Joyce Meyer - God Heals In Different Ways

TOPICS: Healing

I wanna talk to you for a few minutes this morning about sickness and healing. You know, sadly, a lot of times people are not taught that healing of all kinds is part of the atonement. It's part of what Christ died for us to have. Why would he want us to be saved and feel bad all the time? Now, you know, for a long time I didn't know that I could ask God to heal me when I was sick. Matter of fact, sometimes we just kind of fall in love with our illnesses and we claim 'em as our own, you know. My arthritis, my aching back, you know, my blood pressure, my this and my that and my something else. And you know, there's a lot of different ways that God gets healing to us today and, you know, I thank God for all the medical help that's available. But even that, I don't think that can even help us if we don't go to God first.

So let me just, you know, respectfully say if you're trusting the doctor and you're leaving God out of the loop, yeah. You know, we need the medical professionals to have the wisdom that only God can give them. But I do thank God for it. I am gonna pray for people this morning that have pain in your body or that are sick but before I do, I'm gonna give you a little motherly speech, okay? I'm old enough to be most of you, your mother so we'll just I'm gonna be motherly this morning. I would talk to you like I would my kids. You need to take care of yourself. You need to stop staying up all night and not getting any sleep. You need to stop drinking six soda pops a day and drink more water, amen. Need to stop eating sugar four times a day. Need to stop living on fast food that's full of chemicals and grease. And you need to de-stress your life and calm down.

Now, you know, everybody today wants a miracle. But to go with a miracle you need some wisdom or you'll lose the miracle you got and get another problem. And most people today, most being I don't know what percentage that would be, but I think there's more people who don't take care of themselves than those who do. And we make all kinds of excuses and a lot of it's "I'm busy. I don't have time to fix good food so I just grab whatever is on the run. I can't get 7 or 8 hours' sleep a night. I don't have time. I'm too busy. I don't have time to exercise. I don't have time to rest. I gotta keep going, keep going, keep going". But doing what? There's not a person in this room today that couldn't get a fair measure of the stress out of your life just by simply writing down everything it is that you think you have to do and eliminating the ones that aren't bearing any good fruit in your life. If you don't take care of you, who's going to? I'll say that again. If you don't take care of you, who's going to?

Now, here's the thing. I believe that healing is part of the atonement. The Bible says we can pray the prayer of faith and the sick will be healed. But I don't really think that it's gonna do me any good to pray for everybody if you're just gonna keep abusing yourself. Are we all together on this page this morning? Has anybody been even a little bit convicted that maybe you need to make a few changes in how you're? Alright, well, good, that's what it's all about. I rarely ever read this scripture 'cause people who don't really know the word could get a wrong idea but here it goes.

Acts 3, verse 1, "Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour (three o'clock in the afternoon), when a certain man crippled from his birth was being carried along, who was laid each day at the gate of the temple which is called beautiful, so that he might beg for charitable gifts from those who entered the temple. So when he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he said, 'would you give me a gift'"? And here's where it gets interesting. "And Peter directed his gaze intently at him, and so did John, and said, 'look at us'"! Now, basically what he's getting ready to say is, "We've got what you need".

Do you know why you've got what the world needs? Because you have the power of God in you, you have God's anointing in you, and you can pray for people. See, I told you, you're just, like... You can pray for people and see the sick get well. Now, I know we're at a whole new gate for a lot of folks and I understand that.

You know, I was in a large denomination for a long, long time that didn't teach me anything about the miracle-working power of God. I knew that God was powerful but I didn't know that he wanted to share any of it with me. These guys were born again. They'd been there on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out and now they have the nerve to stand and say, "You have a problem? Look at me". You're still not with me, are you? Okay. It's not anything you have in yourself. It's what God has given you. And you know, there's a lot I don't understand about healing and, you know, why we pray for some people and they get healed and why we pray for others and they don't. But I do believe part of it has something to do with this whole thing about how people just disrespect their selves and their lives and the way people treat each other today and all the stress that's in the world, amen?

Joyce: Well, we'll get back to the teaching but I wanna take a moment to just reiterate to you that Jesus is our healer. And he heals in different ways. Sometimes it might be a sudden and a miraculous healing, and other times God may heal over a period of time. And so I've invited my next guest to share her inspirational story of how God faithfully brought her through a battle for her life. Now let's take a look at this.

