In my earlier years as a Christian, I never thought much about healing. I grew up in a religion that didn’t focus on it or even mention it. When I got saved, clear back in 1973, I started, for the first time, to read my Bible, but even though I read verses where Jesus healed, or people got healed by the apostles, it wasn’t something I even thought about. It wasn’t on my radar.
I was exposed to healing for the first time in July of 1976 and it was a healing I received. Greg and I had been married for 5 years with no hope of children in sight. I had been told by medical doctors that I could not conceive because my ovaries had stopped functioning. I remember one doctor giving me a prescription for fertility pills with the caution that they caused multiple births. My husband wasn’t open to that saying he didn’t want twins or triplets. (I think God has a sense of humor, because we had twins years later without any fertility pills). Anyway…I really wanted children and carried a sense of grief that I never could get pregnant.
The first time I ever heard of God’s power to heal was a sermon I heard at my church in Wichita, Kansas. The pastor preached, on a Wednesday night service, about the word SOZO and how it meant to be healed body, soul and spirit. He asked if anyone wanted to come up at the end for prayer, and of course I went. Some people laid hands on me and prayed that I would be healed to be able to conceive.
Well, 6 weeks later I was pregnant. Boy was I amazed. But even though I had been healed, it didn’t make a big difference in my life. I wasn’t going around telling everyone or looking for opportunities to pray for people. Maybe it was because I was SO sick and literally threw up every single day until the day my first daughter, Holly, was born.
My second experience with healing was when my son, Jon, was little, probably around 2 or so. I had taken him into the bathroom during another Wednesday night service. When we were leaving the bathroom, his finger got shut in the heavy bathroom door and he screamed while I quickly opened the door back up. As I looked at his finger it looked ripped open and smashed. I remember, without even taking a second to think, putting my hand on his hand and praying for healing while I comforted him then took him to the bathroom sink to run cold water on his hand. When I took my hand away his finger was whole. He still cried while I comforted him, but there was no rip in his finger and it was no longer smashed. My second eye witness healing…
In time, we moved to Union, Missouri and went to Abundant Life Church. One of our pastors had a wife that developed cancer. I remember our whole church praying for her fervently. They went to healing conferences, healing rooms, we spent services in intercession for her but she didn’t get healed. She died leaving 4 young children. I can’t speak for our entire church, but I know that did a death blow to my faith for healing, when that happened. They had really believed God and they did not get what they were believing for. I don’t remember praying much for healing after that point.
Some time after that, I went to a conference in St. Louis. My pastor at the time was Randy Clark and he had been immersed into the renewal in Toronto, back around 1994.  He was the main speaker at this conference and one of his sermons was, “God Can Even Use Little Old Me”. He talked about how God began to challenge him to start believing, by faith, what the scriptures said about healing and pray for people. I remember him saying, “I start my prayer out by saying, Lord, your word says that you heal, and to pray for the sick and they will recover, so out of obedience to your word, I ask for healing for…..” I remember thinking, I can do that. Out of obedience to God’s word, I can do that. So, I stuck my toe back into the water for healing. I chose to believe again for it. I started praying healing prayers over people when I was on the prayer team at church or when they would ask me individually for prayer. I chose to begin to combat the doubt that had layered itself over my mindset because of my pastor’s wife’s death. I still didn’t understand why we had believed and it hadn’t been answered, but I repented for my doubt and moved forward.
A couple of years ago I really began to come alive to more of the Kingdom of God. I read through the Bible once a year for several years in a row and my faith began to stir for miracles. I watched a movie called Paid In Full, God’s Desire to Heal through Today’s Believers; A Supernatural Truth Productions film. This film literally blew my mind. It had teams of people praying for people in the streets. One young man, who was not a believer, was asked by a couple of men if he had anything he needed healing for. He told them he had a back problem that could not be fixed and he had lots of pain. These two men asked him if they could pray for him to be healed. He said, “Why not”. He handed his cigarette to his friend and they prayed for him. Then they asked him if he felt any changes. He said he had felt something when they prayed for him, like a warmth in his back, so they prayed again. Then they asked him to do something he couldn’t do before. Right there in the middle of the street he did a back flip and then started freaking out because he was completely healed. It was amazing to watch God show His love to this young man who didn’t even believe in Him. He physically healed this young man who wasn’t even looking for God. Then these two men asked him if he wanted to accept Jesus into his life, the One who had actually healed him. Of course, he said yes and they prayed with him, right there on the street. I remember a stirring in my heart when I watched that documentary and I loved it so much I bought the video so I could watch it again and share it with anyone else willing to see it.
So, healing began to be on my radar. This spring I went to a healing conference at Bethel  Church in Redding, California, and Randy Clark shared the conference with Bill Johnson, Bethel’s pastor. I was, again, blown away when the conference started. I remembered the last time I’d been at Randy’s conference and he shared his sermon on “God Can Even Use Little Old Me” and this was nothing like that. This was full blown, mind blowing, faith in action. There were words of knowledge and people were healed. There were meetings where all they did was share testimonies of other people getting healed and then he would say, “If you need healing for this area, stand up”, and people were getting healed. They would pray for people at one meeting and have several of them share the next day about what God had done in them. One lady had a leg injury, had several surgeries that did not fix it and was told there was nothing more they could do. The next day she was up on the stage, ecstatic! She walked back and forth as she talked saying she would have been limping the day before but now there was no pain. Then, she jumped off the stage as she went down the aisle. Needless to say, when I came home from that conference, I had a huge stirring for God to show up in Washington, Missouri. I still have that stirring.
Then a most significant thing happened. I felt the Lord prompt me to do a word study on the word SOZO, the word the pastor clear back in 1976 had taught us in Wichita, Kansas. So, I got started. Here is what I learned.
The word SOZO is a Greek word and means “safe”, to save, ie deliver or protect (literally or figuratively); heal, preserve, save (self), do well, be (make) whole.
Here it is in context to the scripture I looked up. John 3:16-17, For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved (SOZO) through Him.
So I looked up every other SOZO verse in the New Testament. Here are a few of them below: The words right before the word (sozo) are how sozo was translated in the Greek.

