Have you ever imagined yourself being in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve after they were created? And a few days after you had been enjoying some of the good things in the garden with them, you started complaining about having a headache or a stomachache. Headache or stomachache in the garden of Eden? How is that even ever possible?
You know as a Christian in our world today that both of them, would had of course looked at you with a big surprise and in a very strange way; because such things were never even thought of in the garden of Eden.
The Bible says that everything that God created was good (Genesis 1). There was no flaw or anything lacking in the garden of Eden. It was the perfection and the very best of God’s creation on the earth for mankind.
And as the Book of Revelation later gave us a glimpse into what it really looked like, there was nothing like headaches or stomachaches in the garden of Eden (Revelation 22:1-5).
There were no sicknesses and diseases at all in it. Adam and Eve never knew what it meant to be sick in the garden, until after the serpent came to tempt them into sinning against God’s command (Genesis 3:16).
They were used to enjoying a healthy life in the garden. They were free to eat everything that they wanted to eat, apart from the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. God had told them not to eat of the fruit from that tree.
Life was so good for them until the serpent sneaked in to tempt them with food (Genesis 3:1-3). God had provided them with the best and most healthy choices of food in the garden. They were eating and enjoying everything until the serpent crept in from nowhere. He tempted them with what they were not supposed to had eaten at all.
And temptations of this nature has not ceased to persist in the world today. People are eating, drinking, breathing and touching those things which they do know are harmful to them. In the very same way as Adam and Eve were tempted, people are still being tempted today.
That was how Adam and Eve sinned against God’s command. The serpent tempted them into disobeying God.
Before they were tempted the man and the woman never knew what it meant to be hot or cold, clothed or naked. They never even knew what it meant to be living in caves, until after the judgment of the Lord on sin was pronounced to them (Genesis 3:23-24 and 4:14). Living in a cave before their fall would had been an attempt by them, to hide from the presence of the Lord.
When sin came to make them fall from the glory of the Lord (Romans 3:23), they began experiencing a lot of the things that we are experiencing today also. Adam and Eve were both covered and clothed with the glory of God from creation. They were never naked until the serpent lied to them about being naked. God’s glory was their covering in the garden; but the serpent tempted them into loosing the glory of God.
The direct consequence of sin from that time onwards was death for them and their descendants (Ezekiel 18:4). Adam and Eve never knew what it meant to die, until sin came to reveal death to them. The entrance of sin brought them spiritual death (separation from God).
Spiritual death does not only separate us from fellowship with God. It’s the root cause of sicknesses and diseases. It’s what eventually causes physical death to the body cells. Every sicknesses and diseases on the earth today afflicts the body through the spiritual oppression of the devil. The ultimate goal of the devil is to destroy lives through it.
But there is no reason why we can’t live on the earth for as long as we want to, if we are doing the things that are spiritually and naturally necessary.
After the fall of Adam and Eve God’s plan to rescue mankind began. And that plan was never changed. He had told the serpent after the fall of Adam and Eve about His plan of redemption, before it even ever happened:
“And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”
Genesis 3:15 NKJV
Jesus finally came as the Seed of the woman to destroy the power of sickness and death (1 John 3:8). He came to provide us with a way of escape from the plan of destruction by the devil.
This means that we have no excuse for being sick anymore. Jesus had conquered sicknesses and diseases for us, including death. You can be free from the bondage of sicknesses and diseases today, because of what Jesus did by ransoming His life for you on the cross. He sacrificed His own life willingly for you and me, so that we don’t ever have to go through what He went through on the cross.
And just because Jesus had conquered eternal death for us, does not necessarily means that physical death in the body will not come. But by putting your faith in the perfect work of Jesus Christ, you can be completely free from the fear of physical death (1 Corinthians 15:55-57). The devil will attempt to put sicknesses and diseases on your body, but you can deny him access to your body by taking control of it, with the spoken words of God’s promises.
You don’t have to be sick for as long as you are able, to stand up against the tactics of the devil in this way. And if you are sick right now or later do get sick, you need to know that there is provision already available for your healing in the stripes of Jesus Christ.
There are a lot of things going on in the world today, that are not in the will of God at all. To be sick is definitely not the will of God for anyone. God’s plan to stop people from being sick had been accomplished already by Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:24).
