Living Boldly for Christ: Daily Reflections on Faith, Prayer & Spiritual Life by David Hathaway
Isaiah 53:5 says Jesus was wounded for our sin, bruised for our iniquity and with His stripes we are healed. Matthew 8:16-17 says Jesus healed all that were sick to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. So healing is to fulfil Bible prophecy! I talk about Bible prophecy, I write about it in Prophetic Vision magazine, but part of Bible prophecy is healing the sick
I love to see God heal people that the doctors cannot help! To me, the real miracles of healing are when doctors have tried to heal and failed, then God takes over and by a miracle does what the most expert of doctors cannot do. I have seen many people healed of broken bones and the effects of accidents, especially young people, and many other young ones born blind, deaf, crippled, where medical science can do nothing.
If you think like that, you will not be healed. No, just as God forgives sin, instantly, He wants to heal you, NOW! God loves you! When Jesus healed the blind man the religious leaders asked, ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents?’ Jesus said neither! If God were to punish us now for every sin or mistake, then every one of us would be dead, including me!
We’ve got to search for God and find Him right where we are! If you think my life as an evangelist is easy, I can disillusion you! Some people say they want to be like me, but if they knew the truth, they wouldn’t want to! When I had the lung cancer I had a very busy schedule – don’t ask me how much I fasted, how much I prayed. When you know you have only a short time to live, you learn how to pray!
If you want to meet with God, you don’t have to wait until you have done this or that. I would never have become an evangelist, never seen a miracle of healing if God had waited until I was perfect before He answered my prayers. I call on God, He deals with me where I am. That’s why I was healed, not because I was ‘holy’. What God looks at is the deep desire of your heart.
It is easy for us as believers to read and hear about the stories in the Bible without personally identifying with them. But if God did these things in the past, why not believe for them today? Some Christians would dismiss miracles like speaking in tongues and healing by saying either that these were in the past, or that they were ‘dispensational’, that they can only happen at certain times! The real truth is that they do not want these things to happen, it would disturb the religious ‘order’ of their lives!
God has given us so many promises, it is not presumptuous to accept them by faith, then go and take them. Too many sit and wait, asking, and never receiving. I remember as a boy the time when I wanted to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The old believers said, ‘Wait, we must have waiting meetings.’ But I am impatient and soon became tired of waiting. I said, ‘Easter is coming, I will go to London to one of the big conventions and not return until I receive.’ With that positive attitude I went – and received.
The Lord has given you the land! Possess it! Go in armed ready for war!’ (Deuteronomy 3:18). It is God’s command, not a request, to go and take the land! I see this as a challenge in my personal life as well as in my ministry in Russia. Many ask why I see miracles of healing, thousands repent, and revival comes.
Today it’s time that we began to rise up and recognise the power and authority that we have in Jesus’ Name. Power to preach a life-changing Gospel, power to bring healing miracles in order that He might receive the glory, and so that we as ‘ordinary’ people might have something dynamic to demonstrate in our lives! When Jesus healed the paralytic man (Matthew 9:6) He said, ‘So that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth... rise up and walk!’ Today we must become men and women of action to continue the demonstration begun by Jesus, so that non-believers will desire to have what we have!
The message to all of you listening is one of comfort – especially for those who have lost loved ones: a mother, a father, even a child. Before Jesus died, He promised that after three days, He would rise again. And on the third day, He came out of the grave – He is alive. This is the assurance that there is life after death for all who believe in Him.
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