Big Healing Book - The Baseball Diamond of Healing

The Baseball Diamond of Healing

Receiving healing can be likened to running around a baseball diamond. You have to get to first base, then second base, then third base, then home. You don’t score until you get home. You don’t score half a run for reaching second base or a quarter of a run for reaching first base. Many Christians, when it comes to healing, are still stranded on the base paths, wondering why the score in their body is not changing. This message will help you locate where you are right now and help you get the rest of the way around so that you can receive the healing that Jesus Christ paid for you to have.

FIRST BASE

In this illustration, first base is the realization that GOD IS ABLE TO HEAL YOU.

I’ll assume that you’re starting at home plate, which would be “total cluelessness” concerning God and divine healing, and I’ll take you to first base.

A book that was popular some years back tried to popularize the notion that God really ISN’T able to heal you now. In the picture it painted, God was saying, “I would if I could, but I can’t, so I won’t.” The author knew that God loves us, and he assumed that because He loves us, He would do something about our sicknesses if He could. Therefore, the only reason He would not do anything would be that He actually can’t.

I suppose that if I were God, I would rather have someone doubt my ability than doubt my love, but the Bible does not support the idea that God is unable to do anything about your condition. Quite the contrary!

Consider the following:

Luke 1:37:
For with God nothing shall be impossible.

Matthew 19:26:
But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

Mark 10:27:
And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.

Jeremiah 32:17:
Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee:

Jeremiah 32:27:
Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?

Genesis 17:1:
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.

Genesis 18:14:
Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.

Genesis 28:3:
And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people;

Genesis 35:11:
And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;

Revelation 19:6:
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

God is almighty, so there is no sickness or injury too hard for Him to heal. God designed and created your body in the first place – don’t you think He’s capable of fixing it? Can’t the God who created billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, relieve your illness? Of course He can!

Furthermore, upon Jesus’ return, God will instantly change your entire body from being mortal to being immortal. In the blink of an eye, every Christian on the planet will be instantly healed of every physical problem, and even that won’t put any kind of power drain on God Almighty. Nor will the fact that He will instantly create immortal bodies for all the Christians whose bodies have already died and decomposed!

So surely He has the power to heal any physical problem you happen to have. The fact that Jesus healed all sicknesses and all diseases among the people should also be proof enough that God is able to do this. We see in the Bible that Jesus healed “all manner of sickness and all manner of disease” (Matthew 4:23-24), “all that were sick” (Matthew 8:16-17), “all” (Matthew 12:15), “a great multitude” (Matthew 14:14), “all that were diseased” (Matthew 14:35-36), “as many as touched Him” (Matthew 14:35-36, Mark 6:54-56), “great multitudes” (Matthew 15:30-31, Matthew 19:2), “many” (Mark 3:10-12), “any sick with various diseases” (Luke 4:40-41), “a great number” (Luke 6:17-19), and “all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38).

Not only is Jesus ABLE to heal everything, He DID HEAL EVERYTHING when He walked the earth. Now Hebrews 13:8 tells us that He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What He could do around 30 AD, He can certainly do today! Jesus is the same Miracle-Worker and Healer today that He always has been. Modern theological garbage has blinded many to that fact, but it’s still true whether people believe it or not!

We see from Jesus’ teaching that it is not a question of whether God is ABLE to do something – it’s a question of whether or not people can believe.

Matthew 17:20:
And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Matthew 21:21-22:
Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

Luke 17:6:
And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.

Mark 11:22-24:
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

Mark 9:23:
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

The IF here is not on God’s side of things. There is no doubt about His ability to heal. The question is whether we can believe.

I’m telling you this to put some hope into you. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and someone who’s hopeless needs to get some hope! Hope isn’t a substitute for faith, but it will take you in the right direction. But before we can believe, we have to go past just knowing that God is able to heal everything.

SECOND BASE

In this illustration, second base is the realization that GOD WANTS YOU TO BE IN HEALTH.

I would say that the majority of Christians have already reached first base, but many have not gone any farther, so they are doing without the healing that they know God is ABLE to perform. They may even shout, “God is able!” But you don’t receive healing from the Lord just by knowing that He is able. He was able before you ever got sick and He’s been able all the time you’ve had whatever it is, but obviously, that alone is not enough. Otherwise, you’d already be healed!

