Why most Christians never step into supernatural power.
Brethren, it was 10 o’clock at night when the urgent call came. A young woman lay dying of consumption in her bedroom. The doctor had given up. Her family hadn’t slept in three weeks, taking turns keeping vigil as death slowly claimed their beloved daughter. Her lungs were shredded, reduced to nothing but torn tissue. Every breath was a battle she was losing. When I arrived and saw her condition, I knew one thing with absolute certainty: unless God himself intervened, this girl would not see mourning.
The atmosphere in that house was thick with fear, exhaustion, and hopelessness. The family surrounded her bed, unable to let go, unable to help, watching her slip away minute by minute.
But what happened in that bedroom between 11 p.m. and dawn will challenge everything you believe about the gifts of healing and the working of miracles.
Let me tell you what happened. Before I tell you the rest of that story, I need you to understand something critical about the spiritual life.
Matthew 5: 13 You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
Church, we cannot afford to become stale salt. We cannot afford to stop moving forward with God.
I have had to come out of spiritual stagnation multiple times in my life. When I was in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, I was sure I was saved and was sure I was all right. But the Lord said to me, Come out, and I came out. When I was with the people known as the Brethren, I was convinced I had arrived. But the Lord said, ‘Come out.’ Then I went into the Salvation Army. At that time it was full of life, and there were revivals everywhere. But when the Salvation Army went into natural things, and those great revivals ceased, the Lord said to me, ‘Come out.’ And I came out.
Listen carefully. God has no use for any man who is not hungering and thirsting for yet more of himself and his righteousness.
Philippians 3:13-14 about Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Now, the Lord has told us to covet earnestly the best gifts. We need to see the gifts of healing and the working of miracles in operation today.
But here is what most believers miss. These gifts do not operate in an atmosphere of criticism, competition, or cold religion.
Brethren, I am satisfied that in Pentecostal circles today, our paramount need is more perfect love. Perfect love will never want the preeminence in everything. It will never want to take the place of another. It will always be willing to take the back seat.
If you go to a convention and there is always someone who wants to give a message, who wants to be heard, who wants to be seen, who wants something on the line of finances, that person has no right to be there.
The one thing that must move us must be the constraining love of God to minister for him.
You see, when I was in the plumbing business, I would get urgent calls to pray for the sick. I would have no time to wash, and with my hands all black I would preach to these sick ones, my heart all aglow with love. You must have your heart in the thing when you pray for the sick. You have to get right to the bottom of the cancer with a divine compassion, and then you will see the gifts of the Spirit in operation.
Let me take you back to that bedroom at ten o’clock at night. The dying girl lay there, her family surrounding her in their fear and exhaustion. I looked at the mother and said, “Well, mother, you will have to go to bed”. She protested, oh, I have not had my clothes off for three weeks.
I said to the daughters, you will have to go to bed. They did not want to go. It was the same with the son.
So, I put on my overcoat and said, Goodbye, I’m off. You should have seen their faces. Oh, don’t leave us, they cried. I said, I can do nothing here.
Oh, if you stop, we will all go to bed, they promised. Why did I do this?
Because I knew that God would move nothing in an atmosphere of mere natural sympathy and unbelief. You cannot have breakthrough in a room filled with panic and doubt. The gifts of healing operate in faith, not in fear.
They all went to bed, and I stayed. Brothers and sisters, that was surely a time as I knelt by that bed, face to face with death and with the devil. The room was silent, except for her labored breathing. The family had gone to rest, trusting me to intercede, and the fight came.
It seemed as though the heavens were brass. Have you ever prayed and felt like your prayers were bouncing off the ceiling? That is where I was. I prayed from eleven o’clock until three thirty in the morning. Four and a half hours of warfare. Four and a half hours of standing against the powers of darkness.
And then I saw it. The glimmering light on the face of the sufferer. I watched her take her last breath. I saw her pass away. The devil whispered in my ear, Now you are done for. You have come from Bradford, and the girl has died on your hands. What will you tell the family? What will people say?
But in that moment something rose up inside me. I said it can’t be. God did not send me here for nothing, this is a time to change strength.
I remembered that passage in Luke 18: 1 which says men always ought to pray and not lose heart
Death had taken place but I knew that my God was all powerful the God who split the Red Sea is just the same today. Can you imagine from death to sleep, from gone to resting.
