Chapter 19 - Healing

Regarding healing: The miracle in the flesh will perish, but the miracle in the spirit—to make us into living spirits—will last through eternal ages. Do you want deliverance or development?

People get these strange ideas that God always fits into the same pattern. He did not raise every corpse that was being buffed!

God reaches the basic need by a physical distress.

I am always healed in spirit first, before it ever touches my body.

Christ’s words are as much a miracle as His deeds. The very words He speaks are above the realm of nature and philosophy of man. The miracle of the Word is always above the miracle of the deed—it lasts for ages, but the deed only for time. When He works a miracle on my spirit, it abides through the eternal ages. The miracle on my body is only for time, and the miracle dies with me.

We must learn this: God does not always do the things which He is able to do. He doesn’t always want to do the things, because they are not always in His design and purpose. All things are possible, but all things are not always probable.

Now regarding the man who claimed all the promises for the healing of his mother of cancer, and, when it didn’t work, came to me asking, “Why?” He never once said, “What are You doing, Lord?” He was telling the Lord what he wanted the Lord to do! If he had spent five minutes before the Lord praying and asking Him to speak to his heart, and had said, “Lord, You give me a Word concerning this situation; I don’t know. You know all my natural human instincts and desires, but I don’t know what Your purpose is in this thing at all, because You have that situation relating to a great scheme of which I have no knowledge at all. What is Your will concerning this?” Then He will reveal His will to you, and always give you some Word of promise which will carry you. He has done that many times.—I have had to unlearn a lot I learned forty years ago; not because it was not scriptural, but the promise didn’t pertain to that particular situation.

Second Peter 1:4 says the promises are given to us. The promises are given to us; we don’t take them to Him. When the emergency comes, and the need comes, God, knowing us and the whole situation, will give us the Word. Now don’t try to get it the first minute; it isn’t like a ouija board: one, two, three, bumble bee, I want a promise all for me. . . And then we get one and it doesn’t work. Then we don’t like it, so we put it back in the box, and then we pull out another one, and we say, “Oh, the Lord spoke to me!”

God has HIS WORD, and He has a Word for every occasion, and, if we will be honest with Him, whether we like the Word He gives us or not, that is not the point. If we go to find a Word we like which we think will bridge the chasm, and then it doesn’t work; that is disastrous. He may give us a Word that we may really not relish very much, but when He gives it to us, we can take it, and go to God and say, “Oh Father, what is Your thought about this situation? Now, Father, I could find a lot of promises which I would like, but I don’t know how to use them, because I don’t know which one fits this. Now, speak to my heart.”

It will take us a while to get still, and whatever Word He has, I don’t care if it is the simplest thing, cherish that; hold it; that is fresh; a promise fresh from heaven, because God spoke it. We say, “Doesn’t he speak through His Word?” Yes, but the Word in itself is a dead thing. If we go and find the promises, they are all dead. They have to be enlightened by the Spirit of God. When God speaks a Word it has two qualities about it. The Word which God speaks into our hearts has faith already with it, and it is creative. As soon as that Word gets into our hearts, it begins creating; bringing life; it has power. But a Word which we pick (now it is The Word of God; don’t quarrel about that)—the one we pick has no life; no power. Let Him speak the Word; then we can go through with Him.