Verse 2 says “he forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.”  Believing that God can heal your body should be no different to believing he can forgive sin. Yet, that truth becomes even more powerful when you realize that, not only can he forgive you and heal you—He already has! God’s provision for the healing of your body and the forgiving of your sin are just two of the many benefits that you receive when you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Your forgiveness and your healing were secured for you. But while it is important to realize that healing indeed belongs to you as a believer, it is just as important to know how to apply God’s Word to your life so you can activate that healing…when you need it.There are five main ways in which we can see healing gain a fuller release.

1) Apply the word to your own life.

Proverbs 4:20-22.

My son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body” This is probably the most demanding level of faith because the physical symptoms or the circumstances that you are facing will probably be the exact opposite to what faith says they should be.So we need to train ourselves to apply our attention as regularly as we can to what the word says and not just what our circumstances or symptoms say. With faith all things are possible. Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has accepted ,in spite of your changing symptoms moods and circumstances.”

2) Call for the elders of the Church.

James 5:14 “is anyone sick He should call the elders of the  church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord” There has been lots of debate about this passage and its meaning. This passage makes a direct comment upon what needs to happen when sickness developes. You are to call for the elders and they are to come to you. You are to call for leading members of the church to pray over your sickness.There is an anointing that is meant to flow from the head down.

The elders in this context have two functions:

1) To Pray

The elders need to be people of faith who know how to pray in faith.

2) To anoint with oil in the name of the Lord.

Mark 6:12-13 tells us:“ They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them”

The origins of anointing with oil is to be found in  the practises of ancient shepherds. It was common for insects and parasites to burrow their way into the heads and ears of sheep and  potentially harm them. However shepherds would   pour oil on the sheep’s head making it impossible for bugs to burrow into the skin or ears and harm the animal. Oil was also regarded as having healing properties Here the anointing is done “in the name of the Lord”. Anointing can release a similar level of protection from  sickness: It is also important to have faith in the Name of Jesus,Acts 3:6, 16; John 14:12-14; 1 John 3:23  Jesus’ Name carries all the authority of Jesus Himself. When Peter spoke in Jesus’ Name, it was as if Jesus were speaking. He didn’t pray for the man at the gate called Beautiful. He spoke words of faith—in Jesus’ Name. In the same way and with the same authority, you can speak to your affliction. James 5 v.13 says “The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well” The key here is that it is not the prayer offered with good intentions, it is not even the prayer of compassion , it is the prayer of faith. If   you have heard from God you can pray in faith.

3) The prayer of agreement.

When two or three believers get together in Jesus’ Name, He is there too. And if they ask anything and agree in prayer, it is done. However it is not just as simple as us agreeing to something and God complying with our will.It is us agreeing together and complying with his will. The prayer of agreement is a partnership of two or more people cooperating in  employing prayers of faith, The key is having discerned successfully what the will of God is in the situation.

4) Receive the laying on of hands.

Hebrews 6;1-2  tells us “the laying on of hands” is an elementary teaching.There are two ways to receive the laying on of hands—where people of faith actually lay their hands on your body and believe you are healed as a result: It can be done  firstly by any believer (Mark 16:15-20), and secondly  by special ministries (1 Corinthians 12; Hebrews 6:1-5 5)

5) Participate in communion.

This is a fundamental way to receive healing that has been overlooked by the Church in recent history. When you receive the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus, you should be keenly aware that you are activating  the Blood Covenant of the New Testament, and acting according to the Word of God. As we remember the body and the blood, we should not only judge ourselves concerning sin, but we should judge ourselves concerning sickness as well. After all, Jesus paid a high price for both of them. By receiving Communion, we are partaking of everything Jesus’ sacrifice provided—salvation, peace, prosperity and healing1 Peter 2:24 “He himself bore my sins in his body on the tree so that I might die to sins and live for righteousness,by his wounds I have been healed”.

If we give greater attention to these five activities the outcome will be a greater manifestation of healing.

“When God asks you a question he’s not looking for the answer. He already knows the answer. He wants you to discover what the answer is!”

The above are extracts from this Sundays talk 24^th January 2010. To listen to the full talk please click Here.

