Prayer has an important place in healing and wholeness in every believer's life. Dr. Bill Dasch (BillDasch.com) is a nationally-known presenter of healing prayer workshops. Bill has seen our Lord's hand of healing extended to many, resulting in prayers of thanks, followed by increasing numbers of prayers, lifting up others. Listen in as Bill talks about prayer and the blessings God gives. Interviewer is Pastor John Cain.

The following program is sponsored by evangelical life ministries.

Welcome to engaging truth, the manifestation of God's word and the lives of people around us. Join us each week. As we explore the impact of his message of spiritual renewal from the lesson of forgiveness forged in the crucible of divorce, to the message of salvation learned by an executioner from a condemned killer to the gift of freedom found in the rescue of victims of human trafficking. This is God's truth in action,

And welcome to another addition of engaging. I'm your host John Kane Willis. Today we have pastor bill dash of bill dash ministries. Welcome to the program bill,

Glad to be with you guys this afternoon.

So tell us, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

So tell us how you got in into that. I know some of that backstory, but tell our listeners how you got into praying and in this ministry of leading others to pray for, for health and wholeness and faith.

Well, thanks for that question. You know, when I was a pastor in commerce, Texas, uh, my first church, I used to pray for people and there were, when people would get healed and some would come in who had cancer and all of a sudden their cancer would be gone. And I thought in my mind, so I was working on my doctorate in counseling. That's a placebo effect. That can't be anything more than that. It's just their mind. It never occurred to me that God still heals today. So I went around just thinking, oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I kept seeing healing after healing happen, but never could put it together. And so when I went to Houston, it was there in that atmosphere and a few other things that happened working with people like Dave Schultz, who has a real gift of prayer and healing.

I believe that God began to move me and open my eyes to see that he not only heals today, he uses people who are clayed to pots, even like me. And I'm not just a clay pot. I think I'm a crack pot on there and certainly chipped up and broken in a lot of places. He can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things. And we just saw many miracles happen there. It was at that time that someone from California came and visited it and said, you've got to take this public and let people know what you're doing. But that time I wasn't sure it was Lutheran. I wasn't sure that it was Christian. I wasn't sure what was happening yet, but as I began to read God's word, I discovered not only is it, uh, in the Bible, not only did, uh, God, uh, heal people, Jesus healed people.

The, uh, early disciples healed people. The early church really took over the Roman empire through healings and exorcisms. You've got Martin Luther prayed for healing. And I found this rich heritage all throughout our history on praying for healing, got to studying it more, and God just began to release more or that upon me and others around in that church, through the other pastors as well. And I began to grow into it until finally, when I went away on a, uh, prayer and fasting thing before I moved to Mansfield, Texas to take a church there, that would be my third church. And, and as being a full-time pastor went all fasted and prayed. Now I wrote down when that moment came, when I felt the presence of God strong in the room, what I did was I wrote down whatever he was telling me. And he told me in no uncertain words to leave St.

Mark, go to this other place. And then he says for this time, and he said, then I want you to do what I created you to do. And that is to do this ministry of healing and wholeness. So that's exactly what I did exactly what, what I did. So now we have this ministry, we have a team of 10 people on our team here in Mansfield. And what we do is we teach people how to pray for healing and wholeness through biblical instruction and through experience, we believe not just in information but transformation. And, uh, we pray for people like on, we have a miracle Monday that we do you or people calling from all over the United States. And sometimes throughout the world, we've got teaching Tuesday, we've got personal appointments and we do conferences and workshops all the time, all across the nation. Now.

So let's get into that a little bit. How can people begin to pray? What's the, what, where would you have someone start bill?

You know, I think people, sometimes they, that you got to be a, uh, I don't know, maybe a monk or something somewhere who's been away in the desert for 20 years to start praying for healing. And, and what's amazing is that Jesus took 12 ordinary people called his disciples, the first apostles and just being with him, they went out under his charge when he said heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out evil spirits and cleanse those who have leprosy. Well, those when Jesus left were filled with the holy spirit, when Jesus has sent it into heaven and the early church, that was just a normal thing for them as well, to heal the sick, raise a dead cast out evil spirit and cleanse those who have leprosy. And so I think what we're seeing is that I wanna tell people that you not that different from the early disciples, you have the same baptism.

They had baptized to the name of the father, son and holy spirit, the holy spirit that was inside of them lives inside of you. And Paul says that that's the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. And that's a game changer right there. And you realize the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of, and in the Bible. I see where it says the spirit of God was there to heal. Come on, we got all those things. And then we've got the same call, the same call to make disciples of all nations and teaching them to observe whatever I had commanded you. And part of that is from what Jesus said to disciples in Matthew and Luke go, and once again, heal the sick, raise a dead cast out evil spirit, cleanse those who have leprosy. And, you know, uh, it's clear as a bell that the church has a, a ministry of preachy teaching and healing and wholeness.

