I woke up this morning with this thought running through my head. God LOVES to heal. He is not a reluctant healer, he delights to heal, there is nothing he likes better. He boasts about this aspect of his nature. He says loud and clear “I AM the Lord your healer.” (Ex 15:26) When the Lord talks about healing or saving He always means it in the complete and widest sense, healing or saving in every way, body, soul and spirit. Total wellbeing. Healing from every hurt, habit and hang-up. Healing for our bodies, healing for our minds, our emotions, our internal bruises. God’s salvation (which includes healing) is not this narrow crossing the line thing at the end of our lives. It is intended for right here, right now. “Now is the day of salvation.” (2 Co 6:2)
We talk and pray as if we had to persuade the Lord to heal us. We think and act as if we had to earn God’s favour. If we do enough good maybe the Lord will have mercy on us and heal us. We think the reason we are not healed is because we don’t measure up in some way, we fall short. This is what the devil wants us to believe.
Of course we fall short, that’s why we need a Saviour! We cannot measure up, we are lost. God knows that better than we do. That’s why Jesus came to save us, to take our place, to pay the price for our redemption. That price has been paid in full. There is no shortfall, nothing we have to make up. Believe it! God loves us right now, totally, passionately, intimately, through and through. And God is ready and eager to heal us right now, this moment.
In that case, why are we not healed? In many cases our wrong believing, our talking, our praying, our thinking and acting are actually preventing God from healing us. It’s like a short circuit. The power is all there but it’s not flowing because there is a tiny break in the circuit. As long as we have this performance mentality we are going about to establish our own righteousness instead of simply accepting that which God has provided through faith in Christ Jesus. Our very efforts to get healed short circuit the Healer who already lives within us.
Think about this. Healing is not something God does, your healer is who God is!
God says, no that’s not enough, God boasts “I AM the Lord who heals you.” In the same way that Jesus says “I am the Light of the World” or “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. God IS all those things all the time. He could never be anything other than who He is. According to Heb 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to day and for ever.” If the Lord IS my healer I am not waiting for Him to do it to me. He already lives inside me, my Saviour is right here not somewhere up in heaven. I need to change my thinking, believe it and receive it.
The apostle Paul upbraided the Galatians for moving away from receiving by faith into a works based relationship with God. Are we so foolish? Having begun in the spirit shall we continue in the flesh? How did we receive our initial salvation, by works? or by the hearing of faith? We heard that Jesus died for our sins, we believed it and we prayed and received it by faith. Suppose someone said that “I heard and believed and prayed but I didn’t receive anything.” We would ask, “what were you expecting to receive? Goose bumps? a warm glow? a voice from heaven? Believe the promises of God. If He says he will then He will. If you prayed in sincerity He already has!”
We know that if such a person continues to believe and act according to their faith there will be evidence aplenty. They will come to know that they are saved, not simply believe it. Jesus said to those people who had believed on Him “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Conversely, what will be the experience of the person who continued to believe and act according to their doubts? In James 1 we read “Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord” for he that doubts is like the waves of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind and is unstable in all his ways. God wants to give it, Jesus died to provide it and yet that man will receive none of it. God’s delivery method is faith. If our faith is short circuited, nothing flows.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Our enemy’s task is to deceive us, to twist and pervert our understanding of God and His word. Satan has taught that God is the one who makes us sick and brings problems into our lives to teach us valuable lessons. As long as we believe that God is the source of our sickness we will be waiting for Him to change His mind. Our faith is short circuited.
“You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” Our Saviour is who God is. If we are born again, our Saviour lives within us to save us from every hurt, habit and hang-up, every sin and sickness, to deliver us from the past and release us into the future. Let us stop trying to earn it, stop waiting for Him to do it TO us and expect Him to do it THROUGH us.” God loves to save …..