Healing

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Praise the Lord!  I'm new around here.  I'm a Pentecostal Afro-American.  I
work for the St. Paul Fire Dept on Ladder 24 (http://www.stpaul.gov/depts/fire)

Question:  If someone gave you a gift handing you the receipt with it, and
later the store where the gift was purchased sent you a bill for the gift,
how would you feel?  What would you do?  You would probably resist by taking
the receipt to the store.  You would let them know the item was already paid
for and you had no intention of paying again!  But do you accept the bill of
sickness as though healing had not been paid for? You have the receipt, if
you have a Bible, for healing and a long list of other things. But how do
you resist paying again for them when Satan presents a demand for payment?
Just how are the demands of hell denied?

I spent 3 hours typing this article from the "Believer's Voice of Victory"
magazine from Kenneth Copeland Ministries.  It's a free publication.  I'd
like to know what you think. God bless you.

The Great Exchange
by Kenneth Copeland

Believer's Voice of Victory Magazine, February 1996

Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Fort Worth, Texas
76192
ph: (817) 489-3717

YOUR DAYS OF SICKNESS AND DISEASE ARE OVER.  I'll never forget the day God spoke
those words in me.  It was some of the best news I'd ever heard.  I believed
it and have been walking in the glorious truth of it for more than 25 years now.

If you're sitting there right now, wishing God would say those same words to
you, I have good news for you: He has.

He has said it to every one of us.

He said it with such power and force that it made hell tremble and heaven
ring.  He wrote it in the covenant blood of His own Son.  He shouted it down
through the ages through prophets and apostles and preachers.

The problem is most Christians haven't truly heard it.  They haven't let it
reach down into their hearts and become truth to them.  God has said
it...but they haven't yet believed.

If that is the case with you today, I want you to know that what you are
about to read can change that forever.  If you will take this message, study
it our in the scriptures and see for yourself that it is the truth, if you
will dare to believe it and act on it, it will not only change your heart,
it will change your body.

This one message will forever alter how you see sickness and disease.  It
will put to rest every doubt about God's will for your healing and open the
door of divine health to you.

A Supernatural Substitution

What message could possibly be that powerful?

Only one.  The message of the Cross.

If you're a believer, you've already experienced how life-changing that
message can be. When you first received it by faith, the anointing of God in
it snatched you out of the kingdom of darkness and delivered you into the
kingdom of the light of God's Son.  It changed your eternal destination from
hell to heaven.  It transformed you spiritually and made you a new creation.
Think of the power it released in your life!




Yet the fact is, most of us have understood only a tiny fraction of what was
accomplished at Calvary.  We have only begun to grasp all that was done for
us in that Great Exchange.

I like the phrase, The Great Exchange, because the Spirit of the Lord gave
it to me, and it captures what happened during Jesus' death and
resurrection.  It communicates that Jesus did more than pour out His life to
pay the penalty for our sin, He actually was made "to be sin for us, who
knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2
Corinthians 5:21).

To understand how all-encompassing The Great Exchange truly was, you have to
realize that the word sin there does not just refer to what we'd normally
think of as religious errors.  It includes everything in our lives that
falls short of the glory and perfection of God's original design (see Romans
3:23).

If you want to see that original design, look back at the Garden of Eden.
What you'll find is a man and a woman living in unbroken fellowship with
Almighty God, untouched by sickness, grief or poverty, and exercising
dominion over the whole earth.

Religion has tried to cheapen what Jesus did for us by teaching that He only
brought forth a partial redemption--that He freed us only from the eternal
damnation caused by sin and not from its damnable effects in the here and
now.  But thank God, that is not the case.

Calvary was the most complete event that has ever taken place.

God left nothing out of it.  Not one cursed thing that came about through
mankind's union with Satan was left standing.  Jesus triumphed over it all.
By taking upon Himself every foul thing that fallen man has ever suffered.
He set us free--spirit, soul, and body.

He became our substitute.  He became poor, that we might be rich (2
Corinthians 8:9).  He became weak so that we might be strong.  He endured
death so that we might be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22).  He "bare our
sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live
unto righteousness: by whose stripes [we] were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

A Mystery Hidden in God

Notice there that Peter lists redemption from sin, and healing in the same
breath.  So does Psalm 103.  It says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all
that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth
all thy diseases" (verses 1-3).

All through the Bible, healing and forgiveness go together like had and
glove,  God does not separate them.  The reason is simple.  They are not
separate!






