← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
When to Say "Your Faith Has Healed You"
00:23:38
This episode explores the question many Christians wrestle with: why some prayers for healing seem to work while others don’t. Dan Wilt unpacks the biblical truths, theological tensions, and practical ways to approach healing ministry with humility, faith, and hope, while reminding listeners that healing is both a gift and a mystery. You’ll hear why Jesus’ miracles aren’t always immediate, how faith and suffering fit into God’s greater plan, and what it means to pray boldly while still surrendering the outcome. Drawing from the woman with the issue of blood in Luke 8 and a five-step prayer model from his vineyard journey, Dan offers encouragement and real-world guidance for anyone longing to pray more effectively or walk through suffering with confidence. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction to Healing Ministry 02:56 The Role of Faith in Healing 06:03 Understanding Healing and Suffering 08:57 The Mystery of Healing 11:53 Being Healing Agents in the World 14:48 Personal Testimonies and Enco...
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Sower nation and fellow Sower Today is Thursday, July 2nd in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm Dan Wilt and this is your wake up call. We continue into this final season of days in our journey to together on this long path that we've been taking and wandering together, learning and growing in all the things everyday, ministry in the power of the spirit. And today we're going to be looking at a topic that I believe will be helpful to all of us and it's the topic of healing. So wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Let's pray our prayer of consecration together. And as we begin today's meeting with Jesus. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, as we go to today's entry, I want to say just a few things up front that I'll remind you of at the end of the entry. We are journeying together to discover what Jesus was all about and then what it means to be his apprentices in the world. And one of the primary expressions of kingdom ministry we see flowing through Jesus is the ministry of healing. And that's going to be our focus for today. I'm going to take kind of a unique vantage point on us on it to get us there. But we're going to talk about healing and the role of faith in healing. And I just want to point you to something as we begin that I think is going to be really helpful to you. We want to encourage you in your journey in learning the all the things ministry of Jesus. So over@seedbed.com allthings there are lots of resources for you, for small groups, for bands, for local churches, congregations who want to do this study and learning together. And particularly today, I want to point you to a video. We have seven videos there that are available to you. And I want to point you specifically to video number five, Power to be Witnesses. Because I'm going to be talking about a prayer model. It's called the five step prayer Model, Praying for people for Healing that I learned in my vineyard journey. And I think it's going to be really helpful to you as we continue to be those who move into the coming months in the coming year as the people of Pentecost praying for people for healing. So our entry today is titled when to say your faith has healed you. And our Passage is from Luke 8:42b to 48 Hear the word of the Lord. As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him, and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. Who touched me? Jesus asked, when they all denied it. I love that part. Peter said, master, the people are crowding and pressing against you. But Jesus said, someone touched me. I know that power has gone out from me. Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people. She told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace. The Word of the Lord Consider this. The message coming from the front of this particular church was some version of God always heals if you have faith. But many in the room faced incredible health challenges, and a few were even wheelchair bound. Did that mean each person didn't have enough faith to be healed? I've talked to many people over the years who have believed that message and have spent years thinking that their faith was somehow inadequate for healing to occur. If you heard that message and weren't healed, would you ever return to that kind of church? A church that had a theology of miracles, but not a theology of suffering or bearing up under illness? It is God's will that leads in healing, not our own. It is his choice if we are healed in an instant by another way, or even by a victorious death in his presence. So I'm going to be referencing throughout this entry a book that is my favorite book on healing, and it's written by our beloved Steve Siemens, who many of you may know and you may know, and it's called Follow the Healer Biblical and Theological Foundations for Healing Ministry. And it's a powerful book, and I would encourage you to make it a part of your life and your library. But let's continue in our entry, Healing is a mystery in the now and not yet of the kingdom, which we've explored together. I have often wondered why God heals some and not others, but some can't live in that tension. So they teach that God only heals if our faith hammer hits the bell hard enough to reach the top of the pole. Now this sets people up for what? For discouragement, for disappointment, and ultimately a faith that can't bear up under suffering. I've Even known people to leave the faith because someone taught them that they didn't have enough faith for healing to cut the mustard with Jesus. So, yes, let's feel this tension and allow it and kind of enter into it. Yes, the faith of a person matters when walking with God. The story of the woman who had an issue of blood is an example of this. We walk by faith, not by sight. Second Corinthians 5, verse 7. Faith is the assurance of things we hope for, the