(Ver 1.3)  Today’s lesson is Part 17 in one of the most important Bible study series that I have ever given to you about the subject of “Understanding Bible Faith”.  If you have not read all of the lessons I would strongly recommend that you go and start reading with “Part 1” first and then continue through the series.  Today is going to be a really different kind of post in this series.   The Spirit of God led me in a way this week that I really did not expect to go.  This week I was spending some time on Facebook and I was led to talk to a friend and the conversation went in a direction that only God could have orchestrated.  Today I am going to share my friend’s testimony that I received this week about her mother’s miracle of healing.  Hopefully you will read this testimony with an open mind and will learn something from it while being also encouraged that no matter what the diagnosis is from the doctor, that nothing is impossible or too difficult for God to solve and help you through.  I will let you read the entire testimony that she wrote and then I will comment on it at the end and help you to understand what happened and why her mother has lived past the age of 80 after being given a near death sentence by the doctors at a young age.  This testimony is from over 25 years ago.  Here is what she sent to me and I want you to know that it was her anointed writing that produced this:

HEALING FROM CANCER TESTIMONY

My senior year in high school was Straight A’s, Dean’s List, Honor Roll, National Honor Society, Best Writer Award on the school newspaper and a small scholarship to help pay for college.  Just when things seemed to be turning out pretty good for me, things got pretty shaken up.

Found out my dad was sneaking around with a young gal from his college classes. My mom found out the lump in her breast was cancer & decided she didn’t want to put up with both my dad & the cancer, so after 28 (not so happy years) of marriage, they split up.

My mom went into the hospital at the Air Force Base, and had a Bi-lateral, Radical Mastectomy – both breasts removed, and most of the lymph nodes from under the arms too.

With my dad out of the house, this left me and my older brother Tony on our own. The task of calling family, friends & church people to give them the news about Mama’s diagnosis, fell to me, because Tony thought it sounded better if I the person giving the info was crying and emotional (rather than him, in his ever monotone, emotionless way).

Mama was in the hospital 18 days – she was afraid to come home because she feared the dog might jump on her & hurt her, but she did finally come home. That was hard. Moms aren’t supposed to get sick. At least not that sick. And with chemotherapy treatments, she got pretty darned sick. Kids aren’t supposed to have to deal with that kind of stuff – they’re just not equipped for it. Teen-agers are still quite self-centered, at least I was, and so looking back at this time is hard, because I just wasn’t there for Mama like I would be today. This was a battle that she fought on her own, just her & God.

Because she was now separated (not divorced, because then she would lose her medical coverage from the military), she was on her own financially… with two teenagers at home. Tony did move out around this time. And the house had to be sold as part of the divorce settlement. I was not emotionally equipped for college, so I dropped out after the 1^st semester. I had never had a job, so I wasn’t equipped for that either. I was pretty lost and self-absorbed. Mama, endured 9 months of awful chemotherapy while still driving 20+ miles each way to work & back; often driving with a bucket on her lap, because she was so sick from the chemo.

Somehow God brought her through all of this by His grace and a series of miracles.

Back when she first found the lump, a friend asked her what she would do if the doctor told her it was cancer. Mama said, “I’ll just tell him to sew me up & let me go home to die.”

But when the doctor gave her the news, he took her to the room of another patient. In that room, she saw a lady lying in the bed, one side of her chest flat and with stitches, and her husband standing next to her. First Mama saw the surgical wound, but then their eyes met. She said it was like the lady was saying, “But I’m alive!”  Mama then felt “billows of peace” rolling over her with each breath she took. Instantly she did the first three steps of AA: 1) Admit there’s a problem too big to handle; 2) Admit there is a God that can restore her; 3) Turn her life, will & problem over to God.

She told the doctor to schedule the surgery, and then she went to bed. Sometimes, in the midst of a battle, the best thing you can do is rest and sleep, and let God take over.

The surgery was done. She was bandaged up and mostly alone in her hospital room. Mama, was always one to have her hair and make-up done up nice before going anywhere, so these endless days in the hospital were challenging in that respect as well. Wanting to try to regain some normalcy, she asked a nurse if someone could come wash her hair for her – apparently not! So Mama went in her bathroom, bent over the sink and washed her hair herself. Of course it hurt, but it had to be done. The next step was to pin her hair up. Pinning up her hair was a ritual Mama had done every night since she was 13 years old. It consisted of methodically taking very small sections of her hair, wrapping the hair around her finger, sliding that bit off her finger to lay flat on her scalp, and securing it in place with two bobby pins. This would cause the hair to dry in with a curl in it, rather than the pin-straight style that came naturally to it. This process of pinning up her hair required both hands working on top and above her head.

