Teaching kids to pray for healing

Senior and young holding handsOur church hosted a conference at the weekend where Bill Johnson from Bethel Church and Leif Hetland were the guest speakers. On the Saturday, they ran a ‘More for Kids’ day event where both Bill and Leif came and spoke to the kids and then received prayer and prophetic words from the kids. Both of our kids were involved. Princess (13) as a leader, Matey (10) as a participant.

Matey came home with a booklet from the day called ‘Healing is easy as 123’. Two pages from the booklet stood out for me that the leaders used to train the kids to pray for healing for people and to see results. (Both my children have been involved in our church’s Healing Rooms for nearly 5 years and have seen and prayed for people who have received physical healing. Princess in particular has a gift in praying for infertile couples and seeing them return with a baby. I believe this is part due to the fact that hubby and I struggled for over 10 years with infertility and Princess was the blessing from it and now God is using her to bless others.)

The 3 points were:

  1. Ask: What hurts? Between 1-10, how much does it hurt? (This way you can determine if there is any change.)
  2. Pray: You can choose to put your hands on them or not (our kids are taught to always ask if they can touch them first at the spot where it hurts, or if an inappropriate spot to touch, to touch their shoulder or hand.) Pray out loud with love. Welcome God’s power & presence. Tell the pain to go. Pray quick prayers. You can also sing, dance, jump, wave a flag, anoint with oil, draw, share a Bible verse – go with what you feel/see/hear the Holy Spirit telling you to do.
  3. Test: Ask the person what the pain is now like? If it is better, celebrate what God has done. If it is not better, or eased a bit but still there, pray again.

Our Church’s Healing Rooms has recently made a huge change in regard to the children on the team and this change has been hugely beneficial to the children, the rest of the team, and the people coming to receive prayer. They have formed groups of 2 children with an adult and they pray purely for physical healings. Prior to that, one child would be matched up in a team with 2 adults and most of the requests were emotional based which was hard for the children. This way, the kids love ministering with their friends (who doesn’t!!) and they are purely involved in physical healings and not deep emotional issues. We are seeing that the people coming for healing love the children praying for them and the children are seeing most of their prayers answered with amazing results. The children also draw pictures from what they see, hear, sense God is saying and showing them. They then ask God who they should give the picture to and then go and find that person, give them the picture and perhaps pray for them. These pictures are highly valued by the recipient. These folk often comment how the picture brought healing or spoke to them prophetically.

As part of the preparation on the day, the children gather and usually fill out a ‘Word of Knowledge’ sheet. It has an outline of a body on it. They ask Jesus who He wants to heal today and then listen to what He tells them or shows them about an injury/illness or body part or Jesus may even give them a feeling in a body part eg a pain in the finger that would mean that He wants to heal someone’s hurt finger. The children then draw or write it on the blank body outline and then look out for these injuries/illnesses when they are praying for people.

I usually find that the kids hear from God very quick. Whilst I am still quietening myself and turning my heart to God, my kids have already received the answer from God. They hear quickly, probably because they don’t doubt and question is that God or is that me etc. Please don’t doubt or dismiss what they are hearing. I struggled with this especially with my son when he was younger and we were first doing this. He would always get something we had talked about that morning (thus I would assume that it was because he had heard it that day) or something connected with him. I would sometimes dismiss it but what he had heard always came about.

I encourage you to spend some time with your children, perhaps after a meal etc. Have outlines of the body on sheets of paper and get your children to ask God to show them what He wants to heal. We even ask God for specific people or specific names of people to go with the injury/illness. Then pray for those people with your children.

The more you practice and pray for people for healing with your kids, the more you see people being healed. My kids are now used to seeing physical healings and just expect it all the time. I can remember hearing Jennifer Toledo (www.gcmovement.org) speak about how her kids practiced raising people from the dead by practicing on each other and having one family member pretend to be dead. The audience laughed to which she then said, “You can laugh but I bet you that my children will pray for dead people and they will see them being healed before you children do.” Oooh, was I challenged!!

Imagine how you and your children could change the world by praying for healing for people.

This blog post is also published on my other blog – www.raisingworldchangers.com.au where I blog about raising children who are changing the world.

Prophetic Activations / Exercises to incorporate into your week:

The purpose of these exercises is to help us hear God’s voice in a clearer manner. They sharpen our senses to hear and recognise God’s voice and His way of communicating with us. This enables us to grow in our relationship with God and also to impart to others what God tells us for them. Feel free to use as many of these activations each week as you can. The more you practice, the sharper you become at hearing God’s voice. Enjoy!

Remember that whenever you give another person a prophetic word or picture etc, please make sure that it is encouraging, edifying (strengthening) and comforting (1 Corinthians 14:3)

1. Children / Families Activation: Gather around a world map. Ask God to highlight a different country to each person and what He would like them to say over that country. Then take it in turns declaring it.

2. Group Activation: Get into pairs. Ask God to show/tell everyone a country or place which God would love to use to tell their partner something about themselves and how God sees them and their future. Ask God questions to ‘flesh’ it out more. Share with your partner.

3. Beginner Activation: Spend some time quiet before the Lord opening up your imagination before Him. Then ask God to show you a specific place in the world where you will visit within the next 3 years. Ask God to show you more of the picture of what you will be doing there. Journal it and write a declaration about it then speak it out aloud.

4. Intermediate Activation: Ask God to bring to your mind someone in your life who is of a different nationality to you. Ask God to show you how you can communicate to them how God sees them and loves them and ask God to highlight to you His purposes for them. Ask God to set up a time when you can communicate this to them.

5. Advanced Activation:  Find a current news item about a different country in the world to where you live. Ask God to show you His perspective on the situation in that country. Declare out aloud what God has shown you and pray into that situation, decreeing and declaring God’s perspective over that place and situation.