Say What?

Some things that I believe need to be spoken over our lives in no particular order:  

I praise God because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and I have an exceptionally well designed immune system, able to fight off all kinds of sicknesses and diseases.  The God who created the sun, moon, and stars, also created me.  He knit me together in my mother’s womb. I am his workmanship.  He does all things well.  If my immune system is not functioning well, it is acting contrary to it’s created design.  I have authority to speak to it.  What I bind on earth will be bound in heaven.  What I release on earth will be released in heaven.  I may need to ‘bind’ an unseen force that has come to steal, kill, and destroy, and ‘release’ the immune system to function properly.

My body is designed to heal itself, to regenerate.  A weak heart can be made strong again through exercise and good nutrition.  This is not true, say, of a weak link in a chain, a cracked handle on an axe, a tear in a sheet of paper.

God’s names are indicative of his nature, his character, his desires, and his will.  Since one of his names is HEALER, I can rest assured that it is his nature, his character, his desire, and his will to heal.  I do not need to doubt his desire or his will, since his name has revealed his desire and his will to me.

Jesus came to give me LIFE, and that more abundantly.  The Greek word for LIFE is ZOE, which is: the quality of life as possessed by the one who gives it.  Is the one who gives me life plagued by sickness, weakness, disease?

The Greek word for SAVED is SOZO, which is an immensely inclusive word that includes physical healing.  Look it up.  Begin to use the word healed everywhere you would normally use the word saved.  For it is by grace we are healed through faith, not of works lest any man should boast.  This is equally accurate to the thoughts we normally associate with the word saved.  The Greeks will have known this, and therefore not needed to write every verse about salvation specifically mentioning the word healed.  If we were to include physical healing in our definition of the word saved, as it was originally meant to be, we would increase our Biblical reference to healing probably tenfold!

We have been asked to pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  God’s will on earth is not always done... but in heaven it is.  And there is no sickness in heaven.  If we are to pray that his will be done here, then we can safely presume that his will is for health, on earth.  We cannot hold to a belief that he ‘wants’ us to be sick, or that it is his will for us to be sick.  If it is his will for us to be sick, then it was contrary to his will for Jesus to take up our infirmities and carry our diseases.

I am a child of the Most High God.  God is my Father.  My Father is the great physician.  I have been purchased by, and am covered by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.  I am a citizen of heaven.  I will declare these things.  The prince of this world, the devil, has NO authority over me, in fact I have authority over him.  I can bind him, rebuke him, cast him out, command him to be silent, and, as a child of God he is required to obey me.  All of heaven backs me up.  The weapons we fight with are not of this world and they are POWERFUL to demolish strongholds. 

Sickness, disease, infirmity, etc, etc are all listed in Deuteronomy under ‘the curse’, and not under the ‘blessing’ which were the direct consequences of disobedience to the law.  Jesus Christ both fulfilled the law for us, and also became the curse for us.  In him we are blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing.  We are not under the law, or under the curse.  We ‘live in a fallen world’ as many people say, but, we have been redeemed.  We are citizens of heaven.  We are ‘in’ the world, but we are not ‘of’ the world.

I have NOT been given a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.  If I am experiencing fear, I can rest assured that it is NOT from God, and I have been instructed to take these thoughts captive and make them obedient to the knowledge of God.  I am able to do this, because I have been given a sound mind.

We have been instructed to take captive every thought and make it obedient to the knowledge of Christ.  If our experience does not line up with the word of God, this does not make the word of God untrue.  We need to take these kinds of thoughts captive. We cannot decide that God’s words are not true because we have not yet experienced them.   “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” There was an event.  Stand on the truth of the event. This event occurred once and for all... for all... We need to take captive thoughts that suggest that this may be true for some, but is not meant for me.

Jesus healed liberally.  He healed everyone that came to him.  Many times it is recorded that he ‘healed them all’.  Although we only usually hear about the specific, individual cases recorded by the disciples, the Truth is that he ‘healed them all’... and... “there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.”  Healings were not isolated incidents, few and far between.  He did these things because he ‘had compassion on them’... and also, to fulfill scripture... “This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “ He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.”  This ‘taking up’, this ‘carrying’ happened in the courthouse, on a whipping post, by use of a ‘cat-o-nine-tails’, rods, staffs, slaps, beard plucking, spitting, etc.  There was an event.  We know where, when, how, and why. By his stripes we are healed.

