If as Christians, we are able to identify healing as one of the inheritances that the Lord had given us to possess; we therefore need to acknowledge that the only way to take possession of it is by faith.
Faith for our healing works in same way as Abraham received the promise of God to become the father of many nations. We take possession of our healing by faith also, just as Abraham possessed the promise of God by faith.
The Lord had told him that everywhere the soles of his feet would touch belonged to him (Genesis 13:17).
To be able to take hold of what had been given to him, Abraham had to walk through the land. His footprints on the soil of Canaan land became his signature mark for possessing the land.
Those footprints as he walked through the land of Canaan, became the sign for the hosts of Heaven to be positioned beside him and his descendants, until the territory got into their hands.
Abraham did exactly what the Lord God had commanded him to do, so as to be able to receive what was promised to him. His faith was in the Lord God who had promised him the land.
Today healing comes to us in the same manner as well. It’s in the form of a promise that must be received and acted upon by faith, so that we can be able to take possession of it.
God’s Spirit spoke directly into Abraham’s heart. That was how faith came to him. Abraham at the time had to train himself to discern the voice of the Lord. He had to train himself to separate God’s voice from that of the devil. He rejected the voices of the evil in his world, so as to accept the voice of God with the promise which gave him faith.
The Prophet Job pointed out to us how Abraham must had been able to do this, when he said:
“Does the ear not put words to the test, just as the palate tastes its food [distinguishing between the desirable and the undesirable]?”
Job 12:11 AMP
Abraham trained himself to discern and taste of the goodness of God. He rejected the undesirable voices of unbelief in his world to hold on to the voice of faith in God.
We have to believe in God’s promises with our hearts, and then proclaim it with our mouth (Romans 10:9-10). We can only take possession of whatever we are believing with the heart by proclaiming it with our mouth.
But the Holy Spirit still has to work through our hearts in the process of proclamation, so that we may be able to declare what is believed with the heart faithfully. Every promise of God has to be tested in the heart, before it can eventually be released with power through proclamation.
No one can possess what belongs to him, by just waiting for the Lord to give it first, before believing that it belongs to him. Faith does not work in that way. We take hold of the promises of God by believing in them first with the heart.
After we have received the promise of healing into our hearts, we will then have to release our faith in it, for the possession of the promise through proclamation.
Our attitude during the proclamation of God’s promises matters a lot. The possession of God’s promises has to be with an expression of joy from the heart. You can’t take possession of what is yours with sadness of heart.
A sad expression on the face during the proclamation of God’s promises is a defeatist attitude before the Lord. It’s not an expression of faith in God. The enemy uses this type of defeatist attitude to take what belongs to many children of God away from them.
The declaration of your faith for healing has to be with the joy of what the Lord had done through the promise to heal you. Faith has to be expressed with joy.
Rejoicing in the Holy Ghost will therefore position the hosts of Heaven on your side. The angels will always rejoice with you whenever they see you rejoicing.
Your expression of joy causes them to swing into action on your behalf; because they do know that your Heavenly Father is thrilled to see you rejoicing.
The joy of the Lord brings good health.
The Bible says that we are to:
“Rejoice always,”
I Thessalonians 5:16 NKJV
And again:
“Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!”
Philippians 4:4 NLT
Joy brings the aroma of love into your faith for the healing promise, even while your faith is working through love (Galatians 5:6).
You can’t be sad if you’re living by faith. Joy is the essential force that your faith needs at all times to stay active.
The joy of the Lord is what gives impetus to your faith, so that the corresponding action of your faith, will be able to release the power to fulfill the promise of God for you.
It’s the joy of knowing that the promises of God can never fail that causes you to walk deeper in the love of God towards others. This will make you to grow stronger in faith for healing and every other thing.
There is an inner strength from the inside of your spirit man, which can give you the power to heal and restore your body to good health.
And the joy of the Lord is what produces that spiritual strength. You can’t be physically strong if your spirit man is weak. Joy is what gives the energy boost to your spirit man.
That’s why it’s important to be in good spirit – always rejoicing at all times. This opens the way for a constant flow of God’s power to heal and restore your body tissues, just as it closes the door of your heart to the ploys of the devil.
Joy is an important fruit of your born-again spirit man in the healing process.
If rejoicing is making you strong on the inside of your spirit man, then you will be strong in the body also. Being consistently joyful is good for your physical body and good health.
As a Covenant child of God your inner strength comes from delighting yourself in the Lord, and not from delighting yourself in the things of this world (see Philippians 4:13 and Nehemiah 8:10).
The world can make you happy, but the world can’t ever give you joy.
Joy is the spiritual power in the life of every child of God which the devil hates so much; but which causes us to be doing exploits to get healed and be in good health.
It is what releases the spiritual power in our lives, which causes us to go out and fulfill the Great Commission of our Lord and Savior – Jesus Christ.
It’s what energizes us to lay hands on the sick and see them recover. It’s what gives us the strength to go on the onslaught at the devil, as we are casting him out.
That’s why the devil doesn’t like to see you rejoicing. The Bible says: “… the joy of the Lord is your strength”. (Nehemiah 8:10).
