Category: January 2018

Mark 5:28-29

For she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” Immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction

Have you ever heard people say, “I will believe it only when I see it.” Generally, that is the way the world thinks. But God’s ways are not like the ways of the world. The world says, “If I can’t feel it or see it, I cannot believe the miracle is here.” While God says, “If you believe it before you feel it or see it, you will see your miracle.”

Believing first before seeing the evidence of what we are believing for is called faith. Faith is like a spark and Jesus is the dynamite powder.

In the story of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, there were many people who touched Jesus (Mark 5:31), but nothing happened to them. They didn’t touch Him in faith. But when the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came to Him and touched Him in faith, He felt power leave His body (Mark 5:30), and it sparked off an explosion of healing in the woman’s body! Hearing about how good, kind and loving Jesus was fired her faith to believe that He could and would heal her. So convinced was she (even when the condition in her body was still evident) that she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” Did she experience her healing first before she believed? No, she believed first in Jesus’ goodness and power, acted in faith and only then felt the healing in her body.

In the same way, God wants you to believe in His goodness and love toward you. He wants you to know how willing He is to act on your behalf to bless you, and how, with Christ, He will freely give you every good thing. (Romans 8:32) He wants you to declare by faith that all is and shall be well with you, and to expect to see just that. And then, no matter how long you have had the problem, no matter how bad the experts say it is, healing and restoration will take place, and you will receive what you are believing for!

Isaiah 53:4

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…

Imagine the dreadful disease leprosy eating a man alive. The poor leper in Matthew 8:2 could stand his suffering no longer, so he came out into the open to look for Jesus. He needed to know if Jesus was willing to heal him. When he saw Jesus, he fell at His feet and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” (Matthew 8:2) The Son of God looked at the outcast with love in His eyes, reached out His hand, touched him and said, “I am willing; be cleansed.” (Matthew 8:3)

Perhaps you are suffering from some disease or sickness and wondering if God is willing to heal you? You may not be sure if He is willing because just as you have seen people get healed, you have also seen people not get healed. Don’t look to people’s experiences. Look to the cross! As surely as Jesus bore away your sins, He also bore away your diseases!

Here is a solid foundation for believing this truth. In Isaiah 53, the chapter on our Lord’s crucifixion, it says in verse four: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. The words “griefs” and “sorrows” here mean “sicknesses” and “pains” in the original Hebrew text. So Isaiah was referring to physical healing. Also look at Matthew 8:16-17: “…they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: ‘He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.'” Matthew quotes Isaiah 53:4, saying that Jesus took our “infirmities” and bore our “sicknesses”. The context here refers to physical healing.

If you will just believe this truth, your days of sickness will be over. You will walk in greater health because the One who has surely borne your sicknesses and carried your pains says to you, “I am willing, be cleansed!”

Genesis 15:8-9

And he said, “Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

Are you discouraged because a breakthrough that you have been praying for has yet to manifest? Maybe it has been days or even weeks and you are asking, “How will I know that I will get it?” Abraham faced the same situation and asked God the same question. And God answered, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

What a strange answer! But if you read on (Genesis 15:10-21), you will realize that God took Abraham’s question very seriously, and went on to show him just how serious He was about being his provider, protector and blesser. God was so serious that He was willing to bind Himself to a covenant.

So what is a covenant? It’s like a contract but it is more than a contract. A contract is binding only for a period of time, like five years or seven years, or until certain terms are fulfilled. But a covenant is perpetual, it is permanent. The only way out is through death. That is why marriage is a covenant, not a contract. It is permanent – “Till death do us part”.

In Bible times, when you cut a covenant with someone, you bring an animal, usually a ram or goat, and kill it by cutting it in two. Next, you will face your covenant partner and walk toward each other between the two pieces of the animal, passing each other in the center. What all this means is that both parties are obligated to protect and provide for each other. Whatever belongs to you is your partner’s and whatever belongs to your partner is yours. Of course, the one who benefits is the lesser or poorer party.

Today, God is in covenant with us. We are the lesser, poorer party. We have nothing to offer God, but God the richest and most powerful being in the universe, has everything to offer us! God has bound Himself to a covenant, an iron-clad guarantee of His blessings and provision in your life, and it is all for your benefit. The breakthrough you are waiting for is guaranteed by His covenant!

