MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY - BEING HEALED BY THE WORD = (PART THREE)
Healed by the Word Without Surgical Scars
The study of the book of ‘Job’ comforted me greatly in my perilous journey through life. Although we lived many years apart, we have somehow travelled a similar path with remarkably similar circumstances. Having lost two wives, a sister and three brothers, a sister-in-law and most of my worldly possessions over a fourteen-months period, followed by another fourteen months of bed confined illness diagnosed as prostate and colon cancer, I subconsciously thought God had been caught off guard by these events and I wanted to understand the reason for this trial and testing I was experiencing. I refused to undergo surgery. With unshakeable faith I believed that God is always in control of any circumstances, and we are never out of His protective care, so I persevered for His greater grace and mercy, not for deliverance but for preservation. Knowing that He has the power to heal me without scars - when He preserves you, and with healing and restoration you remember all, but it does not hurt anymore.
Likewise, Job was a man who believed in doing the right thing, avoided offending others, and took care of his responsibilities. His great wealth and success were the product of faith, hard work, and God’s favour. Raising his family in the best way he could, he equipped his children with the right foundations: Lessons of responsibility, family, loyalty, and faith were taught at every possible opportunity. The home was a peaceful place filled with a sense of security. It was also a festive place with regular gatherings where friends and relatives were always welcome.
Experiencing one of the most gut-wrenching ordeals of all time, Job watches as everything he had work so hard to build disintegrates in less than a day. He underwent an intense fire of suffering. Unknown to him, this ordeal was part of God’s plan for perfecting his life. He came to a deeper understanding of his Creator’s power and faithfulness, and He brought glory to God through his steadfast trustworthiness and praise. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the victory that shapes us, but adversity. Tribulation molds and defines the character of our lives. Let us look more closely at the life of Job, which is recorded in the book in the Bible that bears his name.
Job: The Worst Day of His Life
The day began as any other day. Apparently, the evening before, all had been peaceful, without any indication as what was to come. I imagined Job surveying all that he owned. His investments were intact. Then, unexpectedly, a messenger brings bad news. Neighbouring peoples have attacked Job’s herd of oxen and donkeys and carried them off after killing those who were taking care of them. In the past, Job had always addressed any problems immediately and brought things back into order with confidence and experience. Since a hostile takeover is not uncommon in his environment, maybe he said to himself, “I have worked through tougher times than this. I will rebuild my strength, and everything will be all right.”
Yet, as he was regaining his perspective, he receives another message. A natural disaster had destroyed another part of his herds, and more of his workers had been killed. Perhaps this time he thought, “I cannot complain. These things happen, but…what is going on?” An element of confusion crept in. Unbelievable, more bad news arrived. Another raiding party had carried off the rest of his herds, and more of his servants had been slain.
In his growing alarm, maybe he thought, “At least my family is safe.” Then the worst happened. A fierce wind, perhaps a hurricane or tornado, struck with sudden fury, and all his children were killed while they were attending a party in the oldest son’s home.
Job’s life had been permanently altered. He mourned deeply, yet held on to his faith, saying, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21). Looking at his entire life he acknowledged that life was a series of seasons, some good some bad and those we must expect to experience both. At one point he said to his wife, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10).
Abandoned by Everyone
Then Job’s health failed. People close to him began to challenge all that he believed and had based his life upon. His wife abandoned him emotionally at the time of his greatest need, and his friends contributed only criticism. Maybe they looked at his situation as an opportunity to verbalize hidden feelings of jealousy, hoping that he was less than he appeared to be. Adversity would force your friends and your enemies to reveal themselves. Job tried to declare his innocence to his friends, but to no avail. They believed he was getting what he deserved for some secret infraction. Job continued to love God, but like me who experienced similar, Job wanted answers about why he was going through all these troubles.
Job’s Healing and Restoration
Finally, mercifully, God spoke. Though He had allowed Job to go through this test, He demonstrated that He had always been in control of the circumstances and that Job had never been out of His protective care. Job prayed for his friends who criticized him, and the Lord reversed his situation, causing him to be more materially blessed than he was before the crisis.
Sometimes, difficult situations happen to good people through no fault of their own. Life can seem extremely unfair. Yet, in everything Job went through, he held on to his faith and his character, and his life became defined by his experience. While he had been deeply wounded, he emerged from his experience healed without scars. God mended the hurts and filled the voids in his life. He gave Job twice as much wealth as he had before his ordeal. Of course, nothing can replace the lives of his children (likewise my wives, my sister Joyce, sister-in-law Vilma, and younger brothers, Oswald, Andrew, and Bernard). Yet, God gave Job seven more sons and three more daughters. They brought joy to Job and played a part in his restoration as their presence and love healed the hurt in his heart. Job can walk in confidence and strength once again, understanding more deeply the power of faithfulness of God, and being strengthened in his own faith and character.
