Healing

The Lord Jesus is the Great Physician

The Lord Jesus never changes (Hebrews 13:8). Healing has always been part of covenant; it was true for Israel and it is true for those in the Church. However, healing is not the perfect will of God for your life -- divine health is. Brother Timmons has walked in divine health for over 42 years with no sickness or disease so this is a subject, like the devil's kingdom, about which we know a great deal.

Brother Timmons on Healing and Miracles:

In the "What we believe" section I mentioned the greatest thing I've ever learned about the Lord -- that He is who we believe Him to be. You can believe and trust Him as your Savior and be saved but if you don't trust Him to be your healer or Great Physician then He may not heal you; He wants to heal you, of course, and have you enjoy divine health -- that's promised in the Scriptures but you must appropriate the Word to receive healing just like you do for salvation.

We get many calls and emails every day from all over the world from people needing deliverance and healing. The first question we always ask them is: "What are you doing about it?" Just believing Jesus heals is no guarantee He will heal you even though He wants to. You can believe with your "head" and still not believe with your heart (true faith). Hopefully, we can explain this so that you're not confused but we've found from experience that the hardest people to get healed are Spirit-filled Christians who know that God still heals. For example, almost all of the people we've prayed for who were healed of terminal cancer were not Spirit-filled Christians. Most Spirit-filled Christians with terminal cancer normally die even though healing is available for them. Also, sometimes Jesus heals them and then they succumb to a counterattack from the devil and lose their healing.

Sickness and disease are from the devil, my brother and sister. If you've read my book Mysterious Secrets of the Dark Kingdom then you know that these particular spirits are called "servient spirits" and they bring cancer, diabetes, etc. upon the human body.

The reason we always ask people, "What are you doing about it?" is because we've learned through many years of ministry that Christians don't understand healing. Sure they may believe the Lord still heals but even people of the world believe that God can heal.

Yet Christians normally lose the battle because they think "God will heal me because I know He can" or "Brother Timmons, I know God heals and He can heal me if He wants to" and they just sit around waiting for Him to heal them. That is not true faith, dear friends. True faith demands action -- that's why we ask, "What are you doing about it?" Now, the stronger your faith is in any area the less time it takes you to defeat the attacks of the devil but if your faith is weak then it can take some time.

In 1997 the Lord gave me a message to minister at the End-Time Handmaidens convention in South Africa titled, Vessels of Mercy. The Lord gave me the message in January of that year even though we didn't minister it until April. The message speaks much about covenant.

In March of that year we were ministering at a church in Capetown, South Africa, and the Lord showed me that the pastor's sister was in the hospital with terminal cancer. The pastor confirmed this. Evie and I went with them to pray for her -- she had terminal, pancreatic cancer and was only given a week to live. I simply shared with her the revelation the Lord had given for the convention -- that because we are in covenant with Him He is obligated to heal us -- then Evie laid hands on her and prayed for her. She was instantly healed, jumped up from the hospital bed and ran around the room. Praise God!

A similar thing happened in Anchorage, Alaska, a few years later when I was there to minister deliverance to an alcoholic. I always like to go to major hospitals when I'm in town and pray for people who want it. I prayed for a lady who was in the hospital there to die; she had returned home from M.D. Anderson in Houston which is recognized as the best cancer facility in the world. I shared the same revelation about covenant and the Lord being "obligated to heal you." She believed it, we prayed and she was instantly healed and went home the next day.

If you're a Christian, God is in covenant with you. Most Christians don't have any understanding about covenant; that's why I devoted an entire chapter to it in The High Calling of God.

The New Covenant is a legal agreement between you and God if you're a Christian and have become a part of the Covenant. That means God has certain obligations and you have certain obligations.

God's obligation is to heal you when you pray; your obligation is to stand in faith believing you receive but it must be true faith. Your part is to "resist the devil and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). How do you resist him? With your faith in the Word of God. Peter says: "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him [how?], standing firm in the faith ..." Why is the devil "looking for someone to devour?" Because he can't devour everybody! He will try to devour you but if you stand "firm in the faith" he will be unable to.

I've learned that what Smith Wigglesworth said many years ago is true. "If you wait to build your faith till you need it it's too late." One reason David was able to defeat Goliath was because he had built his faith earlier against a lion and a bear.

That's why you need to spend quality time every day in the Bible meditating the Word of God. This renews your mind and allows you to "think the thoughts of God" (cf. Is. 55) as we say. When we think the way God does we see things differently and it builds our faith.

On October 19, 1998, the Lord Jesus appeared to me in a vision in Elliston, Montana. This complete vision is given in my book, Revelations from God. He was not dressed as He normally is when I see Him (in a brilliant white tunic-type robe with a very wide, pure gold belt around his waist) but rather as an Old Testament prophet. He spoke to me about the Gift of Working of Miracles -- how it functioned. The vision was in response to some prophetic words over me from 10 years before that I would teach on the Working of Miracles. Although I have seen all the miracles from the Scriptures many times including the raising of the dead I did not understand how the gift functioned. The Lord explained it to me in this vision.

Then before He left I asked Him about people receiving miracles from Him and He said, "Anybody can receive a miracle from me by following these three (three is God's perfect number) steps:

1. He said, "Find it, you must find Scriptures to support what you are believing Me for." That should be obvious to us! He is in covenant with us and He "watches over His Word to perform it" (Jer. 1:12) so if I can find a minimum of two Scriptures that promise me something than He is obligated to do it. Right?

2. He said, "Fast it, like Daniel did."

3. "Let your words and your actions be in line with the promise you are believing Me for -- act as if you already possess the promise."

At this point in the vision I "knew" that I had every single promise! I had powerful faith! That is what will happen when we follow these three steps.