Just as sickness entered the world through Adam's sin, healing came when
Jesus paid the price for that sin.  To believe otherwise would be tantamount
to saying that what God did in Jesus on the cross was less powerful than
what the devil did in Adam in the Garden of Eden.  That could not possible
be so!  For Romans 5:15 assures us:

God's free gift is not at all to be compared to the trespass--His grace is
out of all proportion to the fall of man.  For if many died through one
man's falling away--his lapse, his offense--much more profusely did God's
grace and the free gift [that comes] through the undeserved favor of the one
Man Jesus Christ [the Anointed One], abound and overflow to and for [the
benefit of] many (The Amplified Bible)

In other words, what God accomplished through redemption not only equaled
what Satan
accomplished through the Fall...It far surpassed it!

I'll admit, judging by the sickness-ridden, poverty-plagued, defeated lives
of many Christians, it may not seem like redemption did much more than save
us from hell by the skin of our teeth.  But that's because for the most
part, we don't have any idea what really happened at Calvary.  And that lack
of knowledge has destroyed many precious Christian lives.

"Well now, Brother Copeland, I know what happened at Calvary.  I've read
every gospel account of it."

That may be so, but quite frankly, you can't find out what really happened
there strictly by reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  For one thing,
those books contain very little information about the Crucifixion.  And for
another thing, the men who wrote them had viewed it from a natural
perspective.  They didn't understand it themselves at the time it happened
because it was a mystery hidden in God (see 1 Corinthians 2:6-8).

To see the Crucifixion from God's perspective, you must read what the
prophet Isaiah wrote about it.  For God revealed to him not just the
physical facts, but also the spiritual truths of what actually occurred the
day Jesus died for us.  You can find what he wrote in Isaiah 53:

Surely He has borne our griefs--sickness, weakness and distress--and carried
our sorrows and pain [of punishment].  Yet we ignorantly considered Him
stricken, smitten and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].  But he was
wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities;
the chastisement needful to obtain peace and well-being for us was upon Him,
and with the stripes that wounded Him we are healed and made whole (verses
4-5, (The Amplified Bible).






Some theologians have tried to rob this passage of its full power by
teaching that the healing it refers to is merely spiritual healing.  But the
gospel writer Matthew makes it clear that they are mistaken.  For in Matthew
8:17, he quote this very passage and applies it to the healing ministry of
Jesus in which people were cured of every kind of physical sickness and disease.

The following scripture was not included in the article but is listed here
for your benefit:

Matthew 8:16 When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were
possessed with
devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were
sick:
Matthew 8:17 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the
prophet, saying. Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
(King James Bible)

Matthew 8:16 When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought
to him, and
he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.
Matthew 8:17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

"He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases."

(New International Version)

Back to the article:

With that said, look back at those scriptures again.  Do you see there where
it says He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities...and with the stripes
that wounded Him we are healed?  If you were to look up the Hebrew words
that have been translated bruised and stripes, you'd find out that they both
come from the same word saying He was bruised for our iniquities and with
those bruises we are healed.

That means healing and forgiveness of sin was bought by the same blood that
poured from the same wounds on Jesus' body.  He paid the same awesome price
for them both.  He took on His own body every sickness and infirmity of
every man just as He took on Himself the sin of every man.  He suffered the
torments of them all so that we could be free of them all.

The very thought of it staggers the mind.  Just imagine, for a moment, if
someone were to take every illness ever experienced by anyone in your
city--everything from hangnails to the measles to cancer--and put them on
one person all at once.  It's hard to even think of such a thing, isn't it?
We've never seen anybody that sick!






Imagine that same person must also take into his spirit every sin ever
committed by anyone in your city.  Violence, adultery, perversion, murder,
hatred, jealousy, resentment--all of it must enter into him at once.  Can
you imagine what that would do to someone?  Sin is powerful!  It will change
the color of a person's hair.  It will twist their countenance.   It will
darken the light in their eyes.

Now expand that picture to include the sicknesses and sins of every man,
woman and child who will ever live on this planet.  Of course, you cannot
imagine such horror.  But if you could, you would be able to see the awful
price Jesus paid for us at Calvary.

Isaiah described the sight of it, saying, "[...the Servant of God became an
object of horror; many were astonished.]  His face and His whole appearance
were marred more than any man's, and His form beyond that of the sons of
men." (Isaiah 52:14, The Amplified Bible).

