Last night I fell asleep with the TV on again. It's a nasty habit and one my husband admittedly isn't too keen on either. I have only developed this habit in the last three years or so; it was after I became ill and it seems to help me drift off to sleep. I cannot exactly pinpoint why I believe it helps me but I think it is a cross between drowning out the ringing and the rushing in my ears and just giving me some sort of noise so in that place between wakefulness and sleep, I can tell that I am still alive. That place isn't always easy for me....
Usually, once I have fallen asleep, I don't have a problem staying asleep. This is an absolute Godsend because I know most people with chronic conditions have a terrible time falling asleep and staying asleep. A lack of sleep is one of the biggest stressors on our body and simply makes everything ten times worse. I am not a morning person and never have been, so I usually sleep until 9 AM. This morning, however, I was awoken at precisely 6:30 AM due to a very quickened heartbeat in my chest. I do tend to have a lot of angina and other weird pains and flutters in my chest, but this was a rapid heartbeat and I confirmed it by taking my pulse. I sat up in bed and just the repositioning helped to calm my heart back down. It was then that I realized Joyce Meyer was on my TV screen.
For those of you that don't know who Joyce Meyer is, she is a Christian evangelist that has been bringing the message of the Gospel through TV, radio, books and live conferences for many years now. I like Joyce because she preaches the Word and strongly encourages the application of it in our daily lives. The cool thing about God is that he uses many people to reach His many people. What I am going to respond to may not necessarily be the same thing you are going to respond to; it's like a different strokes for different folks sort of scenario. God created us all differently, so doesn't it make sense that He would send us different people to bring us the same message in different ways? Of course it does. We still need to test the spirits to make sure what we are hearing is OF GOD (Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1), but we should not be so quick to judge every evangelist that we do not respond to. The teachers of the Word are accountable to God and He will judge them accordingly (Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, because you know that we will be judged more strictly. Jas 3:1).
When I first tuned into Joyce, she was saying that the power that is in us is the same power that raised Christ from the dead and that if the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, it shall "quicken [our] mortal bodies" (Ephesians 1:20; Romans 8:11). It was at this point that I started to think it was the Holy Spirit who had woken me up by quickening my pulse because He had something to tell me. I stared bleary-eyed at the TV but the truth of God's Word still spoke to my heart. At least the Spirit had the good sense to tell my brain to record the program. I have gone back and watched it several times now so that I could bring to you, dear friends, the message of Health, Hope and Healing that the Holy Spirit wanted all of us to hear today:
Joyce’s message started off about the importance of knowing God. Now, there is a clear distinction between knowing of God and truly knowing God. The difference lies in having a personal relationship with God, not just a belief in who He is. The apostle Paul says in Ephesians, "I also, having heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and of the love you are holding toward all saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, might give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him (the word knowledge is from the Greek word “epiginosko” meaning "full knowledge" or "acknowledgment"), that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know (from the Greek word “oida” as it speaks of knowing with a distinct and certain finality, very close to absolute knowledge; an instinct that is deeper than acquired knowledge) what is the hope (the certainty) of His calling (upon your lives), what is the wealth of the glory of His inheritance in the saints (His glorious deposit He has placed within you that makes you exceedingly valuable to Him), and what is the exceeding greatness of His power (released through the resurrection of Christ) unto us who believe...(1:15-19).
Joyce spoke of the different ways we could start to get to know God:
1) To really know God, we have to study His Word. There is no way to know God without reading His Word.
2) In the Word, you will find God's promises. Knowing God's promises is another way of getting to know God and we should take every one of God's promises personally. These are not just promises that were made to a foreign people in ancient times--they are applicable and relevant today!
3) We need to know what God expects of us. Again, being in the Word will help us learn about God's expectations. The number one thing God expects of us is to BELIEVE. John 11:40 says "Only believe and you will see the glory of God." So our job then--no matter what we are going through, no matter what our circumstances--is not to try to fix what is wrong, but to believe. If we have prayed, trusted God, and found a promise in the Word that He will take care of our situation, then we are not to doubt but to just believe!
4) We need to know what to expect out of God. Get to know His character. We can again do this by being in the Word and hiding God's scriptures and promises in our hearts. It is okay to have expectations of God and to verbalize them! Tell God what you are expecting. Not in a sarcastic, demanding way, of course, but rather saying to God that He has given us these promises in His Word and that we are expecting Him to do these things because we know that He is a person of His Word. This honors God.
