Could THIS Be Why You’re Not Healed.

Many people have recently written us and they've been expressing frustration because they believe they're using their faith for healing and yet symptoms of sickness and pain continue to linger in their bodies. That might describe you and so I would stay tuned today because you might receive an answer. Now I would encourage you to go back as well and watch previous episodes because I've been on this subject for a while now and really the Lord dealt with me to start a series along these lines and really just give you some potential reasons or causes why perhaps you still have sickness and lingering symptoms in your body. You know there are causes and many people don't understand this and we know this that Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 27 Paul said neither give place to the devil. Now he would not have said that if it wasn't possible to give place to the devil then we can certainly take that place back by shutting the door and oftentimes when we give place to the devil we're really unaware of how we did it and that's why we need the constant help of the Holy Spirit in our lives and really he can use videos like this one to try to get answers to you and help you on your journey. You know the devil really no longer can take place in the life of a believer he's been bound he's been defeated by Jesus the Bible says we're redeemed from the curse of the law and we truly are but we can unknowingly give him place and some of the avenues we've discussed in the past are things like refusing to walk in love or having a loss of peace in your life. You know if your mind is not sound it has an effect on your body and there are several others we've discussed in previous episodes but today I want to talk about another area that I believe is a key for some of you who are watching. Now I want to also open up with first Corinthians chapter 11 because we've had some people that have written and said I don't believe that what you're preaching is true because God wouldn't require anything of us to receive our healing and yet you would have to dismiss this scripture that I'm about to read in order to embrace that thinking. Now Paul said this in first Corinthians chapter 11 in verse 28 he said but let a man examine himself. You know we would not have to examine ourselves if there were no changes needed in life so certainly we're making changes in life. Let a man examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup for he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself not discerning the Lord's body. Now in one of our previous episodes I discussed what not discerning the Lord's body means and then he goes on to say for this reason many he didn't say a few he said many are weak and sick among you and many sleep or die prematurely. So Paul here is emphatically stating that there are reasons or causes why many are weak and sick and why many die prematurely and for us to dismiss this would be foolish. This is in the New Testament epistles and this applies to the church today because he was writing to the church about celebrating the Lord's Supper. So many were weak many were sick and many died prematurely. Now of course he states emphatically why for not discerning the Lord's body and that's very encompassing really and you'll have to go back like I said before and listen to that episode to get the full explanation of that. But there are other places in the New Testament that also imply why perhaps many are sick and today we're going to look at one of those causes and this is something that most people don't get excited about but I would still listen and that is a lack of consecration. You know an older minister he noted that people in the church many decades ago did not have nearly as much sickness or disease in their bodies as the modern day church does and he believed that it was due to this one thing a lack of consecration. Now let me just define consecration for those that are watching. Consecration means separation for a sacred purpose. It means to separate from a common or profane use. So you see when God brought us into the kingdom of God when he translated us out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of his dear son he consecrated us. He set us apart for his use and his purpose and for us to use our lives for any other purpose than that which God intended would be out of the will of God and things that are out of the will of God are sin. So what I'm saying is that many in the church could be suffering from sickness because they have a lifestyle of sin and preaching against sin has never been popular but it's especially unpopular in our day and I believe there are two main reasons for this. The first reason why it's become unpopular to preach against sin is because for many centuries people preached so heavily against sin. There was such a heavy emphasis on sin and there was really no light on the righteousness of God in Christ and so people were so sin conscious and they lived under guilt and condemnation for so many years and when you're sin conscious you can't really live right because you're more conscientious of your sin than of who you've become in Christ or the fact that you've been made free from sin and so I could see that getting in that ditch was not good for the church and so then when light came into the church on teaching for example on the righteousness of God and who you are in Christ and that you're the head and not the tail that you're healed these types of teachings really began to grow in prominence over the past two to three decades and so people started becoming more conscientious of who they are in Christ and it helps them have the power to live free from sin and this is a great truth and it needed to come to the surface in our day. However this truth has been pushed so far into the other side of the road into the ditch that now we don't have the middle of the road sound doctrine anymore you know it's it's good to preach on who you are in Christ it's good to preach that you overcome through Christ it's good to preach what we have in Christ but it's still necessary to preach against sin you know this doctrine has been you know pushed so far into the ditch that there are people today that actually teach that the Christian no longer has to repent of sin and I want you to know that that's absolute error we have to guard against getting into the ditch on either side we don't want to just always preach against sin and be sin conscious and we also don't always just want to preach how great we are there's a middle of the road that all of us need to stay in if we're going to remain sound in Christ and so if we never preach against sin it's going to gain access into the life of the and this is why virtually every book in the new testament deals or addresses the issue of sin and if you're honest about it when you're reading through the epistles you're going to find in just about every book that there is some kind of teaching that warns us against living a lifestyle of sin now I think another reason why preaching against sin is so unpopular is because the generation that we're currently living in it's more wicked than the generations of the past 200 years and the spirit of the world will always try to get into the church you know why because being surrounded by wickedness the church will have a tendency to be swayed to conform to some of the world's ways and they'll think that God's approving of it because everybody's doing it and there are many Christians that don't want to believe that their lustful behavior or their poor behavior is actually a sin in God's sight it's more convenient to live the way you want to live and not make a change but God never changes my dear brothers and sisters he does not approve of sin because sin always opens the door to the devil and when you open the door to the devil it leads to destruction in your life and God loves us too much to leave us the way we are and let us get destroyed by the devil so he'll send messengers to