The Laying On of Hands
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It would be just as foolish to have a person come down to the altar to give their heart to the Lord,
and before you would pray the sinner’s prayer with them, you’d say, “I don’t know, Lord. Is it
Your will for them to be saved? Or are they predestined to hell? Because I don’t want to pray
with them and get them out of Your will, or fight against You. If you’ve already marked them for
hell, then…”
People believe this. They don’t like you to say it like that, but they believe it. “Well, just pray for
me, and whatever is God’s will, we’ll find out.” No. That’s not okay. We don’t have to live such
a dark, vain, shot-in-the-dark, “let’s just give it a shot and see whatever” existence. No. We can
pray with confidence. We can lay hands on people with confidence. Why? He wouldn’t tell you
to pray for someone for something that it might not be His will to give them. He wouldn’t tell
you to lay hands on someone for healing when it might not be His will for them to be healed. He
never would have told us that.
Let’s look at the laying on of hands. Mark 16:18 in the New International Version says, “…they
will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
I think we’ve heard this so much that we’ve lost our excitement about it, and I want you to get it
renewed. Jesus, the Head of the Church, said that believers will place their hands on sick people.
He didn’t say preachers or pastors. Are you a believer? Do you have hands? Did Jesus tell you
that as a believer you could place your hands on sick people and they will get well?
The New Century Version says, “They will touch the sick and the sick will be healed.” Glory to
God. “They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.”
Some say, “I tried that, and it didn’t work.” When did you decide it didn’t work? “Well, I tried it
Brother Keith, and they got worse the next day.” So? What does that mean? He didn’t say the
symptoms would go away in a second. He didn’t say the symptoms would only improve after
you did. He said, “They shall recover,” and if you believe that, you ought to believe it with every
fiber of your being, as long as you’re standing and able to believe. They shall recover.
The problem is that people walk by sight. They try something, they pray a prayer, they do
something, and then they back up to look and see if it’s true or not. You should have already
decided that it’s true when you read it in the Word, and it’s not going to change no matter what
you see or feel.
A minister overseas was having an open-air meeting to pray for the sick, and he invited people,
asking everyone to come. “We’ll pray, and you’ll be healed.”
Well, the media heard about it, so they came out, and he agreed to do an interview. In one part,
they asked, “You say that God will heal anyone?”
“That’s right. God will heal anyone. The Bible says so. God can heal anything.”
They said, “Well, what if you pray, and they don’t get healed and they’re no better? What if you
pray and they don’t improve?”