So now bill, is this, uh, something like a, a, a heal Potter sort of, uh, Inca or what's a source of power and authority. Is it up to me to say the right words?

Well, obviously the only person that heals is Jesus Christ. Not us. There you go. I have time and time again. Uh, Peter and John find this, uh, paralyzed man on the way when they're going out to pray one day and he said, Hey, why are y'all all excited? It's by the power in the name of Jesus Christ. This man has been healed. And I think that when we ask people, uh, we generally don't ask me, what can we pray with you about? Although we will, sometimes we oftentimes say, what would you like for Jesus to do for you? You see it's God who's heals. And what I like is Psalm 1 0 3, where it says he forgives all our, our sins and heals all our diseases. Now we believe that he's, he forgives all our sins today. Right,

Right, right

Now, why don't we believe the second half that he heals all our diseases? Why don't we have more faith in just going out and praying for healing? I think oftentimes things don't happen because we don't even bother to pray, but we do have some legitimate doubts about this whole thing. Ain't quite frankly, John, I think that some of the things I've seen on TV and in churches would turn most people off and the glory certainly doesn't go to God, right? He to be a person. And oftentimes I see people in what I call healing lines that go to a certain person. Cause they believe that person is going to heal them. Not realizing it's God who heals them.

Right.

And I think we have a responsibility to tell people when we pray for them, that it is God who is the healer, certainly not us. So we don't take the credit. And by the way, I kinda like that. It's kinda like evangelism. I don't convert anybody. The holy spirit does that. So when they're not converted, I always say, Hey, I get another chance. I don't feel bad about it. So when people don't get healed, I always look at myself, but I never blame them for it. Here's what I've also seen in some other churches where I've been, sometimes people will say, you just have to believe more and it becomes a law thing. If you just believe this much, you'll be healed. You just have enough faith. You weren't healed because you didn't have enough faith. And that is hog wash. I mean, Jesus raised people from the dead and quite frankly, when they were dead, their faith, wasn't exactly real active. Right.

That's absolutely right.

And there were people that didn't have a clue. The Bible tells about some people, well, who, who healed you? I don't even know who this guy was says. Right?

Right.

I wanna tell you what God heals us. Because first of all, that's his, his nature. He's a good loving, compassionate God. Secondly, I believe that Jesus came down. He said to bring the kingdom in, to destroy the devil and his works. And whenever you see somebody get healed, restored renewed, we see a, a glimpse of the kingdom, the way God intended it for it to be, uh, doth Ludwick, a professor at Concordia Irvine once said that this was order restored, that Jesus came and is restoring order. Like bring us back to the garden of Eden. So when you, someone gets healed, they throw down the bottle. When they get off of drugs, their life exchange or marriages restored, you get a glimpse of what God always wanted us to be. That's the kingdom coming. It is a, a bit of now, but not yet. It's not yet the fulfillment of it when it'll be that way all the time. But we get a glimpse of what God always wanted us to be like and what he has for us.

Well, as you're keeping it real here, bill, you're giving us some of, some of the things you've seen. Do you have any examples of some of the things that you've seen God, do

You know there there's, I, I know one, uh, one person who, uh, used to be a Lutheran that, uh, has a list of things that he sees people do. And, uh, and he just keeps a list of that. I don't keep lists, but let me just year of some of the things that really turned me around there have been, when we were at St. Mark in Houston, we just saw a large number of miracles and Dave can attest to that. And you know, there are some things that turned me around seeing that God do such amazing things, but I have seen things like, uh, a man who was brain dead for three days, he was restored and came back and David was there praying for him before I went in the room too. And some others were and so on. And, and wow, his wife who was an agnostic, not an agnostic.

It lasted four hours. And the afternoon, the evening, they gave me another hour to do a class there. It lasted four hours. Let me give an example. So here in that, that particular, last class I, I asked for someone who had a problem with their back to stand up, cuz backs. Usually God heals, always somebody who's got a back 80% of Americans have back problems. So God was healing that day in a mighty way. And started off with a pastor, says, I don't have a back problem, but I have an eye problem. I can't see outta one of my eyes. And I prayed for him three times and nothing happened. And I wanna tell you what a letdown, when somebody brings you in all the way and the first person you prayed for, nothing happens. And then I asked him, I said, Hey, didn't I hear you say something about being a missionary.

And he said, yeah. And he told me he was in central America. I said, where did you live? Did you ever get around any kind of voodoo or which doctors? He said actually, yeah, that, uh, which doctor actually lived in the house that we lived in before we got it. He said he moved out and we moved in and I said, oh, just a second. So one of the things we've learned about spiritual warfare is sometimes demons can harass people. And sometimes I'm not saying all, sometimes they can really, uh, add to some kind of ailment somebody has. And so we just did a little thing where we just called out this spirit and you know what, as soon as we called out that spirit, all of a sudden this guy says, oh my, he said my bad eyes, my good eye, I can see, I can see, oh, by that moment.

