Jesus, Healing, and Spiritual Realities

Recently during my devotion time I sensed Holy Spirit highlighting particular scriptures that connected with my ponderings this week.  I realized He was guiding me through what Jesus did and how, when it came to healing various physical and neurobiological ailments and the phenomena of what the Bible calls “demon possession", or "oppression".  I’ve had opportunity to explore all these topics before and have witnessed people get healed, but also get delivered from possession.

Yes, demons exist.  No, they are not mythical.  I’ve seen their effects, and exits from people, with my own eyes:  while praying for someone’s healing (a bowel issue), while praying for a move and job transition for an individual (a spirit of witchcraft began to manifest and grip their spine), while praying for a youth pastor (a spirit of grief).  How do I know they were spirits?  They exit with some noise, through the persons mouth.  They try to fight it, they try to exit with as much drama as they are allowed.  Sounds such as belching, retching, coughing uncontrollably, seething and screaming.  If you know your authority in Christ, then you can order them to exit without drama and they have to obey Christ’s authority through you.  When it’s over, the person feels the freedom, because they were heavily oppressed before.

So back to what Holy Spirit showed me.  I was pondering what one pastor wrote about neuro-biological disorders (NBD) (an article excerpt on the web) and thought, how brilliant, this seems simple, comforting and nice (separating demon possession from NBD's in particular).  I was actually going to buy his theory, in part.  But later, Holy Spirit debunked the man’s theories and interpretation of scripture, when He illuminated key scriptures about demon-possession, it’s link to healing and the fact that it is actually not rare and it does not occur with only older people who’ve committed terrible or habitual sins or are involved in the occult.  In fact, a number of the most potent examples in scripture involve children.  Other examples show healing of the mind, healing of speech, and healing of what appear to be symptoms of catatonic schizophrenia and a crippled body - after being delivered from a demon of “infirmity”, a “mute” demon, and a “deaf & mute” demon.  When a demon was not involved, Jesus simply laid His hands on them or stuck his fingers in their ears and said “be opened”.  Some ailments are caused by demons, some are not.

Some will come out if you just invoke the name of Jesus, others will say, “Who are you?”, and won’t budge unless you have a lifestyle that is marked by prayerful relationship with God the Father and lead a life consecrated (obedient, set apart) to God.  Even Jesus said He could do nothing apart from the Father and He did only what He saw the Father doing.  This means He had a very close and active/real relationship with God, where He could see and hear what God the Father was telling Him and then move in response.  This provided Jesus with Heaven’s power and the confidence to use it.

The other thing I found, that impacted me, was that God the Father gave Jesus authority on earth because He is the Son of Man (John 5:26-27).  Jesus was the Son of God and the Son of Man.  If He was not the Son of Man, He would not have authority on Earth.  Because God gave the Earth to Man.  Satan usurped it through deception and getting Man’s agreement - this is how satan gains authority on Earth.  God doesn’t usurp.  He offers partnership with Heaven.  He’s got the power of life, we have the authority on Earth.  Jesus had both, and then through His work on the cross and the gift of Holy Spirit, that is made available to all who believe, we are to release it in the Earth, with our authority, to destroy satan’s work.  We are mandated to imitate Christ and do even greater works than He did.

Nothing Jesus did should be impossible for us.  Our problem is lifestyle, lack of faith and apathy, and we give up when we don’t see immediate results (and build false theology around it), as though obeying our mandate was an option based on our success rate, and lastly, we are not willing to risk looking like idiots (Jesus was accused of being out of his mind, by his family, and demon possessed, by the religious).  Thankfully, Holy Spirit is available to heal those heart issues in us, if we recognize them in ourselves, confess and repent of them, and ask Him to change us.  It would be His joyful pleasure to do so.

Two Kingdoms

This morning during my drive to drop off my youngest at playschool I had some very interesting thoughts going on. I'm not sure how it got started, but I began to think about how humans are hosts to spiritual beings, spiritual beings who want authority in the earth, but can only get it through an alliance and agreement with a human being. Truth is stranger than fiction. Why can't these beings just take what they want? Because the earth was given to mankind by God.

We abdicate our authority when we make agreements with the deceiver, Jesus Christ got it back for us, but we have to believe the keys exhist before we can use them. What we believe makes a world of difference. When I asked Jesus to come into my life and be my Lord and Saviour, I became His human host. This is why the Bible refers to the Church as the Body of Christ. When Jesus came into my heart and life He began to clean up any resident darkness, and so over the years, as I've surrendered to His process, I've become lighter as He cleanses this spiritual house that is me. The opposite happens when we let darkness in through agreements we make with the things of the kingdom of darkness.

During Jesus' ministry on earth He delivered some people by casting out the dark spiritual beings they were hosting. In one such story they begged Jesus to let them go into pigs, since they had to come out of the man at Christ's order. I gather that a pig host is better than no host, but the pigs rushed into the water as a result, and drowned. Eventually, the kingdom of darkness leads to death, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Since God loves the world, He sent His son to deliver it from the kingdom of darkness. All who invite Him into themselves and submit to His transforming power, will prove it in increasing measure, by coming out of agreement with the kingdom of darkness and destroying the spiritual work, and thus the physical destruction, caused by that dark kingdom. We are to do this by loving people.

