Healing Prayer: God's Idea for Restoring Spirit, Mind, and Body - eBook

Dr. David Chotka is the founder and director of Spirit-Equip Ministries, an organization designed to help people grow in the spiritual disciplines one small step at a time (www.spiritequip.com). He serves as the cochair of the Alliance Pray! Team (APT—the prayer mobilization team of Christian and Missionary Alliance Canada) and, for more than twenty-five years, has taught prayer principles and equipping both nationally and internationally. In his role with APT, Dr. Chotka was the principal author of the Transform Prayer! Course—a resource that has been translated into French, Mandarin, and Cantonese (www.alliancepray.ca). In addition, he has been a lead pastor for more than thirty years and has preached in seventeen countries to crowds large and small, teaching on such topics as "Healing Prayer," "Prayerful Discernment," "Spiritual Gifts and their Use," and "Unearthing the Depths of the Lord’s Prayer." He is the author of Power Praying, Sifting Our Discerning, and 50 Days of Prayer: Discerning the Voice. Dr. Chotka has four earned degrees, including a master's degree in biblical studies from Regent College in Vancouver and a doctoral degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He lives in southwestern Ontario, Canada, is married to Elizabeth, has two adult children, plays the piano for fun, and lets his fourteen-pound dog take him for a walk from time to time.

Dr. Maxie Dunnam is minister at large of Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. He has a doctoral degree in divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary and a master's degree in theology from Emory University. During more than sixty years of ministry, he has served as pastor of rural, suburban, and urban congregations. Apart from pastoral assignments, he has served as world editor of The Upper Room and president of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. During his tenure on staff at the Upper Room, the Walk to Emmaus and the Academy of Spiritual Formation were begun. For the ten years he served as president of Asbury, the school pioneered the use of technology establishing a virtual campus and a second geographical campus in Orlando, Florida. In his role as minister at large at Christ Church, he cohosts a weekly television program, and he represents and champions the expansive missional outreach of the congregation, including his commitment to public education, which he believes is the civil rights issue of this century. Maxie has a passion for assisting ministers in their spiritual growth, especially those who are planting faith communities among the underserved. He is a prolific writer, having authored more than forty books, including The Workbook of Living Prayer, which has sold more than a million copies and has been printed in six languages. Dr. Dunnam and his wife, Jerry, an accomplished artist, have three children and four grandchildren. 

In one word: Wow! Healing Prayer: God’s Idea for Restoring Body, Mind, and Spirit is not just about healing prayer; it breathes healing prayer! Through and through, this book is about the manifest presence of God in healing prayer. Worth the price of the book is the story in chapter 6 about a dying man who had accepted his fate and was planning his funeral, only to encounter God’s healing presence manifested to him! Led by the Spirit, uniting two spirits as one, David Chotka and Maxie Dunnam do a masterful job of interweaving Scripture confirmed by signs, following and blending together Wesleyan and Christian and Missionary Alliance healing traditions. David and Maxie also write of God’s comingling or intertwining of medicine and miracles (as well as beyond what medicine can do), what Oral Roberts called the praying hands—the hand of prayer and the hand of medicine as one. Dr. Chotka and Dr. Dunnam provide so many nuggets of practical biblical truth to describe features of healing prayer—such as "God initiates, we respond," "Embrace the mystery," "The intersection of human spirit and the Holy Spirit," and "The fiery manifest Presence of God"—and expressions of God’s healing impartation: rising peace, forgiveness, compassion, love, touch, interior fire, prayer of tears—powerfully and practically illustrated through real-life encounters with the healing power of Jesus. This book covers the whole scope of healing prayer—physical healing—of the most difficult illnesses and injuries, healing from depression, trauma, fear, guilt, abandonment, bitterness, and more, as well as the "here now and not yet" of healing. -- Author, Gods Healing Arsenal


I stood in healing lines with Oral Roberts for six years. I experienced the healing power of the Holy Spirit on numerous occasions as I traveled the world. Yet there is a dearth of books written as primers for introducing healing prayer into the local church. Maxie Dunnam and David Chotka have given us a book written with compassion, faith, and hope. It is filled with testimonies, both biblical and contemporary, of the healing power of the Holy Spirit at work throughout the church. Read this book and be encouraged as your expectations are raised for teaching and experiencing the healing power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is Lord, and the kingdom of God is afoot. -- Professor emeritus, Asbury Theological Seminary