warn us you know every almost every prophet in the old testament was stoned or killed because they came bringing a warning against sin they came and said repent you know which was supposed to be good news because if they would repent which means just turn around and go the other direction then the blessing of God would overtake their lives and that's what God's always been after he's after the blessing getting into our lives and so he's so good to us he warns us against sin now here's a scripture from the apostle Paul to the Corinthian church in first Corinthians chapter 6 and verses 19 and 20 he says do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God and you are not your own you've got to remember that that when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you lost well you technically lost the ability to control your own life you can still do it God will let you because you still have a free will but Paul is telling them here don't you realize you're not your own for you were bought at a price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's I think sometimes as Christians we forget that our bodies don't belong to us anymore they belong to God and we've been set apart by God for his use not for our own use not for what we want not for our personal pleasures and lusts now certainly God will let you enjoy your life but he knows this that Satan will bring pleasures into your life that the Bible calls sin to lure you away from God and into a path of destruction and if it was not pleasurable nobody would do it you know the devil is not going to just appear to you with a pitchfork and two horns and say do this and then think that people are going to follow him so he entices people through pleasures through sinful pleasures and so I'm not pointing the finger at you in judgment today what I'm trying to do is bring a word of encouragement that if you're living a lifestyle style of sin you can repent of it today and get that turned around and receive healing power into your body you know the fact that sin can bring sickness is a truth that's taught throughout the scriptures and so people want to refute this teaching but I am backing it up with scriptural evidence now I'm going to look at three places in particular where the scriptures teach this first of all we just read first Corinthians 11 where it said let a man examine himself and for this cause many are weak and sick so again why would we examine ourselves if we didn't have to make any changes so that's one place in the bible now another place James in the book of James he suggested that sin may also be involved with sickness and we're going to read from James chapter 5 verses 15 and 16 and it says the prayer of faith will save the sick and that word save is from the greek word so so which also means heal so the prayer of faith will heal the and if he has committed sins he will be forgiven so this is suggesting that you may not be sick because of sin and so I'm not suggesting that this is always the cause I'm just saying it could be but he's also saying if you have sinned it will be forgiven and then he says confess your trespasses to one another in other words confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed so you see once you recognize that perhaps you've been sinning against God or living a lifestyle of sin be quick to repent if you repent if you confess your trespasses that's meaning I'm saying I'm sorry I've sinned against you forgive me and then he says pray for one another and then you may be healed you know that's how Job was healed he prayed for his so-called friends who were not speaking for God he was angry with them but he had to forgive them and when he prayed for them and he repented of his own stupidity he was healed lo and behold now here's a third thing that I want to bring out and for sake of time we can only talk about so many Jesus also emphasized this in John chapter 5 in verse 8 Jesus he was at the pulpit of Bethesda and he was dealing with a man who was a paralytic and he said to him rise take up your bed and walk and immediately the man was made well took up his bed and walked but then let's look at verse 14 afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him see you have been made well sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you so Jesus was showing him that sin had brought this particular disease upon him and he said if you want to stay healed don't sin anymore because a worse thing can come upon you and you know we see this also in the teachings of Jesus he said when an evil spirit is cast out of somebody it goes about seeking dry places and when it doesn't find a place to rest it'll come right back to the place where it was cast out of and if it finds the place swept and clean and empty meaning you haven't been living full of the spirit and full of the word of God not only will that thing come back but it'll bring seven times with it so Jesus was telling this man a worse thing will come upon you if you don't get this straight and I think some of you watching you may have had experiences along this line where you got free from a particular habit or particular sin and you were fine for a while but when you went back to doing it again it became stronger and worse than it had been the first time I want you to know this is not a hopeless situation there is help for you today you know the poison of sin is going to try to work in somebody's life and it it works in the form often of sickness and disease and so if we expect to receive healing you know just like a person drinking poison can't get healed until the poison gets out of their body you've got to get the poison of sin out of your life now I'm not suggesting again that every sickness and disease is the result of sin I'm just saying this is one reason for sickness in the life of the believer and if this is the case the way that you receive your heal your healing today is to repent of that sin ask for forgiveness and then stop sinning consecrate your life afresh to the Lord and God is merciful he is so merciful I want bless the Lord oh my soul and forget not all his benefits who forgives all of your iniquities and who heals all of your diseases listen it's never too late for God to forgive you his mercy endures forever so no matter what you've done or how long you've been doing it God will still forgive you and he's not going to hold it against you and you don't have to think well I've been living this lifestyle for so long that I don't think there's any hope for me today I want you to know there absolutely is hope for you because even this man at the pool of Bethesda was that way for a long period of time before he was healed there are many stories in the Bible where somebody suffered for many years but they still were healed and so I want to encourage you today that you too can be forgiven and healed now I want to pray with you father in the name of Jesus all those who are watching especially those that this message applies to today I thank you that you're a merciful God and you're a merciful healer and so we thank you Lord as they repent of their sin that you are faithful and just to forgive them and to cleanse them from all unrighteousness and now Lord as they are repenting I thank you that your healing power is flowing from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet driving out all of the sickness in the disease in the name of Jesus in the name of Jesus you know sometimes just by repenting of sin especially sexual sins you can get free in your mind you can get free of depression and anxiety you can receive healing of all kinds of debilitating things just by repenting and so I am believing with you that going forward from this day forward you are enjoying the benefits of God in your life so please write to us and let us know your testimony well thank you for watching us today please like and share this video with other people also I want to remind you that God has a great plan for your life and it's so much bigger than you know God bless you