Tradition – Making the Word of God of None Effect

Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.  (Matthew 15:6 NKJV)

So by this you have invalidated the word of God [depriving it of force and authority and making it of
no effect] for the sake of your tradition [the rules handed down by your forefathers]. (Matthew 15:6 AMP)

Cancer. Heart disease. Multiple sclerosis. When we think of killer diseases, those are the names that come to mind. But the truth is, there’s a far more deadly killer on the loose in the Church today. And it’s destroyed more lives than any of us can imagine. It’s called tradition. Traditions rob believers of their healing. They steal the power from the promises of God.

Faith concerning healing should be as highly developed in the Church as is faith concerning salvation. If the Church were told what the Word says about healing, Christians would be equally as quick to believe they are healed as to believe they are saved. However, instead of teaching and preaching that healing belongs to us, many have taught just the opposite.

Make the decision to live in divine health in the same way that you make the decision
to accept Jesus as Savior. Decide to be well!  Just as salvation is being offered to
whomever will accept it, so is healing being offered to whomever will believe.

By hearing the Word, you continue to develop the faith for your healing.

It is easy to understand why the Church as a whole has not walked in divine health for all these years, even though healing has belonged to it. Men have tried to teach God’s Word through head knowledge, instead of by His Spirit, which sowed traditions and seeds of doubt. Jesus said that men make the commandment of God of no effect by their tradition (Matthew 15:6).

How helpless we are in the face of Satan and disease without the seed of the Word of God living in you concerning your healing! And if you allow the traditions of men to usurp authority over God’s Word, you will continue to be helpless in the face of sickness. God will be able to do nothing for you—you will have made His Word “of none effect” in your life.

The Word of God is incorruptible seed. Satan does not have the power to stop it. Disease does not 
have the power to overcome it. In your life, only you have the power to stop the Word from working.

Lay aside what tradition has taught you. Your heart has never agreed with it anyway. Realize that only Satan could be the source of such powerless, defeated beliefs sold to the family of Almighty God.

As you study the Word of God concerning healing, this incorruptible seed
of the Word will drive out the doubt and tradition you have been taught.

Believing in healing is not enough. You must know that it is God’s will for you to be healed.

Through the Word, you can know without a doubt it is God’s unchanging will for you to be healed.

If It Be Thy Will
One tradition that has robbed the Church of healing is the practice of praying, “if it be Thy will.” You cannot stand in faith against sickness and disease when you have been taught that sickness is God’s will for you.  You should know that it is God’s will to heal you before you ever pray. You can know because God’s Word tells you His will. The Word of God is the will of God.

According to the Word, what did Jesus do with your sickness? He bore it for you. It
could not be God’s will for you to be sick with the sickness that Jesus suffered for you.

Healing Has Passed Away
Another tradition we hear is that healing has passed away and there are no miracles today. God said, “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). We all know that God doesn’t change (James 1:17). He has not changed since the beginning of time (Malachi 3:6). For healing to pass away, then God would have to pass away. He is still the Lord that heals us!

Just believing in healing is not enough. You must believe that it is God’s will to heal you. You have to believe that healing is yours, that it belongs to you. “Healing belongs to me!”

Miracles have never passed away, some people just quit believing.
It takes active faith to receive from God.

God Gets Glory From Christians Being Sick
Our commission is to give forth the Word of life—that is the Word of God concerning salvation, healing and deliverance to those around us. Instead, because of the traditions of men, we have tried to tell the world that the God we serve has made us sick.  What a lie to tell on the Father God Who is the God of love and mercy.

Tradition says God gets glory from sickness supposedly because the world sees how marvelously the Christian bears the pain and agony. (Tradition never produces the right answer.) Everyone knows that the world has all the pain and agony it can stand. What the world wants is a way out of sickness—not a way into it. Suffering has no appeal to the world; but through tradition, Satan has sold suffering to the Church as being the will of God.

God Has Made You Sick to Teach You A Lesson
How can you stand in faith when you think God has put cancer on you to teach you something? This tradition is an abomination to the nature of God! How can you say that a loving God would put sickness on you to teach you something? If you believe that, then you need to quit taking your medicine. If it is God’s will for you to be sick, then to take medicine would be to fight against the will of God.

Some people accept sickness as God’s will. Yet the same people will take
medicine, be operated on, or do anything else they can in order to get well.

