grunt when you want them and i think part of being a mature friend of god is we articulate what is our need and so listening gives us a chance for that person to articulate what their need is before us and god and it's also an opportunity to show empathy and uh and compassion compassion is such a huge driver of healing ministry so often we see especially in matthew's gospel he seems to really emphasize this he had compassion and he healed their sick he had compassion and he healed their sick and i have found and uh you guys i don't i don't know if your experience has been the same but i have found that sometimes healing ministry becomes this big thing about the show it's like i was driving by a church one time and it was like signs and wonders here is what it said on the marquee and i'm like is is that really what it's about because i'm pretty sure it's about the love of jesus being shown it's it's not about getting people to come see the fireworks show and i think when people come forward and you're listening you're interviewing it's it gives you an opportunity to make that human connection that's going to move into uh the power of god that side of things so any of you guys had something to add to that yeah i think the interview is is um a great place to start uh you see several precedent for several examples where there's precedent for it in scripture uh one when they find the boy who's falling down in the fire and is probably blind and mute and the disciples couldn't cast out the demon that was causing this so jesus comes into the situation and he asks the father how long has the boy been like this and i think there's a reason for why he's asking that question because it also may give an indication as to why the boy is in this condition in the first place the person at the pool of bethesda jesus also starts asking him questions he doesn't go straight into the encounter and begin healing he begins with questions of would you like to be made well i think that's important my experience has also shown me that some people don't always want to be made well i think i may have shared this before but there was a woman in denmark who had major problems with her vision and pain with her neck and at the end of the day she didn't want to be made well because she was in sin and to be made well meant walking away from a particular sin that had her infirmed and demon eyes to begin with so no that was that's been my experience we were in a youth group setting there was a girl who'd been in and out of mental hospitals and asked us you know i hear voices i think i have something demonic um i'd like you guys to pray for me so that we could get rid of this um and i asked her like are you willing because i knew there was a specific sin because i was close with her family that she would not give up and she had every intention of continuing um and i asked her you have to give this up and she said i'm like like can i think about it i was like yes like yes you can think about this come back tomorrow and and let me know are you willing to repent of this and she did just that and she came back and she wasn't willing to repent so we didn't administer deliverance for her um because it wasn't something the bible talks about you know seven more evil um and i think that there's a biblical precedent to say hey uh to ask to have that interview process that you're talking about and and we see this i think in in first corinthians 14 where he speaks of tongues and he says that someone he likens the tongue speech to a bugle and he says if they play an indistinguishable sound on a bugle like how do you know to like march to war like how can someone shout amen if they don't know what's being said so like it's actually talking about prayer in an agreement sort of way and this investigation process in a sense is to to know what is it that you want me to pray for um if we just come together and gather and pray we're praying as we're boxing in the air as it were but by having agreement there is a kind of unified power in that prayer of a synergy which is a very charismatic word but it's a it's an appropriate word for the subject yeah you know uh and and this is again my perspective on on it i don't again i don't use the word interview when i'm training people i use the word listen i i i think it communicates the empathy like i did before doesn't make it feel like an interrogation but there's another reason too and that is that whenever i am interacting with a person over a healing issue i'm listening on both on two different levels simultaneously i'm listening on a natural level but also a supernatural level i'm listening to the person but i'm also listening to the voice of god and so you guys uh just talked about like hey sometimes there's a deeper issue sometimes i'll i'll hear the voice of the holy spirit communicating to me what that deeper issue is so that i can engage uh on that level so for instance i was were you about to enter interrupt josh well no go go ahead i got my words i'm sure i just yelled across the hall to my kids to be quiet i thought i muted my microphone so if i'm screaming no no you're good you're good okay so i i'm listening on uh on two different levels simultaneously natural and supernatural so uh so when i say supernatural uh i'm trying to hear the voice of the holy spirit what is he speaking into this situation and um sometimes it'll be just an indicator and something the person said and sometimes it'll be something that comes by way of more spiritual discernment um i was uh praying over a young woman probably in her 20s and uh and as i was i was with a group of christians who were praying for her actually pastors from my church and uh and as we were interacting with her before we even got to the prayer segment and she was telling us she had essentially endometriosis and um anyway make a long story short i michael your keyboard please stop uh to make a long story short i just heard the holy spirit say like two words one was conflict and the other one was men and um which is honestly like a really weird prophetic word like there's no socially like like not awkward way to bring that up you do have an example of jesus he uh in john 4 where he has an awkward prophetic word to share uh hey go get your husband well he's not your husband and neither are the last five uh you know before him so uh he he finds a way to bring it uh to bring it up and i found a way to politely ease into it but i basically asked if there had been a conflict with a certain uh male figure as it turned out she had this huge breakup with uh with a guy again this is not just me one-on-one with a girl here uh pastors were with me um anyway huge breakup with a guy unforgiveness was present we prayed for her walked her through a prayer of forgiveness there were lots of tears to make a long story short again she was completely healed we followed up with her months later and then months later again and then months later again this went from totally debilitating every month to never experienced it ever again and uh but it came with from listening on two different levels natural and supernatural simultaneously so josh michael uh now continue with your interruption that you were trying to to go with earlier no uh oh well i i oh who's first go ahead go ahead miller all right uh so bj mentioned that the guy at the temple gate no interview is conducted they just uh you know in the name of jesus get up and walk right silver and gold have we none um so