BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

God Wants You Well! by Gloria Copeland God is not schizophrenic. But the way some people talk about Him makes it sound like He is—especially when it comes to the area of divine healing. “God puts sickness on us to teach us something,” they say. “Then sometimes He heals us, if it’s His will. You just never know what He’s going to do.” Such statements, as well-intended as they might be, are wrong. God does not have a split personality or a divided will. He is not the source of disease and its cure! He doesn’t will to make people sick one day...and then will to heal them the next. God’s perfect will is, and always has been, for His people to be well. I don’t know how anyone could read the Bible and argue about it. In the first few pages of Genesis, it lists everything God created and does not include sickness in the list. On the contrary, it says that everything He made was good. That’s why there wasn’t any sickness in the Garden of Eden. It was the one place on earth where God’s perfect will was done! Sickness came from the devil. It got into the earth when he convinced Adam and Eve to sin and they became vulnerable to him. You’ve read how it happened. Satan came to Eve in the form of a serpent and convinced her to doubt (and then disobey) God’s Word by asking her this question: “Yea, hath God said...?” (Genesis 3:1). Today, he’s still robbing Christians of their healing by getting them confused about God’s Word. “Is it really God’s will to heal you?” he’ll whisper. “Maybe it’s not. Maybe you don’t qualify for healing. Maybe God’s plan for you is to be sick and die young. Blah...blah...blah....” They’re all lies, of course, because lying is what the devil does best. He is famous for it! If he can’t get us to believe his lies, he can’t get anywhere with us. Here’s what we need to do. We need to become so Word-minded where healing is concerned that the devil can’t deceive us. We need to look in the Bible, find out what God says and believe it. And not just once, either, because the devil will always be working against us. To stay strong in faith, we must continually keep the healing scriptures fresh in our minds. That’s what I do. I not only read them regularly in my Bible, I keep a list of them handy. If you want to live healed, I encourage you to do the same. Make it a habit to read healing scriptures often, even when you’re healthy. Otherwise, when symptoms of sickness strike and Satan starts whispering in your ear, you may not remember what God said. It’s All Too Easy to Forget Psalm 103 warns us about this. It says: “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (verses 1-2). It’s important to remember God’s benefits, because the ones we remember are the only ones we’ll receive and enjoy. It’s only those we pay attention to, believe in, thank God for and don’t forget about, that become real to us and manifest in our lives. 28 : BVOV : DEC '13

• Cover