Joyce Meyer - How Do I Receive God's Healing?

I wanted 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? 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 kinda 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'm old enough to be, most of your, your mother. So we'll just, I'm gonna be motherly this morning. I'm gonna talk to you like I would my kids. You need to take care of yourself. You need to stop stayin' up all night and not gettin' any sleep. You need stop drinkin' six soda pops a day and drink more water. Need to stop eatin' sugar four times a day. Need to stop livin' on fast food that's full of chemicals and grease. And you need to destress 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 or 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 goin', keep goin', keep goin'." But doin' 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 wanna 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 tryin' 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 own 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 months. Where 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 tryin' 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 in what I'm sayin'. 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 wanna 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 puttin' the wrong kinda stuff... What would happen to your automobile if you didn't put good fuel in it? Amen? So I'm just bein' motherly this morning. If you don't, you know, if you don't wanna 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 ya the truth. It's got a whole lot to do with church. I'll tell ya 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 gonna say the really dirty word right now: EXERCISE. People used to work hard enough they didn't have to go try to exercise. But man, we got it made. We got elevators and escalators and automatic dish washers. And we crab about pushin' the button and havin' to unload it. Well, I dread to unload that dishwasher, put those clean dishes away. I just dread pickin' that laundry up out of the floor and puttin' in the washer and pushin' the button. C'mon, now. Okay, so you heard my speech. 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?