I did not choose this book to read. Honestly, I was required to read it as part of the church plant training my wife and I have been going through.

The book is neither as radical as the title suggests nor as juvenile as its cheap looking cover art implies. There are no forearms to the face, no power lunges into the chests of people seeking the healing of their chest cavities. This is not stereotypical Pentecostal tent revivalism with the carnival atmosphere found in the many Youtube moments Benny Hinn finds himself in.

A better title for this book would be The Power of God's Healing or Healing: Power of God. Power Healing is ambiguous helaing, so one naturally assumes that the person at the forefront of the healing is the author, yet John Wimber is one of the most humble, selfless, and cautious healers I have read.

Most Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave writings on healing, generally speaking, are ancedotal and full of conjecture. This is often seen in the teaching of tongues that is in many cases contradictory to the parameters of corporate worship Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians. This is not an attack on gifts itself, just that they are so often systematized in polarizing ideologies: either cessationism or reckless abandon of gifts. Either Science and rationalism superceding the miraculous and unexplainable or the abuse and hypocrisy of gifts flaunted over the rules and aim of Scripture. Wimber offers a relaxed, rational, and prescriptive method of inviting the power of the Holy Spirit into the midst of belivers to perform signs and actions of healing and deliverance.

Wimber takes the full notion of "salvation" seriously. Salvation is a word that has been narrowed to a point of uselessness when attempting to speak about the holistic view of the Christian life. Salvation is often better translated deliverance, a word that not only applies to the deliverance of souls to their eternal state but also to present sin, guilt, pain, suffering, troubles, and afflicition. The "delivering" or "saving" work of God is seen in all aspects of a person's life, not just their eternal state.

Wimber takes time to explain the many facets of a healing ministry and also how to participate in God's healing works. Where many Christian arguments on the gifts are too simplistic: they either don't exist or fall into our laps, Wimber instead treats the "miraculous" gifts as any other gifts, which is a third and better way to navigate a theology of miraculous gifts in American evangelicalism. Far better than the Open Yet Cautious View espoused in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? the Third Wave view rebutts the Cessationist view but does not rely on the over zealous rational scrutiny that can affect the Open Yet Cautious view. The Third Wave, as a mediating movement between Pentecostalism and Cessationism, treats the miraculous gifts as recognizable works of the Holy Spirit through a Christian, as Pentecostals do, but also recognizes the need for the "method of the mind" found in the rationalism of Cessationism. Wimber instructs that the gift of healing, open to many (if not all) Christians, is a gift that must be taught, instructed, and learned. Like the gifts of teaching and preaching, the gift of healing does not just come onto a person and give them super-abilities. The person with the gift of teaching must first learn what he will teach, the preacher what he will preach, and, for Wimber, the healer what he will do to heal. In this way, healing becomes a gift that is treated with far greater reverance than in Pentecostal teaching. This is a way of the Spirit working that is not capricious and sporadic but focused and utilizes the discipled Christian. The art of healing Wimber discusses is the way of apprenticeship, of learning how the Holy Spirit moves and then interacting with the Trinity in healing, deliverance, and mercy.

Throughout the book Wimber used illustrations and ancedotes from many denominations, not just the traditionally charismatic ones. Of special interest to me were his discussions of healing in liturgical services, particularly the healing of a priest during his ordination. A fellow priest prayed over him as he laid prostrate on the floor, the bishop preaching to the congregation, and in the holiness of the service the newly ordained priest was healed of his migraine headaches. Wimber is not tribal, he does not advocate a particular denomination, theology, or doctrine---he is an advocate for the mighty work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of all who come to him with the faintest belief, and in time he seeks to light that faith like an ember, and to light a fire of healing and deliverance in all peoples.