God Allows Satan to Make Us Sick
Some people say, “Well, maybe God doesn’t put sickness on you, but He allows Satan to.” There is only one person who allows Satan to put sickness on you, and that is you. As a believer, you are in authority in the earth over Satan and sickness and disease. If sickness has come upon you, you have allowed it, not God. God doesn’t have to allow Satan to make you sick. Satan is always ready to do the job!

You can see how helpless we have been with traditions
planted in our hearts and minds instead of God’s Word.

Cancer Is Not a Blessing!
Religion has come along and said, “God put this cancer on you to teach you something. He’s done this to break you and make you better. It’s really a blessing.” Cancer is not a blessing! It’s a curse.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and
light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

Religion has made many Christians call sickness “good” and healing “of the devil.” What? Religion screws everything up.

You are blessed. If you understood what I’m sharing, you would defy sickness, poverty, emotional instability, depression, discouragement, fear, and every other curse because you are not cursed, you’re blessed! People aren’t experiencing God’s best, because they’ve bought into a lie that this is just normal and they have to live this way. It’s not true. You don’t have to be this way.

After you have a child, you don’t have to have postpartum blues. You don’t have to have post–traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). That is a curse. Many people have come to me who have been totally healed of PTSD, and they had been in some bad situations! But they heard the truths from God’s Word, rejected the curse, and started walking in the blessing.

Don’t limit God. God has blessed you. There is nothing – no deception, no accusation, no temptation – that can come against you unless you empower it by your unbelief.

The Mother of Really Bad Theology
Don’t allow your doctrine to be shaped by your experience. A lot of good and sincere people attempt to interpret the Word of God based on their experience. That is not good theology! It is never wise to give your personal experience greater authority than the Word of God in your life. Let God be true and every man a liar (Romans 3:4).

A quote from Pastor John in this regard: “Basing our faith on our own personal experiences, and on what our five physical senses can perceive vs. what God tells us in His Word, is a strategy of the enemy designed to discourage us.  Disappointment is the mother of really bad theology because what many believers do when they’re disappointed is to lower their theology to match the disappointment rather than lift the disappointment to the truth of God’s Word.” 

Making the Word of None Effect
When Jesus sent His disciples out, He instructed them to “preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2). He placed no limitation on the sick—any sick were to be healed if they would receive it. He told them to freely give what they had received.

Jesus told no one that he should keep his disease because God was trying to teach him something through sickness. No one in all the vast throngs and multitudes was told that God wanted him to stay sick in order to give Him glory. No, the scripture tells us that healing brings glory to God—not sickness. The people glorified the God of Israel “when they saw the dumb speak, the maimed be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see…” (Matthew 15:31).

God is good. He cannot be the source of any sickness. It is an abomination to His nature of love for people to believe God made them sick.

Satan Has Come to Steal, Kill & Destroy
Some people say they know God does not make people sick, but they believe He allows Satan to put sickness on them to teach them or to get them into His will.

God does not have to allow Satan to do his evil work. Satan is quick to bring disease to Christians if they will allow it. It is you who must govern Satan in your life and circumstances. If you are not walking in God’s Word, you have no defense against Satan and his fruit of sickness. Your lack of knowledge of God’s Word or your lack of diligence to act on that Word allows disease to fill your body.

Jesus said, “I will” (Mark 1:40-41). You will never see Jesus refusing to heal anyone. You will never hear Him say,

“You’re going to have to keep the sickness two more weeks because the Father and I are trying to teach you something.” You will never hear that! You will never see Jesus saying, “You are to remain blind because we want people to give glory to God.”

Jesus never withheld the healing power of God, not even in Nazareth. It was their will, their unwillingness to receive that kept them from receiving.  God’s will never changed.

God is never the source of sickness.
The antidote to any problem is the knowledge of God.

Sickness is Not a Blessing
Maybe you’ve been told that God wants you to suffer.  You may have been told that God puts sickness on you because you did something wrong, and that’s his way of punishing you.  Many people have been taught that God doesn’t heal or perform miracles today.  That way of thinking is just wrong.

There is not one single instance in the Bible where Jesus refused to heal a person, told someone they hadn’t suffered enough or that God put sickness on them to teach them some kind of lesson or to get glory out of it. 

