One particular place in the Gospels where I go to meet Jesus, my healer, is in the story of the leper. For years, what Jesus said to and did for that man has been a great blessing to me. The leper’s experience has strengthened my faith and made me know that if he could receive healing, anybody can.
What an awful situation that poor man faced! The sickness that plagued him was worse than anything most of us will ever encounter. When he came to Jesus, he wasn’t in the early stages of disease. He didn’t have just a few leprous spots. He was “full of (covered with) leprosy” (Luke 5:12 Amp).
In our modern culture, we aren’t familiar with it but leprosy is a horrible disease. It is characterized by tumors produced by a viral infection. When the tumors break open, the virus spreads. It is very contagious.
Since leprosy attacks the nervous system, a leper could put his hand on a hot stove and not realize he’d been burned. He could walk for weeks on a broken ankle without knowing it. As a result, his body would suffer such abuse that it would begin to deteriorate. Fingers and toes would be consumed by the disease. Facial features would eventually become unrecognizable.
In Jesus’ day, lepers were expelled from the community and had to live out in the wilderness. If anybody came near them, they screamed out, “Unclean!” to keep others from being exposed to the disease. They couldn’t be with their families. They couldn’t be with their friends. They couldn’t pursue any kind of profession. The leper was a walking dead man—untouchable, incurable, and without human hope.
The leper in the Bible, however, refused to accept his hopeless condition. He decided, instead, to turn to Jesus. (Is that what we as believers do when we get sick? Do we go to Jesus or do we just grab the aspirin bottle?) And He said to Him, “Lord, if You are willing, You are able to cure me and make me clean” (v. 12 Amp).
I don’t know about you but I don’t always have all the answers when I come to Jesus. Sometimes I come to Him with questions—and that’s what the leper did. He had a little light on the subject of healing. He had confidence, for example, in Jesus’ power to heal. He was sure of the Lord’s authority and anointing. He knew that He was able to cure him of his leprosy. But he still had one BIG question:
Was it the Lord’s will for him to be healed?
Before the leper could receive, that question had to be answered. Even though he was there in the very presence of the Master, even though his faith in Jesus’ ability was strong, he would continue to be sick until he knew without a doubt that Jesus not only could but would do for him what he was asking.
The same is true in our lives. We can meet with the Lord in our prayer closet every day. We can be ever so confident that He is there with us. But to receive our healing, we must have something else. We must have the kind of faith that Jesus talked about in Mark 11:24 when He said, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (KJV).
It’s believing that we receive healing when we ask for it that gets the job done. And to have that kind of faith, we must be absolutely certain that healing is always, in every circumstance God’s will for us. We must know without question that He wants us well!
Scripture Reading: Matthew 8:1 – 17
On the chilly March night in 1972 when Lynne Hammond took her first step into a life of Spirit-led prayer, she had no idea what was about to happen. All she knew was the hunger in her heart for God wouldn’t let her sleep. In the few short months she’d been born again, her desire to fellowship with Him had grown so strong she could hardly contain it. “Help me, God!” she cried. “I want to know you. I want to be able to talk to you. Please, teach me to pray!”
Suddenly, a heavenly presence flooded the room. Lynne sensed waves of spiritual fire sweeping over her and a beautiful language began to flow like a river from within her. Although she’d never heard of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, she knew instantly, without a doubt—this was God!
What began that night soon blossomed into a life of prayer that ultimately became a ministry of prayer when, in 1980, Lynne and her husband, Mac, founded Living Word Christian Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Under Lynne’s leadership, the prayer ministry at Living Word has become an internationally recognized model for developing effective pray-ers in the local church.
A teacher and an author, Lynne publishes a newsletter called Prayer Notes, has written numerous books, and currently serves as the national prayer director for Daughters for Zion. Her passion for inspiring and leading others into the life of Spirit-led prayer continues to take her around the world to minister to believers whose heart cry, like hers, is “Lord, teach me to pray!”