Category: January 2016

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!”

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!

2 Corinthians 5:21

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Some Christians believe that they have to work at becoming more righteous. And they kick themselves when they do wrong. They don’t realize that by doing these things, they are not seeking God’s righteousness, but are trying to establish their own righteousness by their law-keeping and right conduct. Righteousness is not about right conduct. It is a gift from God to us through Jesus. And since it is a gift, we cannot earn it by our law-keeping and right conduct. We can only receive it! So how do we receive this gift? We receive it through the cross. God made Jesus “who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”. So today, we are the righteousness of God in Christ. We are as righteous as Jesus is!

Some of us think that in the body of Christ, there are different classes of righteousness, like the seating classes in an airplane. They think that some of us have economy-class righteousness, others have business-class righteousness and a select few have first-class righteousness. That is nonsense! When God gave us Jesus, He became our righteousness. So we have His righteousness. This means that we are 100 per cent righteous in God’s eyes! We have first-class righteousness!

You might say, “I don’t understand. How can I be righteous when I have done wrong?” Think about this: Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us. Jesus knew no sin, did no sin and in Him was no sin. But at the cross, He received our sin and became sin for us. Likewise, we, who were sinners, knew no righteousness, did no righteousness and in us was no righteousness. But at the cross, we received His righteousness and became the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. At the cross, the divine exchange took place. Jesus took our place so that we might take His place. He did not deserve to be made sin, but He was made sin in our place. We did not deserve to be made righteous, but we were made righteous because we received His righteousness. What good news! What amazing grace!

John 10:3

…he calls his own sheep by name…

Do you feel like you are just a face in a crowd or a number in a system? You are identified by your social security number. If you feel depersonalized and dehumanized, that is exactly how the devil wants you to feel – that you do not matter much to anyone, especially to God.

But you do matter to God! 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, though the way through Samaria would take much less time. But Jesus deliberately took the shorter, avoided route, just so He could stop by Samaria to 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 currently 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 at in 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!

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…

Each 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, and 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’ work on the cross, 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!

1 John 1:7

But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

The devil may whisper in your head, “You cannot go into God’s presence because you have not been reading your Bible and serving in your church.” Or he will tell you that it is because of the sin that you have just committed. The devil will always try and make you feel that you are not qualified or clean enough to go near God. But the truth is, regardless of how you feel and what you have done, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

In the original Greek text, the tense for the word “cleanses” denotes a present continuous action. This means that once you are a believer, the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing you from every sin! So you can rest knowing that you are always forgiven in this continuous “wash cycle” of Jesus’ blood. Because you are continually cleansed, you are always in the light. Of course, you will fail here and there, but you are still in the light because the blood is continuously washing you!

The Bible says that we overcome the devil, the accuser of our brethren, by the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 12:11) If you have sinned, remind yourself that Jesus’ blood keeps on cleansing you from every sin – 24 hours a day, seven days a week – and move on with God! The devil cannot defeat you when your faith is in the blood that cleanses you continuously.

Some Christians are guilt-ridden because their consciousness of their sins condemns them. Although Jesus’ blood continuously cleanses them, they would rather hold on to their past mistakes and feel bad about them, thinking that they are being humble and holy when they do this. But this is nothing more than self-righteousness. The eternal blood of Jesus Christ offers you eternal redemption and everlasting righteousness. Accept the payment of His blood as the final, perfect and only sacrifice you will ever need!

Hebrews 10:7

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

I would say that Hebrews 10:17 is good news. God sees all our sins – past, present and future – and says, “Your sins I 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 by no means ever 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 judgment. And that expectation of judgment will give the devil a chance to get you thinking that God has something against you because of your sin. You must come to the place where you know and believe that all your sins are forgiven, and that you are saved eternally.

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 that has so glorified His holiness. Hear God say to you, “I will be merciful. Your sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

When God made man, He gave man dominion over everything on earth. To have an idea of the kind of dominion that man would have had had he not sinned, let’s look at the perfect Man, Jesus Christ.

When Jesus wanted to pay the temple tax, He only needed to command a fish to bring the money to Him. (Matthew 17:24-27) When He wanted to feed a multitude, He only needed to multiply five loaves and two fish in His hands. (Mark 6:34-44) When a storm threatened the lives of His disciples, He only had to speak to the storm and there was perfect calm. (Mark 4:35-41) And every sick person who was brought to Him went away healed. He even brought the dead back to life because He had dominion over death!

Today, you have the same dominion that Jesus exercised because Christ is in you. (Colossians 1:27) God’s purpose for you is to have dominion on earth, He will keep you healthy. After all, it is hard to rule the earth when you are sick and lying on your bed. And God will prosper you because it is hard to want to do things when you are in lack.

We need to understand that since God’s greater purpose is for man to have dominion on earth, it would include the lesser blessings such as health and provision. Then, we will see ourselves as God sees us, walking in dominion, and we will walk in victory over our negative circumstances in the natural realm.

Exodus 4:2-3

So the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A rod.” And He said, “Cast it on the ground.” So he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it.

God wants to take the natural things in your life and make them supernaturally blessed. He does this by asking you to give Him what you already have in the natural, and He will do the supernatural. That is why the Lord told Moses to cast his rod on the ground. And when Moses cast his rod on the ground, which represents him giving the rod to the Lord, that same rod became the rod of God. With that rod, the Red Sea was opened. (Exodus 14:16) And when that rod was used to hit a rock, water flowed out of the rock. (Exodus 17:5-6) It was no longer a natural rod, but the supernatural rod of God!

But why did the rod become a serpent when Moses cast it to the ground? Moses never realized that there was a “snake” in his rod. You see, because of the fall of man, there is a touch of the curse – a snake – in every natural thing, including your career, natural strength, talents and ministry. So how do you deal with the “snake” that is in all the natural things in your life? First, cast it to the Lord. Then, do what the Lord told Moses next: “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail”. (Exodus 4:4) It could be fatal to take a snake by its tail because it can easily turn its head around and bite you. So why did God say to take it by the tail? When you take it by the tail, God will take the head! He wants you to let Him handle the head, and not grab it or hold on to it tightly in fear or self-effort. That is how you see your career, strength, talents and ministry supernaturally blessed.

There is a snake, a touch of the curse, in everything in the natural. But give what is natural to the Lord and see the touch of the curse replaced with the supernatural touch of God!