Whatever your believing God for. Make it bigger than you can accomplish by yourself. Make it bigger than we can do as a people….. We need a God who is bigger than us to fulfil a vision that is bigger than us!

The above are extracts from this Sundays talk 17^th January 2010

Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between a winner and a loser? Victorious people seem to share an inability to accept defeat. The alternative to winning seems to be completely unacceptable. They seem to have a capacity to work out what needs to be done and then they go after it with all of the resources at their disposal. Within these terms Nehemiah did nearly everything right in order to accomplish victory in the completion of his project.

1) Victorious people have a compelling purpose.

Nehemiah 2;15 and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.”
Nehemiah did not just have a particular journey but also the destination in mind. He could see both the problem and the solution and yet he had never visited Jerusalem.

Victorious people see

a) Further than others can see:

Victorious leaders and people can see further. Nehemiah was able to see the problem but he was also able to picture the solution. What difficulty are you facing today, what challenge are you experiencing, God wants you to see not just the problem but its potential  solution.

b) More than others can see:

He knew that the wall could and should be re-built. He also knew what it would take to accomplish the task in terms of human and material resources.

c) Before others could see.

Many of the neighbouring people groups around Jerusalem did not want to see the wall re-built and several enemy leaders conspired to prevent the completion of the task. Nehemiah saw the danger in advance and planned a strategy accordingly. Many of the struggles described in scripture are about territory and who controls it; in this respect the Bible echoes life itself .For example the struggle around Isaac’s wells in the book of Genesis was about territory and influence. The greatest example of territory  and struggle is the area of the human heart and who influences it.

In History we have the example of Churchill .Churchill did everything in his power to win. He deployed troops in the Mediterranean against Mussolini, although he hated communism ,he allied himself with Stallin and the soviets and even sent them supplies. He developed his relationship with Roosevelt though the president was reluctant to join the war. In time his efforts paid off. When the USA entered WW.2, Churchill is reported to have said, “So we have won the war after all” One of Churchill’s most famous rallying calls is contained in the following quotation:
“What is our aim? I answer in one word Victory-victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

What do you need to do? ,What alliances need to be made? ,to accomplish the purpose that God has for you as an individual .Big doors can swing on little hinges. Sometimes your breakthrough is tied up in a relationship, or someone who can show you the favour that you need to succeed. Sometimes your destiny can be tied up with a particular person.
2.Victorious leaders/people create a sense of momentum.

Momentum means a force or speed of movement; and impetus, John Maxwell declares that momentum is the key that unlocks victory. When leaders and people lack momentum, they look worse than they are ,when they have momentum they appear to be better than they are. With enough momentum any kind of change is possible. With sufficient momentum a tipping point becomes inevitable. We need momentum in our individual lives, in our corporate lives together. If you have ever driven behind a new learner driver ,who keeps stalling the car you can see how difficult it is to build any momentum.
The way to stop a great work is to stop its leader,One way to stop him is to break his momentum.
Momentum is often easier to stop than to start.

A) Momentum breakers come from a tidal wave of negativity.

4:1 –2 When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall; he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews.In the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, “What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble–burned as they are?”

As a result of this negativity, workers became discouraged .We need to recognise that our words create or destroy, discourage or inspire, heal or hurt, so choose yours carefully today! Think about it for a minute, what are your words saying about you?, do you sound like a child of God or a live-in lodger with the Osbournes? The Bible says we should be, swift to hear, slow to speak. (James 1:19 NKJ) King Solomon adds, even fools are thought to be wise when they keep silent. (Proverbs 17:28 NLT) What he means is? stupid people show the world  how vacuous they are by speaking too readily .

b)The impact of multiple voices.

12) Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, “Wherever you turn, they will attack us.” Notice here that on ten separate occasions they came with a negative report.

The impact of this was to discourage and to break the momentum in the re-building process.

c) Momentum creators include prayer and strategic planning .

He relied upon God.
We need to remember that whatever part we have to play in things the battle belongs to God. Out of prayer and connection with God, a plan was created to address the problems.

4; 12 Therefore I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows.
His plan was to strengthen the weak points in the wall. Sometimes momentum is the only thing between winning and losing. That’s why in football when a team is on top their opponents sometimes will try to disrupt the momentum by giving away a number of fouls to slow the game down and break the momentum. We need a strategy in order to maintain momentum.

