As I said in the first lesson, there is a lot of good teaching material available on this topic. So I will only touch briefly on it.
There are two types of spiritual factors to consider. One is standing in faith for our healing and the other is basic principles of spiritual warfare.
Faith And Keeping Your Healing
Everyone agrees that faith is important in healing, but not everyone agrees on what faith looks like. People tend to error on both sides of having faith. Some don't exercise any faith at all. Other exercise faith when it is not merited -- sort of deciding they want something that God has not necessarily given to them and then trying to claim it in faith. I have seen that in many areas of the Christian walk, not just in the area of healing. Someone decides that God has to give them the desires of their heart (from a misunderstanding of Ps 37:4). And they want an expensive sports car, so they claim it in faith. But God does not supply the money for the car since He never intended to give that person an expensive sports car. We can only exercise faith when our faith lines up with God's will and with His plans.
Some people teach that it is never God's will for anyone to be sick, that all sickness and disease is the devil's will, not God's. In one way, I sort of agree with that. But I don't believe that we can use that principle as a carte blanche to naming-claiming healing for each and every person who is sick. I would like to point out that God does not want people to die unsaved and go to Hell (2 Peter 3:9). And yet people die without Christ every day and end up in Hell. Even though it is not God's will for people to perish (e.g, die unsaved), people do perish every day. An unsaved person needs to make a choice to receive Christ, he can't just count on God not sending him to Hell because 2 Peter 3:9 says that it is not God's will for anyone to perish. Likewise, you can't assume that God will heal each/every sick person because of the general principle that it is not God's will for people to be sick.
If God gives a clear indication or a Rhema word that He wants to heal a specific individual, you can stand on that word. Once God has revealed His will in a specific situation, you can stand in faith for His will in that situation. But you should not apply "blind faith" to situations where God has not explicitly revealed his will. Some people take faith to what I consider an extreme. They are sick so they say "I am healed" whether or not there is a change in their condition. They ignore reality, claiming that faith is the substance of things yet unseen. They say that their healing is "unseen but it will manifest soon." There are people who "claim" their healing without a Rhema word from the Lord to do so. Most of them do not end up seeing the "manifestation" of their healing. That is because they are trying to earn it by merit of their great faith when healing is a gift of grace given from God, not something you "earn."
There are times when a person does claim an unseen healing at God's direction. Once God has given the person a Rhema revelation that He will heal them, they can claim their healing and proceed like it already happened -- and they will often be healed. I think of Heidi Baker, who came down with multiple sclerosis. The doctors told Heidi that she must not return to the missions field or she would most likely die. But Heidi had a promise from God that He would give her the nation of Mozambique and that she would see great revival and supernatural healings break out there. So she choose to believe God's promise and went back against the doctor's recommendation. And God healed her of the multiple sclerosis in Mozambique!
Once God has given an indication of His will for a given person or situation, then it is very appropriate to stand in faith in agreement with His will. The circumstances surrounding you are not your reality -- God's will and God's promise become your reality. That is what you hold on to and you will see it come to pass, because God is not a liar and He will always keep His word.
If God heals a person when you pray for them, you can take that as a clear indication that God wants that person healed. If there is a significant change in their physical condition, then we have seen a clear evidence that God has indeed healed them. It is not wishful thinking -- it really happened. So, if the symptoms come back, we know that those symptoms are in direct violation of God's will for this individual. And we can stand in faith against the sickness returning. However, if the sickness was caused by sin or environmental/diet issues that have not yet been corrected, we need to deal practically with those issues before we stand in faith.
But there is no reason to accept symptoms coming back after a person has been healed when we are sure that sin and environmental/diet factors are not causing the condition. The returning symptoms are a lie of the enemy designed to put them back into bondage. Faith is standing on God's reality that He healed you when the symptoms originally went away. I encourage that type of faith. Usually those who make a stand of faith will end up keeping their healing. If the symptoms try to return, they will not be able to stay.
One last thought on faith and healing. It is sometimes a fine line between acting in faith and acting in presumption. One of those is in the area of discontinuing medication. If the medication is critical to your survival or mental balance, you should never take yourself off of it when you think you have been healed. You should go back to the doctor and be retested and have the doctor take you off of the medication.
If the medication is just something for your own comfort, such as a pain killer, then you have more leeway in choosing to discontinue it. If you believe God has told you to go off of your pain pills, you are free to obey Him. But I recommend that you carry them with you at first, just in case you were mistaken in your hearing. If God tells you to go off of allergy medication the same thing applies.
However, if God tells you to go off of medication to lower your blood pressure or regulate your heartbeat, or to keep you from being depressed or psychotic, then do this by going to see your doctor. Have your doctor examine and test you and let the doctor be the one to take you off of the medication. You are still obeying God and going off of the medication (assuming the doctor finds physical evidence that you don't need it any more). But you are doing this in a safe and practical way that will help you to steer clear of the area of presumption. Going through your doctor to discontinue life-sustaining medicine helps protect against those cases where you heard wrong. It allows you to be a good steward of your body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Spiritual Warfare In Keeping Your Healing
There is also a dimension of spiritual warfare when a sickness is from the devil. It can land on you because of strategic high level warfare against you. E.g. the enemy may try to resist God's plans for your life by bringing sickness or disease. If that happens, mobilize your friends and some intercessors to pray for you to cancel the enemy's assignment against your health and to cut off the enemy's access to you.