that sometimes is presented as an argument that the five-step model shouldn't be conducted and i don't think that's what bj's saying but i think it actually goes to show that not every healing is done the same way this is why you have to approach each person as an individual rather than a model that's a sort of a catch-all um and we see this happen all throughout the scriptures there's times when people are sovereignly healed in their seats nobody lays hands on them nobody prays for them the spirit just moves but then there's other times where you know maybe god is wanting to use someone or the laying on of hands to bring about healing and you see the same thing happen with like jesus when it comes to healing a blind person he doesn't seem to do it the same way twice one time he spits in some dirt makes mud puts it on the man's eyes another time he just says eyes be open apollo right and eyes are suddenly opened so um i think that that's kind of the point is just because it happens one way in one text doesn't mean it'll work the same way every single time yeah and and just to go on the tail end of that there's so many i mean the apostles one guy is healing people with a shadow another guy guys taking handkerchiefs and sending them to people and healing them and other times jesus is speaking from a distance and sends his word to heal so again over and over there's so many different models and patterns in which healing is accomplished in the scriptures uh if you go to the old testament we've got even more we've got a guy who dunks himself in the jordan river to cleanse himself of leprosy um i mean we've got account after account of just being led by the spirit in these things so we would certainly say hey this model if anything these these five steps the goal is actually to to lean and press in and to ask the holy spirit um what what would you have me do um so we wouldn't even say that this model is the authoritative model you should use at all times it's to say that hey ask the holy spirit if you're not getting anything ask the person what's going on you know i mean if the person's walking up to you and you can assess this person's blind and the lord wants to heal them before they get anything out of their work their mouth i mean just pray for him and see him get healed but if if they're they're coming to you you don't know what's going on you've got no sense from the lord what they may need then you ask them why have you come for prayer right so like we're just these are just uh guidelines not to be used as um pillars you must do these five things and if you don't do these five things you're not practicing healing these are guides to help you lean on the holy spirit and ask people treating them as humans as persons um again but the the goal of this whole process is to trust in christ trust in christ's power for healing of the sick so one of you guys touched on this already but when somebody comes to you uh i mean this is a common thing especially in churches that practice praying for the sick is they'll see somebody with an obvious infirmity and they assume that that person wants them to pray for that infirmity to go away whereas that's not always the case um sometimes you know a person may be dealing with entirely or what maybe on presently a concern of theirs may be something entirely different than what seems obvious to the eye yeah and so that's why you you ask them what would you like you know what is it that you're wanting right now yeah yeah absolutely the whole thing is not it's not too much different from the fact that i'm training the other pastors in my church how to preach and teach and so uh there's certain kind of i i have a way in which a sort of manner in which i go about that and i train them in that and i say but you'll develop your own way and you don't have to do it my way etc but i still teach them that so we're teaching you a way that we find is helpful but if you don't like it do something different so um okay so let's jump into step two so we've got the interview slash listening time great opportunity to show empathy and compassion uh second step is the diagnosis who wants to jump into uh what the diagnosis is i'll let miller jump in there okay sure um just jump in miller i'll jump in as best as i can uh so by diagnosis we're just trying to determine the causation for this sickness um sometimes sickness is just because we're born uh in a you know born in a fallen world and there's no apparent reason for it um you know some people will say that that uh like the guy in john 9 that he was born that way just so god could display his glory that's a that's a bit problematic because the word that's translated so that can also be be rendered but let like it was neither this man or sin nor his parents but let the work of god be displayed um so i i don't necessarily find a particular causation but obviously god is using it for his own glory right um and then you've got other so some causations can be natural you know like you had an accident got a car accident got a concussion you fell off a ladder um some causes could actually be sin in your life right jesus says to the the man who was i think paralyzed he says go and sin no more lest something worse befall you so it's the implication is that somehow sin was related in how this person was infirmed um and i've seen this on multiple occasions specifically when it comes to bitterness and issues of the heart bitterness is a sin holding unforgiveness over somebody is something we're told not to do we're told to forgive uh and i know michael you've got some incidents of that or experiences with that as well not that you were better honestly honestly forgiveness is like the biggest thing i'll tell you i agree when it comes to healing ministry if if there's a spiritual root of some kind of infirmity a huge percentage of the time forgiveness is the issue people who forgive are more physically healthy bitterness is rottenness in the bones as it says in the proverbs and and so i would just encourage you if you haven't forgiven anybody so like even forget healing prayer for anyone else like healing prayer for you and just your own physical and mental and emotional health it's rooted in the spiritual health i think the number one thing is forgiveness if you walk in forgiveness which is to not count that person's sin against them uh to not uh to not demand that they pay you back so to speak release the debt release them unto the lord trust him to be a righteous judge and uh and the way i know that i've forgiven in my heart is if i can bless that person sincerely in my heart and if i can't bless that person without a sort of like ping in my spirit like like the little cringe factor that i've not really forgiven uh and matthew 20 is the greatest parable in the world to read through for forgiveness but it's just a huge huge factor you're absolutely right michael so like when you're uh one of the examples that we would have is like when we're you're praying for someone and um they would say hey i i've been getting night terrors right so you go oh and one of the questions you would ask in this this interview process would be okay when did those night terrors occur well um i guess they started two years ago okay did anything happen two years ago um was there anything that was happening around that time i don't know i can't think of anything and then you can you can just begin to ask like um did you have a breakup did you you can ask those questions