Having Faith For Healing | The Great Physician | Twin Rivers Church

and it's called The Great Physician, where we're gonna be for the next few weeks, really diving into what is the doctrine of divine healing. Now, I don't know what your background is. Maybe you are very comfortable with supernatural things that we see in scripture and the role they play today, or maybe you grew up in a tradition or completely absent of a tradition, and it just all seems a little crazy to you. No matter which direction you kinda come from, I hope you'll join us for this series as we dive into this, what does scripture really say? Because here's the truth, if you open the Bible, or just even the Gospels, you cannot deny that Jesus healed, and that it was a central part of who he was. As a matter of fact, if you read the Gospels, there's roughly 3,779 verses, 727 verses, nearly 1/5 of the Gospels are dedicated to Jesus healing people. And so we just believe that what he did then is also relevant for what he is doing now. And so hopefully over the next few weeks, you're gonna see in scripture, but also you're gonna see in your own life that there is a great physician. Now, I wanna just start off, and maybe throughout this whole series, with just a lot of Bible, because I want you to see how much healing was at the center,

and also how many different ways Jesus did heal. Like, let me give you just Matthew 4, 23. It says Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing, help me with this word, every disease and sickness that was among people. Look at this, Matthew 1530. Great crowds came to Jesus, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others. Notice the diversity of ailments, and yet the result was all the same, that he healed them. But then there's the shift that Jesus makes it very clear that he's not the only one that's gonna operate in divine healing. When he says in John 1412, very truly I tell you, talking about to his current followers, and those who will follow in the future, whoever believes in me will do the works I've been doing. And they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father. Now, through the years, Kayla and I, just we have kind of so bought into what the scriptures say about divine healing, that for us, it's just a natural response, whether it's a kid's sniffles, or we meet someone with a cancer diagnosis. We just personally believe that the scriptures show God heals. And just an example, you know, some time ago Kayla and I were with some friends,

we were gonna be spending the day with them, and we got in the car, and Kayla immediately started feeling very nauseous, and the longer it progressed, the more she felt nauseous, debilitatingly nauseous, because when we arrived, she couldn't even get out of the car. And we didn't know what it was, and we thought maybe it's the onset of something like a virus or something, and my friend who was with me, he said, "No, you don't think she's pregnant, do you?" And then all of a sudden, I felt nauseous. And we stood there, you know, trying to figure out how to help and what to do, and then Kayla just said, "Guys, will you pray for me?" And so we just came over, and we just prayed a simple prayer of faith, God. We know that we have a day planned, we wanna enjoy our company and enjoy what we have planned. Will you heal Kayla? And within seconds, the symptoms subsided, she felt great and had no issues through the rest of the day. But for us, this has just become a reality, that what we read in scripture, we're expecting to experience in our own lives. Now, it's not as simple as sometimes the stories that you can hear, like I just shared, but the reality is this, that I believe that healing is not something that is mystical,

it's not something that is only for a lucky few. I believe scripture shows this. Healing is a gift from God that he dispenses into the lives of many people for many purposes, and he's still doing that today. Now, I think one of the reasons that I personally just feel strongly about this is because this was maybe one of the earliest lessons I had to learn in my personal life. I've told this story before, but so many of you are new to our church. The reality is when I was a teenager very early in life, I started showing some symptoms that ultimately traced back to a renal issue or kidney issue. And I remember setting as a young man, setting in an exam, a specialist's office, and him coming to us and saying, we see a decrease in your kidney function. And we're gonna watch it, but if it continues to decrease, you're gonna have to have some life-changing surgeries, and you're also going to have some things that honestly are gonna travel with you And I remember at the time just feeling so angry and so frustrated because, you know, I pictured my life heading in one direction at the time I was playing football and I was just seeing all of that come to an end. When all my friends were talking about

what colleges they were gonna go to, I was considering where I was gonna have to go have this procedure and where I was gonna live based on treatments I could get. And I remember being scared and I remember being frustrated and I'm just wondering that maybe there's even some of you here today that you have a different ailment but you do have kind of some of those same feelings. You've been dealing with something that's been with you for a long time or maybe it just onset in the last few weeks and it's debilitating, it's frustrating, it's impairing and you're wondering, God, what's it going on here? Why am I dealing with this? Well, here's one of the best things that I want us to wrestle with is this, is that asking why is not a problem. As a matter of fact, real faith doesn't eliminate questions, it just knows where to take them. And for us, what I want us to do is wrestle with the questions in this series. And one of the things, Jesus' disciples were pretty, we get a lot of examples of what not to do but one of the things they did really, really well is they had no problem bringing the hardest questions to Jesus. And so what I wanna do today is I wanna dive into one of those moments where Jesus actually performs a miracle and they come to him and go,

