Let’s turn to Acts, Chapter 2, and as we’re talking about this doctrine, the doctrine of divine healing, we’ll go back over many of the basics that we all know, but we have a lot of new people here in our midst over the last year or so, so we want to do the best we can to bring them up to speed.  But when we talk about the doctrine of divine healing, we’re not talking about “faith healers.”  There’s a difference.  “Faith healers,” men that put off that they have that power to heal, that they can initiate healing.  All divine healing comes from the Divine Source; amen?  God, alone, can heal in these areas.  We become conduit, those of us that are used of God and follow the biblical doctrine and the biblical admonition that we’ve been given as to how Jesus’ church should operate.

We, at best, are vessels through which the glory of God, the Bible says, flows; amen?  Earthen vessels, but the glory and the excellency are of God and not of us; amen?  So, we don’t ever look at people that are used in this manner and somehow go, “Oh, they’re something special!”  They’re just a vessel, just a vessel.  We’ll see as we go on in the study that the purpose is not just for the person being healed, but ultimately for God to be glorified; amen?  God heals people for Him to be glorified; to be recognized as that source, and that He is, in fact, divine.  Many of the signs and wonders were there verifying and pointing to the authority of the Word of God, the promises of God, and the absolute sovereignty of God.

The mindset in most Christians is that divine healing comes about by God’s sovereign action.  The Bible teaches that divine healing comes about by faith in God’s promises.  Okay?  Big difference.  So, we’ll see as we go on that those are some of the things that we as believers then, Pentecostal believers, Spirit-filled believers, cannot allow ourselves to be swayed over into this mindset of the sovereignty of God’s healing ministry.  “Well, God will heal those that He wants to heal.  So, I’m going to pray now, and if God wants them healed, they’ll be healed.”  That’s not praying in faith.  The Bible says it’s, “The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:15).  Amen?  So, we understand what the Scripture’s requiring. 

We want to start pushing a lot of this off on God that He has commanded us to do.  He said, “You go into all the world and preach the gospel of this kingdom and heal the sick.”  Amen?  “And raise the dead and cast out devils.”  Acts Chapter 10, verse 38, you might want to put it down, we’re going to refer to it on a number of occasions.  Many of you have it memorized.  But the Scripture says, “That God filled Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.”  That’s the title of the teaching: The Holy Ghost and Power.  We, the church, are to be filled with the Holy Ghost and power and do what Jesus did; amen?  “He filled Him with the Holy Ghost and power, who went about doing good, and healing all that are oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” Now, that word oppression is good, because the word oppression includes not only physical healing, but it includes, and there’s so much of it in our country today, the psychological healing.