What does it take to become a skilled, anointed leader in an area, in any area of life? Let’s say, for instance, we desire to master the release of God’s miracle-working power flowing out through our lives so that suffering is alleviated and the kingdom of God is extended. How does one successfully release the gift of miracles? Having just returned from the Voice of the Apostles Conference and being scheduled to do a miracle service myself, I am immersed in this question. I need healing and miracles to work!
Currently both Bill Johnson and Randy Clark have huge international healing ministries where they see thousands of miracles occurring every year. How did they arrive at this point of mastery?
They tell their stories in two books they have co-authored, The Essential Guide to Healing and Healing Unplugged.
Both Randy and Bill have been passionate about miracles and healing for over 30 years. As I read their stories, the Lord showed me they both took the seven steps listed below as they have sought and acquired a proficiency in releasing miracles and healing the sick.
The Seven Steps to Mastery
Establish a passionate intention to succeed whatever the cost.
There will be failures and bumps in the road. Do not quit, or focus on them. Focus instead on God’s vision and on the successes.
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Acquire God’s clear vision, purpose and will concerning the area
through prayerfully meditating on Scriptures, and hearing God's voice.
- Discover and master key skills necessary to succeed in the area.
List from Scripture and your readings of books by successful people what skills must be developed. Work on developing these skills.
- Get coaching from experts allowing them to teach you the finer points.
Identify the key leaders in the area. Read their books, go to their conferences, listen to their teachings, receive an impartation and build relationships with them.
- Commit time to becoming proficient – acknowledge successes and failures.
I will learn from my mistakes. "Lord, show me what went wrong there. Lord, show me what I did right here."
- Learn together in community, as iron sharpens iron, so …
Teaming up produces synergy which is greater than the sum of its parts.
- Release God’s glory into the area.
See God’s Kingdom manifested as you walk and live.
The 7 Steps to Mastery as Applied by Bill Johnson, Randy Clark & Mark Virkler
As I read Healing Unplugged and The Essential Guide to Healing (both of which are completely down to earth, practical and awesome) I could not help but relate a number of their key learning experiences in mastering miracles and healing, to my own battle to learn to hear God's voice. Here are some of these correlations, stated very briefly. How about if, as you read, you relate these seven principles to an area in which you have succeeded in your life. This will allow you to see that you have already created success by using these keys, which means you can do it again in another area of your life - divine healing perhaps.
- Establish a passionate Intention to succeed whatever the cost.
- Bill abandoned his pursuit of miracles after not succeeding. He then went to Toronto and made a fresh commitment that if God would restore healing, he would never abandon it again.
- I abandoned learning to hear God’s voice after years of fruitless searching. Then I made a commitment to spend a year focused on learning to hear God’s voice.
- Acquire God’s clear vision, purpose and will concerning the area.
- Bill and Randy were passionate that God’s will is to heal the sick. It is part of the Gospel of the Kingdom.
- I was passionate that Jesus’ words were true that “My sheep hear My voice.”
- Discover and master the key skills necessary to succeed in the area.
- Bill and Randy explored how to increase faith and understanding for miracles.
- I explored how to increase faith and understanding for God’s voice and vision.
- Get coaching from experts allowing them to teach you the finer points.
- Bill and Randy learned from John Wimber, John Arnott, Morton Kelsey and others.
- I learned from Morton Kelsey, Jack Hayford, Dennis and Matt Lynn and others.
- Commit time to becoming proficient – acknowledge successes and failures.
- Bill and Randy spent many years perfecting the gifts of healings and miracles.
- I spent many years perfecting the gifts of hearing and seeing and two-way journaling.
- Learn together in community, as iron sharpens iron, so …
- Bill and Randy have teamed up and taught one another keys to releasing miracles.
- I have teamed up with Murray Dueck, Gary Greig, Mike Rogers and others to expand into related areas.
- Release God’s glory into the area.
- Miracles and healings are commonplace wherever Bill and Randy minister.
- When I teach on hearing God's voice 95+% are able to hear.
Reflections from These 3 Life Stories - Bill Johnson's, Randy Clark's and Mark Virkler's
Some people teach that the supernatural has ceased. We need to cleanse our hearts and minds of all such contamination and steer clear of such teachers and teachings in the future.
Some people, who know how to do a particular skill, do it so intuitively they cannot communicate to others how they do it, so they will not be of much value to you. You need people who can communicate clearly and in a language you can understand so you can take steps forward in the realm of the supernatural.
Great advances in healings came when people go with Randy to South America on healing crusades. Also when I went with Steve Stewart to India on a Journey of Compassion, I took a huge step forward in healing. Such ministry trips are highly recommended!
Let’s Team Up, Grow and Coach One Another!
Three months of focused, revelation-based learning with a coach and a group pursuing intently the same goal produces astounding results. However, if after three months, you have not mastered the revelation you are seeking and are not yet walking in it, do not go on to another topic. Stick with the topic God has you on, reviewing it more intently, adding additional resources and coaches and experimenting until you have obtained mastery. THEN you are free to move on under the direction of the Holy Spirit. This approach allows you mastery in area after area.
I remember with fondness a three-month course on divine healing which I led at Buffalo School of the Bible using John Wimber’s videos. We prayed each of the 12 weeks for healings, and by the time we got to the last 2-3 weeks, everyone we were praying for was healed. This included a baby in a hospital whom they were ready to take the tubes out of and allow to die. We all laid hands on a handkerchief and imparted God's healing power into it and it was taken and laid on the baby and she instantly recovered.