and and then begin to see is this tied to something um spiritual is this something tied to unforgiveness a pattern of unforgiveness i've seen miller practice this with with my wife who had migraines and he he identified something through asking these kinds of questions and asked her okay let's let's repent of this let's repent of this specific thing and from that moment on she hadn't had migraines and it was one of those quick identifiers what was happening when you started getting these migraines is this tied to something um let's talk about this let's repent and again this is that james five practice that we're we're actually prescribed in scripture confess your sin and you'll be better but the thing is is a lot of these things we are able to kind of justify or were able to not identify these things as sin like there is a person in my life that i have unforgiveness towards and i have asked god kind of flippantly like lord you know bless them lord like like michael said there might be a little prick in my heart and i can kind of justify like i'm i'm right with god like i've forgiven him i've moved on and it's like this this physical thing that we're weighted down with until we really get freedom from that um and i think that there there are areas in our life like through these investigation processes where we can just ask people what's going on and how long has that been there yeah i think uh stern of mine go ahead okay well sure uh rachelle bates uh she says in the chat she says i'm stuck in this because aren't we always dealing with sin well in the body and so i think this is a really good point because um when i read james 5 it's really particularly talking about unconfessed sin confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed that's right and and i'll also i'll say there's there's a scripture and that's the most important but i'll also say experientially i don't come across people who like oops they send immediately repented and suddenly like an infirmity comes upon him i'm sure that it happens sometimes i mean if somebody has like a one-night stand and maybe they get an std or something there certainly can be that uh that sort of situation but um i i would say in the majority of situations it's not oops i sinned now i have an infirmity it's uh it's generally james 5 unconfessed sin and and if it is a situation like the one night stand like what i just described i would still recommend that person go before another human being confess that sin to another human being because honestly i don't think confession just before god and not another person is enough i think the biblical model and we see it there in james 5 as we confess before another person and uh even in a scenario that i would just i just described i would suggest uh confessing that sin and asking somebody to pray for you uh that you might be healed but but i think this is uh primarily dealing with unconfessed sin and uh based on james five and and i think that this can sometimes be abused and you know my my wife has uh experienced this before where she my wife has an autoimmune disease and it's called shogun syndrome and man she has repented of everything under the sun i mean she is so faithful she loves the lord so much she is so humble and one of the most generous people that i know and pure-hearted and on and on and on uh and she has done her best she has asked the lord to search her heart lord is there anything in me that has brought on this autoimmune and you know other people have come up and like well maybe it's this sin and maybe it's that sin and that's honestly it's just not helpful for people to like guess which sin might have caused your disease right like um she and so i think we have to be very careful when praying for healing uh michael let me just ask you uh the one typing um let me just ask do you navigate that michael how do you navigate like you don't want to be like just sitting here calling people out you don't want to be heaping abuse upon people so how do you feel about that two things when it comes to one that's why i said there's a variety of reasons a person may be sick a variety that we haven't even talked about like we have not given an exhaustive list for the causation for these things and it's not always something we committed sometimes a person is demonized for no reason at all other than there's an evil spirit who's done evil to a person um but but also um we're not we're not our own saviors trying to go through the litany of our own sins is in some sense us trying to set ourselves free from that and that's actually not our job i mean that's the job of the spirit to convict us of all sin and unrighteousness and so if you're praying for somebody and you know you know you've you've gone with everything that you know to ask as far as like here's what i feel like god showed me is this true um and then you kind of leave it there and say well you know god hasn't shown me anything else is there anything that comes to your mind when you ask god why am i sick and so that the other thing is in this model we're not just listening to the person we're talking to we're also sitting and waiting on the lord which is a practice throughout the scriptures of just waiting on him to get answers and get direction and get wisdom and some examples of the other thing i was going to say about sin in particular some people when it comes to unconfessed sin they don't even realize that there's a sin that they committed that was unconfessed and the example that josh gave earlier um about praying for somebody who was um plagued with night terrors well that was actually a real story that happened at the convergence conference about four years ago in 2017. i was praying for a young woman um she said she had night terrors that she's had them every night since she was like 13 years old well actually she couldn't even remember she just thought she'd always had them is what she said um and and so i'm you know doing everything i can to get information from her by asking these questions but also recognizing that she may not know the answer to why she's sick but god does and so i just prayed silently and i said listen i just want to wait on the lord and ask him what's going on here. and so when we're doing the diagnosis there's two sources that we're listening to this person and god um while i was praying though i had a little picture pop in my head of her playing with a ouija board with some other girls when she was probably 12 years old and so i said um when you're around 12 years old were you and some girlfriends playing with ouija board and she just started crying and the words that were coming out her mouth were oh my gosh i didn't know i didn't know and it was like she knew suddenly that this is what what brought this problem into her life um and i said of course she didn't know i said you know the ouija board isn't a cult practice but it's put in the game section at a target like it's literally marketed to kids but it's actually forbidden it's an occult practice a way of communicating with the dead a way of uh divination which are both forbidden practices in the scripture so i walked her through a prayer of repentance this is where the public confession and a turning away from from that sin from her past and then i commanded anything evil that came in to leave and it was just a simple prayer repentance and a command and then um two years later i run into the same girl she has been free from night terrors ever since