Oscarr, I can't believe you wrote that.
That is not Johnny's heart at all.
I don't want to debate with you if you are getting upset.
Let's give it a rest if need be. You go ahead and have the last word.
I'm not getting upset at all.
I would love to see that sick person healed as the result of Johnny's ministry.
What concerns me is Johnny's use of faith, which seems to me more aligned to Norman Vincent Peale's positive thinking. It has been established that Peale subscribed to Eastern mysticism and mind control as well as being a professing Christian.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having faith in God's power to heal a sick person. The Scripture is quite clear about that:
"Have faith in God. Truly I tell you that if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and has no doubt in his heart but believes that it will happen, it will be done for him" (Mark 11:22). Notice that the reference starts with
have faith in God. This is where faith has to be always directed. Faith has no power of its own. Faith links us with God's power.
Notice that Jesus prayed to His Father before ordering Lazarus to come out of the grave. He did not do it without conferring with His Father first. This is because Jesus came not to do His own will but His Father's will. Once He knew that it was the Father's will that Lazarus be brought back to life, Jesus had confidence to order Lazarus to come out.
Dave Hunt's ministry is really good at exposing sorcery and witchcraft in the church. He shows that people using faith as a power in itself are aligning themselves to eastern mystic mind control. "If I set my mind to this, it will happen". "If I think positively about this, I will achieve the result". This is exactly the same as "If I believe hard enough, that person will be healed."
Now, having said that, this is the way I would handle the sick person's healing. The first thing I would say is that I can't heal anyone, not even a flea with a headache; but I believe that Jesus heals people, and I am prepared to be obedient to God's Word when it says: "They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." Then I tell the sick person that I can speak to the part of the body that is not functioning properly and tell it to resume its normal function, and I do that. Then I say, "Jesus heals you." If I think there is a spirit of infirmity there, I will cast it out. Then I tell the person that I have been obedient to God's Word, and we can leave the results to Jesus.
If there is opportunity to go back to that person every day and pray the same prayer, I will, because I am being obedient to the Scripture: "Pray without ceasing", and "Men always ought to pray and not to faint". Persistence in prayer is not unbelief because I would be following a Scriptural principle in repeating the prayer day after day. This is called the endurance of faith. The Scripture says,
"Through faith and patience we inherit the promises of God" (Hebrews 6:12).
Also, it is important to spend as much time as possible in personal and private intercession for the person. This is not "naming and claiming", but it is praying through with, and waiting upon God that He will cause that person to recover.