A bitter heart will make you sick
But sin just as it was for Adam and Eve, is still a major cause of both spiritual and physical death on the earth today. Sicknesses and diseases are manifested among many Christians today, because of their inability to walk in love and forgiveness towards one another.
The Bible says:
“If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”
I John 4:20-21 NKJV
You can’t say that you do love God, if you can’t love your fellow Christians. We are all different from one another in character and the way we practice Christianity. But that can’t be allowed to prevent us from loving one another. Such differences should never be allowed to stand in our way of loving one another.
There are many children of the same parents around the world today, who don’t agree with one another about several things. But that does not means that they don’t love one another. It works in the same way within the family of God.
There are many Christians that I don’t necessary agree with on many things, but I can’t allow our differences to prevent me from loving them. We are related with one another by the blood of Jesus Christ, and that relationship is bigger than anything else in this world. How will I stand before God to explain that type of behavior and attitude towards God’s own people?
Love is the fulfillment of all the commandments of God (John 13:34-35 and Romans 13:8-10). The primary reason why God heals the sick is because of the nature of His Love towards us. God is Love (1 John 4:8); and He manifests His nature of Love towards us by healing us when we are sick.
God loves the whole world, including the sinners who don’t even know Him yet (John 3:16). He loves them as much as He loves us (Christians), because He created us all. And that nature of God’s love is in the life of every Christian on the earth today. You were born again of the love of God. You do have the love seed of God in your life as a Christian. Let that seed grow by living in forgiveness towards others.
There are many people who are sick today, because of their inability to love and forgive others who had offended them. The enemy is using their inability to forgive and love, to not only make them sick; but to also spread the root of bitterness around to others through unforgiveness. That root of bitterness emanates from their lack of forgiveness towards those who had offended them. The devil uses the bitterness of heart to afflict other people with whom, they are in one form of relationship with; by afflicting them with pain, sicknesses and diseases everywhere they are going. Bitterness is like a cancer that spreads very fast if you don’t deal with it now.
Paul once warned Timothy about certain Christians who were spreading bitterness among other Christians. He advised him to flee away by shunning such things. He said:
“But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort,”
II Timothy 2:16-17 NKJV
As the root of bitterness continues to spread, so also will sicknesses and diseases spread everywhere. It’s a spiritual law. What you sow with words into other peoples’ lives is what you will reap. If you’re sowing the root of bitterness into other peoples’ lives, it will spread like cancer to cause more pain, sicknesses and diseases for them also. You are just making them bitter just like you towards other people, who they may not even know at all.
Jesus warned us about the danger of allowing the evil, that others are engineering against us to affect our ability to walk in love and forgiveness. He said:
“Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!”
Matthew 18:7 NKJV
Offenses creates the opportunities for the enemy to attack people with sicknesses and diseases. And things will always happen that will make you to get offended at people. You will always have people to offend you. But you don’t need to be taking those offenses. Don’t get yourself baited by the enemy to be taking the offense from him.
There are so many offenses going on around you everyday in the realm of the spirit. The devil is always throwing them everywhere. That’s what he uses to create chaos around the world. But just because the devil is throwing things around you to tempt you, doesn’t means that you have to be taking them.
People will always get you offended. Be smart and careful not to allow their offenses to make you bitter at them. Be quick to forgive and forget about those offenses.
You do have the primary responsibility as a Christian to walk in love and forgiveness towards all men. Don’t ever say that you can’t forgive anyone. That’s the lie of the devil. You can truly love and forgive others, no matter what they might have done to offend you as a Christian.
The Holy Spirit lives in you to help you in doing this, even in excruciating situations when it is so difficult for you to love and forgive. The truth is that you can love and forgive others. It’s the nature of God in your life as a Christian. Love is the first fruit of the Holy Spirit in your Christian life (Galatians 5:22). Yes, you can love and forgive anybody.
Forgiveness is a spiritual force
The Bible informed us about one of the things that Jesus did after His resurrection from the dead:
“And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
John 20:22-23 NKJV
You will notice that the disciples never received the supernatural power to forgive others, until after the resurrection of Jesus. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was not living inside the believers. So people at the time often struggled to forgive and forget. But after Jesus had accomplished the plan of God to save us, the Holy Spirit started living inside of those who did and will believe in Him.
