VOICE of HEALING SERIES 2

How can a person who fully believes in the doctrine of healing, receive the blessing and appropriate healing?

In preaching on Divine Healing in many different congregations and nations, I have found that many struggle with, doctrine and the application of healing. It is one thing to hear His will and teaching on healing and another to apply it personally if you are sick.

Jesus often said, "according to your faith, be it done to you". How did he/she get to that place? Well faith was built into the sick. Faith can only come:

1. "Unless you see miraculous signs and wonders, you will never believe". (Jn 4:48

2. "Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of God". Rm 10:17

It is my conviction:

• that we spend little time on proclaiming salvation and healing ... they come together.
• we need to preach on healing night after night – having protracted meetings, like of old. A week long at least.

In Europe recently due to intense, focused, proclamation of truth on healing; a woman who had never seen, was healed by Jesus and saw. A man with multiple injuries was able to walk and "be made whole". People travelled into the meeting from 100km away, why? Because they knew "the power of the Lord (word) was present for him to heal the sick" . Lk 5:17

I hope these 7 points will help both, those who are sick and those who preach - to help the sick receive their inheritance of health.

7 STEPS:

1. Be fully persuaded the word of God in this matter of divine healing.

• The word is the only sure foundation of rational and Scriptural faith.
• Your faith must rest on the great principles and promises of the Bible, or it can never stand the testing's that are sure to come.
• Exodus to James, the word must be fully embraced and realized.

Most of the practical failures of faith in this matter result from defective or doubtful convictions concerning the divine Word.
Exod 15:26 "I am the Lord who heals you".
1Ki 8:56 "There has not failed one word of all His good promise".
Ps 107:20 "God sent His word and healed them".
Jer 1:12 "I watch over my word to perform it".
Mk 16:20 "And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs."
Heb 13:8 "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever."

2. Be fully assured of the will of God to heal you:

• Most people are ready enough to admit the power of Christ to heal.
• The devil himself admits this.
• True faith implies equal confidence in the willingness of God to answer the prayer of faith.
• If there is any question of God's will to heal you, there can be no certainty in your expectation.
• A mere vague trust in the possible exceptions of your prayer is not faith definite enough to grapple with the forces of disease and death. You ought to know His will before you ask, and then you must will and claim it because it is His will.
• Christ's whole redeeming work was simply the execution of His father's will.
• You can know His will - but by His word.
• If you partake of any of the benefits of His testament, you must observe all the terms of His testament.
• The Word of God is forever the standard of His will, and that word has declared immutably that it is God's greatest desire and an unalterable principle of action to give you every person according as he or she will believe.
• Especially has He promised to save all who will receive Christ by faith and to heal all who will receive healing by similar faith.
• "Ought we to ask anything of God until we have reason to believe that it is His will? Is not His word the intimation of His will; and, after He has so fully promised that, is it not a fixation and a mockery to imply a doubt of His willingness?"

The classic account of His will to heal is seen in Mk 1:40 of Jesus healing the leper. "Lord if you are willing...?"Jesus answered, "I am willing..."

3. Are you right with God?

• • If your sickness has come to you:

• on account of any sinful cause,
• a discipline designed to separate you from some evil,
• an impure heart, (a constant fountain of disease) then:
• repent of and confess your sins,
• present your soul to God in frank self judgment and consecration and
• claim from him the grace to sanctify you and keep your holy. Ja 5:15-16

• • If we judge ourselves we would not be judged 1Cor11:31
• • "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" 1Jn 1:9
• • "If we draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having (your heart) sprinkled from an evil conscience, and (your body) washed with pure water" Heb 10:22

4. Commit and Claim:

Having become:

• fully persuaded of the word of God,
• the will of God, and
• your own personal acceptance with God, now can commit your body to God and claim by simple faith is promise of healing in the name of Jesus.

Do not merely asked for it, but humbly and firmly claim healing as his covenant pledge, as your inheritance, as a purchased redemption right. Claim it is something already fully offered you in the Gospel and waiting only your acceptance to make good your possession.

There is a great difference between asking and taking, between expecting and accepting.

