Spiritual Gifts and Healing

Four spiritual gifts might be needed to get a sick Christian healed: word of knowledge, discernment, faith, healing. The gifts of discernment and word of knowledge will often be more important than the gift of healing. The latter gift is more important for evangelism, but discernment will be more important in a healing team dealing with Christians.

The Holy Spirit can give all these gifts to one person, but he prefers to give them to different people so they will work together. He does this to strengthen the body.

If someone gets a word of knowledge about a sickness, we should not assume that they have the faith to heal the sick person. The Spirit may have given the gift of faith to someone else in the body. For example, when the man at the Beautiful Gate was healed, Peter did the talking, but he said, “Look at us!” (Acts 3:4). John may have had the gift of faith that produced the healing.

Healing: Insights for Christian Elders, p.80.