Was God Caught Off Guard
Life tends to carry us into situations where we never would have gone voluntarily. Job’s story teaches us much about the tests and trials that we undergo. Job too, wanted to understand the reasons for his suffering while he was going through it. At times, I am so shocked by some things that happen to me that I subconsciously thought God had been caught off guard by them, too. If He had known about my troubles, would He not have prevented them? Before my afflictions, I had recently returned from some teaching crusades - Ghana, West Africa, then in Kenya, East Africa, and Michigan in the USA. Often, I find myself questioning God, as Job eventually began to.
We think we would handle things better if God would just give us a preview of what we were going to face. We imagine that if he gave us a glimpse of what was going to happen, we could have a sense of confidence that He was in control. This is probably not the case, however. Even if we knew what troubles we would face, we would likely still ask God why we had to go through them.
What we can be assured of is that the faithfulness and love of the Father is always with us. He is working out His plans behind the scenes of our lives. Gaining personal information and a deeper relationship with God through our trials is a process that takes time. We often do not recognize at first how God is working our troubles for good in our lives. Yet as we entrust ourselves to His care, He will surely see us through. Does it ever seem to you that, the hotter the situation you are in, the more time God seems to take, in doing something about it? The story of Job’s survival through all his troubles reveals what I believe is one of the greater graces of God.
During adversity, we are looking for deliverance. The greater grace is not deliverance, however, but preservation. Why? God’s resurrection power is revealed when we are sustained in a difficulty that causes others to give up. The forces of the world and the enemy are going to come against us, and we must learn to keep loving, trusting, and worshipping God in difficult times to persevere in fulfilling His purpose for our lives and for the world.
Most people just want to talk about being blessed. They do not want to mention that to be blessed; we are going to have to undergo persecution. I have found that before the blessing comes, persecution comes to discourage me about what God is about to do in my life. The enemy tries to preempt us from receiving the blessing. Persecution will cause us to miss God if we concentrate more on what the enemy is doing rather than what God is going to do. When you decide to believe in the love and promises of God, the devil is not going to leave you alone. The moment you begin to move in God’s will for your life, persecution may break out as it never has before. As happened to Job, people, especially those nearest to you whom you thought you could depend on may misunderstand and turn on you.
The enemy knows that God wants to preserve you in the fire, so he causes the fire to be more intense so you will give up during it. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace, it had been heated up seven times hotter than usual. When the fire is that hot, only faith will make you walk into it to encounter the preserving presence of God.
God wants to deliver you in the fire before He moves you out of it. The difficulty may be that you have not yet learned to walk freely with Him in the fire. You must learn to be in the presence of God during adversity. When you do, you will be amazed, saying, “That is strange, I can breathe in here. My clothes are not burned. I am not even perspiring. I should be consumed, but I am walking around in the very thing that should be destroying me.”
Noah was preserved in a boat during a flood that killed everybody except those who were under the protection of God. Moses and the Israelites were preserved by walking through the very thing that should have drowned them. Instead, God transformed the Red Sea into a way of deliverance for them. When Jesus experienced death and lay in the tomb, the very thing that should have held Him forever was just a holding area until it was time for Him to come walking out in resurrection power.
Thriving in What Should Have Consumed Us
Have you been through some things that should have marked you for life, but instead served to strengthen and free you? Perhaps you have been depressed for a long time, but after drawing close to God in search of healing, you woke up one morning and said, “I do not feel the heaviness of depression any longer.” If you have not yet had this experience, God wants to free you during that fire so that it can be your testimony.
We need to stop looking for a ‘quick fix’ or a way out of tight situations. The path to deliverance is in being able to function in what should consume us. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were not defeated in their praise even though they were thrown into the fire. God says, in effect, “The enemy can turn up the fire as hot as hell, but you will not die in it because you belong to Me. They have not made a fire hot enough to consume your life. There is not a situation tight enough to hold you down.” Hallelujah! Praise God!
