Derek Prince - Unbelief In God's Word Can Be A Barrier To Healing
This is an excerpt from: Invisible Barriers To Healing
I'm going to give you now a list of about it so happens that I've got seven in my list but there could be more common barriers to receiving healing. And the first is ignorance. Ignorance of God's word and God's will. I'm sorry to say that this is a tremendously common barrier in the church today. Multitudes of Christians do not know the clear, simple truths and teachings of the word of God. In Isaiah 5:13 God says: Therefore my people have gone into captivity because they have no knowledge. No knowledge of God's word, no knowledge of what was accomplished by the death of Jesus on the cross. Ignorance. And then in Hosea 4:6 the Lord says something very similar. Hosea 4:6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Now, we can't educate you tonight in one service but I believe last night and in what I've recapitulated tonight I have laid a basis of knowledge of the word of God and the provision of God that should help to dispel your ignorance. So, I want all of us collectively to confess to God our sin and ignorance the fact that we haven't sought God, we haven't studied His word we haven't taken the time to find out what God is saying. And we want to ask God to forgive us tonight. And we want to commit ourselves so far as is possible to seek to know the will and the word of God. Will you join me in that? All right, I'm going to invite you to say a short prayer after me. Will you say these words?
"Oh, God, we acknowledge that in many ways we are ignorant of your word and of your will through our own fault. Tonight, God, we confess this as a sin. We repent of it. We ask you to forgive us and to help us to seek the truth from this night forward more diligently in Jesus' name". The next barrier is also fearfully common in the church it's rather related. It's unbelief. In many of our churches we regard unbelief as a kind of harmless weakness. Well, I don't believe but after all does God really expect me to? The New Testament doesn't call unbelief a harmless weakness. It calls it a sin. And when we see that we're ready to get rid of unbelief and to open the way through believing God to receive what He has for us.
I want to read from Hebrews 3:12-13. This is addressed specifically to Christians. Hebrews 3:12-13: Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another while it is called the day lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. You notice what the writer calls unbelief? He calls it evil and he calls it sin. So, I want to ask you to join with me in asking God's forgiveness for our unbelief. And, proclaiming our faith. You see, in dealing with these spiritual conditions what we have to do is replace the negative by the positive. So, first of all we ask God to forgive our unbelief. And there's not one of us here tonight myself included that doesn't need to ask for forgiveness for unbelief.
And then we're going to proclaim our faith very simply. We're going to proclaim our faith in God, in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit and in the word of God. And this can change the entire atmosphere in this auditorium. From this moment onwards there can be an atmosphere of faith. I'm going to ask you to join me again in a prayer, we're going to go through this. Is a little bit like when you go to the doctor nowadays. In the old days he tapped you on the chest and said: Open your mouth and say 'ah'. And stuck something down your throat reached up and gave you lots of pills. That's not the way it is now.
Now when you go he takes your blood and he takes various other things from various spots of your body and he sends them all to the laboratory. And after awhile when they've been through the tests they come back. This is where the problem area is. Well, what we're trying to do is do that, as it were, go through all the tests and eliminate the problems. See what I'm saying? I told you that we were very practical. They're just on a different basis but we're just as practical as the doctor or the dentist. So, we're going to confess the sin of unbelief and we're going to ask God to forgive us, we're going to renounce it and we're going to proclaim our faith. Are you ready?
Oh, God, we come to you in Jesus' name and we confess our sin of unbelief. We do not try to excuse it. We are responsible for it. We are sorry for it. We ask you to forgive us and to deliver us from it and impart to us your faith. Tonight we want to declare each of us individually: I believe in God the Father. I believe in Jesus Christ His Son. I believe in God the Holy Spirit. And I believe in the Bible the true, authoritative word of God. I believe, Lord Jesus, what you said: God's word is the truth. Amen.
Do you feel better now? I tell you, there's a different atmosphere in this place. A lot of nasty little demons of unbelief had to sneak out of the back door