Healing Prayer from North Down

Healing Prayer from North Down Encouragement, resources, and inspiration to help equip you pray for healing in the name of Jesus.

Twice weekly this page will aim to provide stories that will encourage and inspire you and help you to learn how to heal the sick in the name of Jesus. It will also direct you towards resources on healing such as online sermons, video clips and books which you may find helpful.

Healing through Soaking Prayer Catherine Marshall wrote, “I am a very slow learner spiritually. Sometimes it takes me ye...
10/09/2026

Healing through Soaking Prayer

Catherine Marshall wrote, “I am a very slow learner spiritually. Sometimes it takes me years to grasp a lesson the Helper is trying to teach me. Thus I have long pondered why I was not instantly healed of my lung disease by Jesus' presence in my bedroom that September night in 1943. That was definitely the turning point in my illness; from that night there was steady improvement. Yet to many Christians the slow-returnto-health route does not seem to honor the Lord as much as dramatic instantaneous healing.

I also asked myself: did an instantaneous or a gradual healing hinge solely on the level of my own faith? This is a theology of healing often taught. Yet to believe this places a burden of guilt on the sick person. The sufferer is already oppressed by disease; he does not need the added burden of guilt.

In our time the Helper is now giving us quite a different explanation: many authentic healings through prayer are a gradual process rather than a one-time miracle. The complete healing thus takes time and persistently repeated prayer work. And this slower timing, by the way, is consistent with all normal processes of the body, as well as of everything in nature.

Interestingly, the Helper is currently bringing this truth to the attention of a number of people scattered over the Church at large and not necessarily in contact with one another. Thus the Reverend Tommy Tyson, evangelist-teacher from North Carolina, has stumbled upon what he calls ''the soaking prayer.'' This means that the person being prayed for is gently bathed in the prayer-atmosphere for a considerable time. In this case, those praying conceive of Jesus' life and power as pouring steadily into the affected area.

Another is Father Francis MacNutt, active for ten years in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. He now asks for a frank appraisal of the results for those prayed for. ... Is the pain gone? Is there movement in the affected part of the body? Is there some or much improvement? From many such experiences Father MacNutt's best rough summary is that after prayer 75% feel demonstrable results. Of that total, 50% feel improvement but the need of further healing.

Teenager Bunni Determan was one who needed persistence in prayer. Bunni had to wear a neck brace because of severe scoliosis, which is an S-shaped curvature of the spine. In June 1975, after a group including Father MacNutt and Bunni's mother (a professional nurse), prayed with the girl for about ten minutes, some improvement could be seen. Encouraged, they continued the soaking prayer for two more hours. By then most of the curvature at the top of the spine had straightened out.

At this point in his healing work. Father MacNutt often has to withdraw, and the patient's family and friends in a local prayer group take over the prayerwork. Thus everyone concerned becomes involved in a growing and learning experience. With Bunni the healing has continued as her mother and teenage friends have continued to pray. The girl is now out of the neck brace and her spine is about 90 percent straight, despite the fact that the medical prognosis on scoliosis is usually progressive deterioration.

If the soaking prayer seems costly in time and effort (and it is), a prayer-effort of eight or ten hours for someone like Bunni compares very favorably with the medical effort of weeks and even months spent in hospitals, the outlay of thousands of dollars, the pain and trauma of operations, long series of X-ray or cobalt treatments, plus medication that goes on and on.

I wonder now why I ever expected five or ten minutes of prayer to cure everything. Or why any of us have accepted the principle, often taught, that to pray more than once betrays a lack of faith.

Asking questions like "Do you see anything now?" and looking for results actually stimulates faith. When Father MacNutt marked Bunni's spinal S-curvature in red ink, and all those praying could see a noticeable straightening after ten minutes of prayer — even if only a little — everyone was jubilant. Faith then sprang forth to undergird the group for more praying.”

Catherine Marshall wrote these comments in her book, “The Helper” (Chosen Books, 1978).

Healing of Birth TraumaBarbara Shlemon wrote, “With all the rejoicing there usually is over a new baby, why should the t...
07/09/2026

Healing of Birth Trauma

Barbara Shlemon wrote, “With all the rejoicing there usually is over a new baby, why should the time of birth need healing prayer? Because the infant inspiring all this joyful activity has just come through one of the most harrowing episodes of its life and, on the whole, we are completely oblivious to the trauma. We are aware of the mother's labour pains and her postpartum discomforts, but only in recent years have we begun to explore the newborn's response to the process of birth.

