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
God said to me, ‘David, you’ve got a mountain in your life that you’ve got to move, and that mountain is to get that cancer out from your lung. I didn’t go to a healing evangelist, I went to the Word of God and God completely healed me – no operation, no treatment – I only had God and the Bible, and that’s all I needed to confound the doctors. They were shocked, they didn’t believe God. But I do, I believe in a God of power, of miracles.
I believe that with God, prevention is better than cure and we should not abuse our bodies, which can cause sickness. Often when people come to me for healing I can recognise, without being a doctor, that their problem is due to a wrong lifestyle. If you smoke, you are likely to get lung cancer; if you put on very excessive weight, you run the risk of diabetes and heart problems. These are facts. Yes, God can heal you, but I recommend that a healthy diet can mean prevention rather than cure.
The disciples came to Jesus privately and asked, ‘Why couldn’t we heal him?’ Jesus did not compromise, He said, ‘Lack of faith!’ – not on the part of the child, but the disciples. It does not take enormous faith, but the child-like, seed-like faith of a simple believer to move mountains. I know, because I have commanded ‘mountains’ and seen them move many times! Jesus preached the Gospel – so I do; Jesus healed the sick – so I do. In the Bible Jesus said simply, ‘Preach the Gospel, heal the sick.’
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!
Isn’t sickness part of the cross we must carry? The cross that Jesus carried was not sickness but rejection, torture and death. The cross He asked us to carry is not sickness, but the persecution, hardship, rejection and even death that follow being His disciples and preaching His Gospel (Matthew 10:38; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; 14:27).
How do you recognise God? How do you find Him? What is the evidence of God’s existence in the Bible? It’s the fact that He’s a God of miracles, who answers prayer, when it takes a miracle! This is the reality! This is the God we’re looking for: a God who answers all who call on Him, by miracles, by signs, by wonders. This is the evidence! Take the miraculous out and you destroy the reality of who God is. You make Him no different to men!
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!
Possess the promises of God. So many believers are without power because they don’t understand the promises and power of God to those who believe. Don’t just take ‘spiritual’ blessings – take the land, possess what you need in the material realm as well. When Israel went in, it meant war, a spiritual fight, but it also meant that they could have the milk and the honey, all their material needs supplied.
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!
Everything in the Bible can happen today! Don’t limit God. I want to challenge you to a new kind of faith. We are commanded to go in and possess all the blessings which God has promised. Get into the Word of God, search for and mark every promise that you want in your life in red – then every promise you don’t want, cross it out – no, NO!! I want you to have the faith to go and take them ALL! I hear Christians saying I can’t – but my Bible says I can do all things through Christ.
I have Christ IN me and I have the Holy Spirit IN me! That is the secret of fifty years of miracle ministry. I do not want any new Gospel – I want the Bible-believing, miracle-working, powerful Gospel according to God’s Word! You can pray for an easy life, ask Him to prevent the problems, ask for a quiet time... but that means where there are no problems, there are no miracles!
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!
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