and just be clear she had them every single night like she would wake up her whole family screaming in terror so this was not uh for it to go away for that amount of time was was a sincere freedom and healing so well you know one thing i really enjoyed about the way you talked with her and the way you communicated that to us was even as you're talking about a sin that she committed you did it with compassion and so you weren't a private investigator trying to point out somebody's flaws you were kindly asking did this happen and then your empathy afterward well of course you didn't know you were 12 years old and you know they sell this at target at the game section when you come with the right heart that's the attitude and people feel it but if you're coming like the private investigator just to try to figure out what what roadblocks getting in the way of the power of god like this is about love all the spiritual gifts i mean my definition for spiritual gifts is this is empowered love and uh michael i think that was a great example uh for you and and i think you also unpacked another one of the things that we're listening for in this uh we're paying attention for in this diagnosis step and that is demonization demonization and infirmity these are connected in luke chapter 13 uh a woman has a a spirit of michael help me out or josh a spirit of disability i think is yeah and her back is bent over double by satan okay so uh sometimes you'll have a deaf spirit you'll have a mute spirit and uh and uh let's see i have mark 925 written here you deaf and mute spirit i command you come out of him and never enter him again and so often times when it comes to healing uh there's a spiritual cause in fact michael this actually reminds me of a time that you and i were ministering together do you remember uh you remember the girl with tourette's i know you but yeah that was followed up with her like slovenia yeah you followed up with her for a long time afterward um so this one was fascinating okay go ahead this was yeah this was frustrating actually because um i don't think she stayed free uh there was a number of things going on there so when we we got out there we were ministering with the youth group of this church in pennsylvania and when i walked in i i felt like the lord had told me there was somebody that was dealing with a spirit of fear and that it would manifest through night terrors and uh anxiety and pain in her chest and so um i didn't know who it was and so i i got up you know i think michael i think you even taught uh at that meeting and then at the end i got up and i said hey i felt like god was showing me that there's somebody who's been dealing with night terrors and anxiety i didn't say spirit of fear because if you come in and say hey somebody has a spirit of fear you know that's not exactly protecting them a lot of people will feel shame because of that although there's nothing to feel ashamed of it's a demonic spirit that's attacking you you're not like inviting it to come and dwell with you um but all the same i said yeah you've been dealing with this i said who is this because i didn't i didn't have clarity on who it was in the room and nobody stood up uh which makes sense right because if you've got a spirit of fear the last thing you want to do yeah they're afraid to stand up and be singled out i said listen i know that you're probably afraid to stand up but i really do feel like god wants to set you free today and and that's something i always try to do is point to the freedom you'll experience uh rather than the the thing that's holding them back right um and this is true with believers and unbelievers you know if you're asking to pray for somebody who's not a believer they're like well i don't want you praying for me i don't believe in all that stuff and i always go yeah but wouldn't you like the pain to go away because oftentimes they think you're the problem you're not the problem the problem is the pain and so again i'm encouraging this person to stand up because i i feel very confident that god wants to do something and so this girl stands up she's probably 13 years old you know looks like uh shirley temple and i i then privately pray with her and i command a spirit of fear to leave and when i do she begins to tremble and then she falls back into her chair and she i didn't know this until afterwards but she had suffered with tourette syndrome that was so bad that she had actually been kicked out of her school like two weeks prior because she was so disruptive and saying all kinds of obscene things in the classroom um i mean it was a really unfortunate situation um but that's how this spirit was manifesting itself and some of the symptoms it was causing was her to cuss profusely um so i think there's some time goes by and she's free from this which had never happened but when she goes home and tells her parents her dad says sweetie i don't think that that really happened i don't think that you're really free from tourettes and from what i understand the issue actually came back later on um and i don't think she was permanently set free and i didn't really get a chance to interact with her anymore after that i'm not entirely sure why that happened i do know that she saw a two-week period where she wasn't cussing uncontrollably which should well you know prove something the story the story i remember michael was that she was like driving back home with her dad and she was like hey i just noticed i haven't said a profi i haven't said like a profane word like all evening and he's like whoa that's crazy and it continued for some time after that and her family was like marveling at it don't you remember that yeah well i i just noticed that the way you is that the way you remember it yeah it came back which which yeah it came back was it after two weeks yeah it was like two i mean i i i'm not entirely sure i mean again this was i don't know this is over ten years ago i think uh but i'm i'm pretty sure it came back within a couple of weeks but still for two weeks to be freezing that is a pretty astounding amount of time considering this was a daily thing and some people would so there are two different things we're talking about right now like one would be um like maintaining a healing and the other one would be demonic activity we actually have biblical precedent that um that a person can have be demonized and that demon can actually be exercised um and that demon come back with seven more evil right we actually have biblical evidence to say hey if you're not filling that vessel with the strong man being the spirit then you you can have more demonic activity that's present and also we have passages talk about not giving foothold to the devil in the scriptures so so we have this this pattern of sin or disbelief or whatever giving access to demonic activity and that if those things aren't dealt with that demonic activity can come back so in this young girl's situation it seems as if she had a demonic activity that was causing a sickness or bringing with it some kind of uh sickness such as tourette's and that once that was dealt with that that activity came back um so so specifically in the case of demonic activity i think we can all see how that's possible uh how what do you guys and maybe this is the fifth step here um how do y'all process through people keeping their healing someone who was sick and they actually physically experienced freedom but then begin to doubt or disbelieve