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The Door of Healing
July 30th, 2008 by 
Erik Rogers
This weekend, I had the pleasure of letting my wife Colleen give the message in our services. As usual, she brought a great word that was full of life. So, in case you missed it, I’d like to summarize it here.
God has the same heart to heal us today as He did for all those people that Jesus healed in the Bible. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. God does not change. He was the Healer long ago and He is still the Healer today. Yet today, either because of ignorance or unbelief, people often miss out on receiving healing.
So, is God still healing today? Is Jesus really who He said we was? If we want to answer these questions, we should ask the person that they’re about. And, we’ll find His answers if we go to the right source – God’s Word. Isaiah 53:5 says, “By his stripes we are healed.” And, 1 Peter 2:24 says, “By his stripes we were healed.” Notice that it says “were healed” – as soon as God thinks something it’s as good as done. From God’s perspective everything that needed to be done by Him for us to be healed was completed in Jesus. The promise is intact.
What is needed now is our participation in order for the promise to be delivered. You see, just like the people in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth, our doubts and unbelief cut us off from being able to receive. It’s almost like God needs our permission; He doesn’t force himself on anyone. Rather, He’s looking for us to trust Him. That is what opens the door of healing.
Now, if we want to keep the door open, there are two things we have to do: Sift and Stand. First, we have to sift, or filter out all our wrong beliefs and the lies that the enemy throws at us. Then, we have to stand on the truth of God’s Word The devil would love to close the door of healing in our lives, but if we learn how to take a stand, we can refuse him that opportunity.
Still, standing is not easy. There are a lot of things that contend against our healing such as our feelings, the facts, fear, failure or false information. In order to stand, we have to keep believing in God and what He says He accomplished in His Son. We must embrace truth and isolate ourselves from the lies that serve to undermine our faith. That’s why we have to keep God’s Word in front of us. It is the lens through which we must examine the validity of what we believe. It will tell us if what we’re thinking and expecting is right or wrong.
Because of that, we need to fall in love with it. What’s great is that as we do so, and as we find truth in it, we develop faith. Now, this is not just mental assent or agreement. Faith is when the truth connects with our spirits; when we have that “aha” moment; when, regardless of circumstances, we know that we know that God is our Healer.
To get to that place, God’s Word must become a part of us. How? Through meditation. I don’t mean some kind of crazy eastern meditation where you’re sitting there saying, “Ommmm,” or whatever. No, I’m talking about the definition of meditation: to revolve in the mind; to ponder; imagine; speak; utter. Meditating is not only thinking about something, but it is also engaging our mouths. When we start speaking what we believe, the revelation of His goodness becomes illuminated. Something amazing happens. We get the Word into us and that enables us to stand.
Now, this can work for us or against us depending on what we’re meditating about. So often we focus on and verbalize our feelings, circumstances, sicknesses, symptoms, etc., but that only takes us further down, deeper into sickness and doubt. On the other hand, if we will meditate on the truth of God’s Word, it will work out through us in the form of faith and move us toward healing. Through faith we give God permission to move in our life. It may not be instant, quite possibly it may be a process, but it is inevitable.
As you go through this process, I want you to be patient with yourself. You’ve had a lot of experiences. It takes time to let go of traditions, preconceived ideas or impressions left behind on our souls from disappointing experiences in the past. But, if you will continue to sift your beliefs and take a stand, you will come to the place where your spirit agrees with the Word and you’re convinced.
Then, if you want to receive healing, you must activate your faith. Receptivity involves tenacity not passivity! The devil wants to steal your healing. Are you going to let him take it, or go after what is yours and take it back? Sure, you can be lying in bed, you can have a disease, but it doesn’t have to have you! Don’t just let the enemy run over you. Stand. Take up the armor of God (see Eph. 6). Activate your faith. And take what God has promised you.
God wants you to have the experience of healing. Why? Because after you’ve had to stand for it, gone through the process, and then received healing, you’ll want to go out and tell others about it and share the experience with them. And that is just what God wants you to do. He wants all of us to live life with the Door of Healing wide open!
Posted in Pastor Colleen, Sermons, Uncategorized | 
1 Comment »
August 7th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Dear Pastor Colleen:
Your message on healing last week really touched my heart. You see, I lost my mother two years ago despite having prayed and prayed for her to receive healing. Many people stopped by her hospital room and prayed at her bedside. We all prayed for her healing for weeks and weeks. Yet despite all of our prayers on her behalf, God took her home.
After she died, I found myself with a lot of anger toward God. I kept on telling God how I knew He could have saved her and restored her, and the fact that He chose not to do so made me angry with Him. I had this anger toward Him for most of the past two years since she passed away. My mother was a school teacher and meant a lot to most of the people that she worked with. I could not believe that God would take away someone who meant so much to all the people that surrounded her. It has only been recently that my anger has subsided and I have begun to be at peace with God – not having an attitude of blame toward Him.
I had been living with the perspective that He just decided not to heal her, until last Sunday morning during second service. Then, that all changed. Toward the end of your message when you spoke to people, like myself, who had prayed for healing and had not received it for their loved ones, you spoke words that I had never heard before and that took away any anger toward God that I had left. When you said that God did something better for them than healing, that He gave them eternal life, I felt so at peace with my mother’s passing.
You see, toward the end of her life, my mother had a lot of personal pain that she did not know how to deal with, and unfortunately, she turned to alcohol to cope with her problems. This lasted for about 10 years. She was eventually admitted to the hospital when she developed Jaundice. She never recovered and passed away. However, she was fortunate enough to have some pastors come by and pray with her, so that if she didn’t make it, her soul would be ready. And, with this in mind, we never doubted that she made it to heaven. But, what I did not realize at the time was that this was God’s way of answering our prayers for her healing. He gave her the best healing He had to give, eternal life.
Thank you so much for your words, they mean a lot to me.
Carl Ketchum