And if we look through the gospels there is not one single example of Jesus making anyone sick.  Yet, some denominations will teach that it’s God’s will for you to be sick.  They’ll say God did this to humble you, to break you or to bring you to the end of yourself and that it is a blessing.  But that’s not how Jesus operated.  He healed ALL that were oppressed of the devil. (Acts 10:38)

The world is looking for a way out of sickness and disease, not a way into it.

Now if a person really believed that God put sickness on them because He was trying to work some kind of good in their life, then they should not go to the doctor or take any kind of medicine.  That would be resisting God’s plan.  They should just let sickness run its course and get the full benefit of God’s correction.  Of course, that’s not right. 

God’s Truth, Not Tradition
Let’s look at 3 John 2. John starts his letter by sharing a prayer that he prayed above every other: Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.

This introduction and prayer of John establishes several very important truths for the Christian. We know that John wouldn’t pray something that was contrary to the will of God. And even if he would have, the Holy Spirit wouldn’t have it recorded and placed it in the canon of Scripture. So by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John prays that we may prosper and live in health. This is God’s truth, not tradition, so we must realize it as God’s will for His people before we will actively search it out.

By misunderstanding the words of the apostle John and many other passages of Scripture, the church world has preached doctrines of sickness, poverty and defeat that have enabled the world to dominate the Church. These doctrines have discouraged many from entering the kingdom of God. But that’s not God’s will!  We must accept God’s Word as the highest and the final authority.

What About the Old Covenant?
Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, what about the Old Testament instances where God smote people with sickness and plagues?  There are examples of God putting sickness on people in the Old Testament, but it was always a punishment. It was never a blessing; it was part of the curse. (Deut. 28:15-46)

God used sickness in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, Jesus bore the curse for us. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.”

Under the New Covenant, God is not punishing any of His children with sickness. The Lord would no more put sickness on a born–again believer than He would make us commit a sin. Both forgiveness of sin and healing are a part of the atonement Jesus provided for us.

There are many people who still don’t have confidence that God will heal them. It may be that they feel they don’t deserve it, God is punishing them, or they are supposed to learn something. If that’s you, I tell you, that way of thinking will keep you from reaching out and just taking your healing. You have to renew your mind to what God’s word says.

Acts 10:38 says that Jesus “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him.” If that’s true, and I believe it is, why would the Father work against Jesus by putting sickness on people? It’s God’s will that we be in health, not sickness, and Jesus is the expression of that will. The sick people who Jesus healed were oppressed of the devil, not God. It was the devil who was causing sickness when Jesus walked on the earth, and it’s the same today. Sickness is from the devil, not from God. (John 10:10)

Does God Really Control Everything? 
God isn’t going around putting sickness on people, and He doesn’t decide who gets healed and who doesn’t. That’s a radical statement, but it’s true. And herein lies some of the obstacles to receiving God’s healing power. One of the worst doctrines in the body of Christ is the belief that God controls everything that happens. There are Christians who believe that God either controls or allows everything, and that Satan has to get His permission before he can do anything.

That’s a convenient theology because it absolves the individual of any responsibility. That’s also the reason for its popularity! I know this may shock some people, but what I am about to say is true: that kind of thinking will kill you. God’s will doesn’t automatically come to pass. We have to believe and cooperate with God to receive what he has provided for us, including our healing.

Set Free From Religious Tradition
Tens of millions of Christians have not learned facts from the Word of God pertaining to divine healing. Errant religious beliefs about divine healing have been handed down from one generation to another. Some Christians have a difficult time believing that God will heal them because their parents, their grandparents and their church have taught them that divine healing is not available today.

Religious tradition says that healing was only for the early church. Jesus made a strong statement about religious tradition when He said, “…for the sake of your tradition (the rules handed down by your forefathers), you have set aside the Word of God [depriving it of force and authority and making it of no effect]” (Matthew 15:6).

Jesus made this statement to a group of Scribes and Pharisees, but these words also apply to you today. Some Christians are so indoctrinated in erroneous traditional teaching that has been handed down from generation to generation that they have “set aside the Word of God, depriving it of force and authority and making it of no effect.”        

Religious tradition can cause the mighty supernatural power of the living Word of God to be ineffective. Please do not make this mistake. If you are sick, you must be certain that your belief about divine healing lines up exactly with what the Word of God says about this vitally important subject.        

If you have asked Jesus Christ to be your Savior, you have been set free from religious tradition. You have been given the ability to understand the facts that are presented in the Word of God. “…you were redeemed (ransomed) from the useless (fruitless) way of living inherited by tradition from [your] forefathers…” (I Peter 1:18).        