If you know that Jesus COULD heal you if He were WILLING, you are in good company with a certain leper who approached Jesus in the gospels, saying, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8), told him, “I am willing. Be clean.” And the man was healed of leprosy, an incurable condition. (You can read about this in Matthew 8:2-4, Mark 1:40-45 and Luke 5:12-15.) Today it would be like someone with AIDS telling Jesus, “If it be Your will, You can heal me of AIDS!” And His answer would be just the same today – He IS willing to run AIDS out of your body.

Jesus’ answer to the leper was, “I will.” He never told anyone, “I won’t.” Because Jesus is the same today as He was then (Hebrews 13:8), His answer to anyone with that question today must also be the same: “It is My will for you to be well.”

Notice that Jesus didn’t have to pray first to find out whether it was God’s will to heal the man. He didn’t have to! He knew the Scriptures! God said in Psalm 103:3 that God “forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.” God said in Exodus 15:26, “I am the Lord who heals you.” That isn’t a promise, it’s a statement about His very nature! He is a Healer and always has been. Jesus knew the Word enough to know that God wants to heal ALL, not just SOME. So there was nothing to pray about.

We know from Romans 2:11, Ephesians 6:9 and Colossians 3:25 that God does not play favorites. He treats everyone the same. In fact, we sin if we play favorites (James 2:1-9, 1 Timothy 5:21).

Therefore, we know that God cannot be willing to heal one person and not be equally willing to heal another, including you. However, God is fair to insist that you meet the same conditions as everyone else.

Healing is simply the physical benefit of salvation. God is willing to save everyone, with no exceptions. He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). God is both able and willing to save every person on earth.

Some today would have you believe that God WAS “The Lord Your Healer” but that He has changed and gotten out of the healing business, making Him “The Lord Who ISN’T Your Healer.” But God says that He “changes not” (Malachi 3:6). If He WAS “The Lord your Healer” (which can be rendered, “The Lord Who Heals You” or “The Lord Your Physician”, depending on the translation), He still must BE “The Lord Your Healer” today. Otherwise, He changed! If we aren’t seeing miracles today, WE are the ones who changed, not God!

If God IS your Healer, it MUST be His will for YOU to be healed. Otherwise, He isn’t your healer, and He says He is! I will gladly take God’s word on the matter over anyone else’s word.

What is God’s desire for your body? It is clear in 3 John 2. You’d have to have some seriously bad seminary training to misinterpret this clear statement: “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.”

It MUST be the will of God to heal EVERYONE because in James 5:14-16, the sick are instructed to call for the elders of the church to pray the prayer of faith over them with the promise that the Lord WILL raise up the sick person. (This is probably one of the most disobeyed Scriptures in the Bible!) If God’s will were unknown, or if He could make exceptions in His sovereignty, it would be impossible for the elders to pray in faith. You can only pray in faith when you KNOW that you will receive your answer. If there is any “if” or “maybe” about the matter, it isn’t faith.

Several opposing players will try to block the base path to stop you from getting to second base. These all traffic in URG – Unscriptural Religious Garbage. If you believe their arguments instead of believing the Bible, you won’t get your healing because you will lose your certainty of God’s will in the matter. You cannot believe and receive something if you’re not SURE that God wants you to have it.

If you really think it’s God’s will for you to stay sick, you have no business going to the doctor or the hospital or taking any kind of medicine to get out of “God’s will.” But you’ve probably done these things, right? Deep down you know that sickness is a curse, not a blessing, and you want to get rid of it. Your body itself will do all it can to get rid of sickness– God designed it that way.

Refutations of over 450 flawed arguments against divine healing may be found in the Objections Overruled! section of this book. The following pages touch some of the highlights. This book goes into much more depth about the arguments below.

Some of the people who make the arguments you’re about to hear love the Lord every bit as much as you and I do. The fact that they believe religious garbage over the Bible does not make them bad people; they’re just passing along the ignorance that they were indoctrinated with. If they knew the truth, most of them would be happy to preach it too.

