Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be cured of your disease.”
Mark 5:34 (emphasis added)

There are at least seven times that Jesus said the faith of the person He was ministering to was the reason they were able to be healed. It wasn’t the perfect power of God. That was the source of the healing. It wasn’t the total faith of Jesus, that was the vehicle that brought the healing from heaven to the people. But the acceptance, the permission, the opening of the door, and the receiving of the healing was their faith. Their own faith. Had they not believed in totality, in truth, and in their deepest parts of their hearts, they would not have been healed. The source of the healing would have remained the same. The faith of Jesus would have remained the same. The healing touch would have been the same. But the non-acceptance of the healing would have pushed the healing away and they would have remained sick. Yahweh God the King of the Universe wants everyone well and whole. He’ll meet you where you are, infirmities will not hold you back, but His best is for you to be shalom: nothing missing, nothing broken.

We need to submit to Jesus who is the Christ one hundred percent. No cracks and crannies not looked in. Do you know who Jesus is? He IS the Bread of Life. He IS the Light of the World. He IS the Good Shepherd. He IS the Way and the Truth. He IS the True Vine. He IS the Door. And He IS the Resurrection and the Life. This is who you are to submit to. To break your ego and acknowledge that in Him and through Him ONLY do we do anything at all (John 15). Jesus embodies resurrection to life. Resurrection healing and restoring power able to take people from the grave itself and regenerate them unto life again. He IS life. He is the opposite of everything that sickness brings.

Proverbs 9:10-11 says that the reverence of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because it is by Him that our days are multiplied and our years increased. The Lord told Solomon “If you will walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days”” (1 Kings 3:14). Death and life are in the power of OUR tongue (Proverbs 18:21). These are not empty words. These are principles of the Kingdom of God. This is not about twisting the will of God around our finger. To defeat death or to force our will on or over our lives. No. This is about us walking in the longevity that the Lord wants for us. This is living according to His Will which is the Word of God. This is living in the total and absolute belief in the fact that if we live according to the principles of the Lord we WILL walk in His Righteousness and when we do there are things that are ours to claim and walk in. But if we aren’t living absolutely according to the principles of the Word — such as the total broken submission of ourselves to Jesus — then we are not in the spot where the Lord can bless us. It isn’t about whether God blesses or not. It is about us being where we can receive the blessing that the Lord is pouring out. It doesn’t matter if a rich man is pouring gold coins from his hand into a bucket if we are not there to catch them.

“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts. They, having become callous, gave themselves up to lust, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you didn’t learn Christ that way, if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4:17-24). First, this does not mean doctors are ignorant or foolish. They are blessed by God with wisdom. They know a lot about the natural issues of our natural bodies. But there is more to life than the natural and unless they are spirit-filled, they will be challenged with diagnosing or treating anything whose foundation is in the spiritual. That is why we need to lean on the understanding of the Lord (Proverbs 3:5-6). We are spirit beings.

Everything can and should be dealt with through our spiritual eyes and nature. That doesn’t mean the solution is always in the spiritual — God is not excusing us from work or exercise only toil and bondage. It DOES mean that if we approach things in the spiritual, the Holy Spirit can reveal to us the truth of the situation and lead us to where we can receive our solution (no matter whose hands and methods have it). But the Spirit will honour our honouring of the Lord and our obedience to His Will. He will meet us where we are even as He is prodding us to move to where the Lord’s best is.

It is so important for us to not walk in ignorance because “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may be no priest to me. Because you have forgotten your God’s law, I will also forget your children” (Hosea 4:6). We need to not forget the Word. To not forget the principles of Righteous living that we are called to. “My son, attend to my words. Turn your ear to my sayings. Let them not depart from your eyes. Keep them in the centre of your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to their whole body. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:20-23). This is not just a principle. It is also a command and a promise. Things can be more than one thing. This is especially true of the Word. We have a multi-faceted God. His Word is also multifaceted. That is why it takes renewal by Him through the Word for us to comprehend it and why every time we read it we come across new things to learn. It is living and breathing and ever ready to visit our minds and spirits with revelation.

