I recently prayed for a friend who was in pain and facing surgery. I’d prayed for her several times before. Sometimes when you’ve ministered to someone before and they are still having trouble it can feel discouraging. The person you minister to often feels discouraged as well. Today I’d like to share my experience with those situations to encourage other’s who have ministered healing so someone and the person was still dealing with pain or problems after you’ve ministered.

Don’t Let It Stress You, Keep Encouraging People, And Keep Going!

I’ve ministered to many people multiple times who didn’t feel anything the first few times I prayed. Yet I continued to be cheerful and ask if I could pray for them again.

Sometimes they said things like “You know, I had a surgery and there’s a metal rod in my leg.” Or “You know, I don’t have any cartilage in that joint…” I just responded by saying “Oh, that’s no problem. God heals that all the time. It’s not hard for Him.” Or I told them a few testimonies of things that happened recently and said “I’m not giving up! There’s always more happening. I’m growing in Christ and in manifesting His glory to a greater degree.”

So many of those people ended up getting healed. In most cases, I didn’t do anything different. I just did the same thing again. “In Jesus’ name, be whole, restored, free from pain now. I release God’s peace and glory in your body.”

When you minister healing a lot sometimes you start to feel like “this person is easy to get healed” or “that person is a really hard cookie!” Don’t let your mind play tricks on you, and don’t fall into that trap! As soon as we start thinking like that, we get our focus off of Jesus.

When I started ministering healing I sometimes thought “That person I ministered to had so much unbelief. That’s why it was hard to get them healed…” Then I realized that Jesus never told anybody that he couldn’t heal them because of their unbelief.  Everyone who touched him was healed.

I used to share testimonies and encourage people to try to get them to have faith so they could be healed. Now when I encourage people, I’m not really focusing on if I can get them to believe or not. I’m just releasing God’s life with my words. I tell people “You don’t have to try to believe or do anything when I pray for you.” When I tell someone “Don’t worry. This is no problem for God…” they may or may not believe it, but what matters is that I believe it and I’m speaking it.

When someone didn’t feel any improvement the first time, or the first few times I ministered, I used to think there might be some “hindrance” to healing that I needed to uncover or some magical new method that would get the breakthrough for that condition. I read and studied everything I could. But it soon became clear that wasn’t the answer. I couldn’t imagine Jesus touching someone, praying really hard, and then saying “Hmm, it still hurts? Are you sure you don’t have any unforgiveness against anybody in your past that might be blocking your healing?” 

Now, looking back, I can’t even count how many people didn’t feel much different after the first few times I ministered to them but they finally ended up getting healed and experiencing a supernatural touch from God. I’d been sharing testimonies and prayed for certain people several times over the course of a year or more before they got free from pain.

Guess how they got healed? In almost all of the cases, I didn’t minister to them much differently than I had the first time. I didn’t discover a “hidden key” to their healing.  I kept persevering, rejoicing in the Lord, sharing testimonies, and ministering to people.

Some of the best advice I can give you when you’ve ministered a few times and not seen the results you want is “Don’t let it stress you!” Don’t try to figure it all out, and don’t put the responsibility on the person you were ministering to. Just keep releasing God’s life, rejoicing in the Lord, and persevering.

I know that can be hard with some situations that have more fear attached to them. How can you not be stressed by a life and death situation? That’s why we need to continue to be built up in Christ and strengthened in our innermost beings by the power of the Holy Spirit. We get so focused on what the Holy Spirit is doing that the things which used to stress us don’t stress us anymore.

As soon as we start analyzing every little thing and trying to “break the devil’s power,” we are out of a position of faith in God. Sometimes we make faith about overcoming a problem rather than about seeing and knowing Jesus, and when we do that we get out of a place of real faith.  Don’t let your focus turn to the problem.

When you take this attitude, you’ll experience a lot more people coming back later and telling you that they didn’t feel much when you ministered to them but from that moment on their problem went away. You’ll hear that they suddenly started to get stronger, or that even though they didn’t notice much difference at the moment, the pain was gone by the end of the day.

The Powerful Force Of God’s Goodness!

When you keep stepping out to minister healing and seeing more and more happen, you soon begin to feel a powerful force of God’s goodness surrounding you. Wonderful things are going to happen all around you, and it doesn’t matter what you haven’t seen happen yet. 

When I first started ministering healing, I felt really frustrated trying to get myself healed. But as I kept ministering to others, I soon started getting healed when I wasn’t even trying to. It was the force of God’s goodness around me as I continued to minister to people and rejoice in the Lord. God’s glory just started soaking into my body.

Some of you have read the story of how my sister’s eyes were instantly healed. I was sharing a testimony, not of a blind lady whose sight was totally restored, but a blind lady who had a slight improvement in vision, felt God’s power, yet was still legally blind after we ministered. What if I had gotten my mind wrapped up in “Why wasn’t she totally healed?” I wouldn’t have shared the testimony and my sister wouldn’t have been instantly healed from wearing glasses.

Once I ministered to a man with MS. I like to get other people to participate, so I asked his wife to lay hands on him with me as well. He didn’t feel different after we prayed for him. Yet his wife found that she was healed of a bum hip once she got up after ministering to him! We didn’t even pray for her! But God’s goodness soaked into her, and it was the first time in her life that she’d experienced God’s touch in such a way!

One person I like to follow on social media is John Mellor, because he is always posting wonderful testimonies of the amazing healings God is doing. You can follow him on Facebook here. He has even been featured on Australian national news. One thing I’ve noticed about many of his testimonies is that some of the people with serious conditions came to his meetings several times and had progressive improvement each time.  Others were healed of one thing once and of something else another time, or came several times and eventually had a supernatural experience with Jesus the healer. For example, Artyem was in a wheelchair because his head was bashed causing near paralysis. He said his dying wish was to go to one of John Mellor’s meetings, and he had to be carried up the steps. Artyem received prayer multiple times without much clear physical improvement. Yet when John hugged him as they were leaving, he stood up, walked down the stairs normally, and refused to use his wheelchair!

Be Encouraged!

If you’re ministering healing to others, may this encourage you to simply continue talking about what Jesus is doing and ministering to people. Don’t hesitate to minister to someone again even if they didn’t feel anything the first few times. Never blame the receiver for “not having faith,” don’t get stressed, and don’t complicate things. And of course, I never tell someone not to go to the doctor if they are having issues. We do ask people to get checked again by the doctor if they had a serious illness but no longer have any symptoms! We ask for nothing but we have everything to give.

If you’ve received ministry before and are still dealing with physical issues, may this encourage you as well! We’ve seen so many people who didn’t feel much difference after the first few times they received ministry, but they eventually got healed. God isn’t waiting to heal you! His very presence manifest is healing! It’s just that God has put his spirit in human bodies, and we as the “body of Christ” are learning to walk in and manifest His glory to an increasingly greater degree. God loves you, and you’re a great target for his goodness!