The dynamics of healthcare
Dr. Roberto Miranda
(es: es)
es: The passage in Mark 8:22-26 teaches us about the complexities and dynamics of healing. Sometimes, the Lord chooses strange ways to minister to people and we need to be prepared for unexpected things. We should not reject the manifestations of the Spirit of God simply because they are strange, as God can use anyone to bless our lives. However, we should also be aware that there may be spiritual obstructions that need to be overcome before a healing can occur. Healing is complex, but we have a healing God who wants us to pray and minister to the sick. We should understand the different ways in which the Lord can heal, whether it is an instantaneous healing or a more complex and symbolic path. Ultimately, the purpose of healing is for the glory of the Lord.
The methods that the Lord used to heal in the Bible were diverse, sometimes verbally, sometimes by touching, and sometimes from a distance. There were also cases where the Lord forgave sins before healing. Sometimes the cause of the illness was a demonic spirit, which the Lord rebuked. The Lord would also take the initiative to heal, even if the person did not ask for it. It is important to persist in prayer and trust in the grace and mercy of the Lord, even when we don't understand the complex paths of healing. We should also ask for spiritual discernment and be willing to fight for our healing.
The speaker discusses the different ways in which God heals people and emphasizes that we cannot manipulate or control God's will. He also emphasizes that God is a God of processes and that we should trust in His timing and ways, even if we cannot fully understand them. The speaker encourages listeners to seek wisdom and understanding from God and to surrender to His will.
God is mysterious and wants to choose humble-hearted people who seek Him without preconditions or limitations. The speaker asks for a spirit of wisdom and understanding to interpret the times and minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. They pray for forgiveness of unbelief and ask for God's blessing to rain down on them during a prayer meeting on August 16. They express love and adoration for God.
The methods that the Lord used to heal in the Bible were diverse, sometimes verbally, sometimes by touching, and sometimes from a distance. There were also cases where the Lord forgave sins before healing. Sometimes the cause of the illness was a demonic spirit, which the Lord rebuked. The Lord would also take the initiative to heal, even if the person did not ask for it. It is important to persist in prayer and trust in the grace and mercy of the Lord, even when we don't understand the complex paths of healing. We should also ask for spiritual discernment and be willing to fight for our healing.
The speaker discusses the different ways in which God heals people and emphasizes that we cannot manipulate or control God's will. He also emphasizes that God is a God of processes and that we should trust in His timing and ways, even if we cannot fully understand them. The speaker encourages listeners to seek wisdom and understanding from God and to surrender to His will.
God is mysterious and wants to choose humble-hearted people who seek Him without preconditions or limitations. The speaker asks for a spirit of wisdom and understanding to interpret the times and minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. They pray for forgiveness of unbelief and ask for God's blessing to rain down on them during a prayer meeting on August 16. They express love and adoration for God.
I want to talk about the subject of healing. I invite you to go to the Gospel according to Saint Mark chapter 8 verses 22 to 26, Mark 8:22 to 26. And I want to talk specifically about what is the dynamics of healing, dynamics of healing, what are the complexities? Since we are going to be ministering healing, this is a very practical teaching that can help us to approach the mystery of the God who heals us but who is also sovereign and who sometimes does unexpected things.
And I have chosen this text precisely because of how complex it is and because it teaches us that the Lord sometimes chose strange ways to minister to people as he does in our own lives as well. There are many teachings about healing at this time and many times well-intentioned but not necessarily biblical and so many times we oversimplify what the Lordship of God is or we get into the subject of healing, we are not prepared for strange things or even the strange things. more complex and deeper things than we expect.
Sometimes we simply want God to heal us physically but God wants to heal other things that exist in our being, emotions, spirit, family past, many things. And we can understand all this better when we approach texts like this one. In Mark 8 verse 22 it says that: "The Lord then came to Bethsaida and they brought him a blind man, and they begged him to touch him. Then the Lord took the blind man's hand and led him out of the village" we see there a first complexity. It is that the Lord for some mysterious reason decides to remove this man and leave only Him and this man, we do not know for what reason; we are not sure, no one could say for what reason the Lord but we already see here something that the Lord normally did not.
The only other moment that I can think of when He wanted to heal I think the daughter of Jairus that He took out of the people and was left alone with a very select group of His disciples but the fact is that in this case the Lord does something out of the common and takes the man out to the village. And he says that: "Spitting in his eyes" another strange thing that the Lord does at this moment, normally the Lord did not work that way. One may wonder what was on the Lord's mind in spitting this man in his eyes.
Something interesting is: when the Holy Spirit is moving strange things can happen. I have learned not to reject the manifestations of the Spirit of God because they are ugly or because they are strange or because they are inelegant, just as I have learned not to reject people that God uses in very powerful ways even if they seem uneducated, do not dress well , although they themselves may even have some disease; although they do not have all their theology clear, even many times the Lord chooses who he wants.
And if you are going to reject God's move because it is strange, perhaps you are going to miss out on the blessing. So not necessarily because something is weird. Now I also want to say that the Kingdom of God has order, the Kingdom of God is also coherent but sometimes the coherence of God is not the coherence that we want. The Bible says that the folly of God is often wiser than the wisdom of men and I have learned that many times God even wants to humble our intellect and sometimes His gifts come in unpromising packages.
People that perhaps you thought could never do something, God uses them to bless your life. He used two humble people to minister to the intellectual Apollos. Do you remember that passage where the Lord uses a couple to take this man Apollos, an intellectual, a philosopher converted to the Gospel but who needed people experienced in the Gospel. They were not theologians, they were not rabbis but they had the knowledge of the power of God and they were able to minister to this man. God used a leather tanner to also minister to Saul, the great Pharisee Saul persecutor of the Church when Saul was blind there in his house humiliated by the Lord and waiting for the new stage of his life, the Lord sent a simple man too to minister the Holy Spirit to the proud Pharisee and prepare him for his new stage.