And then on, we couldn't teach anymore. And we went three and a half hours more. I'm telling you, and out of 40 people, 39 got healed. I've seen like things happen. I've seen everything from people. Get outta wheelchairs that can't walk. I've seen, 'em bring people in they're, they're carrying them in that run around. I was at a Lutheran church where one guy came in and uh, we prayed for him. They carried him in. And then I said, now what I want you, you're standing up. I want you to run around in front of this church. And he ran around in front of him. I said, now I want you to praise God for your healing. And he said, well, I'll praise out for my healing. If I'm still healed after choir practice tonight. Well, I never saw him until I went back to that church about three months later.

And I was teaching a Bible class there and this little old man came up to me and he said, do you remember me? I said, yeah. I said, how are you doing? He says, God healed me that night. He says, but I didn't. I was embarrassed to tell everybody about what happened. And you know, we don't give a testimony to God oftentimes about what, what, what has happened to us. But any case, everything that you can imagine from arthritis cancer, I've seen cancer healed immediately. I've seen eye problems. Uh, we were in a church in Arkansas during an eight o'clock service at the end, P people came up for prayer and prayed over a lady. On the third time she had bad eyes. Couldn't hardly see. Third time her eyesight was totally restored. The next service when we had a, in the gym, which was a contemporary service there, the pastor interrupted me at the end and said, I want y'all to know that.

So and so, you know, in the eight o'clock service had her eyesight restored and then the entire Jim came forward for prayer. God is doing something new today. And I believe that people are willing to at least just, you know, Hey, I believe help my unbelief. Just give it a shot. Get out there, lay hands on people, pray, pray, pray out, outrageously, pray like, you know, like, uh, like you never prayed before. Just go ahead and do it. And what God's gonna do. Look, my wife gets embarrassed when I go someplace sometimes. Cause I always ask the waiter. Can I pray for you? If I'm in Walmart? And I see someone and God says, pray for 'em, I'll pray for 'em there. If I'm an airplane sitting next to somebody, I guarantee you I'm gonna talk to 'em and try to pray for 'em. Now they've got earphones and they can, you know, zoom you out. But, but I'll do my best. I want you to know that if you go ahead and just start praying for people, you're gonna see God heal somebody at some point I guarantee, and then you're never going to go back.

So what do you say for somebody who says, well, I've been praying for something for years and nothing happened.

Thank you for asking about that. I wanna talk about the, uh, problem of unanswered prayer. Yeah. Uh, first of all, uh, it's not uncommon. We believe that God heals you immediately. He can do that. Gradually. Sometimes it takes a while. I've seen people like two, three days, a week, three months, and then things have happened to him or ultimately, but God always hears our prayers. He answers in his timing and with his wisdom. And I just kinda, uh, when it comes to unanswered prayer, there's a mystery. Quite frankly. I don't know why some people, uh, get healed and others don't. I don't know why we can have some people the same night, everybody getting healed. One person doesn't get yelled. I don't know why Deuteronomy 29, 29 says this, something about the mysteries of God. And those are some of the mysteries that unless you learn to accept the fact that we will never understand everything about everything, uh, is hard to pray for people. But one thing I want to emphasize, please never laying people for, for healing, not happening. I think some people project their helplessness on other people and say, the reason you didn't get healed once again is because you don't have enough faith. And I just hate to hear that. I just hate to hear that all the time, but I hear it in a lot of, lot of different places where I go,

When that healing comes, that's really a gift. And, uh, you know, to, uh, to tell somebody that they've been deprived of the gift of God is just absolutely wrong. I think, uh, I, I think if God, uh, delays in answering to us, uh, maybe he's teaching us to come into alignment with his will in some other way. Um, but he knows what's best. Um, it's a tremendous opportunity for us to be in prayer for each other though. And I, I think we're instructed by Jesus to pray. Aren't we

And he was weeping and he had all kinds. He prayed genuinely, but sometimes we go through the motions, uh, of prayer and sometimes it's kinda like, well, let's have a quick prayer. In fact, think about church meeting. How many times have they started saying, pastor, do you have a quick prayer for us? So we can get down to business. I would suggest that prayer is the business of the church. And I wanna tell you, well, I did one of the workshops in, uh, in Phoenix. I did the brain on prayer Norberg and some others have been studying, but the brain looks like on prayer and you can see a definite when you're in prayer, on what starts happening, things start connecting. And Martin Luther said that he prayed two hours a day. And if he was really busy, he'd do three. And what that does, your brain is actually working to put things together while you're sleeping, even. And that's why you go to bed at night, thinking about something in the morning, wake up and your brain has solved it.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's amazing. The way God designed us.

