Spiritual Gifts: The Gift of Healing

Outline

• Modern views
• Biblical practice

Introduction

The pastor walked to the front of the stage while the band was softly playing and said, ‘The Spirit has told me that an anointing for healing is here tonight. If anyone wants to be healed come to the front and we will pray for you.’ Sitting in the front row was a girl with a birth defect sitting in a wheelchair. She had been born with five vertebrae missing. Two young men heard the pastor and saw the girl and went to the girl in the wheelchair and prayed for her and pulled her out of the chair to try and get her to walk. She was not healed. That girl was the sister of one of my ex-girlfriends, and one of those young men was me.

The gift of healing; that is what we want to consider today. 1 Corinthians 12:9 talks about ‘gifts of healing.’ The book of Acts is filled with many acts of healing, not to mention the ministry of Christ. Is the gift of healing something that we should expect to see functioning in the church today? It is not a revelatory gift, so it need not cease like prophecy, are the men and women who claim this gift actually empowered by God to heal?

Today we want to consider this gift as it is defined by its modern practitioners, and then we will consider the bible’s teaching on the matter.