So I always say one thing: when God wants to do something in your life, perhaps he will use strange ways. I have always said: Lord, our Church is always open to whatever you want to do and we are never going to close the doors to something because it is strange. Now I can also say that just because it's strange doesn't mean it's from the Lord, right?
But God uses the way he wants. In this case, the Lord Jesus Christ spits on this man and I don't know what was on the Lord's mind, the fact is that it was something that He wanted to do and he left it there as a way of expanding our expectations, saying: hey, don't reject anything simply because it was unconventional.
"Spitting out his eyes he laid his hands on it" and here is something interesting also from this passage, he says that he asked him if he saw anything. Once again one wonders: why does the Lord ask this man if he sees something, was the Lord unsure of what had happened? When the Lord performed a miracle, he simply did it, period, but in this case he asks: what's up, how did it go? if i saw something
Then look at the interesting thing about the passage that the man answers, he says: "He looking said: I see men like trees, but I see them that they walk" for some reason it seems that the miracle did not occur perfectly. The man could see figures that moved, much better than what he saw before, before he didn't see anything but he can't make out what's happening. He says: I see the people, I see shapes that move, they look like trees to me, maybe because of the limbs that moved and maybe because of the blur of the image, but something had happened, who can imagine what had happened at that moment? Was there something spiritual, was there a spiritual obstruction, was there something that had to be?
We don't know but what captivates me is that the Son of God, the Almighty finds an obstacle and then he has to minister to this man again so that he can be completely healed. By the way I remember, it is that brothers: whoever wants to be simplistic in the things of the mysteries of God will never be able to enter the totality, that is why the Lord says that unless we are like children we will never be able to enter the Kingdom of the Heavens.
I was thinking about Daniel now it just occurred to me. Daniel says the Bible that he gave himself to pray and fast looking for an answer from God about the future of his people. And he spent 21 days praying and fasting and apparently nothing had happened until an angel appeared to him with all his power and all his elegance and his dominion, and when Daniel sees this powerful angel he melts on earth and the angel has to minister to him and strengthen him and says: Daniel from the day you gave yourself to cry out for your people your prayer reached the Throne of God and I have been sent to give you the answer to what you were asking for, but on the way he says I was confronted by the I think he is a prince of Greece or of Persia, referring to a demonic angel, to an infernal power that presented itself to him and prevented the arrival of God's response.
Now again, think about it brother. Daniel had the opportunity to find out what had happened in the spiritual world but many times we are praying and crying out and asking the Lord to do something in our life: revelation, advice, healing, deliverance but there are battles in the air too; there are things, there are complexities. In Daniel's case it was a spiritual struggle. How was that titanic fight between two angels, one from hell and one from heaven? the mere concept blows my brains out a bit, the fuses.
Will it have been with swords, will it have been with lightning? We don't know how that spiritual battle took place but the fact is that there was an opposition that had to be overcome before the answer came and sometimes many times in our lives we also have to be aware that there are obstructions. I don't know why the miracle was a little stunned and then the Lord had to make a second intervention, but what I want to point out to you is how complex it is.
And while I discuss these things, I want you to start thinking, right? in our own lives, all the things we ask of the Lord and miracles and supernatural life. What I want this afternoon is for you to keep an idea. That is why the dynamics of healthcare, that healthcare is something very complex and that we have to live up to it in our understanding of it.
Another thing: I do not want you to leave here with the idea that healing is something so complicated, so complex that it is better not to heal or ask for healing or pray for healing, quite the opposite. I simply want us to be well prepared to address something that God tells us we have to do because brothers, in the Bible it is very clear that we have a healing God and that God wants us to pray.
I believe that all these stories that are in the Bible are designed to inspire in us an idea that we have a God who ministers, a God who responds to the needs of His people and we are a Pentecostal people, we believe in the gifts of healing. of signs and wonders. The Lord Jesus Christ said in the Gospel according to Saint Mark that: "These signs will follow those who believe" says that: "they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover" and the Book of Acts that it is no longer Jesus ministering but His Church here in On Earth, we continually see healings of different kinds in different manifestations.
So let's understand that we do have a healing God but also a God who, as we see in this case, sometimes moves in complex ways. Compare this with another passage in the same Gospel according to Saint Mark in chapter 1 verse 29 to 31 where another miracle is given but in a very different way. It says in verse 29 Mark 1 that: "When Jesus came out of the synagogue they came to the house of Simon and Andrés with James and John" the Lord leads a procession to the house of Simon and Andrés his brother.
And it says that: "Simon's mother-in-law was lying down with a fever" and immediately they spoke to the Lord about this sister. Look at something here: what I like in this case is the daily nature of this healing that the Lord does. She is there, there is a member of the family who is sick, they ask her to minister to them and she says that then the Lord came and took her by the hand and lifted her up and immediately the fever left her and she served them. The Lord does not speak, he does not start to fight; He simply goes where the woman is, takes her hand, raises her up, does not say to say anything and the woman instantly healed and healed in such a total way that she begins to serve, it was not that she was going to recover immediately, no; soon her vitality returns and she can minister to the disciples of Jesus and to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Sometimes the Lord heals instantly, suddenly without a doubt, without any ambiguity, but sometimes he takes a more complex and symbolic path and for other purposes. I believe, brother, that one of the purposes of the Lord in recording this complex miracle of the blind man from Betsaida was possibly precisely to give us a clearer understanding of what healing is because I believe that the passages that are in Scripture are designed to give us intelligence about what are the ways of the Lord.
Do you know that many times in your sufferings, your struggles there is a great cloud of witnesses who are seeing what is happening to you too? and sometimes the Lord lengthens the healing process for a while so that the miracle is well cooked and when He intervenes then it is for the glory of the Lord and it takes time. Just at the end of the service this morning, I was approached by a sister who I don't know if she was in the first service or is in the second now; the case was that between the two services.