The Holy Spirit was given to you to help you to live in forgiveness towards others. It’s when a Christian is struggling to yield to the Holy Spirit in doing this, that the devil will start exploiting the absence of forgiveness against them within their minds, until they become sick in the body. The devil knows how to exploit your everyday thoughts, so as not to ever forgive people who offend you. He will do this until you become bitter and start getting sick in your body.
Bitterness of heart will make you stressful emotionally and unstable in your thoughts. A Christian who is bitter can’t meditate on the Holy Scriptures. Bitterness will make them angry at other people. It’s a root cause of rebellion within many communities today. The stress that emanates from bitterness of heart has been proven to cause several bone, muscle and nerve diseases.
But from the moment when you make the decision to forgive and start loving others, the power of God’s love is released to heal you.
The decision to forgive and love people who have offended you, is an act of obedience to God’s command. You don’t need to necessarily be in agreement with what people did to offend you. You are not accepting the offense. You are just refusing its right to rule and control your life. That’s why you have chosen to forgive. You do have a Christian responsibility to forgive. By forgiving others you are making the decision to let the offense go away, instead of holding it to the heart against them.
There are many things that will be impossible for you to accomplish in life, for as long as you harboring hatred and bitterness towards others in your heart.
After releasing the forgiveness from your heart towards them, you are then able to pray better and more effectively for them. Your prayer life becomes more effective after forgiving others. As Jesus said:
“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”
Mark 11:25 NKJV
You can’t pray for others for as long as you are holding grudges against them. But when God’s love is allowed to work through you by forgiving them, you are in a better position to be praying for them more effectively.
The power to constantly live and walk in forgiveness is in every child of God. That power works in you and through you, to heal you and help you to stay healthy. The power works in giving you the supernatural wisdom, to do what is naturally necessary for you to stay healthy, after your healing must have manifested. And you surely do need God’s wisdom to stay healthy and not to get sick again.
You can never be able to lay hands on the sick and see them recover for example, if you are not walking in forgiveness and love towards others. It’s the nature of God in your life to love and forgive others. The love of God can’t flow through you to heal the sick, for as long as you are laying those hands on the sick, with unforgiveness towards others in your heart.
The nature of the devil is to hate and never forgive or forget. That’s the nature of the people of the world who don’t know God. They are always out there looking out to avenge on people who have offended them. The devil uses the absence of forgiveness in their lives, to make them bitter and later afflict them with all types of sicknesses and diseases.
If you can forgive people who have offended you as a child of God, then you can lay your hands on the sick and see them recover.
If Jesus could do it, you can do it also
Jesus Himself demonstrated how forgiveness works in His own house at Capernaum one day, as He was teaching the crowd. The town of Capernaum was where Jesus had His own house and the headquarters of His ministry. But He rarely stayed there because of the crowd that was always following Him (Matthew 13:1). He was always on the road doing the work of the Kingdom of God.
But at every opportunity available to Him, He would teach and minister to the crowd in the house. One of those days as He was teaching the crowd four men had brought their crippled friend to Jesus for him to be healed. They could not find a way to enter the house because of the large crowd. So they did a very weird thing by breaking through the roof of the house, so as to get to where Jesus was sitting.
Naturally the people of the world would had been offended by what these men did. But it was not like that with Jesus. He would not allow the devil to use what they did, as they had destroyed His property. He decided to turn the offense against the devil himself. Instead of getting offended by what they did by damaging the roof of His house, Jesus was thankful to God for their faith. He refused to get offended. Jesus saw the faith of these men instead of their offense.
The Bible says:
“Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, “Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them, “Why do you reason about these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘ Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins” —He said to the paralytic, “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!””
Mark 2:3-12 NKJV
Instead of seeing a transgression in what they did by destroying His property, Jesus chose to see their faith and was immediately able to forgive them. Faith works through love in this way for us to be able to forgive people (Galatians 5:6). It makes God’s power available for us to heal others and to be healed also. This was what Jesus did here. And you can do the same also as a believer in His name.
The religious people were not happy about this. And that is what often happens in our world today, when you choose to love and forgive others. The world will take you offense at you.
