"Just learned a dear sister in Christ has cancer. Please join me in praying God's healing power over her. He is a God of miracles. Let's claim this for her and her family. Dear God please intervene. May your perfect will be accomplished in and through this!"
I find it sad and frustrating that so many beloved people in the body of Christ do not understand healing, or what to do if they do get sick. Prayers such as this are akin to begging God to do something, and yet, in case He decides not to, resigning any outcome whatsoever to His "perfect will".
I used to serve a God I thought had to be begged to do something. I never was sure whether He would but in fact, from rarely experiencing the answer I really wanted, I nearly always doubted He would. I was like those praying for Peter's release from prison, but they really didn't believe he would be released, because when he actually showed up, they accused Rhoda (who met him at the gate and ran ahead to tell them he was released) of being insane. (Acts 12:12-16)
Since I've fully accepted the finished work of Christ at the cross, Who bore all my sins and all my sicknesses (Isaiah 53:5, I Peter 2:24), I've come to see God as a loving God, Who wants the very best for me in every single area of my life. (Wouldn't a loving earthly father want that for his children? How much more God!)
So what are we missing? I think even those who are willing to trust God for healing get discouraged because it doesn't often happen, as my friend wished, as a miracle. There is often a span of time during which nothing seems to be happening. The pain is still there, the symptoms are still there, and the fear that God is sitting on His throne doing nothing, and perhaps even being amused with our struggling, takes over--and we quit.
I understand that, I really do. I am not saying receiving healing is easy as pie. Most of the time, I've found, it's not. But I have found that healing really does manifest, if I'm willing to have faith and not expect absolutely instant results. Which is not to say that at times I haven't had instant results. I have! That part is still unpredictable and relatively unexplainable to me. But anyway, here, for those of you who are interested, is how to receive healing from God. As far as I have been able to ascertain, by the way, it works every single time I am willing to apply my faith until it manifests.
- Most important, first off--Do not fear! I read somewhere but have never validated it that "Do not fear" appears 365 times in the Bible (once for each day). On the contrary, we are only told to fear one thing, and that is not entering His rest, Hebrews 4:1. (How beautiful is that?) Kellie Copeland, when her daughter came down with spinal meningitis in 1995 from which other children were dying, insisted from the start that she would not fear! (Her daughter miraculously recovered.) David Oyedepo of Nigeria, when his brother died, insisted to his mother not to fear, and his brother came back to life. Dodie Osteen, mother of Pastor Joel Osteen, when she was diagnosed with metastatic cancer of the liver and given just weeks to live, refused to fear and fully recovered to live a long life. These are wonderful stories of miraculous healings, but I swear I have prevented colds and disease from taking hold in my body for years and years by refusing even the thought of sickness. My confession is always, "That disease will not touch me!" I guard my body by slamming the door of my mind on even the tiniest inkling of disease. Go, disease, in Jesus' name!
- If, if, if disease begins to manifest, such as with a sore throat or any other symptom...(and this has definitely happened to me), it is critical to rest...except I am not talking about the kind of rest prescribed by well-meaning doctors and friends, even though it is not necessarily wrong to get some physical rest. The rest I am talking about is the rest that is referred to in Hebrews 4:1-3 that I mentioned in the above bullet: "Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers. For we who have believed enter that rest. Read those verses "backwards": We "enter that rest" because we "have believed" by exercising "faith" which "benefits us" because we heard and believed the "good news". Yes! And what is the "good news"? The "good news" is the gospel of Jesus Christ, that through Him each man receives total and complete forgiveness of every single sin, past, present, and future (Acts 13:38), and so we can stand unashamed and cleansed in the presence of God and...
