But you can renounce known sin and you can walk so as to please God. You can judge yourself and put away all that God shows you to be wrong. The moment you do this you are forgiven.
Do not wait to feel forgiveness or joy, but let your will be wholly turned to God, and believe at once that you are accepted. Then “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having [your heart] sprinkled from an evil conscience and [your body] washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22).
It is quite vain for you to try to exercise faith for yourself or others in the face of willful transgression and in defiance of the chastening God has meant you should respect and yield to. But when you receive His correction and turn to Him with a humble and obedient heart, He may then graciously remove the pain and make the touch of healing the token of His forgiving love.
“The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:15-16).
Fourth, commit your body to God and claim by simple faith His promise of healing in the name of Jesus. Having become fully persuaded of the Word of God, the will of God and your own personal acceptance with God, now appropriate your healing. Do not merely ask for it, but humbly and firmly claim healing as His covenant pledge, as your inheritance, as a purchased redemption right. Claim it as something already fully offered you in the gospel and waiting only your acceptance to make good your possession.
There is a great difference between asking and taking, between expecting and accepting. You must take Christ as your Healer–not as an experiment, not as a future benefit, but as a present reality. You must believe that He does now, according to His promise, touch your life with His almighty hand and quicken the fountains of your being with His strength.
Do not merely believe that He will do so, but claim and believe that He does now touch you and begins the work of healing in your body. And go forth counting it done, acknowledging and praising Him for it.
From that moment, doubt should be regarded as absolutely out of the question and even the thought of retreating to old “means” inadmissible. God has become the Physician, and He will not give His glory to another. God has healed, and all human attempts at helping would imply a doubt of the reality of the healing.
Fifth, act your faith. To the paralyzed man, Jesus commanded, “‘Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house'” (Mark 2:11). Not to show your faith or display your courage but because of your faith begin to act as one who is healed.
Treat Christ as if you trusted Him by attempting in His name and strength what would be impossible in your own. He will not fail you if you really trust Him and continue to act your faith consistently and courageously. But it is most important that you not do this on human faith or word.
Do not rise from your bed or walk on your lame foot because somebody tells you to do so. That is not faith but impression. God will surely tell you to, but it must be at His Word.
If you are walking with Him and trusting Him, you will know His voice. Your prayer, like Peter’s, must be, “Lord … bid me come unto Thee on the water,” and He will surely bid you if He is to heal you.
Sixth, be prepared for trials of faith. Do not look necessarily for the immediate removal of the symptoms. Do not think of them. Simply ignore them and press forward, claiming the reality back of all symptoms.
Remember the health you have claimed is not your own natural strength, but the life of Jesus manifested in your mortal flesh. Therefore, the old natural life may still be encompassed with many infirmities, but back of it and over against it is the all-sufficient life of Christ to sustain your body. “You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
But Christ is your life (v. 4), and “the life which [you] now live in the flesh [you] live by faith in the Son of God, who loved [you] and gave Himself for [you]” (Gal. 2:20). Do not, then, wonder if nature fails you. The Lord’s healing is not nature. It is grace. It is by the power of the risen Lord.
It is Christ who is your life. Christ’s body is for your body as His Spirit was for your spirit. Therefore, do not wonder if there should be trials. They come to show you your need of Christ and to throw you back upon Him.
To know this and so to put on His strength in your weakness and live in it moment by moment is the way of perfect healing. Then, again, trials always test and strengthen faith in proportion as it is real. Faith must be shown to be genuine so that God can vindicate His reward of it before the whole universe.
Seventh, use your new strength and health for God, and be careful to obey the will of the Master. This Christ-given strength is a very sacred thing. It is the resurrection life of Christ in you. And it must be spent as He Himself would spend it.
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