Then I had a glorious time, brethren. In the morning, she woke early, put on a dressing gown, and walked to the piano. She started to play and to sing a wonderful song. The mother and the sister and the brother had all come down to listen. The Lord had undertaken. A miracle had been wrought. The lungs that were in shreds that were just gone, the Lord restored them perfectly sound. This was not a partial healing. This was not an improvement. This was resurrection power in operation.
Now, let me teach you something crucial about the gifts of healing.
When you pray for the sick, you must understand that you are not dealing with the person alone. You are dealing with satanic forces that are binding the person.
Jesus declares in Luke 13:16, speaking of the woman who was bound, so ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it, for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath.
You see, Jesus identified Satan as the one doing the binding. Your heart must be full of love and compassion to all, but you must be moved to a holy anger as you see the place the devil has taken in the body of the sick one.
You deal with his position with real forcefulness. Much sickness is caused by some misconduct. There is something wrong. There is some neglect somewhere, and Satan has had a chance to get in.
It is necessary to repent and confess where you have given place to the devil, and then he can be dealt with.
When you deal with a cancer case, recognize that it is a living, evil spirit that is destroying the body.
I had to pray for a woman in Los Angeles one time who was suffering with cancer.
As soon as it was cursed, it stopped bleeding. It was dead. The next thing that happened was that the natural body pressed it out because the natural body had no room for dead matter.
It came out like a great big ball with tens of thousands of fibers. All these fibers had been pressing into the flesh.
But the moment that evil power was destroyed, its hold was gone. Now here is the key that unlocks everything.
1 John 3:4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. Take your position in this truth and declare it.
Recognize that it is not yourself that has to deal with the power of the devil. But the greater one that is in you.
Oh, what it means to be filled with him. You can do nothing of yourself, but he that is in you will win the victory. Your being has become the temple of the Spirit. Your mouth, your mind, your whole being becomes exercised and worked upon by the Spirit of God.
Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
It is our privilege in the power of the Holy Ghost to loose the prisoners of Satan and to let the oppressed go free.
But you need to know something. Before God could bring me to this place, he broke me a thousand times. I have wept, I have groaned, I have travailed many a night until God broke me.
It seems to me that until God has mowed you down, you never can have this long-suffering for others.
There is a fruit of the Spirit that must accompany the gift of healing, and that is long-suffering. The man who is going through with God to be used in healing must be a man of long-suffering. He must be always ready with a word of comfort. If the sick one is in distress and helpless and does not see everything eye to eye with you, you must bear with him.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was filled with compassion, and lived and moved in a place of long-suffering.
1 Peter 2:23 that when he was reviled, did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten but committed himself to him who judges righteously.
We will have to get into this place if we are to help needy ones. Let me share another testimony that will build your faith. I was called to a certain town in Norway. The hall seated about 1,500 people. When I got to the place, it was packed, and hundreds were trying to get in. I preached to the people outside first, then I asked the policemen to get me the marketplace to preach in. They secured a great park for me, and I was able to preach to thousands.
After the preaching, we had some wonderful cases of healing. One man came a hundred miles, bringing his food with him.
He had not been passing anything through his stomach for over a month, as he had a great cancer on his stomach.
He was healed at that meeting, and opening his parcel, he began eating before all the people.
There was a young woman there with a stiff hand. Instead of the mother making the child use her arm, she had allowed the child to keep the arm dormant until it was stiff. She had grown up to be a young woman, and was like the woman in Luke 13:11, who, had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over, and could in no way raise herself up.
As she stood before me, I cursed the spirit of infirmity in the name of Jesus. It was instantly cast out and the arm was free. Then she waved it all over.
At the close of the meeting, the devil laid out two people with fits. When the devil is manifesting himself, then is the time to deal with him.
Both of these people were delivered. and when they stood up and thanked and praised the Lord, what a wonderful time we had.
Now, beloved, let me get to the heart of why I am sharing all of this with you.
Most Christians will never step into the gifts of healing and miracles. Most believers will live their entire lives without ever laying hands on the sick and seeing them recover. Most will attend church every Sunday, read their Bibles, say their prayers, but never move into the supernatural dimension that Jesus promised to all believers. Why?
Because it requires something most Christians are unwilling to give. It requires you to be broken. It requires you to move out of your comfort zone. It requires you to risk looking foolish. It requires you to stand in faith when everything in the natural says, It is impossible. It requires you to confront demons. It requires you to war in prayer through the night if necessary. It requires you to develop a depth of compassion that travails over the suffering.