The weight of all that sin and sickness on one man was so heavy it rocked
the earth.  It was so terrible the sun refused to shine on it.  No wonder
the Roman centurion who witnessed Jesus' crucifixion said, "Truly this man
was the Son of God" (Mark 15:39).  He had never seen a man die like that.

"If It Be Thy Will"

In the light of such a sacrifice, it is as grievous to the heart of God for
us to pray, "If it be Thy will, heal me," as it is for us to say, "If it be
Thy will, save me."  God revealed His will once and for all when He laid our
sicknesses on Jesus.  Giving us that revelation cost Him dearly.  Once, when
He spoke to me of Calvary, He said, It is as close to Me as if it had
happened today.  It is burned into My consciousness.

How dare we, then, ignore what happened there and tell some sick brother
that it is God's will for him to be sick a little longer so he can learn
something?

Isaiah 53:10 says, "It was the will of the Lord to bruise Him, He has put
Him to grief and made Him sick." (The Amplified Bible)  If it was the will
of God to bruise Him and make Him carry our sicknesses, how can it be the
will of God to bruise us and make us carry those same sicknesses again?  It
can't be!  That would be a travesty of divine justice!

If you want to see just how repulsive such a thought really is, switch
things around for a moment.  Think what your reaction would be if a fellow
believer came to you and said, "Yesterday I got so drunk, I could hardly
walk.  Then I beat my wife and my kids.  After that I robbed a gas station.
But don't blame me for it.  God put that sin on me to teach me something."

The very concept is revolting, isn't it?  You would never tolerate it.
You'd shut it down immediately.  "Friend," you'd say, "you have the wrong
idea.  Jesus shed His precious blood to deliver you from sin.  So if you
choose to let it into your life, don't blame it on Him because it's not His
fault!"




You may think that's an absurd example.  You may think no one could ever be
that foolish.  But, the truth is, there were people in the Apostle Paul's
day who preached that very thing.  They went around saying that Paul's
message of grace meant that we ought to sin so that grace could be shown.

That sounds silly to us today because we know that sin is repugnant to God
He hates it.

It's high time we realized that He hates sickness in the same way.  Listen,
sin, sickness and disease all came out of the same pit at the same time!
God hates it when some devilish germ gnaws the life out of the body of one
of His precious children.  He designed and formed that body with His own
band out of the dust of the earth--and He made it perfect.  How do you think
He feels when He sees it twisted and tormented, bringing grief not only to
the sufferer, but also to all those who love him?

Don't you ever let anyone tell you that God likes that.  He is a Father--not
a monster! Such suffering could never be His will.

If by some convoluted stretch of the religious imagination we could decide
it is His will for us tobe sick, then we'll have to put the hospital and the
beer joint in the same category.  We'll have to condemn every doctor and
every nurse for trying to thwart God's will.

"Now, Brother Copeland, that's stupid."

Yes, it is!  Religious tradition is always stupid.  It makes men believe
things in church they'd never believe on the street.  It makes them sit in a
pew and agree with a preacher who says we learn from sickness and pain.  "Oh
yes, amen!" they'll say.  But if that same preacher were to take a hammer,
go down to the school and start knocking kids in the head to help them learn
better, those same, Amenners would have him arrested!

Healing Always Comes

Of course, some sincere-hearted believers have gotten confused about healing
because they've seen or heard of instances where a good Christian didn't
receive it.  We've all heard the stories.  "Well, healing couldn't be
included in redemption because Sister So-and-So who taught Sunday school
every week for 65 years got sick and God didn't heal her."

I want you to know something about those stories: They are lies.  Granted,
those who tell them usually don't realize it, but they are lies just the same.

I realize that's a shockingly blunt statement, but the Bible itself is just
that blunt. It says:

What if some did not believe and were without faith?  Does their lack of
faith and their
faithlessness nullify and make ineffective and void the faithfulness of God
and His fidelity {to His Word]?  By no means!  Let God be found true though
every human being be false and a liar (Romans 3:3-4, The Amplified Bible).

God has made his word plain to us.  He has said, "By His stripes we are
healed."  He has said, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord
shall raise him up."  He has said, "[Jesus} Himself took our infirmities,
and bare our sicknesses" (Matthew 8:17).

God always keeps His Word.  Healing always comes.  The problem has been in
our receiving, not in God's giving.

Put that over in the realm of the new birth and you can easily see what I
mean,  The Bible says that by the righteousness of one, the free gift has
come upon all men (Romans 5:18).  Jesus has already gone to the cross and
been raised from the dead.  He has reconciled us to God and made
righteousness available to every person on the face of the earth.