For salvation: Luke 8:12 The seed is the word of God. Those beside the road are those who have heard, then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart so that they may not believe and be saved (sozo).
Physical Healing: Luke 18:42 and Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well (SOZO).
For Salvation: John 10:9 I am the door, if anyone enters through Me, he shall be saved (sozo) and go in and out and find pasture.
Physical Healing: Matthew 9:22 For Jesus, turning and seeing her said, “Daughter, take courage, your faith has made (sozo) you well (sozo).” And at once the woman was made well (sozo). (King James says whole)
For Salvation: Romans 10:13 For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved (sozo).
Physical Healing: Mark 5:34 And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made (sozo) you well, go in peace and be healed of your affliction.
Deliverance: Luke 8:36 And those who had seen it reported to them how the man who was demon possessed had been made well (sozo).
Physical Healing: Mark 10:52 And Jesus said to him, “Go your way, your faith has made (sozo) you well”(sozo) and he immediately regained his sight and began following Him on the road.
Physical Healing: Luke 8:48 (woman with the issue of blood) and He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made (sozo) you well (sozo), go in peace.
Physical Healing: Luke 17:19 (leper who returned) And He said to him, “rise and go your way, your faith has made (sozo) you well (sozo).
Physical Healing: Acts 14:9-10 (lame man) This man was listening to Paul as he spoke, who, when he had fixed his gaze upon him, and had seen that he had faith to be made well  (sozo) and called out, “Stand up on your feet!”. At that, the man jumped up and began to walk. (This one is significant because It wasn’t Jesus who was doing it).

For Salvation: Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save (sozo) that which was lost.
Salvation or Protection: 2 Timothy 4:18 The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed and will bring me safely (sozo) to His heavenly Kingdom; to Him be the glory forever and ever, Amen.
Physical Healing: Mark 6:56 And wherever He entered villages, or cities, or countryside, they were laying the sick in the market places and entreating Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak, and as many as touched it were being cured (sozo).
There are many more sozo scriptures; I just added a few.
So, I had a decision to make. Was I going to believe the word of God or my earthly experience? I heard a sermon that challenged that very thing. It said that just because you’ve had a lack of experience in something doesn’t mean it’s not true. We can’t formulate a doctrine around our experience because we haven’t experienced the fullness of what Jesus provided. He purchased sozo for us on the cross. It’s been provided for us. Unfortunately, if you were like me, you didn’t know this. I had never thought of it that way. It’s easy to believe His work on the cross for our salvation. Each one of us, when we got saved, accepted, by faith, that it was so. But it’s harder to believe that the same work paid for our healing AND deliverance too. But as you can see, scripture says that it does.

When I was at the last healing conference I had a vision while we were in worship of me walking on a tight rope with a safety net below me.  I felt the Lord ask me the question, “Will you take down the safety net?  Are you all in?”  I literally wrestled with removing the safety net, like having a back door to retreat back into if what I was starting to believe for didn’t happen.  The back door was my safety net so my faith wouldn’t be destroyed.  I was choosing to protect myself.  I finally said yes, but it felt rather scary and uncertain.

I also did a word study from this verse a while back.  Mark 9:17-24  And one of the crowd answered Him, “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him to the ground and he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth, and stiffens out.  And I told Your disciples to cast it out and they could not do it.  And He answered them and said, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I put up with you?  Bring him to Me!”   I’ll let you read the rest of those verses but he challenges the fathers belief and delivers his son.