It was the work of French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer which first focused medical attention on the plight of the infant during childbirth. He wrote in his book, ‘Birth Without Violence’: ‘What makes being born so frightful is the intensity, the boundless scope and variety of the experience, and its suffocating richness. People say, and believe, that a newborn baby feels nothing. He feels everything. Everything without choice or filter or discrimination. Birth is a tidal wave of sensation, surpassing anything we can imagine. A sensory experience so vast we can barely conceive of it.’

My experiences of prayer for inner healing have convinced me that most of us require some release from pain and trauma associated with our births. Even the most ideal circumstances cannot completely abolish anxiety and fear from the delivery process since the infant appears to be aware of much that is happening at that time. The March 1981 newsletter published by the International Childbirth Education Association narrates two conversations between mothers and their two year-olds. In the first conversation, Linda Mathison was bathing her son Todd when she questioned him:

‘Mother: Todd, do you remember what it was like to be born, when you came out?
Todd: I went down the tunnel.
Mother: What did it feel like?
Todd: Like exercise.
Mother: What happened then?
Todd: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.
Mother: What was it like when you left the tunnel?
Todd: Light.
Mother: it was light. Was there anything else?
Todd: It was cold.
Mother: Where we’re you before you were born, Todd?
Todd: In a light bulb. It broke!’

After having the conversations with their mothers, both children forgot what happened. Now, at age four, neither, when asked, recalls anything about their birth. When I shared this information with my coworker, Diane Brown, she tested out the same questions with her three-year-old granddaughter, Alisha, with similarly fascinating results. Perhaps if we listened more intently to the ‘imaginative’ discourses of the young, we might discover the rich storehouse of remembrances carried within all human hearts.

As noted previously, psychologists believe that the unconscious mind never forgets anything that has occurred in a person's life and, although we may consciously have no recollection of being born, the memory is still retained within us. Numerous times I have prayed for persons to be healed of any trauma associated with their birth and they have envisioned the whole scene as it was brought to their minds. Occasionally they described feelings of pressure over their bodies as they sensed being conveyed through the birth canal, experiencing momentary fear at the prospect of being born.

I wish to emphasize the fact that it is not necessary to relive the birth experience in order for healing to take place. In fact, sometimes displays of emotionalism in response to inner healing prayer are a deterrent to the process, focusing attention on feelings rather than the inner working of the healing power of God. Some current forms of therapy, such as Primal Therapy, require a person to re-experience every detail of the birth process with appropriate expression of feelings before psychological release can be accomplished. The Holy Spirit can act as a two-edged sword; with one side he reveals our need for healing and, almost simultaneously, he heals our painful memories. Our reaction to this revelation may be tears, but this is not essential. Healing occurs because we yield and are open to the Lord's touch as he replaces the pain with a sense of peace and wellbeing.

One woman related the following experience:

‘As you asked Jesus to take me back to the moment of my birth, I was aware of a high degree of fear. There seemed to be much tension in the air around me with people shouting in loud voices. It was always a joke in my family that I couldn't wait to be born and my mother delivered me in the back seat of the car as Daddy was racing to the hospital. Reliving the scene in my imagination enabled me to understand why I never thought it was such a laughing matter. Daddy's voice was angry, telling Mom to stop making so much noise and she better not have that baby in his car. Mom was crying hysterically and screaming, "I can't help it, she's coming," as I emerged. My feeling was of overwhelming guilt. I had done something which brought disapproval from my parents and it was all my fault. Maybe this has something to do with a feeling of not belonging which has always seemed to be with me. I asked Jesus to heal me of these memories and felt an immediate release of tension. It was like warm water being poured over me to wash away my guilt. I know this healing is somehow affecting my attitude about myself, because recently my sister made a remark about my "speedy" entry into the world and I could laugh about it for the first time.’

Many persons have not experienced such dramatic birth situations, yet the need for healing prayer may still remain. Entry into the world, even in the best of conditions, contains elements of tension and fear which can subtly impede our psychological growth. Any departure from the normal process, i.e., use of forceps, Caesarean section, breech presentation, premature delivery, multiple births, prolonged labour, etc., usually indicates an area which may need to be healed. Since Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, we can invite him to relieve the negativity associated with our birth process, thereby enabling us to embrace the true joy of the gift of life.”

Barbara Leahy Shlemon wrote this material in her book, “Healing The Hidden Self”, (Ave Maria Press, 1982).

