"who Himself bore our
sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might
live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed"
1 Peter 2:24
Divine Healing
For some reason this is a very controversial subject in today's church. For me the Bible makes it clear that it is God's will and desire to heal just like it is His will and desire to save us. However, many people don't seem to believe so. They struggle with it because of how many people they have seen who didn't receive healing, and it is true, many faithful Christians die early of sickness never receiving their physical healing. But I think we need to ask ourselves a question:
Are we going to twist the Word of God to fit our experience or are we going to find a way to change our experience to match the Word of God?
Throughout the Word of God we see God presenting Himself as "...the Lord who heals..." (Exodus 15:26). Way back in the Old Testament He reveals Himself as Jehovah Rapha and Jesus simply clarifies that role in His life here on earth.
Constantly we see Jesus "...healed them all."
(Matthew 12:15; Luke 6:19)
Some people would like to say "Well He was Jesus. Of course He could heal." But Jesus sent His followers to all do "the same works that [He did]." (John 14:12) The only prerequisite in this verse is that we believe in Jesus. Then in Mark 16 Jesus describes the signs that should be following us:
"And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Mark 16:17-18
Notice again that the only prerequisite is belief. So who are we going to believe? Are we going to believe the Word of God or our experience?
It's time for the Body of Christ to start making our experience match the Word rather than trying to make the Word match our experience!
How do we do that? We believe!
We need to build our faith so that we can use it to mold our experiences according to the Word. There was one point where Jesus did not "heal them all". In Matthew 13:58 and Mark 6:5 we read the story of Jesus returning to His hometown. It says that he couldn't do many miracles due to their unbelief.
Belief is the quality that produces miracles!
If we are not seeing miracles regularly then we need to build our faith and we do that through the Word of God and through spending time in His presence.
So true Matt! Unbelief limits God's power in your life. It's a crazy thought that we can limit God's power, but when it comes to our lives God has given us the authority over our circumstances.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's how He made it in the beginning with Adam who gave that authority away, but then Jesus took it back for us! But He still expects us to walk in that authority.
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