There are so many things the Father has given us by grace that we have never dared to trust in and receive by our faith. The saddest thing about this is that we've actually rejected the offer of God to us and haven't believed in His Word. Isaiah 53:1 (Amplified) tells us that this has happened before when it says, "Who has believed (trusted in, relied upon, and clung to) our message (of that which was revealed to us)? And to whom has the Arm of the Lord been disclosed?"
Further down in this same chapter of Isaiah 53, he speaks of the Lord bearing our sickness and disease, our pain and punishment, our transgressions and trespasses and all of our guilt and sin. Even as we read this and the next chapter, I cannot get away from Isaiah 53:1 which says, "Who has believed our report?"
Has our faith reached out to include this part of grace? Or, are we like those who couldn't enter in because of unbelief? Is this part of the cross not just as valid even though we don't put faith in it? This is why everything God has promised through Jesus, must come by faith.
Romans 8:31-32 (Amplified) says, "What then shall we say to (all) this? If God is for us, who (can be) against us? (who can be our foe,m if God is on our side?" Verse 37 says, "He who did not withhold or spare (even) His Own Son but gave Him up for us all, Will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all (other) things?"
So, we see that even with all the Father has done through giving Jesus in our place, it still must be received by faith. John 1:16-17 (Amplified) says, "For out of His fulness (abundance) we have all received (all had a share and were all supplied with) one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift (heaped) upon gift." Verse 17 says, "For while the Law was given through Moses, grace (unearned, undeserved favor and spiritual blessing) and truth came through Jesus Christ."
The things we used to have to earn under the commandments of the Law, we now obtain by faith in the finished work of Jesus. That's what the grace was all about. Under the Law, you could only obtain favor from God by how you kept the Law. Through Jesus, all things have been freely given by grace.
We don't become good enough within ourselves to deserve or not deserve our healing or blessing. We simply receive (by faith) that Jesus has already don it for us and by faith, receive His favor and grace. The same way we received Jesus as our sin bearer for our forgiveness (by faith) we also received Him as our Healer, our Wisdom, our Comforter, our Counselor and everything He is to the Church. Grace has already made all spiritual blessing ours in Him. What is required is for us to believe it.
For many years, we've tried being good enough to deserve salvation. The heart was right within us and because we didn't know any better, God still honored His Word. After awhile, we are called to grow up (mature) in the Lord and no longer walk as mere infants. We excluded faith for church doctrine and religion for centuries. We've tried walking with God once again, based on our performance rather than our faith.
If something in God's Word wasn't working the way we thought it should, then we counted it as we were doing something wrong. And, if things were working, then we counted that as we were doing something right. We began to base our righteousness and success in the Word based on how we dressed, how much make-up we wore, how many times we prayed a day or even what denomination we belonged to just like the scribes and Pharisees.
If we didn't get healed, then we must have sin in our lives or we were doing something wrong. Where then is our faith? Is is in what He's done or what we've done? Now, then, we began walking back under the Law based on our performance and we've made grace no longer grace (unmerited favor). We're trying to get blessed based on favor that was earned or merited by our own performance rather than on grace (the unmerited favor of God). This takes no faith, but is an attempt to obligate God to help us by our own terms.
We don't need to believe in healing, but to believe in Jesus Who is our healing. Like we believe He bore our sins, we now believe He bore my disease. We can't separate the two things because He if One. We've somehow tried dividing Him into different categories by our doctrine. We've tried to separate our spirit from the rest of us. But, you cannot do it. Everything that comes from the spirit (good or bad), affects the flesh and the soul. We are a tri-une people. Sin and sickness all come from the same source. Sin brought death (spiritual and physical), so salvation brought life in both realms. Even our natural bodies are to be raised and restored by God in the last day.
This body is the Temple of God once again. 1Corinthians 6:19 (Amplified) says, "Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received (as a gift) from God? You are not your own."
When sin entered mankind through the fall of Adam, death and disease were the result of his trespass. This trespass affected everything about man; spirit, soul and body. When Jesus went to the cross and the grave and then to His resurrection, He bought back (by His Own life and blood) the entire spectrum of man that had bound mankind; spirit, soul, and body.
Once the new creation was made complete by receiving Jesus Christ, life in every spectrum of man was to be restored. Man was once again to be complete in God. This was the provision of God's great grace and mercy towards man. Nothing of the enemy was to remain that could contaminate the family God so loved. Every trace of the death of sin that had held His children in darkness, was to be expelled.
This grace is made available to all who will believe on and in the love God has for us. For too long, we've been taught to think of God as a far distant force Who is totally separated from us mortals. We were taught that He was totally unpredictable and nearly impossible to please. Our relationship with God was like walking on a frozen lake where you could never tell when you might fall through the ice to your death. We were taught that God was almost a mystical being, not unlike the heathen gods and masters.
We tried appeasing God by sacrifice and sufferings. We've even had religious sects who abuse themselves with whips and other instruments of torture to who their repentance and sorrow for their sin. How wrong we've been taught and how wrong we've viewed our Father. Only the devil himself could have given us such a distorted view of our God.
It's no wonder it's been so hard for us to believe that God really wants us to walk at peace with Him. We reached a place where every terrible thing that happened to us, we were told (and believed), God was trying to teach us something. Nobody had any idea what He was trying to teach us or how long we were to learn. Worse yet, because we didn't even know what it was we were to learn, we never knew when the test was over.
Our lives became one never ending trial and test. We were never taught to listen to the Lord's Prayer, I guess. Jesus taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation (trials and tests), but deliver us from evil (or the evil one who does try and test us)."
We've moved in misguided faith for so long that we forgot it's also a gift of God to be able to understand the grace. Our faith was to be able to now believe and see our Father through the very gift of His Son. Our faith was to be able to see past the ideas of man and see into the heart of our Father's grace by this gift of faith.
Jesus Himself was the Sacrifice that the door to this unmerited and undeserved favor and blessing of our Father. Until the time of His coming, no one but Jesus referred to God as "Father." When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, "Our Father," it must have been a fearsome way to pray. The Chief Priest and his followers actually got Jesus crucified for this very statement according to Luke 22:70-71 (Amplified) which says, "And they all said, You are the Son of God, then? And He said to them, It is just as you say; I AM. And they said, what further evidence do we need? For we have heard (it) ourselves from His Own mouth."
Jesus was accused and tried and ordered to die for saying that He was the Son of God and that God was actually His Father. It still frightens some Christians to dare say they are righteous or to refer to themselves as no longer sinners. Grace has declared that we are no longer sinners, butheirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus.
Because of Jesus, this grace is made available to us at any time and it can always be counted on to be there to meet our needs. Because of Jesus, we have the boldness to come into the very presence of our Father and know that we are accepted and received. Hebrews 4:16 (Amplified) says, "Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God's unmerited favor to us sinners) that we may receive mercy (for our failures) and find grace to help in good time for every need (appropriate help and well timed help coming just when we need it)."
Only by grace can we hope to have this access to the Father and Jesus is this manifest grace of God. Faith in Jesus has now opened the door to all the grace of God. It's unmerited and undeserved, but always there because Jesus paid for it for us, which was the will of God. When we put our faith in Jesus, all of God's grace and favor and mercy was included in our salvation. Everything man could ever need to restore us back to the Father, was in Jesus. It's grace and truth by faith.
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