God’s Heart for Healing the Sick #2: Greater Works and the Power of the Name of Jesus

Healing the sick is part of the greater works Jesus promised to every believer, and the authority to do it rests in His name. In this second message of the series God’s Heart for Healing the Sick, the pastor explains that a corrupt world given over to a reprobate mind is not beyond hope, because where sin abounds, grace abounds much more through the church. He then teaches how to ask the Father in the name of Jesus and why that name carries power. It follows God’s Heart for Healing the Sick #1: Wake Up and Labor Together With God.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, every key Scripture (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was preached at NTC Ministries in Wisconsin and posted in July 2024. The pastor recaps the first message, which established from Scripture that healing is God’s will, and then moves from the problem of a corrupted world to the believer’s answer: the works of Jesus done in the name of Jesus.

Along the way he shares several testimonies from his own ministry, including a woman born blind who received her sight during a phone call, and a crusade in Uganda where a woman who had never walked jumped off her stretcher. His conclusion is simple: the problem is not God and not the world, but a shortage of laborers willing to use the name of their King.

A World Given Over, and Grace That Abounds

The pastor begins with the end-time picture from Luke 21:25, which speaks of distress of nations with perplexity. Perplexity, he explains, means a situation so bad that there seems to be no way to fix it.

He finds God’s hand even in this. Romans 1:28–31 says that because people did not want to retain God in their knowledge, He gave them over to a debased, or reprobate, mind, to do things no one would imagine doing otherwise. Yet the same letter declares that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (Romans 5:20).

That is the paradox he wants the church to hold. Sin is getting worse, but grace is becoming more evident through the church. Grace is not a license to be corrupt; it teaches us to live righteously, changes us and increases us. And grace will not abound among people with a reprobate mind on their own. It abounds through those who have received it, so that others can see it.

He traces corruption back to Adam. When Adam sinned, the earth itself came under the curse and began to bring forth thorns and thistles (Genesis 3:17–19). People lived over 900 years and accumulated enormous knowledge, yet things grew worse, until God saw that every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).

His point is that knowledge without God does not fix the human heart. Ancient Rome and Greece made education their god, with philosophers searching for new ideas because they had no fixed truth. But being given over to a reprobate mind, he insists, does not mean there is no hope for a person.

Sowing Good Seed in a Corrupt Imagination

To explain how hope works, the pastor describes a 40-acre field that is tilled but never planted. What comes up? Weeds. To get food, you have to plant good seed on purpose and then keep pulling out whatever wants to choke it. That, he says, is exactly what Jesus taught in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3–8).

Seed by the wayside is stolen, seed on stony ground is scorched, and seed among thorns is choked. But seed on good ground brings forth thirty, sixty and a hundredfold. The question he presses is personal: what is being sown into your life?

Left alone, he says, the human imagination runs toward evil. Hear a creak in the house at night, or a phone ringing at 3 a.m., and the mind does not jump to good news. So believers must sow good seed on purpose and cast down every imagination that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5).

That is why hearing the word matters. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). A ten-minute sermonette that never teaches the word plants no seed. God is not mocked: whoever sows to the flesh reaps corruption, but whoever sows to the Spirit reaps everlasting life (Galatians 6:7–8).

People bound by corruption, he says, need a miracle to be set free, and believers are meant to be part of that miracle. In his words, “he saved you to save people he set you free to see people set free.”

Greater Works: Healing the Sick Today

The church cannot sit back and ask why God is not doing something, the pastor says. He already did; now it is our turn. The central text is John 14:12–14: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.”

What could be greater than raising the dead or opening blind eyes? While Jesus walked the earth, he notes, no one was born again, because new birth came only after His resurrection. Now believers can lead people into eternal life. The table below follows how he contrasts the works Jesus did with the greater work open to the church.

The greater work does not replace healing the sick; believers are still to do the miracles. But, he says, you cannot do them sitting on your hands or never talking to anyone. He believes that before Jesus catches His church away, there will not be a sick, broke or disabled one among the believers, because they will be doing what Jesus did.

He shares how he first took this passage seriously around 1981. He began praying for people on the streets, saw people saved and healed, and started a food program in the Upper Peninsula that gave away 90,000 pounds of food a month across about a 150-mile radius. On one delivery, a shut-in woman tried to close her door, and he told her he had come to feed her spiritually too.

