Hello again friends! Recently I have been studying much – gaining insight and wide perspectives on what people are learning, listening to, and believing. I am enjoying the process and consider it wise to listen to the counsel of many advisors. Keeping an open mind is important and valuable. The catch is making sure that it’s not so open that you lose all your brains. smile.
So, that being said, here’s my blog this month. It is about wholeness, which I believe Father has planned for us.
Wholeness.
We see it all over scripture. His heart is for us, and He is deeply in love with us. Therefore, we are meant for life and life abundant (John 10:10).
There are many out there, perhaps this includes you, who struggle with the idea of healing being Father’s will and heart for us. I understand. We struggle for many reasons with this idea and there are MANY stories and examples of people who “believed God” and didn’t get healed. Why is this? Does it mean that it is not His will or His heart for us? Maybe He gives or allows sickness so that we can learn things? I’ve been sharing and chatting with many people about this. I cannot help but come back to what I see in the Bible and what I see in Jesus as His heart for us! The situations we face and the experiences we have must not be what we base truth on. We must always come back to the Word.
Please understand me. I know not everyone gets healed. It is so very hard when loved ones die from a sickness. I personally have experienced GREAT LOSS due to sickness. I have had 2 VERY DEAR FRIENDS (think soulmate, closest friend that I’ve ever had, and another brother-type friend) die from sickness. It is incredibly difficult!
My heart doesn’t understand it all. I cannot begin to explain it all. And honestly, this is just a small part of life when we consider all the things going on. I don’t have the answers and I don’t even suppose that I should have all the answers. We do after all live in much mystery.
All of this being said, here is still – even after all my personal hurt and loss and experiences – where I stand on the subject of this very small part of our lives called healing:
Please, if this is a difficult subject for you, consider the possibilities. Open your heart as you read. And perhaps none of this matters to you or changes your belief at all. In which case, you are still loved and valuable to me! Ultimately, we all die and perhaps we will see clearer in a new life.
So much love and care for you my sweet friends!
Sickness was not in the Garden.
When God created earth and us, He did not include sickness. It was a pure paradise. The Garden of Eden shows us God’s original intention for us. Peace, beauty, life, wholeness, perfection!
So then, the Garden is the picture of what God wants for us today.
Genesis 1:1-2:22
Our bodies were created whole AND created to heal themselves.
Genesis 2:1-22
2 Peter 1:3
Genesis 1:27
We were created in His image. We know from scripture Jesus was never sick, God is never sick, we can be overcomers of sickness because we have the life of Jesus in us.
Also, and this is silly but evidence, when you watch Naked and Afraid and other such survival shows/stories we see people’s bodies healing themselves with no attention whatsoever except the will and the determination of the people themselves to survive. Of course, we also see and know people who have died from sickness, so we cannot look to purely people’s experiences. We MUST look to the promises God has given us.
Even before Jesus came to earth God was healing people and He made plans for wholeness for people.
Genesis 20:17, Daniel 4:28-37, 2 Kings 20:1-7, Psalm 41:1-3
We live in a better covenant than the people in the OT lived in, so if God was healing people in the OT – who were living in a ‘lesser covenant’ – He is healing people today and His desire is for our (His children/people who belong to Him) wholeness.
Again, we see God’s plan in His creation as well when we observe ‘pagan’ people (people who do not believe in Him) gaining their healing by using the principles shown in the Bible.
When we look at the old covenant as well, we see that God planned for His people to be healed because it lines it out in the law and the list of sacrifices to be made when someone is healed. All of the book of Leviticus lists all the sacrifices, offerings and feasts for the people to make. Note Leviticus 14 and 15 specifically for the sacrifices of healing. This is not what we need to do today as The Sacrifice (Jesus) was made once and for all for us, but it is here that we see God’s heart in providing for healing even before Jesus came as the ultimate sacrifice.
Jesus is the EXACT representation of God.
In other words, if we want to see God’s heart for us, we can simply look at the way Jesus lived and worked on the earth and we can see what God wants for us!
Hebrews 1:3, the Amplified Version of the Bible says it like this: “Jesus is the exact representation and perfect imprint of His Father’s essence…” I love that – the perfect imprint (on the earth) of His Father’s essence! The poetry of this touches my heart!