You must learn for yourself exactly what the Bible says about divine healing. You must not allow traditional religious beliefs to stop you from learning the truth from the Word of God. Jesus said, “…you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free” (John 8:32).       

These words that Jesus spoke to His disciples more than two thousand years ago apply to you today. What was Jesus referring to when He spoke of the Truth? Jesus was speaking of the Word of God. At a later time He said, “…Your Word is Truth” (John 17:17).         

You can be set free from error by learning exactly what the Word of God says about health and about healing. If you have any doubts about healing, allow the Word of God to be the final authority. Your Father does not want you to block Him with erroneous doctrine. He wants you to have a humble and teachable heart that will receive the wonderful truth of His healing promises.

You Decide
Contrary to the belief of some denominations, God does not pick and choose who He wants to heal. God has provided healing for everyone. We are the ones who do the picking and choosing. You decide whether you will carefully study scripture to learn exactly what the Word of God says about divine healing. You decide whether you will continually strengthen your faith for divine healing to the level where you will receive manifestation of the healing Jesus already has provided for you. You decide whether you will do everything you can to walk in divine health. Believe and receive and rest in God.      

What more could you ask your Father in heaven to do? What more could you ask His beloved Son Jesus to do? Complete provision has been made for every person on earth to receive eternal salvation through Jesus Christ. Complete provision has been made for every person on earth to receive healing through Jesus Christ. We each decide whether we will receive salvation. We each decide whether we will receive healing.

Humble and Teachable
Your Father wants you to be humble and teachable (I Peter 5:5-6). You should yearn to understand healing more and more from God’s perspective. You should have a deep desire to turn away from human logic and intellectual understanding to comprehend healing (or any other subject you are meditating on) from God’s perspective.         

You may be very learned and capable in the natural realm, but this natural knowledge does not mean anything in the spiritual realm. As you humbly realize your spiritual ignorance and you begin to comprehend how much you need to learn about divine healing you will gladly meditate on God’s Word continually. “…receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you, making your ear attentive to skillful and godly Wisdom and inclining and directing your heart and mind to understanding [applying all your powers to the quest for it]” (Proverbs 2:1-2)

You must not make the mistake that the Pharisees made during the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. Jesus said,
“You disregard and give up and ask to depart from you the commandment of God and cling to the tradition of
men [keeping it carefully and faithfully]. And He said to them, You have a fine way of rejecting [thus thwarting
and nullifying and doing away with] the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition (your own human regulations)!” (Mark 7:8-9).

You must not “disregard” God’s instructions in any area of your life, including divine healing. You must not “cling to” human “tradition.” You can fail to receive manifestation of the healing that already has been provided for you if you insist on clinging to traditional beliefs and customs instead of learning and obeying the specific instructions your Father has given to you.

Susceptible to the Influence of Others
You must not allow other people’s doubt and unbelief to pull you down when you are sick. You cannot afford to be influenced by people who do not understand what the Bible says about healing. We are talking about your life.

Refuse to allow these people to influence you with their unscriptural beliefs. These people are the same people who will come to your funeral if you die prematurely because you listened to their traditional beliefs instead of turning away from doubt and unbelief to place all of your faith in Jesus Christ and doing all that you can to enable your body to heal itself.

“…having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!” 2 Timothy 3:5      

Jesus is your personal Savior. Jesus is your personal Healer. You must not allow what other people think to affect your deep, strong and unwavering faith in Jesus as your Healer. These people are talking about your body. They are talking about your health. Be deermined to do what God tells you to do to receive manifestation of the healing that Jesus already has provided for you.

God Does Not Renege On His Promises
You can be set free from error by learning exactly what the Word of God says about health and about healing. If you have any doubts about healing, allow the Word of God to be the final authority. Your Father does not want you to block Him with erroneous doctrine. He wants you to have a humble and teachable heart that will receive the wonderful truth of His healing promises.

Some people believe that the healing miracles that were recorded in the New Testament only lasted until the end of the apostolic age. The Word of God teaches that just the opposite is true. “…the Lord is good; His mercy and loving-kindness are everlasting, His faithfulness and truth endure to all generations” (Psalm 100:5).

God did not place promises in the Bible that would only last for a short period of time. Divine healing did not end with the apostolic age.

Divine healing dwindled and disappeared because of ignorance and
unbelief caused by spiritual darkness during the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages.

