If you need healing, you can’t sit back and wait for God to drop it down on you. You have to do what it takes so you can rise up in faith and take what rightfully belongs to you!
by Gloria Copeland
Take it!
That’s exactly what you have to do if you want to obtain healing.
In fact, in every area of life obtaining the victory boils down to one thing: Just take God at His Word. What He says-what is written in His Word-is the absolute truth and it really will work if we will only take hold of it.
The fact of the matter is, healing is no problem for the Lord. The only hard part is getting people to believe what He has said about it so they can receive their healing.
God has given each of us the choice. He said it this way: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). We must choose to take what God has offered. And we must do that-“by force” Matthew 11:12 says.
If you need a healing, you can’t sit back and wait for God to drop it down on you. You have to do what it takes so you can rise up in faith and take what rightfully belongs to you!
Taking requires active faith. Having faith in God and His Word is the bottom-line answer to every problem regardless of what others may say. People are not short of well-meaning advice. I’m sure you’ve figured that out, especially if you are believing God for healing. More than likely, you’ve also figured out that most of what people say is not productive advice. I can tell you from experience, the answers that actually work are found in one place-the Word.
God’s Word has the power within it to bring itself to pass. Not only that, God’s Word teaches us to think His way which is the higher, better and smarter way (Isaiah 55:8-11). That becomes possible when His Word, His way of thinking, crowds out other thoughts and ideas. Then you can pray in faith and receive what you need.
1. Faith Believes It Takes!
“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray,” Jesus said, “believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). That word receive is an action word. It means “to take.” We could say, “What things soever you desire when you pray, believe that you take them.” That is a brief lesson on faith right there! Faith believes it takes what is needed when it prays. That’s exactly what we must do when we pray for healing. We must take healing like a dog takes a bone. He clamps down hard on that bone and refuses to turn loose of it!
The fact is, you really haven’t prayed in faith if you pray about something, but don’t take it. If you get up from prayer saying, “I don’t have it. I’m still sick, I still feel bad,” then you didn’t take it…and you certainly don’t have it.
You simply cannot look at the circumstances to determine whether or not you are healed. Second Corinthians 4:18 explains that you must “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
See yourself taking your healing when you pray. See yourself in perfect health. Take it-by faith-and hold on to it. When you take it, you have it. And if you have it, you say you have it. You call “things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17).
To get to that point, read healing scriptures aloud and receive (take) each promise. Look at the scriptures with your eyes, and hear them with your ears as you speak them out your mouth. Rest assured they will get down into your heart and you’ll be able to release your faith. You’ll say, “Thank You, Lord, I believe I’m healed and I take it!”
Watch Gloria Copeland teach how God’s healing power is available as we learn to receive it by faith.
2. Be Relentless!
Years ago, my friend Dodie Osteen had to take healing in just that way. She was given a report that the cancer in her liver was fatal. The doctors offered no hope. So, Dodie went home from the hospital. She and her husband took forceful action! They stood in agreement on the healing promises in the Word of God. They confessed God’s Word over her body. They were relentless.
Dodie faithfully took those healing scriptures every day, just like medicine. She fought the good fight of faith by using the sword of the Word to resist fear and all the lies of the devil (Ephesians 6:17; James 4:7). It was a battle that took awhile, but Dodie was completely healed of cancer and remains free today. In fact, she has been cancer free for more than 22 years. She says she stays well by consistently taking God’s medicine.
Proverbs 4:20-22 explains this process for healing. It says: “My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” The Hebrew word translated health there means “medicine.” Healing scriptures are God’s medicine for your body. So, take that medicine daily, be relentless about it and take your healing.
The fact is, as a child of the living God you are more than a conqueror in Christ (Romans 8:37)! So, if you’re believing for healing, you can kick the devil out of your life with the Word of God! If it takes time to obtain a complete healing, don’t give up; be determined to persevere until you win! And, don’t fall prey to self-pity or seek sympathy from others. That is not what you need. Faith is what you need.
3. Do the Heavy Lifting
Let’s look at the important lesson Jesus taught His disciples about faith and receiving from God. In Mark 11, we find He charged them simply to “Have faith in God” (verse 22). By way of explanation about this scripture, the margin of my Bible says, “Have the faith of God.” Faith is imparted to us when we’re born again, and we are given “the measure of faith” (Romans 12:3). At that time, God gives us the same kind of faith He has. But, we have a responsibility to feed and grow our faith.
