The other night I went with Dennis Arrevelo, our worship leader at Centro de Fuego, to Huachipa, outside of Lima. We have a fellowship out there that’s a part of our network, or covering, and we make a habit of going out there and encouraging them, often times preaching or teaching something to the whole group of maybe 30 to 40 or so who come out. Since I’m still at the stage where I can talk Spanish, but still need an interpreter if I want my preaching to hit the mark, we tag teamed a little bit. Dennis shared first something on the heart of God, and then afterward I came and shared something a little along the lines of Jesus’ Eyes of Fire, similar to the previous post I shared.
I thought the direction we were going in was on the love of God and encouraging in that regard, but it was obvious that it was time to do an altar call and invite people forward to repent of anything in their life God needed to purify them of. After a little hesitation, one man came forward, and then another 8 or 9. We prayed with them, and let them spend time alone before God dealing with whatever they needed to deal with before him. But what I want to share is something that happened afterward, and I see happen all too often when believers are seeking healing.
Dennis invited people forward if they needed healing in their body, and a few did. I approached the man closest to me and asked him what he needed prayer for, and he told me he had tremendous pain in his back. I encouraged him to stand there and let me pray for him, but immediately I was distracted by his strong crying and sobbing and begging God to forgive him. I tried to encourage him to stop begging God to forgive him, not only for the reason that we don’t need to beg God to forgive us–He freely will if we seek after Him to! But because it was hindering his ability to just receive the healing he needed.
I tried encouraging him with this, but he proceeded to start telling me what he did (I didn’t understand it all because of how slurred and fast the Spanish was), but basically, if I have seen what happened that night once, I’ve seen it hundreds of times; people believing they’ve done something or many things so bad they needed some kind of extra special repentance session before God will forgive them. Stay tuned for a forth-coming post on erroneous things people believe about healing.
One of the passages in Scripture I get this from, is from the prayer of faith found in the fifth chapter of James:
Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. (chapter 5:14-15, ESV)
Did you notice that? In receiving prayer for the healing of your body, IF you have committed sins, they will be forgiven. Why? Because Jesus’ work on the cross was a salvation (deliverance) from both the curse of sin on the body and on the soul. This passage annoys our sensibilities, especially if we’ve done something so drastic that we have a hard time forgiving ourselves for it, it’s all the more difficult to accept that God will forgive us. Think of someone who has a sexually transmitted disease that they received from a promiscuous lifestyle. They get saved and come to know the Lord, and someone prays for them to be healed, and they DO get healed. I had a roommate in Bible college that such a thing had happened to him. Do you not think then, that if God healed their body, it’s a good indication that He always washed over their sin with the same blood that was spilled at Calvary?
Remember the paralytic that was lowered through the roof:
And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins“—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home. (Mark 2:5-11)
Dear saint, the forgiveness of sins is closely intertwined with the healing of the body. In fact, healing your physical body is the much easier of the two, so how much more so can we have confidence that when we go to go God, with our conscience weighing us down, that not only is he faithful and just to forgive us our sins, but we can be healed in our physical body as well? The problem is too many of us think it should be the other way around, and that we need to be forgiven first before we can get healed, but here’s Scriptures that show the two reversed.
Take heart and be encouraged! And by the way, when I prayed for my brother the other night, in the end he was smiling and rejoicing like he had an ‘aha’ moment, and claimed in the end that his back pain was all gone.
God is good!
