Celebrating Jesus the Healer

Celebrating Jesus

INTRO: 

Starting Sunday 1st September: Carryduff Elim and Crown Jesus Ministries are running a joint project, over 4 months, focusing on Jesus the Healer, Saviour, Baptiser and King.

For more info on services and events visit:

Celebrating Jesus

or:
 http://www.crownjesus.org
 http://www.carryduffelim.com

Does God heal?

Firstly let me make my position clear:

I am not an expert on healing. I don't have all the answers, I am just a follower of Jesus who believes the bible and tries his best to live it out. I am typing this with three discs out of place in my back, tinnitus ringing in my ears and my father in law in hospital since February. My parents both died as a result of cancer and I see sickness around my everyday. I don't live in Cuckooland. It's not just bad people who get sick either...  in fact it can seem a great injustice that some of the finest people I have ever met are either suffering with sickness or have died as a result of sickness. Sickness seems to be evident in all kinds of people: babies, kids, youth, adults, elderly, tall, small, rich, poor, black, white, Catholic, Methodist, Pentecostals and even Presbyterians!! :-)  Sickness can come to everyone... even the best of us.

Secondly I do not believe that all people remain sick because they lack faith. The Pastor who would dare tell a mother that her child continues to suffer with leukemia because she does not have enough faith for their healing needs a... (I will leave that to your imagination). Of course a prayer of faith can rise up the sick (James 5:15) but to blame a person’s lack of faith is ignorant and very cruel. God’s ways are higher than ours... there is a mystery in it all.

Thirdly I believe that what the bible says supersedes my experience. This is very important.  As I Christian I cannot allow what I see to determine what I believe. If I see no one healed does that mean God does not heal? If I lead no one into faith in Christ does that mean Jesus does not save? If I have never seen a shark do they not exist?
Faith in God required me to move beyond what I can physically see and touch.

When my mother died of cancer a well meaning individual said "Has that shaken you faith in healing?" Of course not! God is bigger than my experience, he is the God of the bible and he does not change. I believe God to be loving, just, merciful, gracious, jealous and patient. I believe God to be Creator... and if that be the case he is also the best person to go to when something is broken. There is logic in this. The one who makes things is also the best one to go to for a repair? I believe God to be a healing God... irrespective of my experience.  (To that point may I add I have prayed for and witnessed first hand some amazing miracles.)

Fourthly I believe God can heal in many ways. Through the hand of a surgeon, medicine and also as a supernatural act of power. When I pray for the sick I pray my best prayer and always in Jesus name and for His glory. With the persons permission I will at times lay on hands or use oil.

Fifthly, not everyone who is prayed for is healed... Why? I have no idea... but I trust God, my Father in heaven, to make the right choices whenever I don't understand the reasons. If you have been prayed for in the past and you have yet to receive your healing here is my advice; don't quit! Keep praying for a YES until God gives you a NO. I have been prayed for 100's of times for healing and it hasn't happened...yet!
Ultimately, and this is of utmost importance: Everyone who believes in their heart and confesses with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord will be healed; this may not come until we reach heaven but rest assured your healing is coming!

Finally, God's ability or willingness to perform the miraculous is not confined to a certain time frame of Church History. God's Holy Spirit has power to heal today just as He had power to heal at any other time. God does not change.

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT HEALING?

Over the coming months I will assemble into this little blog a list of some references to healing in the bible and brief thoughts on the passage.



I have put together this collection of Scriptures so that you can know the truth about God and healing; and the truth that you know will set you free. Fill your life with God's promises and take Him at his word. Trust Him today for your healing and apply these scriptures to your life.
I pray as you read these you will trust in Jesus as your Saviour, Lord and Healer.

The first reference in the bible which deals with healing is found in Genesis 20:17.

So Abraham prayer unto God; and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants, and they bare Children.

This first physical healing recorded in scripture as a result of answered prayer.

In Exodus 15:26 the bible says:

If thou wilt diligently harken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statues, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which i have brought upon the Egyptians: For i am the Lord that healeth thee.

This scripture has two parts to it; the conditions and the promise. Additionally God declares that he is the Healer. Jehovah-Ropheka. God your Physician.

Exodus 23:25
 And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless thy bread and thy water and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.

Leviticus 16:21
And aaron shall lay both his hands upon the goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions in their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send him away...

In the same way as the goat carried the sins and sickness of the people and was put out of their midst to die, so too was Christ put out of the city walls carrying the sins and sicknesses of the people.

Numbers 21:8
And the Lord said unto Moses, make thee a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looks upon it shall live.

The serpent upon the pole is symbolic of Jesus Christ becoming sin for us on the cross (John 3:14)

Deuteronomy 34:7
Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural forces abated.'

Joshua 14:10

And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as he said, these 45 years, ever since the Lord spoke this to Moses while Israel wandered in the wilderness, and now, here i am this day, 83 years old. As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me, just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war...

Both Moses and Joshua experienced God blessing of long life and health.