Joyce Meyer - How Do I Receive God's Healing? (08/21/2019)
Joyce Meyer teaches that physical healing is part of Christ's atonement, available today through faith in Jesus' name. While thanking God for medical help, she stresses personal responsibility—proper sleep, diet, exercise, and de-stressing—as cooperation with healing. Like the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, we can boldly command sickness to leave in Jesus' name, refusing to claim illness as "mine" and pressing through for wholeness.
Healing Is Part of the Atonement
I want to 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?
And, 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 them 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, uh, yeah, you, uh, you know, we need the medical professionals to have the wisdom that only God can give them. And, uh, but I do thank God for it.
Take Care of Your Body – It's God's Temple
I'm old enough to be most of you your mother, so we're just, I'm going to 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.
You need to stop eating sugar four times a day. You 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 I, and a lot of it's, I'm busy. I don't, I don't have time to fix good food. So I just grab whatever is on the run.
I can't get seven or eight hours sleep a night. I don't have time. I'm too busy. I don't have time to exercise. I don't, I don't have time to rest. I got to 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.
How many things are you doing just because somebody else expects you to do them that really inside you just don't want to do at all? Don't even really believe it's God's will for you to do it, but just to keep the peace.
And you know, we should obviously do things for people, but I found out a long time ago that your emergency can't run my life. Because if you want to have an emergency, have one during the day when I'm awake. Don't have one in the middle of the night when I'm trying to sleep. Amen?
Let me say this lovingly. People will take advantage of you if you let them. And you can't blame them because we are the ones that have to protect our lives. 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?
I've decided that busy is the new four-letter word. Well, I haven't heard from you in six months. Where have you been? Oh, I'm just busy. Just busy. Just busy. Well, you know what? God didn't call us to be busy. He called us to be fruitful. To bear good fruit. And to prune things out of our life.
Some of you almost have a nervous breakdown just trying to get dressed in the morning because your closet is such a mess. And if you pruned about 70% of the stuff in there, out. Oh, well. I better not get too far off in the ditch here or we'll have to have another message.
But I'm very serious about what I'm saying. You know, I hate sickness and disease and what it does to people. I hate it. You know, if you feel really bad, you don't even want to pray. And I don't think we should all be tired all the time. I think God created us to have energy.
But I can tell you, if you don't sleep and you're constantly putting the wrong kind of stuff, what would happen to your automobile if you didn't put good fuel in it? Amen? So, like, I'm just being motherly this morning. If you don't, you know, if you don't want to hear it, stick your fingers in your ears. I'll be done in a minute.
But, you know, you say, well, what's this got to do with church? I'll tell you the truth. It's got a whole lot to do with church. I'll tell you why. Because your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. God lives in you, and He lives in you so He can work through you. But if you're too tired to move all the time, amen?
And I'm going to say the really dirty word right now, exercise. People used to work hard enough they didn't have to go try to exercise. But now, man, we got it made. We got elevators and escalators and automatic dishwashers, and we crab about pushing the button and having to unload it.
Well, I dread to unload that dishwasher and put those clean dishes away. I just dread picking that laundry up out of the floor and putting it in the washer and pushing the button. Come on now. Okay, so, you heard my speech.
Command Healing in Jesus' Name
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 going to do me any good to pray for everybody if you're just going to 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... All right. Well, good. That's what it's all about.
I was kind of... I rarely ever read this scripture because 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 now 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. 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. 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? And this is not the answer. I mean, 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 asked 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... But healings take time. And I believe sometimes you have to cooperate with those healings.
And, you know, I'll be very honest with you. Years ago, I was almost finished from stress. And three times I made myself sick working in the ministry because I thought I had to do what everybody wanted me to do. I had to go where everybody wanted me to do.
Well, Joyce, God told us you're supposed to come do our conference. So I brought up and do the conference. And finally, I got smart enough to say, well, God didn't told me. And if he doesn't told me, then I'm not going.
You know, I hate it when people pull that God told me card. Somehow or another, that just puts like this. Well, if I don't do it, am I going to be missing God? So anyway, long story short, after three go-arounds of getting sick, I finally wised up.
And you know what? I asked God for healing. And I have it now, but it came over a long period of time and making a lot of changes in my life. Amen?
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 to them, expecting that he was going to 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? Because 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. Come on. I'm wanting you to get an attitude of, okay, I'm just not going to lay down and just put up with this anymore.
I'm going to press in like the woman who had the issue of blood. I'm going to press through the crowd. And I'm going to touch the hem of his garment and trust him for healing and wholeness. Amen.