Evidently, it was so hot outside the furnace that the strong men who threw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the fire were killed by the heat. There are some things that have destroyed other people, but when you walked through the same thing, you are preserved by Almighty God because you have remained in His presence and have received His sustaining power. To other people it looks as if you are being consumed, but you are being consecrated for His purposes. After you are preserved in your test and trial, other people will be amazed at the quality of your life. They will seek some sign of what you went through, but they would not be able to find any. They will look for some small evidence that you were defeated by the same thing that they were. They will look for it in your attitude, and they will look for it in your words, but they will be discouraged because they would not be able to find it. Then they will say, “After all that you went through, how did you survive?” You will answer, “All I know is that my God is able, and I know by experience that my God is able to save and heal in all circumstances.” After his ordeal, Job acknowledged to God, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5).
You may tell others that you were abused or given away as a child, and they will say, “What? I would never have thought that of you.” Or they will exclaim “What do you mean you are a pastor” Were you not one of the biggest playboys and drug dealers in the country? If you are at a social or family gathering, and someone brings up a situation from the past just to see how you will react, it is all right because they cannot hurt you any longer. Your past no longer stops you from moving forward.
After God preserves you in the fire, the memories of that fire might still bring you some discomfort, but they would not hurt as they used to. You may shed a tear over some things when you think about them, but you would not break down as you formerly did because God has preserved and delivered you. You will remember the situation, but it would not hurt anymore. Perhaps you came from a broken home, but now you have established your own home, and the hurt has been transformed into wholeness. Perhaps you were abused, but now you are healed, and your testimony is that the Lord is good and worthy to be praised. You have been through the fire. You have been through the flood. But it does not hurt anymore because God has healed you with His words without scars.
When we try not to remember our past, that is when we run into difficulty. But when we confess our mistakes and sins to God, and when we give over to Him the pain and abuse, we have received from others, we become free and can say, “It happened, but now I am delivered. I remember the flames. I remember the heat. I remember what bound me, but it does not hurt anymore.” We do not want to forget the fire completely because of our coming through it becomes our encouragement in our next test. We know that if the first fire did not consume us, then what we are facing now can also be overcome.
Allow Jesus To Heal You
Are you in the fire right now? God wants to preserve you and heal you with His word and without scars. Jesus says in Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in, to him, and dine with him and he with Me.” God wants to walk through the door of your negative experience, damaged emotions, and lost expectation. He desires an invitation into the emotional refuge you have created that protects you from further hurt but shields you from full healing. Let Him into that dark place. His desire is to set you free. He has the power to heal you of all the issues in your life. When you let Him in, your hope and expectation will be reborn as the light of renewed purpose and restoration pushes away the darkness of the past. Jesus will do for you what you are unable to do for yourself. God sent Jesus to heal your mind, will and emotions, which have been fragmented by your negative experiences. He will free you from the captivity of the past that holds you back from a full life.
Jesus brings beauty in exchange for the ugliness of the past. As hurtful and hopeless as your feelings may be, you have God’s promise of restoration. The Lord will exchange the sadness, mourning, and pain of lost hope for the joy of His presence. He wants to remove the image of defeat and heaviness from your life and renew your dreams and aspirations. Your damaged life can be rebuilt by His power. Life with God removes the nonproductive isolation and alienation that trauma produces. You will have new, positive relationships as He aligns your life with His purposes. God will give you a new identity with a new level of expectation. This identity will be based on the foundation of peace that comes from a relationship with Him. His original intent for you will be restored. He wants to stabilize the emotional roller coaster of your depression, anger, fear, and hopelessness, and reconnect you with purpose and joy. He wants to give you the ability to persevere in and recover from all the challenges of life. Jesus is not looking at what you have become, but what you will be. He has a vision of you in His mind that you can still fulfill. That person is divinely healed with His word and without scars. God wants to use the apparent negatives of your past as the components for a future of total wholeness and strength. The realm of impossibility is the place of opportunity with God. In that place in His presence, with Him, you will receive Divine Healing without Scars - save for His Word.
THE SOLUTION TO DIVINE HEALING
OF THE SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:2-6 NKJV)
One of the hindrances to being healed is not being able to see beyond your present circumstances or state of mind. Years of distress can take their toll, as we see in the story of the lame man who had been sick for almost forty years. Why do you think that Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed when it seems obvious that he needed it? Perhaps He wanted to test how much the man really wanted to be restored. You can be in a bad condition for so long that you can become complacent or even content in it. When God wants to take your pain from you, you struggle with Him for it. You are in a tug of war about it. Why? You have been thinking and talking about your pain for so long that you have tied your identity to it. You are afraid that if you lost it, you would no longer know yourself. Or perhaps you think you do not deserve better.
God is asking you to see beyond your pain. This does not have as much to do with the person or event that caused the pain as it does the feelings of loss, hurt, and failure that are associated with the situation. These feelings are what you keep replaying in your heart and mind, and they are limiting your outlook. What should have been a short-term issue has become a full-fledged lifestyle for you.