Yeah. You know, uh, talking about, uh, how Jesus prayed. I remember hearing that in Luke's gospel, particularly, uh, look at every time that Jesus prays that's immediately before major events happen in Jesus ministry.

That is absolutely correctly. You start thinking him well, ultimately I'm going to the cross, right? Instead praying you wanna talk about unanswered prayer. And one way he said, father, you know, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. I wanna say that, uh, Jesus just was, he just, Ooh, prayer. And I think it's because he understood that he needed a with the father. And that was his way of doing that. And I wish we could understand that we were creative for a relationship with the father, right? And that God has always wanted everyone to be part of his family. Now, some people have refused to be part of his family, but the family of God has called to reach out to our members who are not there. And to really, to be say, Hey, we have a God that loves you. God is good. In fact, let me give you a quick, uh, model that we use for prayer for your listeners.

Okay.

You know, everybody's heard of the acts model, adoration, confession, Thanksgiving suffocation. Well, uh, I'm from Louisiana. We're not real smart down there. So we cut it down from four to three and just called it packed P a T praise ask and thank. And it goes like this. So we praise God when we start to pray, God, you are a good father. You're worthy a praise and honor, and glory. And today, uh, I come before you and we ask whatever it is with John who has cancer, not you, John. Uh, but someone over here who has cancer today, we ask you to, uh, curse that cancer, to heal this man in the name of Jesus. And we thank you for you're a good God who is concerned about your people. It can be as simple as that. It can be as simple as that, you see, praying for healing is no different than praying for anybody else. It's simply intercesory prayer. That's all it is.

We'll come back to bill in just a moment. I wanted to, uh, tell our listeners to visit our website, Elm houston.org. On that website, you can find out more about us. You can get links to our Facebook, Twitter, YouTube accounts. You can, uh, listen to podcasts of past programs. There's also ways for you to write us and ways for you to support us so that you can support what you listen to. Uh, all of your on the air hosts are volunteers. So your tax deductible donations go far to help us purchase airtime. Now coming back to bill real quickly, bill, we've just got about two or three minutes. Yeah. Tell, tell our listeners real quickly, how they can, uh, get to your website. And if you would very quickly give us your vision for, uh, what you'd like to see Christians doing in prayer.

Hmm. First of all, uh, I wanna say in contact us on@bill-atbilldash.com and, and that's my personal email, but bill Ash ministries will take you right to our website, bill Ash ministries. And we've got, uh, we've got resources that are free, that are downloadable as well. We do do conferences and workshops. I just published a book called spiritual warfare that just came out on Amazon by Dr. Bill dash. And then my wife said, I have to show you this one or else this whole thing. I get slaughtered on this. Sorry about that. She wrote a book called behind the

Collar.

She says, you better tell about my book too. So, so there it's it's out there. Well, you were asking the more you were saying what now, the vision of it. Let me tell you what the vision of this is. First of all, the vision of build action ministries is to, to see every family, every church being a church of prayer, we'd like to make it a normal part of the way we interact, not just at church, but wherever we are. And it's kinda like we have this vision of, uh, when I was in, at St. Mark in Houston, we took our kids to, uh, Huntsville state park and all these kids are catching these little tiny, tiny fish. And one guy was little kid was catching nothing. I went over and said, what's wrong. He says, I don't know, said, pull your line up. And this guy had a 10 inch worm on it. I mean, that's about three to four times bigger than any of those fish he's catching. I said, I see the problem. You've got too big, a bait. And he said, no, sir, I don't have too big a bait. I need a bigger fish. I need a bigger fish.

There you

Go. And I think that's what we're saying. We'd like to see church Missouri Senate just become a church of prayer. We've got great theology. Look, we've got amazing worship. This is a great church. I believe that one of the things Jesus taught, he preached and he prayed. And I say, let's just reclaim all of Jesus' ministry for his church today. And we watch what happens when people see the gospel demonstrate with power, not just preach with power, but demonstrate it. I believe we're gonna see a massive revival in the Luther church, Missouri center.

Well, that's something to pray about that God would, uh, sweep through this, uh, nation sweep around the globe, turning hearts towards Jesus so that, uh, through Jesus, the world's one and only savior, they may be saved completely freed from sin and guilt and given the blessing, the gift of not only life with God in this earth, but also life face to face with God in eternity, given the blessing, the gift of not only life with God in this earth, but also life face to face with God in eternity. Bill, I wanna thank you for your ministry and for being with us today. We tell our listeners to join us again soon for another edition of engaging truth. Goodbye.

Thank you for listening to this broadcast of engaging truth. Be sure to join us each week at this time to help support our ministry, contact evangelical life ministries, post office box 5 6 8, Cypress, Texas 7 7 4, or visit our website Elm houston.org, or find us on Facebook evangelical life ministries. Thank you.