Romans 1:16

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes…

Every time you hear the gospel of Christ, you are hearing God’s good news for you. And the Bible tells us that the gospel of Christ – the good news that God wants all men to hear – is the very power of God for your salvation, not just from hell, but also from illnesses, financial lack, harm, and every aspect of your life that needs saving!

You may say, “I’ve heard the gospel of Christ, but it seems like I am one of those whom the power of God has missed.” When you hear the gospel of Christ, do you really believe it? You cannot just understand it in your mind. You must know and believe the good news in your heart, then you will see that it is the power of God for your salvation.

So what is the good news that God wants you to know in your heart, which will release the power and salvation of God into your situation? “For in it [the good news] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith…” (Romans 1:17) The good news is that you are the righteousness of God in Christ, which you receive from faith to faith. This means that this righteousness comes because you have faith in His blood, not your good behavior, to make you righteous. It is from faith to faith, not faith to works, or works to works.

The good news is not preached to show you what is wrong with you. It is preached to show you what is right with you because of Jesus’ finished work at Calvary, in spite of what is wrong with you! There is nothing left for you to do to earn God’s blessings for your life. You only need to hear and believe the all-encompassing saving power of the gospel of Christ to heal you of diseases, preserve you from danger, bless your finances and bring well-being to your family.

The world may say that the good news is too good to be true. But for those of us who are the righteousness of God in Christ, the good news is so good because it is indeed true!

Hebrews 10:17

…”Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

Isn’t it wonderful to know that Hebrews 10:17 is such good news. God sees all our sins – past, present and future – and says, “Your sins I will remember no more!” The words “no more” are a strong double negative in the original Greek text. In other words, God is saying, “Your sins I will never remember!”

Has God lowered His standards? No, He is still perfectly holy. He did remember all our sins – 2,000 years ago at the cross. Every sin which we have committed or will commit has been punished to the full in the body of Jesus Christ at the cross. That is why today, God remembers our sins no more. We should, therefore, not be sin-conscious.

Each time we feel condemned for our past mistakes, God wants us to remember the cross and say, “Lord Jesus, you were sentenced for this sin I committed. You bore the judgment, so God will not judge me for this sin. You were condemned for this sin, so God will not condemn me for it.” If you don’t look to the cross, you will become sin-conscious and you will walk around with a certain expectation of divine judgment. This will only lead to despair and more sin. You must come to the place where you know and believe that all your sins are forgiven, and that you are saved eternally. Such security enables you to come to God and receive His grace and power to overcome sin.

Hebrews 10:12, 14 says, “But this Man [Jesus], after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God… For by one offering He has perfected forever…”

You and I are perfected forever because of Jesus’ perfect work on the cross. We are perfected by God’s full acceptance and perfect delight in His Son’s work. Hear God say to you, “I will be merciful. Your sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more,” and live for His glory!

John 10:3

…he calls his own sheep by name…

Do you sometimes feel like you are just a face in a crowd or a number in a system? If you feel depersonalized and dehumanized, that is exactly how the devil wants you to feel, he wants you to feel like you don’t matter much to anyone, especially to God. But you do matter to God! Did you know that He calls you by name? He knows exactly what you are going through and where you are hurting. He sees you and cares for you, just as He cared for the people when He first walked on earth.

He will do for you what He did for the woman in Samaria. The Bible says that “He needed to go through Samaria” to get from Judea to Galilee (John 4:4). Now, any Jew of His day would have taken a different and longer route to avoid going through Samaria because they hated the Samaritans. But Jesus deliberately took the shorter, avoided route, just so He could speak to the woman who had been searching for something in her life to satisfy her. This woman had had five husbands and the man she was living with was not her husband. Clearly, things had not been going right in her life. She was probably looking for answers and fulfillment, and must have felt ashamed about her failed marriages and current lifestyle. Yet, in spite of all this, she mattered to Jesus! He needed to go to her to minister to her. And indeed, after she met Jesus, the perfect Man, she was transformed. She was no longer ashamed, and went into the city to tell the people about Him (John 4:28-29).

Jesus wants to meet you wherever you are in you’re life and minister His grace to you. You certainly matter to Him. He came to give you life and life more abundantly (John 10:10). You are not just a face in a crowd or a number. No, He knows you by name and has a personal love for you. And in spite of the mess that you might be in, He wants to meet your every need and make your life beautiful!