Last week I had the opportunity to pray with three people who needed healing. They all went differently.

“Does anyone have any Tylenol?” a young mom asked a group of us. “My husband has a bad headache that came on suddenly about half an hour ago.” I said I did, I just needed to go get it. As I said that I remembered someone had given me a word that my hands were dripping with anointing for healing. So I asked, can I pray for you? “Yes”. I put my hand on his head and said, “Be healed, in the name of Jesus.” He responded, “It’s gone. Thanks.” Don’t you wish it always worked like that?

The next opportunity was an older woman with chronic knee pain. A few of us gathered to pray for her. “Holy Spirit, so many people have prayed for healing – why is it not happening?” All of us, including the woman, began to receive revelation of what was going on in her heart that was the real cause of her pain. She was awesome, repenting and renouncing and choosing to believe. As her soul received significant healing, her knee started feeling better as well. But her physical healing was not completed on that day. A mystery.

The third one was back to the same young dad from the first story. Later in the week, he had caught a cold from his sick children. His head was in a fog, his nose was stuffed and he was having trouble functioning. As we prayed for him, at first nothing happened: “Be healed…. How do you feel?” “Same”. As we continued to pray, he reported that the fog had lifted. “Thank you, Jesus!” But what about the stuffy nose? We prayed two more times before that cleared up. Then a few more times to get rid of the more minor symptoms, but they wouldn’t go away. “Holy Spirit, why is his healing not complete?” I heard: “He’s a young dad with sick kids; this is part of the cost of parenting.” He still had a cold, but at least he was able to participate with a clear head and nose.

This is how my healing experiences go. If you’re looking for all of them to be instant, complete healing, it’s going to be disappointing. But if you’re OK with inner healing and partial healing, there’s always some way to invite the Holy Spirit to minister to people.