A Problem of Perception
Jesus encountered a woman whose affliction limited her ability to see beyond her circumstances.
Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.” And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God…[Jesus said,] “So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound; think of it; for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond?” (Luke 13:10-13, 16 NKJV).
This woman had a “spirit of infirmity” for eighteen years. As the affliction progressed, she became bowed over. Her problem was stronger than her ability to raise herself up. That is the case with many of us. If we were to look through the eyes of Jesus, we would see that our spirits are “bent over.” The weight of past trauma keeps us from standing up straight in the face of life. It has taken the edge off our power for living.
The woman with the spirit of affliction is a symbol of limited vision. Her head was being drawn closer to her feet every year. She was being drawn toward herself so that, probably, all she could do was think about her problem. After eighteen years, the people in this woman’s community had gotten used to seeing her in a bent-over state, and she also had gotten used to it. Is there something in your life that is weighing you down so that you cannot see anything except your hurt and pain?
Perhaps you can think back to the very day you were first afflicted. You even know what the weather was like and what you were wearing at the time. Now you cannot take as much stress as you used to because the emotional toll has drained your resilience. It has changed the way you see things. Perhaps the trauma has altered your life’s course or stopped you in your tracks so that you cannot make any progress.
“Do You Want to Be Made Well?”
God did not intend for you to remain anchored in the same emotional place for the rest of your life. Notice that Jesus called the woman a “daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13:16). Abraham symbolizes true faith, so Jesus’ designation of her indicates that she was a woman of genuine faith who was suffering affliction. Jesus loves her –bent and all- and He wants to set her free. He wants to set you free, too. He wants you to be whole, complete, and able to live life to the fullest. He desires that you enjoy His blessings as you live in His love, power, promise, and purpose.
You have been emotionally imprisoned for long enough. You are controlled by other’s opinions of you. You lean on your own understanding regarding what you can accomplish in life – yet that understanding has been distorted by fear of rejection. Your emotions constantly run the gamut from hot to cold, happy to sad. It is time to get off the roller coaster because chaos is not your legacy. You have not been saved to live in bondage. Today, Jesus asks us the same question that he asked the lame man in John 5:6, “Do you want to be made well?” (NKJV). In other words, “Are you ready to say yes to you healing? – ready to change your situation? Jesus was asking the lame man, in effect, “How do you see yourself? Do you want a restoration of your dominion, of God’s original plan for your life? Do you want your power, authority, strength, and will back? Do you want to walk in healing and in resurrection power? Do you want to be whole and complete? Jesus’ words give us vision for our lives because, suddenly, we see things from His perspective, and what seemed impossible becomes possible.
Again, the problems we face are not the real issue; it is how we feel about these problems that causes us distress. When a problem seems greater than God’s ability to solve it, we need a change of perception. “The spirit of wisdom and revelation” (Ephesians 1:17) is available to transfer our faith in the problem to faith in God. When our faith is transformed, our relationship with Him is also altered, positioning us for the healing of our wounds and the removal of our scars.
Vision Versus Sight
To understand how to live by God’s vision for our lives and not our present circumstances, we must recognize that there is a difference between vision and sight. Sight involves focusing with the natural eye on what is visible. It gives us the power to confirm our physical reality. The problem is that, for many of us, sight has become our only means for confirming reality. We want to believe only what we see, just like the apostle Thomas. After hearing that the other disciples had seen the resurrected Jesus, Thomas replied, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). Reality was confirmed by sight when Jesus appeared to Thomas and said, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing” (verse 27).
Vision is not like sight. It confirms an unseen reality. Jesus said to Thomas, “Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (verse 29, emphasis added). Vision confirms a reality that for the moment, exist in the spiritual realm or imagination but will eventually be manifested. It is the ability to conceive something that you cannot see with your natural eyes. With sight, we say, “I will believe it when I see it,” but with vision, we say, “I believe it, even though I cannot yet see it.” For example, it is vision that gives you the capacity to imagine a house with blue shutters, drapes in the windows, an S-class Mercedes Benz parked in a two-car garage, and a brick laid driveway with an electronic gate, even though your dream house has not yet been built. A vision is a view that is so vivid it evokes an emotional response. It gets you excited about what will come to pass.
We begin to understand vision when we recognize that we really do traverse between two realities: a physical one and a spiritual one – the one we were born into and the one that we were born again into. Vision confirms a higher spiritual reality. Years of wounding and scarring block our ability to see ourselves the way God sees us. In our pain we only see our pain, we see only our physical or human reality, and that is why we lose our focus and power for living.