Your loving and merciful Father’s magnificent healing promises “endure to all generations.” God does not change His promises. He said, “My covenant will I not break or profane, nor alter the thing that has gone out of My lips” (Psalm 89:34).

When God promises that He will do something, He will do it forever. Your Father does not stop doing what His Word says He will do. “…whatever God does, it endures forever, nothing can be added to it or anything taken from it…” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).

There is no question that Jesus healed multitudes of people during His earthly ministry. Jesus has not changed. He still heals multitudes of people today. “Jesus Christ (the Messiah) is [always] the same, yesterday, today [yes] and forever (to the ages)” (Hebrews 13:8).

Jesus is “the same” today as He was during His earthly ministry. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John recount more than sixty instances where Jesus healed people from sickness. Jesus has not grown weaker. His healing power is just as great today.

If Jesus did not want you to be healed today, why would He have paid the tremendous price
that He paid at the whipping post? Why would He have undergone that horrible mutilation? 
Why would He have taken upon Himself all of the sickness of all of the people who were
alive then and all of the sickness of people who would live after them? Jesus did not pay
this horrible price so that only the people who lived in the next generation after He ascended
into heaven could be healed.

God’s Ways Are Very Different
Some religious people cannot even begin to comprehend what the Word of God teaches about healing.

“…[although] they hold a form of piety (true religion), they deny and reject and are strangers to the power of it [their conduct belies the genuineness of their profession]. Avoid [all] such people [turn away from them]” (2 Timothy 3:5).

The word “piety” refers to pious people who are zealous in the area of religious ritual. These religious people may attend church regularly, but they “deny and reject and are strangers to the power of” the Word of God. You must “turn away” from ritualistic religious people who do not understand what the Bible says about healing.

If you are boldly speaking God’s Word, what you are saying will sound like a foreign language to your family members and friends who have not consistently renewed their minds in the Word of God. Do not be surprised if some of your family members and friends tell you that what you are doing is extreme. The scriptural principles we are talking about here are extreme from a worldly perspective. You have seen that God’s ways are very different from the ways of the world (see Isaiah 55:8-9).

You must not allow your family members, your unsaved relatives and your friends to talk you out of receiving healing from God. Do you allow your unsaved relatives and friends to talk you out of your eternal salvation through Jesus Christ? Do not allow unbelievers and religious people to sway your faith for divine healing. You should be just as certain of what God’s Word says about healing as you are about what God’s Word says about eternal salvation.

Your family and friends undoubtedly mean well, but they are wrong if they do not know what the Word of God says about healing. Unfortunately, many Christians who are sick allow their thinking to be influenced by the things that well-intentioned people say to them. “Blessed (happy, fortunate, prosperous, and enviable) is the man who walks and lives not in the counsel of the ungodly [following their advice, their plans and purposes]…” (Psalm 1:1).

Healing in the Atonement
Jesus provided for physical healing as well as forgiveness of sins. The Greek word “Sozo,” often translated “save,” is translated “made whole” in reference to physical healing in Matthew 9:22; Mark 5:34; and Luke 8:48. But the word Sozo applies to healing, as well as deliverance and forgive of sins. It applies to everything Jesus made available through the atonement, taking the sins of the whole world into His own body on the cross.

Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins,
should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24)

Every sin, sickness, and disease of the entire human race – every deformity, tumor, and perversion – entered into the physical body of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why His face looked worse than any other person who has ever lived, and His form became so distorted that He didn’t even look human (Isaiah 52:14). He became sin so we could become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21), and healing is made available because of the atonement.

James 5:15 says, “the prayer of faith shall save (Sozo) the sick.” Many scriptures mentioned the healing of our bodies in conjunction with the forgiveness of our sins (Psalm 103:3; Isaiah 53:4 – 6; and 1 Peter 2:24). 

Healing is a part of our salvation just as much as the forgiveness of sins.

As He Is, So Are We
When you mention the powerful statement from 1 John 4:17 to most Christians—As He is, so are we in this world—most of them will simply blow it off.

Why? That kind of statement just doesn’t fit the image Satan has passed on to them. In fact, if you go around saying, “As God is, so are we in this world,” today’s modern Pharisee will call you a New Age sorcerer. His image of God is angry and confused.

