Overcome Your Sickness! How His Strength Transforms Any Weakness
After the heat and toil of the day, we find rest and repose in sleep.
It is out of that sleep we awaken with renewed strength for the tasks that lie ahead. It is out of death also that we awaken! It was said of our glorious Lord, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die, it brings forth much fruit.” (John 12:24).
It was out of His death that the glorious harvest of Eternal Life blossomed! He Himself became the FIRST FRUITS of them that slept. Without death, there can be no Resurrection. He does not impart His resurrection life to us because we live for Him; but because, for His sake, we are willing to die and allow Him to live His Resurrection life in us.
God saw that the human race could not be Divinely indwelt in its fallen state; lest in eating of the Tree of Life man would live forever in his fallen condition. Death had to come. The royal edict had gone forth, “The soul that sins, it shall die.” It was only in the new creation that Christ could indwell His people, or the Spirit of God take up His abode again within the confines of the entity called “man.” So the typical sacrifices of the Old Testament, and the antitypical Sacrifice offered, once and for all, of the New Testament took us not only into death—but through death—to the power of His Resurrection!
It was vicariously that He suffered for us on the Cross of Calvary. It was substitutionally that He died upon the accursed Tree. He took us with Him to the Cross and then He took us from the Cross into His grave; and, through the grave, we went with Him to the dawning of the first Easter morning, and the warm, eternal glow of His. At the time of His first advent, there was no room for Him in the inn. His pre-incarnate glory had filled the heavens; and yet, when he was to take upon Himself the form of man and, through the Miracle of the Incarnation, be born of a virgin mother, there was found no room for Him in the inn. You see, there was no room, because the rooms were already occupied! Even so, in these days, at the time of His advent as the Indwelling Christ, who will make our bodies His temples and will Himself tabernacle within these vessels of clay; if the rooms are occupied, He will find no place within to take up His abiding!
If only we could realize that His coming will bring life, light and health, we would not be so preoccupied with giving place to our selfish, fleshly desires and purposes so that He is crowded out. He who bore our sicknesses and our sorrows would come to give us His peace, rest and joy.
When He comes, will He find faith in the earth? One step further—will He find faith in the “earth” which we are? If we would become less concerned about what we do, forget our petty bickerings about Biblical interpretations, and open wide the gates of our beings to let the King of Glory in, we would start once again the music of joy by the angel choirs of the glory-world. All heaven would rejoice in such a surrender as that! Do you believe Him enough to make room for Him?
From the Inside Out
He does not come as a postman, bringing gifts from the Father, leaving them at our door, and then walking away! Some people would use the Bible like a mail-order catalog. They ask the Father to give them what they want, and then expect the angelic messengers to bring them this, or to bring them that; in order that their own desires might be gratified, and their needs met in the way they want them to be. The light, which Christ brings, does not shine from the outside in; but it radiates from the inside out! The gifts He imparts, He administers and operates. He does not literally “give” light. He is the Light! He does not impart health. He is the Health. It is the constant acknowledgment of His indwelling—the recognition that the life we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God, who gave Himself for us, and who now dwells within us—that brings us into vital union with Him.
Room is made within us, BY THE SPIRIT, for the Incoming Christ! Commensurate with our sur- render and our death to self, His light, His life, and His love permeate every department of our being! Perhaps the transformation, at first, is spiritual only. Possibly the transformation is brought about by the operation of the Spirit within our spirit, bringing us light, understanding, and the deep settled peace which always floods the life when He dwells within.
Following this experience of His grace, manifested within our lives, the cup of His mercy overflows and the physical body begins to feel His Resurrection Life! Instead of struggle, it is REST. Instead of agonizing, it is PEACE. The consciousness that Christ is dwelling within, and that He has taken the government upon His own shoulders, brings us into a blessed quietness before the Lord. How many times, if only we could hear His Voice, upon our ears in gentlest tones would fall: “Be still and know that I am God.”
One might say, “Yes, I believe that!” It is not enough to believe “that.” Our troubles in days gone by have been just “that.” We have accepted the doctrine as truth, when He is calling upon us to accept HIM as the TRUTH. It is not enough merely to “know” that in Christ is health, virtue, and saving power. We needs must be INDWELT BY HIM! He does not impart virtue, separate from Himself. The miracle of healing is never separate from the Healer.
When our poor, diseased bodies and lives are transformed, it is only that our darkness is SWALLOWED UP IN HIS LIGHT! He—as our Health—overcomes our sickness. He—as our Strength—absorbs all our weakness. We are strong in Him for He does not, in the final analysis, make us strong, but He gives us His Strength. His Presence does it. We don’t. There is LIFE in Jesus and in none other! Christ and Adam will not be joint tenants. Before the Second Adam will move in, the first Adam must move out. When the Light comes, the darkness is dispelled.
The Greater Physician
When sickness visits homes, many call for a physician who comes to the house and diagnoses the case. The first thing the doctor does is to find out, if he can, what the difficulty is. When he arrives at his conclusion, he prescribes the remedy. It is the remedy for which the patient waits. The doctor is only a means to the remedy. He takes out a little pad of blanks, writes down a prescription, and someone goes to the drugstore to return with some little, black pills,—or whatever the prescribed remedy might be. The confidence of the patient is in the remedy. The sufferer looks for the efficacy to be in the pills. The faith and trust the patient places in the doctor goes only so far as to hope that he knows the remedy; and that he knows what he is doing when he writes the prescription. When the little pill is taken, however, the patient settles back and waits for the pill to do its work.
How different it is with the Lord Jesus! The virtue is not in what He prescribes; it is not in doing this, or in doing that. It is not even in knowing “how to receive healing”; but it is the PERSON of the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself. He sees us in our sick and sinful state of impurity. He knows the only remedy is holiness. We have read that, too, and have made the mistake of struggling to become holy. There is no such thing as holiness apart from Him. He does not leave holiness at the door of our hearts, and then move away and ask us to utilize it in the living of our lives!
We go to the altar and pray for sanctification and sometimes jump to our feet and say, “Praise the Lord, the work is done.” However, He does not give sanctification to anyone. HE IS OUR SANCTIFICATION. When His sanctification overflows our lives, we are truly sanctified in Him! “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glories, let him glory in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:30,31).
Even so in Divine Healing, we do not take a “pill.” We do not prescribe to the patient: “Now you must do this, and you must do that, and then the Lord will touch you with healing power.” It is not a question of being made right in our own righteousness, or ready with our own readiness, for in James 5:15 we read, “and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” What the poor, broken sufferers need, in all their unworthiness—and even in their sin, is to come in absolute surrender to the Lord—to LET JESUS IN!
It is not what He gives—but what He is! He is Resurrection Life! He is Wisdom! He is Righteousness! He is Healing! As He once led captivity captive, He will do it again in you and in me! As, in the days of old, virtue flowed from Him into the woman who had an issue of blood—so once again—we too can feel the healing warmth of that glorious flow. The virtue is not in what we do for Him. It does not go from us to Him. IT FLOWS FROM HIM THROUGH US!
