Prayer Of Impartation

Q

May the Lord continue to bless your website. I have been blessed in many ways by it. I would like to know what a prayer of impartation is about and if it is biblical. I came across this recently but know very little of the concept.

A

The term “prayer of impartation” is used by some to describe the process by which spiritual gifts and other blessings are “imparted” to a believer through prayer accompanied by the laying on of hands. Those who use this term point to the examples where Paul laid hands on a group of disciples in Ephesus resulting in them manifesting spiritual gifts (Acts 19:4-7) and where he exhorted Timothy not to neglect the gift that was given to Him through a prophetic message when the elders laid hands on him (1 Tim 4:14).

The concept of laying hands on a person while praying goes back to the earliest times. In Numbers 27:18, God told Moses to lay his hands on Joshua in the presence of the priest in order to give Joshua some of the authority Moses had been given so the Israelites would obey him.