Power Healing by John Wimber

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
In, Power Healing, John Wimber seeks to place healing in the biblical and ongoing ministry of the church and offer a practical model for this ministry.

“By 1977 I believed God could heal the sick today. There were many factors that contributed to the evolution of my thinking and attitude about divine healing: new knowledge gained from Scripture study and prayer; my experience… and the Holy Spirit’s Continual prodding” (44).

In his study of scripture Wimber looked for patterns. He would look at instances of sickness and healing in the old and new testaments and chart the characteristics of the events (like the one in Appendix D). In this way he built himself a biblical systematic theology of healing. This is the way he handles the scripture in this book as well. He gives us the characteristic patterns of healing citing various instances in scripture to support his claim. In this way his treatment of scripture isn’t an inductive exposition as much as it is a look at scripture through the lens of divine healing.

Wimber alternates between his story of reluctantly coming to the healing ministry and exploring the patterns of healing he discovered in scripture and practice. The way he builds his argument from experience into scripture has the effect of taking skeptics of their guard. He was a skeptic and makes his arguments implicitly, as an explanation of his personal discoveries. I get the sense that the experiences he describes at the beginning of a chapter set up some assumptions for the rest of the exploration. The rest of the treatment, then, isn’t so much a proof as it is an exploration of the outcomes of these assumptions. For instance in his chapter, “An Unlikely Healer,” Wimber describes his encounters with God that convince him that God is still active in healing ministry, then the rest of the chapter he discusses reasons that God does heal today, using the patterns in the Old and New Testaments that he had found. The experiences brought Wimber, “to a place where I was open to his supernatural work in my life” (34). They changed his underlying assumptions about scripture and invite the reader to approach the scriptures he will present with the assumption that the supernatural is at work today.

My own experience has lead me to a place similar to Wimber as he started out. As I entered early adulthood I was desperately hungry to see God move through me. I have always been hounded by fear. To begin with I wanted God to give me the boldness to evangelize, then in college the boldness to speak up when I felt I had a word of prophesy or interpretation of tongues. I have had an enchantment with the Power of God and I too wanted to play in that power.

A couple of things slowed down my search and probably still affect me as I read Wimber. Once, when I was beginning to experiment in delivering a word, the pastoral staff called me out as being out of order. I made an inward vow that night to no longer seek God to use me in that way again. Another, more positive, lesson learned was that I didn’t have to run after displays of God’s power to enjoy God’s presence and activity in my life. When I was a youth sponsor, the youth group made a few trips to a revival that was going on in Pensacola Florida. It was wonderful and refreshing to be immersed in worship and the ministry of the Spirit in power. One trip, though, I couldn’t go. God made it all right by meeting me in a more powerfully personal way that week alone. While I don’t doubt the power of the Spirit moving today and I still hunger for God to move, these experiences left me struggling with the place of these displays of power and my own roll in them. I appreciated Wimber’s story and the way he struggled with me as I read.

I find Wimber’s experiences and the practical model for healing prayer that he offers to be the strengths of the book. He gives me permission to hunger again and challenges me to make healing a part of our ministry. I wrestle with how to do this. His integrated method for praying takes time and a lot of emotional investment. Even if I was completely prepared to make that kind of commitment, my congregation, who are quickly out the door are likely not. I have started making more of a concerted effort to pray for healing individually during the service, touching each with my hands and anointing with oil. I would like more involvement from the congregation. Often my experiences with healing services include getting lost in worship for extended periods. Getting my congregation to worship is difficult, perhaps there is a connection to explore in relation to the move of the Spirit.

Where I have a hard time agreeing with Wimber is when he discusses sexuality. I suspect he inherited the Augustinian view of sex that twisted the church for so long (though I’m not convinced that Augustine was as hard on sex as the church later would be). I am not convinced that homosexuality is a disease in need of cure or that masturbation is inherently sinful. That aside, Wimber’s warning that these may be indications of demonic influence for people bound sexually is well taken.


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