When sickness strikes, it’s wonderful to receive healing from the Lord. But you know what’s even better? Living in divine health all the time.

That’s something I’ve endeavoured to learn how to do and I’ve really gotten the hang of it. Praise God, I’ve been living healed for many years now! What’s more, I have my faith set on continuing to do so all the days of my life.

If you know much about me, this doesn’t come as surprising news. After all, I’ve been teaching Healing School in our ministry campaigns and conventions for over 35 years. When I first started, some people worried that I wouldn’t be able to apply what I was teaching in my own life. “What if you end up getting sick and dying young?” they’d say.

I suppose they thought I’d look foolish if that happened. But I never shared their concern. I figured even if I did miss it somehow and died young, I’d rather go to heaven doing everything I know to do to believe God’s Word about healing, than go there in doubt and unbelief saying some dumb thing like, “See, I told you God’s Word doesn’t work!”

Of course, these days no one worries about my dying young anymore. It’s too late for it to happen now. I’ve already passed up that opportunity. Now I’m starting to live in the fulfilment of the promise God made in Psalm 91:16: “With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not winding down. The Lord also promised to renew my youth like the eagle’s (Psalm 103:5), and according to Genesis 6:3, that promise is good to at least age 120. So I plan to be around here for a good, long while yet—and I plan to keep living healed the whole time.

“But Gloria,” you might say, “if your body stays healed, how will you ever die?”

That’s easy! My body is just the house my spirit lives in. My spirit is the real me. All I have to do when I’ve been on this earth long enough to be satisfied, and I’ve finished everything God wants me to do, is leave this physical house.

When my spirit leaves, my body will die. Then they’ll dress it up and put makeup on it and everybody will look at it and say, “Oh, doesn’t she look natural.” But really, I won’t be there at all. I’ll be in heaven enjoying myself with Jesus!

Actually, I’m hoping the Rapture will take place before then because I really want to be a part of the catching away of the Church. I think it would be so exciting! I always envision it happening in the middle of the night. I picture people all over the world hearing a great noise like people did on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. “What was that?” they’ll say. “Was it a storm?” Then they’ll get up the next morning to find that the nicest people they know, all the people who are good and full of love, are gone.

Wow! Won’t that be something? I’m ready for it anytime! But if Jesus tarries and I die before He comes, I’m still going up. An angel will come get me and off we’ll go. I’ll be thrilled about it, too, because “to be absent from the body…[is] to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). So I don’t have anything to fear in death.

If you’re a born-again child of God, neither do you. But even so, you want to live out the full number of your days on earth. You want to complete the work God has given you to do here so that when you get to heaven Jesus can say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

All of us who love the Lord want to hear those words someday. None of us wants to get to heaven and have God say to us, “Well…?” We don’t want to have to make excuses for why we didn’t complete our assignment. I don’t think they accept excuses up there anyway. So we need to make up our minds on this side of heaven to do what it takes to obey God, and to live long and in good health!

A Bad Day at Black Rock

Proverbs 3:1-2 gives us the key to this. It says: “My son, forget not my law or teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments; for length of days and years of life [worth living] and tranquillity [inward and outward and continuing through old age till death], these shall they add to you” (AMP).

This is the way you live a long life and have a happy departure when you leave: You do what God says. You keep His Word. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it? As believers, we ought not to have to attend a lot of seminars to get hold of it. We should just open our Bible every day, study it, be strengthened in our faith and find out how God wants us to live. We should start our day with His Word and act on it all day long. Personally, I don’t let a day go by without spending time in the Word. I think it’s the most important thing I have to do.

The reason is simple: If I’m living by faith in and obedience to God’s Word, I can live a life of peace and tranquillity even when the whole world around me is falling apart. I don’t have to be terrified when the newscasters talk about the latest virus that’s going around. I don’t have to take the flu off a bird, a hog, a dog or anything else.

In fact, I don’t have to be afraid of pestilence or epidemics of any kind. Instead I can declare that the Lord “is my Refuge and my Fortress, my God; on Him I lean and rely, and in Him I [confidently] trust” (Psalm 91:2, AMP).

According to Psalm 91, when you really believe that and say so:

[God] will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence…. You shall not be afraid of the terror of the night, nor of the arrow…that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor of the destruction and sudden death that surprise and lay waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you ( 3, 5-7, AMP).

It’s a bad day at Black Rock when 11,000 people fall down dead all around you. Yet God says if you stick with Him, live obediently in His secret place and speak His Word, even in the midst of the worst devastation, you’ll be protected. When it’s all over, you’ll still be standing there testifying of the truth of verses like Psalm 145:8-9: “The Lord is gracious, and full of compassion…. The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works”!