God is love. Satan cannot love. Not real love. If we cause factions and strife, if we make judgements and condemn people based on judgements, we have missed our true calling. If we need to be right, we've missed it there too. Wrong exists. It touches everyone, it hurts, it's painful, it's frusterating, especially if someone you love is being hurt. We are to protect the innocent. We are to set the captives free, to release the prisoners of darkness. We do that by shining the light of love and truth. The truth is Jesus, not a philosophy you smack people with. Jesus shed His blood for us. That is truth. When we invite Him in, we invite the dominant spiritual power of light to overtake the darkness, from the inside out.

WHAT IF HELL IS REAL?

I just finished reading an article in Maclean's May 13, 2013 issue titled 'What if Heaven is Real?'. It brings forward interesting information and reports on books written by folks who've had near death experiences (NDE's) or have been dead and revived. They write that Heaven, or the idea of a heaven-like afterlife, is hot and that hell is colder than ever (in popular opinion polls). They state in the article that even modern Christians are struggling to reconcile a loving God with the idea that He would condemn sinners to hell. And my mind took off.

I see a problem, or a fault, with the popular understanding of what hell is, not only in this article, but in our society's beliefs on it, which this article reflects. If hell is not real, then what about evil spirits? We know they exist, so if there is a loving God and good spirits (angels) is it not logical, then, that these two groups live in separate areas? All the accounts of NDE's have reported love and comfort where they went (heaven). They did not report feeling or seeing any evil spirits. So where do the evil spirits come from? Very few people, especially journalists of popular news, want to delve into that one. If they really wanted to do some investigative reporting, they'd find a motherload of evidence pointing to the existence of a place that is devoid of love. God is love. There is a place where God isn't.

So how come those who don't necessarily profess or support Christianity in their NDE's, went to heaven? My answer to that is, their life is not over yet. The lack of judgement they speak of in their NDE experience of Heaven is in line with what the Bible teaches. Judgement will be at the very end, when all the dead are raised, standing beside the ones who will still be living. My understanding of judgement is not that it condemns people to hell, as many of us would do to each other, but that God will look at the heart and judge that a person should not be condemned to the place that is devoid of His presence, aka hell.

If we believe God is who He says He is, then He is perfectly capable of providing a way for His creation to understand things of an afterlife or death magnitude. Not only that, but He should also be able to communicate important knowledge on the importance and impact of this present life, even if He does it through imperfect vessels. Some, including myself, believe the Holy Bible to be that communication. It is one of the most supported works of literature in human history, the thousands of supporting, ancient manuscripts that have been found and authenticated by science elevates the Book to historical fact status. It is not scientific fact, because only that which can be repeated in a lab can hold that label. The historical fact label is achieved by well documented eye-witness accounts (like the Mayflower brought pilgrims to America). Which the Bible has.

So this is the thing. If hell is a place where God isn't and He gave us the knowledge on the topic of Himself, if we choose not to enter into the place where He is, via the door He provided, then by default we remain where we were. The Bible tells us that in this age, hell is not allowed to take over, that the Holy Spirit keeps it back, to give us the opportunity to decide freely. We live on a planet that currently manifests the characteristics of both heaven and hell, through the choices we make each day. We see this and the Bible also speaks to that. Humans influence, and are influenced by, the spirit world. We see it and the Bible speaks to that. So what is causing all the confusion? What is causing all the doubt?

Suppose that doubt and confusion were functions of evil spirits who are the enemies of God and His angels and, because we are all created in God's image, enemies of us as well.

Why is Christianity the most controversial faith on the planet?

Why is Christianity the only religion who's God died for the love of mankind?

The NDE's all agree in their experience of love after they died.

“There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.” John 15:13 Aramaic Bible in Plain English

Would not the One who is Love, demonstrate the greatest love?

If there is no hell, why does the Bible tell us of the Son of God, Yeshua, Emmanuel (God with us) coming down to teach us and to die in order to provide a way for us to escape it?

The article surmised that personal healing was evident in many of the NDE's.

The Bible tells us that salvation (sozo), and as demonstrated by the accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, is for the healing of our spirit, soul AND body. The healing of the whole person.

If God is love, where does hate come from? If there is a heaven, why do people struggle to believe in a hell?

Because we want what we want, the way we want it. We are selfish from birth. We create God in our own image, to our personal likes and dislikes. We are being influenced.

The good news: If we are really and genuinly interested in truth, despite what it might do to our personal beliefs, we will find it. If all we want is to feel better and find support for our own theories, we will find that too, unfortunately the end results (and some current results) will be different and only time will tell.

Love has a source, so does evil. To believe in a heaven and not a hell, is wishful thinking, in my opinion.

My prayer is that people will see God's heart for us and His provision for our healing and reconciliation to Him. I pray that I would grow to be a more accurate representation of His heart toward others, that I would live my life in a way that brings honour to God and draws people to Him, rather than repelling them. God forgive me and God forgive the Church where we have so sorely failed in that. God help us all.