When the nurse walked in on her, she gasped, turned around and left. Nurse number two came in and did the same. Apparently, in the course of the surgery, the muscles needed to raise the arms are cut, so that movement is not possible… or is very painful. As they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way! Some days or perhaps weeks later a volunteer from “Reach to Recovery” came in to teach Mama how to walk her fingers up the wall, to exercise her arms and regain that movement. Well, Mama was way ahead because of her hair pinning chores.

Somehow life did go on. The house sold. Mama found an apartment for her and me. Although I don’t remember packing, I know we must have. Then somewhere along the way, sometime after the 9 months of chemo, Mama had another divine intervention.

Battling with pain in her liver as well as depression, one morning it was just too much to face. Mama lay in bed, and told God, “You gave me a job to do, if you want me there, you’re going to have to do something.” And then she pressed her head even deeper into the pillow. Before she knew what happened, she found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, with her feet on the floor, and no idea how she got there!

She made her way to the bathroom, where the orange glow of the countertop made her look even worse as she stared at herself in the mirror. Her response was only, “Unh–uh, God!” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw this small, brilliantly colored rainbow with block lettering. The message read “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. She closed her eyes, yet still she saw it. “Great, now I’m hallucinating!” She thought.

The rainbow went with her as she got in the shower, and with her eyes closed, she kept reading it. Every time she read it, it moved, like it was dancing and it was progressively moving closer to her. “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. “I HAVE HEALED YOU”. Until it went inside her mouth and exploded! She said it felt like the explosion shook and vibrated all through her. As she stepped out of the shower, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had healed her.

As she walked through the doorway from the bathroom to the bedroom, she saw something above her, shine down on her, and she said it “Tattooed” on her brain: “It doesn’t matter what it looks like, I Have Healed You.”. She said it was so real that she answered aloud, “Okay”.

She had not gotten a doctor’s report or diagnosis back yet, so she didn’t know what she was healed of, but she knew she was healed.

On the way to work that morning, Mama told me this whole story. And she said that she had been so sick with chemo that she would not go back on it. She said we serve a God who heals. I agreed (I did not know about the prayer of agreement: Matthew 18:19 “Again I tell you, if two of you on earth agree (harmonize together, make a symphony together) about whatever [anything and everything] they may ask, it will come to pass and be done for them by My Father in heaven.”). When she got to work, she shared her story with her co-workers; Christian counselors, who prayed over her.

By the time she went to see the Oncologist to get the news of the liver scan that had been done, the doctor was quite upset by the many new spots he saw. He motioned for Mama to look at the slides hanging on the light boxes. As she turned to look, all she could see was a hand, with fingers grasping a round pull ring, and a white shade pulled down preventing her from seeing the slides. At the same time she heard again, “It doesn’t matter what it looks like, I HAVE HEALED YOU!”

She left that doctor’s office without a prescription or a treatment plan; after all, she was healed.

That was more than 25 years ago. Mama is now 80 years old and is still healthy & well. Every now and then a pain will trigger a fear, but as she shares her story of God’s power, faithfulness and love, she is reminded of God’s word to her, that she was healed…. and still is, no matter what it looks like!

LEARNING THE FAITH LESSONS REVEALED IN THIS TESTIMONY!

I can possibly understand different things from reading this testimony of deliverance than you can see right now.  I can see many hidden faith lessons presented to us that I feel are valuable for us to understand in this story.  But, I also believe that I understand the subject of faith now much better than when I first started to study this subject of faith extensively well over 20+ years ago.  Too often people do not understand that their current level of spiritual knowledge places limitations upon the things that they can receive from God’s Word.  God tells the Corinthian church in 1 Cor 3:1 they are still carnal and unable to receive the spiritual things of depth and substance.  Thus their spiritual maturity level placed severe limitations on what could be taught to them by Paul.    Everything that is being taught by me or any other real Bible teacher is relative to two realities.  What I teach you is totally relative to what I know on the subject and what you can understand about the subject is also totally relative to what you already know on the subject and the basics found in the Bible.   I could easily go over your head with deep information, but I try very hard not to do that.  That is why I teach using a series of lessons style of progressive information with limited content in each lesson.  I try to go with the basics of a subject first, introducing you to progressively more complex parts of the subject in succession like they do in school with math for example.  Therefore as you progress in this knowledge of God you should be able to grow into more complex sections of the information presented.  I recommend that you go back and reread all the lessons more than once.  This way you will catch new things that you did not see or understand before.

