“And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. … Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” Matt. 10:1,8
What did the disciples receive freely? What was it that caused the disciples to be able to heal the sick and raise the dead? Power! It was the baptism in the Holy Spirit that Jesus prophesied would come after his death and resurrection. “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Luke 24:49 Then Jesus told them what he wanted them to do. He told them to, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Mark 16:15-18 The word tells us that once we are born again and filled or baptized in the Holy Ghost we will be able to heal the sick, cast out devils to prove or confirm His word.
We receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit the same way we receive healing. Ask. It’s that simple! “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” Luke 9,10
Here Jesus is telling us that every one that ask will receive. Are you an everyone? Yes! He tells us to ask, and then he tells us that we will receive. This Is the word of the Lord. In Mark the Lord tells us that if we have faith in him we will be able to command a mountain to move and it must. He tells us that if we ask anything in his name, believing, that is believing the answer is on it’s way, we will have it. One of the problems with those trying to get healing is they are always looking at their body, feeling for symptoms. W.V. Grant a mighty faith teacher in the early 1900 says, “Ignore symptoms after a touch from God and complete deliverance is yours.”
We are people of faith now. We walk by faith and not by sight. Our faith is our eyes. We cast down all that opposes the word in our minds. Faith to us is just as real as any other of our other five senses. Just because you can’t see the chair your sitting on does not mean it’s not there, you know it’s there because you can feel it under you with your sense of feel. In the same way just because your other senses have not picked up on the fact of your healing, it is there nonetheless.
“No person who allows his mind to be ruled by his senses can have victorious faith. The mind that is ruled by his senses lives in a realm of uncertainty. Until God’s word gains mastry over your mind, your mind will be swayed by feelings and by the things you see or hear, rather than by the word of God.” F. F. Bosworth
As children of God we have to realize that we “We live by faith, not by sight.” 2 Cor. 5:7 We have been redeemed from this fallen world by one greater. His name is Jesus. The word says that all those that believe in him (Jesus) were given the power to become the sons of God. John 1:12
What does that mean to the average Christian? It means you walk like Jesus down here. We are a dwelling place for God, a habitation. We walk in his fullness. We are members of his body, flesh of his flesh and of his bones.
Ephesians 2:22, 3:19 5:30 If we could only realize who and what we are in Christ. We are dead to sin and alive to God. Sickness does not have a holed on us anymore. We have the law of the Spirit quickening and making us alive with power and life. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:2
One time when John G. Lake went to Africa the bubonic plague broke out. People were dying all over the place and John G. Lake was praying over the sick that were there. When the doctors got their they asked Mr. Lake why he was not sick, and he told them because he walked in the law of the spirit of life. They thought he was crazy but could not figure out why he was not getting sick. So they took a sample of the bubonic plague and put it under the microscope it was still alive, but when they placed it in Mr. Lakes hand and then put it back under the microscope it, the plague was dead. The disease could not live on Mr. Lakes body because of the anointing of God on His life. If we can believe God will fill us in the same way also. If you are born again, you are redeemed. Sickness has no more claim to you.
We know that all the fullness of God dwelt in Jesus, but many of us don’t know that we are complete in Christ lacking nothing. If someone says something is complete. They are saying that is all of it. There is nothing left to add. The word says in Colossians that we are complete in Christ, which is the head of all principality and power. Col. 2:9,10 Think about that for a second. You have all of God you will ever need. If you ask God for more of Him, He will say were am I to get more of me? You don’t just have the pinky toe of God due you? No! You are complete in Christ. You have enough power in you to raise the dead, kill cancer, cast out devils or mental problems and heal all manor of sicknesses and diseases. Do you believe that? It is the word of God. People are always waiting on God. For God to give them some kind of sign that he is with them and has given them the power of the Holy Spirit. Smith Wigglesworth commented on why people have a problem receiving the Holy Spirit. He said, “If we wait for such power, we have mistaken the position we have through the Spirit. God is waiting…So act! “If I could only feel the power” we say. We have been too much on that line. God is waiting for us to act; to be like Jesus.”