The strength for your physical healing comes from the joy of the Lord on the inside of you. Don’t allow the enemy to deny you access into the joy of the Lord.
The fruit of your born-again spirit man are the products of the new creation in Christ Jesus from within your heart (Galatians 5:22-23).
Faith, joy, love and peace are included among the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit always works from within your heart, with the help of the Holy Spirit to heal and restore your health.
In the same manner they do work also with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that you are able to minister salvation, healing and deliverance to a lost world. You need all of the fruit in your Christian life, to do the work of God’s Kingdom on the earth.
However, you may not need all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit for you to be able to fulfill your calling in life. But the fruit of the Holy Spirit are so important. And joy is included among the fruit.
You need to be open at heart for the fruit of the Holy Spirit to work in your life. There are a lot of people who are not being healed today, because they are not cooperating with the Holy Spirit for their spiritual fruit to work in them through the healing process.
As an example, I had personally heard stories of a lot of people, who are participating in all kinds of weight loss programs. Some of them are not getting anything from those programs, not necessarily because the programs are not good.
They are not getting anything from those programs mostly because of the absence of joy in their hearts. Joy is what gives the inner strength to be able to go through those programs.
Evidently, they are not being joyful or excited at all about losing weight. That’s why they go about whining and complaining, instead of rejoicing in the Lord. Some even sees these programs as an extra burden on top of their weight.
The ability to cultivate the right attitude with the joy of the Lord, matters a lot in the midst of several of our life’s endeavors. After saying “Amen” to your prayer, the Lord expects you to be rejoicing before Him, for the answered prayer with thanksgiving. And you need faith as the fruit of the Spirit to be able to do this.
Faith just like joy comes from within the heart. Joy is what gives strength to your faith, thereby empowering you to do the impossible (Mark 9:23).
The joy of being healed gives you good health for the restoration of your body tissues. Joy is therefore like the safeguard to your faith (Philippians 3:1).
The joy of the Lord can make you whole – spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
There are many religious people who are very nice and lovely. They like reading the Bible daily and going to every church meeting. But some of them are doing those things without being wholly committed in their hearts to the Lord.
That’s why many of them are dropping out of Churches in frustration, and in many instances, they are even no more reading the Bible.
Of course, a person can be very religious without being born again. One clear evidence of being born again is the inner peace that comes with joy from within the heart.
That’s why the Christian life had become boring and monotonous to many of these religious people. Being saved and healed in the body comes with joy from within the heart. The joy of delighting yourself in the Lord gives the inner strength which affects your physical body.
You may be weak or sick in the body right now; but when you begin to allow joy to manifest with laughter and smiles, then you will receive the supernatural strength that your body needs for your healing and good health.
Rejoicing will manifest healing for you.
As the Bible says:
“A joyful, cheerful heart brings healing to both body and soul. But the one whose heart is crushed struggles with sickness and depression.”
Proverbs 17:22 TPT
Depression is the evidence of a crushed spirit. When you are not joyful, then you are in the risk of being depressed. The devil uses depression as a weapon to get people sicker and weaker in their bodies.
Depression has a way of affecting the flow of blood in the body system. It affects the bone marrow, and it can cause other serious sicknesses and diseases in the body, like high or low blood pressures and even some forms of deadly cancer.
It’s important to stir up your spirit man always with joy, even when you don’t feel like doing so. Being joyful has nothing to do with how you are feeling in the body.
The voice of the body will have to be ignored for you to be joyful. If you’re not going to put your feelings of pain away, you can’t stir up the joy of the Lord from within your heart.
Rejoicing is a matter of choice that we make, especially when trials and temptations comes to us (see James 1:2-4).
As mentioned before joy is the spiritual force in your life that the devil can’t stand. But you will need to be able to stir it up at all times, because in most situations you are not going to feel joyful at all.
You will have to learn how to put your feelings aside, so as to rejoice always in the Lord, just as the Bible says you should be doing.
King David explained how he did it when he said:
“I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God.”
Psalms 84:2 NLT
David had a longing for the presence of God in his life. It was a very strong longing that almost caused him to faint. In other words, he was being deprived of physical strength, because of the absence of God’s presence at that moment.
He therefore made the decision to do something about it. His personal will was involved in this decision.
David’s whole being (spirit, soul and body) eventually entered the presence of God with a shout of joy. But he had to initiate the shout as he entered into the presence of God.
Notice that he said: “I will shout joyfully ..”. The ability to shout joyfully is a decision of our personal will. David made the decision within himself about how he was going to approach the living God – with a joyful shout.
A joyful shout will always catch the attention of all of Heaven. Whereas a broken or depressed spirit can’t get into the presence of God.
That’s why you can’t afford to be living on the earth without being joyful at all times. The good things of life comes your way when you are joyful at heart. Don’t ever allow the world or whatever you are going through right now, to steal your joy away from you.
What kind of a parent is not glad to hear the joyful shout of the child? You are happy to hear your children playing around your house and in your home. It gives you joy to see them laughing, jumping and running around as they are playing.
That’s how God, your Father in Heaven reacts to your shout of joy also in His presence. God is glad to hear your shouts of joy. It thrills Him to hear your joyful voice.