As he shared the kingdom, she said her daughter needed to hear it and called her on the phone. When they prayed together, the daughter began screaming. She had been born blind, and she cried out that she could see. Salvation, he explains, means to heal, to deliver, to set free and to raise up; when you receive Jesus, you get everything.

He compares miracles to the burning bush. Moses had spent 40 years in the desert hearing nothing, yet when he turned aside to see a bush that burned without being consumed, God spoke and told him to take off his sandals because the ground was holy (Exodus 3:1–5). His mentor T.L. Osborn used to say that “miracles are a dinner bell for the unbeliever.” People come to see, and then God speaks to their hearts.

Ask the Father in the Name of Jesus

In John 14:13–14 Jesus says that whatever we ask in His name, He will do. Anything, the pastor says, means anything. But how do we ask? In John 16:23–24 Jesus says that in that day we will ask Him nothing; instead, whatever we ask the Father in His name, He will give. So the pattern is not “Jesus, heal me” but asking the Father in the name of Jesus.

Believers have been given authority, like a power of attorney, to use the name of Jesus, an authority no one else has. And we must ask according to God’s will. 1 John 5:14–15 promises that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us, and we have the petitions we ask.

That is why the first message in the series spent the whole service proving healing is God’s will. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came to give abundant life (John 10:10), and by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:4–5).

Faith must also be in our words. After Jesus cursed the fig tree, the disciples found it dried up from the roots, and Jesus told them to have faith in God (Mark 11:20–24). Whoever speaks to the mountain and does not doubt will have whatever he says. “Your mouth is a creator,” the pastor says, so you cannot call something junk and then ask for it to be better.

Verse 24 says to believe that you receive when you pray, not that you will receive eventually. Many Christians pray, still feel an ache, decide they did not receive and go looking for someone else to pray. He says to believe you have received and you will have it.

The wording matters too. He rejects vague phrases like “in your name” or “in his name.” A $1,000 check is worthless unless it carries the right signature. So we pray in the name of Jesus. And you must know Him personally to use His name. In Acts 19:11–17, the seven sons of Sceva tried to cast out a spirit by “the Jesus whom Paul preaches,” and the evil spirit answered, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” They fled naked and wounded.

The Name Above Every Name

Why does the name of Jesus carry such power? Because He destroyed death, hell and the grave, and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). In Philippians 2:5–11, Jesus humbled Himself as a bondservant, obeyed to the point of the cross, and God gave Him the name above every name.

The pastor tells believers to let that same mind be in them. They are not deity, but through the gift of righteousness they are sons of God, bondservants who work with the Father. It is not our power that heals, he says, but we have the authority to unleash God’s power. At that name every knee bows, in heaven, on earth and under the earth.

He reads a reflection by Gloria Gaither, who with her husband Bill wrote “There’s Something About That Name” around 1970, describing the name of Jesus calming storms, melting hardened hearts and cooling a feverish child. He also recounts Smith Wigglesworth’s report of standing at the bed of a man dying of tuberculosis and repeating the name of Jesus until the glory of God filled the room and the man rose up whole.

Peter used the name too. At the Beautiful Gate, he told a man lame from birth, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:1–8). The man went into the temple walking, leaping and praising God. And 2 Peter 1:1 says believers have obtained like precious faith with Peter. The righteous are bold as a lion (Proverbs 28:1).

The pastor reports a crusade in Uganda with about 10,000 people each night in an open field. After preaching commitment to Christ, he commanded everyone healed and delivered in the name of Jesus. A woman carried in on a blanket between two bamboo poles, her legs with no muscle, jumped up and ran from one side of the crowd to the other shouting glory to Jesus.

He admits there were years when using the name did not seem to work, while his faith was still growing. When he began to think of himself as a righteous child of God, boldness rose up.

Laborers Who Use His Name

In Luke 10:1–2 Jesus sent out seventy others, two by two, and said the harvest is great but the laborers are few. The pastor asks what the problem is. Not God, and not the people, since there were reprobate minds then too. The problem is a shortage of laborers willing to stand up and use the name of their King over a corrupted, cursed system.

The seventy returned with joy, saying even the demons were subject to them in His name, and Jesus answered, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:17–20). He gave them authority over all the power of the enemy, yet told them to rejoice most that their names are written in heaven. Salvation is found in no other name (Acts 4:12).

So everything is to be done in His name. Whatever we do in word or deed (Colossians 3:17), giving thanks always (Ephesians 5:20), and offering the sacrifice of praise that confesses His name (Hebrews 13:15).

