Is it God's Will to Heal Me?
Part Two.
Hey, welcome to today's lesson.
Thank you so much for joining me on a special edition here in the DR Congo.
Sun just coming up and the Christians have all just gone to work, because I'm no longer
hearing all the praises and worship going on and all of these churches around here and
preachers preaching and yelling at their congregations and so forth.
Things are quieting down here at about 7:00.
So now we can jump into our thing here.
We're asking the question, is it God's will to heal me?
You know what precipitated me wanting to do this, talk about this with you, is because
I have a dear, dear, dear friend, a saint, a man of God, a guy who's been preaching the
Gospel for decades, and decades, and decades, and his body is deteriorated.
He's about as old as me and he's dying.
He had to go on dialysis because of diabetes and so forth, and on dialysis ultimately for
most of the day.
Wearing him down and just decided to go off dialysis.
But he said, "I'm just going to put myself in the hands of the Lord.
If God wants to raise me up, he'll raise me up.
If not, he'll take me home to Heaven."
I've watched this, I want to say a million times, over my Christian life of the last
four decades or more, and those people always die.
I shouldn't say always die, but mostly, the large majority of them die.
If you're been a Christian for any length of time, you've watched plenty of people die
who are praying for healing.
The whole church is praying for them for healing and they still die, or don't get any better
and so forth.
The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and hoping
for a different result.
You just wonder when the church is going to wake up and say, "Maybe we need to stop and
study the Bible on this subject and see if we can figure out where we're missing it.
Because there's so much about the healing and the Bible and we're all praying like crazy
here and the whole church is praying.
We're sending out a prayer requests all around the world.
People all around the world are praying and people are still dying.
So there something we're missing here, you know?"
And there is.
So this dear, dear friend of mine, again, he's a man of God, a preacher, and by the
time you watch this, he's in heaven, no doubt about it.
He's alive as I was recording this, but there's just no doubt he's on his death bed.
He's going to go to heaven and he's got reward laid out for him there, because he was an
evangelist and a wonderful evangelist.
I had him preach in my previous churches, and he's preached for heaven's family, just
a dear, dear man of God.
But one of the last things he did, he put a teaching out.
He wrote it out and published it on Facebook, and it was titled to something like healing's
in the atonement, but it's not guaranteed.
So he agreed that healing's in the atonement, something that I was just been talking about
in the last ... some previous little lessons here, but it wasn't guaranteed.
Then he began to make a list of why he was sure of that.
The majority of his list consisted of stories of people who were famous preachers who even
preached about healing and they got sick and they didn't get healed and that supposedly
proved that it wasn't God's will or just didn't work for them for whatever reason.
He did have some scriptures.
He quoted a few things about Paul told Timothy, "Use a little wine, drink some wine for the
sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments so forth."
Had those scriptures.
But I just felt so bad, because the overwhelming majority of scripture is pro-healing, not
anti-healing.
You can get your faith built up in the Bible much more to be healed than not to be healed,
right?
Some folks will go to Job and say, "Well, let's look at Job, there's an example.
I'm just like Job.
Well, I got you, because Job was healed."
When you say, "I'm just like Job," well, okay, maybe you are.
Maybe you are the greatest example of holiness on the planet right now, and so God and the
devil got into an argument about you, maybe, but I doubt it.
But anyways, even if you are the holiest person on the face of this Earth and you're being
tested, because God and the devil have an argument.
In the end, Job got healed.
So Job's story is not a story of a guy getting sick and dying, it's the story of guy getting
sick and God healing him.
Then somebody else will drag it up something, "Oh, but the Apostle Paul, he had a thorn
in the flesh, he asked God to heal him.
God said no."
Well, you're going to wish you hadn't said that, because that's not true.
Paul, yeah, he had a thorn in the flesh.
Yeah, he talked about the thorn in the flesh, but he told us exactly what it is and it wasn't
sickness.
He never said sickness, never said disease, he never said illness.
He said, "It's been given to me, a thorn in the flesh."
In the new American Standard, my Bible I got here, it says, "A messenger of Satan."
You go into the Greek, find that word messenger, what it actually is in the Greek, and it's
the word Angelos or Agelos.
I forget if it's got the N in there, but it doesn't make any difference, because anybody
can figure out real quick that, "Oh, that's actually the word angel in the Greek."
If you look for that word elsewhere in scripture, it's always translated angels.
So Paul's thorn in the flesh was an angel of Satan sent to buffet him.
Concerning it, that demonic angel, I entreated the Lord three times that it, not sickness,
not disease, not illness, it, the angel of Satan, might depart from me, but the Lord
said, "No, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."
So therefore Paul said, "I'll be most gladly boast in my weaknesses."
Then Paul lists all these things he's gone through.
He never mentions sickness, never mentions illness, never mentions disease, persecution,
affliction, just stress, hardship, all these things, which we're not exempt from persecution.
Oh, no, no, no, no, not exempt from persecution.
But suffering sickness, Paul wasn't saying, "I suffered sickness for the glory of God."
Oh, no, no ma'am., no sir, au contraire, monsieur.
No, no, no.
He never said, "I was sick."
He never said, "I prayed to be healed," and he never said, "God said, no, I won't heal
you."
That's not in the Bible.
If you've heard a sermon about that, then I'd run from that church, because you're listening
to a guy that's twisting the word of God.
Okay.
So, anyways, you can drag up scriptures, and maybe I'll touch some of those as I go through
some of these things.
But I'm looking for the faith building scriptures, the one that revealed to me that God is the
healer and God wants me healed and healthy, and praise God I am.
Amen.
That doesn't mean I've never been sick.
Yeah, but that's one of the benefits.
Bless the Lord.
Oh my soul, let me not forget any of your benefits.
Who forgives all my inequities, who heals all my diseases.
Right?
Since I've been a Christian, I've committed some sins and I've been forgiven to those
sins and since I've been a Christian, I've been sick and I've been healed of those sicknesses.
Okay?
So let me build your faith.
Here I am, I've been going seven and a half minutes and haven't gotten the word yet.
Well, okay, real quick.
As we close this little lesson, let me just read one faith building scripture to help
you understand that God wants you to be well.
So look at this in Exodus, Chapter 15 and Verse number 26, God said, "If you will diligently
listen to the voice of the Lord, your God," talking to the people of Israel now, "and
do what is right in his eyes and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes,
I will put none of these diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians for I am the Lord,
your healer."
Now you say, well, that sounds pretty good.
You're doggone right it sounds pretty good.
Sounds real good.
But this is a contingent promise, isn't it?
Sure.
You can't expect God's best unless you're giving him your best.
You know, it's hard to pray for healing when you know you're not obeying the Lord.
I am the Lord, your healer.
Literally in the Hebrew it says, "I am Jehovah Rapha.
I put my name together until the word Jehovah and healer.
I'm the healer.
God," is what he's saying, right?
Get to know him as the healer God, and that's a great blessing.
Okay.
We're way out of time.
I hope to see you next time.
God bless you.