Tag Archives: prayer

Faith and Healing

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Have you wondered why sometimes people of faith become sick and ask for healing, praying fervently, yet are not healed, perhaps suffering for years, or dying of some disease or infirmity? Does the Bible offer a guarantee of physical healing in this lifetime, for those who have “enough faith”? Lazarus, in the parable in Luke 16, was diseased and reduced to begging, yet is to be with Abraham in the resurrection. Why wasn’t he healed in this lifetime? What are we to learn from the example of the other Lazarus, who, after he had died and been buried, was restored to life by Jesus Christ?

Over the years, there’s been much misunderstanding regarding faith and healing, and what the Scriptures say about the relationship between the two. In the sermon, “Faith and Healing,” are discussed a number of Scriptural passages and principles relating to faith and healing, that may help you better understand questions related to the subject.

“Faith and Healing,” a sermon by Rod Reynolds, COGMessenger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Seek God and Find Him

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Azariah the prophet told Asa, king of Judah, “The Lord is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you” (II Chronicles 15:2).

What is it that the majority of people in today’s world seek most? It is God? Is it money? Pleasure? I think you know that whatever the correct answer to the question is, it’s not God. Many do their best to hide from God, or even deny that God exists, but relatively few people in today’s world spend much time seriously seeking God.

Perhaps we could ask ourselves, what it is that we seek most. It is God? There are many scriptures that instruct and encourage us to seek God, and tell us what rewards we can expect to receive in doing so. And what does it mean to “seek God”? How does one go about it? The Bible has the answers, which we explore in this message.

“Seek God and Find Him” COGMessenger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Thirst For Living Water

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Without water you can’t live. In fact, your physical body consists largely of water. And the supply of water in your body must be constantly replenished for you to thrive. Usually we rely on our sense of thirst to tell us when and how much water to drink. Sometimes, however, for various reasons, our sense of thirst may fail us. And when that happens individuals may become sick or even die from dehydration. At other times, people may thirst, but seek to satisfy their thirst with impure water that, either slowly or quickly, produces disease and death. Do you thirst for living water, pure, flowing, abundant and life-giving?

Thirst For Living WaterThe Spirit of God is analogous to water. “On the last day of the Festival–the great day–Jesus stood up and cried aloud. ‘Whoever is thirsty,’ He said, ‘let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, from within him–as the Scripture has said–rivers of living water shall flow.’ He referred to the Spirit which those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not bestowed as yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7:37-39, Weymouth translation).

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Jesus Our Savior

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When the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt they were living under a very powerful government. While in Egypt they were forced to live under the rule of Pharaoh – who was not only king but considered by the Egyptians to be a god as well. The Israelites were oppressed by the laws of Egypt and the whims of its ruler – Pharaoh (Exodus 3:7). To escape the oppression of Pharaoh in Egypt, they needed a Savior.

Egypt typifies the rule of sin – the law of sin which operates in the flesh – and in the fleshly mind (Romans 7:23). This law, rule or dominion of sin which operates in the flesh is something we must overcome in order to please God.

Yet within our own flesh, within our fleshly minds, we simply do not have the power of and by ourselves to cast out the law of sin that rules us. The fleshly mind is too weak to exercise dominion and power over sin, even if it wants to. That’s what Paul is referring to when he writes in Romans 7:23 about the law in our fleshly members warring against the mind, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin.

Just as without God – without a Savior – the Israelites were in captivity, in bondage to the law of Egypt, so our flesh without a spiritual savior is in bondage to the law, dominion and rulership of sin. Even with the Old Covenant, wherewith the laws of God were written on tablets of stone, but not written in their hearts and minds, the Israelites were powerless to break the dominion of sin in their lives (Deuteronomy 5:29; 10:1-5; Romans 2:27-29; Jeremiah 31:33; Mark 7:6). In the same way, our human flesh of itself is powerless to break the bondage of sin.

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