I quoted Francis McNutt on ministering to others. Here it is again.
“It is necessary that the minister be free of the need to prove anything, that he be free of any personal desire for achieving results. To be cast down when his prayers have failed to effect a cure means it is time to examine his motives to see how much of his own fear of failure is mixed into his ministry. I may think I am defending the honor of God by demanding faith; but perhaps what I am really defending is my own self-image as a minister of healing. I must call to mind over and over again that the gift of healing is a manifestation of God’s Spirit working through me. It is not “a thing” I have in my possession, which I can turn on or off at will, but a transient grace, a passing movement of God’s Spirit working through me to help someone else. In most healings three persons are involved: God, the sick person, and the minister of healing. My part, as the minister of healing, is to pray the prayer of faith and then to move out of the way. In fact, the sick person is capable of asking for God’s help himself without anyone else being with him at all. The key persons are God, who is Love, and the sick person, whose sickness elicits God’s loving compassion. I am simply the human channel of God’s love, and I should be humble about that. I feel very uncomfortable when someone calls me a healer. The connotation is much like putting on a label of certification, a kind of rank – a something which one possesses permanently and over which he has control. But that is not true. Sometimes God uses my prayers and touch in order to heal; at other times, he does not. Why this is, I do not know. What I do know is that this inability to control keeps me humble; it helps me realize where the healing power comes from. So, the minister is simply to pray as best he can and, above all, to love all the sick who come to him.”
Also, in observance of The National Day of Prayer, the Sanctuary will be open on Thursday, May 5, from 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Pastor Ed