conviction of things that we cannot see. Hebrews 11:1 without faith, it also says it's impossible to please God. Verse 6a. Jesus couldn't do miracles in his hometown. Why? Because of their lack of faith. Hebrews 11 alone attests to the importance of faith in the life of a believer. So, yes, a great and resounding yes to faith and is in order. Yes, to trust. Yes to believing in the impossible and believing God for the impossible. Yes. However, we must hold this truth in tension with another equally biblical and resonating truth. God does not always heal a person in response to our prayers, or theirs. At least not in the way we would like to see it happen, or definitely not in the timing. If it be your will, is a prayer that Jesus prayed in the garden. And we must come to grips with this type of prayer if we're not to be discouraged when we pray for someone and a healing does not occur. And I keep putting in parentheses here in the way that we would want to see it occur. I learned over the years of asking now, honestly, as I. As I've shared, I've prayed for thousands just practicing this, this listening to Jesus and wanting to partner with him in what he's doing. I learned over the years of asking, may I pray for you? That sometimes prayer must be persistent. Over years, over decades, sometimes. And honestly, it feels like more often than not in my own life, the person is not physically healed, at least not this side of heaven. Steve Siemens says this in Follow the Healer, and I love this paradigm. It's why this book is so important to me. Jesus says, excuse me, Steve Siemens. Don't want to confuse Steve with Jesus, but he is a good, good man in the faith. Steve Siemens says in Follow the Healer that Jesus heals A directly and supernaturally, B through doctors, nurses, medicine, C through the human body's healing power, D through grace, sufficient meaning, strength to bear an illness, and E through victorious dying. And I've referenced that in, in the book itself. We have faith when we pray and we call others to believe for their healing together we trust God to do a miracle. But when that miracle doesn't happen in the time or the way that we think it should, we continue to be people of faith. We continue to pray, we continue to trust, we continue to believe that God is at work in the suffering. Jesus told this woman, your faith has healed you. Luke 4, excuse me, Luke 8, verse 48. To emphasize the role of trusting God and not giving up, not to create an eternal metric for why a healing does or does not occur. Does that make sense? Let me just say that again. Jesus told the woman, your faith has healed you. Luke 8:48. To emphasize the role of trusting God and not giving up, not to create an eternal metric for all of time for why a healing does or does not occur. Jesus heals, and he uses our faith in the process. And when someone is healed, it is good for us to affirm the role of their faith and ours in their healing. But it is also good for us to talk about a theology of suffering, of suffering well in the presence of Jesus, of bearing up under the weight of an unhealed illness, so that the whole story of how God works is told. So let me just say this as we move to our prayer. Healing is a ministry of the church. We are called to be many things in the world. And one of those things, and we see it in Jesus, we see it in the apostles, we see it in the history of the church, is to be a healing agent in society, believing that the God who made the human body, who made the brain, there are different kinds of illnesses and struggles people go through, that he is a healer and we are healing agents. We are healing agents as we follow the healer. As Steve says, if we carry in us a theology of the resurrection of miracles, then we're in a good place to pray for with faith, for people. And that's where I say no amount of shouting or raising our voice or doing all sorts of extra theatrics helps that along. We simply need to come in a naturally supernatural way in the spiritual authority. We've been given in price in Christ to pray for someone's healing. At the same time, we carry in us a theology, a rich one, of suffering, of the cross, if you will, of the garden of Gethsemane, that we say, let your kingdom come, let your will be done. Not my will, but your will be done. And what Steve does for us is he helps us see that there are many ways that God heals, and there are many stories that God is weaving in someone's life and in our lives. That we may never know until we see him face to face. So, as I've said, I've made it my habit as often as I can with those who are Christians, those who are non Christians, to ask, could I pray for your healing? Would you give me that privilege of praying for your healing? It would be an honor. It would be a privilege to pray for you. And so I've just prayed for everything that moves over the years. Praying for healing. An illness kind of doesn't get past our house. We hear about it, we get a text about, et cetera, where we are not in. We say we are going to talk to the Lord about healing. So we always bring our faith to that moment. But the answers, the ways that God works beyond that are mysterious, unknown. And we simply must trust him as we come with faith. The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen along that journey. And, and I want to say that so that, so that we can be those who. Who offer a healthy view of prayer and healing in the way God works in the world. In our churches, in our communities, we can be the first people to pray for healing. And sometimes I believe the greater frequency with which we do that. This is something John Wimber taught me. He said pray for. He said to a room of us as pastors once, pray for a thousand people. Before you start determining if God heals or not, just pray for people. The ratio will rise as to how many people actually get healed over a lifetime. You'll see miraculous things happen, but at the same time, know that there will be maybe, and this is my story, maybe many more, many, many more stories where