Healing is just one area of Christian discipleship, but a very important one, and not least in the context the local church. Every local church or parish needs to be able to offer a healing ministry, and not just because every Christian is called to pray for the healing of others. That would be important enough. But it begs the question: why do others need prayer for healing?

Every Christian is called to pray for the healing of others at some time, although some are called to do it more habitually than others and seem to be particularly empowered to pray with people for healing Hence they are referred to as having a healing ministry. In recent years many more people than hitherto, and most of them lay people, have found themselves anointed in the area of healing.

But whether we are called into such a ministry or not, there are some important truths of which we need to be aware. For those who belong to sacramental churches, it has to be recognised that praying for healing is an adjunct to sacramentalism, not a replacement of it. The eucharist, for example, can be an important means to healing. But, on the other hand, we should not make the error of imagining that the sacraments are the only approach or, indeed, all that are needed

Not least in importance is the truth that there is no-one who does not stand in need of healing, for there is no-one who has not sustained some damage somewhere, and few whose damage has been wholly dealt with. As Christians we should be especially aware of the need for healing, and particularly for spiritual healing, the aleviation of which can significantly assist in our reaching greater spiritual depths in life.

To put it alternatively, healing is strengthening and all strengthening involves healing since we can only be strengthened where there is weakness and weakness is the manifestation of damage to some part of our being. It is consequently a measure of the difference between what God desires us to be and what we actually are. Hence to accept healing from Jesus Christ is to be brought nearer to wholeness and to be strengthened in him. That strengthening process ought to be available in every parish, for it is one of those characteristics which Jesus said would distinguish his disciples (Mark 16. 17 - 18)

This strengthening is generally recognised to occur in one or more of three broad areas, so that healing is either physical, psychological (emotional, from rejection, trauma, abuse, etc) or spiritual. Quite often more than one of these areas will be involved, even when not explicitly the subject of prayer. For example, many would argue that, when a physical healing takes place, there is virtually always some degree of spiritual healing which also occurs. On this understanding of healing as strengthening, even to pray with another Christian for healing is to experience healing oneself. Faith increases as an experiential function of its own use: the more we exercise faith, the more we see God perform what we cannot accomplish and the more our faith increases as a consequence, for nothing will raise our expectancy of God’s action in our lives than to actually experience him at work in them. It is because we are damaged spiritually that our faith is always under par i.e. at less than the level we see in Jesus in the gospels. T

Therefore any increase in it is a consequence of a process of spiritual healing which has occurred in us, by which we are strengthened, in this case in faith. Jesus, moreover, made it quite clear that he expects us to grow towards the level of faith we see in him through the gospels (John 14. 12).If we cannot always recognise the need for healing in ourselves, we can always see the need for it in others ! That being so, we should all be able to admit the need for healing and be encouraged to make it available in the local church.