we don't understand what's going on. Can you help us perceive what is happening and what you've just done? It's Mark 11, chapter 11, verse 12, that says, "The next day as they were leaving Bethany," which was a town, "Jesus was hungry." And so seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find it if it had any fruit. And when he reached it, he found nothing but leaves because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it. And in the morning as they went along, so they were going back the same way they came, they saw the same fig tree. But this time it was withered all the way to the roots. And Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look, the fig tree you cursed has withered." Now, Jesus is traveling along and he sees a fig tree and the Bible tells us he's hungry. And then he sees that it's got no fruit. So he speaks a correcting word to it. And then the next day is the disciples and he are traveling back, they see that same tree. And they saw it the day before and it looked fine. It was full bloom. They come back the next day and it's dead. Like somebody done poured some poison on it. And immediately they remember what Jesus did.

Now, Jesus wasn't just acting in hangariness at this moment. He wasn't just like, "I curse you, Drew." 'Cause he's opening up a spiritual lesson to these disciples. As a matter of fact, I think that's the only reason he went back the same way. Is because he wanted to show them how you engage your faith, particularly when you need to see God do something like a healing. And so what I want to do today is kind of get just right out of the gate, pretty applicable, is I want to help you see how to engage your faith when you need a healing. And what do we find from this story? And what do you got to do and your part and what parts God's part? And maybe today, if you need a healing, you would find one of the things that's happening that if you could make an adjustment, it would allow the power of God to flow more clearly. Here's the very first thing that I think Jesus is trying to teach them is that you must perceive your situation correctly. Jesus of the disciples saw this as very different. The disciples saw this just as a tree, just as it just happened not to work. It just happened not to have fruit. Jesus didn't see it that way. He says you are not operating the way God designed you to operate.

This is not functioning the way it should function. And he speaks to that specifically. And I think that's important for us 'cause Jesus didn't just go, well, sometimes trees bear fruit and sometimes they don't. He didn't say, well, they're just, sometimes God may not have designed this one treat to bear fruit. No, no, no. He said this is supposed to operate this way. This is not how it's operating. He saw it very clearly. And the reason I bring this up is because before healing comes into your life, you have to see your situation and God correctly. And here's where I've learned over the years of praying with many, many people. Many people's sickness is tied to the fact they have some sick beliefs. The reality is that this is why Jesus in verse 22 says this when he's teaching the disciples, he says have faith in God. Now, what he's ultimately saying is is don't fall into the trap. And there are some traps. As a matter of fact, I would call them some lies. That God punishes some people with sickness. That some people were designed by God to have a lesser life. That somehow in it that God, you know,

he picks and chooses and plays favorites and that these beliefs permeate people's lives. here's what you have to understand is, you have to believe that God heals before you experience a healing. And so I just wanna review real quickly just a couple bedrock beliefs that you have to have when it comes to the way you see God in healing. And the first one is this, God can heal. And this isn't just an opinion, I mean, the Bible's clear. You can't read the Bible without seeing it. In the Old Testament, there are healings. In the ministry of Jesus, there are 31 healings. And listen, but it's not just who, it's not just what he does. It's literally who he is. One of the names that God gives us for himself is Jehovah Raha, which means the God who heals. So it's a separate healing from God is to literally take his personhood away. God clearly heals. Now, now for us immediately go, well, then why isn't everybody healed? Why isn't everybody experiencing healing? Well, let me just say this, I don't know. And there's going to have to be some space in your faith for, I don't know. It is a journey of faith, not one of explanation. And God doesn't like hold that back. He's pretty clear with it.

Look at Isaiah 55, he clearly says, my thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the Lord. And my ways are far beyond anything you can imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. And so here's what happens. Sometimes God teaches us principles and gives us glimpses of how he works. And then sometimes he doesn't, but in those moments we fall back on his character, that we come back to who he is, and we accept that maybe sometimes he understands something we don't, he sees something we don't, he intends something we don't, but we still ultimately trust him. Let me just say it this way, your body is an ecosystem of roughly 37 trillion cells. Within those cells, each one holds about a hundred trillion atoms. As a matter of fact, just your stomach alone, the bacteria in it, there's more bacteria in your stomach than there are stars in our galaxy. Is that what's your point? Here's my point. If you can't even conceive or understand the operation of your body, how are you gonna understand the God who created your body?