You may scoff when you read these things. You may say that they are just principles of living. Man-made proverbs and sayings pointing to a way of living. A path we follow toward our ultimate sanctification in heaven. But I was struggling with sickness once. Nothing major, but it wanted to become major — as all sickness does. I was praying and meditating and declaring and doing everything I knew how. But I was still finding it necessary to take medicine and I was feeling like a failure. God said two things to me. First, He told me I wasn’t a failure and to stop beating myself up about it. No one runs a marathon right away. Training is needed in every aspect of life and renewal in the Word is no different. I asked what I could do to help. What was I missing? That’s when He told me the second thing. By picture. It was a clear picture of me reading large swaths of the Word. With intent. Not just reading, but feeding on it. The thing I was missing was the vital ingredient. I wasn’t relying on the Word for my sustenance. And if I am not retraining my spirit and mind with the Word on a regular basis, if I am not remoulding my Self to be next to Him and dwelling in Him, how can I expect to hear Him when He guides me? To hear the verse to stand on. To hear ‘take an aspirin’. To hear ‘get the doctor to look at that’. To hear ‘pray over that’. I won’t know which way to walk if I’m not dialled in to His gateway.

The other way we suffer from lack of knowledge is that we forget a simple but powerful scriptural principle given to us by Jesus Himself: “The thief only comes to steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10a). Satan is a thief. His only purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy. He is going down. He has lost. As soon as the judgment was laid on him in Genesis 3:15, he was doomed. He may have legalistically wormed his way out from under immediate punishment, but ultimately he knows his goose is cooked. He’s trying to do as much damage as he can before he goes. It isn’t about bringing as many with himself as possible. It’s about denying God’s presence to as many as possible. To try and hurt God by attacking that which the Lord loves so dearly. Every sickness of every kind is given us by him or conditions he fostered. Every lie he can get us to swallow about our sickness and suffering is a victory for him. Every one of us he can separate from fellowship with the body of Christ is a victory for him. God doesn’t want us sick in any way ever. The devil always wants us sick in every way. This is a basic principle in the Word that you can see from Genesis to Revelation. If you’re not where God can protect you, you’re where you are under the judgment of the curse and enjoying its fruit. We need to stay where He can bless us.

He is more than just a fortress and a high place of active defence (Psalm 27). He is also the source of our victory. He is the Sovereign Lord. There is None like Him. “Behold, I have created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame, and forges a weapon for his work; and I have created the destroyer to destroy” (Isaiah 54:16). All the weapons of judgment are created by the servant of God who creates them. God is in charge of the very weapons that exist to bring judgment on any and every one. But the Lord God is also Sovereign. He has created the destroyer who can destroy those very weapons. If He says they are not to be used on you, they cannot be. That is next level protection. That is a perfect guarantee of safety – dominion over even the weapons of the battlefield.

“No weapon that is formed against you will prevail; and you will condemn every tongue that rises against you in judgement. This is the heritage of the LORD’s servants, and their righteousness is of me,” says the LORD” (Isaiah 54:17). Because God controls that which destroys the very weapons of war, we have an incredible resource in our toolbox. Our righteousness is in the Lord, given by Grace to us. It is our vindication in times of attack. By declaration of Yahweh, it is our legal right of inheritance. The enemy may want us to tolerate head colds, common colds, flus, and even viruses. But the Lord says no. No weapon formed to deform, defame, or denigrate us will survive the vindication of every aspect of our spirits, souls, and bodies. It is our right. We have a right to life. What did Jesus say He came for in John 10:10b? “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” That is a full-on promise of a standard of living that doesn’t include sickness. Our spirits are already renewed in Jesus. Why aren’t you receiving it for the rest of you? Not by effort. Not by earning it. By submitting to the Lord so that we can receive it.