Grow in love to be quick to forgive
It’s when we are growing in the love of God, that we will begin to get quicker in forgiving others.
The Apostle Paul said this prayer for the Ephesians:
“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:17-19 NKJV
When you are growing in the love of God, you will be filled with more of God’s glory in your Christian walk of faith. The power to forgive flows easily through your life at this time.
The knowledge of the love of Christ in you surpasses the knowledge of love as the world understands it. When you are growing in the knowledge of the love of Christ, you are able to freely walk in forgiveness towards others. Forgiveness becomes so easy for a Christian who is growing in the love of God. It’s what causes the fullness of God’s presence to be with you and be manifested through you, in the demonstration of the power of God’s Kingdom.
There is a depth of the love of God in your life as a Christian, which you are only able to tap into as you are walking in forgiveness towards others. The power to forgive flows through your life, because of God’s love in your life as a Christian. You are quick to forgive and forget easily as you are walking in love towards others.
The devil can’t forgive because he doesn’t have that nature of God (Love) in him. That’s why he can’t afflict you with sicknesses and diseases, for as long as you are walking in love. He will have to create a situation around you, where you will find it hard to forgive others, so as to exploit the absence of forgiveness to afflict you with sickness.
Do you have people in your life that you are finding it difficult to forgive. Forgiveness is an act of faith. You choose to forgive irrespective of what you are feeling. You may not even feel like forgiving them, but you have to choose to forgive anyway and move on. Don’t let the devil use this to stop your faith from working.
The realm of the spirit where you are walking in love and forgiveness, is the realm of the supernatural where there is no limit or hindrance for you with God. God’s power flows through you in that realm where nothing will be impossible for you.
You will observe that forgiveness opened the door for Jesus to minister healing to the man in the above scripture texts. The same thing goes for us also as God’s children today. To be able to heal the sick and cast out demons, you have to be walking in love and forgiveness towards others, especially those who have offended you.
You don’t have a ministry yet until you are able to walk in love and forgiveness towards others. God can’t work through you until you are walking in love and forgiveness. And your love and forgiveness will be tested through persecution. But you have to be smart never to allow the devil to target you, by planting the seeds of hatred, bitterness and the lack of forgiveness in your life against your persecutors.
The woman with the issue of blood as another example had lost everything that she had to the doctors, before hearing about Jesus and consequently having the faith to be healed. She had every reason to be offended by the doctors, because medical science had failed her. She had lost all her money to them without any result to show for it.
But it’s really impossible for her faith to had worked without forgiving them. She obviously had forgiven them. That was what opened the door for her faith to work through her heart so as to get healed. An unforgiving heart can’t receive healing.
Are you harboring hatred and bitterness towards anyone? You can’t be holding on to that and expect God to heal you. It’s a sin for you to harbor such things in your life towards others.
Let the love of Christ work through you to help you in releasing forgiveness towards them today.
The Bible says about how the love of God worked through Jesus to bring us healing. It says:
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.”
Isaiah 53:5 AMPC
God’s love forgave all our transgressions in that sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. God forgave you in Christ Jesus. He did exactly what He expects you to do before you could be saved. Love allowed Jesus to be bruised for our guilt of sins, so that we can have peace with God and men. An exchange took place on the cross that released the forgiveness of our sins. And the result was the healing power for our bodies.
If God could forgive and forget all your sins in Christ Jesus, what makes it so hard for you to do the same thing for others. Don’t let your flesh stand in the way for you to forgive. Crucify the flesh in you by the power of the Holy Spirit in your life (Galatians 5:24-26).
In another place the Bible says again:
“who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness— by whose stripes you were healed.”
I Peter 2:24 NKJV
The forgiveness of sins opens the door for healing to take place according to these scriptural texts. You can be healed today by choosing to forgive, and living a life full of love for those who had offended you.
The blessing of the Lord will begin to flow into your life as you take this step today. Stay in the love lane. Forgive others and be healed.
As Paul said:
“bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.”
Colossians 3:13-14 NKJV
Love is the perfect bond of your Christian life. It’s what allows healing to flow through you always. Keep on loving others no matter what they are doing to offend you. Love always wins.