Maybe up to now you don’t feel like you’ve experienced much of God’s graciousness. Maybe you’re thinking, It doesn’t seem like God has been very good to me at all!

If that’s the case then it’s because you haven’t been giving Him first place in your life. You’ve been going along doing whatever you want, ignoring the things you know are right. For life to be good on the earth, we have to get with God’s plan. That plan starts when we get born again by receiving Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

It takes another leap forward when we receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. So if you haven’t already done that, I encourage you to do so. It’s very difficult to live a victorious life without it. You can’t get the revelation you need to live healed without the Holy Spirit’s awesome help.

He is our Teacher. He’s been sent to strengthen us, train us and empower us. Once we receive Him, He’s on the job 24/7. We never have to go hunting for Him. He’s always there when we need Him.

My life was sad before I got filled with the Spirit. Even though I was born again, I was just struggling along. But once Ken and I received everything God has provided—not just the new birth, but the Word and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit—things started turning around for us. Our sick days were over. Our broke days were over. Life started getting good!

Give Yourself A Little Test

Will God do for you the same thing He did for Ken and me?

Certainly, He will.

He is tender and merciful toward you. He loves you without reservation. He loves you more than your wife, your husband or your children do. Nobody on earth can love you as fully as God does. He is love!

“Yeah, but you don’t know the bad stuff I’ve been doing,” someone might say. “The reason I’m sick and defeated right now is because I’ve been living a sinful lifestyle.”

Then repent! If you haven’t been doing what’s right, receive God’s forgiveness and get cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Then take what belongs to you in Christ which is healing, health and well-being.

Truth be told, every believer needs to repent from time to time. We all miss it now and then, sometimes without even realizing it. That’s why in my life, when things aren’t working, the first place I look is at me. I don’t blame my problems on God or anyone else. Instead, I give myself a little test. I ask, “Am I spending time in the Word every day? Am I believing and acting on what God is showing me? Am I saying what He says about my situation? Am I walking in love and keeping His commands, or have I been disobedient?”

To be clear, I’m not saying that every time you experience a symptom of sickness, it’s because you’ve disobeyed the Lord. Not at all. Many times sickness is just a sign that the devil is up to his old tricks. He’s the thief and he comes “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10). So when we have problems with sickness, we often just need to go after him and say, “No you don’t, devil! You’re not touching my body! You get your hands off me, in Jesus’ Name!”

If we’re going to be ready to do that, however, we must keep our spirit strong all the time. We must stay built up by staying in the Word!

Take a Double Dose of GOD’S Medicine!

According to Proverbs 4:22 (AMP), one reason staying in the Word is so vital is because it is “healing and health,” or “medicine” to all our flesh. What would you do if you went to the doctor for an illness and he prescribed a medicine for you that could save your life? You wouldn’t just put it on the shelf and let it sit there. If you did, it wouldn’t help you. So you’d take it as prescribed!

For God’s Word to work in us the way He intends, we must do the same thing. We can’t just leave our Bible unopened on the nightstand. We have to do what God says: “Attend to my words, consent and submit to my sayings. Let them not depart from your sight; keep them in the centre of your heart” Proverbs 4:20-21 (AMP).

I like to take God’s healing medicine even when I’m well. I want to get His Word in my heart and mind in advance so that when I need it, it’s already inside me. I’ve done this for so many years now that I rarely have symptoms of sickness come on my body at all. But if they do, I increase my dose. I go over healing scriptures and take God’s medicine daily, three or four times a day.

What specific scriptures do I use as my healing medicine?

The Bible is full of them and I love them all, but one of my favourite passages is Isaiah 53:4-5, (AMP). It says this about the crucifixion of Jesus:

Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment]…. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.

According to those verses, when Jesus went to the cross He took upon Himself all the bad things that came on the earth through mankind’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden. He “redeemed us from the curse,” as Galatians 3:13-14 says, so that THE BLESSING could come upon us.

What does it mean to be redeemed from the curse? For one thing, it means all our sins are washed away. There’s no sin we could ever commit that hasn’t already been taken care of by the blood of Jesus. That’s why we can receive Him as Lord, live clean lives, and not only be forgiven of sin but walk in victory over it.

This, by itself, is a tremendous BLESSING. But there’s even more to it. As Deuteronomy 28:60-61 AMP says, “all…diseases…. every sickness and every affliction” are included in the curse. Therefore, healing is just as available to us as forgiveness of sin and the new birth—simply because Jesus has paid the price for it.

So, receive your healing by faith today. Take your stand on the Word of God and keep His medicine in front of your eyes, in your ears, in your heart and in your mouth until there’s not one symptom of sickness left in your body.

Learn how to live healed—all the time!

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