Faith for healing comes as we meditate on what God’s Word says about healing. When we read healing scriptures, we are building up our faith to obtain healing. A bodybuilder lifts weights consistently to build up his muscles. He becomes stronger day by day as he works out. We build up our faith in the same way-we exercise the healing scriptures over and over again until we become strong enough in faith to take our healing out of the realm of the spirit into the natural realm. Hebrews 11:1 says it this way: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Jesus told several people who received healing that it was their faith that made them whole. (See Matthew 9:22; Mark 10:52 and Luke 17:19.) And, faith will work for you the same way it worked for those mentioned in the Bible.
God is present where faith is present. Faith causes the supernatural healing power of God to come on the scene and override natural diseases and circumstances.
4. Read the Word
I’m sure you realize faith for healing won’t come by reading secular magazines or comic books. To build your faith, you must read the Bible and believe it is God speaking to you. Romans 10:17 explains, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Find scriptures that apply to your situation and take hold of those promises and apply them to your life. That’s the truth that changed my life-knowing that the Bible is God’s Word to me, and I can take it and do something with it (John 17:17).
The Bible tells us what God says about things. Men of old, anointed of the Holy Spirit, wrote down what came out of the heart of God. In regard to healing, they wrote things like “by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
The born-again spirit is a receptacle for the Word of God. His words get into us when we consistently take them in through our eyes and ears. From there His life-giving words go down into our hearts, or our spirits and affect our entire body.
So, if you need healing, feed on healing scriptures daily. Your faith increases according to how much time you spend in God’s Word. When the Word gets down into your heart and overflows out your mouth in faith-healing will manifest!
Jesus said in Matthew 12:34, “For out of the fullness (the overflow, the superabundance) of the heart the mouth speaks” (The Amplified Bible). What you continually say with your mouth is what you are enjoying or struggling with in your life today. Your words either open or shut the door to the power of God working in your situation. They also open or shut the door on the devil. So if you catch yourself saying things you don’t desire in your life, repent and change your words. Speak only what you want to come to pass.
5. Release Faith by Your Words
Every word you say is important. To have faith for healing operating in your life, you must have confidence not only in God’s Word, but in your words. Mark 11:23 says, “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.”
Faith comes by hearing and goes by saying. Faith is released by your words.
Faith is believing what God says in His Word regardless of what any person, circumstance or the devil may say. And faith speaks what the Word says. When you take the Word into your heart and it comes out through your voice, it becomes God’s Word applied to the problem. If you will keep your words in agreement with God’s Word, they will change your natural circumstances. Or, as Jesus said, “The truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
But if you read the Word with traditional eyes, not believing the promises are for you, you disqualify yourself from receiving those promises. It takes faith-believing in God and His Word-for the Word to transform your situation.
Receive the Word as truth. Then say, “That’s God speaking to me. I can have it. I take it!”
That’s faith.
6. Possess the Land
After you have received God’s Word for healing by faith, begin to do what you couldn’t do before. James 1:22 says we must be doers of the Word, not hearers only.
The children of Israel in the wilderness are a good example of what happens to hearers who are not doers. Through Moses, God told this nation of people He had given them the land. At one point, Moses basically told them the Lord said they had been going around the same mountain long enough (Deuteronomy 1:6). Have you ever felt like that? Perhaps even now you are going around that mountain of unbelief and getting nowhere fast!
If so, you can take drastic faith action!
What God said to the children of Israel applies to you as well. He said: “Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers…to give unto them and to their seed after them” (verse 8).
God had promised them the land. But possessing it wasn’t automatic. He was telling them to go armed and take it. That was the only way they were going to get it.
If you need healing, that’s how you must possess it too! You must take it!
7. Take It by Force!
Healing belongs to you and to me. God has given us great promises in His Word, including promises of health and wholeness. He sent Jesus to die on the cross to redeem us from sin and sickness. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us….” The curse includes every sickness and every disease (Deuteronomy 28:15-68). Jesus’ sacrifice paid for us to be redeemed from them all.
As far as God is concerned, that settles the issue of healing. It’s all done. There’s nothing left for Him to do. Healing belongs to us in Christ Jesus, and yet it’s not automatic. It’s up to us to receive it.
If you need healing, take it! Take it with your faith, and with your words. Believe you receive it and don’t waver.
Related Articles:
3 Ways to Combine Faith With Works to Live in Divine Health
Need a Creative Miracle? How to Stand in Faith for a New Body Part
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