Sickness can also come from "illegal" demonic activity. A spirit of infirmity may attach itself to a person even if it has no "legal right" to do so. The spirit of infirmity will bring chronic health problems and maybe even fatal ones. If a healing occurred because a spirit of infirmity was cast out of a person, then there is a very high likelihood that the symptoms will try to come back. Jesus explained this in Matt 12:43-45. He said that when a demon is cast out, it will wander around looking for a new home. If it can't find one, it will grab some reinforcements and try to gain access back to the person who was healed. It will try to get the person to accept it back by trying to convince them that the problem has returned, that God never healed them. It will bring some of the symptoms back. The way to deal with this is to rise up in the authority of Christ and command the demon and the symptoms to leave. If a spirit of infirmity comes back, it needs to be kicked out again. It must not be permitted to take up residence in the person again.
If you minister healing to a person and it involves casting out a spirit of infirmity, you need to teach the person how to take authority when the spirit tries to come back. If they are not saved, you need to get them saved or they won't have any authority in Christ to exercise. Once they are saved, you need to teach them how to rebuke this demon and to warn them that it will probably try to come back. But with a few minutes of training, the person can handle any returning spirits of infirmity and not allow them back in.
Sickness can come from a curse, spoken against the person or even a curse the person speaks on themselves. The bible tells us that a curse undeserved cannot land (Prov 26:2). If a curse against a person's health has landed, there was something in there somewhere to give it a "legal right" to effect the person. That is usually some sort of emotional wounding and thought sins (bitterness, hate, resentment, unforgiveness, etc). If the person is healed and the legal right is not dealt with, that curse is still in effect and will try to land again. So if the symptoms try to return, the curse may need to be explicitly broken. You may need to break any curses of man against the person's health or well being. Once the curse is explicitly broken, it usually can't land again.
Our Minds, Emotions and Health
The Physiological Side
Did you know that our mental and emotional state can make us physically sick? There are several whole branches of medicine that deal with this type of condition. There are many variants of "psychosomatic medicine" out there. Webster's Dictionary defines the word "psychosomatic" as "of or relating to a disorder having physical symptoms but originating from mental or emotional causes" and "Relating to or concerned with the influence of the mind on the body, and the body on the mind, especially with respect to disease."
In short, there are a lot of real physical health problems that are caused by our mind and emotions. According to the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine many health problems are psychosomatic in their cause. And many physiological conditions are effected by our mental state of well being -- our minds and emotions can determine the depth and severity of many of the physical symptoms. In other words, your mind/emotions either make you sick in the first place or they make your symptoms much worse when you have a legitimate physiological sickness.
Here are a few of the diseases that the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine considers psychosomatic in nature: how severely the body is effected by AIDS in an HIV positive person, cancer, addictive disorders with alcohol or amphetamines or caffeine or cannabis or cocaine or hallucinogens or nicotine or opioids. Childhood disorders including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, conduct disorders, depression, mental retardation, tourette's syndrome, and many other childhood disorders. Your mind and emotions play a big role in the effects and severity of neuropsychiatric disorders such as alzheimer's disease, huntington's disease, parkinson's disease, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and delirium. Psychosomatic disorders also include disassociative disorders, eating disorders, impulse control disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, panic disorders, phobic disorders, mood disorders, posttraumatic stress disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, sexual disorders, sleep disorders, somatoform disorders and syndromes secondary to general medical disorders.
The Spiritual Side
There are many facets to the spiritual side of our mind and emotions. This lesson will only touch on a small subset, three of them: peace, forgiveness and holiness.
PEACE
After seeing the list of psychosomatic disorders in the above paragraph, we should not be surprised that God has very strong opinions about our mental and emotional well being. Anxiety and stress are two of the biggest "killers" .. the physiological side effects of stress and anxiety do terrible things to our bodies including elevating our blood pressure and giving us heart attacks and strokes. Perhaps that is why God wants us to be centered in His peace.
In fact, Jesus explicitly gave His peace to us as a gift. He did this in John 14:27, where He said, "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" (NIV). In other words, Jesus gave us the gift of His peace, but we must choose to accept it and then we must choose to hold onto it. Faith and trust enter into this. we must choose to believe that God will protect and take care of us just like He promised in His word. We must choose to believe that God will take care of our needs just like He promised in Matt 6:25-33 and in Luke 12:22-32 and in Phil 4:19.
Jesus sent His disciples out ahead of Him to all the places that He planned to go minister. He instructed the disciples to bless the houses that they would stay in with His peace (Luke 10:5). When Jesus appeared to His disciples after raising from the dead, His first words to them were, "Peace be with you" (Luke 24:36). Peace is one of the top three fruit of the spirit (Gal 5:22) along with love and joy.
