Excerpt
There are too many people who are either living in the past or living in the future. The Bible tells us that faith is now (Heb. 11:1). 1 Corinthians says, “Now abideth faith, hope, charity [love], these three; but the greatest of these is charity,” (13:13 KJV). The word that I want you to understand, indeed, that we all need to understand is now.
I want you to realize that now is the only time you have to initiate your healing, your prosperity or whatever you need. This is because faith is now. To tell you the truth, and the truth is hard to take at times, if you don’t initiate now you will never make it happen.
The Bible tells us that we are healed now (Isaiah 53:5). And you and I know so many people who will argue with that simple truth. They are just being moved by what they see and feel, but God said, through the Apostle Paul, not to be moved by sight or feelings (2 Cor. 5:7). They look at the facts and the facts say that they are sick or broke or whatever the case may be. But we know that God’s Word is truth. Jesus said in the book of John, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth,” (John 17:17 King James Bible). Therefore God’s Word overrides our feelings, or to put it another way, God’s truth overrides our facts. The facts are there, that’s undeniable, but they change. The truth is also there, it’s also undeniable, and it changes the facts.
Jesus did not say, in Mark 11:24, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you will someday receive it, and you shall have it.” And he did not say “You shall have it even if you do not believe you received it.” Nor did he say that “You shall have it if you believe it but don’t receive it.” NO! He said, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it [right then], and it will be yours.” Now when do you have to believe it? The King James Bible reads, “when ye pray, believe.” When you pray is now so that must be when you believe it. And when do you receive it? That must be now also, because that verse says, “when ye pray, believe that ye receive them.”
Now the understanding mind, the person who builds his life on the Word of God (he doesn’t have to be smart according to this world) will recognize the difference in that verse between “believe that ye receive them” and “ye shall have them.” You see, “ye shall have them” is talking about the manifestation-- the time when you and all those around you can actually see and touch the thing that you believed for back when you prayed.
Mark 16:18 ends by Jesus saying, “. . .they [the believers] will place their hands on sick people, and they will get better,” the New Jerusalem Bible says, “. . .when they place their hands on. . .” This is not, as you can clearly see, saying that when the believer places his hands on the sick their healing is instantly manifest. But it is saying that when the believer places his hands on the sick they can know that healing is theirs and the manifestation is inevitable, if they believe and receive it now.
In Isaiah 53:5, Isaiah was prophesying about Jesus, the Messiah, God among us, when he said, “. . .the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Now when do we have peace? The answer to that question is an obvious now for the true Christian. But the punishment is past tense, it was upon him. Okay, when does that verse say that healing is ours? Is it when we see it or feel it, when the manifestation is apparent? NO! A thousand times no! Healing is ours now. As soon as you pray or are prayed for, hands are laid upon you, for healing you can know that healing is yours now. Recovery is not healing, recovery is the manifestation of your healing.
When a farmer goes out to plant a seed he doesn’t expect that seed to grow into a apple tree full of apples in an instant. No! It takes time for that seed to grow. Well, it’s the same thing with healing. Depending upon what kind of healing it is, the time may be anywhere from 1 second to 30 years (I’m talking about in the natural flow of things, when God intervenes it could be different). In farming terms the time would be called germination time, where healing is concerned it is called recovery time.
The Greek word for healing means soundness, wholesomeness, a remedy and (an interesting meaning) yielding. Yielding means to give up or surrender. Some synonyms of yielding are being submissive or obedient. This says to me that in order for me to receive my healing from God I am going to have to be submissive and obedient to His Word now.