I am going to go through the testimony and give you some new perspectives to look at on the subject of faith.   For example, many times we get the wrong idea from reading the Bible that a miracle of God is only an instantaneous spectacular phenomenon of the power of God and does not fit with a slower extended over time process like this testimony speaks of.   Clearly this testimony was a new extension of the miracle working power of God over time.  God was certainly involved in her deliverance even though it took an extended duration of time to fully manifest.  Perhaps the reason why this detail took time will become clearer as I continue to go through the analysis of what was said and make some direct comparisons of this modern life experience with another Old Testament example that God gave to us as an example of faith to follow and to learn from.  I will be teaching you using the story of Joshua and how they took the Promised Land as you will see soon.

Satan is definitely an equal opportunity oppressor, destroyer and murderer.  He comes at anyone, anywhere and at any time that they will let him.  The Bible says that “Your adversary the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).  That is exactly what is occurring in this testimony.  I believe that is one of the first things to learn from this testimony.  The origination of the cancer was not from God.  God did not send the cancer and then deliver her from it for that would be idiotic.  The next lesson to learn is that sometimes bad things happen to good people and we can understand that this occurs because of what Adam chose in the garden.  After Adam sinned God said “The man has become as one of us, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:22).  Therefore Adam allowed all evil to cross the threshold into the world because of his sin.  When Adam let evil into the world he also let sickness come in the same door.  I have a Bible lesson series on the specific subject of “Understanding Healing, Sickness and Disease” if you would like a more complete definition for why sickness is an evil and why it exists in our world.   You need to settle in your mind and your heart today and determine who your God is.  Is your God good or is your God evil or perhaps you are really confused and think that your God is both simultaneously?  As long as this is not established in your heart it will cause you to doubt.  This is exactly what Satan wants, since doubt will defeat you from receiving healing.  Let me ask you again?  Where does cancer come from?  Is it from God or is it from Satan?  Jesus gave us the answer and He taught us something very important in the Gospels and gave us some direct clues to that question.  In the book of John Jesus informed us that it was not God who performs the evil in the world.  Jesus said “the thief has come only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you might have life” (John 10:10).  Jesus said very clearly that “I am not the thief”.  Jesus said I have come to give to you, life abundantly.  This was God in the flesh telling you He does not do anything evil to hurt you.  Is cancer a good thing or a blessing?  If you think it is good then you are cleverly deceived by Satan the thief.  Cancer steals your health, your time, your ability, your strength, your money and your life if you let it.  But Jesus said I am here to give you life and not to give you cancer.  This is really not rocket science but you need to settle it.

Jesus revealed in John 10:10, that there exists two opposing forces; one of evil versus one of good and He attributes death and doing evil to you as being from Satan and life and doing good to you as being from God.  Therefore, if any evil is working in your life it was Satan that was behind it and not God.  Acts 10:38 teaches us that Jesus went about DOING GOOD, healing all those that were “oppressed” of the devil.  That verse clearly teaches us that all sickness is the opposite of good and is an evil satanic oppression.  Therefore, cancer is also a part of this unified set of evil oppression brought to people by Satan.  Consider the synonyms of “oppression” because they are fascinating to learn.  Oppression means “domination”, “coercions”, “cruelty”, “tyranny”, “subjugation”, “persecution”, and “harassment”.  None of these describe God at any time or under any circumstances.  These words are the antithesis of God and His goodness (Rom 2:4).

Here is another interesting bit of factual information that I learned from studying this information in the Bible.  Satan can cause physical diseases, illnesses and symptoms to manifest in your external natural physical body.  I really do not have time to fully elaborate why this is possible or what gives Satan access, but know that there was something that you did that opened the door for him.  I know this because of the verse that I gave you earlier about “Satan goes about as a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour”.  We can clearly read that Satan is not able to devour just anyone that he wishes or he would not need to seek.  To seek means to look for something like a hidden door or search for something like a hidden passage that will allow him access to devour you.  What is it that you do that opens the door for him?  I really can’t explain it completely here, but if you want to know you can begin to read my series of Bible lessons on the power of your tongue and gain many clues to how this is possible.  You see the Bible says “Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and those that love it will eat the fruit thereof” (Prov 18:21).  Did you notice that this verse in Proverbs repeats the same two elements described by Jesus in John 10:10?  Here we have two opposing forces of life versus death and good versus evil.  Therefore, life must be produced by us choosing to speak God’s good Words and death must be produced by us choosing to speak satanic evil words.  This is more relevant and important than you can imagine right now.  Your words got you into this mess, and your words can be changed to get you out of this mess.  Let’s go back and read Deuteronomy 30:

