PatRobertson.com -

QUESTION: When you pray for one particular person on your show, does it just come to you from God, or do these people write to you telling you of their needs?

PAT: People write and tell us of their need. We have thousands and thousands of telephone calls asking for prayer, and there are times when we get some of those. But when the Lord begins to move with the word of knowledge, it is the Lord speaking. And, of course, it could describe one person but it could also describe a hundred persons. Pick up your Bible and read 1 Corinthians 12 and see about the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. This is one of them.

QUESTION: How do you get divine healing? I've been praying for healing for my mom, who suffers from congestive heart failure and bad lungs.

PAT: I remember Kathryn Kulhman saying every time she thought she had God figured out, He changed the way He did things. He's infinite and all-powerful. Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil and all who were sick. Everyone who came to him for healing got healed. I don't know of anybody He turned down, so it is God's plan and will to heal people -- physically as well as spiritually.

How do you get it? You have to empty yourself and ask Him. Sometimes it is spontaneous. I believe it was in Toronto that a fellow was walking along the street and there were TV sets in a window of an appliance store and he stood outside and there was a word of knowledge that came during a telethon. He received it and was healed. He didn't know the Lord, but all of a sudden -- bingo! -- God describes him and God heals him.

Don't ask me why the Lord does what He does when He does it. Normally speaking, when we pray and we seek His face and we ask Him, He will do something. He says, 'When you stand praying, if you have ought against any, forgive that your Heavenly Father might forgive you' [Mark 11:25]. It is very important that we do forgive others, because it depends on entering into the supernatural with the Lord.

TERRY: Also, Pat, I will hear people say, 'I want to listen today, and I was praying, "God, please let them say something for me."' You don't have to have a word of knowledge specifically about your condition to be healed, do you?

PAT: Of course you don't, but some people like to do that. I think it was Harold Bredesen, our good friend and brother for many years, who was praying in a church. These people were coming in a prayer line and he was laying hands on people and the Lord was showing him what was going on. This one woman came up for prayer and he laid hands on her. He said, 'I don't think there is anything wrong with you.' She said, 'I don't think so, either. I just came for a check up.'

It isn't like a magic trick where you ask, 'Could you give a word of knowledge for me?' The biggest thing is that the word is in the Bible. It is in Isaiah 53 and all throughout the New Testament and in all of the Gospels about the healing power of God.

QUESTION: I know that healing is promised in the Word of God as part of the new covenant, but why do we see so little healing and miracles in our churches today?

PAT: Do you remember what Jesus said to the church in Laodicea? You are rich. You are increased with goods, having need of nothing. I think that describes American Christianity. We are rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing.

Jesus said, 'Blessed are the spiritual beggars, for theirs is the kingdom of God' [Matthew 5:3]. You have to be really desperate. When you get desperate with God, things start happening. Why should you want healing if you can go to see the doctor? If you have a headache, he will give you an aspirin. If you are a little emotional, he gives you Prozac. If you have something wrong with your skin, he scrapes it off. If your hip doesn't work, he gives you a new one. We have gotten used to doctors and medicine that take care of these things. We are not desperate. But when we begin to get desperate with God, we begin to see miracles.

QUESTION: In the Bible it states that by His stripes we are healed. Then why do some people still die of disease?

PAT: I don't think it means that every person in the world is healed by the stripes of Jesus, but He bore, potentially on His body, the sicknesses and diseases of everybody. Not everybody gets forgiven of their sins. He took our sins on Himself when He was nailed to the Cross, but everybody is not forgiven of sins. I do think we have to ask. We have to obtain it.

Is that the question, why doesn't everybody get healed?

GORDON: Right. Why do some people still die of disease?

PAT: That is Universalism, like the [belief that the] salvation of Jesus is for everybody. It is potentially, but you still have to accept Him as Savior. For healing, you have to accept the stripes for you.

QUESTION: I want to see a miracle of healing for a friend who has had cancer for five years. I know the answer could be "no", but how do I know that I'm praying correctly and will see results?

PAT: I wish I could tell you. I stood over the corpse of a dead girl who had been embalmed in a church and asked the Lord to raise her up. It didn't happen, because the Lord had already told me, 'Blessed are they that die in the Lord from henceforth.' God was taking that child home.

On the other hand, I prayed for somebody else and I wanted to wait and make sure they were dead before I got there, because I didn't want to interfere with God. He was dying, so I waited and eventually got to the hospital. The guy was still alive, so two of us down in Colombia prayed for him, and in the name of Jesus, spoke. They told us when we went in, 'You may get him up, but he will be a vegetable.' God raised him out of a coma, lifted him up, and he's the only bilingual vegetable I ever saw. The Lord touched him. It was a miracle.

I saw one woman who the Lord healed. She wanted to stay alive a few more years to raise her children. The doctors said she was going to die, but she didn't die.

TERRY: There is a sovereignty issue involved in this, certainly. We ask, because God tells us to ask, but we have to always understand that His purposes are different from ours and higher from ours [see Isaiah 55:8].

PAT: You have to be sensitive to the Lord and ask Him. God will show you what He's going to do. The faith is the faith of God, and He will give the word. When you are there praying for somebody, he will give faith in your heart that this is going to happen. He will speak to you. Sometimes he will say no, it is not going to happen. That is a question of being sensitive to him. Many times we see through a glass darkly. We know in part and we prophesy in part [see 1 Corinthians 13: 9]. For anyone to say he has a clear channel and he knows everything is coming from God, I don't think I have met anybody like that yet.

GORDON: I think the issue may be praying correctly, how do I know I am praying correctly? We want to get into the form, so that if we execute the ritual in the proper method and the proper time and quote the proper Scripture, it is almost like it is a magic formula. We are getting away from truly relying on God. Jesus said I see the father work and I work [see John 5:19], and that makes it really easy. You look to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, and He speaks words. And you just say, 'OK, I will bring myself in line with that.'

PAT: The way that power is transmitted is the mind of God to the Spirit of God to the spirit of man to the mind of man and to the mouth of man. You look to the father and listen to what He is saying. He speaks to your spirit, and your spirit speaks to your mind, and then you command the disease to go, you command the cancer to leave, you command the demon to come out, and you command the person who is paralyzed to stand up and walk. That's what you read over and over again: 'In the name of Jesus, rise and walk.' There was this command.

GORDON: One of the best prayers in the Bible is the centurion's prayer: 'Lord, speak the word and my servant will be healed' [see Matthew 8:5-13].