I did not recognize this lady at the time, I knew she was part of the Church. But he tells me: Pastor, do you remember me? Two years ago I came because his niece told me to come see him and I was suffering from a terrible depression, it completely paralyzed me. I had been diagnosed with cancer, had been given a short time to live, and had lost the ability to even get out of bed, my thoughts totally confused. And it took me a long time but thank God recently the Lord did the work, here in the Church they prayed for me recently and two years of hell disappeared in an instant and God cleared my mind. It's been over a month now and I'm a new woman, I've returned to being the woman I was before.
And he says that in an instant that which was darkening my mind disappeared and God has done the work in my life. Now I wonder: Lord, why didn't you do it the first day we prayed for her? who knows, maybe his faith had to increase, maybe there were other things we don't know. The important thing is that you have to pray, brothers, and if it didn't work out for you the first time, try it the second time, and if not, the second time, the third time, but keep going. The Bible says: ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you, you have to persist.
Many times you do not know what is in the mind of God and if you worry the first time, perhaps you missed the opportunity that God had for you the second time. That is why the Lord Jesus Christ speaks about the parable of the widow who says that she approached the unjust judge many times: do me justice before my adversary and this corrupt judge did not want to attend to her until one day he said: you know what? So that this woman doesn't tire me anymore and doesn't fill my patience, I'm going to attend to her and she did justice. The Lord used that.
Now the contrast is that our judge is a just Judge. What the Lord wanted to say through this is that: the heavenly Father wants but many times we have to persist, we have to continue because we often do not understand the complex paths.
So these passages remind us of the diversity of methods that the Lord used to heal. Sometimes the Lord verbally healed from a word be healed and the person was healed. Sometimes he touched people, laid hands. Sometimes, as in the case of Pedro's mother-in-law, she made a symbolic act and took her hand as if to say: hey, there is no alternative, you are going to be healed whether you want it or not, whatever it is, there is a healing, the authority of the Lord, right? ?
Sometimes the Lord healed from a distance, as in the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman. This woman approached the Lord, asking him to heal her daughter who was demon-possessed. Even the Lord did not even give the Word of healing, the woman when manifesting her faith when the Lord challenges her and gives her an apparent refusal, the woman says: Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table of the chosen ones like this that the Lord stayed and said: wow great is your faith woman. By that word your daughter is healed.
The Scripture says that at that very moment the woman confirmed that when she returned home her daughter had been healed. Praise the Lord that the Lord uses the faith of this person, the declaration of this person and that is what heals the other. And many times it is like this, we could talk about healing by proxy, I don't know how to say it in Spanish, it is an intermediary healing. Remember the men who lowered the paralytic through the roof of the house? And it says that when these men lower this man, seeing their faith, he ministers to the paralytic. So many times there is a person, their faith may not give but your faith can intervene.
The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God, it says that without faith do not think that you will receive anything but many times even God can superimpose His own Lordship and heal a person who lacks faith out of love for others who is interceding for them , the Lord does what he wants brothers. I have heard many times that we say: oh you don't heal because you don't have faith, be careful when you say that to someone because we could be planting a sense of guilt in people; I don't see that there is much use in telling people: look, you don't have faith and giving them more blows than they are already suffering.
Of course we do need faith and we have to ask the Lord to increase our faith and we have to look for foundations of faith in the Word but the Lord is so faithful and so merciful. Do you remember the passage of the deaf boy when the Lord said to him: do you believe that I can heal your son? and the man said: I believe, does my disbelief help? And the Lord did not reject him, the man was saying: well I believe that I believe but there is also doubt in me.
How many times have you prayed to the Lord and there is a part of you that believes but there is another part that is like: wow is it possible? Trust in the Lord, do not psychoanalyze yourself more than necessary. We have a merciful and compassionate God of course, let's look for that place of faith in our lives but ultimately trust in the grace and mercy of the Lord because we have a complex God. He is a coherent and consistent God but sometimes He decides to do what he wants, glory to God that he is.
So sometimes the Lord from a distance healed, sometimes he touched people, sometimes he forgave sins before healing a person. In the case of this paralytic who was lowered through the roof, he said: your sins are forgiven. What was in the life of this man? there were maybe things that needed to be taken care of first and then later he ministered to him. We are going to talk a little bit later about spiritual situations that can interfere with our health and our healing and it is important that we also understand this in all this complex ministry of healing.
Sometimes the Lord rebuked a demon as well for healing. In those cases the person's illness was not really a problem but a symptom of the real illness that was a demonic spirit behind it. Do you know, brother, that there are demons that manifest their power through a specific disease or a specific bondage, a specific lifestyle? There are such things, don't always understand me but in Scripture we see the case of the woman bent over for 18 years, remember? he had been in the synagogue all this time.
And by the way, whoever tells me that believers cannot be affected by demonic powers does not know what he is talking about. The one who tells me that a Christian cannot be affected by a demon is people who do not know anything about liberation because in my ministry for 30 years I have met many baptized people in my Church, serving who are affected by a demon And at a given moment of God's power, that creature that is inside there is manifested and they must be released even though they love the Lord. They are the mysteries.
If the devil appears before the very Throne of God in the Book of Job, for example, I don't think that's a fairy tale there, no. That was a reality. Who are we not to be affected? if he tempted Peter, if he tempted the Lord Jesus Christ himself in the desert. That is why we live, we inhabit a complex universe. I believe that the modern Church sins a lot of being innocent and that is why we allow ourselves a number of liberties because we do not understand the mysteries of God and the mysteries of the Spirit.
The fact is that this 18-year-old woman in the synagogue fearing God the Lord calls her: this daughter of Abraham bent over completely, bent over by a torturing demon who rejoiced in having this deformed daughter of God looking down to the ground when God made her to look towards glory but before the Presence of the Son of God that woman was healed and released and immediately straightened up says the Word, and went straight to her house. And the Lord said: this daughter of Abraham that the devil had tied up for 18 years. And that was not a metaphor.