Deu 30:19  I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

You see your life is more in your hands than it is in God’s hands.  People want to abdicate and relieve themselves of any personal responsibility for what happens to them.  However, God says that I have given to you the choice, and therefore choose wisely and select to live.  If Satan puts cancer upon you based upon something you said to open the door, then you can begin to reverse that curse that you initiated by speaking life.  How do you do this?  Jesus said “the words that I speak they are Spirit and they are life” (John 6:63).  Therefore you need to find out what God says and speak that.  I think I’m getting ahead of myself but I just said some very important things.  Let’s go back and verify using the Bible that God is not the initiator of sickness and that Satan is.  Let me give you a verse that links evil spirits with the subject of sickness:

Mat 10:1  And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

I want you to understand that whenever God mentions two or more subjects in a one verse statement that there is an undeviating connection between them by direct word association.  Clearly power was given by God to do two things; to cast out unclean spirits and to heal. This word “power” means “delegated influence” within a realm of jurisdiction or authority.  It is a legal term indicating a transferred right of legal supremacy.  Why does Jesus give His disciples power to cast out unclean spirits and was this, the same as healing someone?  In other words is casting out unclean spirits equivalent to healing or are they potentially two separate spiritual activities of God’s power.  You do understand the implications given here, don’t you?  I believe what is being revealed is a cause and effect relationship between demons causing the sickness and then when you get rid of these causes then you have eliminated the effects of sickness.  I hope that you understand these concepts of physics.  I believe that this is all very significant information and you need to pay close attention to what is revealed.  First do you know what an unclean spirit is?  How do we define that and what is different between a clean spirit and an unclean spirit?  What makes a spirit unclean?     Perhaps it would be helpful to study the definition in the Strong’s of the Greek word translated as “unclean”:

G169

From G1 (as a negative particle) and a presumed derivative of G2508 (meaning cleansed); impure (ceremonially, morally (lewd) or specifically (demonic)): – foul, unclean.

We can see that this word is associated with the demonic by Strong.  It means something that is foul and impure.  The opposite of pure is impure.  A pure substance like gold is the most valuable in the pure form and the value decreases as you mix more filler elements with it.   The concept of water is best as pure H2O and adding other elements soon makes it undrinkable.  This is clearly a difficult concept to grasp until we search and find God’s use of this word in the Old Testament.  God uses “unclean” to describe a  leprous man in the natural realm.  A leprous man was one with his flesh in a state of rot and decay.  A leprous man was required to be separate from the non-leprous people so that they would not be infected.  Any time a leprous man came near clean people they were required by law to yell out “unclean” so that everyone would be warned  (Lev 13:45).  I believe that God is using this natural example of sickness to demonstrate a spiritual truth about the angels that have fallen with Lucifer.  They have left their state of perfection to become imperfection by their own sinful choice.  Therefore sin is again a cause for spiritual imperfection making a clean spirit one without sin.

To be an unclean spirit is never mentioned in conjunction with a man’s human spirit in the New Testament.  23 verses in the N.T. mention unclean spirits and they are directly associated with spiritual beings that inhabit people.  We can learn this a little more clearly by reading what Jesus speaks of in Matthew 12:43.

Mat 12:43  When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.

Mat 12:44  Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.

Mat 12:45  Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

An unclean spirit is revealed to us in this discourse as a spiritual being that enters into and exits from a man’s house.  However this is not a physical dwelling like a brick, mortar or wood building construction.  These are all symbolic expressions of a much greater truth. The man’s house in this explanation is his symbolic natural body.  A clean house or body is one that is free from evil influence or inhabitation and an unclean house is a man with one or more evil spirits living within. The real man is a spirit that lives in a physical body.  The unclean spirits that are coming into the man’s house (body) were those spiritual beings that followed Lucifer from heaven.  We can understand this concept of the human body house better by reading other verses in the N.T. like when Paul writes this:

2Co 5:6  Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:

Clearly the body of a Christian man is his temporary dwelling place while still being present here on the earth.  It is self-evident to me that this verse is speaking of an implied house being called a home to the spirit of man.  The contrasted antithesis truth found in this verse is to be with the Lord in heaven when we are found apart from this physical body.  What I just said is more clearly stated in verse 8:

2Co 5:8  We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

To be absent from the body is to no longer be at home in the natural body.   To be “present” with the Lord is defined as our spirits having left our body after death here on the earth and going to be with Jesus.  This is called rightly dividing the Word of Truth (2 Tim 2:15).  Did you notice that the unclean spirits mentioned in Matthew were there for the purpose of the destruction of the natural house?  The implied part of the story is that they were cast out and that the man was able to get his house back into the physical order of health.  Let’s call this being physically healed since Jesus is describing his body and not a house that we live in.  Jesus is describing spirits that cause havoc to a man’s body.  Jesus says if you get rid of them and then let them back in they will bring 7 more with them the next time and it will be worse than the previous time.

