Never Raise a White Flag to the Devil

“I tried to believe for my healing, but my body still has all kinds of problems.  OK, I give up – I will just use natural means to deal with this condition.”

The statement above is the LAST mindset you can afford!  Even if you turn to natural means, which is not a sin, keep believing and speaking the Word.  NEVER agree with the devil by saying, “Well, the Word didn’t work, so I’ll have to let the doctors handle this.”  God says that His Word works effectively in those who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13) – don’t take sides against Him.  Continue to speak only thoughts which agree with the Bible, even if you go to a doctor.

Decades ago, I was having alarming and debilitating pain and I had no idea what the cause was.  I reasoned, “I’m not going to play with this; I’m heading to the Emergency Room.”  There was nothing wrong with that.  Before I went, though, I “believed and received” my healing.  I took the book, “Christ the Healer” (an excellent old book by F. F. Bosworth) with me – in case I had to be admitted – and went to the hospital.  They did an X-ray and asked me, “Mr. Young, have you ever had a kidney stone before?”  I hadn’t; I’d only heard of kidney stones and I knew they were no fun.  Another preacher and I had visited someone in the hospital who had one and the man was healed and discharged within about twelve hours.  So obviously this wasn’t anything Jesus couldn’t fix, but man, did it hurt!

They admitted me and gave me a popular fuzz-out-your-brain pain reliever, but even that only dulled the pain some, so I was lying there fuzzed out but still hurting.  When the drug wore off, I was as bad as before.  But I still kept saying, even while wincing in pain, “By Jesus’ stripes I was healed.”  They drugged me some more, and later that night I was in a hospital bed reading Christ the Healer.  The nurse asked, “Why are you trying to read right now?”  I said, “Because I want to get out of here as soon as possible!”  Just being the way I am, my mind was calculating what my insurance deductible was and how much I would be paying out of my own pocket for this, which was somewhat traumatizing in itself!

They did more X-rays the next day and gave me some more drugs, but finally they said, “It’s just going to have to come out on its own, and you could be in pain for several weeks.  So I said, “I can hurt at home!  Why am I here if you can’t do anything about it?”  So they sent me home!  That night I couldn’t sleep due to the pain, but I was still confessing that I was healed by Jesus’ stripes.  In the wee hours of the morning I said, “Lord, you promised your beloved sleep, and I can’t sleep with this pain.  This has to stop for Your Word to be true in my life!”

All of a sudden, a sheet of power hit me.  For the first time in two days, I felt really good.  I went to bed, went to sleep, and the next morning, that nasty stone came out, causing no pain whatsoever on the way out.  And that was the end of the ordeal.

The doctor’s prognosis was weeks of pain to be treated with drugs.  I’m glad I didn’t raise a white flag to the devil.  If I had, I would have had to tough it out.  Modern medicine is a blessing, but even the best doctors don’t have a fix for every condition.  If they have no safe way to deal with a problem, what will you do if you’ve surrendered to the devil by giving up on divine healing?

Good, godly people can die when they raise the white flag.  One way they do this is with this reasoning: “I will try the latest Homeopathic Alkalinity-Enhancing Immune Boost and trust it to heal my serious condition.  I will believe that God gave man the wisdom to invent the Homeopathic Alkalinity-Enhancing Immune Boost, and that by avoiding bread and dairy products and eating kale and beets three times a day along with this new wonder drug, I will be healed.”  But the problem is that such people can end up trusting in the wonder drug and their diet and STOP believing God.  Such people will die if the wonder drug and diet are ineffective.  There well could be conditions that could be healed by a diet and a wonder drug, but I’m sure there are conditions that cannot be healed that way.  There will always be cases like the woman with the issue of blood who spent all she had on doctors, but only grew worse.  She was healed when she trusted in Jesus, though!

It's not a sin to take pills for a headache, but if you are wise, you will still maintain that you are healed by Jesus’ stripes even as you take them.  That just makes sense from a medical perspective, too.  Do you really think your head hurts because you have an acetaminophen deficiency or an ibuprofen deficiency?  Drugs like those just treat symptoms; they don’t heal underlying causes.  If the underlying cause is still there, you’ll be back to the medicine cabinet later for another dose.  But the Word will knock out the underlying cause.  Don’t settle for mere symptom relief when the Word will bring you total relief.

And NEVER say, “I give up; I guess this flu bug got me.  I’ll settle for symptom relief drugs and try it God’s way next time and hope it works better then.”  NEVER back off of the Word!  Continue to agree with God no matter what it looks like and feels like.  We walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).