God wants His children to be filled with His peace. Proverbs 12:25 says, "an anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up." Philippians 4:6-7 encourages us that we "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
FORGIVENESS
Forgiveness is very important towards walking in health. Many problems such as digestive and circulatory and possibly some forms of cancer are related to unforgiveness and bitterness. We don't hurt or punish the other person when we hang on to unforgiveness, we only harm ourselves -- both physically and spiritually.
Jesus taught a lot on forgiveness, and He always made one thing very clear: God expects us to forgive those who have wronged us because He has forgiven us. Jesus told the parable of the unforgiving debtor in Matt 18:21-35 to underscore this principle. You are probably familiar with the story. A man owed the government a lot of money (unpaid back taxes??) so the government came down on him to collect the unpaid debt. They were going to confiscate all of his possessions to sell and try and get back some of the money. And they were even going to sell the man and his family into slavery to get back some of what he owed the government. But the man fell on his knees before the magistrate and begged for mercy. The magistrate was moved with compassion and cancelled the debt or wiped his slate clean. The man left the court and on his way out, ran into someone who owed him some money. The person begged for mercy but he refused and had the man thrown into jail until he paid the debt. Soon this got back to the magistrate, who was very upset. Let's pick up the story from Jesus' own words starting at verse 32:
Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?" And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.
In other words, if we don't forgive others, God gives demons (the torturers) a legal right to torment us with sickness and financial problems, etc until we deal with the unforgiveness.
In fact, Jesus underscored this principle when His disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray. So Jesus gave them a model prayer in Matthew 6:9-13. A part of that prayer was to "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." Jesus was not referring to finances when He gave us this part of the prayer, He was talking about receiving and releasing forgiveness. We know this because He explained it in verse 14-15, immediately after He gave the prayer. He said: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
In other words, if we hang on to bitterness and unforgiveness, then God will hold us accountable in this present life by allowing the enemy of our souls to make us miserable. We will be hit with things like health problems, financial difficulties, being treated unfairly or being falsely accused and misunderstood, etc.
If you are holding onto unforgiveness and bitterness and resentment -- God views this as sin. So if you want a physical healing from God, you may need to deal with your unforgiveness and bitterness issues in order to receive and retain your physical healing.
How do you release forgiveness? God commands that we release it "from our heart" in Matt 18:35. This means a total forgiveness, our wills, our intentions and our emotions. Now, it is not always easy to get our emotions to line up with our wills. So the best way to release forgiveness is to start by choosing to do so as an act of our will. Along with that, ask God to help your heart and emotions line up with your choice. Invite God into the process by confessing unforgiveness as sin, and then by asking Him to empower you to forgive completely and totally. Another thing that is very helpful in releasing forgiveness is to intentionally give up your right for "vindication" to God -- let Him be the one to decide whether to hold the person who wronged you accountable or to extend His total forgiveness and grace to them.
HOLINESS
Personal holiness is important to our relationship with God. When something or someone is "holy" they are set apart for God's usage. Old testament law does not allow us to mix "holy" items with common items or with sin. Therefore, to be holy before God means to be set aside for Him, to be under His control and not under the control of sin. We are not perfected yet, so we may live in holiness and occasionally stumble or fall into a sin. That is when the blood of Jesus covers us and washes us clean. But in general we choose to intentionally live for God and behave in accordance with His way of doing things. Our motivation is to be close to God and pleasing to Him, to be His servants and to be set aside for His plans and purposes.
When we choose to live for ourselves instead of living for God, we are not walking in holiness. Even if we don't do any of the "no-nos" that the bible explicitly calls a sin (lust, fornication, stealing, lying, etc) we are still not walking in holiness because our goals and motives are not to please and serve God, to be set aside for His plans and purposes. When we are self-serving, we are not serving God. We must choose to pursue His agenda instead of our own.
There are blatant and intentional or recurring sins that we can choose to do or we can fall into bondage in some area. These type of sins can give demons a legal right to afflict us with infirmity and disease. Do you remember when Jesus healed the lame/blind man at the pool of Bethesda? The account of this healing is found in John 5:1-15. There is an indication (in verse 14) that the man's original health problem was caused by sin. Jesus said to him "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you."
This gives us some very serious food for thought. What was the "something worse"? Bible scholars don't all agree on the meaning of this passage. Some feel it is referring to eternal condemnation for sin. But that is not clear from the passage -- and salvation is a result of our believing in Jesus, not a result of our living sin-free lives. So I don't agree with that view. Some scholars take this passage more literally, and I tend to agree with them. In other words, they believe it says that sin was the cause of the original health problem, and if the healed person continues sinning, that person will end up with an even worse physical ailment.
So if we have recurring sin in our lives, we need to eliminate it. That is true whether or not we need a physical healing. And if we do get healed and we continue to live in sin, we may be giving that sickness "legal grounds" to return.
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