Do you recall reading about the demon possessed man that Jesus ran into at Gadara?  This man was described as a madman that could not be chained and Jesus came to him and commanded the “unclean spirit” to come out of him and they had a conversation first.  Jesus asked for the name of the “unclean spirit” and they said “We are legion for we are many” (Mk 5:9).  Here was a clear example of many evil spirits being present in the body of a single man.  It does not say that this man had a physical illness, but it does say that he had a great mental illness.  Therefore, mental illness is also demonically inspired manifestations of “unclean spirits”. That is exactly what Jesus was teaching in Matthew could occur.  No doubt the man in Mark 5 had cleaned house before but has let the same spirits return with many more until now he has enough unclean spirits to be called a great army of them.

“Unclean spirits” are the evil spirits that inhabited the bodies of men and women on the earth that cause physical disease and mental illness and I could give you many more scriptures that help to support this evidence if I need to.  Going back now to Matthew 10:1 do you better understand why Jesus connected the “authority” to cast out unclean spirits with the ability to heal ALL manner of sicknesses and diseases?  According to the Bible when you get rid of the cause the resulting affects also has to go.  What am I saying?  I am saying cancer is caused by evil spirits.  If you don’t understand that or believe that then you will not know to resist it and you will let it come in stay and live, run its course and kill you.  You are going to have to take the authority that Jesus gave to you over your house that you live in.  Just because Jesus gave His disciples this authority does not mean that it was not also transferred to you.  You are the same body of Christ as they were.  I do not have time to teach the subject of Bible Authority completely.  I did one lesson on the subject of authority and great faith in this series, but I should probably do more just on this subject soon.

One seminary graduate man that I worked with many years ago told me once that God had given his wife cancer, yet they still went to the doctor to try to get out of the perfect will of God.  That really did not make any sense to me.  He desired his wife to live but then he had to believe that he was fighting against God to get her healed by a doctor.  He was mixing up who was the oppressor and who was the healer ignoring the Bible while attempting to put God in both roles in his mind.  Why pray to God and ask for healing if God sent you the sickness in the first place?  Whatever God sends to you are we supposed to refuse it?  Clearly that is illogical human reasoning and turns God into a liar when Jesus said “a house divided against itself will not stand” (Mark 3:25).  If God is sending you the sickness and then healing the sickness, His house is a mixed up divided kingdom about to perish.  I alluded to this statement earlier, but you MUST believe that Satan is the oppressor and that he has brought you the sickness or disease to kill you or you will not resist it like God says in His Word (James 4:7).  Physical and spiritual resistances are both absolute requirements for any faith victory.  The ultimate faith battle is on the inside, but the ultimate victory result is only seen by others on the outside in the natural.  However, victory always starts on the inside and then this will works its way to the outside and I’ll talk about this more later.

I cried when I read this testimony.  It touched my heart how much this lady endured in her life.  I felt great compassion for what she went through.  However, I also saw several things that developed in her over time that God used to deliver her.  At first she did not want to fight the cancer, but then the doctor showed her another lady that was still alive and that seemed to make a difference in her to give her a fighting spirit.  God can use anyone to try to change your heart.  You need a fighting spirit within you or you will be easily defeated before you start the first battle.  The Bible clearly teaches us that we are to “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim 6:12).  This clearly implies to us that there will be a series of faith battles that will occur in your life for your life.  No fight is over instantly.  In fact a fight further implies endurance is necessary.  Natural fighters train for months before they go and fight one event.  During this time they are strengthening their bodies to be an overcomer.  This is a physical quality that can be transferred into the spiritual arena.    If you go into this faith fight unprepared and passively expecting to automatically win, then again you are going to be defeated.  I have never seen any fight with a passive winner natural or spiritual.  If you think that you have automatically won the fight because of what Jesus has done for you, then again you will be defeated.  There is nothing in the Bible that teaches us what God has given to us is automatically transferred to anyone without them believing, receiving and fighting to keep it.   This pattern was first introduced with Adam when God told him to hedge the garden.  Sure God gave Adam the garden without a fight, but to keep it safe was not God’s responsibility because God had given it to him to rule over.  Threfore Adam held responsibility to keep every enemy out of the garden, but failed.

The children of Israel learned this lesson the hard way in the wilderness.  When they finally decided to take their Promised Land, they still had the exact same enemies as before but now there were probably many more of them than there was 40 years earlier.   The children of Israel had to couple a physical external fight with their internal spiritual faith fight in order to produce an external physical victory for the possession of the land.   That is really no different than what we go through as revealed by this great testimony.  Taking the Promised Land is really no different for us than what Israel endured.  I would recommend that you go and read the book of Joshua.  The entire book of Joshua is only 24 chapters and can be divided into three sections of information.  The first 5 chapters represent the preparation part before the actual battle occurs.  In these chapters God taught Joshua and Israel to start by being strong and courageous.  This is a basic of any spiritual fight using your faith.  God then told Joshua to not let the book of the law depart from his mouth, but to speak it day and night (Joshua 1:8).  How does faith come?  Surely you understand from the previous lessons that faith comes by hearing and that this act of Joshua speaking God’s word was God’s way of giving His people faith.  This is exactly where you must start your faith fight also.  If you are not getting prepared correctly you are already in trouble.  Learn to be strong and then learn to speak God’s Word day and night.

