Thoughts On Healing

     I don't know about you, but I see healing scriptures so clearly in the Bible, but I rarely see God stretch out His hand to heal.  I see in Isaiah 53 what Jesus paid for with His stripes and on the cross: our transgressions, our iniquities, our peace and our health.  He already paid the price.  We should have free access to all that He paid for, yet what I am seeing is that people I know and love continue to suffer day after day while God presumably remains silent.  Then the last few weeks, the LORD has begun to download things into my spirit that I never understood before.  I think what He is giving me is pure, unadulterated truth.  I want to share with you what He has given to me.
     First of all, God is the one who does all things, so if sickness comes, it is God who does it.  This made all the difference in the world to me to know that everything that happens is from God.  He is just using Satan to accomplish His purposes.  So what are His purposes?  Most of the time in scripture I see that the purpose of sickness is to bring us to a place of repentance. (see Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28)  So the first thing I would presume is that God is trying to get my attention.  So what I would do is ask God in to search my heart.  I would let Him into every corner.  Whatever He brings to the surface, I would "humble myself and accept my guilt and confess my sin".  I would bring whatever God reveals into the light.  If it remains in the darkness, the darkness has control, but if it is brought into the light, God can heal us.  James says, "Confess your sins one to another that you may be healed."  The Bible also says, "May you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers."  So it is God's purpose to bring us to a place where we put our sins under the blood and turn away from them.  Then He can cause our soul to proper and bring us health.  Most everything I see in scripture points to this.
     However, there are two other scriptures that make me think that sickness is not always connected to sin.  There was a blind man, and the disciples asked Jesus, "Who sinned, this man or his parent?"  Jesus said, "Neither.  This sickness is for the glory of God."  So there was not sin involved in this, only God's glory.  Then there is the story of Job.  If you are like me, I have stayed away from this story for a long time.  It is hard for me to understand a man who is righteous in every way, who "fears God" and "shuns evil" who went through all that this man went through, but it happened.  Then I got to thinking that the there was no way for the enemy to attack this man.  He feared God, and he shunned evil.  There was a hedge around him that was so "high" and "wide" that the enemy just went around him.  He didn't even look his way until God said, "Have you considered Job, my servant."  OK, so here we go...God did it.  He opened the door for the enemy to enter Job's life.  Why?  What was His purpose?  At the end of the book, after God challenges Job, Job said, "I had only heard of You before, but now I know You." 
     I believe that in the coming days we are going to "get to know" God in ways that we never dreamed possible.  So what does that mean.  It means that we "fix our eyes on Jesus", "we guard our heart" so that no enemy comes in, and "in everything we give thanks for this is the will of Christ Jesus concerning you".  Once we cross over to praise and thanksgiving as our "default" response, we will be victorious in all we do and God's holy name will be "hallowed" among the nations.  Praise and thanksgiving opens the door for God's mighty arm to descend with power on our enemies to defeat them.  (Psalm 150 and Isaiah 30:29-33)  The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy!

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