-Transcript-
00:24 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:27 Welcome to the cafe. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. A wonderful week.
00:32 And guess what? Even if you’re not, even if you’re saying, wonderful day, wonderful week, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m having it rough right now. Well, I’ve got the perfect message for you today.
00:42 Out of God’s Holy Word, amen. Welcome to the cafe again. My name is Pastor Clark Covington.
00:48 Today we’re looking at the healing power of God. Part of the human condition, if you will, part of living here on this earth, no matter the age, is sickness. Oh, goodness.
01:04 I remember, I mean, I kind of thought young kids were healthy, but of course, I guess that was wishful thinking. I remember my daughter being born and she had jaundice or whatever you call it, and she was under a blue light for a week or so.
01:18 And I remember our eldest in his early years having allergies to the point where he had to be on one of those nebulizers on occasion and on and on.
01:30 So from the youth, you’re sick. Not always, but oftentimes you are, you’re sick, amen, all the way up through adulthood. And in our latter years, how much do we have to go to the doctor and so forth? And some are healthier than others.
01:48 And I know that we can make good decisions and bad decisions that can contribute to our health through our lifestyle and so forth, walking and eating right, and all those things.
02:00 Even getting good amounts of sunlight, they say, helps. Getting lots of sleep helps.
02:14 All these things, right? But generally speaking, we all deal with illness. And I just touched the surface on what illness is. And I want you here to know today that God can heal your illness.
02:19 Jeremiah 17:14, heal me, oh Lord, and I shall be healed. Save me and I shall be saved for thou art my praise. Heal me, oh Lord, and I shall be healed.
02:26 Save me and I shall be saved for thou art my praise. Jeremiah 17:14, such a beautiful verse. It relates to God on so many levels.
02:38 Number one, Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah is speaking with great faith. Is he not here writing, I should say, but I imagine him saying it with great faith. Understanding, look, if you will just do it, it’ll be done.
02:58 If you’ll heal me, I’ll be healed. If you save me, I’ll be saved. It kind of is like the New Testament, Jesus is healing people and so forth.
03:07 And some folks approach him and say, can you heal my daughter? Can you heal my son? Can you heal my servant?
03:13 And they say, you don’t even have to come here to my home. I’m not worthy of you coming here to my home. Just say it and it’ll be done.
03:20 And that’s that great faith in God. That’s that great faith in God. I believe it was the centurion that said that to Jesus about it.
03:27 He had sent up one of his workers, a messenger to let Jesus know that all, you know, he believed that Jesus simply could do it. Amen. And Christ did it.
03:40 And Christ said, great. No, you know, no greater faith have I seen in Israel, I believe was Christ’s response. And that’s the idea of having that faith of the healing power of God.
03:48 And let’s look at that in the light of first in this life. God has all power. Therefore, he can heal any and all he chooses to heal.
03:57 Oh, it’s so good to know this. Psalm 103:2-4. Bless the Lord.
04:04 Oh, my soul. And forget not all his benefits who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies.Man, that’s so beautiful.
04:22 God bless the Lord. Amen. Forget not his benefits.
04:26 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities. When did that happen? That happened at the cross at Calvary, where Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, provided us a way to get right with God, to be reconciled to God, to have peace with God.
04:35 And by the way, all of those things are not natural to us.
04:45 We are not born with a peace toward God. That is something only that happens after salvation. When we are saved, we now are born again.
04:54 We now have access to the father. We now have the Holy Spirit living within us. So he is the one that forgave us our sins, because what before our salvation was keeping us at a distance from God, that was our sins.
05:09 A holy God cannot tolerate sins. A holy God will not tolerate sins. A holy God must judge sin.
05:16 And how will he judge sin? He’ll judge it very harshly. And the only way to be forgiven of our sins is, number one, to recognize that we are sinners. How could we be forgiven if we don’t even recognize we have that problem?