The most often quoted objection to healing is that Paul had a sickness that God would not heal, referred to as his thorn in the flesh. Supposedly God wanted Paul to be weak so that he could be strong and He refused to heal Paul so that he would stay humble despite his many revelations. The next awful logical conclusion would be that God may be giving YOU a thorn in the flesh in the form of sickness, so it may not be His will to heal you. Therefore, you cannot pray with any certainty, and because faith is being CERTAIN of what you don’t see, by definition you cannot pray in faith. Therefore, you receive nothing.

But Paul tells you explicitly what his thorn was. You don’t have to guess. Paul says it was “a messenger of Satan to buffet me” (2 Corinthians 12:7). You should know that the Greek word translated messenger is the same word translated angel or messenger all over the New Testament. It refers to a sentient being. The word is used over 180 times in the Greek New Testament, and not once could it possibly refer to a sickness or anything other than a sentient being. Also, the word buffet means to strike with repeated blows, talking about something done to you from the outside. No one would ever use that word to describe a sickness that attacks from the inside. Have you told anyone that your sickness is really buffeting you? Of course not.

It seemed that almost everywhere Paul went, someone wanted to beat him up (buffet him) for his preaching. I believe that Satan sent this messenger to stir people up to do just that. But that is quite different from making Paul sick with a cold or a cancer or any other disease.

In Galatia, after being stoned and left for dead at Lystra, Paul said that he preached through, or because of, physical infirmity at the first (Galatians 4:13). But it was only at the first, because God obviously restored Paul’s health. He did so every time Paul got beaten up. Far from being a testimony that God wanted him sick, he was a walking testimony of God’s will to heal over and over.

Another “favorite” is saying that you might be another Job. Supposedly, God would not heal Job, so He may want you to suffer for a while to teach you patience or some other virtue. Let me tell you plainly that there is no such thing as another Job in the New Testament, nor can there be. Job did not live under the New Covenant. Under the New Covenant, you have authority over the devil and his works. Job did not have that. He could not command Satan to stop what he was doing because he didn’t have the legal right to do that! In fact, as far as we can tell, Job didn’t know anything about the Law of Moses and its promises either because he lived before they were given! Job didn’t even seem to be aware that there was a devil, so he blamed everything that happened to him on God – just as many Christians do today! Of course, God let him know that there was an evil being out there, and God did heal Job despite Job’s ignorance, his ranting and raving, and his rather non-comforting friends. The book of Job explicitly says that Satan made Job sick (Job 2:7) and that God healed Job (Job 42:10). That should tell you who the sickener is and who the Healer is. The argument that “God allowed Satan to do that” holds no water for the Church because we have authority over Satan. We are no longer part of Satan’s kingdom and what he has (sickness) does not belong to us. What God has (health and healing) does belong to us.

Then we hear about Timothy’s frequent stomach ailments. Paul advises him not to drink the water. That’s still good advice today if you travel to many places. I had some “stomach ailments” after drinking the water in a certain country. The fact that Timothy and I had multiple ailments of the same kind indicates that neither of us stayed sick. But the practical advice is not to get sick in the first place! Paul also told Timothy that bodily exercise profits a little. There’s nothing wrong with having some common sense and taking care of yourself! That can affect your life span, too. If you can avoid doing things that tend to make you sick in the first place, you don’t need to get healed! If there’s anything involving God’s will in Paul’s advice to Timothy, it’s that God wanted Timothy to be well. Otherwise, why give him advice to help him stay well?

Then there is Trophimus, whom Paul left in Miletum sick (2 Timothy 4:20). This has nothing to do with the will of God in the matter. God’s will is not stated in the verse – Paul merely states a fact, just as he did in verse 10 of the same chapter when he says that Demas forsook him, having loved this present world. Was it God’s will for Demas to do that? No! It happened anyway, and Paul recorded that fact. The fact that it happened and was recorded does not prove it was God’s will! So the fact that he left Trophimus sick somewhere ten verses later does not prove anything either, any more than the fact that Peter denied Jesus three times means that it was God’s will for him to do so.

