Don’t Complicate What God Has Spoken Through Jesus!

Today let’s deal with one religious lie that Satan uses to deceive Christians. Satan was completely defeated on the cross, but he tries to get people to lend him their authority by deceiving them with his lies.

Psalm 107:20 (NIV) He sent out his word and healed them…

Matthew 15:6 (NIV) Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

Jesus is the Living Word of God, manifesting the invisible God in flesh. The gospel is simple. Religiosity complicates it. It’s pretty simple to see that healing the sick was urgent to Jesus. He was moved with compassion and healed them all. If it was urgent to Jesus, it was urgent to God the Father, because He only did what He saw the Father doing!

When Is God’s Time To Heal?

In the article 13 Solid Scriptural Proofs Of God’s Will To Heal, we saw that healing is just as much a part of salvation as the forgiveness of sins is. Jesus’s atonement was for our healing just as it was for our forgiveness. So when is God’s timing?

2nd Corinthians 6:2 (NIV) I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

God is not waiting to heal people, just as He is not waiting to deliver people from sin.

Have you seen every single person who gave their lives to Christ immediately free in every area of their life? I imagine not! But do you tell someone “Today must not have been God’s day to set you free from porn?” Of course not! We continue to hold fast to gospel truth and apply it!

If a guy gives his life to Jesus, encounters Jesus, but then yells at his wife a week later, do we say “The Lord must not have really saved you?” Do we invalidate what God did to deliver him? Or do we remind them of what God did to deliver him and encourage him to go back to it and walk in it?

Many Christians would think that kind of talk to be absurd when talking about moral issues, yet they apply exactly that kind of logic when it comes to healing. Instead of standing firm and applying God’s word and Christ’s redemptive work, they doubt if it was God’s will or timing!

Yes, there are times when we have persevered to see someone healed, but it was never because God was waiting and it wasn’t His will the first time. Rather, God is all-powerful but not all-controlling. There is a way He has chosen to work, and there’s a way His power flows through us, the members of his body. It was a matter of God’s power being released into the situation, but it was never a matter of it not being God’s time yet! Now is the time for Jesus to receive the reward for His suffering, including your whole life and your redemption, healing, and deliverance that he purchased at the whipping post and on the cross! Jesus paid the price because of His love for you, and He wants what He paid for now!

When God Speaks Twice…

In the book of Genesis, Pharoah had two different dreams with the same message, and as Joseph gave the interpretation he said that Pharoah had the same dream twice because God had firmly established it. This double whammy is like Jesus saying “Verily, verily I say unto you…” He said it twice!

Why would God say something twice? God doesn’t need to speak twice for His own sake! He says the word and it is done. But He sometimes speaks twice for our sake to get through our stubbornness and hardness of heart. There are some things that scripture especially emphasizes.

Like Pharaoh having two different dreams with the same message, there are two different stories in the Gospels with the same message about God’s timing for healing.

I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow!

Matthew 12:9-14 (NIV) Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Luke 13:10-17 (NIV) On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

Think about what happened. What kind of hard heart would it take to see your sheep fall into a pit, bleating in pain and fear, and to say “I’m going to come back tomorrow because this is the Sabbath.” Yet the blind Pharisees thought as if God had less compassion for a person than they did for their animals. If something fell on your pet dog and injured it, would you wait for a moment to rescue the dog? How can we think that God cares less for people?

When the Pharisees told the people “Come on the other days to be healed, not on the Sabbath,” Jesus called them hypocrites and said “If you pull out your animal if it falls in a pit on the Sabbath, then how can I not heal this man right now?” Religiosity is blind to compassion, and Jesus thought it was ridiculous that they would have more compassion on their animal than on a person who was suffering, and tell someone with a withered hand or chronic illness to come back the next day to be healed. Just as they wouldn’t wait until tomorrow to pull their animal out of the pit, Jesus couldn’t wait until the next day to heal those with needs! They were humiliated when Jesus pointed out the double standard, but instead of repenting, they wanted to kill him!

Long ago, I remember seeing a TV program showing the true story of a child who fell into a well and was stuck halfway down. They had to call the firefighters and work for hours to rescue him. Would you wait a moment if that were your child? How is it that we somehow imagine that God has less compassion for His children than we do for ours? Is He not a better Father than any of us are? We feel compassion because we were created in His image!

Religiosity is blind to compassion and makes it an empty doctrine. The religious have a very strange view of God’s compassion! But these stories of how Jesus responded show us that God’s compassion is not strange and mysterious but is real, and it cries out “They are suffering! How can I wait another day to rescue them!”

If You Honor Jesus, His Priorities Will Be Your Priorities.

If you know Jesus, you will know what is important to Him. One of the things that God has been speaking to me lately is that if we honor Jesus, we will make His priorities our priorities. And Jesus prioritized rescuing people by healing the sick, casting out demons, and caring for the poor. If we honor Jesus, these things must be our top priorities. And if we honor Jesus, His Spirit will manifest among us. Many churches may say they would like a revival, but they dishonor Jesus by making the things that are priorities to Jesus of little priority to themselves. And the reason they aren’t seeing Jesus manifest in their midst is that they do not honor Jesus.

For the Spirit of God to manifest through us in any situation, we should know how God feels about that situation. When you have a suffering person in front of you, it’s not about your qualifications or issues. We sometimes get so caught up in ourselves! Even pride (self-centeredness) disguises itself in the thought “Well, I don’t want to be proud.” But it’s about the person in front of you and God’s compassion for them! God wants to rescue that person and He is looking for someone to join in partnership with Him so that He can manifest Himself through His body the church! Just say “Holy Spirit, I give up on my own strength. Here’s my body. Do through me what you want to do!” Then let the compassion of Jesus grip your heart and move you, overflowing through your mouth. Let Jesus cry through you. Make His priorities your priorities. Honor Jesus, and you will see Him acting in front of you!