Nehemiah’s strategy was simple:
From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armour. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah.
1) It had an offensive capacity. Half of the men continued the work.
2) The other half were engaged in defensive duties protecting the workers.

You and I need a sense of momentum in our spiritual lives. If we are not moving forward then we could be stuck in a rut. Yet progress can take time. It may take you five years to learn to stop people- pleasing, or ten years to stop feeling sorry for yourself, or twenty years to stop going back and reliving your childhood. All the while God is telling you, ‘Stop it,’ and you’re saying, ‘Yeah, I know. I’m going to do better.’ Then finally a crisis happens and the truth hits you. You need to change. At that point you say, ‘you know what? I’m going to forget those things, which are behind, and start reaching for those things, which are before. Then the momentum has a chance to build.

3) The Power to prevail.

Ch4;22
 Hear us, O our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity.

There is something about the anointing of God that enables you to not only prevail but also prosper in adversity. Joseph prospered whilst in prison. The people left Egypt with their pockets full and the chains of their captors empty. Jesus preached freedom in a prison that could not contain him.                        

6:15″ so the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days”
The real miracle in this book is the fact that the wall was completed in 52 days despite many adversaries. The tide begins to turn once the project is successful. The purpose of rebuilding the wall was not just to make the city secure again. The purpose was to change the spiritual climate.
6:17 When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.

If we are victorious in building the kind of lives God wants then we will transform the situations we touch around us. If we are victorious in building the kind of church God wants to build we will transform the world around us.

Five things about being filled with the spirit.

1) Jesus is the source of the experience

John 7:37-39 37 declares

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice,
 ”If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

Also John the Baptist tells us in:

Matt 3: 11
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
The foundational lesson to be learned here is that Jesus is the baptiser.We baptised a group of people a few weeks ago in water but only Jesus can baptise in the Holy Spirit.Whenever I pray for someone to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit I am simply seeking to be a facillitator for Jesus to move in that person’s life .

2)It is not a limited or a limiting experience

Baptise means to totally immerse and soak.It is therefore a powerful all encompassing experience.Some people refer to this as being filled with the Holy Spirit.I like to think of Baptism as the initial encounter and infilling as an ongoing activity. This is not a limited or a limiting experience. Every christian has the spirit but not every believer is filled with the spirit. When  a human being becomes a christian the holy spirit comes to live in and influence that person as an individual. He or she becomes the sacred dwelling place of the Holy Spirit!. God no longer is just “out there somewhere;” God designed you and me to be his address on earth. God wants to lives in you and  manifest his life through you. When you commit to God and yield to Jesus Christ,  God takes up residence in your life at that very moment. The Holy Spirit comes into a life and sets in motion a  transformation within us.In this way baptism in the spirit brings an added dimension that is potentially limitless.

3) It exposes us to the  limitless power of Love.

When people get  filled  with the spirit they experienced the love and power of God. The problem with human love is that it is often conditional and with limitations .It comes with a price tag attached.For example in the following letter,
Dear John,
I have been unable to sleep since I broke off our engagement. Won’t you forgive and forget. Your absence is breaking my heart, I was a fool,nobody can take your place. I love you.I love you,I love you-Marsha
P.S.Congratulations on winning the lottery.

God wants you to know that his love is unconditional. it accepts you as you are but in order to experience in a growing way his limitless love ,we need to learn obediance,this will necessitate going on being filled with the spirit.

4) It is a sign of empowerment.

Just as baptism in water is not a condition of salvation but an outward sign of an inward change.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit is not a condition of empowerment but rather a sign of it.Baptism in the spirit is how Jesus chooses to empower us.What is the difference between someone who’s a christian and a christian who is full of the Holy Spirit? ,It’s a bit like the difference between the light from a tiny candle, and that produced by a gas lantern. The light in the tiny candle is like every Christian – all Christians have the Holy Spirit living within them. But some people are like a gas lantern – they are so full of the Spirit of God that the light they give off is bright and warm and much greater than the light from the tiny candle.One of the main purposes of being filled with the spirit is that it enables us to receive the necesary power to be Christs’ representatives or witnesses here on Earth.