The second part of the book of Joshua is chapters 6-12 where they actually take the Promised Land in phases.   During these chapters the nation of Israel has multiple encounters with their enemies.  God gives specific instructions for each encounter that must be believed and obeyed in order to be victorious.  So far we have 5 chapters of preparation and 7 chapters of battles.  The rest of the book of Joshua is Israel settling in the land.  It is important to note that the conquest of the Promised Land is a duration of time of nearly seven years.  What we learn from this is that just because God gives you something does not mean it does not take time to possess it.  Clearly this was not an instantaneous miracle of God.  But yet it was still clearly the power of God at work throughout the battles.  Are you seeing any parallels with this information to the testimony yet?

Take the battlefield of Jericho in the O.T. as being no different than the battlefield of cancer for this lady in the testimony.  The battle is not all yours, but yet you still have a major role to play in producing the victory.  For example in the battle for Jericho, the children of Israel were given specific instructions from God and they were required to believe them by faith alone without proof or evidence, obey them and then expect God to do His part.  They were required to march around the walls for 7 days.  On the seventh day God told them to march around the wall 7 times and then have 7 priests blow their 7 horns and God brought the walls down so that they could take the city.  That was an O.T. typology picture of a N.T. spiritual faith battle.  They had to believe what God said and then become obedient to what God said or God was not going to help them win or make it happen for them. This is still true today.  If you expect God to do everything, you are going to be defeated and the walls you are told to march around will remain upright.

Let’s compare what is different between this woman’s testimony and the fight of Israel to take the Promised Land.  In the testimony, she did not believe in divine healing at first because of her ignorance of God’s word.  Therefore she completely lacked faith to receive anything from God.  Before this she did not have any courage to even continue to fight and thus she has failed to prepare as Joshua did.   Thank God for His mercy.  If you do not know what you are lacking, God will help you to get there.   God ended up giving the woman courage to begin the fight by showing her another woman that had done the same.  Later in the testimony God shows her a Bible verse and this is for the advancement of her faith in God’s word to allow her to believe what He has said.  God sent His word to the prophet Moses and it was recorded bevore the battle can be fought.  This written word of God was the faith source for Joshua’s fight.  Are you seeing how God achieved what He taught Joshua in the first 5 chapters as this testimony unfolds?

It is very difficult to believe in the truth, if you do not know the truth or have never heard the truth.  God did eventually show this woman a portion of a Bible verse found in 1 Peter 2:24 that states we were healed.  We should be able to understand that this was God’s attempt at building her faith since faith comes by hearing the Word of God (Rom 10:17).  In the testimony did you notice what God said to her?  Maybe I should ask, did you notice what God did not say to her?  God did not say “I am going to heal you”.  God looked past her current physical condition where it did not yet look like she was healed and He called those things that be not as though they were (Rom 4:17) and said to her in the testimony “I have healed you”.  God is never going to change what He says today and make it something different than what He has already said to you yesterday in His Word (Mal 3:6).  That is why many of your prayers probably do not work, you are asking God to heal you someday and He has already said to you “I have healed you” (1 Peter 2:24).  You are therefore, not in agreement with God.   If you do not know what He has said, then that is your number one weakness and why you believe wrong.   If you believe wrong then your faith is not based upon the Word of God but rather your misconception of the truth.   When the answer to your prayer doesn’t come you will let your circumstances and your symptoms dictate the final outcome.  If you learn to change your perspective and start believing “I am healed” simply because that is what God says I am, then you are now in full agreement with His Word and not your symptoms (Amos 3:3).