their healing and then it went away um is that yeah is that gonna be addressed in this process yeah i well i think this story is actually instructive on that and i i think this is important too because a lot of people will say well like you know jesus never had to coach anyone to keep their healing but uh he actually says go and sin no more unless nothing worse happened to you and uh and then we have the story in matthew 12 where uh he you just mentioned uh where the spirit leaves and then brings back seven of its more wicked spirit friends which is just an interesting side note there are spirits with degrees of wickedness um but uh neither here nor there my point is that there is such a thing as keeping a healing and that involves walking in holiness because if we return to the sin that we uh were in before and uh then we might have that infirmity return and so uh really the coaching to keep your healing it's it's not about like i i i can see why that gets uh sort of a hard time because i i've heard of some people the way they do this is they're like you know you just gotta keep telling yourself and keep it it's almost like this personal pep talk you're giving it all time yeah yeah and it sounds more like conjuring it sounds more contrived and um that's not what we're talking about we're just talking about live a holy life we're talking about okay go ahead i was gonna say help me out with the story because like i'm with you guys when i hear people talk about keeping their healing i hear that your psychological certainty is what manifests and maintains your your healing which makes the healing entirely about your power and your ability and not in the power of christ right so i also agree with you i want to get it off of me and what i have to do and place my faith and expectation in christ right so that's what i want to do with healing but i have this experience i was very young i had to have been nine years old um maybe even younger and um i'm i'm at church um i walk in after a kid's church i'm walking into the sanctuary it's an evening service um it it was an assemblies of god church but we were a pretty organized assemblies of god church i never remembered in my entire time there um people slaying in the spirit or anything like that but but people were really weeping and and being ministered to and like like it was tangible and at nine i could walk in and go like something's going on you know i'd never noticed it before and uh my mom's up front and she's crying and i'm like what's going on and apparently someone had gotten healed and it was just really it was a moving touching thing and i had this really bad headache and i told my mom i was like hey i've got a horrible headache do you have tylenol or you know something and she goes uh well let's have miss gina pray for you when i go up front and there's an older lady there at the church miss gina stewart and she lays hands on me and she prays it was a short prayer but i'm telling you i felt that thing leave instantly and i was just like blown away it's first time i'd ever experienced a healing myself and i'm sitting in the car waiting for my mom because it's an evening service and you know um she likes to talk right so i'm stuck in the car waiting on her and as i'm sitting in the front seat i'm like waiting going okay well i wonder if that really happened and i actually started questioning like i wonder if that was real and then suddenly i was nailed with a headache i mean i had for 20 minutes not had a headache you know and i'm now sitting in the car questioning whether that was god or whether that was even real was was i just convincing myself that was something and then was nailed with a headache and i was like oh no no no no like i don't want to doubt you know and then my mom gets in the car and she's like wasn't that great you got healed and i was just like but i have a headache now like what happened um that that experience has always been a bit of a prick in my in my theological categories and i don't want my experience to drive my theology but what how would you guys make sense of that so yeah i think you you just returned to a life of sin is really what happened that's what i would say i mean it sounds right yeah all right i think this is the so when i look back on the experience with the girl with tourette's i think on some level i also failed her there was a lot that i i don't know if i ever got to the root issue for why she was demonized um i i don't know there could have been other things going on that we just didn't address and so uh i'm not prone to thinking that your psychological certainty equates to faith i'm just not i don't uh i i don't go that direction really ever i think the um the fact that somebody may get healed of something and then that thing sort of comes back or at least they feel healed uh may very well be because it's demonic and maybe there was something that wasn't dealt with but again i don't think we've covered in totality all the reasons for why those things are there we just mentioned that there is something else playing a part in it and with your particular experience josh i don't know if it had anything to do with doubting i imagine doubting is rather normal you know jesus with the man who was doubting still healed a man he says i believe help my unbelief like it's not like he didn't want that to be true and i think god honors that so i'm really careful to say well that had anything to do with your expectation of a particular outcome um again i always think it you know faith looks like trust in a person and a hope and a person and because of that you can expect certain outcomes um but again there's a number of reasons why people are sick and if we don't deal with the reason for why they're sick then they're not really getting free um i mean you think of the guy who had leprosy jesus could have just said the words but he didn't he touched the man which implies that there was more that jesus was healing than his leprosy so yeah i i like this this comment uh okay so this is from post script chiara yeah i see that yara i feel like the headache story has happened to every youth group child and word of faith pastors use it to teach that we have a lack of faith so we have lost our healing it happened to me um as far as the word of faith you know josh and i we've been talking about we want to do an episode or series of episodes about the word of faith um so i'm going to put that on one side because we're going to do a whole episode on that at least but um but what i want to to do is just address that theology which is in some of the word of faith and it's also in some uh some other circles and uh and this is really what we're trying to protect against this is uh this can be dangerous i think this idea that i have to like convince myself to play mental gymnastics to like squint out a miracle or something like that i just don't think so i i just think we could be more natural in our friendship with god like you know what i would encourage somebody it's like if your headache comes back or whatever it is just talk to god about it like oh god uh i thought i was just healed of that and now i don't feel or now i'm feeling the pain again will you please take this away i think it can be an invitation into a spiritual battle and and going back to god about it but i don't think it is an invitation into a battle of trying to convince yourself you don't actually feel pain or my healing just has not manifested fully or something