Another worn-out argument is that if you never got sick, you’d never die, so you have to get sick eventually. Sickness does NOT have to be the way you leave the earth. Older Christians often tolerate sicknesses unnecessarily, thinking that maybe that is how God will “take them home.” Sickness is not God taking them home at all, and you’ll never hear me say that at a funeral. God received them, but He did not take them. There’s a difference! There is no time limit on God’s healing offer – as long as you are alive on the earth, you are entitled to be well. When you decide that you want to leave the earth after a long and satisfying life, ask God to receive you and He will. Let Him “take your breath away” so your body “returns to its dust” (Psalm 104:29, talking about living things in general).

The idea that you can have some say over when you go to be with the Lord may be new to you. Most people think that God has a set date for you to die, and when that date comes up, you’re gone no matter what. That just isn’t true! If it were true, the many statements in Proverbs about certain things that will make your life longer and certain things that will make your life shorter are meaningless! How long you live is more up to you than it is up to God! Paul, writing to the Philippians, said that he did not know which HE should CHOOSE, to live on and labor more, or to depart and be with Christ:

Philippians 1:22-23:
But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot [know] not.
For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:

Man thinks, “The way God set up this world, when you get old, you get senile, you fall and you can’t get up, and you drool away your days in Depends in a nursing home.” God says, “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing” (Psalm 92:14). I like God’s plan a lot better!

Another piece of URG is that God wants to build character in you through sickness. Hah! As you’ll admit if you’re honest, sick people as a whole tend to be crabbier, meaner and shorter-tempered than well people because of their physical discomfort. Sickness does not seem to breed character in many people! Nor should it, because the Holy Spirit, not sickness, was given to you so you could bear fruit. God wants to build you up through His Word and His Spirit, not through some miserable sickness that Satan wants you to have.

Along these lines is the “blessing in disguise” argument that God “blessed” you with sickness so that you could spend more time with Him and in His Word while in your sickbed. That’s pathetic! God doesn’t disguise His blessings as curses; the reason why sickness looks like a curse is that it IS a curse! There’s nothing good about it. Claiming that God sent you a broken neck (when really you broke it yourself!) to draw you to Himself shows only that you don’t understand His character. God says that it is His goodness (not sickness) that draws men to repentance (Romans 2:4). Yes, some people may start serving God after they “hit bottom” who otherwise would have kept on sinning, but don’t make God a party to things He doesn’t do. Someone else might have gone through a divorce, bankruptcy and a prison sentence for killing someone while driving drunk, and finally been so desperate that he got saved. Should he thank God for “sending” him the divorce, the bankruptcy and the drunken homicide so that he would be drawn to God? NO!

Besides, if you really believe that sickness is a character-building blessing, you should start praying for a double portion of it and ask God to bless everyone in your family with the “blessing in disguise” of sickness! You know better deep down!

Then there’s the idea that miracles were done away with after the last apostle died or after the New Testament was completed. The first makes no sense at all because there are still apostles today, and the second has no grounds in Scripture, though some try to use 1 Corinthians 13:10 to “prove” that when the “perfect” (which they think means the completion of the New Testament) has come, gifts of the Spirit, including healings and miracles, will be done away with. But it is obvious that what Paul calls the “perfect” in that chapter is not the completion of the New Testament. If the perfect has come, you see face to face, not through a mirror dimly, as Paul said. Can you honestly say that you see face to face today? Can you say that you know “perfectly” instead of “in part”? I didn’t think so. In that case, the “perfect” in 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 has not come, and this is proof that all the gifts of the Spirit, including healings and miracles, ARE for today!

Then there’s the argument that Jesus only healed to prove that He was God. He didn’t do miracles in Nazareth, so I guess He wasn’t God there if you believe that argument. And He didn’t do any miracles for the first 30 years of His life, so I guess He wasn’t God then either according to this argument! See how much trouble this line of thought can lead to? It is nowhere stated that Jesus healed the sick to prove that He was God, but it IS stated that He was moved with compassion. Because He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), don’t you think He has the same compassion now, seated at God’s right hand, that He did walking the earth?

