James 5:13 - Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14 Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (NIV)
Hebrews 13:8 - Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. (NIV)
Good Saturday Morning, my dear brothers and sisters. I want to get right to the scriptures today, right to the message. Let's pray and get going.
Dear Father in Heaven, thank You for waking us another day, and thanks for all You do for us, and thanks this day for prayers answered already. Please, Lord, forgive us of our sins, heal our weary bodies according to Your will for each of us, and please, Lord, help me wrap up this week's messages with this special edition that You laid on my heart. I love You, Jesus, and I pray and give praise in Your name. Amen.
Healing (Day Six). Yes, I opened with the same scriptures again today, for they are great scriptures when talking about healing. There are so many scriptures in the Bible about healing that with the help of Jesus I could really write for weeks and weeks about it. But I do need to wrap it up and move forward for Jesus.
Yesterday I closed with a statement that went sort of like this. This is not word for word, but I will state it again ... Why would an old man, an old pastor, who is crippled up from a motorcycle accident and getting more twisted and in pain, pray for people to be healed? To go along with that, my wife Dolores is also crippled up and in a ton of pain daily, still she pushes forward working for the Lord. Some days her fingers hardly move, but still God works them on the keys of the piano. With those things said, why would anyone want to listen to me talk about healing or hear me preach on the subject? Why would others just not say God must not heal, for He will not touch the preacher! Or here is a couple that seems to be walking with God and do not get healed, and we are sitting here listening to him and we have questions about it. I want today to address those questions ...
First of all and above all else, I am just an old sinner saved by grace, and Dolores is the same, except let me drop out the old part. And yes, we do our very best to walk with God, but like others, we slip and fall once in awhile and must get up, dust off the sin, and ask to be forgiven again. Please notice when I pray each day I do no pray for God to forgive your sins, I pray for God to forgive my sins or our sins. Again, I am indeed a sinner as is everybody else, some worse than others, of course. Please remember we must love the sinner and hate the sin. God loves us all, so God indeed loves the sinner, but He hates sin and I pointed that out a week or so ago in another message. But I want you to hear this scripture and then we will talk about it just for a minute.
This comes out of Hebrews chapter 12 and I wish you would please take time to read all of this today.
Hebrews 12:1 - Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, 6 Because the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son." 7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 More over, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. 13 Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. (NIV)
And yes, right here and now, I must enter this scripture one more time. You know what it is.
Hebrews 13:8 - Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. (NIV)
So what is this scripture telling me? Yes, my earthly father, and please notice the small "f" in father - and I pray I got them all correct in writing out the scripture - my earthly father did discipline me from time to time. (Believe it or not, there were times when I was a down and out brat.) My daddy never beat on me, but I did know what a belt or a razor strap felt like across a bare butt. I am happy that he did not make me go sit in a corner after that, for I was not in the sitting mood if you get my point. I also knew what it was like to go to bed without supper, even though we had food in the house to eat. If I turned my nose up at what my mamma would cook, I went to bed without supper. In my day I also ate a lot of soap for swearing, lying, and I could go on. There for awhile I thought lye soap was really lie soap. My mamma also was quick with the handle of the knife on the hands if you were acting up at the table. When I look back now, I find out that when I really started to appreciate my parents was after my mamma died. I also learned to behave after I was sixteen, for never once did they have a need to take away my car. (I should have gotten the car when I was two.)
So now as I am 71, and yes, I have some bumps and pain, and yes, I pray for God to h eal them as I pray for Dolores to be healed, but this scripture tells me that if Jesus did not love me, He would not discipline me. And I feel that this, my pain, is indeed the discipline that the Bible is talking about. When I look back I would hate to think how I would have turned out, if my daddy and mamma would not have been strict parents. Who knows what might have happened. And folks, over the years I have made many, many mistakes and have sinned many, many times. God has forgiven all that, and brothers and sisters, that for one is the very best HEALING A PERSON CAN GET - Being healed of our sins.
Also, I need to point out that I am healed from cancer, God took that away, and I have never really been that sick to where I missed work. Before the motorcycle accident, I never missed a day's work for being sick, my wife tells me that there were days I should have stayed home, but God was good, and I went to work. I confess that over the years I would wonder why God did not heal a pastor or a person working for the Lord, and even before when I would write about healing, God never pointed this scripture out to me.
God is so faithful, and brothers and sisters, the more you read His word, the more He opens it to you. Some of you know that I am not a good reader, and in fact, I have never read a complete book, yet God opens His word to me. And each time I read a scripture, He opens that scripture even more. It is so exciting. I am so happy that I walk with God, and He has taken me as His son and disciplined me. I would much sooner walk around in pain for Jesus than be walking around in no pain and not knowing where I was heading after my life here on earth is done.
In closing I need to make this statement. God is good, and if He disciplined me according to my sins, like my dear old dad disciplined me, I would not be able to sit for the rest of my life and would need to be laid on my side in the casket. However, God, in His great mercy, looked ahead in time when He was on the cross and saw me standing there, first before I was in the womb, then in the womb, then as a child, then as a youth, then a young man, then middle-aged, and now aging, and saw that I was just a sinner indeed in need of the blood He was shedding then, and He poured out enough to cover me even to this day ... AND I AM CLEAN, I AM FREE, I AM ALIVE, AND I AM HEALED OF SIN. And brothers and sisters, in His time, I know He will heal me of my pain. I just know it. So I will wait upon the Lord and pray for others to be healed, and I know God still heals and He will heal YOU, SO KEEP YOUR FAITH. For it is by His stripes we are healed, and He took one heck of a beating for us. I must go, I am welling up in my eyes.
RISE AND BE HEALED IN THE NAME OF JESUS ... for
Hebrews 13:8 - Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. (NIV)
Someone please shout out with me ... THANK YOU, JESUS! AMEN!
Now go forth and share your blessings. Love ya, Pastor Dan
And yes, you are welcome at The Bridges this Sunday when I preach this message.
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