The word says that Jesus Christ spoiled or destroyed the power of the devil and made an open show of them. Col. 2:15 In Luke 10:19 Jesus gave that authority to us. Is there anything that can stand in our way? No! We have authority to cure diseases, raise the dead and cast out devils. Some teach well God only let the twelve disciples do all those miracles because the church was just starting out. Turn your Bibles to Luke 10:1 which says, “After these things the LORD appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come.” What did he send them to do? He sent them to do the same thing the others did. See vs.9 “And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”
Jesus when he was praying to His father said, “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” John 17:18 He sent us to do the same things he did. In fact do you know he said we would do greater miracles than he did? “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” John 14:12
Are you starting to see your position yet? We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:” Eph. 2:6 If we will get this into our spirit no disease will be able to stand before us. Before we can go against sickness we must first recognize it as an enemy of God. We must treat all sickness and disease the same way Jesus treated it. He treated all sicknesses and diseases the same, He treated them like a person, or something with a personality. He rebuked the things and called them devils. Jesus never begged his father to remove a disease, he commanded it to go and it left. Jesus always spoke to the sickness or devil, he never talked to his father about the sickness or devil. We as Christians must wake up to our authority and get fed up with letting satan take our loved ones and friends. We must begin by getting aggressive in our attitude against sickness. We must not look at symptoms, but trust God’s word. We must be like our Lord and speak to peoples sicknesses and not to the people about the sicknesses. None of this will work unless we spend time in the word every day building our faith.
“And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.” "And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?" Luke13:11,16
Satan was the auther of this womans disease not God.
“If I can get you enraged against the powers of darkness, and the powers of disease, if I can wake you up, you won’t go to bed without you prove that there is a master in you – greater than the power that s hanging round about you.” Smith Wigglesworth
Faith will begin to grow as we meditate on Gods word.
” So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Romans 10:17 The more of the word we have the greater your faith will be. If you have faith you will be able to look someone in the eyes that has cancer or some other disease and command it to go and it will go. Mark 11:23,24 testifies to that fact. Faith is believing even when you can see no physical evidence.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Heb. 11:1 The Internataional Standard Version words the same verse this way, “Now faith is the assurance that what we hope for will come about and the certainty that what we cannot see exists.” If we have need of healing we may obtain it now. Not five days, or five months, but now. Today is the day of salvation. “For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” 2 Cor. 6:2
The word tells us, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Romans 10:9,10
In fact did you know that the greek word for saved is sozo which means, made whole, healed, sound. The greek word for salvation is soteria, which means, deliverance, healing, health, soundness and protection. Paul prayed that God preserve the Thessalonians spirit, soul and body. 1 Thess. 5:23 The word for preserve means to keep or save from injury or destruction; to guard or defend from evil, harm, danger, etc., to protect. Sickness and illnesses injure the body. When some one is sick they are not being preserved. Notice also that this verse says that if we confess with our mouth. Your mouth will always give away what you believe for out of the abundance of your heart your mouth will speak. Matt. 12:24
If you believe that God has healed you, you will talk as though you are healed. Even if you don’t feel it.
Mr. A. B. Simpson had an incurable heart condition and was very sick. He had to carry a bottle of ammonia with him every where he went. He could not climb stairs or go far for fear of exhaustion to the point of dying. He found Christ as his healer through the word of God and stepped out in faith and claimed his healing. He did not feel any different after he prayed, than before. He just took God at his word and believed that God’s word was true for him. When he became convinced that it was God’s will to heal him. He stepped out and began to share his testimony, not to try to convince God to heal him, but because he really believed that God was working in his body now. Some young men that heard him share his testimony invited him to go mountain climing with them. He thought to himself, “If you refuse to go, it is because you do not believe that God has healed you. If you have taken Him for your strength, need you fear to do anything to which He calls you?” So he went with these men and the whole climb up he battled the symptoms of his body with the word of the living God. When he reached the top of the mountain he was wonderfully healed. Mr. Simpson said regarding his healing that, “ God did not ask me to testify of my feelings or experience but of Jesus and His faithfulness. And I am sure He calls all who trust Him to testify before they experience His full blessing. I believe I should have lost my healing if I had waited until I felt it.”