We often see in the Bible or hear that we are to "wait on God." Psalm 27: 13-14 says, "Yet I am confident that I will see the Lord's goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord." The word "wait" in Greek means "to expect," "to hope for" or "to long for." Waiting on God then is NOT passive! We are to expect, hope and long for God to show up in a mighty way during this "waiting" period! With regard to everything then, including our physical healing, we need to EXPECT that God is working in us and through us even though we may not be able to see it or feel it.
God's character is wrapped up in His name. When God first told Moses His name, "Yhwh," it was unpronounceable. This signifies that God is so far above us in every way, we cannot even pronounce what He is really called. But remember, our Great God is so compassionate and loves us so much that He wants us to know Him and He wants to come live within us! So how can we sit around discouraged and full of self pity? Why are we so content to live under our circumstances and not over them? It's because we think about the wrong things, think about what other people say, focus on our problems and forget about God! For some of us, the answer has been to maybe live in church all the time and go to meetings (perhaps even becoming church or meeting junkies) because we feel good there. But the point is to get strong enough (no matter what our physical condition or other circumstances) in our relationship with God so that we can be happy all the time.
As time progressed, we put vowels in "Yhwh" and it became "Yahweh." Then it became "Yehovah." Then "Jehovah," which means "Lord God." Then we took it even further and added other names to His name. One of those names is "Jehovah Rapha," which means "God, My Healer." (Now let me just take a minute to add an aside here, because it was at this point in Joyce's broadcast that she mentioned how she "very rarely" does a whole teaching on this anymore, but that today, she felt it was necessary to talk about "Jehovah Rapha: God, Our Healer." Yep, definitely was a wake-up call by the Holy Spirit this morning. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled blogcast.)
3 John 1:2 says, "Beloved, I would above all else that you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers." So we know that our Spirit is much more important than anything physically, but besides that, God wants us to prosper and feel well. As I often say, besides our salvation, our health is the next most important thing we can have. If you think about all of God's blessings for our lives, there is really no way to enjoy any of them when we feel terrible. Think about the last time you had the flu or were sick in bed. I don't mean just a little cold, I mean really, really sick. What was in the forefront of your mind? Feeling better so you could "get on with things," right?! It makes since then that the scriptures would desire good health for us. We simply cannot do much or enjoy much without it. Well then, if God wants us to feel well, why do we feel so terrible and what can we do about it? Read on.
"Saying, If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God and will do what is right in His sight and will listen to and obey His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you." (Exodus 15:26). So let's understand something right now: JESUS is our physician. The WORD OF GOD is our medicine. Healing is for our whole being--not just physically but emotionally, financially, mentally, socially, etc. Prov 4:20-22 says, "My son, attend to my words; consent and submit to my sayings. Let them not depart from your sight; keep them in the center of your heart. For they are life to those who find them, healing and health to all their flesh."
One thing we need to do if we need any sort of healing OR if we would like to walk in divine health: be on the offensive not the defensive! We need to be fighting these issues before they arise, if at all possible, and if we already have them, we need to take an active, scriptural approach to dealing with them. Remember how we talked about needing to learn God's promises and recite them to Him when telling Him our expectations? Well, we are also to mediate and think--on purpose--about those things. Meditating means to mutter, over and over, under your breath. If you've never done that before, that's okay, here's an easy way to start:
God, you're my healer.
By your stripes I am healed.
I thank you that your Word is my medicine and that the more I meditate on your Word, the better I feel.
You're my energy.
Your strength is in me.
Your life is in me.
Every day I get better and better in every way and I believe the healing power of God is working in me right now!
If you are suffering from any physical infirmity, I encourage you to meditate on these words every day—they are all scriptural and part of God’s promises for us. Part of our physical healing is going to come from expecting God to honor His promises over our lives and verbalizing this. Does God give healing to others that don’t do this? Sure He does, but this is the message that He has given to me for my healing and for yours.
I’d like to pray for you right now, for your healing:
Father we trust you and we believe that you sent Jesus to heal our diseases, to forgive our sins and to really just restore us in every single area of our lives. Your Word says that by His stripes, we are HEALED AND MADE WHOLE. All throughout the Bible we see records of Jesus healing sick people and I believe that He is the same yesterday, today and forever. You said that we could pray the prayer of faith for the sick and that they would get well. So today I pray for everyone that is reading this who has sickness, disease, or pain in their body. I pray for them, that they would experience the healing power of God in their bodies right now. That they would trust in you for their healing and that whether those symptoms go away immediately or a little bit day by day, that they will stand in faith and believe that God’s healing power is working in them right now. So once again, I say, IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST BE HEALED! Father, we thank you that you are working in our bodies and that you will receive the praise. It’s in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.
Always Hope
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