"What He did, we will do." That is the hope of this volume on prayer, from authors who have walked the walk. This book is full of stories that will encourage your faith and embolden your prayer life. Their definition of healing prayer as "an interactive, responsive relationship" will challenge you to move beyond words and formulas to an enlivened encounter with Jehovah Rapha, the God Who Heals You. -- Founding pastor, Mosaic Church


This is a book that facilitates healing in groups. Easy reading, insightful, overwhelming, and excellent for the reader desperate to see that healing comes. The story of Elizabeth’s healing is overwhelming and brought me to tears. Read it! -- Author, Praying with Accuracy


David Chotka and Maxie Dunnam provide a blend of theology, inspiration, and practical guidance to lead you into the ministry of Healing Prayer. If Jesus has risen, and Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then the true message is: This is who Jesus IS, and this is what Jesus DOES.  Healing Prayer teaches and equips people to proclaim and practice that message! -- Director, Renewal Ministries International


This book is a practical and biblically grounded resource for ministers, prayer teams, and those who seek to bring healing grace to the whole person, whether physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Combining Scripture, reflection questions for those who minister, and their own life and personal experience, David and Maxie share how they wrestled with God and found keys to being God’s instruments of change, healing, redemption, and reconciliation. This work challenges and encourages us to bless anyone, anywhere, any time. -- President, Christian and Missionary Alliance of Australia


Accounts of healing from the hands of Jesus and the apostles, scriptural teaching on divine healing, testimonies from the healing ministries of the coauthors, instruction on how to pray for the sick and to train teams to carry it out, and finally practical wisdom on how to pray for the sick, including key dos and don’ts—Healing Prayer is a primer, a Healing 101, for everyone. Dunnam and Chotka show us how the supernatural can be quite natural in the life of the church. Healing the broken and the sick was a regular part of Jesus’s ministry, as well as that of the disciples. Chotka and Dunnam believe that such a healing ministry should also be an ordinary part of our everyday ministry, among both clergy and laity. The coauthors bring their combined decades of experience in the pastorate to offer the reader down-to-earth, plain narrative accounts of healing that occurred not only in Christ’s ministry but in their own. This book makes something like healing, which can seem complicated and intimidating, simple and accessible. The testimonies stir our faith as we are encouraged to walk in compassion as Christ did and reach out and touch the sick.
Healing Prayer seeks to impart faith and hope in the believer to pray for the sick and to build healing teams in the local church that will move in compassion and touch the broken, as the early church once did. The book is practical, offering wisdom from learned experience. It teaches believers how to prepare for healing ministry and identifies pitfalls to watch out for once they begin to pray for the sick. Dunnam, a Methodist, and Chotka, from the CMA tradition, like their spiritual fathers John Wesley and A. B. Simpson, are revivalists at heart. They recognize that the kingdom is demonstrated not only by word but also by deed and a demonstration of God’s power to heal. The next revival in the West will need such a demonstration of the Spirit. -- Associate professor, United Theological Seminary


David Chotka and Maxie Dunnam have joined together to craft a compelling and practical book on healing prayer. They approach the subject from the standpoint of both practitioners and prophets. They humbly articulate their personal challenges and uncertainties around divine healing. With powerful stories and startling supernatural encounters, they proclaim the undeniable truth that through God’s empowering presence, we are invited to partner with the healing power of the Holy Spirit. This book creates anticipation and inspires imagination, boldly calling followers of Jesus Christ to be agents of God’s healing touch to the nations. -- Past president, Christian & Missionary Alliance, Canada


For most of us, this book offers a completely new, inviting, and life-changing way to look at prayer. We are not trying to convince God; rather, we are sharing in His own heart and plan. The authors apply this paradigm to prayer for healing, showing us how we can pray with confidence that we are cooperating with God’s plan and trusting that God hears us. -- Professor, Asbury Theological Seminary


As we embrace increasing levels of brokenness in culture, the heart cry of many yearns for life-giving restoration of body, mind, and spirit. The relevancy of the book Healing Prayer is practical, applicable, and empowering for those who wish to serve as Christ’s healing agents in an hour of chronic need. -- Senior pastor, Christ Church Memphis