Will the holy Communion “work” if the one partaking of it is not a believer of Jesus?

What we need to understand is that simply ingesting the elements of the holy Communion will not yield results. In and of themselves, there is nothing special or magical about the elements of the holy Communion.

The Communion is a time of intimacy with the Lord, a time when you remember His love for you. It is when you partake of the elements with revelation—seeing His body broken for you as you break the bread in your hands, and seeing His blood shed for you as you drink of the cup—that His power is released to heal and deliver you from sickness and disease. This is why in our church, we invite only believers to partake of the Communion during our services. Without revelation and relationship, the Communion would just be an empty ritual to nonbelievers.

I share extensively about this in my book, Eat Your Way to Life and Health—Unlock the Power of the Holy Communion (chapter 7). I encourage you to read the chapter again to fully understand why the power of the Communion is based on a personal revelation of His love and faith in His finished work.

But if you have nonbelieving relatives, friends, colleagues, or neighbors who might be facing medical challenges, please go ahead and pray for them, and let them know you are talking to the Lord for them. In your own time with the Lord, you can partake of the Communion on their behalf and believe with them for their breakthrough. You are the righteousness of God in Christ, and God hears your prayers (2 Cor. 5:21; Prov. 15:29). The Bible even says the prayer of a righteous person “has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16 NLT).

By all means, share the gospel with them if the Lord opens the door for you to do so, but don’t worry about whether they are believers or not at this point. Just make sure they know you are praying for them so that when they are healed, they will know it is the Lord who healed them!

Share with them the testimonies you have read in this book, and tell them there is a God of miracles who can heal them and is most willing to. Tell them they don’t have to handle their challenges all by themselves, because God loves them and wants to help them in their times of need.

They do not have to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior for God to heal them. Did you realize that none of the people whom Jesus healed during His earthly ministry were “Christians” to begin with, since He had not gone to the cross yet? And interestingly, in the very first mention of healing in the Bible, righteous Abraham prayed for the heathen king Abimelech, “and God healed Abimelech,” and not just him, but also “his wife, and his female servants” (Gen. 20:17).

In the same way, just because your friends are not believers does not disqualify them from the Lord’s healing. It is the goodness and kindness of God that melts our hearts and leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). It is not our repentance that leads us to God’s goodness. When they experience His goodness and His healing power for themselves, I believe they will want to know Him more.

There is a promise in Acts 16:31 that declares, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” What does that mean?

God loves your nonbelieving family members, too, and He wants every one of them saved. Even under the old covenant, God told the children of Israel to take a lamb for the whole household (Ex. 12:3). This does not mean that once you believe in Jesus, your family members are automatically saved. But when you received Jesus, the Lamb of God, as your Lord and Savior, you opened a big door for Him to move into and touch the lives of your family members.

The word saved is translated from the Greek word sozo, which means “to save, heal, preserve, and rescue.” The greatest blessing for your family members is for them to invite Jesus into their lives as their Lord and Savior and to know once and for all that their sins have been washed away and heaven is their home.

But on the cross, Jesus did not just bear their sins; He also bore their sicknesses. If you have family members who are in a hospital or battling a disease right now, I pray that the Lord will create opportunities for you to pray for them and to share with them all that Jesus has done for them. Get ready for them to be saved, healed, preserved, and rescued!

Adapted from

Joseph Prince, Eat Your Way to Life and Health—Unlock the Power of the Holy Communion (Nashville: Emanate Books, 2019), pp186–188.