Epilepsy healed after John Wimber prayedRich Nathan told this story, “I have a friend in church named Mike. When Mike wa...
03/09/2026

Epilepsy healed after John Wimber prayed

Rich Nathan told this story, “I have a friend in church named Mike. When Mike was five years old, he began to suffer from epileptic seizures. Over the next two decades, Mike was taken to the emergency room on dozens of occasions because he had fallen as a result of a seizure and cracked his head or bloodied his face.

Growing up with epilepsy caused Mike unimaginable social embarrassment. About three times a week, he found himself looking up from the ground in the schoolyard, only to realise that he had had another grand mal seizure and half of his classmates were standing around staring at him.

Yet, despite the dozens of pills he took each day, and despite the constant trips to the emergency room, Mike‘s epilepsy got so bad that he was experiencing, at a minimum, three grand mal seizures and hundreds of petit mal seizures each week.

Because of the severity of his disease, his job at a hospital was in jeopardy because the hospital judged him to be a significant danger to himself and to patients. His neurologist suggested that Mike undergo a radical operation involving severing the hemispheres of his brain to reduce the intensity of his seizures. Such an operation would almost certainly mean several years of physical therapy to fully recover. Even then, Mike‘s seizures would only be controlled, not eliminated.

When Mike came to see me, as his pastor, asking for my counsel regarding the doctors’s advice, I encountered a man who was devastated. He was devastated physically; his face puffy and his eyes blackened from a recent fall. He was devastated vocationally because he was about to lose his job. And he was devastated spiritually because he could not see God in the midst of all his suffering. What would you do if you had met Mike and he had asked you for counsel and help regarding his future?

A few few friends and I began to pray for Mike’s healing. From the outset we saw significant power as we prayed for him; we experienced certain physical sensations that I have learned often accompany the healing presence of God. On several occasions, we felt extraordinary amounts of heat on our hands as we prayed for Mike. Other occasions we felt as if a ‘force field’ had descended around Mike. Consequently, we were encouraged to continue to pray because of these signs that we believed to be indications of God‘s healing presence.

Nevertheless, despite over a dozen lengthy prior sessions during the next few months, Mike‘s grand mal seizures continued unabated. He was not healed as a result of our prayers and his time to make a decision regarding the radical surgery was running out.

About that time, I was planning to attend a conference in New York led by John Wimber, and it occurred to me that I might ask John to pray for Mike‘s healing. I knew from past experiences that John was often used by God to heal the sick. And so I called John and he agreed to set up an appointment with Mike.

He was excited about the possibility of receiving prayer from John Wimber but Mike, like the rest of us, was also apprehensive. What if it didn’t work? Where would that leave him? What would his lack of healing mean regarding God and God‘s will for Mike‘s life?

We spent a significant amount of time in prayer before we went to the conference, asking God to intervene on Mike‘s behalf. Then, at the conference, we met with John and another man. They began to pray for Mike, laying hands directly on Mike‘s head and back.

Mike received prayer for about an hour. Everything seemed to slow down for Mike. His subjective impression was that the prayer only lasted for a few minutes. In Mike‘s own words, it felt like a tornado was rushing through his body while John was praying for him. At the end of the prayer time, John told Mike to check out his condition with his neurologist, but that he believed Mike was ‘90% healed; the next 10% will come slowly over time.’

Since that prayer session with John nearly 6 years ago, Mike has never experienced another grand mal seizure – not even one! His neurologist said, after reading his EEG, that Mike appeared to have experienced about a 90% improvement in his brain wave activity. His neurologist attributed the radical change in Mike‘s condition to a sudden and instantaneous change in Mike‘s brain due to his growing older. He did not explain Mike‘s experience of God‘s presence during prayer or give much credence to the possibility of Divine Healing Ministries.

Because of Mike’s changed condition, he was gradually weaned off most of his medication. Today, Mike has a driver’s license and has been driving without limitation for two years. He obtained a job promotion. Mike is also happily married. I had the privilege of performing Mike and Susan‘s wedding last year. In short, Mike is an example of someone who has experienced in this life ‘the thrill of victory.‘ “

Rich Nathan told this story in his book “Empowered Evangelicals” (Vine Books, 1995), written with Ken Wilson.

The Difference between Surface and Root MemoriesMichael Scanlon wrote, “An important distinction is between surface memo...
31/08/2026

The Difference between Surface and Root Memories

Michael Scanlon wrote, “An important distinction is between surface memories and root memories. At times, there is a single memory of an embarrassing act, an incident filled with guilt feelings or a single moment of fright; and this memory can be called forth into the consciousness of the person. The minister prays that the person now experience the love of God in the memory. Following the prayer, it is common for the person to experience new peace in the memory.

