Why You Are Still Sick: Healing Truths for Christians

I don’t believe you can bust through stress without knowing what God’s will is on the matter.  You won’t have faith to believe for a light and free life if you don’t see that as being a natural part of God’s Kingdom life - His will.  Learning about how things work in God’s Kingdom has been critical to me finding joy and peace.  

I’ve had to be intentional about  ‘searching and learning’ because the way things work in God’s Kingdom is so counterintuitive to the way things work in the kingdom of the world.  My kingdom of the world experiences, mindsets and preconceived ideas don’t apply to the Kingdom of God and if I insist on bringing them with me, I’ll not only be limited but I’ll be robbed of the fullness of life that I could have otherwise had.

Physical healing is one of those areas.  In the Kingdom of God, healing and wholeness is natural and to be expected.  No one is sick in heaven.  Our world experience tells us that everyone gets sick, that even those who love the Lord and work full-time for him as missionaries or pastors die from sickness and disease.  Do you see the clash of the Kingdoms?  

Maybe you say, “But Donna, I’m not in heaven.  I’m in this world so that is why I can’t expect to be in divine health yet.”  Well, let’s see what the Bible says about that.  Jesus says about His disciples in John 17:16 “For they no longer belong to this world any more than I do.”   We are in this world but not of this world.  It holds no power over us unless we allow it to.

John 16:33 AMPC "I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.]   

Luke 10:19 TPT "Now you understand that I have imparted to you all my authority to trample over his kingdom. You will trample upon every demon before you and overcome every power Satan possesses. Absolutely nothing will be able to harm you as you walk in this authority."

Come on, Stress Buster, those verses are either true or they are not.  So, if we don't belong to the world, where do we belong?  John 17:9 “So with deep love, I pray for my disciples. I’m not asking on behalf of the unbelieving world, but for those who belong to you, those you have given me.”  If we belong to God, He is our King and we live in His Kingdom.  

Where is this kingdom?  It’s not a city or a country.  It’s not far away in heaven either. Luke 17:21 “The kingdom is not discovered in one place or another, for God’s kingdom realm is already expanding within some of you.”  The Kingdom is in you.

So back to healing being a natural part of God’s Kingdom, take a look at Luke 10 starting at verse 8 “When you enter into a new town, and you have been welcomed by its people, follow these rules: Eat what is served you. 9 Then heal the sick, and tell them all, ‘God’s kingdom realm has arrived and is now within your reach!’ 10 But when you enter a city and they do not receive you, say to them publicly, 11 ‘We wipe from our feet the very dust of your streets as a testimony before you Understand this: God’s kingdom realm came within your reach and yet you have rejected God’s invitation!’”

Physical healing is an integral piece of the Kingdom.  God invites us not only to come into the Kingdom through salvation or believing in Jesus but once in the Kingdom He also invites us to experience the fullness of salvation. 

Salvation is a broader term in Greek than we often think of in English. Some concepts that are inherent in the Greek word soteria (salvation) include restoration to a state of safety, soundness, health and well being as well as preservation from danger of destruction.  Health is built right into the word. 

But many today are rejecting God’s invitation to the Kingdom life of divine health because they are stuck in the kingdom of this world mindset or how the kingdom of this world works.  They haven’t learned how things work in the Kingdom of God.  They limit themselves to what they see, hear and have experienced.

When we look at healing or stress busting in general in the Bible, we can’t build a theology on one verse.  We need to see the God of the whole Bible.  When we do this we see His nature of lovingkindness, gentleness and mercy.  We see that His covenant, both the old and new, include provision for physical healing.  We see that God calls Himself Jehovah Rapha (Our Healer).  We see Jesus healing everyone that came to Him by faith.  He never told anyone "no" or "wait".  We see that sickness is part of the curse but we've been redeemed from the curse.  Healing and health are everywhere in the Bible when you start looking.  It's who God is.

I understand that it has not been most of our experiences to see people healed and walking in divine health.  We have only seen glimpses of heaven with an occasional miracle here and there and so we have decided that it must not be God’s will to heal every time.  We’ve had to come up with a reason for why it didn’t happen.  Will we ever see more than glimpses of heaven if we don’t understand the Kingdom and how things work there?!  

To hear that some of you feel that God is holding back on you or that He would put sickness and disease on you because He gets some kind of glory from that makes me not only extremely sad but almost sick to my stomach. 

To think that our Father who loves us so much that He sent Jesus to come rescue us would hold anything else back from us is so wrong!  When you have an intimate relationship with God you get to know His heart and His character and you’ll come to discover that it is defamation or slander to say these things about God.  It’s when a person doesn’t know another person well that they believe untrue things about them. 

To me, it’s as perverse as someone saying that I’m a child molester.  Yes, I feel this strongly about it.  If someone was going around telling people I’m a child molester, I’d be so upset.  That’s not who I am!  That’s not my nature!  That’s so wrong of them!  It’s untrue!  And wouldn’t it be especially heartbreaking if I had done really nice things for this person and thought we were so close and yet they don’t know me at all if they would think that was true.  How can they say this?!  How can they feel this way?!  If they really think I could do that, they don't know me at all.  Because my husband knows me so intimately he would quickly be able to know that it is not true if he heard these rumors.  He would defend me and believe in me.

I hope you are seeing how this works.  Knowing God’s will and His great love for us helps us to read Scriptures through the right lens - the Kingdom of God lens - and not through the kingdom of this world lens. 

When we do that, we see healing is ALL OVER the Bible and so in our face that it’s hard to miss.  The only way we can miss it is if we choose not to accept God’s invitation to His Kingdom life and decide to reject it because it doesn’t line up with the tradition we have been taught, seems too good to be true or hasn’t been our experience. Why do people go searching for other things it could mean so that God's Word can line up with the reality we know instead of getting our reality to line up with what God's Word says?

Yes, I’m a little fired up about this because I hate to see God defamed.  I hate to see the devil lie to people.  I hate to see you miss out on the fullness of your salvation and live in stress and sickness all so unnecessarily.  It's a waste of the freedom that Jesus bought for us on the cross.  

So, next time we’ll cover one of those verses that people love to say shows that sometimes God says no to healing.  We’ll look at Paul’s thorn in the flesh.   

 
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