Marilyn Cox: September 8 of 2014, I was just getting ready to put on my tennis shoes to do a workout and when I bent over I felt something terribly wrong. And I'm, like, "Oh no". So I waited it out for several hours. And at 1 in the morning I woke my husband up and I said, "I have to go to the hospital". I was in agony. (This was the beginning of a horrific 17-month ordeal for Marilyn). They then did confirm through a cat scan that I had a twisted bowel and they admitted me. They sent me back upstairs and took me in for emergency surgery. (It was the first of 8 major surgeries).

I was in the hospital 8 days, in pain. It was a very big surgery. So they sent me home and within 2 days a staph infection had gotten inside my incision. Stuff started pouring out. In the middle of the night I found blood all over myself. My doctor said, "You're basically rotting". So they took me in. It was a long surgery again. But what it did is it killed all the tissue inside of my abdominal wall so they scraped and basically took out all of the dead tissue and I had a big, gigantic hole in my stomach. This part makes me cry. This is the part that's so hard. I didn't realize what the surgery had entailed. I was so, so sick, I just wanted to die. (Marilyn spent a total of 72 days in hospital. She was bed-ridden for more than 7 months).

I slept. I didn't talk. I just slept. But I finally got better and went home and, you know, continued to have the hole in my stomach and was pouring out infection. No one knew why I had all this infection. They were stumped. And so I was home a month and had to have another surgery but that surgery, the doctor came in and said, "I need you to understand that this surgery could leave you permanently disabled. You would have no abdominal wall". I looked right at him and I said, "That is not going to happen". I knew it was God because I came out of the surgery and none of the things he had thought could happen, happened. They got all of the infection, they cleaned me all up, and then, within 24 hours, infection was pouring out again.

I became hopeless very many times. I mean, it was like a fight. When a fighter goes in the boxing ring and he just gets hit in the jaw and then he comes back and gets back up and then he gets hit again and he's down again. I never had time to process the emotion of it all. I just kept calling on God. I just had to. That was the only way I could get through it. It really was. (Psalm 30:2 - o Lord my God, I cried out to You and You healed me).

So surgery number eight was my final surgery. They were able to find the problem after all of 17 months. They went in and I had a fistula that was wound in my small intestines. There was a slight hole in my intestines where bowel content was coming out and the infection was coming out. And they fixed it. And I woke up to no tube and no drain. And I just stopped and thanked God right then and there because if it weren't for him, I don't think I'd be here.

Joyce: Well, Marilyn, you certainly went through a terrible long ordeal. How are you doing today?

Marilyn: I'm doing great today, I'm so happy to say. I slowly began to get my strength back and started working out, taking walks. That was one of them. I still do that. And I can honestly say I feel great, thank you.

Joyce: That's awesome, that's great. Now, you know, in your testimony of what you went through, you talked frequently about trusting God. Did you trust God every day?

Marilyn: No, I cannot tell you I did. I definitely, definitely, had dark moments and I do wanna emphasize that, that there were days I was strong at the hospital but it was when you're home and you're alone and you're trying to heal. I did become pretty numb and I did withdraw into myself some. And I do need you to know that, that there are very dark days and there were days I just cried out and said, "Jesus, help me". I couldn't even pray.

Joyce: And you said there were days when you couldn't read anything. You just were so discouraged that you just...

Marilyn: Yes, I left the purple book right there on my ottoman but I wasn't picking it up. I start all my mornings watching the show and I couldn't even watch you. I taped you but I didn't watch you. So I just, I was in a dark place.

Joyce: But then you had one specific day that you told us about where you were just, like, totally at the end of everything. You just wanted to die. You felt like God sent you the right encouragement. Tell us about that.

Marilyn: I had just told my husband that morning that I didn't see any light at the end of my darkness and I just said, "I wanna die". And he kept saying, "No, I don't want you to die". And a girlfriend of mine came over and she had never seen me like that and she walked in and she whipped out her phone and she looked up all these scriptures and I laid there and I was angry. And I laid there while she read scripture after scripture to me and I know I felt bathed in peace. And that was the turning point for me. I had several weeks of this. And then that day, I could feel from that day forward I started caring again and wanting to live.