There's just part of this like, we're not gonna get it all. We're not gonna understand it all, but that doesn't mean that we deny the fact that God clearly shows that he heals through scripture. And let me just say this, here's what I believe that this life, we just get to see a small part, small part. I think we're all gonna get to heaven one day, and when we get there, we're gonna get to see everything, and we're gonna be like, oh, okay, that makes sense now. Yeah, totally get it. Yeah, okay, yep, sure, yeah. I just think there's gonna be like a big collective. Oh, like that's gonna happen. Even sometimes I think we're gonna look and we're gonna see people that weren't healed, and we're going to get to see the other side of how God was using it to bring about something good. You say what? Let me show you the verse. Isaiah 57 1, good people pass away that Godly often died before their time, but no one seems to care or wonder why, but look at this, no one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. Now, I don't fully understand everything about that verse, but I can give you a personal example, a friend of mine named Ken, who's also in ministry, went through a season where he experienced an enormous amount of fatigue,

and it was prolonged, and then he lost his vocal ability, his voice got so weak he couldn't preach. And I think we can all kind of agree, it seems like God's will is that a preacher preach. And so I remember hearing from Ken and him asking for prayer, and many times him praying that God would heal him, and having people come and pray for him that God would heal him. And it all just kind of seemed very clear that God should heal him because of what he does, and why he wanted to be healed, and he had to set out for a period of time where he wasn't able to do his ministry. I mean, everything seemed like, "God, why aren't you healing, Ken?" Well, it turns out that these combination of symptoms caused doctors to look deeper than they normally would, and when they were looking deeper, they found that on the back side of his heart, he had some blockages that ultimately, the doctors told him, they said, "We wouldn't have ever even looked there "had we not done these extra tests, "and so thank goodness you had these issues "so that we can do a procedure to prevent "what ultimately, probably would have killed you." Listen, if God would have healed him, he would have killed him. Sometimes his ways are above our ways, and his thoughts are just well beyond our thoughts,

and sometimes a delay in something is not a denial, but it's a redirection to protection that he intends for our lives. But it doesn't change the fact God can heal. Here's the next one is, God desires to heal. I think there's many people who believe, oh yeah, God can heal, but I don't know that he wants to. is one of the number one ways the enemy comes and works in our lives. He comes in because the goodness of God is meant to be a cornerstone in your theology. The fact is God is good and we settle it there and that therefore his intentions towards us are good. But when you're sick and you're hurting or someone you love a sick and already, all that starts to get a little muddy. And so I want to just show you clearly how we don't have to believe God desires to you. I want to show you that in fact, he's already made it a fact that he desires to heal. Let me show it to you, because ultimately it's based in this, not what he's even said, but what he did, every time you see the cross, you see God proclaiming his desire to heal. Let me show it to you. This is the Old Testament prophecy that pointed to the cross and connected it to healing. It's Isaiah 53, 5. But he, talking of Jesus, was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. Now this part of the verse, maybe you've heard before. And by his stripes, we are healed, okay? That's the Old Testament. So Isaiah's writing this and he's writing, we are healed. Now Peter quotes Isaiah, but twists it a little bit in 1 Peter 2, 24. Let me read it to you there. He says, he who himself, he's talking now about Christ, he said he who himself bore our sins in his own body on that tree that we having died to sins might live for righteousness. Now notice he reaches back and points to the prophecy. Isaiah got, but notice this. He says, but whose stripes you were healed. Did you see that? Isaiah says we are healed believing in faith. This is gonna happen. Peter says we were healed. What's, why the change? Well, Isaiah's on the pre-side of the cross. Peter's living on the post-side of the cross. One of them saying, I believe one day we are gonna be healed. Peter's standing on, I saw what happened on that cross. We have already been healed by what took place on that cross. Listen, one of them's talking about a promise. The other one's talking about an inheritance. And the cross stands as a fact. God desires to heal.