Where a root memory is involved there are many disturbing memories built upon one root memory. Praying for individual surface memories yields little success. These memories are but parts of the iceberg above the water. There is a reality to be healed beneath the water. When the root is healed, new freedom is experienced in a whole series of other memories. A childhood memory of being alone at night in the dark, being lost amidst a crowd or being unwanted by parents can be the foundation for later fears of darkness, of strangers or of intimacy. Memories of a tyrannical father can be the roots of memories of many subsequent bad authority experiences. At times, the root is so deep and the healing is so radical that the release of new peace and love is an experience comparable or exceeding what is known at the point of the original release of the Spirit called the Baptism of the Spirit.

These deeply rooted memories are frequently healed with the aid of a visualization process. If the person was frightened at an early age, the minister prays aloud that the person will see Jesus holding her just at that point of fright — that Jesus will be seen now doing the very thing that would have most helped the person at the time of the original incident. We have known persons to visualize Jesus protecting them from some feared danger, Jesus taking them to the Father and introducing them to the first fatherly love they have known, and Jesus taking them to Mary, his mother, and leading them to experience a mother's love. Whatever the true need is, the loving heart of the Lord desires that that need be filled with his saving love; the visualization is but a form of accepting the love the Lord offers.

We have made frequent reference to the healing of father memories. This is because the scars of an unloving father relationship are so much at the root of other problems. Normally children are introduced to God as Father. If "father" means judgment, punishment, distance and abandonment, then the child accepts God as such. Therefore, a lifetime of spiritual activity can be built on a sick foundation. The result is that despite many laudable deeds and desires, fundamentally the person accepts neither that God loves him nor that intimacy and union with God are possible. We have found frequently that a person is in deep rebellion against God while apparently leading a dedicated life for God.

These deep problems of authority and rebellion against God are manifested in patterns of resentment against authority figures, patterns of feeling betrayed by people whom the person once trusted but when they were promoted became unbearable. The priest in the sacrament of penance should be very sensitive to confessions fitting these patterns. If only the current problems are dealt with, then the basic situation will remain unhealed and the series of current problems and sins will continue. How frequently penitents confess for years multiple sins of uncharitableness and impatience with a particular person. Usually the root cause has not been acknowledged or treated. Good resolutions, a firm purpose of amendment and even extended prayer may not help.”

Michael Scanlan wrote this in his book “Inner Healing”, (Paulist Press, 1974).

I unwittingly attended a worship ceremony for a false godA woman called Victoria phoned in to the Everyday Exorcist podc...
27/08/2026

I unwittingly attended a worship ceremony for a false god

A woman called Victoria phoned in to the Everyday Exorcist podcast with this question: “I’m a biologist in Hawaii and I was at a conservation conference for work purposes. In Hawaii there are a lot of cultural respect and recognition statements before events. However, at this particular conference, what happened made me feel deeply uncomfortable. It went way beyond ‘cultural respect’ and what occurred was basically a full-on religious ceremony. They had the participants chant in Hawaiian so nobody knew what they were saying. Then they had the conference attendees all bring plants to offer on a Kuahu, which is an altar to the Hawaiian goddess Laka, the goddess of the forest. However the organisers didn’t give an explanation to the attendees of what was happening. They were just directing people what to do. I only knew what was going on because I’m familiar with Hawaiian mythology. Frankly, I considered that the organisers simply tricked the 1,000 attendees into worshiping a Hawaiian deity. My question is whether I am culpable for being present at this religious ritual even though I didn’t participate in it? Also, is there something I need to be doing for my protection for having been part of this?”

Grant Pemberton answered Victoria by saying this: “Great question. First of all, there’s no need to live under condemnation. However ignorance is not an excuse. It doesn’t give you a free pass and so I would repent and say, ‘Lord, if there’s anything I did there that was sinful, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it. Thank you Holy Spirit for bringing me conviction.’ That’s awesome when he does that. The outcome should be that you don’t feel the guilt that the enemy might try to put on you.

Nevertheless, as we say in situations like this, if you accidentally have a picnic in Chernobyl, and you didn’t know it was Chernobyl, the radiation doesn’t care about your intentions and it doesn’t care whether or not you knew it was there. The radiation just wants to kill you.