like that i think that's just silly talk this is not about brainwashing yourself this is about uh just bring it back to god and pray for your healing again so that's how i would understand it okay we've gotta we should probably cover is the next step the prayer selection like what yeah okay so guys here's what i'm thinking we're 45 minutes in there's part of me that wonders if we should cover the last three next week um you think josh i mean i i think that we're probably in a place to cover the next one uh within 15 minutes so we can kind of see where it goes from there the last step doesn't take right yeah okay uh miller talk to us about step three prayer yeah uh what is it prayer or is it prayer selection person yeah well so um john wimber used to explain it this way that there's two different kinds of prayers as the prayers that go up to god and those prayers look like god will you do x y and z and then there's a prayer that comes from god which is you acting as you know christ ambassador uh making a declaration so like when jesus is dealing with a demon he's not asking god to take it away he's actually telling the demon to leave uh same thing is true with the disciples they're not asking god to take away the demon they're commanding the demon to go um and the same thing is true with with peter like when he when he meets the guy at the temple gate who's paralyzed he doesn't stop and say oh god would you heal this man he literally just tells the man what to do so that would be a prayer from god and then there's other prayers that that are less about the person uh who's ministering and more about the person being ministered to like we talked about earlier the girl that i mentioned who had played with the ouija board i walked her through a prayer of repentance so so the prayer that was chosen there was a prayer that she would pray just confessing to god turning away from a particular practice and so um and then sometimes there's other things that are needed like walking somebody through a prayer forgiveness i saw this happen with a i was praying for a woman who had a lump in her side i was in india um i'm pretty sure it was cancer if i'm not mistaken uh but as i was praying for her one of the things i felt like god showed me was that she had a sister that she hadn't forgiven and i said hey i don't know if this is true but um do you have a sister that that you've been holding a grudge against that you need to forgive and she you know kind of sinks her head and says yes i do and so i was like well um would you be open to to praying a prayer of forgiveness and even seeking god's forgiveness for holding this grudge against her and she's like absolutely and so then we prayed for her and as far as i know the lump left so um yeah those three kinds of prayers i think i've mentioned so far maybe there's more that i'm not thinking of so miller do you just try to be in tune with the holy spirit as to how to pray or do you uh do you command an infirmity to leave every time or do you sometimes just at like how do you distinguish between all of those prayers that's a good question um well i think certain issues have pretty uh obvious prayers like you know you committed a sin you've never confessed it obviously that's a confessional prayer um that makes sense it sort of goes with that territory um whereas when i'm dealing with a sickness i tend to has have as a default a commanding a sickness to leave if i have no other reason for causation although i don't mind praying to god either so yeah in that moment i'm usually asking god how do i pray so this is where i was saying like even in the diagnosis process right we're asking that person questions we're interviewing them but then we're also sort of interviewing god and then when it comes to the prayer selection well i'm going with what i know from the scriptures but i'm also asking god how to pray um so it's always sort of a partnering with the holy spirit throughout the whole process well and if it's a prayer for forgiveness or if it's a prayer for repentance there's obviously a situational dynamic to that and here's just one thing i have found to be really awesome about healing ministry and that i think is something that a a cessationist honestly would uh uh or just anyone who doesn't pray for the sick often okay would miss out on uh i have found that as a pastor it really brings my church to a place of greater holiness because what happens is they might come forward because they've got back pain or they've got headaches or they've got night terrors or whatever it is and if by the end of that prayer they're forgiving their father or by the end of that prayer they're repenting for a porn addiction or whatever it might be and they're turning back to god what happens is i didn't just get to be you know partner with the holy spirit to bring a physical healing but more importantly i've been able to partner with the holy spirit in that person's journey of sanctification from sin and as shepherds isn't that what we're trying to do and so i find that uh that a lot of times the and we talked about this in step two with the diagnosis that that healing ministry i just think it's so much more holistic than we tend to realize because uh yes there are times you just lay your hands you pray they're healed or you just pronounce the word even and they're healed and miller i know that you've seen a lot of people healed over the phone all that stuff can happen but uh but man i find that whether like in prayer selection that i'm able to walk that person through a sanctification journey i find it to be a beautiful thing i i think something else is that this stuff is multifaceted so uh first it's a person that is infirmed uh because of sin um sometimes the sin that they're in they also hate and they don't want the sin so it's not like they're entirely unrepentant about it it's it's more like they're um the sin that they're in they've never really gotten to the root as to why that sin has been committed um i see this to be very true with people who have sex addiction people have pornographic addiction there's there's usually a wounding and inner healing that's needed that has and those sins are actually just symptoms of a deeper issue um so i don't know it is more multifaceted than just a quick easy like here pray this prayer and you'll be free um so that that's another reason why people are sick is there's emotional wounds from their past that have caused them to act out in sinful patterns so yeah okay i just make this more complicated no no you're good you're good so i want to talk about the like if the prayer selection comes down to it was a supernatural cause it was demonization we could obviously do an entire show on this and i'm sure that we will and we probably have at some point but um how do you cast out a demon josh you say go away josh doesn't believe people people can be demonized so he doesn't that's not true i just mess with you uh no well josh why don't you start with this why don't you even before we even get to that um why are we using the word demonized instead of demon possessed so we we like to use the word possessed and oppressed in christian circles but the word in the bible used for uh demonization is the word demonize or demonizo just means that they have some level of demonic influence in a person's life um demons are non-spatial they're non-corporeal so they don't they don't exist in space and because of that the idea of oppression and possession are