That on that Friday that Jesus was nailed to those beings, that he took all sin and the result of sin was sickness entering the world. And he took all sickness and he bore it upon himself, which is why when you read it, there's a connection between sin being solved and sickness being solved on the cross. You see, not only did God save us and heal us, but actually when you read the New Testament in the Greek, the word save or heal is oftentimes the same word and it means whole. It's the word sozo, S-O-Z-O. And here's what it means. Forgiven of sins, freedom from all bondage and healing on every level of your body. That's literally what it means as a sozo. It's the complete work of God. So listen, when you see the cross, you don't just see something that was about God bringing you to heaven within it. Our promise is for you to be free in earth, to be healed in earth, to be whole in earth. That the cross was God's declaration. I desire to heal. That it's not something that you have to wonder about. It's not something that you have to consider. It's not even, you don't even have to take me out of a word. There was a historical moment that I showed you. I so desire you to be whole that I gave the life of my son. It's a fact held in the calendar of history.

Now here's the last one is just the fact that God still heals. I mean, when I was doing this message, I was on an airplane and I was reading a book, doing some deeper study and, you know, I just trying to, listen, when I get on an airplane, I'm not there to have church. I just want to eat my peanuts and read my book. That's it, okay? But this lady that's sitting beside me, she starts up, she says, "What are you reading?" I said a book. (congregation laughing) And she says, "What's it about?" I said, "It's for work." (congregation laughing) 'Cause listen, folks, when people on airplanes, they find out you're a pastor, usually it only goes one or two ways. Either we go, I'm gonna get your wrath 'cause you don't like something about God or pastors or we're gonna get into counseling. That's it, and I'm stuck. There ain't no way, there ain't no switch in seats, okay? And I said, "Well, it's for work." And she said, "What do you do for a living?" I'm like, "Well, you're a prosecutor." I'm, you know, and I'm just, I'm stuck. I'm like, "Well, I'm a pastor and I'm reading a book on divine healing."

that's good." She said, "I've been in the military my entire life." She said that one day I went in for my exam and they thought they found something, went for a few more exams and she said, "They discovered I had breast cancer." And by the time they found the whole measure of it, it had already gotten my liver and she said, "A doctor looked at me and said, 'Man, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do.'" She said, "So I just went to my local church and I had those elders lay hands on me like the Bible says." And she said, "I've been cancer-free for the last seven years." She said, "I can tell you, God heals." Listen, God still heals. That he can, he desires to, and he still does it. And no matter what your situation is, we start by perceiving our situation and God correctly. Here's the next thing that Jesus teaches us. He says that out of perceiving it correctly, then you have to proclaim your healing. Now this is probably the one that I think most people miss. See, for healing to be activated, it has to be actualized. There's a partnership. I'm going to talk more about this next week, but what it means is there's something that God does the healing, but we go into a process where we partner with God for the healing. And that starts with, it starts with his word, that his word. We start there. As a matter of fact, I got to this verse just to show you. So 107-20 says, "He sins forth his word and the result is it heals them." Okay? Let me just say this, prayers not rooted in the Word of God are fallible, they're wishy-washy, they're just the best we can conceive. Prayers rooted in a promise from God are powerful. And so one of the things that I would tell you is you've got to start with a promise from God, like something that you're holding onto this verse, and you've got to hold on

to it, because listen, when we stand on God's word, God stands by his word. It's almost like a little bit of a legal reality, when we go, God, your word says this, God says, "You know what? I look to perform my word, and I see you digging into what I've said and the promise I've said, I'm going to stand by what I've wrote." Okay? So that's what Jesus told me. Jesus solved this problem, and then the Bible says he opened his mouth and declared the Word of God to it. I'm going to show it to you, verse 23, because he's telling the disciples, he says, remember they're having a conversation about it. We just saw this happen. Tell us about this. He said, well, truly, I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, now all they had seen was a tree. Jesus says, I can tell you this works more than just trees, mountains, but they say, go throw yourself into the sea and does not doubt in their heart, but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Now let me just tell you real quick, there's a fight for faith, and you're not going to doubt your way to the deliverance you need. So there's a fight for faith, but it doesn't require perfect faith. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a second. You don't have to have this perfect faith. I'm not one of these people that feels like, well, if you believe more, God would do more. Like God understands Psalm 103, we're but dust. But Jesus, it's undeniable to see here that Jesus ties doubt, the level of doubt we hold, to how we use our mouth. And there's just something about the idea that when you say something out loud, rooted in the word of God, there's a new level of commitment that comes with it. Right?