5) It releases within us the power to live a productive life.
Being filled with the spirit  can  be reduced in our thinking to an experience when it is meant to be an ongoing process.One of the dangers in seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit is that we can emphasise the’experiential’ rather than the process which is meant to enable us  to accomplish  things for God. If there’s an infilling, there must be an out flowing! Every time someone in the New Testament was filled with the Holy Spirit, things happened.  Amazing healings took place. They had book burnings in the town square. Idol makers and pornographers went out of business. They didn’t just celebrate in church; they took it to the streets. There must be an outflow! The first picture we have of God in the Bible is of Him in His creative role. He makes us in His image, breathes life into us, then says, ‘Go out and become productive’ (See Genesis 1:28).

Are you hoping your life will ‘just change for the better?’ Are you praying for somebody with all the answers to come along and improve your circumstances?. No, what’s inside you will change what’s outside you, if you put it to work! This is not some glib, ‘can do’ self-help programme. ‘It is God who works in you’ (Philippians 2:13 NIV). The struggle in your life right now may be over what God wants to do through you! What’s within you is greater than the trouble you’ve been through, the situation you’re in or the obstacles that lie in your path. When everything around you is saying ‘no’ but something deep within you is saying ‘yes, that’s your God-given destiny. Acknowledge it, anchor your life to it and begin to work it out. Be filled with the spirit and God’s power  will work through you in the situations you face.

William

When Michael Eisner, head of the Disney Corporation, had plans drawn up for a house, one wall was so thin it almost buckled under its own weight. Another software billionaire’s house had pine panelling that rotted out before the house was even completed. Were they too busy to notice? No, most architects say, people find construction details boring; they’d rather spend their money on more cosmetic stuff. Yet  an important truth regarding any kind of building work needs to be remembered that it is the foundation that determines the height, the width, the strength, and ultimately the value of the house.

The same principle applies to  the church and even more significantly the lives of its members and those they are seeking to reach.Houses built on sand are quick, cheap and easy; they provide temporary comfort and instant gratification. But building on  a foundation of rock is hard: it takes time, effort, foresight and perseverance – but the results are worth it. Jesus says in MATTHEW 7:24 “Therefore if everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock”.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:10 declares how important  the laying of good foundations  upon God’s word are to the long term effectiveness of what is being constructed;

“By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds.” Successful Christian minstry is the result of commitment, consistency and building according to God?s Word. Similarly successful christian living  is the result of commitment, to the same things. When you make those things the foundation of your life, you can make it through life’s variable weather patterns.  Today there’s a lot of flaky stuff being pedalled in the name of truth. We need to be building upon a strong foundation of the truth of God’s word.

A recent prophetic word encouraged us in Life Church  to think foundationally and as a result we have put together our current Sunday series entitled not suprisingly Foundations.In this series it is our aim to cover often neglected but foundational topics such as Eternity,Heven and Hell,Salvation,Faith,God is Father,Son and Spirit,Water Baptism and being filled with the spirit.These biblical subjects and concepts give us our spiritual foundations.Without good foundations even the most expensive of buildings can fall.Our hope is that this church is here for the long haul and we want it to stand firm on the best of spirittual foundations.We also want the lives of those that we touch to be secured by the good basis of God’s word.

Hope empowers us to reach into the fears, disappointments and failings of the present in order to find something redemptive.

The message of the gospel is profoundly redemptive God entered deep into the darkness of the human condition in order to redeem it. And he did so through the sacrifice of his only Son whose resurrection brought us life: freedom from sin and sinfulness”.

Hope is a Greek word Elpis meaning joyful and confidant expectation. When we have Hope it means that we are looking for something good that we want to have happen in the future, or a confident feeling about the future: Hope is an emotional belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances within one’s personal life.

It’s a mental condition that’s essential to the life God wants you to live. It’s the fuel your heart runs on. It’s the single biggest difference between those who persevere and those who give up. It’s called – hope.

A number of years ago researchers performed an experiment to see the affect hope had on those undergoing hardship. Two sets of laboratory rats were placed in separate tubs of water. The researchers left one set in the water, and found that within an hour they had all drowned. The other rats were periodically lifted out of the water and then returned. When that happened, the second set of rats swam for over 24 hours. Why? Not because they were given a rest, but because they suddenly had hope! Those animals somehow hoped that if they could stay afloat just a little longer, someone would reach down and rescue them. If hope holds such power for unthinking rodents, how much greater should its effect be upon human beings.

