'Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you ill? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective,' (James 5.13-16, NIVUK).
In 1948 Elim held a series of crusades in London. I attended and took part in some of the meetings and felt led to join one of these new churches. It was near Camberwell Green in South London; I knew and became friendly with the young pastor. It was my idea that Ken and I should leave the church where we had grown up and join this church. I thought it would give me useful experience for my own coming ministry. We were very active 17- year-olds; I couldn’t do any preaching of course, but we worked with the young people, and I took the job of being door keeper on Sundays, greeting the people and talking with them. One man who attended regularly used to ask me a lot of questions about healing which, with my lack of experience, I found hard to answer.
My only contact with this man was in church and I never knew his name. After a while, he stopped coming. Then I found out he’d been in hospital and had died quite suddenly. I didn’t know, I believe probably it was prostate cancer. I was quite sad, although I only knew him from talking at the door of the church. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I realised that all his questions had been a desire for a miracle of healing – and I could give him no answers. For the first time in my life, I was confronted with the real need for physical healing from the Lord. It was this that would result in my searching for God’s Power in miracles of healing.
If you are believing for healing, for yourself or others, healing is part of the atonement of Christ.
Matthew 8.16-17 says that Jesus healed all that were sick in order that the words of the prophet Isaiah would be fulfilled, ‘He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses’ (Isaiah 53.4).