There are cases in Scripture. The deaf-mute boy I spoke about a little while ago, the disciples tried to free this young man and they couldn't and the Lord himself had to come and rebuke the devil and then the boy was deaf-mute, he had two things: deafness and dumbness and the origin of This disease was not a physical or physiological problem but a demon whose manifestation was expressed through deafness and dumbness. And the disciples struggling there. Many times we pray but we do not understand the cause, discernment is needed from the Lord.
One of the things we always have to ask for is: Lord, give me wisdom, give me spiritual discernment to know how to minister at any given time. And the embarrassed disciples approached Jesus later when they were over there having lunch and the Lord said to them: hey there are genres. That's the genre we're up against. Do you know that there are levels of opposition, levels of war, levels of demonization? Spirit levels also in the Realm.
There are very wise, very intelligent, very exalted spirits and there are stupid spirits that we have found. There are very strong spirits, there are spirits that create disciplines and doctrines and create artistic, political and historical movements because they are so developed and there are everyday spirits, of the tiny kitchen, they are mysteries. The fact is that the Lord told him: hey, that genre that we confront only comes out with fasting and prayer.
There are struggles in your life, there are ties, there are persistent problems, there are traumas; There are things that bind you that you are going to have like Jacob and grab hold of the angel and say: I am not going to let you go until you bless me. And you are going to have to fight for your healing, you are going to have to pay the price. You are going to have to show that you seriously believe in a God and God is going to glorify himself in that.
He knows that in those struggles we often grow, in those times of waiting when we drink away our tears because we don't know why the Lord doesn't answer us, we mature there, we grow there. And when healing comes, when liberation comes we are stronger than ever and we have learned a great lesson.
If the Lord ministered to us there right away, gave us food like an eaglet at once in our mouths He comes we would never grow, God wants warriors, God wants people experienced in the mysteries of healing and liberation and that is why sometimes it takes time. Sometimes there are things that are behind that have to be resolved, we have to learn the lessons so that the Will of the Lord is fulfilled.
Then there are demonic spirits that also manifest through illness. Sometimes the Lord took the initiative Himself and the person did not even ask Him to heal. Do you remember the paralytic from Bethesda I think it was? the paralyzed man was there by the pond, no one could help him, the Bible says there was an angel. Look how weird this is talking about weirdness, if I didn't know the Bible I would think this is a fairy tale.
The Word says that there was an angel, well I believe it, brothers, I don't know about you, but if the Bible tells me something, even if it is strange, I will believe it. The Scripture says that there was an angel who came from time to time, removed the water in that specific place and the first one thrown was healed. Again whether you believe it or not, I believe it. When I get there to heaven I'm going to ask him: Lord, but what an ineffective way was that to minister and I'm sure he's going to give me an answer that's going to keep me quiet and I'm going to laugh at how logical it was.
But the fact is that the first one to jump was healed and this poor man there all the time had no one to help him. The Lord approaches him, he goes around walking: and what happens to you? Lord I have no one to help me, hey: would you like to be healed? hey hell yeah! then the Lord touched him, grace. The comparison between the hard work of the law, jumping into the water, competing and the grace of Christ that heals freely, automatically. teachings.
This man was healed immediately but the Lord offered to heal him he wasn't even asking to be healed. On occasions people had to shout like Bartimaeus: Lord, son of David, heal me, have mercy on me, and not only did the Lord wait for them to ask for healing, but he acted crazy and let a good time pass and Bartimaeus shouting loudly: Jesus son of David have mercy on me and the Lord waiting there for it to simmer to teach us a lesson too, that we must persist, we must overcome obstacles as we also saw last Sunday, right? you have to be brave and carried away so that the Lord does the works in our life.
And finally the Lord stops and ministers to him. Bartimaeus had to ask the Lord and insist like the Syro-Phoenician woman also had to argue with the Lord because sometimes the Lord wants to take things out of us that are hidden there. We are very crude and very simplistic: Lord, heal me and I go on my way but the Lord says: no, it is not like that. I want to bless you, I want to do things in you. I want to go to the root of the evil because what good is it for me if I heal you and the next day you are doing the same little shame that led you to where you are now?
So the Lord was ministering. God is not there a sugar daddy who comes and gives you what you want and then you continue doing what you want. There are people who come to the House of the Lord for God to heal them, to give them a new car, to give them a girlfriend and after he gives them they never come back because they want to manipulate the Lord. He says: I am not a machine where you throw in 25 cents and a Coca Cola comes out, I require your life, I require your dedication, I require your heart, I want to do transformative works in you; I want to give you much more than what you expect.
And we have to understand, brothers, that we cannot manipulate God. We have a God that the more I analyze Him, the more I look at Him, the more I am amazed at the depth of His personality. Sometimes the Lord healed someone and told them to shut up and not tell anyone, as in the case of this blind man who told him: don't tell anyone that I healed you. On other occasions, as in the case of the ten lepers, he told them: go and report to the high priest so that they will put you in the New York Times tomorrow that 10 lepers were healed and confirm the healing, right?
He says that in that case the Lord wanted it to be published and sometimes also to the demoniac Gadarene who wanted to go with the Lord Jesus Christ. made for your life Sometimes, good Lord, do I shut up or do I speak? tell me. The Lord has for each one a different way of doing things.
We sin because we are simplistic, the Church of Jesus Christ needs wisdom and spiritual discernment because we have a tremendously complex God. Furthermore, there is a case about diversity, there is a case that the Lord involuntarily healed, who can tell me who it is? (laughs) that is, the woman with the issue of blood we have here theologians, people who know their Bible. The woman with the issue of blood.
The Bible says that the Lord was walking through the crowd and this desperate woman in dire need for many years had lost all her money, all the doctors had failed her and she was a woman on a mission. She approached from behind Jesus and what is more, I believe that superstitiously this woman could only reach the edge of the mantle of the Lord and she said: here is energy to light up an entire city if I touch the edge of His mantle a little it's going to touch me.
