Things I learned from praying in Dead Churches

Why be in a dead church to begin with? Because it was the only way I could get my wife to go to church.

Being dead meant they were embarrassed about Jesus' signs & wonders. Since no one was really healed by prayer, don't raise false hopes by praying too specifically. If God was going to heal anyone, He would do it with or without us, so don't bother praying. Certainly don't say that God could heal through you. That is blasphemy, since only God can sovereignly heal - if & when he feels like it.

I would pray for people and they were healed by God. The church members would chalk that up as mere coincidence. God must have intended to, anyway.

So I was praying for people without anyone else praying. Thus the scientific method could be used in this situation. Prayer events could be “repeatable, isolatable and verifiable.”

As I prayed for sufferers, God healed some and not others. I noticed that some ailments were amenable to my prayer and some weren't. I would pray for the gift of healing of an ailment in the second category and, behold, God's healing took place when I prayed from then on. There must be gifts of the Holy Spirit for healing specific ailments. I wondered about that until I saw in Corinthians it mentioned 'gifts of healings.' Aha. It's not a one universal gift, like prophecy for example.

I prayed for cancer sufferers and they were healed by God simultaneous to my prayers. Months or years later, they got cancer again. I sought the Lord for wisdom about cancer. He told me poisons and radiation were damaging the DNA, causing cancer. From then on, I prayed for God to also neutralize carcinogens and straighten out DNA damage before I prayed for the cancer. From there on, when God healed someone on behalf of my prayers, they stayed healed of cancer.

I learned the value of soaking prayer. If some prayer brought some healing, a lot of prayer would bring more healing, if not a complete healing. Even Jesus did this one time. All healings happened while I was praying and not after. I would take on cases where I would pray for someone over a couple of weeks until the healing was complete.

I had a case where a girl had been brought from Alabama on a week night with arthritis all over her body. I prayed for her right and left hands and they were healed. But we were running out of time. I asked the Lord what to do. He said “pray for momma” who had brought her. The Bible says the gifts are conferred by the laying on of hands. I prayed for momma to have the same gift of healing of arthritis I had, and sent them on their way back to Alabama.

Since then, I prayed for my barber for the gift of healing MS which his daughter was bed ridden and dying of. The next time I went in for a haircut, the barber said his daughter was free of MS and was cooking up a feast for the extended family!

Jesus told us to pray “peace be upon this house” before we enter it. I tried this with the dead church. The priest and parishioners were moved to tears by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the place. From then on, I spent an hour on Saturday night, praying for the church and its people. Unfortunately, the Gnostics took over the denominational leadership and God told me not to pray for them. We left.

You can do all these things and have the same results.