When you say the Church can do Christ’s miraculous works, these bound-up religious puppets, who wait to pounce on anyone who doesn’t believe just like they do, will brand you a heretic. But Jesus said it, not brother what’s-his-name! He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father” (John 14:12). And Jesus is still saying that today.

Today the Lord is still saying, “If you walk with Me, if you believe in Me, you’re going to be like Me.” And this is still God’s goal—for us to be like Him!

So we must get the religious traditions out of our minds! We must get all that nonsense about “holy poverty,” punishment and all of that other unbiblical nonsense out of our Protestant heads. We must get a new image of God, who created us to be like Him. And I tell you, if you’ll believe in Him, you will do everything He does!

Walking out the reality of our Christian life is learning how to be brighter and more beautiful, going from glory to glory! God hasn’t left us alone in this life with only steeples and man-made religion. He gave us Jesus as our Savior, deliverer and role model. Our Father in heaven wouldn’t have done that if He intended us to fail. He wants us to learn daily how to live this life of Christianity like Jesus lived it. And He gave us Himself to make it come true.

False Humility
The religious teaching that most people have received today has either taught or left the impression that there isn’t any good thing in us. We’ve been taught that the way to activate the power of God in our lives is to keep our unworthiness and weaknesses continually before us. This is characterized by what I call the “false humility attitude” among many Christians. You will hear statements such as “Without Jesus, I can do nothing,” which is totally true, but it is not balanced by the truth that “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.”

Tradition Neutralizes
Deuteronomy 4:2 clearly states, “you shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it.” This same thought is repeated in the New Testament in Revelation 22:18 – 19 with very stiff penalties. Religious people are very swift to observe the part about not diminishing any of God’s commandments, but there seems to be an unwritten law that adding to them is okay.

Every denomination has its own set of do’s and don’ts that aren’t found in Scripture, and like those of the hyper critical Pharisees, their unwritten laws usually have to do with outward appearance. We need to remember that adding to God’s commandments is just as bad is taking away from them.

The commandments of God and the traditions of men must always be clearly separated. Any attempts to place them on the same level will always result in making the Word of God ineffectual in your life. You have to either lay aside the commandment of God to keep the traditions of men, or you have to lay aside the traditions of men to keep the commandments of God. (Exodus 20:3) You neutralize the supernatural power of God’s Word in you by elevating man’s traditions above God’s Word.

The Word will not profit anyone who doesn’t believe it, but God’s Word never loses its power. Today, take a good look at why you do the spiritual things you do. Are your beliefs and actions based on God’s Word or a tradition of your church or denomination? Remember that only the Word has the power to save you, heal you, deliver you, prosper you, and give you peace and joy!

God Has Already Provided Healing
Most people are asking God to do for them what He’s already done. They’re pleading with Him to give them what He’s already given. Then, after praying this way in unbelief, they wonder why they aren’t seeing the physical manifestation of their healing. Since they think the Lord can do anything He desires, they wonder, Why isn’t He healing me? If God wanted me well, He could heal me right now! So they come up with all kinds of excuses like, “God is perfecting me through this trial.” Wrong!

People come up with wrong conclusions like that in order to make sense of their disappointing experience. They pray for healing, thinking that faith is something they do to move God. They believe He evaluates their “faith”—whether they’re sincere enough and have done enough—and then He responds to them accordingly. Since there’s no apparent response, they wonder, Why isn’t God answering my prayer? Then they start coming up with different excuses like: “Maybe He’s trying to teach me something. Maybe I’m not holy enough. Maybe I haven’t prayed enough. Maybe I have sin in my life. Maybe I need to do this and that and all these other things.” No—God has already done His part!

When you understand that God has already done it, condemnation is defused. How could you think that you’re not holy enough if He’s already done it? God provided everything you would ever need before you were born again, before you did anything good or bad, before you were even born! He provided it independent of you—by grace.

All you have to do is—by faith— reach over and receive it.

Put Your Doubts to Rest
If religious traditions have robbed you of the goodness of God, if they’ve taught you He brings trouble into your life so He can teach you something, start today washing those traditions away with the truth. Get out your Bible and let God Himself tell you through His own Word that He is the God who heals you (Exodus 15:26). Dig in to the Scriptures and discover for yourself that He is a God of mercy (Psalms 86:5), lovingkindness (Jeremiah 9:24), and compassion (Psalms 145:8).

Put your doubts to rest and open your heart to receive the truth about your heavenly Father. It’s the only thing that can truly set you free.