And when he touched, he says that immediately the flow of his blood stopped immediately at the same moment. And the Lord says that she felt the discharge of power that had come from Him. Notice that she did not ask the Lord for permission, she did not have all her theology correct, I do not believe that this woman knew that Jesus Christ was consubstantial with the Father and that there was been begotten and not created and that all these things that we sometimes, she simply knew that this rabbi had power and that he was from God and had faith, a crude faith, a crude faith but it was faith in the end.
She had paid the price, she had taken risks and she had identified that in Christ there was power and when she touched the Lord the Lord felt because the Lord is living grace and when we approach Him even though sometimes there are things that are not resolved in our lives and our theology is not totally clear, the Lord is pure grace, the Lord wants us to confidently approach the Throne of God's Grace to receive timely help.
And then the Lord felt that his power had been stolen and he says: who touched me? And the disciples again said: but Lord, if you are surrounded by people, who touched you? everyone is touching you and the Lord said no, someone touched me because power came out of me. There was no special request or anything there, but simply a naked faith, a living need that caused this woman like an animal that could smell water out of the desert to go where she had to receive her healing.
So there are different ways, brothers, different ways in which God ministers to our lives, give me a little more time, this is a fairly broad teaching and perhaps I will continue it next Sunday, but I want you to understand that God is sovereign. God heals who he wants and when he wants. And I think that precisely because of this breadth of His healing capacity is that we should not hesitate to come and ask the Lord when we need an intervention from Him. Our part, what touches you, what touches me each day I learn this more, you know? the responsibility is not mine, the way is the Lord's; what is up to you is to ask, trust and leave the rest to the Lord.
When you have to pray for someone, if you see a need, pray, don't worry, your reputation is not on trial or at risk, it is the reputation of the Lord and He does not care what people think, if He wants to heal, He will heal. if he wants to heal immediately he will do so, if he wants to heal within ten years he will do so but your part is to be a channel of the Word and the blessing of God and leave the results to the Lord; do not be afraid to ask the Lord. If God doesn't heal you, glory to God, one day you're going to die and He's going to heal you definitively then. Do you know what is the greatest healing of all? when we die and go to the Presence of God, there are no more headaches or anything, we are completely healed for all eternity.
The children of God win anyway. We haven't said that sometimes God heals immediately when we pray, instantly. I have learned, however, to greatly appreciate gradual healing, I have learned to appreciate God's processes. Say with me: process. Do you know that God is a God of processes? science is based on God's processes. The universe is a universe of processes. I love the God who manifests himself through systems, sequences, complex things.
We Pentecostals suffer because we believe that God is all about quick action and let's get back to where we came from and God likes to set up a whole stage and take His time and show His glory. Look at all the time that He took with Pharaoh, He wanted to display His glory before humanity and before His Hebrew children and He took and hardened the heart of Pharaoh and how many plagues did they have to go through? seven plagues, and how long will each of them have taken? weeks, we don't know. But a plague was coming, Pharaoh was sorry and: ok take it away but when they were going to leave with their suitcases ready: no, not that they return, oh well it's fine but I'm going to give you another plague and another one, another drama .
The Lord likes dramas, you know? we like things fast and if we like dramas it's one act but He likes to create wonderful and complex things. Seven times until he finally culminated in his intervention with the death of the Egyptians and still after that they are going towards the sea and Pharaoh is still coming after them for one last display of the Glory of God before the Red Sea, because God is a God is complex and we have to live up to it, ask God to open our understanding to us.
For that Almighty God who likes processes as in the case of Abraham and Sara. At the age of 75 it occurs to the Lord to tell Abraham: you are going to have a son. Abraham and Sara suffered from sterility. Sometimes we only blame women, women are the ones who are sterile in the Bible, we don't know who knows maybe it was the man who was sterile but let's say I'm going to believe what he says I'm not going to get into trouble of what I owe right now.
But the fact is that they were both barren and the Lord at the age of 75 says to Abraham: I am going to give you a son, and when will he fulfill the promise? at the age of 100, 25 years later, he finally decides to heal Abraham and Sarah of their shame and gives them a son. And then he wants to take their son away from them and says: sacrifice it to me now because God loves complex things, brothers, and that makes me fall in love with God and inspires me to believe, even though I can't explain everything, I want to obey him. Although sometimes there are contradictions in science and in the events of my life and in other things I tell him: Lord, you are sovereign, you do what you want. In the long run, history ends where you want to take it and that is why our work is to obey the Lord.
Even though you can't explain all the mysteries today many people in the Church are rejecting the Word of God because scientists are supposedly saying different things. I have always said: look, I am going to bet my life on what the Bible says, if there is something that I cannot explain, the Lord will have to explain it to me later when I get to heaven, but we cannot contradict the promises of God and the ways that God works because science has supposedly found either a complicated question or a more complete solution.
We are the people who believe what the Word says because here we have the heart of God displayed. Here we have the workings of His mind, here we have the mysteries of His ways expressed. Men know a small segment of what is the complex personality of the God we serve and our goal is: Lord, teach me Your ways, show us Your heart and wherever You say we go, we will go and the rest we will leave to You Lord.
The Lord does what he wants this morning we went in another direction and despite the translation we made more progress than we did today but I want you to have that teaching because I think it is very important that we understand all these mysteries, these complexities of the miraculous God , powerful that we have. But I want you to lower your head for a moment this morning and thank that God who loves you, that God that you will never put in a box, you will never be able to limit him, he is a God wonderfully generous and good, a God who wants to do His miracles but who tells you: son, daughter, give me your heart. Make yourself meek, make yourself humble, bend your intellect, let Me guide you and let your guard down and do not want to put me in a little box because I do not fit inside it.