So I do think there could be some potential problems arising from this situation. Hence I would pray over myself and pray over my family. Using the authority that Jesus gives us, I would break off anything that might have come into your life during the event. Pray, ‘I just break any spiritual agreements or contracts that I may have made by being there. I break any sort of alignment that my presence there caused. I come out of any alignment that I accidentally entered into.’ I would go through that kind of a process. I would especially break any agreement that I unintentionally may have made with the goddess Laka. You might pray, ‘I come in the power and authority of the Holy Spirit and command the spirit that calls itself Laka to take its hands off my family and to release anything that I unwittingly gave over to it. Anything I may have accidentally given over of my family, I come out of agreement with all of that now. I plead the blood of Jesus over me and my family.’ One difficulty is that, if you took part in the Hawaiian chanting, who knows what you were saying in Hawaiian?’ That kind of prayer would be my first instinct in this type of situation.

Kat Michael added: “I agree with what Grant has said. My first thought was to thank Jesus for giving you the inkling that the situation was problematic. That was the Holy Spirit showing you that there was something going on there. He is really good to reveal things like that to us so that we don’t have any interaction with something like that which is going to end up in a bad place.

However, if the Holy Spirit was giving you an inkling in that direction, that’s probably an indication of what was going on and that there was a need for something spiritual to be broken, severed and renounced or possibly even cast out.

I also know that there are certain illnesses that can sometimes come on a person just for walking into temples that are to other gods. We have heard of people who developed foot issues after they took their shoes off in a Buddhist temple in symbolic reverence. The foot issues don’t always happen immediately. They can be months later or even way later on in their life at a point when they don’t know why. But, as Grant said, it’s like that idea of going into Chernobyl. It is a really good analogy of getting impacted by something but not realising it at the time.

However, it is important to know that Jesus can take care of it. None of the roots of this are particularly deep in your life and it’s not like you were like actively participating in it. Just walk-through what Grant mentioned. I think that should probably take care of it. Given your description, I wouldn’t necessarily assume that you would need to go and get deliverance prayer from someone else. But if you do conclude that that is necessary, then call a friend and and have them walk you through the deliverance process that you have heard us describe in previous podcasts.”

This question and other questions were asked and answered on the Everyday Exorcist call-in podcast which can be watched at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XTqC618ODI&t=22s

The Secular War on the SupernaturalDr. Alice von Hilderbrand said this ,“In 1965 my husband, Dietrich von Hildebrand and...
24/08/2026

The Secular War on the Supernatural

Dr. Alice von Hilderbrand said this ,“In 1965 my husband, Dietrich von Hildebrand and I had a private audience with Pope Paul VI, in which my husband told him: ‘Your Holiness, you realise that the Church is going through the worst crisis in history? What has taken place is that people have lost sight of the supernatural.’

The supernatural is the greatest gift that God has given us. It is a partaking in God’s very life. The supernatural is a new song, a new music coming from above that never entered man’s head. It was my husband’s discovery of the supernatural which drew him into the Church; a new reality, something infinitely more beautiful, the supernatural was infinitely above what he had experienced before. Following his conversion from atheism to Catholicism, until his death, it was his very particular mission to fight for the reality of the supernatural, which he saw as being eroded more and more. An erosion so systematic that it has led today to an absolute rebellion, when modern men say to God, ‘We do not want it, we can do without it; human nature can perfect itself by itself, we do not need any help.’

The supernatural life was lost by sin and this loss was so irreparable that God alone could give it back to us. We have the possibility of re-living, re-conquering the supernatural life through the message of Christ.

Even though the supernatural is the greatest gift that man could possibly have received, for some reason there is something in man’s fallen nature that does not like the message of the supernatural at all. Today, there is an open war on the supernatural. Man does everything to try to undermine the message of the supernatural so that he can live as he pleases.

Let us abolish from our discussion of the church the terms ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ and the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’, all of which are secularistic. I suggest that instead, from now on, we speak about, ‘those who have kept the sense of the supernatural and those who have lost it.’ That is the great divide in the Church.

Do you look at the Church and her teaching, with a supernatural eye, or do you look at it with secular lenses? That is the divide. Left and right confuses the issue. Let us re-discover the greatness and the beauty of the supernatural. That it is so difficult in the polluted world in which we live, where, if we don’t pray for it every single day, we are going to be infected. Secularism is the air that you breathe, the newspaper that you read, the television show that you see. Time and again you will see this is a fight and attack on the supernatural.”

