Why We Don’t Get Healed – Part 5

If you didn’t see the introduction to this post, you can view it here. Once you’ve seen it, let’s get started on listing some more ‘clouds’.

10. Wavering

This is probably quite a large ‘cloud’. Why should this healing happen if the last one didn’t? Are you sure this will work? He is a devoted Christian and he wasn’t healed? All of these sorts of questions enter our minds when we are healing or being healed. I believe this to be a huge cloud, probably one of the biggest in my life. Common sense is good, but when you’re believing for a miracle, it can be a huge hindrance. Romans 12:2 – Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Let’s start doing this, forget what the world has to tell us and start listening to what God is saying, and the Bible is a good place to start. 3 John 1:2 – Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. God wants you well, start believing that and not what the world keeps telling you. I believe that you may find this fairly easy to say, but do you believe it? Do you act accordingly? How much unbelief is floating around in there? Yes, speaking to myself there again. I’ll leave you with James 1:5-8, which says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”. You can’t really argue with that.

11. Pride

James 4:6 – But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Pride is a huge issue. I know that because I have to deal with it in my life. I get proud, I try and do it on my own, it falls apart, I turn back to God and promise to rely on Him, things start going well, I get proud.. It is like a vicious circle. The scripture says that God resists the proud, yet gives grace to the humble. Our healing is grace. I’m not sure what the solution is here, as if I did I would have done it by now, but I know that pride is the enemy.

12. Submission

The very next verse after the verse in the last point, James 4:7 – Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. We need to submit to God. Do we always want to? No. Is it always best for us? Yes. 9 times out of 10 a good parent knows better than the child. With God as our parent it is 10 out of 10. Why do we find it so difficult to submit? It is not just submitting to God, but all of those that God has put in a position of authority over us. Parents, governments, bosses. Do we submit to them? Now this may not be a directly linked to healing, but it is a good thing to do, even Jesus submitted to people in authority over Him. Luke 2:51-52 – Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. Look at verse 52, He grew in favour with God. Now we can argue whether or not that will help you receive healing, but either way, I want to grow in favour with God. How about you?

So there you have it, 12 ‘clouds’ that can prevent you from receiving your healing. Let me make a few things clear just in case there is any confusion. These are not reasons why God doesn’t heal, He has ALREADY healed, these are possible reasons why we don’t receive. There is a huge difference there. There is also no condemnation here, I wrote this to help, not condemn. Lastly, these are not hard and fast rules, merely possible reasons. Even if they are not preventing you from being healed, it wouldn’t hurt to address them.

I hope that this teaching has helped you as much as it helped me when I first heard it.

I’ll leave you with some instructions from Jesus – Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. – Matthew 10:8

Richard

Why We Don’t Get Healed – Part 4

If you didn’t see the introduction to this post, you can view it here. Once you’ve seen it, let’s get started on listing some more ‘clouds’.

7. Unbelief

Please note that I am not talking about faith. When people hear my views on healing, they often attack with “so you think that I lack faith, that is why I am not healed?”. No, and even if I did, it would not be a condemnation. I only teach this because I want people healed, not because I want to condemn, because I don’t. Hebrews 3:19 – So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Well, that doesn’t talk about healing! I think the principals are the same, besides, what about Mark 9:24? Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Now I’m not going to teach on this again, but the disciples were casting out demons left right and centre, they had no shortage of faith whatsoever. They did have too much unbelief. What is the difference? Faith is when you go up to someone and tell the illness to leave their bodies, unbelief is what you brain starts telling you once you have done it. Are you sure this will work? Do you really have this authority? Last time the person wasn’t healed, why should this time be any different? Unbelief. This is the passage where Jesus says that the demon will only come out with prayer and fasting. I have heard people say that you have to pray and fast to get rid of demons. With all due respect, I don’t believe that. Jesus rebuked this demon and it left, no prayer, no fasting. So what did Jesus mean then? I believe that Jesus meant that we needed to pray and fast in order to get ourselves so familiar with the Word of God, that we realise the authority that we have, in order to eliminate the unbelief. Then we can remove these kinds of demons. I believe that this applies to some illnesses too. Let’s soak ourselves in the Word so that this unbelief fades in comparison! Unbelief could also be the fact that some people just don’t believe that we can be healed anymore. Either that or the fact that we don’t fully understand what the Bible teaches about healing. Before you get upset by this, go and read Acts 14:8-10. Paul was preaching and then realised that someone had the faith to be healed (I presume because of what he was teaching, maybe on healing), so he healed him. Faith, lack of unbelief and knowledge.

8. Strife and Envy

James 3-16 – For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. No good comes from selfishness, strife and envy. That also applies to healing, besides, does evil of every kind include illness? I think so. Again, without condemnation, I think that we hold onto lots of our issues. Maybe it is because we like to have something to moan about or because we like the sympathy, I don’t know. I just know that jealousy and selfishness need to go, and as always, I am talking to myself here too.

9. Condemnation of the ‘Clouds’

I keep saying that there is no condemnation, and I mean it. One of the reasons that I believe that we don’t receive healing is because we are condemned by these ‘clouds’. If we get condemned, we start to speak that over our lives, and give the devil all of the power that he needs to destroy us. The Bible says that the power of life and death is in our tongues. If we feel condemned, we will condemn ourselves, and this will not lead to a breakthrough in out walk with God, I can assure you. These ‘clouds’ are merely mentioned so that we can identify and eliminate them, not so that we can beat ourselves up and feel condemned. In the military, you gather intelligence so that you can defeat the enemy, not so that you can feel sorry for yourself and give up. We need to take this information and use it to bring glory to God and for our good, not to defeat us.

