Many churches say, "We believe in healing," but they don't believe in healing in a way that will help anyone receive it. Many times, what they mean is, "We believe that God heals today, but we do not believe that God wants to heal everyone of everything in every case." Or perhaps they mean, "We believe that God heals today through the gifts of the Spirit, but we do not believe that healing was provided in Christ's atonement." I submit to you boldly that if you don't believe that healing was provided in Christ's atonement, you have insufficient faith to be healed. If you aren't sure that God is willing to heal everyone, you can never be sure that God is willing to heal anyone.

This is not a little side point. It is a monumental, major big deal. It makes the difference between getting healed and staying sick.

If you don't believe that Jesus was made sick in your place to redeem you from sickness, you have no basis for faith for your healing. Faith and question marks are incompatible. If there is any doubt in your mind that you receive your healing when you pray, you have failed the qualifications to receive from God in James 1:5-8, and you must not think that you will get anything from God. (Don't get mad at me for saying that; I'm just quoting James!)


If there is no promise in the Bible that you can use to support your belief for your healing, you are not in faith, because faith comes by hearing the word of God. It's that simple. Faith must be based on a specific promise or statement of God. It is not a free-floating thing that just tries to believe something.

If you don't believe that healing was provided in Christ's atonement, you cannot be sure that God ever wants to heal anyone, including you. Your only choice is to try to get a special revelation from God of whether or not he wants to heal you, and whether or not he wants to do it now. This is doomed to fail, because God has already given you his Word on the matter, and you cannot expect a special revelation of this any more than you can demand a special revelation of whether God wants you to walk in love. You have no sure way of ministering to the sick if you believe that God can make exceptions. Therefore, you can't be sure that God wants to heal any particular sick person on whom you lay hands. You are ministering in hope but not in faith. You can't possibly fulfill James 5:14-16 and pray the prayer of faith, because faith is based on the Bible.


If you do get anything from God without believing that Christ took your sicknesses to redeem you from them, you may lose your healing and not get anything the next time you need healing. You will have no Scripture to confront the devil with when you are attacked, which you will be, just as surely as you are reading this. You need Scripture, not just prayer, to run the devil off. If you can't respond the way Jesus did to the devil's attacks -- by saying, "It is written" and quoting what is written -- you are firing blanks at the devil and he knows it.

I am not trying to be mean by making this point so boldly. I want to shock you into reality so that you don't kid yourself about where you stand for your healing. Unless you know that you have Biblical proof that God is not only able, but also willing, to heal you now, you are not in faith and you are in no position to get healed. This needs to be presented boldly because so many people think they're in faith for healing when they're not, and then we who preach healing as a covenant right get a bad name because "So-and-so was really in faith for his healing and he died of cancer anyway." That is why we must preach boldly that Christ bore both sin and sickness. A watered-down gospel designed to please men (even Christian men) will have watered-down results. Don't think that you'll get along with everyone when you start preaching this. People will fight you for their right to stay sick.


But when you know that Jesus bore your sicknesses for you, you understand that you do not need to bear sickness in your body. You understand that sickness is illegal, and that it is trespassing in your body, which is a blood-bought member of Christ. You know that you were healed by a completed act that cannot be nullified by the sum total of the devil's attacks or pallets of anti-healing books. You know that because God has legally healed you already, he will have only one possible answer for you -- "YES" -- when you come to him to receive that healing. You know that God not only paid for your healing, but he is currently offering it to you. He doesn't have to whip something up or do anything new for you. The work, as Christ declared, is finished. You need only receive what is already offered to you freely.


In short, you know that you know that total physical healing belongs to you as a Christian, and that you don't have to settle for anything less. You can boldly declare your healing before God and the devil alike.

If this is not what your church teaches, it does not really believe in healing. If this is not what you believe, you do not really believe in healing. Check yourself. The test is simple: Can you declare on the basis of God's unchangeable Word that you have the right to receive your healing now? You can only believe that healing is for you if you believe that healing is for all, and you can only believe that healing is for all if you believe that healing was included in Christ's atonement.

Sure, you and your church may have sporadic success getting the sick healed through God's mercy and through the gifts of healings and working of miracles and special faith talked about in 1 Cor 12:8-11. But you won't be very successful unless you give people something to trust other than the gifts of the Spirit. People need to know that healing is legally theirs because Christ bore their sicknesses and diseases in their place. Anything short of unqualified preaching of this part of the gospel will result in wavering, doubting and unbelief on the part of the people, which in turn will result in many people staying sick because they are improperly instructed.