Then you’ll get someone who says, “Aunt Glarda was the finest Christian who ever lived. If anyone was a faith person, Aunt Glarda was. She said she was believing God for her healing – and SHE DIED. So that proves God doesn’t heal everyone!” Which at face value is true – God does NOT heal everyone. There are lots of sick people around. God does not save everyone from hell, either – a lot of people go there. But that doesn’t make it His WILL for that to happen! God never fails to offer healing to everyone, but some fail to receive it, just as God offers the new birth to all, but some fail to receive it and go to hell anyway.

But the idea of the Aunt Glarda story is that you should exalt someone’s experience over the teachings of Jesus and over God’s Word. The Pharisees were known for their traditions that actually contradicted the Bible. Many of the traditions of religious men cited here do the same thing. Any time you exalt experience over Scripture, you are headed for trouble. Rather than trying to change Scripture to match our experiences, we should all be reading Scripture and building ourselves up so that our experiences match Scripture!

None of us walks in love 100% of the time the way we should, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make that our goal. I suppose none of us walks in divine health 100% of the time, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make that our goal because of someone else’s experience or even our own experience.

Anyway, you can refer to the Objections Overruled! section of this book for more on these and other arguments that will try to block your way to second base. Don’t be fooled! God is not only ABLE to heal you; He WANTS you to be in health!

THIRD BASE

In this illustration, third base is the realization that GOD HAS ALREADY DONE SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR HEALING. Jesus has paid the legal price for it.

It is crucial to know that God is ABLE to heal you and that He is WILLING to heal you because He wants you to be in health, but you have no guarantee of receiving healing until you know that He has already done something about it! Otherwise, you will find yourself with most of the church world, begging and pleading with God to DO WHAT HE ALREADY DID!

There was a lot of fuss when a movie about Christ’s suffering displayed the scene where He was flogged in such graphic detail, the movie got an R rating for gore. But I hope that this scene at least made people wonder why that happened. Why didn’t He just die on the cross for our sins? How often do people think of the whipping post? How many people sing songs about the whipping post? What was the purpose of the flogging? Isaiah prophesied that “by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Peter, looking back on the same event, tells Christians that by His stripes we were healed (1 Peter 2:24). The lashes were laid on His back to inflict pain on Him so that we could legally be redeemed from physical pain. This occurred not at the cross, but at the whipping post. It was all part of Christ’s great sacrifice for our sins.

Some have said that Peter was talking about spiritual healing, but that is impossible because you were not spiritually healed when you were born again! You received a new spirit; your old spirit was not healed. It was replaced with a righteous new spirit. Besides, the Greek word used in 1 Peter 2:24 to describe this comes from the same word from which we get physician, and it is used many other times in the New Testament to describe physical healing.

Things get even more interesting when you get out a concordance or use an online reference tool and look up the words in Isaiah 53:4: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” These words are not just talking about emotional griefs and sorrows! The Hebrew word used for griefs is translated sickness elsewhere in the Old Testament, and the word used for sorrows is translated pains. The literal rendering of this verse is, “Surely He has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains.” If you don’t believe it, you can do one of three things. First, you can get look up these words in a concordance or online study tool yourself and verify what I told you. Second, you can look in the margin if you have a Study Bible; any good Study Bible will have footnotes indicating that the words used here are literally “sicknesses” and “pains.” Third, you can just open your Bible to Matthew 8:17 where Matthew quotes Isaiah: “Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.” Obviously, the Holy Spirit thinks that Isaiah was talking about physical problems, because the fulfillment of this is in the context that He “healed all that were sick.”

It is also interesting to note that Isaiah’s prophecy that “the chastisement (punishment) for our peace was upon Him” (Isaiah 53:5) uses the Hebrew word shalom, which includes the ideas of health, prosperity and peace. It is more than just a peaceful easy feeling or the absence of war.

Just as Jesus was “wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5), He surely bore our sicknesses and our pains. Just as He bore (carried away as a substitute) the sin of many (Isaiah 53:12), He bore (carried away as a substitute) our sicknesses. You’re included in there! Isaiah isn’t talking about “their” sins or “their” sicknesses – He is talking about “our” sins and “our” sicknesses. You can’t read Isaiah 53 correctly and leave yourself out of it!

It is sad that this side of Christ’s suffering is preached so little. Most ministers have majored on the sin-bearing part but have neglected to mention that He also bore our sicknesses as well.