Since vision enables you to experience something in your mind’s eye that you have not yet experienced as a physical reality, it is vision that will allow you to see yourself healed and delivered before your circumstances have changed. The faith that this vision activates will prepare the way for your restoration. Do you believe of God’s Word? The Father does not want you to think of the Scripture as mere words on paper, but as a living reality. He wants you to place the wounding and scarring reality of the past next to His Word and choose to believe what He says. He desires to do the seeming impossible by helping you to see not only your physical reality, but also the reality of faith. The Scripture says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done [granted] unto you” (John 15:7), and “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
The Jericho Directive
Sometimes, although we want to say yes to Jesus’ questions, “Do you want to be made well?” and “Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ something keeps blocking our vision, I call this type of hindrance a “Jericho.”
The city of Jericho, which the Israelites had to defeat to enter the Promise Land, symbolizes the strongholds that must be conquered in our lives before we can see and possess God’s promises. Once they are pulled down, a new reality can be released. What did I mean by a Jericho? Whatever is contrary to the nature and Word of God. For example, unforgiveness toward those who have wronged you, hatred for yourself or someone else, and jealousy are all types of ‘Jerichos’ that can block your vision.
If Jerichos are in our way, we would not be able to see or experience our destinies. We will be trying to envision the future through walls of sin and doubt. You may be asking yourself, “Can I conquer the Jerichos in my life?” In other words, you are acknowledging, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18 NIV).
Israel’s defeat of Jericho is an illustration to us that only spiritual weapons can bring down barriers to fulfilment of vision. The people of God could not defeat Jericho by fighting a conventional battle. They had to follow God’s directive, which was to march around Jericho, blow trumpets, and shout. In the same way, your Jericho is a place where your experience or strength will not help you. It must be conquered by faith in God and His Word.
God’s directive for your situation may seem as unusual as His instruction to Israel. This is because it will seem contrary to your nature. But it will be consistent with His nature. You are going to have to believe what He says, no matter how unusual it seems, if you are to receive your breakthrough or healing. This is so you will know that only God has the power to heal you. Again, the essence of the Jericho directive was this: Spiritual strongholds cannot be defeated by might or power, but by only the Holy Spirit.
The Bible says, (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
The problem of blocked vision has identified her as “imaginations” or reasoning. The stronghold is in our thoughts and emotions. The enemy’s intention is to take the material of the negative circumstances in our lives and build Jericho in our minds and hearts so that we will remain outside the promises. We must counteract his strategy by bringing our perceptions, thoughts, and ideas into alignment with God’s Word.
According to Your Faith
I had learned from my own experiences as well as experiences of others who have gone through painful times: When, we have been deeply hurt, we often feel as if our faith has fled from us. I want to assure you that the God who had been there for you in lesser difficulties was the same God who would see you through in your present circumstances. Along with faith and God’s anointing on our lives, we can also expect to go through tough times.
Jesus said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and Paul wrote, “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). We cannot choose the times, the circumstances, or the weights of our tests and trials, but we can know that God promises to be with us and to sustain us during them. Jesus will walk with us in the fire so that we would not become scarred by these experiences but will overcome them and fulfil the purposes of God for our lives.
God allows us to carry only what we have the strength to bear. (See 1 Corinthians 10:13). The weight of our burdens is always tipping us toward God’s purposes for us. We are stumbling, but we are stumbling forward. We are tripping, but we are moving ahead. We are falling under the weight, but we are always falling forward so that we are farther along than we were. The weight presses us in the direction of isolation, vulnerability, rejection, and crucifixion. Yet crucifixion (surrendering ourselves to God’s will) ultimately shows the next steps to our destinies.
When we get to the place of crucifixion, we discover others who have been carrying their own burdens yet have ended up in the same place of surrender, strengthened faith and renewed purposes. As Paul wrote, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
The reason we feel alone beneath these burdens is that no one else can carry them for us. The Bible says, “Bear you one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2), but it also says, “Every man shall bear his own burden” (verse 5). We all have burdens that must be carried alone. Healing may come instantly but being delivered from our scars is usually a process that requires persistent faith. Faith enables us to overcome the “impossible” situations of life.