Surrender to Me, accept My Lordship, join the complexity of what I want to do in your life, ask Me for wisdom to understand My mysteries, inquire into My Word. Ask Me and I will answer you. The Word says: "If anyone lacks wisdom, ask God who gives abundantly and without reproach and it will be given to him" I believe that one of the things that the Church requires most at this time is wisdom, discernment from the Lord. And if there is something hidden in your life, we are going to ask the Lord to give you wisdom and understanding right now.
If something is obstructing the Grace of God, if something is preventing the blessing that God wants to give you is stopping right now, we declare that the Lord gives you understanding, gives you wisdom, opens the windows of heaven.
Last night I had a dream, I can't suppress this and then one day maybe I'll tell him but it was fascinating. I had the dream and at the time I did not understand but I do not know if it was minutes or hours later but the fact is that the Lord revealed something to me and I believe that a very, very interesting miracle has occurred and now I am asking the Lord for confirmation. But much of what I am talking about now I see the concatenation and the relationship between one thing and another.
Brothers: God is mysterious, it is a bottomless abyss and the Lord at this time wants to choose the humble-hearted people who want to pay the price so that, like Joseph, like Daniel, give them wisdom beyond what they imagine and if you Do you dare to seek the Lord in the morning, at night, if you make yourself humble like a child God will bless you, God is telling us: look for me and you will find me but do not put preconditions for me and do not limit the level of your dedication .
If you dare to believe Me and ask Me, I delight in giving revelation to those who hunger and thirst for it, but you have to pay the price: sanctify yourself, search My Word, pray and cry out, fast. Lay everything at My feet and I will reveal great and hidden things that you do not know because the Lord loves to share His secrets with His children.
I declare upon Your people a spirit of wisdom, a spirit of understanding in these times, Father, when there is so much deceit in the world, when a spirit of unbelief has fallen on Earth, when the nations and the Church are still falling prey. of doctrines of demons we ask Father that Your Grace invade us and that You take the humble and give us knowledge to know how to interpret the times, to know how to minister in the power of Your Holy Spirit. Give us understanding of Your Word Father and seal our hearts and forgive our unbelief.
We love you. Spirit of God prepare that time of prayer that we are going to have on August 16, anoint it and declare Lord that the windows of heaven will open, Your blessing has to rain on us who love you Father your little ones we want to see Your Glory Lord, take us where we do not want to go even Father but do not leave us useless, do not leave us sterile Father, revive us with Your Spirit. Thank you Lord thank you we adore you we receive Lord all the nutrients Father right now we receive them Father thank you. Thank you Lord, thank you in the Name of Jesus hallelujah. Amen, glory to the Name of the Lord.
And I have chosen this text precisely because of how complex it is and because it teaches us that the Lord sometimes chose strange ways to minister to people as he does in our own lives as well. There are many teachings about healing at this time and many times well-intentioned but not necessarily biblical and so many times we oversimplify what the Lordship of God is or we get into the subject of healing, we are not prepared for strange things or even the strange things. more complex and deeper things than we expect.
Sometimes we simply want God to heal us physically but God wants to heal other things that exist in our being, emotions, spirit, family past, many things. And we can understand all this better when we approach texts like this one. In Mark 8 verse 22 it says that: "The Lord then came to Bethsaida and they brought him a blind man, and they begged him to touch him. Then the Lord took the blind man's hand and led him out of the village" we see there a first complexity. It is that the Lord for some mysterious reason decides to remove this man and leave only Him and this man, we do not know for what reason; we are not sure, no one could say for what reason the Lord but we already see here something that the Lord normally did not.
The only other moment that I can think of when He wanted to heal I think the daughter of Jairus that He took out of the people and was left alone with a very select group of His disciples but the fact is that in this case the Lord does something out of the common and takes the man out to the village. And he says that: "Spitting in his eyes" another strange thing that the Lord does at this moment, normally the Lord did not work that way. One may wonder what was on the Lord's mind in spitting this man in his eyes.
Something interesting is: when the Holy Spirit is moving strange things can happen. I have learned not to reject the manifestations of the Spirit of God because they are ugly or because they are strange or because they are inelegant, just as I have learned not to reject people that God uses in very powerful ways even if they seem uneducated, do not dress well , although they themselves may even have some disease; although they do not have all their theology clear, even many times the Lord chooses who he wants.
And if you are going to reject God's move because it is strange, perhaps you are going to miss out on the blessing. So not necessarily because something is weird. Now I also want to say that the Kingdom of God has order, the Kingdom of God is also coherent but sometimes the coherence of God is not the coherence that we want. The Bible says that the folly of God is often wiser than the wisdom of men and I have learned that many times God even wants to humble our intellect and sometimes His gifts come in unpromising packages.
People that perhaps you thought could never do something, God uses them to bless your life. He used two humble people to minister to the intellectual Apollos. Do you remember that passage where the Lord uses a couple to take this man Apollos, an intellectual, a philosopher converted to the Gospel but who needed people experienced in the Gospel. They were not theologians, they were not rabbis but they had the knowledge of the power of God and they were able to minister to this man. God used a leather tanner to also minister to Saul, the great Pharisee Saul persecutor of the Church when Saul was blind there in his house humiliated by the Lord and waiting for the new stage of his life, the Lord sent a simple man too to minister the Holy Spirit to the proud Pharisee and prepare him for his new stage.
So I always say one thing: when God wants to do something in your life, perhaps he will use strange ways. I have always said: Lord, our Church is always open to whatever you want to do and we are never going to close the doors to something because it is strange. Now I can also say that just because it's strange doesn't mean it's from the Lord, right?
But God uses the way he wants. In this case, the Lord Jesus Christ spits on this man and I don't know what was on the Lord's mind, the fact is that it was something that He wanted to do and he left it there as a way of expanding our expectations, saying: hey, don't reject anything simply because it was unconventional.
