You have called our "bluff!"  We call ourselves "believers," but how many of us fit the description given in Mark 16:17?
 
     According to the scriptures, our Lord Jesus and His disciples spent more time ministering to the sick than anything else...and so should we.  We are to be boldly speaking His Word with healing, signs, and wonders following (Acts 4:29).  The thing that is to separate Christianity from other religions is the supernatural.  We serve a resurrected Christ who is ever ready to demonstrate to the world that He still lives by showing His compassion for the sick as He heals them.
 
     Miracles of healing were the best evangelistic tool Jesus and the early church had - they still are!!  Unfortunately, only an isolated few of the U.S. church have received this truth, and many of those have found more fertile ground overseas in countries without the unbelief and the kind of medical access available here.  Desperate, hungry, poor and sick, many people in these countries eagerly accept the work of Jesus and receive Him as their physician as well as saviour.
T.L. Osborn's book HEALING THE SICK published by Harrison House well documents this.  (It is also the best book on healing that I have ever read, and I strongly recommend it for anyone seeking the TRUTH).
 
    A number of years ago my husband and I drove many hours to pray for a dear friend who had been sent home from the hospital to die with cancer within five days. After arriving we shared God's promises with her on the first day and a half and then we prayed for her.  Jesus immediately undertook, and she arose from her death bed HEALED.  Hospice and the oxygen tanks were cancelled.  Two days later, after having been bed-ridden for over a month, she and her husband drove several hundred miles on a pleasure trip, just to get out and enjoy life again.  When she later walked into her doctor's office, the doctor and her staff were astounded.  They called her their miracle patient.  Four months later we attended her son's wedding and celebrated this event with her looking radiant and healthy.  What a joy it was for us all!
 
    A little over a year ago and after giving a teaching on healing in a pastor friend's church, my husband and I laid hands on a young girl's ankle.  It had been broken but had not healed properly, causing her to limp with pain and discomfort.  Doctors were going to operate and try to surgically repair it.  As we laid hands on the ankle, Jesus undertook and we along with the pastor and others watched the ankle turn, pop, snap and grow straight in a dramatic way right before our eyes.  We then suggested that she try it out.  Thanking Jesus, she ran up and down the church aisles with two perfect ankles.
 
    Last summer we had a neighbor over who asked for prayer.  He was almost deaf in one ear.  Without any real sharing of the Word,  we asked him to remove his hearing aid.  Then we laid our hands on him and rebuked the deaf and dumb spirit in the name of Jesus.  Stunned, he immediately received his hearing.  For two days he could hear perfectly, but then the deaf symptoms returned, so he put his hearing aid back in. Thru this experience we have learned a very valuable lesson.  We are not to lay hands suddenly on anyone without first sharing God's promises on healing and only then after gaining a statement of belief from that person.  It is the Word mixed with THEIR
faith that makes them whole.....not OUR faith!!
 
     The world says, "seeing is believing", but God says believe first, then you will see.  Our part is to show God's promises.  The one being prayed for is to believe them, confess them, and act on them.  In this way Jesus is able to do His part.
 
      James, you are on the right track!  Do not be discouraged, because you are going to come up against a great deal of unbelief...especially from those who call themselves "believers."
 
In Christ,
 
Susie Parker