The word unbelieving in the verses above comes from the Greek word which has a double root meaning.  The first is “not” and the second is “convinced”.  So that word literally means “not convinced”.  It’s easy for us, all day long, to deny that we have unbelief in our hearts, but when you hear it translated into not convinced, it’s a little easier to see where we may have mindsets in our life that are not convinced toward the Kindgom of God.

I’ve chosen to take the safety net down and believe for the full work of the cross. Jesus died a gruesome, painful death for our complete sozo. I don’t want to disregard the pain and suffering He went through and ignore all He died for and just choose to accept one piece of it.  He paid a high price for us and I want to choose to believe for it all.

But, what, you may say, do we do with all of the prayers we pray and nothing happens? Whose fault is it that they didn’t get healed? Did we not pray the correct prayer? Did the person we prayed for not have enough faith? I don’t have answers for those questions. But I have a few thoughts… The Bible tells us in Mark 10:15 “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it at all”.
I felt the Lord ask me to think about what it means to be child-like. I started thinking about my own kids and grandkids. If I tell them something, they believe it. It’s not until we’re older and the experiences of life set in that we begin to process through our reasoning and past. A child just believes what their parents tell them. If I told my 2-year-old grand daughter that the sky is red, she would believe that it is red. She wouldn’t doubt my words until she learned her colors…she would just believe my words.
We have God’s word with us, it’s easy access in this country. It’s not illegal here to have a Bible and I have more than one. But how many of us, when we read His words,  we pick what we want to embrace and leave the rest there. We don’t believe everything we read because our experiences have told us another story. Unfortunately, the enemy is quite busy messing with people when they’re kids, because if he can get their mindsets warped young they are easier to control later. Or they just end up saying, “Yea, I don’t believe that”. That was the case with me… I had years of life experiences to wade through and challenge with the Word of God. As I’ve done this my core values have changed.
Interestingly enough, I am sick today while I write this. I have prayed for healing…I’ve been sick for over a week and unfortunately, I’ve been afflicted with virus #2 when virus #1 isn’t even done. I have not been healed, yet…. but just because my experience isn’t matching what I KNOW God has for me, I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bath water. I choose to believe anyway.
I read a book a while back about a man who could see in the spirit. It was an amazing read…. This thought comforted me. He said when he chose to look, when people were getting prayed for, every single time, angels had buckets ready to pour out on the person being prayed for. Sometimes, they were healed, sometimes he could see demons hanging off of them and they didn’t get healed, and sometimes he couldn’t tell why they didn’t get healed. But what excited me was the fact that angels had the provisions ready to give every,  single,  time.
I did learn during the healing conference this year, that unforgiveness and bitterness hinder people receiving their healing. If the team prayed for someone several times and they didn’t get healed, they would ask if they held unforgiveness or bitterness against someone. Many times, they did. After they repented and released it, they would pray for them again and they would be healed.
Or maybe they would get healed but they didn’t stay healed. They said, almost always it was a bitterness or unforgiveness issue. Those things in our lives are like an open door to the enemy saying, “Come on in”.

And praying the right prayer part?  There isn’t a formula, a right or wrong way to pray.  God doesn’t want our walk with Him to be functional.  He wants relationship with us.  He wants us to feel His heart for a situation and bring Heaven’s intentions into it.  He wants us to see injustice in situations around us, feel His heart for that person or situation and ask Him for a divine intervention.  If we are walking in relationship, we will literally “feel” the promptings as He guides us in and out of situations around us.

And then there’s just going to be those times when we don’t have an answer; we just need to still trust the Lord anyway;  just because it didn’t work, doesn’t make it not true…
And what about the man from the video who wasn’t even a believer? Who wasn’t even asking God for healing? God reached out and showed him great love by healing his body. It wasn’t his faith that healed Him. This young man had no faith at all, it was God’s mercy. So, if we get into the argument that the person receiving prayer just didn’t have enough faith, this debunks that argument all over the place. I’ve even been reading books about people who are using words of knowledge, prophecy and healing to witness to the unsaved.
I heard a testimony of a man who was sitting on the airplane next to a man who, when they started talking, found out he was an atheist. This man ended up having several words of knowledge for him and a prophetic word. The atheist said, “I don’t even believe in God”. The believer said, “Well the God you don’t believe in, believes in you. He loves you this much to have me, a stranger, share secrets of your heart to show you how much He knows and loves you.”
This intrigues me. I want to be used this way to speak and show God’s love to those who don’t even know He’s real. They think He’s a fairy-tale; a made-up mindset for simple minded people. They are hostile to the Gospel, but God is not hostile toward them. And He wants to use any of us who are willing, to show them that.
That’s what I’ve been learning anyway…and I’m willing.