God Is A Rewarder of Faith
Why is faith a key component in God’ healing you and removing your scars? “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). God is a rewarder of faith. The Bible says that we must ask in faith that does not waiver but trust in God’s faithfulness. “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for He is faithful that promised)” (Hebrews 10:23). Faith is not a feeling, and it is not just a cerebral acknowledgement of a biblical fact. Faith believes and trusts. Believing is especially evident when we are obedient to the Word of God in times of trial and testing. Hebrews 10:36 says, “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised” (NIV). Faith acts as if something is so, even when it is not so, in order that it might be so. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
The teaching of faith is an extensive lecture which I will cover fully as a separate biblical topic another time or can be read on our website; so I will conclude by getting back to our initial subject and John 5:6 “Do you want to be made well?” living in God’s reality.
Living in God’s Reality
Your past wounds have produced scars that have given you a distorted outlook on your present life and future possibilities. This entrenched mind-set has functioned like a locked door, barring you from the fulfilling life that God has promised you. You must get to the point where you start saying, “I cannot do it, but I know that God has it under control. Because of His promises, I can see my healing and breakthrough.”
By faith you must capture a vision of yourself as released from the place where you have been anchored in your emotions, a vision of yourself healed without scars from the wounds of life, a vision of yourself fulfilling your purpose and living in God’s provision. The Lord has already spoken in His Word concerning your healing. The decision is yours; I invite you to live in the reality of God, to live above your circumstances by faith.
Do you want a restoration of your dominion, of God’s original plan for your life? Do you want your power, authority, strength, and will back? Are you ready to say “Yes, Lord, I want to be healed, I want to be made whole, complete, and I believe that You are able to do this?” Jesus is always available and willing to heal you and the scars of your past. The Scripture says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done [granted] unto you” (John 15:7). Amen.
THE DISCOVERY TO MY PERSONAL SPIRITUAL CURE
Being Healed by The Word - Without Scars
All scriptural research led me to the discovery to my Spiritual cure. What shall we say to these things? Something must be said because sickness and death are threats to faith in the love and power of God. With my theological training I regard it as my primary responsibility as an Ordained Apostle/Teacher to nourish and strengthen faith in the love and power of God. There is no weapon like the Word of God for warding off threats to faith. And so, I want us to listen and carefully make notes to the teaching of Scripture regarding Christ our Healer and cancer, the power and love of God over against the sickness of our bodies.
I regard this message as a crucial pastoral message because you need to know where your apostle/teacher stands on the issues of sickness, healing, and death. If you thought it was my conception alike some pastors/teachers that every sickness is a divine judgment on some particular sin, or that the failure to be healed after a few days of prayer was a clear sign of inauthentic faith, or that Satan is really the ruler in this world and God can only stand helplessly by, while His enemy wreaks havoc with His children—if you thought any of those were my notions, you would relate to me very differently in sickness than you would if you knew what I really think. Therefore, I want to tell you what I really think and try to show you from Scripture that these thoughts are not just mine but also, I trust, God's thoughts.
Six Affirmations Toward a Theology of Suffering
So, here I would like to refer you again to our Life Instruction Manual before I reveal how I discovered my Spiritual Cure and complete health restoration without scars. There are six affirmations which sum up my theology of sickness, and at least the seed for each of these affirmations is here. Let us read the following text:
Romans 8:18–28. “18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; 21 because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. 27 And he who searches the hearts of men knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” (RSV)
1. All Creation Has Been Subjected to Futility
My first affirmation is this: the age in which we live, which extends from the fall of man into sin until the second coming of Christ, is an age in which the creation, including our bodies, has been "subjected to futility" and "enslaved to corruption." Verse 20: "The creation was subjected to futility.'' Verse 21: "The creation will be freed from slavery to corruption." And the reason we know this includes our bodies is given in verse 23: not only the wider creation but "we ourselves (i.e., Christ Disciples) groan in ourselves awaiting sonship, the redemption of our bodies." Our bodies are part of creation and participate in all the futility and corruption to which creation has been subjected.
Who is this in verse 20 that subjected creation to futility and enslaved it to corruption? It is God. The only other possible candidates to consider would be Satan or man himself. Perhaps Paul meant that Satan, in bringing man into sin, or man, in choosing to disobey God—perhaps one of them is referred to as the one who subjected creation to futility. But neither Satan nor man can be meant because of the words "in hope" at the end of verse 20. This little phrase, subjected "in hope," gives the design or purpose of the one who subjected creation to futility. But it was neither man's nor Satan's intention to bring corruption upon the world in order that the hope of redemption might be kindled in men's hearts and that someday the "freedom of the glory of the children of God" might shine more brightly. Only one person could subject the creation to futility with that design and purpose, namely, the Just and loving Creator.