Why this matters is because while some will say God gave me this sickness to teach me something, or God wants me to learn something in this is simply inaccurate. Can you learn something in it? Of course! Just like we can learn something in any situation. BUT if it were God’s will for you to be sick to learn something, we would have seen Jesus making people sick and then helping them learn their lesson and walk through whatever they were supposed to learn. THAT. NEVER. HAPPENED! Not one time did Jesus ever put sickness on anyone!!!
Anyone who came to Jesus always got healed!
Jesus never reprimanded them for their sickness or their sin. He always simply met them where they were, loved them and met them at their “point of faith" (point of faith being where they were and what they COULD believe in the moment). Examples: Jairus and his daughter, the woman with the issue of blood, and the Centurion soldier.)
“According to your faith be it unto you” Matthew 9:29
Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (people always bring this up as proof that sometimes God does not want to heal us). Which makes no sense because first of all it is ONE example of a problem and second, God didn’t say no, God said my grace is sufficient for you. Grace is God’s ability in us. So God was saying to Paul, "my ability is sufficient for you to overcome. My grace is for you to overcome."
Also worth noting: Paul himself says it was a thorn in the flesh and goes on to say it was a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him. In other words it was not a sickness at all, it was a spirit sent to antagonize him.
Every promise and blessing we are given are for our good, for our wholeness and our completeness. There is not ONE time we are promised ANYTHING bad from God! This is phenomenal and precious.
James 5:14, 1 Peter 2:24, 2 Peter 1:3, Colossians 2:9-10
Health is part of the Kingdom. Whenever Jesus spoke of the Kingdom and Father’s heart for us, health was a part of that. Even though Jesus didn’t teach directly about healing when He forgave people of their sin – healing always followed – showing us that healing is a part of our salvation; this (salvation and healing) includes us having our sins forgiven or having our sins forgiven includes healing.
2 Corinthians 12:7-9
Also note when reading this passage that “grace” in verse 9 literally means “God’s ability.” So God said to Paul, about his thorn in the flesh, that His grace – His ability – was sufficient for Paul. In other words, God was saying I am giving you my ability to handle the messenger of Satan who was simply trying to cause Paul to be proud and puffed up.
Also note in verse 9 the Amplified version says this: My grace is sufficient for you (My lovingkindness and My mercy are more than enough – always available – regardless of the situation) for my power is being perfected (and is completed and shows itself most effectively) in your weakness. This indicates the ability, the power, and the completion to show up and overcome even in our weak areas. And it (His grace and power) is ALWAYS available to us.
Isaiah 61. All of what Jesus came for is wholeness and strength. We cannot do, or be, verse 3-7 and 9-11 if we are sick. Isaiah 61 says He came for healing. “Good news” to the humble and afflicted, ‘wounds of the brokenhearted bound up (healed), ‘release to the physical and spiritual captives’, ‘freedom to prisoners’, ‘comfort for those who mourn’, ‘crown of joy instead of ashes’, ‘joy in place of mourning’, ‘praise instead of a disheartened spirit’ (a garment of peace instead of a spirit of despair).
We will be called trees of righteousness (strong and magnificent)
And we will be called the planting of the Lord.
All of Isaiah 61 is full of who we are to be. The promises listed herein are speaking of God’s people after Jesus comes. The first part of the chapter is what Jesus quoted in the temple. This was Jesus’ mission statement! (See Luke 4:17) The religious people were pissed and took him to the top of a hill in the city in order to murder him but miraculously he escaped. SMH this is so crazy. The scripture says he ‘passed through the crowd and went on his way’. Picture that! Anyway… Is. 61 can now be OUR mission statement because Jesus came for us and established that we now be His hands and feet on the earth. (This leads into a whole other topic! smile.)
The word(s) for salvation in the Greek are: Sozo and Sotiria. These words include: salvation, wholeness, healing, deliverance, provision, recovered, redeemed, restored, saved, etc. This goes so deep and there’s so much to these words but it is interesting to note they all are inclusive of healing/wholeness/completeness.
John 3:16 and 17
John 10:10
James 5:14 “Is any suffering among you, is any sick among you? …” This verse indicates that part of what happens for those in the body of Christ is wholeness/health and if that is not happening there are instructions listed there for us to remedy that and it shows us what is the Father’s heart and plan for us as His kids.
In all of this, hold close to the Father’s love for you. He holds you in His heart. Stay close. <3