Joyce: Feeling hope again and some expectation that things could turn around. Well, one thing's for sure, Marilyn, there's so much power in God's word and I think there are times in our life when we have nothing else that we can depend on but that. And so it is important for our friends and family to continue to encourage and to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. It's interesting that she just felt to come and visit you that day. And somehow that little purple book, we call it the purple book. It's actually a little book that I've written called "The secret power of speaking God's word out loud", and it's really a lot of scriptures to confess. Tell us how that helped you.

Marilyn: Absolutely. Every time I had to pack for the hospital, it was always an emergency and i, you know, you don't always think to bring your Bible but I always grabbed my purple book and every time, six of the eight surgeries were emergency so there was never time to process or anything. So my sister would beat my husband to the hospital and she would grab my book and turn off the tv and she would just read scripture to me.

Joyce: That's awesome.

Marilyn: And it was just amazing. And this was my lifeline, God's word, and I can't say that enough for people. Just one scripture, if I could say. It said, "I shall not die but live, and shall declare the works and recount the illustrious acts of the Lord". And "He heals my broken heart and binds up my wounds curing my pains and sorrows". Those are just a couple but I have circled so many in this little book because it carried me through and became my reservoir of faith.

Joyce: Well, one of the things that I'm wanting to get across to people in what we're doing here today is that God uses a lot of different things to come to one final result very often. And your ordeal took 17 months. I'm sure that we would have all liked it if it would have been a lot faster but it wasn't. And so during that time, God used people to keep encouraging you. And he used the prayers of hundreds and hundreds of people. I know I walk every morning and I would pray for you and now I still very often thank God in the mornings that he healed you. I don't ever want us to be like the lepers, you know, where they all got healed and only one went back to give thanks. And so it's good to just keep thanking God for what he does for us. And he used the doctors, although I'm sure for a while that it probably looked like maybe he wasn't. He used the word to encourage you.

And then I remember a specific situation that I thought was a little bit unique because it was way into this situation. And one morning when I was praying for you I felt very strongly that God wanted me to bring you up before our staff in our chapel that week, which we have once a month, and to anoint you with oil and pray for you. And so when we let you know that I wanted to do that, you were quite amazed because somebody at your church had just asked, "Have you ever had Joyce anoint you with oil"? And so, you know, the Bible does say that one of the ways that God works healing in our lives is when you're sick, to call for the elders of the church and have them anoint you with oil. And so I don't think any of us knew 100% what to expect. Are we gonna get a miracle here or, you know, how is this gonna work? And so we did that in obedience to God. And the one thing that I saw from that, well, first of all, it really encouraged you.

Marilyn: Yes, it did.

Joyce: You know, because you had that confirmation from your church but then secondly, after that, was when your doctor decided to send you to a different type of specialist that then was the one who actually found the leak. And so I just think it's interesting, Marilyn, that many times when we pray, God doesn't do what we might think he's going to do. But he does something, amen?

Marilyn: Yes.

Joyce: And so after all that ordeal that you went through, isn't it just amazing how God worked in so many different ways for you now to have this great result in your life?

Marilyn: It's just truly miraculous to me, and I kept questioning God along the way as to why. But I never was mad at him because he had been good to me through all the good times. So when you go through dark times, that's when you draw on your faith and, yeah.

Joyce: And it is hard, you know, not to get confused when you're in a time like that, you know, why, God, why? When, God, when? And why is this happening? But to stay strong in faith and to always believe in the goodness of God, is very important, isn't it?

Marilyn: Oh, absolutely. He truly is our lifeline. We may not even know it. We may not feel him caring for us. We may not even feel his arms around us or giving us that peace but, in hindsight when I look back on everything, I am amazed at what he did and how he carried me through it all, every bit of it.

Joyce: Amen. Well, we're so excited for your testimony. I just wanna encourage the people that are listening today too to realize that when you pray, you need to really be open to whatever God wants to do. You know, always pray first. Don't ever just depend on a doctor without prayer. Ask people to pray for you, take the encouragement that you can receive from the Word of God. Keep the Word of God in your focus to help you. And then be open if there's anything that God does tell you to do. You know, sometimes nutrition is very important for people. You know, sometimes, people might be feeling really lousy and they just really need more sleep. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why we don't feel well and I just think it's wise to listen to God. So give us one final statement here, Marilyn, and I'm gonna tell 'em about a project we've got.