James 5:14–15 tells the sick to call for the elders, who anoint with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick. He is not begging God, he says, but commanding what Jesus has already declared. Sickness and sin are dealt with together, since Jesus asked which was easier, to forgive sins or to say rise up and walk (Mark 2:9–11). God’s commandment is to believe on the name of His Son (1 John 3:23).

Every believer who serves, he adds, is a minister. He closes with the story, as he tells it, of the hymn “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”: a missionary in India, surrounded by armed warriors, knelt, gave thanks and sang it, and the warriors laid down their spears in tears. In his account, most of the tribe came to Christ.

Living Out Healing the Sick This Week

Here are practical steps drawn from the message:

• Plant good seed on purpose. Feed on teaching that opens the word, and cast down fearful or evil imaginations the moment they rise.
• Ask the Father in Jesus’ name. Pray as Jesus taught in John 16, directly to the Father and clearly in the name of Jesus.
• Believe you have received. After you pray, thank God for the answer instead of searching for someone else to pray again.
• Watch your words. Stop speaking against what you are asking God to change; your words should agree with your prayer.
• Do everything in His name. Give thanks, praise and serve in the name of Jesus so honor for His name grows in you.
• Be a laborer. Offer to pray for someone this week; a miracle may be the dinner bell that draws them to Jesus.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Recap: distress of nations with perplexity
• 1:23 Romans 1: given over to a reprobate mind
• 2:37 Where sin abounds, grace abounds more
• 3:58 Adam’s fall and corrupted imaginations
• 8:29 The untilled field and the parable of the sower
• 10:58 Casting down evil imaginations
• 17:20 John 14:12: greater works
• 18:37 What the greater work is
• 19:56 1981 and the food program
• 23:06 A woman born blind receives her sight
• 24:01 Moses and the burning bush
• 27:11 Asking the Father in Jesus’ name: John 16
• 29:48 According to His will: 1 John 5
• 32:03 The fig tree and Mark 11
• 35:29 Believe that you have received
• 38:46 The seven sons of Sceva: Acts 19
• 41:11 Philippians 2: the name above every name
• 44:39 Gloria Gaither and Smith Wigglesworth
• 48:37 Peter at the Beautiful Gate: Acts 3
• 50:46 A crusade in Uganda
• 54:00 Luke 10: the laborers are few
• 57:58 Doing everything in His name
• 1:02:55 The story of All Hail the Power
• 1:08:32 Invitation and closing prayer

God’s Heart for Healing the Sick Series

This message is part of a five-part series at NTC Ministries:

• Previous: God’s Heart for Healing the Sick #1: Wake Up and Labor Together With God
• You are here: God’s Heart for Healing the Sick #2: Greater Works and the Power of the Name of Jesus
• Next: God’s Heart for Healing the Sick #3: The Prayer of Agreement and the Name of Jesus

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the pastor say not to pray “Jesus, heal me”?

He bases it on John 16:23–24, where Jesus says that in that day His disciples will ask Him nothing, but whatever they ask the Father in His name will be given. He is not saying believers cannot talk to Jesus. He is teaching that the pattern for asking is to come to the Father and to use the name of Jesus, and that when religious habit conflicts with what Jesus said, we follow Jesus.

What if I prayed for healing and still feel symptoms?

The pastor addresses this directly from Mark 11:24. Many believers pray, still feel an ache, conclude nothing happened and keep looking for someone else to pray. He teaches that you must believe you received when you prayed, and that if you believe you have received it, you will have it, even if you do not see it yet. He also warns against speaking words that contradict your prayer.

Does using the name of Jesus work for anyone?

No. Using the name is not a formula. The seven sons of Sceva in Acts 19 used the name of “the Jesus whom Paul preaches” without knowing Him, and the evil spirit overpowered them. The pastor teaches that you must know Jesus personally and have received His gift of righteousness. That is why he closes by inviting people to put their faith in Jesus, not just to know about Him.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• John 14:12–14 — greater works than these
• Romans 1:28–31 — given over to a debased mind
• Romans 5:20 — grace abounded much more
• Matthew 13:3–8 — the parable of the sower
• John 16:23–24 — ask the Father in My name
• Mark 11:20–24 — believe that you receive
• Acts 19:11–17 — the sons of Sceva
• Philippians 2:5–11 — the name above every name
• Acts 3:1–8 — rise up and walk
• James 5:14–15 — the prayer of faith

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

Watch More Messages

If this message stirred your faith for healing, there are many more teachings from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep growing in the authority of His name.