You keep your faith active - thank you God you've touched me, thank you you're healing is worked through my body right now. By your stripes I am healed - in other words maintaining a position of faith, in spite of some of the symptoms that may still be there. Does that mean that we don't go to doctors? Not at all, doctors have their place. The Bible tells us to: “go first to the Lord”.
James 5:14 it tells us this: “If any be sick...” - this is what it says. It's quite interesting, the revised version of the Bible says: “if any be sick, reach into the medical cabinet and get something to fix you up”. The revised, revised version says: “if any be sick, call the doctor immediately”. It doesn't say that!
The Bible says this: “If anyone be sick, let him call for the elders of the church, and they'll come and anoint him with oil and pray over him, and the prayer of faith will heal him”. Presumably that means Laying on of Hands as well.
So many people make the prayer of leaders in the church the last place... I'm going to you now, to pray, because I've been everywhere else, and nothing else works - now I have to come. Not a lot of faith in that. God says: no, believe Him for health. Believe Him to keep you in health. Believe for healing, when healing is needed. Do we need the doctors? Yes, the doctors are helpful; but just make your first place prayer. Turn to the Lord first, and say: God, touch this sickness, touch this thing.
We had one situation with one of our daughters. She had an eczema condition for years and years and years, and we tried all kinds of things. We prayed for her, and prayed for her; took her to doctors, gave her things; and more recently it's got worse and worse and worse. Nothing we did - even praying - seemed to make any difference. When she was here last, Janice prayed for her actually, and she felt the touch of God.
We just gave her a book, and she went away, and she began to look at the issues of her heart; and look: perhaps there are some blocks to healing taking place. She began to look at some generational things that may have been in her life. She began to look at some areas of attitude in her life; and then she just prayed some prayers to put her heart right before God. She woke up the next morning, and almost all of the eczema had gone. God did something no one else could do, no medicine, nothing else could do it. God could do it! So don't be discouraged if, the first time you pray, nothing happens.
Finally, the last is the area of Commissioning Believers. In Acts 13:1-4, they commissioned people into acts of service by the laying on of hands. So the Holy Ghost spoke to Saul, and spoke to Barnabas - spoke to them, put it in their heart that they had a call of God; and then God spoke to church leaders and said: now's the time of that call - so they laid hands on them after prayer and fasting, and sent them out. God worked through them mightily and powerfully.
Throughout the Bible, the Laying on of Hands was used to set people into roles. In Acts 6, they set deacons into roles. They prayed, and the spirit of wisdom and power came on them, and many of them worked in the supernatural, and did miracles.
The laying on of hands enables you to give what you have to someone else. Don't minimise what God has given you, and don't hold back from reaching out to someone to pray for them; because just making that connection, and believing God can release something into their life - that changes them forever.