Marilyn: Okay, well, that's exactly what I wanna say is if you are struggling out there with your health, with anything and I know many people are, I just ask you to go to the Word of God. It is nourishment to our soul. It is a balm to our wounds and I couldn't have made it without it.

Joyce: Yeah, and there is healing power in God's word. Well, you know, something that I have in my heart a lot is that I wanna see people healed. I want to see people whole. I've had enough pain in my life. I suffered with migraine headaches for 10 years, a lot of different things. Had a broken heart from abuse in my childhood and I've seen God heal me in so many, many, many different ways. And I really believe that Jesus is our healer in every way. He wants us to have good lives. I believe that he wants us to feel good.

And I don't have all the answers today for why some people are healed miraculously and why some are healed quickly and some it takes longer and we know from experience that sometimes we pray for people and God decides to bring them home. I don't have all the answers to all that, but I made my mind up a long time ago that I am going to continue believing God for healing and miraculous breakthroughs because I see in the Word of God that, that's something that we can ask God for and have hope and expectation. And so I started thinking about what I might be able to do to help you. If you're sick and you need some encouragement, what might I do to be able to help you. And so we decided here at the ministry after prayer and talking about it, that we wanted to provide a collection of healing scriptures along with many of the stories of the miracles that Jesus did, just to encourage you while you're praying and waiting for your breakthrough to come.

And so today, we're offering you free this audio CD. I read these scriptures myself in our studio here. And then along with the music and the CDs that you can listen to over and over and over and over, we're also providing a little booklet with these healing scriptures in it. And, as I said, we want to give that to you as a gift. It's simply called, "The Healing Word of God". So you can call or you can get to us online and just say, "I'd really like to have that offer that Joyce is making today". And so now we wanna return back to the teaching where I'm gonna pray for you for your healing. And thank you so much for being with us today.

There's real disease, I mean, the devil's alive and well on planet earth and, you know, if you don't get what you ask for then you trust God to take you through and miracles and healings are different, you know, if somebody gets a miracle, it's, like, whoo! But healings take time and I believe sometimes you have to cooperate with those healings. So I just wanna tell you that I believe that you can experience the healing power of God in your life and I don't care if you've prayed a thousand times before, we're gonna pray today and we're gonna believe God that every day you're gonna get better and better in every way, amen? But I'm also gonna pray that God will show you anything that you need to do so it's not just about trusting God but it's having our hearts open to now, Lord, is there something that you want me to do that will really make a difference in my life?

And so here we go. Let's all stand up and we're gonna pray. "So he looked at Peter and John and said, 'would you give me a gift?' and they said, 'look at us'"! And there's an exclamation mark here so I guess they yelled, I don't know. "And the man paid attention and expecting that he was gonna get something from them. But Peter said, 'silver and gold (money) I do not have: but what I do have, that I give to you: in the use of the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk'"! All right. So I love this. I mean, he didn't even really pray and ask God to do something. He commanded healing to come in the name of Jesus Christ. You know why? 'cause there's healing in that name. The name of Jesus is above every other name. That at the name of Jesus every knee must bow.

C'mon, I'm wanting you to get an attitude of, "Okay, I'm just not gonna lay down and just put up with this anymore. I'm gonna press in like the woman who had the issue of blood. I'm gonna press through the crowd and I'm gonna touch the hem of his garment and trust him for healing and wholeness", amen?

Father, we thank you for what Jesus did for us on the cross. And that by his stripes we are healed and made whole. Healing is in us because Christ is in us. Healing is in the depths of our spirit. And, Lord, effective today, we declare war on sickness and disease and pain and we're not going to just invite it and put up with it and love it and claim it and name it. We're at least gonna stand with You and say we believe that You are our healer and we thank you for healing us and for giving us the wisdom to value what you've created and to take care of ourselves. And so in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I say, "Be healed and made whole, in Jesus' name". C'mon, give God a big praise. Whoo! I feel better already.