“He said, “If you will diligently listen to the LORD your God’s voice, and will do that which is right in his eyes, and will pay attention to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I am the LORD who heals you”” (Exodus 15:26). This doesn’t mean that God is going to lay plagues on you. When the tenth plague came on Egypt the Lord Himself descended to earth. Not to kill anyone, but to prevent death from touching anyone covered by the blood sacrifice (Exodus 12:23). Even in times of judgment the Lord is protecting us. God is all about saving lives. No, this verse means if you’re abiding in Jesus, if you are living in God’s yard, then you are where He can help you. Bless you. Protect you. If you stray out from that protection, you will be where the plagues are. Where the judgments are. Where the protection is not. To stay in the yard, we need to stay in Jesus. We stay in Jesus by loving Him. Loving with all all-consuming love. A love that leaves no room for cheating. No room for straying. No room for bad habits. No room for Self. A love so strong we will not rest until we know the statutes and commands of the Lord. Until we have made them so much a part of us that we do them without thinking. Obeying because we want to express our love. True love is not in your words and songs. It isn’t in the wooing and the romance. It is in words and deeds. It is in the way you act and more so in the way that you choose not to act. The more healthily selfless it is, the purer and stronger your love.

But that whole thing has passed away, you say. When the last of the books of the New Testament were written and codified into the bible, the Apostolic age ended and the Pastoral Age began. All that healing and demonic deliverance stuff stopped. Tongues ceased. Miracles are no longer needed. We are just to plod along keeping each other company as we rest on the works the early church did. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that because of four verses. Three are directly connected and the last gives them true thrust.

“But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). This is prophetically looking forward to the Messiah on earth. To what He would accomplish. We think of it as what was done on the cross, because it is in the middle of a whole passage about the crucifixion and the violence that surrounded it. Messiah came when Jesus as the Word became flesh. But BEFORE He died on the cross. BEFORE He suffered beatings or direct betrayal, there is Matthew 8:16-17: “When evening came, they brought to him many possessed with demons. He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” Jesus fulfilled the verse in Isaiah BEFORE He died on the cross. He did it by physically healing sickness and casting out demons. While He was still in His earthly ministry. So this isn’t just a spiritual renewal and healing — which could ONLY be performed on and through the cross — but also a physical healing and deliverance (multi-faceted God, remember?). Isaiah led directly to Matthew which leads directly to 1 Peter 2:24 (and this is from the Lexham English Bible) “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we may die to sins and live to righteousness, by whose wounds you were healed.” Peter separates the two principles and declares them BOTH fulfilled. Spiritual salvation and renewal, driving off the sickness of sin and the curse. Also, physical in this world healing and renewal into how we were designed to work. The three verses create a whole package. A holistic view of how God sees us: shalom — nothing missing, nothing broken, spiritually and physically. And if you can accept Matthew 8 then you can be healed and claim wholeness today because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
This is consistent throughout the bible, throughout Jesus ministry, and throughout Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself for us. When there was a sin offering its blood was sprinkled on the altar seven times: “The priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before the LORD, before the veil of the sanctuary” (Leviticus 4:6). In the same way, Jesus shed His blood seven times for us to claim for us a total spiritual, emotional, and physical restoration and resurrection into a new life with Him.

First in the Garden of Gethsemane, breaking the curse of toil and destroying the sweat we had to shed to get anything from the earth. We were restored to simple, pleasing work to prosper in our efforts. Second He was struck in the face, breaking the spirits of slander and lies which disfigure our reputation and restoring our faces into mirrors reflecting the Father’s glory. Third He had His beard torn from His face. Jesus destroyed the altars of shame and low self-esteem, restoring us to honour. Fourth He was scourged on His back, taking thirty-nine stripes for the sickness and disease of the curse, breaking them off of us forever and restoring us to divine health. Fifth He had a crown of thorns shoved on His head, breaking the altar of poverty and restoring us to a mindset of blessing and prosperity in all we do. Sixth He had nails driven through His hands and feet. He restored us to success for projects and the ability to have a productive life, breaking the chains of the works of our hands and the productivity of our feet. And seventh, He was speared in His side. He gave birth in that moment, with blood and water, to His church. As the 1st Adam died, the Last Adam would be raised, restoring the broken-hearted into His Bride — mended and sorrowful no more.

