“Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies” Psalm 103:1-4
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
“Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” James 5:14-16
The word healing is a verb. I am not sure how many people are taught grammar and english anymore but it doesnt seem like very many. A verb is defined as -
a. The part of speech that expresses existence, action, or occurrence in most languages.
For some reason we seem to think that God should just heal us and we dont have to do anything for it. Do you realize that Jesus took 39 stripes upon His back for your healing? He had to endure some suffering, a lot of suffering for us to be healed! And yet so often we think that we should just get it for nothing. Not that God wont heal like that but I think more often He wants us to step out in faith and receive it! He wants us to come to Him! He wants us to take action!
Last week in our Study of the Word, David taught on the whole man. It was a very fascinating teaching and one that I had never thought about before. There is the body, the soul and the spirit!
So many of us want our body healed but dont want God to heal our soul or our spirit! We beg God to heal our physical body, our heart, our arthritis, our cancers, our everything but we dont want or dont ask God to heal our mind, our emotions, our will! We still want it our way but expect God to take care of our physical body and then we go around and proclaim that healing is not for today because we didnt get healed and we havent seen anybody get healed and therefore it must not be Gods will! Let me tell you, it is Gods will! But it is more His will that your spirit and soul be healed than your physical body!!
To receive healing we need to have the inner man healed first! We need to take some steps to lay down our will, to STOP being ruled by our emotions, to NOT let our minds rationalize our sins! When we start to actively clean up our soul and our spirit than you will be amazed at what God will do to start healing your physical body! God loves us and He wants to heal us but He is more interested in healing the cause of our issue and not just the issue!
There is a man in the church who was having chest pain. He went to the hospital and they told him that his EKG was horrible and worse than it had been and he was very scared. Who wouldnt be? Who wants to go through having a heart attack and all the diagnostics and such. A few minutes later they came back and told him that they had been looking at the wrong EKG and that his was great. As David was telling Zac and Emma the story Zac said, I know what is wrong with him. He just threw it out there. David looked at him and asked him what was wrong, Zac looked at him and said, I saw him out back behind the truck smoking.
I know that many people have addictions to smoking and alcohol and other things and it is a struggle. I recognize that but how many people are seeking God earnestly, fasting and crying out for healing of this soulish addiction that is causing demise to the physical body versus praying and asking God to heal them of the result that this addiction is causing to their body?! You see, it is bigger than just our physical body! God wants to heal the root cause of the problem and not just fix the problem so that it can happen again!
How many people essentially worry themselves sick? Worry and stress and cause themselves ulcers and lack of sleep and run their bodies down with increased levels of cortisol and over time they are destroying their body from the inside out! They pray that God heals the ulcer, they pray that God will give them strength and energy, they pray for endurance, they want to just make it through the day but how many of them are praying and asking God to help them increase their faith so that they will stop worrying? We worry about our health, our families health, pain and suffering that a loved one is going through, our job, our money, how to pay our bills, etc etc and yet the bible tells us clearly to not worry! “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Matthew 6:25-27. When we worry, we are essentially telling God that we dont trust Him to take care of us or our loved ones or our circumstances! If we dont trust Him with that why should we expect Him to heal us because obviously we dont think that He does a very good job of taking care of us!
Worry is a mind problem! Worry is what the enemy throws at us to keep us down and from receiving all that God has for us! Yet how many people just accept it? How many people lay claim to it like it is some sort of prize? I am just a worrier, that is just what I am, I cant change it, it is just me! Really?! Sounds like a sickness to me! Sounds like something that one should want healing from! Sounds like a tool the enemy would use against us like unforgiveness and bitterness and hate and other soulish behaviors that we lay claim to and wont let God heal of us!
You want healing of these conditions? It is going to take some hard work! It is going to take action on your part! It is going to take you living second by second in order to receive your healing! When God healed me of unforgiveness it was the most amazing thing ever! But no sooner had He healed me of it than the enemy started throwing it all back at me! Every time I wasnt thinking of something specific the enemy would throw at me the things that the people I had forgiven had done to me and he would try to get me sick again! BUT I defeated him! How? Every time he had me thinking of what they had done wrong to me, I started singing a praise song to the Lord! I took action!
If you want healing from worry, or smoking or unforgiveness, or bitterness, or any other kind of soulish behavior seek Gods face! Pray and ask Him to help you! Ask Him for forgiveness! Spend some time reading the word, praying and fasting! Then when He heals you be prepared for the enemy to attack you! And when the enemy attacks you and you crave that cigarette or that drink or you start to worry or you start to think of all that was done wrong to you, turn it around and start praising God! Claim the victory that is yours because Jesus Christ conquered death and rose from the grave! YOU HAVE VICTORY IN CHIRST!! You do not have to be a slave to soulish sin!
Jesus took 39 stripes upon His back for your physical healing but even more important than that He rose from the dead and has the keys to death and hades in His hand so that you can be victorious over the devil and his schemes and attacks against your spirit, soul and body! We have the healing! Do you uderstand that? It is ours! By His stripes we WERE healed! But we have to take action to get it! We have to do some things to repair the inside of the house so that God can make the whole house beautiful and not just the external! Who wants a house that looks great outside but is falling apart on the inside?
All that being said, some people will not be healed of their physical disease even though their spirit and soul are in line with God. That is sin that is in the world. Sin and death entered the world when Adam and Eve ate of the apple. Some people wont be healed because maybe God knows that their strength and character that they have through the illness will be an example to those around them and others will come to Christ because of their suffering. I am not God, I dont know why some great and godly people get sick and are never healed. I do know that it is Gods will that we all be healed but we live in a fallen world! It is also Gods will that all will be saved and receive salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ and yet there are millions of people going to hell every day! The world belongs to satan and he is set on destroying it and us!
Are you hurting and in need of healing in your spirit, soul, or physical body? What are you doing to claim it? What sins might you be rationalizing in your soul, your mind, that might be the root cause of your physical illness? Are you seeking to heal that more so than the actual illness? Just because you might not call it sin doesnt mean that it isnt sin. Just like not knowing what the law is doesnt make it ok for you to break it, we are responsible for our actions! Jesus laid His life down for us and for our victory over the enemy and our healing! He prayed for Gods will, not His! He DIED for us! Rise up and claim it! Cry out for healing of the spirit and the soul! Set your mind on things above! Let God heal your inner man and see if the outer man doesnt get healed as a result!