You must take Christ as your healer–not as an experiment, not as a future benefit, but as a present reality.

Do not merely believe that He will do so, but claim and believed that He does now touch you and begins the work of healing in your body. Go forth counting it down, acknowledging and praising Him for it.

It is a good thing to prepare for the solemn act of committal and appropriating faith. In the nature of things it cannot be repeated. Like the marriage ceremony, it is the signalizing and the sealing of a great transaction.

Before you take the step you should weigh each question thoroughly and then regarded as for ever settled. You should step out solemnly, definitely, irrevocably on new ground, on God's promise, with a deep conviction that it is forever. It closes the door against 1000 doubts and temptations. God has become the physician, and he will not give his glory to another.

Jesus said, "have the faith of God". You can take Christ for your faith as you took him for your justification, for your victories over temptation, for your sanctification. God must impart faith, and you simply put it on and wear it as from him.

5. Act your faith:

To have a paralysed man, Jesus commanded, "arise, and take up your bed, then go your way" Mk 2:11

This is not to show your faith or display your courage, but because of your faith, begin to act as one who is healed.

Treat Christ as if you'd trusted him by a trusting in his name and strength what would be impossible in your own.

Do not arise from your bed or walk on your lame foot because somebody tells you to do so.

That is not faith that impression.

God will surely tell you to do so, but it must be at his word.

Your prayer, like Peters must be, "Lord,... bid me to come to you on the water", and He will surely bid you if He is to heal you. Mt 14:30

When you do go forth to act your faith, be careful not to begin to watch the result or look at the symptoms or see if you stand.

You must ignore all symptoms and see only God therefore before you, almighty to sustain you and save you from falling.

The true farmer trusts in nature and lets the seed grow in silence, he does not dig up the seed to see a growth.

So trust God, willing even to see the answer buried. Jn 12:24

6. Be Prepared for Trials:

Do not look necessarily for the immediate removal of all symptoms.

• Do not think of them.
• Simply ignore them, press forward.
• Nu 21:8 "... look at it and live." ... was the command Moses gave to a poisoned nation.
• All they had to do was look, keep a fixed, immovable, ongoing gaze at the cross.
• Jn 3:15 "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life".
• OT – look; NT – believe.
• Col 3:3 "You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God".
• Gal 2:20 "...the life you are now live in the flesh you live by faith of the son of God, who loved you, and gave himself for you".

Do not, then, wonder if nature fails you. The Lord's healing is not nature. It is grace. It is by the power of the risen Lord. It is Christ who is your life. Christ's body is for your body as his spirit was for your spirit.

Therefore do not wonder if there should be trials. They come to show you your need of Christ and to throw you back upon him. To know this and so to put on his strength in your weakness, "... by the faith of the son of God..." and live in that moment by moment is the way of perfect healing. Put on Christ.

Trials always test and strengthen faith in proportion as it is real. They must be shown to be genuine so that God can vindicate his reward of it before the whole universe.

It is thus that God increases your faith by laying larger demands upon it and compelling you to claim and exercise more grace. "As an eagle stirs up the nest"; and tumbles out her young in midair to compel them to reach out their little pinions, so God may push you off all your own props and confidence is to compel you to reach out your wings of faith.

But for the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham might never have attained a seated to the faith of the resurrection. Whatever the symptoms you must steadily believe that back of them all, God is working out his own great restoration.

7. Use your new health for God:

Healing is a sacred thing. It is the resurrection life of Christ in you, and it must be spent as he himself would spend it. It cannot be wasted on sin and selfishness. It must be given to God, "as a living sacrifice". Rm 12:1

• Testify up your healing two others.
• This is not a faith that you can hold to yourself, or use for selfish privileges.
• It is a great and solemn trust.
• In receiving it you must unite with others to use it for the glory of God, for a witness to the truth and for the spread of the Gospel.
• Our eyes must no longer be on the grave but on the opening heavens.
• Sin no more. (Jn 5:14)
• All who were healed of Jesus in the Gospels followed him and served him.
• Walk and live Prov 4:20-24 and your continued, "prescription for life".