Andrew Fountain - Spiritual Gifts 5: Healing and the Gift of Faith

(Part 5 of Series on the Gifts of the Spirit)

0. Review

• God can heal anybody, any time, anywhere by any means, with or without faith
  
  • But most of the time there is some faith involved

1. Faith is what the Father is looking for
2. It is an object lesson of salvation
3. Specifically it was faith in Jesus that the Father wanted to highlight

1. Promises of Faith and the Supernatural

• Statement from Jesus about faith
  
  • Mark 11:22-24 — an extraordinary promise to the person who has faith
• The Gift of faith (and gift of healing)
  
  • 1 Corinthians 12:4-11
  • Matthew 17:18-20
  • Luke 17:5-6

2. What is Faith?

• Faith is a trusting response to a promise or commitment (which must come by revelation, e.g. preaching)
  
  • Romans 10:14-17
  • e.g. God said to Abraham: Hebrews 11:8
• So: There are two parts to faith
  
  1. the promise
  2. trust in that promise
  • Sam Storms' definition of faith
• So what were the people who were healed responding to?
  
  • Matthew 20:21-23
  • Luke 12:13

3. So what has God promised?

• Sam Storms’ five kinds of faith for healing (Spiritual Gifts p.56f)

1. Faith that God is your sole source for blessing
   
   • that he is your hope and he alone
2. Faith in God’s ability to heal
3. Faith in God’s heart for healing
   
   • Faith in his goodness and desire to bless his children
4. That God not only can heal today, but he actually does
   
   • Faith that healing is part of God’s purpose and plan for his people today
5. The faith that it is his will to heal right now

4. Application

• “gift of healings”
  
  • What that means is that he consistently gives them revelations of his will to heal
• What if we are praying for someone but don’t have a word from God that he will heal them?
  
  • Romans 12:4-8 — we exercise our gift in accordance with our faith

1. We need teaching on healing as a basis for our faith
2. We need to pray with whatever faith we have
   
   • revelation of his will God has given us for that situation
3. It seems from experience that if we keep using what faith we have, God will give us more

Updated on 2010-02-21 (r.147) by Andrew Fountain