Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:14-16)

As I shared in yesterday’s DWOD, the contact between a blast of steam and my skin left behind a blister that needed medical attention.

The doctor at the walk-in clinic had instructed me to disinfect the wound every day, coat it with the antibiotic ointment Flamazine, then cover it up with sterile gauze and apply some tape to prevent it from sliding down.

This I did dutifully for a week. It was still hurting at times, though. Also I noticed a yellow layer developing on one part of the wound.

Concerned about the pain and what appeared to be pus, I went back to the same clinic to make sure that it was actually healing.

The doctor who examined me this time took care of those concerns in a jiffy. He assured me that the healing process was indeed well under way. Then he asked how I was taking care of the wound. When I shared the exact same information I divulged in the second paragraph of this post, he proposed some changes.

“Stop covering it up from now on,” he advised. “Let the wound get some air. Apply the ointment twice a day instead of once. In a while that yellow layer will be gone and only a scar will remain.”

I could hardly believe the change when I started following his advice. The pain was gone, the raw redness of the wound started changing to a more pleasing pink and the yellow layer did indeed begin to fall off.

You see, when the wound was still fresh, it needed to be covered for a while to prevent further infection. But, after a time, the healing process was actually being hindered when it remained hidden underneath the gauze. Exposing the wound actually accelerated the healing.

The first portion of the Scripture at the top of this post is often quoted when we pray for healing as a group for someone and anoint them with oil. The latter portion that says: “confess your sins to one another” does not get the same press, does it?

Yet, healing is only promised when we confess and “pray for each other”. Confession precedes intercession.

We see the necessity of such confession to bring about physical healing quite often in prayer ministry. I cannot count the number of times when someone confesses their need to forgive an offender and almost immediately notices pain leaving their body.

Sulojana and I and a host of others have experienced healing of the heart (emotional wounds, spirit/soul hurts) by taking the time to sit down with two or three prayer ministers trained in Sozo and/or Restoring The Foundations or a similar ministry. When we confess our sins, freedom and healing follow, sometimes instantaneously. It is truly incredible!

Dear DWOD friend, don’t kid yourself by saying you don’t need this kind of ministry, because you have already confessed your sins to God. If confessing our sins to one another was not significant for our healing, God would not have included that in the Bible, amen? Keeping such wounds covered will only hinder you from advancing into your destiny.

Just as it was with me, there is a time to keep the raw wound under wraps initially. But then there comes a time to remove the gauze and expose the wound–sooner than later, we hope. You too will realize how true it is that God brings about healing when you start revealing your woundedness to another.

If you have already experienced this, would you please share your story with the rest of your DWOD family in the comments section below this post? If you have not and would like to know how to go about doing this, please contact me at jeeva@destinywordoftheday.com and I will find someone who can help.