You’re Not an Exception
The devil tries to torment Christians with the idea that they are exceptions, and that healing will work for everyone but them. Here are some reasons that he might suggest that you are an exception:
“You Don’t Read Your Bible and Pray Enough”
How much is enough? According to the devil, it’s somewhat more than you actually do. If you read your Bible for half an hour a day and pray for half an hour a day, he’ll tell you that healing is eluding you because you don’t read for an hour AND pray for an hour. If you do read and pray for an hour each, he’ll try to tell you that you need to spend two hours on each, and so on.
Reading your Bible and praying are important, but they do not get you healed. Healing is by GRACE. You RECEIVE it; you do not EARN it by doing enough reading and praying. What reading and praying will do is convince you that healing really IS yours by grace, which is a good thing. But there are people getting healed who don’t do a whole lot of Bible reading and praying; they just ACT on what the Word says.
No one whom Jesus healed in the four gospels had a New Testament, let alone spent a lot of time reading it, and no one even had the unrestricted access to the Father in prayer that we enjoy today as born-again believers. So it can’t all be about taking out a stopwatch and timing yourself. Besides, your success is based on how much Scripture you ACT ON, not on how much you READ.
When Jesus “healed them all” I think you can be sure that there were people in that crowd who were not particularly devout. Healing is by offered by grace and received through faith.
“You’re Not Pleasing God Enough”
Satan tries to throw you back under the Law. As far as your righteous standing with God goes, you are just as righteous and deserving of an answer as JESUS! You “pleased God enough” when you confessed Jesus as Lord! You are under grace, where everything is free, not under the Law where you have to be good enough to get something from God.
“You Are Just Unable to Believe Like Other People”
Are you saved? Then you ARE capable of believing like other people! You had to believe to be saved. You have been given the measure (fixed amount) of faith (Romans 12:3). Don’t let the devil tell you that you can’t believe or that you don’t have any faith. Rather than sitting there listening to his lies, sock him in the mouth with Romans 12:3!
“God Just Has Some Sovereign Reason to Withhold Your Healing”
Isn’t it strange, then, that JESUS never had a sovereign reason to leave anyone without healing. He was always willing to heal them ALL, and ANYONE could have come and received healing from Him. He is the same today (Hebrews 13:8), so you can be sure that He is NOT withholding healing for any “sovereign” reason.
“God Has to Withhold Your Healing so that You Don’t Get into Pride or Some Similar Fault”
God never withheld healing from anyone for fear that the person would get into pride, and He won’t withhold healing from you. What you do with it afterward is up to you. Jesus told some people not to tell anyone about their healing, and they went out and disobeyed Him immediately! The fact that they seemingly couldn’t wait to disobey the Lord’s instructions did not stop healing from flowing to them.
“It Just Doesn’t Work for You and You’ll Never Know Why”
It would make NO sense for God to provide healing for you, then leave you in a condition where you could never receive it and never know what you could do differently to get it. To say that healing does not work for you is the devil’s way of saying that the WORD, which effectively works in those who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13), ISN’T working in you. He’s a liar.
When I was a young Christian, I used to think that I was an exception – that I somehow couldn’t get healed because something was wrong with my faith or there was some other mysterious reason that I couldn’t figure out that I failed to receive when others were receiving. I’m very glad that I found out the truth!
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