Physical symptoms of sickness, disease, and cancer are very real just like the giants were very real in the Promised Land to the children of Israel.  Both are parallel manifestations of the same enemy.  Both the natural giants and the physical symptoms are designed by Satan to put fear into your heart in order to take away any faith, hope or expectation in what God has spoken to you.  The spoken Words of God were designed to give you faith (Psa 107:20).   This is exactly what Jesus described would happen in the battle of the field also known as the Parable of the Sower (Mat 13:18).  Jesus taught us that the seed sown was the Word of God (Mk 4:14) into the hearts of people.  But then Jesus said the birds of the air came immediately to steal the word (seed) that was sown (Mat 13:4).  The birds of the air were the symbolic demons (unclean spirits) that come bringing to you the symptoms.  According to Jesus what was one of the key factors that keeps the spiritual seed from being stolen from us?   It was the understanding (Mat 13:19) and the believing it that allowed the seed to remain and not to be stolen which produced the spiritual fruit that God desired.  Producing spiritual fruit represents you obtaining the victory over your spiritual enemies in this spiritual battle for your faith beliefs.  Jesus said this parable was the most important one for you to know and if you could understand this one you could understand them all (Mk 4:13).  Take time to study the Parable of the Sower in the Gospels.  It clearly reveals the spiritual battle that you are in now for the control of your belief in the Word of God.  Satan is trying everything he can do to steal the Word from your heart and God is trying to help you to produce fruit.  Let me show you some important faith scriptures on external symptoms and circumstances:

Rom 4:18  Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.

Rom 4:19  And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb:

Rom 4:20  He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;

Rom 4:21  And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.

Read these verses very carefully.  These verses are describing the God kind of faith that Abraham and Sarah possessed.  God had spoken and given to them a promise concerning a coming son that would come from their bodies and yet at near the age of 99 and 90 years of age it looked so really bad that it was not going to happen.  Anyone can easily get into discouragement looking at the circumstances.  But this is not what Abraham ended up doing according to these verses.  Verse 20 says Abraham staggered not at the promise of God meaning he did not waiver because of the external circumstances or the wait for the promise to be fulfilled.  In verse 21 it goes on to say that Abraham was fully convinced that what God had declared was not impossible for God to perform.  Wow, that was an awesome revelation of truth.  No matter what the circumstances or the symptoms of the lady with cancer in this testimony God still came and said “I have healed you”.  She took hold of that truth and staggered not at what her body looked like.

The Promised Land was not all taken by Israel in one day.  Neither did this woman in the testimony possess her healing in one day.  Sometimes taking back physical health is a series of smaller miracle victories and not one giant miraculous event.  For example the woman in the testimony continued traveling on her pathway to victory, by simply fighting to wash her own hair.  Perhaps you do not understand the significance in this simple action.  According to the doctors and the nurses, she did what she was unable to do physically and thus she achieved a major victory without even knowing it was a victory.  If you listen to what the doctors say you cannot do then you are defeated.  Fortunately for her she had not been told that she could not move her arms this way and she did it without being discouraged by the doctors negative words.  If the doctors would have been there first and told her this, she might have been defeated.  But this simple effort on her part of doing something so basic was a very significant victory on the road to recovery.  That was a classic type of faith without understanding what faith is.  Doctors do the best that they know from a natural perspective.  They do not mean to be faith killers but many times they are.  If you listen to them and believe them they can and will many times cause you to remain as you are instead of trying to encourage you to fight to get better.  Your will is a major factor in your ability to receive a miracle from God as I have already taught in this series.  This lady ignored the pain and washed her hair anyway.  She then spent time with her arms raised and fixing her hair.  That represents faith whether you understand it or not.  Begin to do what you can’t do.  Begin to do what they said you could not do.  Begin to fight and take back one inch of ground at a time.  Don’t give up, don’t quit and do not get discouraged that you did not take a mile today.  Every inch will matter over time.

Reread this testimony now and compare it to the Children of Israel’s experience with taking the Promised Land:

1. Israel had just gotten delivered (saved) from Egypt by a great display of God’s power and things are looking really positive as they walk out.  Everyone is well, strong and wealthy with the riches of Egypt being transferred to them as they left.  Pharaoh has second thoughts after letting them go and decides to pursue them only to be destroyed in the sea.  Wow, can it get any better for God’s people?  I think they even have a scholarship to get into a really nice college promised land.
2. They then go from what appears as God’s great blessings to a wilderness experience even asking God, why did you bring us out here to die?  Were there not enough graves in Egypt?  The family situation was certainly starting to look very bleak, negative and cursed in this wilderness and even divorce could be splitting the family up.
3. Just when it couldn’t look any worse they send 12 spies into Canaan land and get a really bad doctor’s report back.  The report says that there are cancer giants in the land?  10 spies say we can’t overcome these cancer giants so let’s just die and only 2 said “It’s not a problem”.  This is when the patient people are faced with a decision.  Whose report are we to believe?  The 10 in the majority or the 2 men of God?  Fortunately, one doctor shows the patient a vision of a survivor and she chooses to become a Joshua who is willing to fight for the victory.
4. For forty years the Joshua patient endures a fight of faith in the wilderness while everyone else around her dies one by one.  Time in the wilderness has to take a toll mentally, emotionally and physically, but Joshua holds on to what God says still believing that he can take the land and overcome the cancer giants.
5. Finally, it’s time to enter into the Promises of God.  I can’t stand my dirty hair anymore so I’m going to make it clean all by myself.  It’s not easy to do, it might even hurt, and the nurse looks at her and says you can’t do that.  But that didn’t stop the Joshua Christian from doing it anyway.  You see the 10 spies said we can’t, but the 2 said we can.  Doing what others say you can’t proves that you can do it in spite of their weak opinion.
6. The battle was won and the hair was clean, now it needs to be put up on the top of her head again something that no one said she could do.  People this is called faith, if you did not know it.  Are you learning anything?
7. Every little battle and every little victory matters.  With each time of victory new confidence grows and faith increases.   The next battle is easier to win because of the previous victory and the display of faithfulness from God.