Keep an eye out for more in the next post!

Richard

Why We Don’t Get Healed – Part 3

If you didn’t see the introduction to this post, you can view it here. Once you’ve seen it, let’s get started on listing some more ‘clouds’.

4. Discerning the Body

I wasn’t sure of what this meant at first, so I looked it up to see what I was dealing with. There are loads of ideas of what this means, but here is my understanding of 1 Corinthians 11:28-30 which says, “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgement to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. 30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.”. I think that this is about the body, as in other Christians. How do we treat others? Now before you think that s means that we always have to do what others want, that is not the case. We always have to do what is right. I don’t always want to read my Bible, I never want to fast, I don’t always want to pray. I never want to exercise (just to put a non-spiritual one in there). Why do I do it? Because it is good for me. If we love others as we love ourselves, we should always do what is best for others. If that means confronting them in love, supporting them, teaching them or forgiving them, we need to do it. This is difficult, don’t get me wrong, my ego often gets in the way of this. This is something that I am trying to change. Could this be hindering your healing? How do we value others? Remember, God could use someone else to heal you, if you don’t respect people enough to receive prayer, you may never have the opportunity.

5. Living in Unrepentant, Habitual Sin

Firstly, let me make two things ridiculously clear, I am NOT condemning anyone, not am I passing judgement. I am merely teaching what the scriptures say. Where do they say this, you may be asking. John 5:14 says, “Afterwards Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” What else can I say about that? I am not saying that God is punishing you for being sinful, that is old covenant theology, but this is Jesus speaking. Now yes, technically it was still the old covenant (until Jesus rose from the dead), but Jesus would have known that He was going to die and be raised, so why did He say this to the man? I’m not sure, but Jesus said it so I need to take it into consideration. Besides, even if it doesn’t help you get healed, not sinning is going to help you SO much anyway. I know that it is not the case in this Bible story, but there are practical cases where stopping something will help you keep your healing. If I command your lungs to be healed, and they are, should you then maybe stop smoking? I know it is a simple example, but there are times when this makes sense. I don’t fully understand why Jesus said what He said, but I am not about to ignore it just because it may be ‘old covenant’.

6. Demonic Attack

There are generally two camps when it comes to the demonic, those that warn us not to look under every rock for demons (because they are too scared to deal with them) and those that look under every rock fr demons. We need to be in the middle. We need to be focused on God, and doing what He has called us to do, but when the demons attack (like the devil did to Jesus) we need to fight them (with scripture). They are defeated, but they can still cause us to fall if we’re not vigilant. Luke 13:11 – And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. This was demonic, I don’t care what anyone else has to say. It is not unusual to have to deliver someone in order for them to receive healing, but please be aware that I am not saying that all illnesses are caused by demons. As long as we agree that they (illnesses) are not sent by God.

Keep an eye out for more in the next post!

Richard

Why We Don’t Get Healed – Part 2

If you didn’t see the introduction to this post, you can view it here. Once you’ve seen it, let’s get started on listing the ‘clouds’.

1. Lack of Knowledge

Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me.” But before you complain that I have taken this out of context, it is explained in even more detail in 2 Peter 1:2, which says, “May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.” I’m sure that we can all agree that healing would fall under God’s grace, and here it shows that God will show us more grace as we grow in knowledge. Lack of knowledge will see us miss out. In Acts 14 v 8-10, Paul is teaching, and when he realises that the person has the faith to be healed, he heals him. Not before. Faith comes from hearing the Word (Romans 10:17). This means that reading scripture, listening to teaching, meditating on the Word, will build faith. A lack of faith (this knowledge), may see you miss out on healing. If you want to be healed, get out the scriptures about healing, and meditate on them until you know them backwards.

2. Misunderstanding of Law & Grace

Romans 4:15 says that the law always brings punishment on those who try to obey it. We are no longer under the law, we are under grace. This does not mean that God has changed His mind, it just means that Jesus has done a good job. Some of the ‘rules of the Law’ were based on pre-law principals, so they are still valid, except the punishments are no longer valid. Jesus took that punishment for us. Illness is a curse, we are no longer subject to the curse. Galatians 3:13 says, “But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” God may use our illness to teach us something, but He does not give us the illness, nor does He want us to have it. I believe that He may use the illness, because He makes the best of the situation, but He wants us to be well. We need to understand this.

3. Traditions of Men

Mark 7:17 starts with, “Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’ For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.” This is a huge problem as far as I am concerned. So many people have their ideas about healing, and there are so many different ideas out there. The most common one seems to be that God heals when He wants to. This is not biblical. People use things like Paul’s thorn and Timothy’s upset stomach to try and justify that fact that we all have to put up with illness. This is not the case. I don’t believe that Paul’s thorn was illness (read more about that here), and Timothy’s stomach issue could have been anything. This does not justify our illness. People try and manipulate the scripture to suit what they see and experience. People then believe what they are told, and therefore believe a lie. We need to be aware of this. I wear glasses, but I believe that God wants me to have perfect eye sight. I could go and justify my eyesight by manipulating scripture, but that is not the truth. The truth is that I have not received my healing yet, because of something that is wrong here on earth. God does not want me to be short sighted. I will keep on doing all that I can in order to see God’s Kingdom break through here on earth. Instead of lowering the Bible to your expectations, why not lift your expectations to the Bible?

So there are the first 3 points of this series. This is post 2 of 5, keep an eye out for the next one.

Richard