The apostle Paul, in Galatians 3:10-14, discusses the “curse of the Law.” The Law itself was not a curse, of course; Paul himself said that the Law was holy and just and good (Romans 7:12). But the Law contained a curse for disobedience. The fullest statement of this curse, but not the only one, may be found in Deuteronomy 28:15-68. God told Israel that awful things – curses – would come upon them if they failed to keep the whole Law of Moses. Among these were many named sicknesses, both physical and mental. And in case you’re wondering about AIDS, West Nile and other “modern” illnesses, verse 61 said that every sickness and every plague not mentioned was also part of the curse! That would include any sickness that’s trespassing in your body right now.

So we see right away that God calls sickness a curse, not a blessing in disguise. He also calls it captivity (Job 42:10 in the King James and other literal translations; there’s a footnote to that effect in the NKJV), bondage from Satan (Luke 13:16), evil (Deuteronomy 7:15) and oppression by the devil (Acts 10:38).

But the most important thing to know is that Christ has (past tense!) redeemed us from the curse of the Law. Anyone reading the curse in the Law can see that all sickness is included in that curse, as we saw in Deuteronomy 28:61. Therefore, because the sickness in your body is part of the curse for disobedience, and Christ has redeemed you from that curse, Christ redeemed you from having to bear that sickness in your body. How did He redeem you? By being cursed Himself. He was made sick in your place to redeem you from having to be sick. He took the disease part of the curse in His own body to spare you from having to bear it in your body.

Because the atonement that provided salvation from hell is the same atonement that provided healing for your body, it is insane to think that God is willing to extend one benefit of salvation to everyone while withholding another benefit for some mysterious reason.

The fact that some people will spend eternity in hell has nothing to do with God’s choice in the matter. Likewise, the fact that some people never get healed has nothing to do with God’s choice in the matter. It is just as ridiculous to say that a person was not healed because God wouldn’t heal him as it is to say that a person was not saved because God wouldn’t save him.

It is crucial that you see that Christ has redeemed you from the curse of the Law. It’s something He already did, not something He will do or something you even need to ask Him to do. It makes no sense to ask Him to do what He already did!

So not only is God ABLE to heal you, not only does He WANT you to be in health, but He also made a LEGAL provision by the substitution of Jesus Christ for your healing. He purchased it for you. It belongs to you as a Christian. However, even knowing all of this still leaves you on third base with no score. There’s one more leg to go.

HOME PLATE

In this illustration, home plate is BELIEVING THAT YOU RECEIVE YOUR HEALING WHEN YOU PRAY. God is able to heal you, wants to heal you, and has made provision for your healing, but it does not just fall on you automatically because you are a Christian. You must receive it by faith.

Here is how Jesus said to receive what you want from God:

Mark 11:24:
Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

The key word here in the passage I quoted is receive. Jesus did not tell you to beg God for your healing, to pester and badger Him for your healing, or to keep asking Him over and over for it. Some people misapply the parable of the unjust judge and think that they need to keep “bombarding Heaven’s gates” with prayer until God answers. Then they think if they just get enough other people praying, God will finally do something. I have good news for you – heaven’s gates aren’t shut and they don’t need to be bombarded! God’s ears are always open to the prayer of the righteous. He hears you the first time, and He actually commands you not to use vain repetitions like the heathen who think they will be heard because they talk so much! The lady who went to the unjust judge wanted justice from an adversary, not healing. For things like she requested, for example, the fall of a repressive regime that tortures Christians, we do need to keep praying. But praying for healing the way you’d pray for a nation is like playing golf by baseball rules. They’re both sports, just as these are both kinds of prayer, but different rules apply. If you play golf by baseball rules, you’ll try to slug the ball over the wall – and get a penalty for going out of bounds! What works in baseball doesn’t work in golf. What works when praying about social justice does not work when praying to receive healing. Jesus told you to receive things for yourself in this verse. Believe that you receive when you pray.

