Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure. — 1 TIMOTHY 5:22

As I sat down to talk with the mother and her daughter, I said to the daughter, “Do you believe in divine healing?”

“Well,” she said, “To be honest with you, no, I don’t. I didn’t want to hurt Momma’s feelings, so I thought I would just go ahead and have you lay hands on me.”

“That’s the reason I’m not going to pray for you,” I said. “You understand that God can heal you though, don’t you?”

“No, no,” she said. “We don’t preach healing in our church. But I have great confidence in my pastor, because he’s a man of God. And if divine healing were so, he would have told me about it.”

I replied, “I’m sure your pastor is a good man who loves the Lord with all his heart and is walking in all the light he has, but there was a time I didn’t see some things in the Bible that I now know to be true. Let me ask you a question. What if the Bible said, ‘Himself, Jesus, took your infirmity—this serious condition you’re facing—and bare your sicknesses?’ Would that mean that healing is for you?”

“Why certainly, it would,” she said.

I told her to pick up the Bible that was on the table next to her and
open it to Matthew 8:17. I never will forget it. The minute she read the
scripture, she looked at the cover of the Bible and said, “Why, it’s just like my
Bible! It’s a Scofield too.”

Then she said, “Go ahead and lay your hands on me. I’ll be healed.” I laid my hands on her and she was healed.

Now I could have laid hands on her earlier, but she wouldn’t have received. Then she would have gone off saying, “It isn’t the will of God.” She had to establish in her mind and in her spirit that healing is the will of God for her before she could receive her healing.

Confession: I establish in my mind and in my spirit that it is the will of God for me to be well and whole.