05:26 And then number two, once we kind of make that diagnosis of ourselves, we realize, hey, we’re part of that group that the Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
05:36 Then once we recognize that, then what do we do? We get saved. Amen. And once we’re saved, amen, now our sins have been forgiven.
05:45 We’re no longer under condemnation. Amen. We are now no longer under the law.
05:51 It’s not a workspace salvation. Once we believe on Christ and his shed blood, we’re saved because the law can never save us. And so there is that healing from God in the most important spiritual sense, because that deals with eternity.
06:05 And in heaven, there’s no disease. In heaven, there’s no death. In heaven, time isn’t like it is here because it is eternal.
06:16 It’s forever. And so when we’re saved and we go to God’s heaven, we are then made whole there and we are prevented from going to hell and more about that in the second point here.
06:28 But in the first point, the verse also mentions in Psalm 103, two through four, that he heals all our diseases.
06:38 God is able to heal you today. I woke up. I’ve been having bad allergy.
06:48 I always have bad allergies. I’ve literally never had an allergy issue that I could think of in my adult life until I moved to North Carolina. Thank you, North Carolina.
06:53 10 years in South Carolina and I was fine. Amen. I don’t know what happened about being in the foothills, but something happened over here and allergies just keep me.
07:02 It’s like a thorn in my flesh. I have them all the time. They’re bad.
07:06 They’re ridiculous on and on, blah, blah, blah. I’m sure you know the story. Woke up this morning with an eye infection and it startled me because I didn’t have it yesterday and I don’t know if it’s allergies or what.
07:19 And I said to myself, you know, cause my nature would be to worry about something like that. I haven’t really seen. And I said to myself, you know, God’s able.
07:30 And I prayed to God and said, Lord, you know, my body is yours. My life is yours. If I can trust you with my life, if I could trust you with my vocation, if I could trust you with my family,
07:38 if I could trust you with my day to day, whatever I’m doing, if I could trust you in your word and what I’m preaching, if I could trust you to deliver me from hell itself, then I trust you with this situation.
07:51 And I’m not saying, oh, never go to the doctor, never take medicine. The Lord may lead me there. The Lord may lead you there.
07:59 I don’t know. Amen. I don’t know.
08:05 There’s, I know there’s some doctors that are Christians that are saved. Amen. And God uses them.
08:09 So I’m not against medicine per se. I’m just simply saying, I trust God and I’m not going to worry about it. Amen.
08:15 What is ailing you today? That’s a simple example, but what’s ailing you? Is it a physical sickness? Is that physical ailment? I encourage you to give it to God. And again, what I mean by that is not forsaking modern medicine or the medical establishment or whatever, not forsaking that, but just give it to God. Amen.
08:24 Give it to God, ask God to help you and to guide you. And all of a sudden you may have a certain piece about you. If you’ve been saved, you may have someone suggest something that you hadn’t thought of.
08:46 You may have something come to mind. Again, give it to God and see what he starts doing in your life. Amen.
08:56 That physical sickness, it may be there forever. These allergies, I can’t imagine them going away. I kid with my wife.
08:58 Oh, we’re going to move to wherever to get rid of the allergy. Look, I could move to Mars and still have them, but you know, we’re not moving to Mars, but you know, they’ll always be here probably, but that’s okay. That’s all right.
09:09 You know, I’ve given it to God. And as he decides to, I believe he will strengthen me. But you know what? What’s ailing you besides physical sickness? Maybe there’s worries, maybe worries, you know, ail you.
09:26 Oh goodness. You know, there’s something called psychosomatic illness. And I heard Adrian Rogers preaching an excellent message on this years ago.
09:33 The idea is that when we think something, it manifests in our body. And I believe, and the point was that a brother Rogers was getting at as many, many, many people go to the doctor with that, where they think something and then they end up there. And it’s not necessarily being a hypochondriac.
09:50 It’s not, not thinking you’ve got every disease under the sun. It’s just, you know, you’re worried about something. You know, you’re stressed, you know, you’re stressed at work.