You may have to wait a few days for your body to strengthen it’s self. Many people miss their healing because they are looking for a creative miracle. But God says they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. To recover is progressive. Remember Hezekiah, he was healed and yet it took three days before he could go to the house of the Lord. That is not to say that God does not instantly and creatively heal today. I remember once I had something rip or rupture in my back end it was like a very serous hemroid, but my wife said it looked like I would have to have surgery. I told her that this time I was going to take it to the Lord. I was in intense pain. My wife had to read the word to me while I laid on my stomach, for I could not sit or lay on my back because of the pain it caused me. I meditated on God’s promises every free second I had to build my faith. I had believers lay hands on me according to James 5:14,15. After prayer I thanked the Lord for my healing and began to praise him as though he already healed me. I knew healing had been deposited in me by faith so all I had to do was keep meditating on the word and confessing the word and wait for my body to come into alignment with the word of God. I went about a week with no bowel movement at all. But a couple of days after prayer things began to change. The pain was leaving and my body was beginning to respond to the prayer. Another week after the prayer I was totally healed.
We must believe that we are carriers of God’s glory. His healing power lives in us. We are the hands and feet of Christ in this dark and dingy world. We must show a demonstration of power that will convince the world that God is with us.
When we get God’s word in us it will transform us and the way we think. I know that I am healed, not because of the way I feel, but because God’s word says I am. When I feel a pain, I know satan would love me to give life to whatever disease he can make me think I have. So I resist him in the name of the Lord and cast down all thoughts that don’t line up with God’s word. I speak to my body just like Jesus said I could speak to a mountain. I command sickness to leave my body in the name of Jesus Christ. I then confess that by Jesus stripes I am healed. I resist the devil and he must flee from me. I am more than an over comer in Christ Jesus and so are you.
One thing you will come to realize is that you will never rise above your confession. Your confession reveals what Is really in your heart. If you talk sickness you will have sickness if you talk health you will have health. True faith if it is in your heart will always speak before God will act.
“Faith always blows the ram’s horn before, not after the walls are down. Faith never judges according to the sight of the eyes. It is the evidence of things not seen but promised.” F. F. Bosworth
We need to see more of God’s power today. In this world full of doubt and unbelief their has never been a time more urgent time for the church to demonstrate the power of God. We have become lazy with our faith. It has become much easer to take an aspirin for a headache than to command the headache to leave. In order for faith to grow it needs to be exercised. Faith grows by reading the word and practicing what you read. People need to understand that God wants to heal us more than we have the desire to receive it.
Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Gal. 3:6 When we trust God’s word nothing will be impossible. Matt. 19:26 But there are many that get upset because they believed for big things and they did not get them. But they need to search their hearts and ask why. For instance if a woman wants to be healed of lamness just so she can dance in front of men, she is asking amiss. James tells us that if we ask God for something with the wrong motives we will not receive. Some people are asking for things to feed their lusts and not to bring glory to God. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” James 4:3 Our purpose in life should be to bring glory to God in all things.
