Spiritual Gift: Healing

The spiritual gift of healing was a hard one for me to study, but by the grace of God I believe I can explain it well. I know a couple of people who have the gift of healing and have seen some amazing things take place. In 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 "healings" is plural, just like in 1 Corinthians 12:28. After doing a word study on these passages, we see that Paul does not have in mind that the gift of healing is drawn by some "general power" within themselves, but the healings take place with faith and mostly charisma through the Holy Spirit.

People who have the gift of healing usually would have a natural ability to sympathize or empathize along with the ability to know what to do in certain situations. When these people are yielded to the Holy Spirit, miraculous healings can take place. Through reading, Paul seems to make these healings as miraculous as the ones done by Christ himself.

The American church has institutionalized spiritual gifts. What I mean is that we have taught that each person has certain gifts and that's it. However, scripture often makes clear that we should pray for gifts. So, if someone prays for the gift of healing and is able to heal someone in the Church of a disease, we must be careful not to label that person or assign them to a "healing ministry." The Spirit does give gifts at certain times to those with enough faith and charisma to heal.

Look at some of these examples of healings, and please read the surrounding verses to understand the context: Acts 2:43; 5:12; 2 Corinthians 12:12. When one reads through the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) we see Jesus constantly healing (Matthew 8:16-17). These healings were just a foretaste, or appetizer, to the healing that would take place through the atonement.

Here is the thing friends: The gift of healing is real and we must not limit it to charismatic churches. We all pray that God would move in our churches but then the second a "charismatic" man or woman comes in, we disregard them as crazy or something. We are limiting God ourselves when we do this. Let's start having faith and expecting to see healings happen. Let's see God move!