- Receive the benefits of that salvation! Just what are the benefits, you may ask? David, in Psalm 103, foretells the benefits of the generations who have been blessed by the sacrifice of Jesus: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquity, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from the Pit, Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, Who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." (Psalm 103:2-5) I love these verses; however, we need to remember that they were written by David who lived hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth and they were a foretelling of a future event. Now things have changed...Jesus has already come, already taken our iniquities and diseases, already redeemed us. So as those verses apply to us today they should be read, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgave all your iniquity, Who healed all your diseases, Who redeemed your life from the Pit...All in the past tense...Jesus already did it, it is a finished work, no longer something that is going to happen in the future. So can you see that it is incorrect to expect God to heal you? The fact is, He already has, through the sacrifice of His precious, wonderful, amazing, awesome, holy, generous, sinless Son, Jesus. You cannot ask, as my friend did, for God to intervene. He already has! I Peter 2:24: "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree (cross), that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed! Have been, have been, have been! I know it is contrary to the way the human mind works, I know it requires faith, I know it takes a renewing of your thinking, but the truth lies in the finished work of Jesus, and it is your responsibility, not to try and believe it, but to rest in it.
- Having said that, let me say this. God designed the gospel to be so simple and uncomplicated that anyone could believe it. Some people easily simply believe. Others, especially perhaps those faced with a frightening, life-threatening, or stubborn disease gain power to believe by reading and meditating healing scriptures. (That was me, when endometriosis prevented me from conceiving a child, which I desperately wanted; see my former post, "A Baby by Faith".) There's power in the very word of God to give you faith to believe! If you need this, in my next post I will list the healing scriptures I used to tap into this power.
- And finally, you might ask, teach me how in the world I "rest" in the finished work of Christ. How on God's good earth do I move from knowing to receiving? God (Who thought of absolutely everything we would need in order to help us receive all of His benefits) provided for that through communion. If you've taken communion as a ritual at church and mostly understood it as a time for you to think about your sins and repent, you might be surprised that this isn't taught in the Scriptures. For reference, let me quote I Corinthians 11:23-30: "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'This is My body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.' For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death (not your sins) until He comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner (which would be not proclaiming the Lord's death and all that that death accomplished for you) will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord (rejecting that it is finished)...Let a man examine himself (to see if he believes in the finished work), and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body (that He bore all sins and sicknesses) eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died!!!!" (And in fact, despite books that have been written on "Reasons Why Christians Are Not Healed", this is the only reason the Bible gives for New Covenant believers being sick...they have not received and rested in the finished work of Christ!)
- So, communion is a time to cast your worries, fears, and concerns onto Christ (I Peter 5:7: Cast all your anxieties on Him, for He cares about you.) It is a time to place that sickness and disease, that worry or concern, that stress and discouragement onto Him, mentally, visually, and even with your words. It is a time to breathe a sigh of deep relief. It is a time, thank God, to rest. And you can do it (take communion and rest) as often as you like.
- Just as a brief testimony (and this is absolutely true), about six months ago I was being attacked with a respiratory infection. My throat was tremendously sore, I felt awful, and I was tempted to see myself as sick, coughing, and with a runny nose. Instead, I "slammed the door of my mind" on all these thoughts and said, "NO!" I said, "Jesus bore this sickness so that I wouldn't have to." I was very tired and fell asleep that evening quickly, but kept waking during the night because of my raw throat. Every time I did, I would mentally see and appreciate the cross, cast the care of the sore throat onto Jesus, and fall back asleep. About 5 a.m. I woke again, still having trouble swallowing. I decided to get up and take communion. I took a large hunk of matzo and a small glass of wine and went and sat down in my living room. I concentrated on Jesus hanging on the cross and worshiped and thanked Him for taking my sin and my sicknesses when He hung there. I mentally crawled up on that cross and clung onto Him, feeling the extreme love He had for me, and blessing Him for what He did. I gratefully ate part of the communion bread and drank a bit of the wine. Then I laid my head back on my chair and fell asleep. I woke about a half hour later...still felt awful...took communion in the same way again. When I woke an hour later, every single symptom was completely, 100% gone, and I was healthy and energetic just as if nothing had even happened. Praise Jesus!
I sincerely hope that this helps you to understand how to really receive healing, which was secured for you and me through the brutal death of Jesus, our Lord and Savior, and is now yours and mine for the asking. Take and receive! God is good, and He loves you so much!
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