um just foreign to scripture um we like to use the terms oppression and possession because the idea of possession in the western context is meat puppet um that if uh you've watched any kind of horror films you have a demon because you know you can levitate and your head can spin around and you can project all violent pea soup because you have a demon in you that's controlling you like a meat puppet is that funny michael so that's not the way i would have described it so that that's typically in the west when we think of possession that's what we think of and then we have a group of christians who go really like can a christian um who is a uh a believer in christ be a meat puppet for the devil can someone can a demonic spirit control them to murder you know can a demon control them to to act out in sin and well the bible talks about the gift of the spirit and the fruit of the spirit is self-control right so they go well you can't have a demon possession because they're they're again they have this this very western context and i keep using the word meat puppet because i think it's the best articulation of that um uh but but realistically the way that the scriptures talk is is more about demonization any kind of oppression or possession would all be in the same category of scripture so when the bible says that paul had a thorn in his flesh sent to buffet him um it seems as if this was a demonic activity that was involved in paul's life that would have been oppression this child of abraham who was bent over with a spirit of infirmity that would have been oppression the the demoniac who is cutting himself with rocks and crying out in uh uh uh a graveyard and he's butt naked out of his mind oppression now all of those are the exact same there's category there are multiple kinds of butt naked there's out of your mind but you get it right there's just not naked it might just be the geographical like location like if you're planning to get in a cemetery you're out of your mind kind of yeah i mean if you're if you're streaking during this you guys are digressed versus being being in a graveyard naked if you're in a graveyard naked you've got another another level of demon we're not doing that well you know what actually cracks me up you know what cracks me up about that story is that they were afraid after he was clothed in his right mind it's like yeah no kidding i'm like aren't you afraid of naked dude in the cemetery with a knife you're not afraid of that guy there's this guy you know what people overlook there is the fact that jesus had to tell the demon to leave more than once that's right he had said he he then asked the demon a question after he he says that he had been commanding him to come out of him and commanding it to come out of him is that not weird anybody else out no i mean it's wacky i think that that even is an example of um the investigation thing that we're talking about it seemed as if jesus and this is my perception this is me reading in between the lines and trying to create a cohesive interpretation of scripture he had been saying you know to come out of him and then he asks what's your name um he begins that investigation process which would be my kind of go-to model when people say hey how do you cast a demon out you say go in the name of jesus be gone and that fixes lots of it but sometimes it doesn't and then there's an investigation process that takes place where you ask um in this specific situation christ finds out that that he's legion there's many in there my understanding of that is when he tells a demon to go one demon left it's not like this demon was like resisting jesus it seems as if maybe he was investigating what's going on that we know that he cast seven demons out of mary magdalene how do we know it was seven um there was probably some kind of investigation process that looked like this cast out a demon that one leaves but he's still demonized well what's going on here and he asks and turns out there's a legion there's thousands of demons present here um which is an entirely different situation of demonization but to say that hey there is demonic activity in our life it ought not be there um christ doesn't want it there that's that's the first thing is to know that this doesn't belong um and we have authority to tell this thing to go um but if and when it does not go there is a process um i believe that demonic activity has access to our life because of sin um uh we could have had something happen to us or something we could have done that has invited demonic activity in and you can as easily tell that thing to go um but if there is still a stronghold then to speak to the person that is being oppressed and lead them through a prayer of repentance find out how that demonic activity got access to their life um that would be the process that i would i would lead people down but in that whole time you know just like michael and michael is saying here this is not a a program that's not a list and a process of like do these 16 steps like you've got to be dependent on the spirit um and having confidence in the power of christ to set at liberty those who are captive amen hey josh uh because my uh my five steps i use slightly different wording than you why don't you just read off one more time what the five steps are yeah okay um sorry i gotta pull my camera back over here uh five steps that we have is the interview the the diagnosis we have prayer selection uh we've got prayer engagement and then we have post prayer direction those are the post prayer direction i call that lather rinse repeat ah very nice last one okay do you really call it that i i know when i teach it i jokingly say that just because it lets people know like i mean i like had to ask because i know you so that seems like something you might do i i jokingly say that i don't mean that sincerely but but i know that oftentimes you know we pray for people they may see some relief but not complete and so then we have to go back into the first process of interviewing and asking more questions of them asking more questions of god is there something else here is there more than one demon those kind of things yeah okay uh yeah and then go and sin no more i think i mentioned that one that's i think john 5 14. and then uh here's maybe like a last question for us to uh to handle so let's let's say they don't get healed what do we say with regard to anything medical like should we say okay this didn't work go see a doctor now do we say uh keep on praying and you know trying to have more i mean what do you guys say if they're not healed i [Laughter] i like how the camera comes to me michael you must experience this a lot so tell us what happens when people aren't healed you just got that it took you a sec so uh you know the the thing is i will often pray more than once and if i see nothing happen i may say hey let's let's come back in a week um you know my church that i have the luxury of doing that with people if i if i don't see them again i recommend that they go to their church elders and get prayer in a week um because sometimes i just need time to sit before the lord you know there's that passage of you know this kind comes out through prayer and fasting and so sometimes i'll pray and i'll fast and just begin to ask and seek god on hey is there something i'm missing that i didn't catch out or pick up on before um so yeah i i whatever one thing i don't do is tell them it's their fault that they weren't healed