Dr. Alice von Hildebrand was a prominent Belgian-born American Catholic philosopher, theologian, university professor, and author. She viewed secularism not merely as a neutral political or social stance, but as a calculated, demonic strategy designed to blind human beings to the supernatural reality. She argued that secularism functions as a masterclass in spiritual deception because it does not always present itself as overtly evil; instead, it masquerades as progress, compassion, and human liberation.

This is a greatly shortened version of an address by Dr Alice von Hildebrand entitled, “The Secular War On The Supernatural” which was given at “The Faith of Our Fathers” conference held in London on 13 June 1998. An article containing the address may be found at https://romancatholicman.com/wp/secular-war-supernatural-alice-von-hildebrand/?doing_wp_cron=1787489365.3186581134796142578125

Attacked by a Tree DemonMarguerite Kraft recounted this story originally told by Sulamith Heins Potter: “A man sent his ...
20/08/2026

Attacked by a Tree Demon

Marguerite Kraft recounted this story originally told by Sulamith Heins Potter: “A man sent his children to cut down a tree which he had purchased for firewood. The son, Keen, climbed the tree and did the cutting. He was struck that night with a paralyzing illness and could not even speak. After a day and a night with no signs of recovery, the father sent for a spirit doctor. Potter wrote:

‘They sent for a man named Father Eye, whom they liked and respected, and who has the spiritual strength to deal with supernaturally caused illnesses. Father Eye listened to their story, and then he said that Keen was being attacked by the spirit which had inhabited the tree. He thought that the spirit could probably be appeased by an offering of chicken and rice wine. Father Good got some rice wine and a chicken, and taking Father Eye with him, went to the place where the tree had been. They built a little platform as a sort of altar and offered up the chicken and the rice wine. Soon after they returned home, Keen began to recover and by the next day he was quite well.’ “

Marguerite Kraft commented, “Offending a spirit may at times be an unconscious act, and the spirits usually will accept an offering and an apology.

Living in a Nigerian village and, since then, interacting with people from many other societies have made me aware of the variety of ways different peoples interact with these spiritual powers. In order to survive, people in different societies reach out for spiritual power in specific ways according to their worldviews.

The biblical portrayal of a world filled with spirits is more accurate than that given by Western assumptions. The Bible very clearly presents a world where spiritual powers exist and struggle and tensions between good and evil are in focus. God is clearly a God of power, often revealing himself through “power encounters” with “wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age” (Eph. 6:12). Investigating the Scriptures, I see a God of power. But Christianity, as carried by emissaries from the West, has left most of the world unable to see God in this way. We have received the gospel within a particular cultural perspective. Due to the limitations of that worldview, our understanding and application of Scripture are incomplete. The gospel has been closely tied to our own cultural expression of Christianity and to our interpretations that have arisen as we have read the Scriptures from the perspective of our own worldview and times. The resulting Christianity has usually failed to deal with the active spiritual powers of the environment and the everyday spiritual-power needs of the people. Most Christians in the West have little or no understanding of how spirits affect human activity, the power of curses and blessing, the need for harmony with the spiritual forces, and the battles being waged in the spirit world.

The Western Church, under great pressure from rationalism and science-oriented society through the years, has failed to practice a theology of the spirit realm. This has resulted in a lack of awareness of God’s power and position in relation to other existing spirit powers.

Sickness and treatment of illness are often tied to spiritual resources in some way. The linkage varies according to a society’s theory of sickness. In some, sickness is thought to be caused by neglecting an ancestor or other spiritual being or by breaking a taboo. In others, it involves human causes, such as sorcery or witchcraft. In all of these, spiritual powers must be dealt with. Even if the sickness is attributed to natural causes, the treatment may involve spiritual powers. Accidents, too, may be explained in spiritual terms, requiring spiritual remedies.

In Thai society illness is often perceived as having a spiritual cause. Two of the persons I interviewed explained how they were taken to the hospital very ill, and nothing could be done to make them well; after they returned home, the spirit doctor was contacted, and by following his instructions they got well immediately.

The difficulties that drive Christians in many non-Western societies to continue seeking help from pre-Christian power sources have caused me to reflect on God’s power and its availability to those who follow him. Investigating the Scriptures, I see a God of power. But Christianity, as carried by emissaries from the West, has left most of the world unable to see God in this way.”

Marguerite Kraft, the wife of Charles Kraft and Professor Emerita of Intercultural Studies at Biola University, made these comments in her book “Understanding Spiritual Power : a forgotten dimension of cross-cultural mission and ministry” (Orbis Books, 1995).

Address

Newtownards

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Healing Prayer from North Down posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share