LAYING ON OF HANDS

When we talk about the laying on of hands we are not just talking about the act of one person laying their hands on another person in prayer, we are talking about the concept, the realm of personal ministry. 

We are talking about what happens in personal ministry and how God works through the ministry of one person to another. Basically we are talking about the authority that God has given to mankind and more specifically to the believer through the Holy Spirit.

Every Christian is called to personal ministry. This is not just for the super saints or for the leaders. It is for all believers. And it is crucial to our personal growth and development as believers.

Laying on of hands is not magic. There is nothing special about one person putting their hands on another person. It is a ceremonial action just like water baptism or taking communion or confession of sins. None of those actions have any special powers in and of themselves. What empowers each of those actions is the faith behind them. The faith that drives us to do the actions. That is the key.

The laying on of hands isn’t what makes things happen. What makes things happen is faith. Laying of hands facilitates and creates an opportunity for what you are believing to occur in your body or in your life. It is a tangible avenue by which you avail yourself to experience the power of God manifest in you and for you. It is a way of yielding to the Holy Spirit to minister to us by His power and anointing.

Luke 4:14-44

Here we see Jesus baptized with water, then baptized with the Holy Spirit and going into the wilderness where He spent 40 days and was tempted by the devil. After overcoming He returns and goes to the synagogue to begin His public ministry.

And He begun by announcing that the Holy Spirit was upon Him and had empowered Him to do several things which included bringing financial success and abundant life to the poor, healing the sick, delivering the bound and so forth.

He continued to preach with incredible power and authority so that everyone marveled at His words. However, Jesus wasn’t all talk. He also demonstrated the things He talked about. He cast out devils, healed the sick, and did many signs and wonders.

In verse 40 it says that ‘Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them.

Jesus healed every single person that was brought to Him. How did He do that? By what means did He heal them? By laying His hands on them.
Was there something special about His hands? No. did He have some sort of special power or anointing in His hands? No. was it because He was the Son of God? No.

Jesus did all of this because He had the Holy Spirit in Him and upon Him. He was a man full of the Holy Spirit. Earlier He had announced that the Holy Spirit was upon Him and had anointed Him to do these things. He was simply yielding to the Holy Spirit who was in Him and upon Him. Laying His hands on people was a way for Him to release the life, power and anointing of the Holy Spirit that was in Him unto these people who needed to be healed or delivered or whatever they needed. Laying of hands was a way for Him to take what was in Him and releasing it upon these people who needed it. And it is the same with us.

As we discussed in a previous lesson, being filled with the Spirit has nothing to do with getting more of the Holy Spirit or having a lot of the Holy Spirit in you. The Holy Spirit is a person and when you received Him you received Him in His fullness. Being filled with the Spirit has to do with coming under the influence of the Holy Spirit. It has to do with yielding more and more of yourself to Him.

In Ephesians5:18 Paul admonishes us to “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit”

He compares being filled with the Spirit to being drunk with wine. When you are drunk with wine your stomach is not filled with wine and neither are you having more of wine. You could even take just a very small glass of wine which cannot even occupy a tenth of your stomach and still be drunk.

What happens is that you yield to the wine. Your mind, will, emotions and body all come under the influence of the wine. You say and do things that you wouldn’t when you are sober. And if you drive a car and are arrested you will be charged with driving under the influence. (DUI)

This is the same thing with being filled with the Holy Spirit, albeit in a positive sense. When you are filled with the Spirit, you are intoxicated with the Holy Spirit. And you do this by yielding more and more to His influence through prayer, fasting, acknowledging Him, by being aware and paying attention to Him, by worshipping, by speaking in tongues and several other ways.

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