Article written by Dr. Michelle Strydom MD
There are many people who have believed God for healing for years but are still not healed. Often they think God doesn’t love them because if He loved them He would heal them. As a result they are angry or disillusioned with God. The problem is that they have no knowledge about what caused their disease. The correct statement is not “If God loved you He would have healed you”, it is “If you loved God you would keep His commandments (John 14 v 15).”
When we aren’t healed, what do we do? Do we become disillusioned and go into doubt and unbelief? Do we go and hide and become atheists? Do we rewrite the Bible and make a new doctrine or theology to excuse or explain it? Shall we say that God doesn’t heal today? Shall we say that healing passed away with the apostles 2000 years ago? What about Paul’s thorn in the flesh – He had a sickness that God would not heal? Shall we say that God didn’t want to heal that person because their time on earth was up? Shall we then say that the person didn’t have enough faith? When people are not healed, there often is a reason but it includes none of the above theologies… allow me to explain why in the following pages.
We create wrong theologies by lack of knowledge, quoting scripture out of context and twisting the truth of their meaning to accommodate our mindset. I’ve learnt something as a believer – I don’t change the Word of God to meet my mindset. I change my mindset to meet the Word of God. If I don’t understand something, I don’t change the Word of God to meet my ignorance. I hold out until God reveals the depth of what that scripture means.
You see, it is extremely discouraging for pastors to minister to people, to pray the prayer of faith and anoint people with oil and not see any results. As you know less than 5% of the people they pray for are actually being healed. So because they don’t understand why the people are not being healed and they don’t search the Bible to find out why, they create doctrines of unbelief and then they teach their people to believe it so that they don’t have to be responsible for the failure any more. Well I’ve decided to be responsible for the failure because I’ve decided to be my brother’s keeper and to bare my brother and sister’s burden. The Bible says that when one member of the body hurts, the whole body hurts (1 Corinthians 12 v 26). When you hurt, I hurt.
When healing doesn’t come, it is not time to pray for the person more, it is time to disciple the person more.
Psalm 103 v 3 says that God wants to heal all of our diseases – every single one! And as a doctor and a woman representing God to the best of my ability, I think that is a proper goal to aim for. Just because we have not yet achieved what the scriptures teach, I am not going to make up doctrines about why God cannot forgive you or heal you. Furthermore, in the following pages I am going to have to challenge many of these incorrect teachings and denominational clichés about healing because they can be another form of unbelief which has the potential to block you from receiving your healing and that can ultimately cost you your life.
When I pray for somebody and they don’t receive their healing, I go back to God and search His Word and ask Him why the devil still holds the person captive at his will. It is not time to pray for the person more, it is time to disciple the person more. It’s time to get involved and find out where that door point is that is giving satan the legal right to still be there. Remember I explained earlier that the curse without a cause does not come (Proverbs 26 v 2). If you pray for somebody in Jesus’ Name and God does not heal them through you, it is not because God does not want to heal the person or because He can’t – it is because the disease still has a legal right to be there – there is either a spiritual root (a sin problem that has not been dealt with) or a block to healing (some of which are mentioned in the chapter on page 572). If you are not healed, go before God and ask Him to show you if there is anything in your life that is blocking you from receiving His blessing. I’ve given you enough teaching in this book to get you going.
There are many areas in your life where you are serving and obeying God. However, there are other areas where you are serving sin and those are the areas that are giving you problems. People may be born again Christians but God is not always Lord of all in their lives. Jesus not only wants to be our Savior, He also wants to be our Lord because when He is Lord of all in your life satan cannot touch you (1 John 5 v 18). If you minister to somebody and the Lord doesn’t heal them, it is because He’s not their Lord in a specific area. For example, I have a close friend who genuinely loves God and her passion for Him inspires me. However she had osteoporosis because she was serving the sin of jealousy and envy. Her husband had had an affair and she spent years envying this other woman in her heart. So although she was loving and serving God, there was an area of her life where He was not Lord and therefore, despite being prayed for she was not healed. As soon as she repented, God instantly healed her and her back that had been curved as a result of the osteoporosis straightened.
God doesn’t want to share you with sin because although He wants to, He can’t bless your life. In other words you can’t expect to serve sin and still be blessed. If you serve sin, the law of sin shall rule you. If you serve God, the law of God shall protect you.
There is no point in doing any ministry at any level until you have first discipled the person. I see so many people trying to heal people through so many modalities of ministry to the soul and the body without ever discipling them about the sin issues behind their diseases. For example the deliverance ministries used to take people and shout at them in the Name of Jesus but those evil spirits had every right to the person’s life. Just because you see evil in a person, it does not mean that it has to go because you show up and go “Boo!” That person has to take away the legal right for the devil to be there through heartfelt repentance first. Many people want to be free but they are not truly repentant – they don’t really want to change. Many deliverance ministries failed because they tried to deliver people without discipling them. They tried to drive out a kingdom which still had a legal right to be there because of unrepented sin and so all it was, was a noisy mess. However, just because there was abuse and misuse of one of the gifts of The Holy Spirit which is discernment of spirits, it does not mean there is not a correct approach. When we have discipled properly and the person is repentant, that evil spirit has to leave.
We need to identify the strongholds in our lives that are keeping us from God’s healing. Throughout this book I am going to be explaining many diseases, and I will tell you why people have that disease and what it is going to take to move the hand of God and get healed (I’m not talking about manipulating God, I’m talking about lining up with His Word so that you are in a position to receive from Him). There are conditions to healing. You don’t just receive healing by stomping in and making demands – the condition is obedience, repentance of sin and sanctification of the heart.
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