"Spitting out his eyes he laid his hands on it" and here is something interesting also from this passage, he says that he asked him if he saw anything. Once again one wonders: why does the Lord ask this man if he sees something, was the Lord unsure of what had happened? When the Lord performed a miracle, he simply did it, period, but in this case he asks: what's up, how did it go? if i saw something
Then look at the interesting thing about the passage that the man answers, he says: "He looking said: I see men like trees, but I see them that they walk" for some reason it seems that the miracle did not occur perfectly. The man could see figures that moved, much better than what he saw before, before he didn't see anything but he can't make out what's happening. He says: I see the people, I see shapes that move, they look like trees to me, maybe because of the limbs that moved and maybe because of the blur of the image, but something had happened, who can imagine what had happened at that moment? Was there something spiritual, was there a spiritual obstruction, was there something that had to be?
We don't know but what captivates me is that the Son of God, the Almighty finds an obstacle and then he has to minister to this man again so that he can be completely healed. By the way I remember, it is that brothers: whoever wants to be simplistic in the things of the mysteries of God will never be able to enter the totality, that is why the Lord says that unless we are like children we will never be able to enter the Kingdom of the Heavens.
I was thinking about Daniel now it just occurred to me. Daniel says the Bible that he gave himself to pray and fast looking for an answer from God about the future of his people. And he spent 21 days praying and fasting and apparently nothing had happened until an angel appeared to him with all his power and all his elegance and his dominion, and when Daniel sees this powerful angel he melts on earth and the angel has to minister to him and strengthen him and says: Daniel from the day you gave yourself to cry out for your people your prayer reached the Throne of God and I have been sent to give you the answer to what you were asking for, but on the way he says I was confronted by the I think he is a prince of Greece or of Persia, referring to a demonic angel, to an infernal power that presented itself to him and prevented the arrival of God's response.
Now again, think about it brother. Daniel had the opportunity to find out what had happened in the spiritual world but many times we are praying and crying out and asking the Lord to do something in our life: revelation, advice, healing, deliverance but there are battles in the air too; there are things, there are complexities. In Daniel's case it was a spiritual struggle. How was that titanic fight between two angels, one from hell and one from heaven? the mere concept blows my brains out a bit, the fuses.
Will it have been with swords, will it have been with lightning? We don't know how that spiritual battle took place but the fact is that there was an opposition that had to be overcome before the answer came and sometimes many times in our lives we also have to be aware that there are obstructions. I don't know why the miracle was a little stunned and then the Lord had to make a second intervention, but what I want to point out to you is how complex it is.
And while I discuss these things, I want you to start thinking, right? in our own lives, all the things we ask of the Lord and miracles and supernatural life. What I want this afternoon is for you to keep an idea. That is why the dynamics of healthcare, that healthcare is something very complex and that we have to live up to it in our understanding of it.
Another thing: I do not want you to leave here with the idea that healing is something so complicated, so complex that it is better not to heal or ask for healing or pray for healing, quite the opposite. I simply want us to be well prepared to address something that God tells us we have to do because brothers, in the Bible it is very clear that we have a healing God and that God wants us to pray.
I believe that all these stories that are in the Bible are designed to inspire in us an idea that we have a God who ministers, a God who responds to the needs of His people and we are a Pentecostal people, we believe in the gifts of healing. of signs and wonders. The Lord Jesus Christ said in the Gospel according to Saint Mark that: "These signs will follow those who believe" says that: "they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover" and the Book of Acts that it is no longer Jesus ministering but His Church here in On Earth, we continually see healings of different kinds in different manifestations.
So let's understand that we do have a healing God but also a God who, as we see in this case, sometimes moves in complex ways. Compare this with another passage in the same Gospel according to Saint Mark in chapter 1 verse 29 to 31 where another miracle is given but in a very different way. It says in verse 29 Mark 1 that: "When Jesus came out of the synagogue they came to the house of Simon and Andrés with James and John" the Lord leads a procession to the house of Simon and Andrés his brother.
And it says that: "Simon's mother-in-law was lying down with a fever" and immediately they spoke to the Lord about this sister. Look at something here: what I like in this case is the daily nature of this healing that the Lord does. She is there, there is a member of the family who is sick, they ask her to minister to them and she says that then the Lord came and took her by the hand and lifted her up and immediately the fever left her and she served them. The Lord does not speak, he does not start to fight; He simply goes where the woman is, takes her hand, raises her up, does not say to say anything and the woman instantly healed and healed in such a total way that she begins to serve, it was not that she was going to recover immediately, no; soon her vitality returns and she can minister to the disciples of Jesus and to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Sometimes the Lord heals instantly, suddenly without a doubt, without any ambiguity, but sometimes he takes a more complex and symbolic path and for other purposes. I believe, brother, that one of the purposes of the Lord in recording this complex miracle of the blind man from Betsaida was possibly precisely to give us a clearer understanding of what healing is because I believe that the passages that are in Scripture are designed to give us intelligence about what are the ways of the Lord.
Do you know that many times in your sufferings, your struggles there is a great cloud of witnesses who are seeing what is happening to you too? and sometimes the Lord lengthens the healing process for a while so that the miracle is well cooked and when He intervenes then it is for the glory of the Lord and it takes time. Just at the end of the service this morning, I was approached by a sister who I don't know if she was in the first service or is in the second now; the case was that between the two services.
I did not recognize this lady at the time, I knew she was part of the Church. But he tells me: Pastor, do you remember me? Two years ago I came because his niece told me to come see him and I was suffering from a terrible depression, it completely paralyzed me. I had been diagnosed with cancer, had been given a short time to live, and had lost the ability to even get out of bed, my thoughts totally confused. And it took me a long time but thank God recently the Lord did the work, here in the Church they prayed for me recently and two years of hell disappeared in an instant and God cleared my mind. It's been over a month now and I'm a new woman, I've returned to being the woman I was before.