Again, you can claim that all these are just principles to live by. Guidelines for life written by wise men for our edification and application. Ways in which we can work at being moral. But that isn’t what they are at all. That’s a cop-out. That is opting out of all that Jesus got back for us and all that the Father intends for us and all that the Holy Spirit is here to guide and correct us into. These are the principles that teach you how to receive the promises of the Lord. If you reject that, yes, they will simply be principles to strive for. But if you accept the Word for what it is and all that it can be, they’re not only principles but a promise to claim. The difference is the revelation knowledge that the Spirit imparts to us as we get into the Word and study it. It comes from the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2). It comes from the life to our spirit and our flesh that the Word breathes into us. It comes from the sanctification that the Word creates into us by declaration and prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ to His Father for us: “Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth” (John 17:17). Which was a prayer of the Word — Psalm 119:142 — by Jesus to His Father. And we know Jesus only spoke and prayed the will of the Father. Which means that this is the Will of the Father for you. All of it. For you. If you have ears to hear, hear this. Believe this. Receive this.

Get into the Word and let it sanctify you into this. Walk in it. Every day. Meditate on it day and night. Think about it, read it, and listen to it. Don’t let it get far away from you. Not even an arm’s length. This is LIFE. This is RENEWAL. This is JESUS HIMSELF. Abide in Him. And begin to get revelation of all that He has for you. Begin to let yourself believe so that you can let Him teach you, renew you, and bring you into total conviction of all that the Father wants for you. It’s the process of sanctification that only the Word can accomplish and only if you let Him work in your life. Don’t put it off. Don’t wait until life calms down. THIS IS LIFE! The only life worth living: abundant life. Start today. Start now.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: 1 Peter 3:10-12

God keeps things simple. Not easy. Simple. There is a huge difference between those two concepts. Simple is readily understood and performed. Easy is causing or involving little difficulty or discomfort. God keeps things simple. He does NOT call us to that which is easy. He gives us His moral law. That which we must do if we are to be righteous. And He tells us that we can achieve it. That it is possible to do it in our deeds. But He also calls us to do it in our hearts. That is a trickier matter because we are all born without a righteous spirit. We are born with an inherent weakness to Self. It is only in Jesus, by Jesus, and through Jesus that we can keep the moral law of Yahweh God Almighty. It is only in being resurrected into Jesus’ Spirit that we can have righteousness restored. It is only by the indwelling guidance and correction of the Holy Spirit that we can master our flesh. But we can only truly hear the Holy Spirit and take His guidance and correction when we are renewed in our thinking and have our hearts full of the Word. It is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. And it is the mouth that speaks life or death. The mouth that is the instrument to perform our free will. The Word in our heart becomes the shofar that our spirit blows through our mouths to declare life in all we do and think and say according to how the Holy Spirit leads us. It is how Jesus did only what the Father showed Him and spoke only what the Father told Him to speak. Jesus was a human being just as we are. He accomplished it because of a righteous spirit, a heart full of the Word, and the Holy Spirit guiding Him. Since we died to our Self and were resurrected again into Jesus, we are the same pattern. We are called to do the same. By application of our mind to fill our heart. By letting the Word strengthen the faith God gives us so we can receive what He put in our spirit. By the bending of our ears to hear what Holy Spirit speaks. We can do it. How? Because it will be in Jesus, by Jesus, and through Jesus that we do these three things. In Jesus we access our renewed spirit — faith. By Jesus we hear what the spirit has to say — hearing. Through Jesus we are renewed — the Word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It is always about Jesus.

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.