As a matter of fact, like some of us, we pray for things, but we've never confessed that we believe they're going to happen. We've never told other people we think they're going to happen because, I mean, I mean, if I pray it, it stays in here. But if I start telling people, I'm believing God's going to do this, well, all of a sudden, I'm kind of out here on a limb that if God doesn't show up, I could look foolish. Listen, listen, listen, when you need a healing, let's not worry about your reputation. Let's do whatever it takes to get as far on the limb with God as we can. And so for us, showing up and saying, I believe I'm going to be healed. I believe that God, because it's rooted in this promise, it's okay because faith is voice activated in our lives, that what we say, it really shows what we believe. When you declare something like, I believe God's going to heal me, there's a new level of commitment that comes out of your heart. Listen, sometimes we talk to God, but sometimes you've got to talk to your situation about God, that you've got to start saying, this is God's promise, and I'm going on a limb here with God that I believe this is going to come to pass. Proverbs 18, 21, the tongue has the power of life and death. And those who love it will eat of its fruit. Now, I know there's a lot of people who don't believe this verse. They just say, well, that's that name it, claim it, blab it, grab it, stuff. And I get it, listen, there's misuses, people have misused the scriptures for as long as there's been scriptures to hurt people and manipulate people. But I'm just saying, let's just do an experiment. Go home and do nothing but speak negative to your spouse and see if it doesn't kill that marriage. Go home and do nothing but lamb last your kids and see if it doesn't. Go around saying, "Well, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die." We're gonna be eating fried chicken at your funeral. Just tell you, what you do with your words connected to the Word of God is a huge part of this.

And you know, Remy, who, she's just so cute, pure, so little thing, she came home, she started school last year, she came home, and we could tell she was troubled, and we said, "Baby, what's wrong?" And she said, "I don't wanna talk about it." And we said, "What's wrong?" She said, "Somebody today said a curse word to me, "and I thought I'm gonna kick some kid." Going around, telling my little pure Remy curse words. And we said, "What did they say?" But she said, "I don't wanna say it." We said, "Well, what letter did it start with?" She goes, "It started with an S." And Kayla started feeling, she's like, "I don't know, it just makes me want to make sure "she knows what you're talking about." She said, "Rimi, let's go in the other room." And she got down, and she said, "Now, Remy, "I want you to tell me, just so I know, "so I can tell you if this is a word we can use or not." And she said, "Someone on the bus said stupid." Of course, we were like, "Oh, thank goodness. "I ain't gotta go take care of no kids." But listen, Remy's very vigilant towards, 'cause she knows in our house, there's just some words you don't say, okay? Now, listen to me. Did you know that Jesus taught his disciples, there's some words you don't say?

Namely, at the top of the list, impossible. We don't say that word. As a matter of fact, twice, Jesus says, "All things are possible unto God." And then he inverts it and says, "Nothing is impossible to God." To Jesus, impossible is a curse word. And it needs to be cut out of your vocabulary if you are seeking God to do something extraordinary. And there's some reality for some of us. We've gotta get into this understanding that we have to refine our language because there's the power of life and death. You're gonna have to move from what it is to what God says it can be. You're gonna have to move from the idea of what it looks like to what God says it's gonna be. You're going to have to get a boldness about you that finds a rooted promise in God. And every day, he says, "God, your word has said this, "and therefore I claim it over my life. "I know what the diagnosis is. "I know what the symptoms are on setting. "I see it, but I am declaring that I will live and not die, "that I will see the fulfillment of your promises, "that God, I can have and walk in everything "your scripture says I can have." And there's something not just about the power of God's word, but the power of your words tied to the power of God's word. And you're gonna have to get bold in this

'cause Jesus tells him, he says, "There's something about doubt that's put away "when you start using your mouth "based in what's come out of my mouth." Now, here's the last one. The last one is this, that you're gonna have to persist past your doubts, okay? You see, after Jesus spoke to this tree, nothing happened. Time passed and then they saw the difference. It's not like Jesus spoke to him and said, "Well, this stuff doesn't work. "I guess I'll just give up on it." He understood that there is an element that I declare what God's gonna do and then I just have to stay with it till we see it happen. But let me just say this that it's important for us to understand that throughout scripture, 'cause that's what we're gonna be rooted in. Healing is an individual process, even in the scriptures. Jesus did a variety of things. It very rarely healed people the same way. Some people he spoke and they received their healing. Sometimes he would lay his hands on people and they would receive their healing. So sometimes he would tell them to go do something, like go show yourself to the priest or go to a dip in a pool and then they would receive their healing. And then sometimes there were extraordinary things he has to do, like for example, he would touch their tongue or he would make mud out of spit