Therefore, it always comes.  To whom?  To anyone who will obey the
instructions in Romans 10:9-10? "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved.  For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

Healing comes to the same people.  It comes to those who will believe in
their heart that Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead to purchase
their healing.  It comes to those who ill open their mouths in faith and
say, "Glory to God, I receive it.  I am healed!"

Actually, if you could read that verse in the Greek, you'd see that it
pertains to healing just as surely as to the new birth because the Greek
word sozo, which is translated saved, literally means to be made sound, to
be delivered from every form of sickness and danger, both temporal and eternal.

What Do You Think Would Happen?

"But if receiving healing is as simple as receiving salvation," you ask,
"why are so many Christians still sick?"

First and foremost, it's because the truth about healing has not been
consistently preached.  Since "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
Word of God" (Romans 10:17), our failure to teach the fullness of the gospel
has left many Christians without enough faith to heal a headache--much less
cure cancer.

You know there was a time not so very long ago when it was just as tough to
get people born again as it is to get them healed today.  It's true!
Religious tradition had convinced people that salvation just couldn't be
obtained by the average person.  But then, praise God, people like Dwight L.
Moody came on the scene and started preaching the new birth.  They started
telling people that Jesus bore their sins and if they'd receive the gift of
salvation in simple faith, they'd be born again!

Whole denominations like the Baptists preached that message to everything
that would stand still.  You'd hear it in every church service.  If you
walked in the door and admitted you weren't saved, somebody would grab you
and say, "Jesus died for your sins, man!  You don't have to stay in that
condition.  Just trust Him, receive Him as  your Lord and He'll save you
right now.  Then He'll take you to heaven when you die!"

Praise God for all those precious Baptists and every other denomination like
them!  They
preached the new birth until getting saved seemed like the easiest thing in
the world.

Now what do you think would happen if everyone picked up on the truth about
healing in that
same way?  What do you think would happen if every born-again believer in
town started
knocking on doors and having testimony meetings and revival meetings and
telling everyone they meet a thousand times over, "Hey, man! Jesus bore your
sicknesses and carried your diseases!  You don't have to suffer with that
cancer.  Just trust Jesus and He'll heal you.  He does it every time!"

I can tell you what would happen.  Healing would become as common as the new
birth and we'd wonder why we had so much trouble with it for so long!

What's more, in that environment, if someone prayed for healing and then
said, "I don't think I got anything.  I don't feel any better," do you know
what they'd be told?  The same thing people are told today when they don't
"feel" saved.

Some mature believer would pull them aside and say, "Now listen, here.  You
can't go by
feelings.  You have to do this by faith.  If you wait until you feel
something to believe you're saved (or healed), you'll never be able to receive!"


Start Your Own Healing Revival

If you're sitting there right now wishing such a healing revival would
begin, stop wishing and start your own!  Dig into the Word.  Study and
meditate the truth about healing and the redemption.  Listen to tapes of men
and women of God who have the revelation of it.

Then start preaching.  Preach it to yourself.  Preach it to your children.
Preach it to your dog if he's the only one who will listen.  It probably
won't do much for him, but it will help you--and that's what matters.

If you'll do that, you'll eventually get to the point where you'll fight
sickness and disease the same as you do sin.  You'll be just as mean to
Satan when it comes to standing for the redemption of your body as you are
when it comes to the redemption of your spirit.

When he comes to you with symptom of sickness, you won't crawl up in the bed
and whine,
"Why does this always happen to me?"  You'll stamp your foot and say, "Glory
be to God, this body is off limits to you, Satan.  I refuse to allow you to
put that foul thing on my body after Jesus has already borne it for me.  So
you might as well pack it up and go home right now!"

I'm not saying it will be easy.  It won't be!  Not in this life.  Not in
this world.  Just as you don't live in victory over sin without putting
forth an effort, you can't  bumble along in life and have God just drop
healing in your lap.

No, you'll have to stand for it.  You'll have to fight the good fight of faith.



But don't let that scare you.  It's a fight you can win.  I know you can
because 2,000 years ago, Jesus gave you everything you'd ever need to win
it.  He took your weakness and gave you His strength.  He took your sin and
gave you His righteousness.  He took your sickness and gave you His health.
He took your every defeat and gave you His victory in its place.

You are the heir of the Greatest Exchange ever made.

Begin to live like it and this world will never be the same again.