Now there are things that govern whether you should heal someone, or whether you shouldn’t. Their attitude – are they repentant, did they commit their sins in ignorance, are they determined not to repeat them; is there good to be gained by healing them? And yes, that last is a serious question. Always start by asking yourself the following three questions, to get perspective, no matter how emotional the situation:

• Does God love this person more than I do?
• Does God actually have the POWER to change their situation completely?
• Has God done so?

And then conclude that there must be a reason why God has permitted this – something that is for THEIR good – or God would have already fixed it! I know this can sound heartless, but check the logic there again – it can’t be broken. God has been sitting on His throne watching the whole situation all their life and doing absolutely nothing about this person’s sickness or poverty or heartache or even demon possession. So before you go sticking your nose into the affair, you’d better figure out why He hasn’t – and why you should get involved and change the situation.

There are lots of reasons why you should, and would – I talk about that at length in my article “The Shocking Truth About Prayer.” But the bottom line is, the reasons might include (among others):

1. Because you believe this person really sincerely has repented and now deserves the blessings of God. This will always be the primary reason.
2. Even if you’re wrong, it will serve to teach you WHY this person shouldn’t have been healed so you can use better judgment next time. (e.g., watching the unhealthy things they eat after you heal them, or the Stephen King movies they watch after you cast out their devil).
3. To prove to them that God is working through you (1 Kings 17:23-24) so that they will repent. Careful about abusing this one!
4. To give them a chance to know God, so that down the road they can’t tell God “but I didn’t know!” (mostly for things like grace, and understanding).

But there are also many reasons why you WOULDN’T pray for someone, much LESS use your authority on them directly!

1 John 5:16 If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do NOT say that he shall pray for it.

Clearly, John says there are times you should NOT pray for someone. I talk about this in various articles, just to summarize here:

1. They refuse to repent of their sins

Often people ask me to pray for them, and I tell them a few things that might have caused their sickness, and they say “Oh, I don’t want to know what’s wrong with me, I just want God to heal me!” – well, good luck with that! That isn’t how it works!

Healing is the forgiveness of SIN. When I command your healing, I am forgiving your sin – the sins that caused this sickness. And no sin can be forgiven UNLESS it is first stopped, and repented of! (See my article “Forgiveness Without Repentance Is Wrong”). Because when I forgive your sin, I am acting in capacity as a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), symbolically offering the sacrifice of Jesus upon an altar for YOUR sin in order to forgive it – that’s the only way you can be forgiven!

And yet the sacrifice of Jesus CANNOT be applied to a WILFULL, conscious, on-going sin!

Hebrews 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,

So there can be no sacrifice until you have REPENTED of the cause. Of course the cause isn’t always known by either the person needing help or the person helping, so at those times we must be lenient and grant them help at least until we can find a cause – provided the person is sincerely interested in finding it.

2. The person is in the world, and is not at all interested in God.

Many prayer lists abound with people who have rejected God all their life, are not at all interested in changing, and soft-hearted (and often soft-headed) church members feel responsible to pray for them. Why? Yes, they’re suffering and yes, that’s terrible… but remember our three questions above. Doesn’t God see it? Doesn’t it bother God MORE than it bothers you that they suffer? And isn’t He the one in a position to FIX it? And DOES HE?