Receiving implies an offer. You can’t receive something that isn’t already offered to you; you’d have to ask for it. Asking for something isn’t the same as receiving something. If I went to the store and bought you a tub of ice cream and showed up with it at your door ready to hand it to you, you would not ask me to go get you some ice cream when you saw me at the door with it, would you? No, you would just receive my present to you, and maybe thank me for being so nice that you didn’t even have to ask for it because I bought it for you when you had never asked for it! Likewise, Jesus paid for your healing long before you could ever think to ask for it, and He now offers it to you. You don’t need to ask Him to do it; you need to receive what He already offers you.

I’ve played in chess tournaments, and I’ve won some. (I was even the Massachusetts state co-champion at speed chess a long time ago.) But the people running the tournament will penalize you if you make 2 moves in a row. You have to wait your turn; after your opponent moves, then you can move again. Most Christians are staring at their chessboards waiting for God to move, but God already moved, and He’s waiting for them to move! Then nothing happens as both sides wait for each other to move!

God made His move when He punished Jesus for your sins – He bore your sicknesses and carried your pains. God really has done all that He will ever do about healing you as far as providing healing goes! Now it’s your move. You need to receive what God has already provided – your healing.

At this point you may wonder, “Why do I need to receive healing when 1 Peter 2:24 says that I was healed by Jesus’ stripes?” That verse can’t mean that you were healed in the sense that your body has no need of healing, because if that were the case, no Christian would ever be sick in the first place. Healing is legally yours, but you still must receive it. Consider this: 1 Timothy 4:10 says that God is the Savior of all men. Does that mean that the folks at the Unitarian Universalist House of Deception are right and everyone goes to heaven? NO! Jesus made it clear that many people will go to hell. God has already done everything He needs to do legally about saving all men, but only those who receive Jesus (John 1:12) are saved and avoid hell. All blessings, including healing, are yours in heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3), but that doesn’t mean that you enjoy them all automatically in the physical realm. Action is still required on your part to appropriate these blessings by faith so that you can enjoy them in the natural realm. (If you’re still confused about this, the matter is taken up at more length elsewhere in this book.)

If you have $100 in your bank account, you can write a check, use your debit card, go to an ATM or go to the bank itself and get $50 out if you need it. It’s YOUR money so the bank won’t stop you from taking what’s already yours. However, if you never do anything, the $100 will still be in the bank but you will have nothing in your wallet to spend on what you need. What Jesus did was the equivalent of depositing that $100 into your bank account. Yet most Christians beg God to make a deposit into their account so that money will be there to withdraw. What they don’t realize is that the $100 has been deposited already and it is already theirs legally. They can withdraw it any time because it’s theirs! If a Christian needs $50, he doesn’t need to ask God to give him $50 when more than that is sitting in his bank account because God already put it there!

Jesus paid for your healing and it is already in your spiritual bank account. You don’t need to ask God to deposit healing there because He already did! You are free to make your withdrawal at any time, and it has nothing to do with God’s will, God’s timing, or any other such thing. If He didn’t want you to have it, He wouldn’t have deposited into your account. Just make a withdrawal any time you want – your healing is there for the taking thanks to what Jesus did for you when He suffered physically in your place for your sins.

Receiving does not mean that you try to “psych yourself” into thinking you’re well or that you do any kind of mind-over-matter thing. Your spirit man (the real you) receives from God. What you receive will then work out in your natural body. It isn’t a mind game. It’s a faith transaction.

What basis do you have for faith? The fact that God is already offering healing to you, as we have proven from the Bible. Faith is being sure of what you don’t see (Hebrews 11:1). Faith isn’t being sure of something that doesn’t EXIST; it’s being sure of something that EXISTS that you don’t SEE. There’s a difference! It’s not that your healing doesn’t exist – it does. If you could see into the spirit realm where God lives, you would see it, too. It exists but you just can’t see it yet with your natural eyes. But when you receive it by faith, even though you don’t see anything happening with your eyes immediately, it will be yours in the sense of enjoying it in the natural realm.

