Now here are some thoughts for the day! This is the record of an exchange with my dear friend and brother in Christ, David.
You are right, the gospel is about future glory – but not entirely is it? Is there nothing of it in our present lives?
I am not so sure that what we go through in this life, and of course what God knows we will go through, is of necessity God’s best for us and explained away by His undoubted sovereignty.
I believe God’s sovereignty in our lives allows for a range of options for the elect. His elect are not robots. God has given us brains capable of amazing creativity, rationalisation, understanding and application. At its best we have the mind of Christ. This again is not a statement of robotic conformance, but of the ability to think as He would think and therefore do what is righteous and just in every circumstance.
We see that Jesus healed all who came to Him. We see Jesus raising from the dead those who died before their time. We see Him express unequivocally His willingness to heal and we know He hasn’t changed, that He is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
Now clever people like you and me should be able to extrapolate that to the present day; but the truth is that the evil heart of unbelief is still at work in our flesh and dominates our unrenewed minds. Saving faith is a gift from God but continuing faith is something we have to work at according to the NT. We don’t, at least not in the true NT meaning of it. Smith Wigglesworth did, but even he didn’t have the faith for his own healing.
- Imagine if we did pray without ceasing.
- Imagine if we did give thanks in all things.
- Imagine if we did study regularly and often to show ourselves approved of God.
- Imagine if in between all this we sang psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
- Imagine if we truly rejoiced in the Lord from waking moment to waking moment.
- Imagine if we were always like the Bereans, checking and double checking everything from the scriptures that we might be sure these things are so.
- Imagine if we were properly renewed in the spirit of our minds.
- Imagine we regularly built ourselves up by praying in the Holy Spirit.
- Imagine that we banished every evil and wicked thought and thought only on those things which were pure and lovely, admirable and praiseworthy.
- Imagine we submitted to God and resisted the devil 24/7.
- Imagine that we gave ourselves to understanding to the greatest degree humanly possible what it means to have weapons of warfare that are not carnal but mighty in God for …..
- Imagine what it really means to understand and walk in newness of life.
- Imagine what it really might mean to have abundant life, not in eternity, but in the here and now.
- Imagine if we prayed and fasted more as the disciples all did in the Book of Acts.
Imagine, imagine, imagine – “and I can do more than you can think or imagine according to the power that works in you.” Eph 3:20[br] [br]
David, I think we sell the Lord very short and consequently ourselves too. Humanity in its current form is so besotted and beset by the sin it carries, the sin that causes us to do what we don’t want to do etc.[br] [br]
But is it really just and scripturally correct to draw conclusions that the Lord won’t heal us today, or only if He wants to.[br] [br]
I’m not a wofer, but I cannot get around the scriptures that say ….[br] [br]
Ex 23:25 So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you.[br] [br]
Ps 103:2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
3 Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases,
4 Who redeems your life from destruction,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
5 Who satisfies your mouth with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.[br] [br]
Ps 107:37 He also brought them out with silver and gold,
And there was none feeble among His tribes.[br] [br]
Ps 107 and Ex 23 are without doubt physical healing. Ps 103 includes spiritual healing as well as physical.[br] [br]
Why do we explain these away? Why do we point to those who have not been healed, including Paul and Timothy, and say that healing is not for today, or for any time since the early church, and that God doesn’t heal everyone? Why do we let the evidence of the circumstances overwrite the good report of the Word of God?[br] [br]
Why do we deny the Word of God, or worse, say it means something else other than its plain meaning?[br] [br]
We elect fulfil all the conditions for healing placed upon the Israelites because we are in Christ, so why are we not seeing the manifestation?[br] [br]
I’ll tell you why! Because we don’t know or understand or really care what it means to have the power to become a son of God. We are happy jogging along hand in hand with our spiritual idleness and our evil heart of unbelief.[br] [br]
I speak for myself, of course.[br] [br]
This is very encouraging! Thank you so much posting again, look forward to further insights.
J