Texts: Mark 6v5 "He laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them"
Luke 4vv39&40 "He stood over her... he laid his hands on each of them"
Acts 8v18 "..the Spirit was given through the laying on of the
apostles' hands"
[Quote texts above.] And the power of God working through the laying on of hands is not confined to the pages of the New Testament.
[Tell story of speaking to Aberdeen MethSoc in October 1996; I offered to pray for them; 2 responded; I prayed for them for an extended time - maybe 20-30 minutes; I went away and forgot about it. Read Vicki's testimony, which I got by Email on Tuesday 12th. November.]
[Make sure focus is on the Lord, not on me; whatever the implications of this are for me, they apply to other people too - there's nothing special about me beyond being a child of God and being filled with the Spirit, and that can be true for any of you.]
So I received Vicki's testimony on Tuesday. That was interesting, because on the Monday God had been speaking to me about praying for people with the laying on of hands. Or rather, He'd been giving me a picture. The picture was this: You're living in a remote place in Africa. The local tribal peoples hate you, and are plotting against you. You're on your own, no defences, no weapons, no vehicle; all you've got is 25 pet lions, penned up next to your house. Then one day, you see 100 of these tribal warriors coming to kill you. At that point, it's no use running away, because they'd catch you. It's no use trying to talk to them, because they don't listen. It's no use trying to fight, because there are 100 of them. But all you need to do is make it to the lion pen, and unlatch the gate. (These are your pet lions, so there's no way they're going to hurt you.) You don't do the work; you don't fight. You just unlatch the gate, stand back and let the lions do the rest.
Well, my apologies if you don't like the picture/parable - but I believe it's what God used to explain the point to me. Praying and laying hands on someone is like unlatching the gate for God to come through. The tribal warriors are the work of the Enemy - sickness, fear, etc. And when you've laid hands on people you don't have to persuade them of anything - any more than you'd have to go after your lions persuading the enemy warriors they were being eaten! Having let God out, you just stand back and let Him do what He wants.
So what is the laying on of hands, and why do we do it? When I pray for someone who is sick or in pain, I'll usually just rest my hand lightly on where they've got the pain, if appropriate. If that's not appropriate, then I'll rest my hand on their head. If I'm praying more generally, perhaps for someone to be filled with the Holy Spirit, or for God to deal with fears, or give direction in their life, then I'll lay my hand on their head anyway. More often than not I won't even touch them, but just hold my hand an inch or two above their head.
Why do we do it? Well, because it is what Scripture says, for one thing. Most times Jesus healed people by laying his hands on them; sometimes he prayed, sometimes he didn't, but he laid his hands on them. And in the Early Church the Holy Spirit was passed on by the laying on of the apostles' hands. We've largely got out of the habit of doing that; and then we wonder why we don't see the kind of things - the signs, wonders, the power in prayer - that characterised the ministry of Jesus and the Early Church! Well if we don't do the things Jesus did, we can't expect to see the results Jesus saw. And moreover, if we carry on doing what we've been doing, we're going to carry on getting what we've been getting!
Not only is it Scriptural, but on a purely experiential level, it works! Let's be pragmatic about it: I can't help noticing that the occasions I sit on the other side of a room and pray for someone, most of the time not much seems to happen! I don't like that, but I can't help noticing the truth. But when I do what Scripture says and lay hands on them while I pray, then the success rate goes shooting up! I don't fully understand it, but if that's what I need to do (and if it's obedient to Scripture) then I'll do it!
Having observed that the laying on of hands is the Scriptural thing to do, the second thing I want to try to explain is that we usually don't give God time. When we pray for God to do something - to heal someone, deal with a situation, pour out His Spirit - it's like God says, "Oh, OK, you want me to get involved there, do you?" And He starts to turn on the tap of blessing or power or healing or whatever - just about the time that we get to the end of the prayer and say "Amen"; and the tap gets turned straight off again! It seems to me, again from experience, that when we pray for someone/something, an actual filling takes place. So we need to take time for the filling up to be completed. Suppose you want to fill a beaker with water: you put it under the tap, turn the tap on half a turn, but then immediately whisk the beaker away and say, "Well that didn't work, look it's not full!" No - you need to turn the tap on, and keep the water flowing for a little time until the beaker is full. Likewise when we pray for someone and lay hands on them, allow yourself and God the luxury of enough time to complete whatever He wants to do. Normally we don't pray anything like long enough for the job to get done.
I want to say, as well, that there are probably as many times I've laid hands on people and prayed for them and nothing seems to have happened, as the times God has done something fairly special. For example, a few weeks ago when I was preaching up the coast, I called in to Paul Jackson's manse. Paul was suffering with a bad back, so before I left I prayed for him and laid hands on his back. Next time I saw him I asked how he was: "Much better thanks" he said; "my back got better in exactly the same length of time it always takes by itself."
Give examples of Sandra Jackson, our Sunday School Superintendent who put her back out at the joint Sunday School/Boys Brigade disco-games afternoon in May 97. I simply put my hand on her back where it hurt and prayed - not for very long because it was quite low down her back and I was a bit embarrassed. Then I forgot about it. When I saw her the following Thursday she said that nothing much had happened when I prayed. When she went to bed she'd thought she wouldn't get much sleep on account of her back, but she dropped off quite quickly. And in the morning her back was completely healed. I asked how long it would normally take to get right by itself when she had put it out before, and she said between two and three weeks of total rest (ie. confined to bed).
Example of Linda Smith in Buckie (another 'back' story). She had been over to Peterhead for the Alpha weekend 30th.-31st. May 1997, and stayed overnight with a Peterhead Christian. As a result of the strange bed her back was giving trouble. I went to pray for her at her request on Sunday 1st. June after preaching in Portgordon. I laid my hand on her back, but only had a couple of minutes to pray before her grandchildren arrived. The next day I got an excited message on the answering machine saying her back was completely right, and she'd been carrying boxes at work as if there had not been any problem. On the Tuesday she rang to say she thought the Lord had healed something else in her back she hadn't even been aware of being wrong, because she now had more freedom and mobility than she'd had even before it had given her trouble.
Sometimes people are healed, sometimes they're not. I don't understand that, but so what? I'm not going to stop laying hands on people and praying for them just because half the time nothing much seems to happen, any more than I'm going to stop preaching the gospel just because half the people don't respond and get saved when I preach. I believe, when I lay hands on people and pray for them, that I'm opening a gate for God to come through, just as if I'm opening the gate of the lion pen. What God does when He comes through is up to Him - but I've given Him the opportunity, I've invited Him in (in the Scriptural way) to do whatever He wants.
Much of what I've said is from my own experience, but it is absolutely not the case that ministers have a monopoly on praying for people and laying hands on them: you won't find that in Scripture. A while ago I was catching up with some news from one of my prayer support team back in Wales. She was telling me about one of their Alpha groups, which included at the start of the course (6 weeks before) 3 nonChristian friends/neighbours, and a further 3 or 4 lads off the street who had recently started coming in to church services. The previous weekend, at the Alpha weekend, one of the lads off the street who'd got saved in the second or third week of the course was prayed for, and they laid hands on him. He got well touched by God, and then was going round praying for the rest of the group and laying hands on them - and God was doing powerful things in the rest of the group through him. And he's only been a Christian 3 or 4 weeks! So this is by no means exclusive territory for ministers and preachers.
Well, you're probably thinking that it's OK for all these other people - folk in MethSoc in Aberdeen, lads in Wales, but it wouldn't happen here. [Use live testimonies from Alison and Emma.]
[Invitation to stay behind after the service - or any other time - for me to pray and lay hands on you.]
AMEN