Therefore, I conclude that this world stands under the judicial sentence of God upon a rebellious and sinful mankind—a sentence of universal futility and corruption. And no one is excluded, not even the precious children of God.
Probably the futility and corruption Paul speak of refers to both spiritual and physical ruination. On the one hand man in his fallen state is enslaved to flawed perception, misconceived goals, foolish blunders, and spiritual numbness. On the other hand, there are pandemics, floods, famines, volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, or tsunami, plagues, snake bites, car accidents, plane crashes, asthma, allergies, the common cold, and cancer, all rending and wracking the human body with pain and bringing men—all men—to the dust.
If we are in the body, we are slaves to corruption. Paul said this same thing in another place. In 2 Corinthians 4:16 he said, "We do not lose heart, but though our outer man (i.e., the body) is decaying (i.e., being corrupted) yet our inner man is being renewed day by day." The word Paul uses for decay or corrupt here is the same one used in Luke 12:33 where Jesus said, Make sure your treasure is in heaven "where thief does not come near and moth does not corrupt." Just like a coat in a warm, dark closet will get moth eaten and ruined, so our bodies in this fallen world are going to be ruined one way or the other. For all creation has been subjected to futility and enslaved to corruption while this age lasts. That is my first affirmation.
2. An Age of Deliverance and Redemption Is Coming
My second affirmation is this: there is an age coming when all the children of God, who have endured to the end in faith, will be delivered from all futility and corruption, spiritually and physically. According to verse 21, the hope in which God subjected creation was that someday "The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God." And verse 23 says that "We ourselves groan within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." It has not happened yet. We wait. But it will happen. "Our citizenship is in heaven from which we await a Saviour, the Lord, Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our lowliness to be like the body of His glory" (Philippians 3:20, 21). "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52). "He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there shall be no longer any death; and there shall be no longer any mourning or crying or pain; the first things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4).
There is coming a day when every crutch will be carved up and every wheelchair melted down into medallions of redemption. And all the saints among us will do cartwheels through the Kingdom of Heaven. But not yet. Not yet. We groan, waiting for the redemption of our bodies. But the day is coming and that is my second affirmation.
3. Christ Purchased, Demonstrated,
and Gave a Foretaste of It
Third, Jesus Christ came and died to purchase our redemption, to demonstrate the character of that redemption as both spiritual and physical, and to give us a foretaste of it. He purchased our redemption, demonstrated its character, and gave us a foretaste of it. Please listen carefully, for this is a truth badly distorted by many healers of our day.
The prophet Isaiah foretold the work of Christ like this in Chapter 53:5–6 (a text which Peter applied to Christians in 1 Peter 2:24):
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (RSV)
The blessing of forgiveness and the blessing of physical healing were purchased by Christ when He died for us on the cross. And all those who give their lives to Him shall have both benefits. But when? That is the question of today. When will we be healed? When will our bodies no longer be enslaved to corruption?
The ministry of Jesus was a ministry of healing and forgiveness. He said to the disciples of John the Baptist, "Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receives their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me" (Matthew 11:4–6). Offense? Why would anyone take offense at One who raises the dead and brings in the long-expected kingdom? Easy—He only raised about three people. He left hundreds in the tombs all around Him. Why? Because not enough relatives had faith? O no! When Jesus raised the widow's son in Luke 7:13, 14, she did not know Him from Adam. It was not because of her faith. All it says is, "He had compassion on her." What then? Did he not pity all the other bereaved in Israel?
The answer to why Jesus did not raise all the dead is that contrary to the Jewish expectation, the first coming of the Messiah was not the consummation and full redemption of this fallen age. The first coming was rather to purchase that consummation, illustrate its character, and bring a foretaste of it to His people. Therefore, Jesus raised some of the dead to illustrate that He has that power and one day will come again and exercise it for all His people. And He healed the sick to illustrate that in His final kingdom this is how it will be. There will be no more crying or pain anymore.
But we do have a foretaste of our redemption now in this age. The benefits purchased by the cross can be enjoyed in measure even now, including healing. God can and does heal the sick now in answer to our prayers. But not always. The miracle mongers of our day, who guarantee that Jesus wants you well now and heap guilt after guilt on the back of God's people asserting that the only thing between them and health is unbelief, have failed to understand the nature of God's purposes in this fallen age. They have minimized the depth of sin and the cruciality of God's purifying chastening and the value of faith through suffering and they are guilty of trying to force into this age what God has reserved for the next.
