Sid Roth

SID: You know, I was fascinated, and you know the one thing you said that really hit me like a two-by-four, is I would put my hand on someone and pray for them, and kind of get the Holy Spirit to go through my hand into them. But you said something different.

 

ART: Yes. I was always raised with this idea. I don’t think anyone ever taught it to me. But I thought that healing was something you learned yourself into, that you had to like learn techniques and figure out how to push power out your arm, and all that. I discovered it is none of that. It’s just my job is to do my part and only my part to completely trust Jesus to do the rest. I don’t have to think the right thought, feel the right feelings, say the right words, quote the right scriptures, claim the right promises, any of that. It’s just take Jesus at his word. He said, “Lay your hands on the sick and they’ll recover.”

 

SID: Tell me about your two-year-old son. Again, there’s hope for me and you. Even a two-year-old can do it.

 

ART: My wife was playing in the living room with our two boys and my four-year-old was right between her knees on the floor, and she had her elbows on her knees, leaning forward, and that four-year-old Joey popped up and hit her right in the nose. And I’m sitting in the dining room and I heard this loud pop. She reaches up and she’s got blood coming down her hands, and J.J., the two-year-old, he hops up, runs over before I could get there and says, “Mommy, you okay?” Touches her nose with his hand and said, “Nose be healed Jesus’ name.” The bleeding stops. The pain stops. She goes and looks in the mirror. There’s no sign of a broken nose. All she had to do was clean the blood off her hands and she was totally fine. Still to this day, no sign of a broken nose.

 

SID: What a wonderful way to be raised. But something really beyond a broken nose happened. Your wife goes into labor, 24 weeks, and you know that’s not a cool thing to happen. What occurred?

 

ART: Yes. That’s when she was in labor with Jeremiah, J.J., the youngest. I was at the store and she had had pre-term labor with our first, and so we were kind of expecting to be careful. But she knew what labor felt like. And I’m at the grocery store, and she called me and said, “I’m in labor.” And I said, “Are you serious? It hasn’t been long.” She said, “Yeah, I know and the contractions are five minutes apart.” I left my shopping cart there in the aisle, took off running for the car, drove as fast as I could to get home. Don’t tell the police. But as I’m driving I’m crying, sobbing in prayer. And I just said to the Lord out loud, I said, “God, I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough for this.” And he spoke back to my spirit right in that moment, and he said, “This is what I meant when I said, ‘My power is made perfect in your weakness.'” This peace hit me. I realized I never was strong enough. It was never about that. I drive home the rest of the way in peace still knowing it’s a serious issue, and I hurried into the house. My wife is standing there in the kitchen with her hands backwards on the counter having another contraction. And I knelt down on the floor, laid my hands on her stomach and said, “In Jesus’ name, contractions stop now.” That one stopped instantly. We grabbed the overnight bag, jumped in the car, drove a half-hour to the hospital. She had two or three more contractions on the way further and further apart. By the time we arrived the contractions were done. They ran a bunch of tests. They said, “We can’t find anything wrong with you. We don’t know what happened.”

 

SID: Why is it harder for even, say, a healing evangelist when they get hit with an incurable disease in their own home? I mean, that should be the easiest place. Why is it harder?

 

ART: Really, honestly, the only blocks exist between our own ears. So we had these problems with how much we love our family member. And so we have these expectations like, uh-oh, I hope this works, because if it doesn’t I have to go to bed with this person tonight or I have to see them in the morning, you know. And we wonder, is it going to happen this time? We’ve been pursuing it for so long. Like Proverbs 13 says that, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” This thing you’ve been believing for and pushing for, for so long, gets put off and put off. Your heart can get sick and you start to expect, well it didn’t happen the last 37 times I laid hands on my spouse or my kid, or whatever. Maybe it will happen this time. Probably not. I’ll just expect it in the future. And it’s hard to talk about how to persevere without setting people up with an expectation that they’ll have to persevere. And so we end up trying. We see nothing. We don’t know what to do after that. It is possible to persevere, but it’s also possible to expect it right here, right now, and that’s what we have to expect every single time we minister to our family.

 

SID: Okay. I heard what you said. But I want you to talk to someone that for 20 years has been dealing with a chronic problem and I don’t know even know if they believe anymore.

 

ART: Right.

 

SID: Talk to them.

 

ART: First thing’s first, you’re doing everything right. You’re doing everything right. The only, this is the thing, people ask me, is it okay if I minister healing to myself? I say absolutely.

 

SID: [unintelligible].

 

ART: Yes. There’s nothing in Scripture that tell you that you can’t minister healing to yourself. Okay. However, there’s also not a prescription that says you have to. In other words, if you’re trying and you’re seeing results, don’t feel bad. It wasn’t, the weight of responsibility wasn’t on your shoulders to begin with. So the only prescription for a sick believer is found in James 5, which is to go to other mature believers and have them minister to you. So my job as a believer, my job as a sick person is really to contend as much as I can to do whatever it is I know I can do, but remember, I can’t earn a healing. There’s nothing I can do that’s going to accomplish more than what Jesus already did. He did all the work. It is finished. That’s the truth. So I have to bank on that. I have to hold onto that truth and just keep persevering. Jesus said everyone who seeks, finds. Everyone who knocks, the door is open. The only way that that doesn’t happen is if I stop knocking, I stop seeking, I stop asking, there has to be perseverance. Now beyond all that, I would encourage you, when you’re seeking healing, you’re seeking for Jesus to receive what he paid for. That means that seeking healing is an act of worship, whether you’re seeking your own healing or seeking someone else’s healing. And it’s a form of worship that only exists in this world. You’re not going to have that on the other side of eternity because you’re going to be well. Everybody is fine there. But right now you have a very valuable form of worship that is meaningful to the Lord. It’s dear to his heart. You know, Matthew 25, Jesus talks about this parable of separating sheep from goats, and he’s talking about the final judgment. And he says to the sheep, “I was sick and you cared for me,” or you looked after me. He didn’t say, “I was sick and you healed me.” See, when I stand before the Lord at the end of time I’m not going to have to answer for whether or not I ever worked a miracle. In fact, the people who pointed at their miracles for their justification, he says, “I never knew you.” What I will have to answer for is whether or not I loved. And so people who have someone who is in a chronic condition and they’re not healed yet, know that the greatest and most important thing to the Lord’s heart is the fact that you are loving and you’re caring, and you’re going out of your way to take care of that person.

 

SID: I want Art to pray when we come back. Number one, I believe God is going to operate through words of knowledge for your healing. I mean, he’s had many, many meetings where a hundred percent have been healed. But I also want him to pray that you have all these barriers come off and you start fresh for the greatest move of God’s spirit in history. God thinks enough about you. He had you born for this big wrap-up move of his Spirit. Be right back.