When we are sure of God’s word in a matter we can step out in faith knowing that not only does God hear us, but he will answer us. When God promised Abraham a son, the word says that Abraham did not look at his body that he was over a hundred years old, or the fact that his wife was barren. He believed God would do what He said he would do. “And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;” Romans 4:19, 20
When we ask God for healing, forgiveness, or for deliverance, we must thank him and expect him to be answering us. Not tomorrow, not five days or five months from now. But right now he answers, you may not see or feel anything at the moment, that does not matter in the least. Jesus tells us that when we pray we must believe that God is answering us the very moment our lips stop uttering our prayer. When you are done praying if you believe God’s word, it is done! You have the petition you asked for.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matt. 7:7,8
“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” John 14:13
“If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” John 15:7
“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Mark 11:24
Let me ask you when do you receive from God, before or after you believe? God tells us that once you ask, you have the answer that you asked for. Many think that just because they can’t see it, they don’t have it. When a person is prayed for just because the symptoms don’t disappear right away does not mean that you are not healed. When a tree is cut down it still has all it’s leaves and vibrent colors yet as far as a woodcutter is concerned that tree is dead. The tree has been disconnected from the roots. The same thing happens when we curse a disease in the name of Jesus Christ. The spiritual source from which that disease grew from has been destroyed. Without that spiritual source in place that disease dies and the body begines to heal it’s self.
“I am not moved by what I see. I am moved only by what I believe. I know this. No man looks if he believes. No man feels if he believes. The man who believes god has it. Every one who comes into the Pentecostal condition can laugh at all things and believe God.” Wigglesworth
Now begin to get the word inside of you. Meditate on it daily and confess the word out loud. “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” Prov. 20-22
Proverbs tells us we need to pay attention to the word. To keep them in front of our eyes and in the mist of our heart. This means we are meditating on them. In order to meditate on them you have to find them. You need to find a word from God about your situation. This teaching has many promises to stand on. Learn them and make them your own. Get your own revelation in your heart on the subject and watch what God will do. Do not ever base your healing on what you feel, but only on the word of God. After all, you might feel worse after prayer. Satan is not going to say O he said the prayer I gess I’ll have to go. You have to believe that prayer! What are you speaking after prayer? Your tongue will always give you away. If you turn and tell your pastor “ I believe I received my healing” and then go out to your doctor the next day and say “O I’m such a mess, I think I have the swine flue,” you have just given yourself away to the enemy. He knows you did not believe. For one thing when was the last time you saw someone in the waiting room of a hospital that was totally healed, to see a doctor for a condition he did not believe he had? I’m not saying to pretend your healed ether. If you don’t believe your healed, you had better get to a doctor. Better to see a doctor and live to fight another day, than to fight a battle your not ready to fight. But if you do go to the doctor keep reading the word until the word grows so big in your heart that you know, that you know, that you know, you are healed even when satan tries to lie to you.
“Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession (confession).” Heb. 4:14-16 The word in this verse for profession can also be translated as confession. If I was to hand you a rope and tell you to hold fast to it, you would think that because I said to hold fast that there would be a hard tug that might yank the rope from your hand, so you would hang on tight. In the same way Paul tells us to hold fast to your confession. Your confession reveals what you are really believing. If I told you that I just deposited five thousand dollars in your account for you to use anyway you wanted, and you went around complaining afterwards telling people that you wish you had a hundred dollars to pay a bill you had, you would know that you did not really believe that I had given you money. Because If you did believe, you would not complain, you would rejoice and pay your bill.
Paul tells us not to look at things that are seen, but look to that which is unseen. The promises of God are what we are to look at. For they will manifest if you hold to them and believe God’s word. “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal.” 2 Cor. 4:18
Real faith will step out and say that it will come to pass even as the Lord has said. Smith Wigglesworth used to say, “fear looks, faith jumps”. Why would we ever think that God would not fulfill his word to us. He cannot lie. Trust in the Lord and He shall truly bring it to pass. “Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” Psalm 37:5 If you really trust him you will throw all your concerns in his promises and know that he will take care of you. “casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7
So do you need healing? Believe the word of the Lord ask Him to heal you and believe that he does now touch your body with life, not tomorrow, not in the future, but right now. This moment if you will believe that God healed you by the stripes of Jesus, you can and will be healed. Jesus is no respect of persons if he heals someone else he will heal you. Don’t look at your symptoms, but look to the word. What does God’s word say about your sickness? The word says that “by His stripes you are healed.” Belief comes first, manifestation comes second. Mark 11:24
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