Don’t quit on this if you don’t see an instant, complete manifestation. I once had an inoperable growth in my left eye. The doctors couldn’t operate because if they tried to kill the growth, they would kill the optic nerve that was close to it. I was losing my sight and there was no hope in the natural for me. The doctor said that I would just have to “accept” having blurrier vision for the rest of my life. But I got some Christian friends to agree with me in prayer one night, and I decided to receive my healing when I prayed, as Jesus said to do. Guess what happened over the next week and a half to two weeks! MY EYE GOT WORSE! If I went by “sight”, I’d have been sorry that I even prayed! But instead, I kept on saying, “I received my healing that night when hands were laid on me, and I won’t give it up! I AM healed and God’s Word agrees with me!” That might sound silly, but one night in my bedroom, there seemed to be a big flash of light coming from the inside of me. It’s hard to describe it in English. But I know that afterward, the lump vanished without a trace, my sight was better than 20/20 with that eye, and I’ve had no recurrences of the problem. I’m glad I received my healing when I prayed and that I didn’t let go when “sight” said that things were worse instead of better.

I suffered from allergies growing up into adulthood. They were so bad I would go through Kleenex left and right at my job. After I received Jesus and found out what His instructions were, I decided one night to receive my healing from those allergies when I prayed. The next morning at work was probably the worst I can remember. If I went by what I saw, I would have concluded that my prayers hurt rather than helped! But I was determined not to let go of what I received by faith when I prayed. Sometime around lunchtime, the sneezing and congestion stopped – and I’ve never had those allergies since then!

I had a kidney stone back when I was 30. I didn’t know what it was, but I sure knew I was in agony and I couldn’t sleep! I believed I received my healing in my dining room when I prayed, and then I headed for the emergency room! God is not against doctors and hospitals. If it weren’t for them, I would have died without knowing Jesus when I was in elementary school because of a life-threatening illness! However, even though I was in the emergency room, my trust was still in God. That might seem like a contradiction to you, but it isn’t. You can believe you receive healing for a headache and then take some aspirin. Aspirin will relieve symptoms but it won’t cure the root problem. That is the case with many medical treatments, and it was the case with the kidney stone. They drugged me up so that I could get some sleep and they stuck an IV in me.

Anyway, they took X-rays and they ended up telling me I might be in pain for weeks and there wasn’t much they could do. So I told them that I wanted to go home, figuring that it would be much cheaper to hurt at home! After all, if they couldn’t do anything, why sit in a hospital? I went home, and two nights after I went to the emergency room, I felt like suddenly the ceiling disappeared and a warm flood just came over me. It’s hard to describe. I immediately went to sleep and when I woke up, all pain was gone. The only way I knew the stone was gone was when I heard a clunk. There was no pain as it left.

Why did the healing manifest then rather than sooner? I don’t know, but I do know that if you believe you receive something when you pray and don’t quit on it, what you received will be yours in the natural realm.

I’ve heard it argued that there should be no such thing as waiting for a manifestation, but the trouble with that teaching is that if you don’t see instant change, you have to assume you didn’t really believe when you prayed, and you could end up forfeiting something that you really did receive but just didn’t see work its way out yet into the natural.

Many Christians make the mistake of thinking that they have to pray again the next day if they don’t see a change. Why would you do that? It makes no sense! If you really received healing from God when you prayed, there is no need to pray again because you received it no matter what it looks like. So the logical thing to do would be to thank God for what you have already received from that point on – not to ask for it again! Asking for it again would only indicate that you prayed in unbelief the first time. If you did that, I guess you should “receive” again – in faith this time! But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you need to keep praying about it once you’ve received your healing. The only kind of “praying” you should be doing after you believe that you receive is THANKING GOD FOR WHAT YOU ALREADY RECEIVED WHEN YOU PRAYED!

There is no official canned prayer to receive healing, any more than there is a canned prayer to receive Jesus in the first place. But a prayer like this will do the job if you pray it in faith:

“Father, I thank you that Jesus took this sickness in my place and I don’t have to have it. I now receive the healing He paid for. Thank You that I am healed by His stripes and that I have that healing now.”

There’s no need to pray fancy prayers full of Thee’s and Thou’s that run on and on. God understands modern English and He answers faith, not length!

So we have seen what you need to know and do to be healed.

First, know that God is able to heal you.

Second, know that God wants you to be in health.

Third, realize that God already did something about your healing by laying your sicknesses on Jesus.

Fourth, believe you receive the healing that Jesus already paid for when you pray.

If you do these things, you can receive healing for any condition that you have right now!