Mark 16:17-18, And these signs will follow those who believe: In my name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues, they will take up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.
Did you catch that? These signs will follow those who believe, not those who attend church, not those who know theology, those who believe.
Church, God is calling you into heart, union with himself. He wants his bride to have one heart and one spirit with him, and to do what he himself loved to do.
What did Jesus love to do? He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, as Peter declares in Acts 10:38.
Here is your challenge, and I am not giving you an option to decline this. If you are serious about following Jesus, this is not a suggestion. This is a command. You must begin to operate in the gifts of healing. You must begin to pray for the sick. You must begin to confront the works of darkness. You must begin to believe God for miracles. Stop making excuses. Stop saying you do not have the gift. Stop waiting for some special anointing to fall on you like ripe cherries.
The gifts of healing are available to every believer who will pay the price of brokenness, develop compassion, and stand in faith.
Find someone who is sick this week. Go to them. Lay hands on them. Command the sickness to leave in the name of Jesus.
Stand in the authority that Christ has given you. Declare that greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
You might be thinking, but what if nothing happens? Then you try again. You think I have seen every person healed that I have prayed for? No.
But I keep standing. I keep believing. I keep pressing forward. Because God has called us to be a people who operate in the supernatural, not a people who sit in the pews and watch others do it.
We are on the threshold of wonderful things, but they will only come through the power of the Holy Ghost.
You must not think that these gifts will fall upon you like ripe cherries.
There is a sense in which you must pay the price for everything you get.
We must be covetous for God’s best gifts and say Amen to any preparation the Lord takes us through, in order that we may be humble, usable vessels through whom He Himself can operate by means of the Spirit’s power.
Brethren, we have been seeing wonderful miracles these last days, and they are only a little of what we are going to see.
I believe that we are right on the threshold of wonderful things, but all these things will be through the power of the Holy Ghost. The Lord has given us much in these last days, and where much is given, much will be required.
John 15:5-6, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
But then he promises in John 15:7, If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
If you do not move on with the Lord these days, and do not walk in the light of revealed truth, you shall become as the savorless salt, as a withered branch.
This one thing we must do. Philippians 3:13-14Forgetting those things that are behind, the past failures and the past blessings, we must reach forth for those things which are before and press toward the mark for the prize of our high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
We must wake up and be on the stretch to believe God. We can never have the gifts of healing and the working of miracles in operation only as we stand in the divine power that God gives us, and we stand believing God, and having done all, we still stand believing.
The Greater One lives in you. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you. The same power that spoke the worlds into existence is available to you. The same authority that cast out demons and healed the sick has been given to you.
Will you step into it? Will you pay the price? Will you move forward with God? Let us pray.
Father, in the mighty name of Jesus, I pray for every person reading these words right now. Break them, Lord, the way you broke me.
Give them a holy dissatisfaction with spiritual mediocrity.
Stir up within them a hunger for the gifts of healing and miracles.
Remove every ounce of fear, doubt, and unbelief.
Fill them afresh with your Holy Spirit and with your compassion for the sick and suffering.
Grant them boldness to lay hands on the sick. Give them faith to see the impossible become possible.
May they declare with confidence that greater is he who is in them than he who is in the world.
Loose them from every chain of religion and tradition that has kept them from operating in the supernatural.
Make them vessels of your healing power. In Jesus’ mighty name, amen.
I believe with all my heart that as you’ve learned about the gift of faith today, something has been activated in your spirit.
The understanding you’ve gained about the difference between your faith and Christ’s faith is already working to transform how you approach impossible situations.
Here’s what I want you to do this week. Every single day, spend time in the Word with this question in mind. Holy Spirit, make this Word alive in me.
Don’t just read it, let Him quicken it to you. And when you face an impossible situation, declare out loud, my faith may run out, but the faith of Christ in me never fails.
But let me ask you something. What happens when the impossible becomes your daily assignment?
What if I told you there’s a way to operate in healing and miracles so consistently that doctors’ death sentences mean nothing to you?
How do you develop the kind of compassion that moves God to work the miraculous through your hands? What price must be paid to see cancers dissolve, deaf ears open, and the dead raised not just once but regularly.
And what does God have to break in you before He can trust you with these gifts?
By Smith Wigglesworth