Whilst there are many factors that can diminish our hope there are a serious of hope builders that we can utilise in our lives.

A) Hope Builder One

- Look at the kingdom, not just your corner!

June 6th,1994 was the fiftieth anniversary of the allied invasion of Normandy ,which began the battle to liberate continental Europe from Nazi rule. The event was covered extensively on television.

One of the programmes paired two contrasting interviews back-to back. One interview was with an American who landed on Omaha Beach .He recalled the horrors that sounded like scenes from Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. The ageing veteran recalled looking around at the carnage and the casualties and he began to say “we’re going to lose”

The next interview was with an air force reconnaissance pilot who flew over the whole battle area .He saw the casualties and carnage on the beach but he also saw the penetrations being made by paratroopers, the effectiveness of aerial bombardment and he concluded “we’re going to win” Same battle different perspectives.

Today we need to remind ourselves that God’s kingdom is bigger than our particular section.

• In China it is estimated that 28,000 people become believers on a daily basis. In 1950 one million believers. Today in excess of 60 million.

• In Africa 20,000 become believers every day .In 1900 The continent was 3 percent Christian. I learned the other day of a conference in 1905 that concluded that if things continued as they were at that stage in history then by the end of the century Africa would be a muslim continent. The reality is that by the end of the century it was more than 40% Christian. Today African Christianity is at the forefront .God can take the wisdom of the wise and confound it.

• In the UK lots of negative stuff about the church being extinct by 2050.The reality is that despite continued decline in the main denominations. When you compile an aggregate of new churches and fresh expressions of church the picture is one of slight growth. Like the predictions about Africa God loves to confound the wisdom of the wise and fill that which appears hopeless with hope.

B) Hope Builder Two

- See Christ and not the circumstances!

Hope grows when we see Christ and not just the circumstances. Circumstances have great power over our emotions and feelings. One criticism, one setback, one nasty note or response, ingratitude when you expect gratitude, negativity when you expect something more positive.

At the root of diminished hope is unrealistic expectations. We expect everything to go so well and according to our agenda .

Romans 1: 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live (not by their emotions, not by their feelings, not by their circumstances but) by faith.”

We need to believe that Jesus is Lord of the World AND lord of the church and that the outcome is always subject to his sovereign control. However we need to recognise that yesterday’s faith cannot counteract today’s circumstances. We need today’s faith for current circumstances.

C) Hope Builder Three

- Remember the success stories and not just the problems!

Throughout the Old Testament the Hebrews were regularly exhorted to remember the success stories and not just the problems and failures. When they won battles, crossed rivers, experienced miracles, they piled up stones, so they wouldn’t forget. Annually they celebrated the Passover to remember how God had brought their ancestors out of Egypt. Every Harvest they celebrated the Feast of the Tabernacles. Yes we have to face our problems to do otherwise is simply denial. But we need to come into a season where we disempower failure and empower success.

D) Hope Builder Four

- Hear your call and not just see your complaint!

You see we have got to learn the lesson that every problem and difficulty is really an opportunity. When someone comes to me and says this is not getting done, or that need is not getting met, I’m increasingly wanting to say well what can you do about it?. Kids causing trouble on the street is calling out for someone to come with a solution, it might be you, the gospel isn’t getting out there into the world you might have part of the answer.” You might have the solution” Allow the sense of divine dissatisfaction working on the inside of you to work creatively and positively to give hope of a solution. The fact that you are feeling it means God wants you to do something.

John Maxwell writes:

Hope shines brightest when the hour is darkest.
Hope motivates when discouragement comes.
Hope energizes when the body is tired.
Hope sweetens while bitterness bites.
Hope sings when all melodies are gone.
Hope believes when evidence is eliminated.
Hope listens for answers when no one is talking.
Hope climbs over obstacles when no one is helping.
Hope endures hardship when no on is caring.
Hope smiles confidently when no one is laughing.
Hope reaches for answers when no one is asking.

by William Prentice – Pastor

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