Notice the flow of thought in Romans 8:23, 24: "We ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan in ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies, for in hope we have been saved." Because of Christ's purchased redemption, believers already have received the Holy Spirit. This is like a down payment of our full redemption, but it is only the first fruits, a foretaste. And when Paul stresses that we, even we ourselves, who have this Spirit groan awaiting the redemption of our bodies, you can tell that he is warning against the false inference that because we have been saved, therefore our groaning with decaying bodies is over. So, he goes on to say in verse 24, "For we have been saved in hope." Our salvation is not finished, it is only begun. We are saved only in hope. This is true morally; Paul says in Galatians 5:5, "We through the Spirit by faith are waiting for the hope of righteousness." And it is true physically; we wait for the redemption of our bodies. Christ has purchased that redemption, demonstrated its physical reality in His healing ministry, and given us a foretaste of it by healing many people in our day, but some very slowly, some only partly and some not at all. That is my third affirmation.
4. God Controls All Suffering for the Good of His People
Fourth, God controls who gets sick and who gets well, and all His decisions are for the good of His children, even if they may be very painful and long-lasting. It was God who subjected creation to futility and corruption, and He is the One who can liberate it again. In Exodus 4:11, when Moses refused to go speak to Pharaoh, God said to him, "Who made man's mouth? Who makes him dumb or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I the Lord?" Behind all sickness is finally the sovereign hand of God. God speaks in Deuteronomy 32:39, "See now that I, I am He, and there is no God besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand."
But what about Satan? Is it not he the great enemy of our wholeness? Does he not attack us morally and physically? Was it not Satan who tormented Job? Yes, it was. But Satan has no power but what is allotted to him by God. He is an enemy on a chain. In fact, for the writer of the book of Job, it was not wrong to say that the sores afflicted by Satan were sent from God. For example, in Job 2:7 we read, "So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord, and afflicted Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head." Then after Job's wife urges him to curse God and die, Job says, "Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil?" And lest we think that Job erred in attributing to God his sores afflicted by Satan, the writer adds in verse 10, "In all this Job did not sin with his lips." In other words, it is no sin to recognize the sovereign hand of God even behind a disease of which Satan may be the more immediate cause.
Satan may be sly but on some things, he is stupid because he fails to see that all his attempts to despoil the godly are simply turned by God's providence into occasions for the purifying and strengthening of faith. God's goal for His people in this age is not primarily to rid them of sickness and pain but to purge us of all the remnants of sin and cause us in our weakness to cleave to Him as our only hope.
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives . . . He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (Hebrews 12:5, 6, 10, 11)
All the affliction that comes to the children of God, whether through persecution or sickness, is intended by God to increase our holiness by causing us to rely more on the God who raises the dead
(2 Corinthians 1:9). If we get angry at God in our sickness, we are rejecting His love. For it is always in love that He disciplines His children. It is for our good and we must seek to learn some rich lesson of faith from it. Then we will say with the psalmist, "It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn thy statutes . . . I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are righteous, and that in faithfulness thou hast afflicted me" (Psalm 119:71, 75). That is my fourth affirmation: ultimately God controls who gets sick and who gets well, and all His decisions are for the good of His children, even if the pain is great and the sickness long. As the last verse of our text, Romans 8:28, says, "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose."
5. We Should Pray for Healing Power and Sustaining Grace
The fifth affirmation is that we should therefore pray for God's help both to heal and to strengthen faith while we are unhealed. It is fitting that a child asks his father for relief in trouble. And it is fitting that a loving Father give his child only what is best. And that He always does sometimes healing now, sometimes not. But always, always what is best for us.
But if sometimes it is best for us not to be healed now, how shall we know what to pray? How shall we know when to stop asking for healing and only ask for grace to trust His goodness? Paul had faced this problem in his own experience. You recall from 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 that Paul, not unlike Job, was given a thorn in the flesh which he called a "messenger of Satan." We do not know what sort of pain or malady it was, but he says that he prayed three times for its removal. But then God gave him the assurance that though he would not heal him, His grace would be sufficient, and His power would be manifest not in healing but in the faithful service of Paul through suffering.
In our text at Romans 8:26, 27 Paul addresses the same problem, I think: While we are waiting for the redemption of our bodies "the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words and He (God) who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." Sometimes all we can do is cry out for help because we do not know in what form the help should come. The Spirit of God takes our stumbling, uncertain expressions of need and brings them before God in a form that accords with God's intentions. And God responds graciously and meets our needs. Not always as we at first hoped, but always for our good.
So, let us not be proud and stand aloof from God stoically bearing what fate has brought. Rather let us run to our Father in prayer and plead for help in time of need. That is my fifth affirmation.
6. We Should Always Trust in the
Power and Goodness of God<