That was my quick comparison of the parallels between two victorious accomplishments by faith.  Did you learn anything from it?  I know it helped me and I pray that you received from it also.  Let me conclude with a list of things that I took away from the testimony and reading in the book of Joshua today.

1. Go to a doctor and get natural help especially if you do not know what the Bible says.  There is no lack of faith in fighting a physical battle using a doctor as long you do not neglect the spiritual enemy that has caused it.  Do not fight a spiritual or physical battle without God on your side.
2. Sometimes not knowing what is wrong with you is worse than knowing who your enemy is.  Joshua saw the enemies the same as the 10 spies, but Joshua did not let the knowledge of the enemies deter him from defeating them.  Joshua knew the names of the people and you need to find out what you are facing.
3. When you have a medical diagnosis you now have a natural enemy with a name.  We know that Satan also has a name.  So both of these are the names of your enemy that you are facing.
4. The Bible says that every knee must bow to the name of Jesus because the name of Jesus is above every other name (Php 2:9).
5. Therefore, use the Name of Jesus to stand against your named disease and Satan and command them both to bow to the greater name of Jesus.
6. Remain as positive and optimistic as you can be, despite the diagnosis, prognosis, symptoms or circumstances because your faith is in the Word of God and what He has said to you like the believing Joshua.  Focus on who your God is and the promise not the giants in your body.
7. Prepare for battle.  Feed daily and even hourly speaking God’s Word to help build your faith and keep it ever before your eyes and ears again as God instructed Joshua to do (Joshua 1:8).  Time spent in preparation for battle is more important than the battle itself.
8. Get a hold of a fighting spirit and do not ever bend or waiver to become passive allowing your surroundings, feelings, emotions or symptoms to dominate you or your thoughts.  Cast down every thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God’s Word (2 Cor 10:5).
9. One of the primary spiritual battles that will occur is ultimately in your mind for the control of your beliefs.  As long as you believe God instead of your circumstances you will win!
10. Fight the good fight of faith and take back small chunks of the Promised Land daily.  Don’t attempt to win the entire war in one day.   Look at the war as a series of smaller battles to overcome one enemy at a time.
11. Let each small past victory help to build you up and raise you to a new faith level of greater confidence for the next victory (Rom 1:17).  For the Bible says clearly that the JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.  Do you want to live?  If yes, then you need to get FAITH and increase it (2 Cor 10:15).
12. You never ignore the giants or pretend like they are not present; you look each giant in the face and defeat them with the Sword of the Spirit like David did to Goliath.  Giant symptoms are very real.  We do not deny the symptoms; we do however deny their right to exist in our land.
13. Like I said, your faith fight is probably not going to be a one victory or one battle experience, just like the taking of the Promised Land was not one battle and one victory for Israel. 
14. Faith is more like a marathon race event and not a fast sprint type of race.  The taking of the Promised Land took nearly 7 years to possess.  Do not get discouraged how long it takes, just keep believing it is yours.
15. Joshua and Caleb saw themselves as ultimate winners and victorious long before they ever achieved the final victory outcome.  That is having great faith before you see the result.  That is what I am trying to tell you to do right now.  Get a vision of victory and then expect it to come to pass.

Do you see yourself as a winner?  Can you see the vision of victory?  Do you expect to win because of who your God is or are the giants bigger than your God?  Begin to change to see yourself as God has said and this will make the difference for the outcome in your life.  I hope and pray that this testimony that I gave to you provided some encouragement on how to fight your coming battles.  In this world we will all be faced with the same enemies in some form.  Your vision and your beliefs will determine God’s ability to fight these battles for you.  I thank my Facebook friend for sharing her story with you.  I thank you for taking the time to read it and for allowing God to speak to your heart.  If you have a testimony that you would like to share with everyone I would be very happy to hear it.  God Bless you as we all grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

If you would like to continue reading in this series of Bible lessons please continue to “Part 18“.