09:58 You have a, you have an issue with your boss. You have an issue at work. You have an issue with a coworker.
10:00 You, you don’t know if you can meet production. And my mother-in-law was, she’s retired now. She was constantly under production.
10:09 She said not under, as in not meeting it, but she was under that rule of making production. Constantly worried about it. I couldn’t, by the way, having the older generations, I believe were much tougher than, than us on the computer.
10:20 I’m sitting here with my fingers tap, tap, tap, tap. And she’s out there in the warehouse and they’re saying, Hey, have you packed 400 boxes this hour? You know, that’s, that’s some pressure. So our worries and our stress can lead to illness.
10:33 Depression can lead to illness. You know, the Bible says that bitterness can, can lead to illness. Oh yeah.
10:39 You know, bitterness. Are you bitter about something? Have you not forgiven someone over something that can lead to illness?Proverbs 14:30, a sound heart is the life of the flesh, but envy the rottenness of the bones. You know, we can literally rots our bones.
10:58 Amen. That envy and that bitterness, you know, stress, pain, physical sickness, insecurity, lack of confidence, uncertainty, all of these things. Can physically make us ill or mentally make us ill or a combination of both.
11:13 And what do we have to do? But go to God who forgives our iniquities and heals all of our diseases. You know, I think there’s a good biblical picture in the new Testament as Christ heals in the new Testament. He heals people that had a blood issue.
11:28 People that were lame and couldn’t walk. People that couldn’t speak. People that couldn’t see amen.
11:35 People with an issue with a hand, amen. All kinds of issues, all kinds of a leper on and on all kinds of diseases and issues. Does Jesus Christ resolve and his disciples as well when they’re given the power to heal?
11:49 And I believe that’s a picture of the wholeness or fullness of Christ that we don’t need anything but Christ.
12:00 Psalm 147:3, he healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. You know, he heals our broken hearts. He heals our broken hearts.
12:09 Maybe what we’re dealing with today that we need healing from is a broken heart. Maybe we’ve been let down by someone else. Maybe we’ve been hurt by someone and we just need God to go ahead and bind up that wound.
12:24 Go ahead and stop the bleeding, stop the hemorrhaging and bind it up. Is he not able?
12:30 You know, if we’ve been saved, and I’m speaking to saved Christians here today, that we need to start recognizing the healing power of God and stop running towards the world for answers because the world doesn’t have them and start going to the great physician who can and will heal us as we seek him.
12:49 Now, I say will heal us as in he’ll give us peace and he’ll heal us in due time.
12:55 And again, for the saved Christians, certainly we get that resurrected body, amen, we’re in heaven, we’ll be healed of the physical ailments and there won’t be any sadness or hurt or pain in heaven because sin won’t be there. So he’s going to heal us, but it’s in his time.
13:12 But what we need to do is seek him out and understand that he has this power.
13:17 And that again, going back to the New Testament, when the one lady, I believe it was just want to touch, just touch the hem of his garment. And she was healed because he said, look, your faith made you whole.
13:27 Do we have that kind of faith that we just want to touch the hem of his garment? You know, my prayer to the Lord, oftentimes as I close my prayer and I pray a lot, I try to pray a lot.
13:39 God knows. I ask God, Lord, stay near, stay near, because if you’re near, if you’re close enough that I can just reach out, then I’ve got all I need. You understand?
13:51 We need to pray for God to be near us so that whatever we have going on, he will heal us.
14:00 And he will give us that godly discernment on what to do about certain situations so that we don’t enter into things that are worse for us. Because truly God is a God of love. He is the great physician.
14:13 He’s a great healer, and he will heal you. And I’ve talked a lot about the physical world here. And the next episode, excuse me, we’ll talk about the spiritual.
14:22 So tune in next time as we get to the great healer in the spiritual realm. Thank you for listening. Take care, God bless, and amen.