Focusing intentionally and experientially as a group for three months brought huge results. We were doing lots of things right. We had a good coach, John Wimber by video. We were doing homework where we were meditating on healing Scriptures and healing principles. We were coming together to share our insights and revelations. We were a close knit group that had been through training on how to hear God's voice and see vision so we knew how to pray Spirit-led prayers. We spent half of our class time praying for people who were sick. We used soaking prayer and laying on of hands, and vision and flow. We meditated on healing Scriptures together. We got amazing results from just 12 weeks of focus on miracles and healing.
Places You Can Grow Together and Receive Coaching on Things of the Spirit
- By correspondance: 27+ electronic training modules in the CLU School of the Spirit.
For those who can attend a residency school for a few months, then we recommend the following:
- Randy Clark has Global School of Supernatural Ministry
- Bill Johnson has Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry
- John Arnott has Catch the Fire School of Ministry
- Loren Cunningham has Youth With a Mission
Thought: You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. C. S. Lewis
Those Seven Steps to Mastery again are…
- Passionate intention
- God’s clear vision
- Master key skills
- Coaching from experts
- Commit time
- Learn together
- Release God’s glory
Additional Resources
Miracles of Healing - 7 Step Model - Adapted from John Wimber's 5 step healing model, these steps add in "Compassion" as a specific step, and "Praying a second, third or fourth time" as a specific step.
Vibrant Health! - Miracles PLUS Gifts of Healings - Approximately 100 blogs exploring not only miracles but God's other provisions, which He calls "Gifts of Healings." Wow! So many ways to restore health. Thank You, Lord! Let's use them ALL. Why not?
Photo credits
"Children Balancing" image courtesy of CharlaArts
"Teemwork" image courtesy of CharlaArts
"Roadmap to a Bountiful Harvest" image courtesy of CharlaArts
Related Resources:
How to Be Empowered by the Holy Spirit! How to Enjoy Vibrant Health! Unique Gifts Make Winning Teams!
Comments
Healing Prayer
by Roger Harper
Many thanks for your great blog posts.
Compassion in healing is paramount indeed, as Charity and yourself have stressed. I love Heidi Baker’s praying with people mostly through hugging them – so much obvious love. I appreciate that, as she has said, she doesn’t do ‘line ‘em up and knock ‘em down’ – which could be taken as not so loving. I have some concern that an overemphasis on the word of knowledge and on seeking out the sick for prayer could also lead to practices which are less than fully loving.
I remember someone in a wheelchair writing that they are now wary of travelling in the States because people have come to them and asked to pray with them without getting to know them as a person, and in a way that makes it hard to say ‘Not now, thanks.’ Better to show compassion to the person rather than focus on their symptoms. Not that 1 want to discard words of knowledge: I have great memories of asking a waitress if ‘sisters’ meant anything to her after it had come to me. She laughed and replied ‘Yeah. I have 12 sisters. My Dad’s been a slut.’ That led to significant prayer. Or another woman in a restaurant who opened her eyes wide with amazement after the word had come to me ‘Green – maybe a favourite colour.’ My prophetic friend and I prayed with her and she received a significant healing. I also regularly give words of knowledge at the end of weddings, to which people respond often enough for me to keep going. More often, though, I have prayed with people, those I know and strangers, after establishing, sometimes briefly, a good relationship and after asking them how they need God to come to them.
For me this way is closer to Jesus’ teaching when he sent out the disciples, the 10 and the 72. Yes they were to go and heal the sick, but first they were to notice the people who received their greeting of peace and to receive from these people. Only then, once the relationship had been established, did they bring healing, and then explain the Kingdom of God. Some years ago I heard Mike Breen explain all this and I have much enjoyed putting it into practice according to my level of boldness, still growing. (Mike is a Church of England Minister now working in the US.) The fields which are ripe for harvest are the ones where there is a welcome for the reaper. When people greet us or return our greeting with more than expected warmth, they are the ones with whom we are to spend time, not thinking about the next person to minister to. First we receive from them, whatever they want to give us. As we receive and visit (US meaning), sooner or later a need for healing will become apparent. Then we offer to pray. We go firstly looking for the warm greeting, rather than the sick person, and follow from there.
I also find, as I wrote before, that it helps to ask the person in need what they want us to pray for, (and see if this can be expressed in picture language.) Not all people in wheelchairs want to pray for their healing. As love does not insist on its own way, I think it best to start not with our way of praying, even if it is prompted by the Holy Spirit, but with their way. I find that, having started with what they want, it is easy then to have some moments’ quiet waiting for the Holy Spirit to flow, and, if a word of knowledge comes then, it can be offered and is usually accepted. (I find that speaking out loud, even very quietly to myself, works as well as writing as the 4th Key and is a lot easier when you are in the middle of praying with someone.)
Not starting with a word of knowledge also means that anyone, preferably in a team of 2, can pray, including those not confident in words of knowledge. All we have to do is notice the people greeting us warmly, receive from them, and offer prayer when a need arises naturally. Let me know if you want any more stories of this working out in practice. Airports, in my experience, are particularly good places for finding white fields.
The other element in healing, as with the rest of life, is to look to see Jesus with us. I gather I am not the only person to whom Jesus says repeatedly, ‘Look to see me with you always.’ We look to see where Jesus is and what He is doing as we are with someone, including someone with a need for healing. We then do what we see Him doing, as he did what He saw the Father doing. If He is sitting back relaxed, we sit back relaxed. If He is standing by the door, we go and stand by the door as soon as we can. If He has His hands out raised to heaven as we are praying, we do the same. If He is kneeling in front of someone laying hands on their feet, we do the same. I’m still not very good at actually doing this, despite Jesus having told me to do it for years – thanks to you!
Many thanks for your life-changing ministry and for all the love and enthusiasm you convey.
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