May 15, 2006

• I want to thank you for all your well wishes for Mother’s Day and the trip to Rocking Horse Ranch. I can guarantee to you that a good time was had by all, but I have a confession to make. I got up on a horse and before it left the corral I got off of the horse. I was too scared, so I guess horseback riding isn’t one of my gifts. Katherine mentioned what a good time we had. I concur. Later I will try to put up some pictures.

  
  

  Last time I wrote I mentioned the term sin-sick, referring to the fact that when we sin it affects us physically and emotionally. And that sickness comes from pockets of sin. Someone asked if it was a sin to have diabetes or to have depression if it is a chemical imbalance of serotonin.

  
  

  I wish I could say no that it is not a sin thing, but it is, just not sin the way that the writer is implying. When Adam and Eve (way back in Genesis) disobeyed God, they turned over the title deed of earth over to satan, who deceived them. Satan is the author of sickness, death, lies, and sin. And God warned Adam and Eve that if they freely chose to disobey Him (and He did not make it mandatory to obey) that in that day they would surely die. Well, they ate the forbidden fruit, and felt that they hadn’t died instantaneously. Unfortunately their death is more insidious, it is a spiritual death, and if you realize that for God a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day (2 Peter 3:8), no character in the Bible lived to see 1000 years, including Adam and Eve, they did die within a day.

  
  

   

  
  

  It is not a sin to have diabetes, but diabetes came into this world because of the sin of Adam and Eve. It is not God’s heart that we remain sick, and He sent Jesus to die for our sins and by his stripes we are healed.  Isaiah 61:1-4 states (the passage Jesus read in the temple and declared that he was the fulfillment of this prophesy) he is to preach good tidings to the pour, heal the broken hearted (depression), proclaim liberty to the captives, comfort all those who mourn, give beauty for ashes, rebuild old ruins (including the ruins of sick bodies), etc. And if we watch what Jesus did as He walked on the earth, telling everyone that He did what His father did and showed Him to do, we see that Jesus healed ALL the sick.

  
  

   

  
  

  That being said, the Holy Spirit lives within all of us and will direct our paths to live more in accord with God. As we begin to listen and obey the Word of God and the promptings of the Holy Spirit we will see changes in our lives. These changes will reach out to all areas of our life, from mental to physical and our relationships. God works from within out, and while some healings are dramatic, not all are. Some take more time, or God is focusing on healing one area of our lives first, to be followed by another. God is working to bring our lives in perfect accord with Him, and to help us to grow and change. God is the great healer and He heals ALL who come to Him.

  
  

   

  
  

  So, if we are sick in an area, we need to examine our lives and bring our failings to God to have Him help us to sort them out and change them. As we begin to obey God and His Word, we will see changes in our whole being. And no matter how bleak the picture looks (if you read the Old Testament you will see that many times the odds against the Israelites were incredible) God is bigger than any of our problems or sicknesses and God can effect a change.And yet, He will not be confined within the box of our expectations of how He should work and in what order He should work. He sees the complete picture, and unfortunately in our limited vision we tend to see our immediate circumstances. God’s main purpose is to reunite us with Him, to allow us to share His incredible love. And sometimes when we are hurting it is the way that God uses to get our attention – so that we turn to Him. While God does not cause sickness, he does at times remove His hedge of protection around us so that sickness can come in, sickness caused by satan, to help us to grow and change, to test us so that we see where we stand in faith. God knows where we stand, His tests are not for Him to grade us, but for us to see exactly where we stand.

  
  

   

  
  

  And sometimes, if the sickness lingers, there are reasons for that that have absolutely nothing to do with God. We can get comfortable in our sickness – even depression can seem to be safe if it is what we know. I know because I spent years in depression and changing to looking at life with joy was and is an adjustment.  When we step out in faith and trust God, sometimes it seems that we get worse before we get better – don’t forget it is in satan’s best interest to keep us blaming God, to keep us focused on our disease, to keep us distracted by our symptoms so that we are not effective in God’s kingdom. As we begin to proclaim the Word of God, to speak the truth of God, satan is going to counterattack, and use everything in his power to convince us that this belief in God does not work. We have to persevere in the midst of the apparent symptoms, to continue to believe and trust God. As we build our faith (and for me at times it is grain of sand by grain of sand) there will come a point where we will see progress.

  
  

   

  
  

  We should not beat ourselves up emotionally when we do not hold onto the truths of God, when we slip and fall, we must just get up and start again. There is a song, “We fall down, and get up, we fall down and get up. For a saint is just a sinner who fell down and got up.” When we face our battles, and we all have them, we will sometimes walk strong in faith, other times we will fall down, sometimes it is tough, other times it is easy, but the truth is, no matter what – God is there, and He will succeed, for His word does not come back void and He has promised us that He loves us and is there for us.

  
  

   

  
  

  And we need to know that God knows the end from the beginning, He sees the whole picture, and while something may seem to be an inconvenience to us, it could be the best possible thing for us. Sometimes the things we pray for, in retrospect, we are very glad we did not get. Sometimes a weakness, a challenge, a sickness, a depression could be something that helps us later on in life – giving us discipline, empathy, strength, or something that we didn’t see when we were in the midst of the situation. It ultimately comes down to do we believe the external circumstances, or do we believe that we have an infinite God who loves us immensely and is directing our path to bring us closer to Him, closer to home (Heaven).

  
  

  
  I hope this helps some,

  
  

  Heather

  • 8:39 am
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