um unless they're literally unrepentant of sin which i have done on a couple of occasions which sounds harsh but it's actually the best thing for them is to tell them listen if you don't repent from this if you don't walk away from this practice this is going to stay there and it may get worse um sorry i that sounds bad you say that in like a like a low threatening voice like on those movie trailers where repentance causes sickness you guys are awful you know i did have somebody who was who was helping people contact their dead relatives uh to get reconciliation she was practicing clairvoyancy uh necromancy um and i told her you know the reason you have your vision issues and the pain in your head is because neck pain is because of this and um she even had an evil spirit manifest when we were praying for her but she that's how she was making her living so she didn't want to repent she would rather continue practicing what she's practicing um then be free from evil spirits so yeah there's so many different things that we would encourage people to do like if if you didn't receive your healing um we look at the the account of again paul's thorn in the flesh he went three times before the lord he petitioned the lord and it looked like that was something that he was okay with doing i'm not healed i'm gonna go and pray again so just because you weren't healed today doesn't mean you won't be healed tomorrow when christians look at sin in their life they don't treat sin any differently um they don't go oh well this week i just i was just had all these outbursts of anger i probably won't do any better next week um you know they actually keep contending they keep confessing they keep praying they keep studying their scriptures and that's what we would encourage people to do pray and fast and go into your bible and underline every time in the gospels that jesus healed people and why does he heal people and what's the motivation of jesus and you you task someone with homework and to say read your bible learn what god's heart is on this subject um and yeah that's okay i think and i think i would add on this last step also that when it comes to medical solutions none of us on remnant radio are opposed to medical solutions paul says in 1st timothy 5 take a little whine for your stomach's sake and for your frequent illnesses and so uh and so it's okay to at the same time that you're praying for healing if it doesn't happen you uh you have people you advise that somebody you know what take some tylenol or whatever it is you know um so i i think that the both can be married together i do advise that people go to god first that like because i think that we're so trained in sort of western medicine that it's like oh i'm sick very first thing that i do is call the doctor like what if very first thing we do is we talk to god and what if the second thing we did is we got a few people who love god to pray for us and then what if step three was called the doctor i mean i'm assuming that like this wasn't like your hand was chopped off in like a lumberjack accident um that was a shout out to all the people who are calling me a lumberjack today but uh if your hand gets jumped off in a lumberjack accident go to the doctor and pray on the way that's my advice there's probably some guy who like you're like you're being led by this spirit you don't even know it michael there's a guy who's listening radio driving he's just got his head what do i do father knows he's got one hand he's watching remnant radio on his phone and the other hand yeah okay well everyone thank you so much for tuning into this episode radio what are we talking about next week uh uh roundtree are you with us next week oh man i am starting my writing sabbatical next week so i'm gonna be out for five weeks until march 21st so i think um i might pop in for an occasional episode but i'm pretty much going to be out to the 21st so i think what we're gonna do is if it's okay with miller we'll probably end up doing tongues uh and do the cessationist arguments on tongues bad cessations arguments on tongues uh then we'll follow up on two other weeks because all cessationist arguments are bad yes uh well well just like we did for this series where we do we did the the the bad um cessations arguments than we do the way that this is supposed to be practiced in the testament church and in the way that there's been charismatic abuses we'll probably do three sections of episodes like that for tongues and talking about hey this is the cessationist articulation of tongues this is why we disagree with that um this is what we believe it is to be practiced and this is where it's gone too far so really just trying to call balls and strikes with everything i think me and miller can can keep up with the tongues thing for a couple weeks if there's some dead space just speak in tongues there you go well everybody thank you so much for tuning into this episode of remnant radio we won't be doing that um uh guys so we've got a video i just filmed on patreon if you if you're not giving on patreon please do it's a way to help us keep the show alive uh you can give there on paypal in the link of the description of this video uh there's a paypal link and give one time gift or you can give there on patreon those five bucks a month i just got done filming a video on apostles and prophets in fivefold ministry uh talking about what i think the the roles of apostles and prophets are and how i believe the fivefold ministry our grace is on uh individuals lives and the the fivefold ministry is not a character description or quality of someone's passions and personality but this is a grace on someone's life to be effective and fruitful in ministry so um uh if you're interested in that you can go check that out on patreon it will release probably by tomorrow uh and then right after this video me and roundtree are gonna be filming a video on election uh that election uh being well actually you'll have to click on that video to figure out what that's about um our view of election is it corporate is individual that kind of thing and uh get some of our thoughts on that so those are ways that you can keep helping the ministry it's as low as five bucks a month uh if you're out there and you're like hey i can't afford five bucks a month shoot me an email at media at the remnant radio dot com and we can figure something out for you uh but we figured five dollars is a pretty low threshold that anyone can give at that amount uh to help support the channel so we've got really great shows coming up next week i got an episode on baptism infant baptism uh age of accountability a lot of the questions surrounding children and youth then we've got a video on getting ghosty with augustine that we're gonna do with matthew esquivel dr amos young from fuller theological seminary is going to be with us he's a pentecostal theologian then we have the to be continued series on the gift so make sure that you hit subscribe and set notifications on those videos that when we go live you're notified and you can jump into that discussion i want to thank everyone for coming into the chat today thank you michael miller and roundtree for joining us for the conversation uh and look forward to see you guys next week we'll catch you later blessings you

Channel: The Remnant Radio

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Id: MXholziSbdU

Length: 69min 35sec (4175 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021