The disciples and the apostles also healed liberally.  In fact Jesus himself said that “these signs will accompany them that believe....  They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.”  We have been instructed by Jesus to preach the gospel, cast out demons, heal the sick, and raise the dead.  Luke says in Acts that the disciples spoke boldly and God confirmed the message of his grace by allowing them to perform miraculous signs and wonders.

In the recorded miracles of Jesus, some of the illnesses, diseases, infirmities, or whatever, were in fact caused by demons.  These demons did have the ability to inflict harm on physical bodies. They could, in fact, create physical symptoms.  The woman bent in two, the two different children, a boy and a girl, who threw themselves in the fire and constantly tried to harm themselves, the blind, the deaf, the mute to name a few. The (psychotic) man that lived in the tombs.   Not all... but definitely some.  Jesus rebuked a fever... like he did the waves...  He gave us not only instructions to, but also authority to cast out demons.  I doubt they’d listen to us though, if we denied their existence, or their possible involvement. We would not be instructed to wear armor if we were automatically immune to attack. We’ve also, somewhere in the body of Christ, been given people who have the gift of discerning between spirits.  They may be useful in determining how to deal with a particular situation.  We’ve also been given, in the body of Christ, people with words of knowledge, and people with gifts of healing. These people are meant to all work together, as a body.

Some, NOT ALL, of the illnesses were the result of sin.  We cannot count this out in our prayers.  We are instructed to confess our sins that we may be healed.  It can’t possibly hurt to confess our sin, and, if we say we are without sin, we lie.  There is for sure one case where Jesus said the illness had nothing to do with sin, so don’t get all freaked out about it.

We are, unquestionably, in a war.  Our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.  We are to be on our guard.  We are to put on armor. We are to discern between spirits. . For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. We are not passive.  We do not accept the acts of aggression committed against us by the thief who comes to steal kill and destroy, and call these things the will of God.

We have been given authority.  Authority is rooted in identity. A 150lb police woman can apprehend a 280lb man, not because she is stronger than him, but, because she has authority to do so.  She is not alone.  She has a police force behind her.  She has the law.  She has weapons.  She does not apprehend him based on her own anger over a situation, but rather on her right and her obligation to uphold the law.  The 280lb man has violated the law.  He has done something he is not allowed to do.  She has the right and the authority to apprehend him. If he has stolen something, she has the authority to make him give it back.  An employee cannot fire his boss. He cannot tell his boss what to do. The worker does not have authority over the boss.  The boss has authority over the worker. A parent has authority over a child.  The best use of authority does not involve anger nor does it always involve aggression. It is rooted in identity.  It is knowing who you are and what you are authorized to do, knowing what is, and what is not, acceptable, knowing who is backing you up.

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  Seeing is not believing.  Believing comes first.  Believe in the event.  Believe it was for YOU.  Believe that it is a gift of grace.

Think about this.  IF a doctor required you to change your diet  one hundred percent to exclude salt, or sugar, or gluten, or whatever else, we would obey him regardless the personal cost in order to preserve or improve our health.  If a doctor told you to exercise 45 minutes a day, we would.  If he told us to take ‘x’ amount of pills three times a day we would, (this would be much easier than exercising and/or dieting...) and we’d accept the side effects as a necessary evil. If he said come and see me twice a week, take time off work, sit in an office, wait an unspecified amount of time for me to see you, we would.  If he said he’d like to experiment with something new that he ‘hoped’ would work, we’d say sure.

But, ...  IF the God of the universe says to think differently, to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, to pray continuously, to take captive every thought, to ‘not be anxious’ but in everything, with thanksgiving..., to go to the elders of our church and be anointed with oil and prayed over, if he asks us to learn and to study about authority, about spiritual battles, about the promises and provisions made in his word, by his son, if we are asked to accept and receive the work of the whipping post, in the courthouse, we will accuse him of being unreasonable.