and put it on their eyes. Here's all I'm saying is we want formulas God wants faith. We wanna know, okay, well, it didn't work, no, no, no. Every person here is on an individual journey in an individual process because God's working in two ways. He's trying to pull more faith, more devotion, more maturity at the exact same time he's healing bodies. And that's the reason in verse 24, he says this, therefore I tell you whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. Now let me just say this, this word believe in the Greek. It's not a one time. It's not like at the end of the sermon that Pastor Joe preaches, I believe, and then I go back in the doubt for the rest of the week. It's this continual, it's this persistent, it's this kind of almost like defiant, continual confession, this gonna happen. It's going by the tree that seems to have had no effect. And say it, that tree is gonna be affected. what you believe God's promise. You know, that was the decision I kind of had to make very early on. And now I can see, you know, like God, why would you put such a heavy thing on a 16, 17 year old kid? But now I just see it became foundational for my life. Because at 16 or 17 years old, I was standing between a decision to say, I'm just gonna take life as it is, or God, I'm gonna depend, learn to depend on your promises.

I mean, it was getting thrown in the deep end of the pool quick. I remember after that first appointment with that specialist, they said, we're gonna watch it over the next six months based on the trajectory we expect to continue decline. And then they said, once it reaches 20%, we'll have to go in and do the surgeries and you'll have to start the other, other long-term procedures. You know, what I did is I came home. I didn't know much about the Bible, but I grabbed hold of the Bible. And I started going through every scripture I could find on healing, every scripture I could find on prayer. And then one day I found one and it like leaped in my heart. That's how you know that you're promised. You may have to read a hundred of them, but one of them is gonna leap and you feel like that one's for me. And I still remember the verse, probably the first verse I ever memorized because I said, okay, God. And my attitude wasn't like, oh God, I just trust you. You know what my attitude was like, all right, God, you said this. Let's see if you're gonna back it up. Like this was so much more than just healing for me in this moment. This was, are you trustworthy, God? And I remember taking that verse and then I remember going in my little church

and every time they would offer healing for prayer for healing, I'd go forward and I'd probably got prayed for 15 to, I had enough oil on me to fry chicken, you know? And I just did it and we would go back for an appointment and they would say, hey, you decreased another 30%. Then I'd go back and I'd say, God, you said, you said, I'd go back for more prayer. Go back for another appointment. Hey, you decreased another 30%. And I just remember leaving the last appointment before my pre-op appointment and just feeling so discouraged, going, God, I'm like, I'm reading your word, I'm standing on this, I'm praying it, I'm going forward and receiving prayer and it just didn't seem like it was working. But what other option did I have? And I'll never forget being in the car before the pre-op appointment, reading every one of those words in desperation. God, this is the last appointment. Listen, you gotta show up. I don't know what else to do. I remember going in, getting a scan and I was sitting in the exam room and I was sitting there and you know, you kind of got into a habit of it and I thought, man, this is taking a little bit, a little longer than normal. Just sitting there and sitting there and then took even longer until you know, you start going, what's going on?

Well, eventually the specialist comes in and he says, I'm sorry for the delay. He said, I don't know how to tell you this. He said, the reason I'm late is because we ran the results twice. He said, but you have 100% usage of your kidneys. We don't need to see you again. There is no need for surgery. There is no need for any prolonged. And listen, that was 20 plus years ago and I have never had an issue since. And, but I'm gonna tell you this, my faith wasn't perfect. There was the head games of like, you know, you think you sin and then all of a sudden you think God's not gonna heal you and like you're living on that tight rope and I had to learn that that's not the way God's character, God's character is not based on my character. He is independently, holy and good, despite the fact that I am very unholy and not. And I remember it wasn't perfect and there was wrestling but I do remember that I got a promise and that I kept claiming it And most of all, that I persisted with it until I saw what it says. And so listen, to start us off right now, here's what I'm just saying to you. I have seen our God heals, and he heals cancer, and he heals headaches, and he heals digestive issues,

and he heals depression, and he heals instantly, and he heals progressively, and he heals by miracle, and he heals by medicine. And he healed in the first century, and he still heals in the 21st century. And just because you have a doctor's diagnosis, doesn't mean that you can't get a second opinion from the great physician, because our God heals, and faith wrestles with that, and faith believes that, and faith stands in that, and sometimes face gets knocked down in that, but it gets back up again, because it's rooted in the reality. We have a great physician, and our God heals.