Now, there is a difference between miracles and healings; they are two different Gifts of the Holy Spirit. I define healing as a restoration of health to a part of the body whereas a miracle is more creative, e.g., the Lord growing out a leg or replacing an eyeball or other organ of the body that's been lost. It requires a miracle to grow out a leg because the bone must be lengthened. I've seen the Lord do this hundreds of times over the years. But the Lord will perform whichever one -- a healing or a miracle -- you need if you'll obey these steps. I guarantee it!

Step one is easy; it's steps two and three that are a problem for most Christians. Most Christians have never fasted even one day. Step three is especially difficult and is the precise reason we ask people who need help, "What are you doing about it?"

I believe the Apostle John was the closest to Jesus of any of the twelve. He wrote the Gospel of John and three letters. It's in the original Greek that we see and learn from John about faith and "believing."

All the time we see people healed or miracles but many lose their healing after a period of time. Why is that? Because true faith and true "believing" as John shows us is not a one-time thing. For example the admonition, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved" in Greek (which the Amplified Bible points out) is literally, "Believe and keep on believing."

Quite frankly, it's a sad commentary but most Christians lose their healing. The reason people lose their healing is because they don't "Keep on believing." Listen closely and mark this down in your notes! Anything you receive from God will be contested by the devil. He doesn't want you to have it! Healing or a miracle is no different .

I shared in MSDK about two women whose husbands I knew in the Houston area many years ago who were both in wheel chairs with M.S. Both were healed under Kathryn Kuhlman's ministry the last time she was in Houston. Both got out of their wheel chairs and pushed them to the front of the platform at the Astrodome. But one let her doctor talk her out of her healing and she was back in the wheelchair within a month and died soon thereafter. Did Jesus want her healed? Of course, He healed her. But, you see, she didn't "keep on believing" and when the devil sent his counterattack she accepted it rather than doing what the Scriptures say we are to do -- resist the devil by being firm in our faith.

If you need healing or a miracle then I encourage you to follow these three steps and receive your miracle; then write us with your testimony so we can put it on the web to encourage others and increase their faith.

Sister Timmons on Healing and Miracles

Many years ago before my husband and I were married I was in a car accident and sustained a lot of damage. I broke my back, pelvis, ribs and tore tendons, etc. For the next five months I was on various medications and used a cane trying to help my body heal. I developed a lot of scar tissue and was in a lot of pain. My doctor kept telling me I could wind up in a wheelchair. I went on this way for five months.

I woke up one morning about five months after the accident and heard these words coming out of my spirit - very forceful almost as it I were being yelled at: "WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU!" I was pretty shocked. But instantly I knew what my spirit was saying. It was as if I had been asleep for the five months and had just woken up. Here I was a child of God in covenant with Him and I knew that healing was my right but I was not doing anything about it. I asked the Lord to forgive me for forgetting what He had provided for me and asked Him to heal my body. I went and flushed the medication I was taking down the toilet and made a quality decision that I would never accept less than perfect health and healing since it was part of my covenant with the Lord. Within one month my body not only was perfectly healed but I was in better shape physically than I was before the accident.

It is so easy to forget or let slip the things that we learn from the Lord. If we don't walk in the truths that we know and exercise those truths we tend to forget them. I think this is one reason that many in the body of Christ today act as if healing is a new thing. But healing is not something new - it wasn't lost and revived - it has always been available as a covenant right. The Bible clearly tells us that "healing is the children's bread."

There are many scriptures that deal with healing such as Mark 16:15-18, Isaiah 53:5, I Peter 2:24 and Luke 4:18 just to mention a few. The more you know what the Word of God says about healing the easier it is to walk in that healing.

We see all though the New Testament that Jesus was moved by people's faith. You can't speak about healing and not talk about faith because it is through faith that we receive. So the way we develop our faith to receive healing is to find what the Word of God says about healing and then speak that truth to our bodies. The Apostle Paul made quite an astonishing statement when he said, "I keep my body under ..." Who is the I? The I is his spirit! Faith builds our spirit and our spirit can dominate our flesh if we build our spirit through a diet of the Word of God and exercise of faith.

The Word says that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The Holy Spirit told me a long time ago that people tend to believe what they say more than anything anyone else says and I know this is true. This is another reason that it is important to speak healing to our body because as we speak it, not only does our body have to come in line with what we are saying but it also causes our faith to grow which also helps us to continue to walk in that healing.

Just as there are many different types of prayer there are many different ways to be healed. One way is by reading the Word of God. All through Psalms and Proverbs it speaks of the Word of God being health and healing to our bodies. We can be healed through the taking of communion, I Cor. 11:23:31, we can be healed through the prayer of faith, James 5:14-15. We can pray the prayer of faith over ourselves. I have had healing come during times of worship. One of the ways I receive healing in my own life is I will ask the Lord for healing I then note that day and then continue in the days and weeks ahead to thank the Lord that on that day I was healed by His stripes according to His Word. I speak to the symptoms and tell them they have no place in me since I am healed by the stripes of Jesus. Praise God for covenant.

Remember, the Lord wants you healed even more than you want it. He wanted it enough to do what He did to get it for you -- be beaten almost to death before He went to the Cross. One of the tactics the enemy uses to try and get you to not receive your healing is to try and get you into condemnation. For example, when I would be believing for something promised in the Word and my faith would be strong the enemy realized that he could not get me to doubt the Word of God so then he would try and get me to doubt my ability to receive it. He would say things like "Yea, God heals but you know if you hadn't done blah, blah, blah (you can fill in the blanks) you wouldn't need healing." This worked for a little while until I realized what was happening. The Lord did not say when you are perfect He would heal you - He said healing is the children's bread. Just as salvation cannot be earned or bought healing cannot be earned or bought - it is our covenant gift as children of God.