A shout of joy will be like the shout of “Hallelujah”; “glory be to God” or “Praise the Lord”. It’s the type of shout that makes room for you into God’s presence, so that you can start doing something more by worshipping the Lord with all of your heart.
But you will have to initiate it first just as David said that he did. David with a joyful shout entered into God’s presence. You can easily catch God’s attention with that type of attitude.
No wonder God was pleased with David. He had the attitude of a little child whenever he approached God. When we come joyfully before Him, we get acknowledged immediately.
Laugh the devil off your back!
Smiling and laughing is good for your health also. It’s what God expects us to be doing even in the face of opposition. David said again about the Lord when going through persecution:
“The wicked plots against the just, And gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him, For He sees that his day is coming.”
Psalms 37:12-13 NKJV
If the Lord can laugh at your enemies while they are persecuting you; what stops you from doing what the Lord is doing also. You can laugh at the devil, just as God is laughing at him.
Laughter at the devil when he is afflicting you is good laughter. It opens the door for Heaven to come to your aid. But you have to make up your mind to laugh, because you are not going to feel like laughing at all, when the wicked are afflicting you.
However, if you know that those who are on your side are far more than those against you (2 Kings 6:15-23), you are going to be laughing the devil off your back, because you know what the outcome will be at the end of it all.
The devil can’t stand before you as long as you are laughing at him. You are embarrassing him whenever you are laughing at him. He is not comfortable to see you laughing and rejoicing while he is attacking you.
You are laughing at him because you do know that he had been defeated already. He is just trying to deny that truth about your victory over him by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Don’t let the devil steal your inner joy away from you. It’s the secret spiritual weapon for many things that you need in life.
If you allow him to steal your joy away from you, especially through anger and bitterness at those who are persecuting you, it will start affecting your overall health.
Put a smile on your face today. You will be glad about the inner joy which only God can give you as you do it.
However, you are not going to feel joyful, before you can be rejoicing in the face of persecution. It’s something that has to be stirred up by faith. And as you do it by faith, then God’s supernatural ability will be made available to help you in staying joyful.
God lives inside of your spirit man as a Christian. Your body as a child of God is not meant for the glorification of the dead works of this world, but to give glory to God.
That’s why we were commanded by Paul to yield our body as a living sacrifice to Him (Romans 12:1).
Christ gave His body as a sacrifice for you on the cross. You are to give yours back to Him as a living sacrifice on the earth.
This means that as long as you are alive in the physical body, you will have to glorify Him alone with it and not the world.
You sing to the Lord, you praise and worship God and not a human being. You dance and rejoice before the Lord, because you know that it gives glory to Him. And you also know that it’s good for your health.
In fact, medical science has proved that when you are smiling and laughing, signals are being sent by the nerves on your face to the brain. The brain receives this information that causes your whole body to start reacting to your mood.
That’s how your body begins to rejoice with dancing, singing and clapping of hands.
That’s what happens also when you received the good news of the gospel, about what Jesus did for you to be healed and made whole.
You did not receive it with concerns and worries about, when you would get saved or healed. You reacted by laughing at the devil about it. You reacted with joy from within your heart.
You didn’t go by your feelings after saying the sinner’s prayer to be saved. In fact, you were still thinking about many of your sins after saying that prayer.
But by faith you believed that you were saved after saying the prayer. And after a while it dawned on you, that something had really happened in your life. You were indeed saved!
This is how faith for your healing works also. You will not feel that it’s working. But in reality, it is working. Yes, your faith works as you are declaring what you do believe concerning your body. But do it with joy!
The anointing flows where there is joy to manifest the glory of the Lord, but anger and bitterness at people bring down God’s wrath upon the disobedient.
Don’t ever allow people to get you angry. It’s the weapon of the devil in afflicting you with sickness.
The Bible once told us about king Uzziah who was furious with anger in the presence of the Lord, because the priests inside the Temple would not allow him to burn a censer to the Lord.
It was the duty of the priests to burn censers. As Uzziah got angry before the Lord, leprosy from the presence of the Lord afflicted him, because no one is supposed to be angry in God’s presence, but joyful always.
The Bible says:
“Then Uzziah became furious; and he had a censer in his hand to burn incense. And while he was angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead, before the priests in the house of the Lord, beside the incense altar.”
II Chronicles 26:19 NKJV
You can’t be furious and angry while standing before the Lord in prayer, and still expect Him to honor your faith. Joy is what catches His attention, but your faith must be mixed with joy.
As Paul said concerning your proactive faith:
“While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
II Corinthians 4:18 NKJV
You don’t need to be waiting until all the symptoms of sickness disappears, before you can believe that you had been healed. But those symptoms are in fact disappearing, because that’s what you do believe.
And your faith is actively involved in this process. It’s important to note that it’s the same faith in God’s word, that got you saved which also healed your body.
That’s why it’s important to let the joy of the Lord begin to work through your heart. Let joy begin to flow through you from this day onwards to change your world. You are a world changer.
Rejoice always in the Lord. Let joy begin to move you to do greater things for the Lord. Stay healed, healthy and blessed in Jesus’ name. Amen!