someone was not healed, at least not in the timing or in the way that I hoped it would happen. And so I want to encourage us today, let's go out there, let's be kingdom agents in the world. Let's have people see us. And when they look us in the eye, they see, wow, this person actually has faith for me to be healed. And again, that may come through any of those five ways that I shared that Steve shares in and follow the healer. But I'd encourage you be that person that has a little bit of faith and walks up to someone and says, I'd like to pray for your healing. And you're going to begin to see over your lifetime God heal in all the different kinds of ways that we described. I believe that with all my heart. And that's just so core to this all the Things series and this call to all the Things ministry. The world is not looking just for a gospel of words. They need to experience, as we said at the beginning of the series, a gospel of power, the power of God, always contextualized in the great love of God. Everyone should leave having experienced the love of God in an encounter with us. They should. And then the the power of God moves through love, moves through those fruits of the Spirit that are manifest in our lives. And we move in the gifts of the Spirit and we practice those and we grow and increase in learning. I encourage you come to our new room conferences where we seek to actualize these things and experience these things together, to learn to pray and to be prayed for, to grow together in our understanding of spiritual gifts, in what it means to be awakening agents with Jesus moving through us in the world. So bless you in that and again, our new room conference is coming up that's still open to registration. Go to newroomconference.com and I say that not to just promote it. As JD laughs and says, you know, this is the feature moment. I'm not doing that. I'm saying there is a way forward with others who are learning how to in gentleness and humility, grow in Christ and be used in all the things ministry in the world. So let's pray our prayer together on this beautiful day this Thursday, July 2nd. Lord Jesus, I want to have faith that you will heal me and others when I pray. But I recognize that your will be done means that you may not heal in the way I think you will or should in those moments. Help me to trust in your goodness and to press on. Praying for those who are sick. To press on. Excuse me, praying for those who are sick. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. And here's your journal prompt for today. Can you think of a moment when a healing occurred that seemed to have nothing to do with the faith of the person being healed? If so, write about it. Consider how the faith of the recipient had little to do with the outcome. And here's our activation and a little story, a personal story of my own healing. I'm going to share in compliment to it today. Look for faith in the eyes of a person who needs healing and when you see it, affirm it. When you don't see it, encourage them to have faith and pray for them as someone who is carrying faith for them. So a few years ago I had I do a lot of speaking and singing and all sorts of things and I had some, some nodes on my vocal cords. I was encouraged all the way along to have faith. And quite honestly, my faith was Smaller, I think, than a mustard seed. My prayers were kind of dribbling off my chin when I asked God to heal me. And I was sitting in the office of the doctor who was doing the final check for me before we went into surgery. And as I was sitting in the waiting room, I had that morning felt the struggle in my voice, felt the problems still there that we had seen before on the scope. And as I was sitting there in that office, a moment of faith rose in me. And I put my hands on my throat and I said, in Jesus name, be healed. And I prayed the Lord's Prayer in the imperative sense that one, one theologian writes it in. Be holy your name come your kingdom, your will be done. The doctor came in the office. I felt nothing. And my faith was the same as it was before in that moment. And the doctor came in and called up the scope and put it in, and I was completely healed. Well, brother sister, I pranced out to my truck and I sat in my truck and I just wept. I wept and I thanked Jesus for healing me. That was the first time I'd ever experienced healing in my own body. And what a joy it was, what faith it gave me to pray. Well, I began to pray for others in a new way through the years to come. And I've prayed often for people with voice damage, and that's just been now a part of my testimony. I'd encourage you just look for people, even maybe you have been through things you've been through and ask if you could pray for them, if you could just take a moment and bless them and in Jesus name and let your testimony be a source of activation of their faith in that moment of prayer. All right, let's sing today's song together and we'll worship our way onto the fields. Let's sing together the song. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here. And we'll just sing the chorus together.
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Holy Spirit, you are well. Come, come flood this place and fill the atmosphere. Your glory. God is what our hearts long for to be overcome by your presence, Lord. Holy Spirit, you welcome Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere. Your glory. God is what our hearts long for to be overcome up by your presence, Lord, Your presence.
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Well, we step out into the world as people led by, guided by the Holy Spirit, as the scripture says. We want to keep in step with the Spirit. We want to be led by the Spirit. We want to be filled by the Spirit as we go. And we offer ourselves to Jesus who is moving in us and through us to be healing agents in the world. Bless you as you go.
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Let's get our seeds together and I'll see you on the field. For the awakening. I'm Dan.