divine healing

I am teaching on the subject of divine healing sunday morning.

The week before I do this, I always struggle spiritually. The enemy attacks me with thoughts of "you can't pray for people to be healed, look at your own life, you have no business praying for the sick." Or, "what if you pray for people and they aren't healed, what will others think?"

Yet, every time, I overcome these thoughts and fears and pray for the sick, because, ultimately, I know that Jesus is the healer. I can't heal anyone. My responsibility is to pray - God takes up the responsiblity to heal in the way, manner and time that He sees fit.

I must admit, I don't always understand God's ways. His ways are not my ways as the scripture says.

I would like to walk through a hospital and as a group of us prayed as we walked down the hallway, people would rise up out of their beds and walk out - healed.

Yet sin and carnality keep this from happening.

Read with me this article by Jack Hayford...trust it helps...

God heals in three different ways

Some people think if you’re going to believe that God heals, then you shouldn’t go to the doctor. That’s a serious mistake. But it’s amazing the number of people who know the Lord heals today, and yet when something goes wrong, the first thing they do is run to the doctor, as if the Lord wasn’t closer than the doctor.

It’s a challenge to learn to balance those things; how do I learn to call on the Lord first? One of the Lord’s promises to us is His presence and power to heal those who call upon Him in the name of Jesus.

God heals in three different ways:

By natural means — i.e., you get a cut and it just heals itself
By medical means — you went to the doctor or took some medicine
By prayer — when there’s nothing else but prayer
But let us make clear: When it’s any one of these three, it is God who does the healing.

It isn’t your body that heals itself; it’s God who made your body to heal itself.
It isn’t the doctor that makes you well; you’re healed by the principles that God has built into the system that the doctors help along.

It isn’t prayer that makes people well; it is the God that people call upon when they pray.

It is the Lord’s nature to heal. When Jesus came to show us the heart of God, if there’s anything that stands out, it’s that He is a healing Lord, and He loves to heal us.

Jesus heals today

Jesus heals today:

By being the same as ever
By keeping God’s promise to us
By using people as channels
(Luke 6:19; Matthew 8:16; 9:35; 12:15; 14:13, 34; 15:29; 19:1-2; 21:14) These are not stories of individual healings; all of these are cases where large groups came to Jesus and every time it says, He healed them all. If there’s anything that the Bible wants to make clear to us, it’s that it is in the heart of the Lord to heal.

The Bible says He was moved with compassion, and wherever people reached to Him and touched Him, they were healed. When people reach and touch Jesus, power flows from Him.

Jesus’ power never changes

It unfortunately has been said by some in the church that Jesus used to heal to prove He was God, but He doesn’t need to anymore because now we have the Bible that says He’s God. The sad reason this is said is probably out of their fear that it’s their job to heal people.

Not only does Jesus still heal today, but a lot of people will not believe in Jesus just because it’s in the Bible. But they will believe when the power of Jesus Christ touches them! And He is the same today. Why would anyone would want to make Jesus less today than He was when He walked on the earth?

Jesus’ power never changes and His love never refuses. He never turns anybody away.

The Lord wants to keep His promise to us

It was foretold that the coming Messiah will heal (Isaiah 53:5).
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”

Chastisement means the beating; He took the beating for us in order that we could be put together. Peace doesn’t only mean quietness inside you, but it means completeness or wholeness in all of you.

The devil beats on people; circumstances can break them apart. The Bible says that Jesus’ suffering was intended to take the place of our suffering. Just as Jesus died for our sins so we could be forgiven, He suffered for our sickness, so we could be healed.

Divine healing is not a matter of guesswork. It was prophesied in the Word that God would send a Savior who would not only forgive our sins, but bring healing to the human body. That’s the promise God made.

The prophesy that was made was fulfilled (Matthew 8:17).
Jesus was not simply healing because He cared about human need, but He was healing because He was keeping a promise that God had made to man centuries earlier.

When you ask the Lord to forgive your sins, He does it now because He paid for it a long time ago. When we come to the Lord and ask Him for healing, He is ready to do it now because He provided for it when He suffered for our sicknesses long ago.

The apostle Peter, writing to the Church of all history says by His stripes, your healing has already been accomplished (1 Peter 2:24). Healing is something that is already paid for.

What was foretold was fulfilled, and today, it’s for sure: The risen Messiah comes to bring healing to us now.
Healing comes from the power of God, not by an effort of faith

The healing of the Lord isn’t “faith” healing. The power of God gives healings; faith receives the healing. Faith doesn’t create healing. For example, when you get up Christmas morning and go to the tree, you don’t “believe” for the gifts; they are already there. Under the “tree” of Calvary, there are gifts of God’s healing for broken hearts, for broken minds, for suffering bodies. Your faith doesn’t “create” the gift.

Faith isn’t an exercise of your will in order to get what God has. When people get that mentality it becomes a more of an effort all the time to “get” the gift that God has for them because they are trying to earn it. Can you imagine parents inviting their kids to come get their presents under the Christmas tree, and having the kids just stand there, straining to “believe” for those gifts?

Faith is simply coming to what God has provided at the foot of the tree where Jesus suffered for us. We can come and receive the gifts of healing just as surely as the gift of salvation is ours.

The Lord wants His healing to be available to us. It’s fully available; He does heal today. He’s the risen Lord. He rose again to make it good for us now.

Jesus heals today through people

Healing does not float down out of the sky or come through the chimney. If it comes to homes, it’s more than likely going to walk through the door with you coming to visit someone who’s sick. Healing comes because you come with love like Jesus loves. You speak the words of the Lord Jesus. You offer His kindness and faithfulness.

There are a lot of different ways the Lord heals. These are four:

When you pray and ask with faith (John 14:12, 13) — The faith is in the Word of God. Jesus says that greater things are going to happen in you than ever happened in His ministry. It’s all His power anyway.
When you lay hands on the sick in Jesus’ name — “In Jesus’ name” is by the authority or privilege we’ve been given.
When you receive communion and believe — There is healing when we come to the Lord’s table.
When you ask elders to anoint with oil (James 5:14, 16) — You need to ask for somebody to come and pray for you. The Bible uses oil as a picture of the Holy Spirit and His being at work with power. We anoint with oil to welcome the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Bible says that the yoke, or what ties people up, shall be broken or destroyed because of the anointing.

May we see many healings Sunday morning!