BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Healing=Good; Sickness=Bad He’s also clear about the difference between good and bad. He’s not been confused by religious tradition into thinking that sickness is sometimes a “blessing in disguise.” God has more sense than that. He knows, and we should too, that sickness is never a BLESSING. It’s never a friend. It comes to steal, kill and destroy. So, it’s always bad. Healing, on the other hand, is always good! God settled that forever through the ministry of Jesus. As Acts 10:38 says, He “anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” Jesus only did what He saw the Father do, and He was always ready to heal people. He never told anyone, “You’ll have to keep that sickness for a while because God’s trying to teach you something.” On the contrary! Multitudes of sick people came to Jesus for help, “and he healed them all” (Matthew 12:15). Jesus even endeavored to get healing to people in His hometown of Nazareth, and they rejected His message! They refused to believe He could be anointed because they’d known Him when He was growing up. Yet He had compassion on them anyway. He didn’t go off in a huff and say, “Well, just stay sick then.” Although their unbelief did prevent Him from doing “many mighty works there” (Matthew 13:58), He still did what He could for those folks. He laid hands on them, and a few with minor ailments got healed. That should be an encouragement to us! It shows us that God never wants to withhold healing from us. He wanted the people in Nazareth to be well, even though they were resisting Him and cutting themselves off from His power. So, clearly He wants every one of us today to be well too. The devil, however, wants just the opposite. He wants us sick, so he’ll lie to us to try to keep us that way. He’ll tell us God doesn’t care about us. He’ll remind us of something bad in our past, or some way we’ve fallen short, and try to convince us we don’t qualify for healing. But, thank God, we don’t have to believe those lies! Because we have a Bible, we can counter those lies with the truth. We can remind ourselves that God is good to ALL and that Psalm 103:2-5 says: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not ALL his benefits: who forgiveth ALL thine iniquities; who healeth ALL thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.” Notice just as Psalm 145 emphasized God’s goodness to all, Psalm 103 emphasizes the all-ness of His benefits. I’ve found in teaching healing over the years, that’s something people in some religious circles don’t do. I’ve heard some of them say with great pride, “We don’t preach healing at our church. We just preach the new birth. We think it’s more important.” BVOV : 7

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