And he says that in an instant that which was darkening my mind disappeared and God has done the work in my life. Now I wonder: Lord, why didn't you do it the first day we prayed for her? who knows, maybe his faith had to increase, maybe there were other things we don't know. The important thing is that you have to pray, brothers, and if it didn't work out for you the first time, try it the second time, and if not, the second time, the third time, but keep going. The Bible says: ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you, you have to persist.
Many times you do not know what is in the mind of God and if you worry the first time, perhaps you missed the opportunity that God had for you the second time. That is why the Lord Jesus Christ speaks about the parable of the widow who says that she approached the unjust judge many times: do me justice before my adversary and this corrupt judge did not want to attend to her until one day he said: you know what? So that this woman doesn't tire me anymore and doesn't fill my patience, I'm going to attend to her and she did justice. The Lord used that.
Now the contrast is that our judge is a just Judge. What the Lord wanted to say through this is that: the heavenly Father wants but many times we have to persist, we have to continue because we often do not understand the complex paths.
So these passages remind us of the diversity of methods that the Lord used to heal. Sometimes the Lord verbally healed from a word be healed and the person was healed. Sometimes he touched people, laid hands. Sometimes, as in the case of Pedro's mother-in-law, she made a symbolic act and took her hand as if to say: hey, there is no alternative, you are going to be healed whether you want it or not, whatever it is, there is a healing, the authority of the Lord, right? ?
Sometimes the Lord healed from a distance, as in the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman. This woman approached the Lord, asking him to heal her daughter who was demon-possessed. Even the Lord did not even give the Word of healing, the woman when manifesting her faith when the Lord challenges her and gives her an apparent refusal, the woman says: Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table of the chosen ones like this that the Lord stayed and said: wow great is your faith woman. By that word your daughter is healed.
The Scripture says that at that very moment the woman confirmed that when she returned home her daughter had been healed. Praise the Lord that the Lord uses the faith of this person, the declaration of this person and that is what heals the other. And many times it is like this, we could talk about healing by proxy, I don't know how to say it in Spanish, it is an intermediary healing. Remember the men who lowered the paralytic through the roof of the house? And it says that when these men lower this man, seeing their faith, he ministers to the paralytic. So many times there is a person, their faith may not give but your faith can intervene.
The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God, it says that without faith do not think that you will receive anything but many times even God can superimpose His own Lordship and heal a person who lacks faith out of love for others who is interceding for them , the Lord does what he wants brothers. I have heard many times that we say: oh you don't heal because you don't have faith, be careful when you say that to someone because we could be planting a sense of guilt in people; I don't see that there is much use in telling people: look, you don't have faith and giving them more blows than they are already suffering.
Of course we do need faith and we have to ask the Lord to increase our faith and we have to look for foundations of faith in the Word but the Lord is so faithful and so merciful. Do you remember the passage of the deaf boy when the Lord said to him: do you believe that I can heal your son? and the man said: I believe, does my disbelief help? And the Lord did not reject him, the man was saying: well I believe that I believe but there is also doubt in me.
How many times have you prayed to the Lord and there is a part of you that believes but there is another part that is like: wow is it possible? Trust in the Lord, do not psychoanalyze yourself more than necessary. We have a merciful and compassionate God of course, let's look for that place of faith in our lives but ultimately trust in the grace and mercy of the Lord because we have a complex God. He is a coherent and consistent God but sometimes He decides to do what he wants, glory to God that he is.
So sometimes the Lord from a distance healed, sometimes he touched people, sometimes he forgave sins before healing a person. In the case of this paralytic who was lowered through the roof, he said: your sins are forgiven. What was in the life of this man? there were maybe things that needed to be taken care of first and then later he ministered to him. We are going to talk a little bit later about spiritual situations that can interfere with our health and our healing and it is important that we also understand this in all this complex ministry of healing.
Sometimes the Lord rebuked a demon as well for healing. In those cases the person's illness was not really a problem but a symptom of the real illness that was a demonic spirit behind it. Do you know, brother, that there are demons that manifest their power through a specific disease or a specific bondage, a specific lifestyle? There are such things, don't always understand me but in Scripture we see the case of the woman bent over for 18 years, remember? he had been in the synagogue all this time.
And by the way, whoever tells me that believers cannot be affected by demonic powers does not know what he is talking about. The one who tells me that a Christian cannot be affected by a demon is people who do not know anything about liberation because in my ministry for 30 years I have met many baptized people in my Church, serving who are affected by a demon And at a given moment of God's power, that creature that is inside there is manifested and they must be released even though they love the Lord. They are the mysteries.
If the devil appears before the very Throne of God in the Book of Job, for example, I don't think that's a fairy tale there, no. That was a reality. Who are we not to be affected? if he tempted Peter, if he tempted the Lord Jesus Christ himself in the desert. That is why we live, we inhabit a complex universe. I believe that the modern Church sins a lot of being innocent and that is why we allow ourselves a number of liberties because we do not understand the mysteries of God and the mysteries of the Spirit.
The fact is that this 18-year-old woman in the synagogue fearing God the Lord calls her: this daughter of Abraham bent over completely, bent over by a torturing demon who rejoiced in having this deformed daughter of God looking down to the ground when God made her to look towards glory but before the Presence of the Son of God that woman was healed and released and immediately straightened up says the Word, and went straight to her house. And the Lord said: this daughter of Abraham that the devil had tied up for 18 years. And that was not a metaphor.
There are cases in Scripture. The deaf-mute boy I spoke about a little while ago, the disciples tried to free this young man and they couldn't and the Lord himself had to come and rebuke the devil and then the boy was deaf-mute, he had two things: deafness and dumbness and the origin of This disease was not a physical or physiological problem but a demon whose manifestation was expressed through deafness and dumbness. And the disciples struggling there. Many times we pray but we do not understand the cause, discernment is needed from the Lord.
One of the things we always have to ask for is: Lord, give me wisdom, give me spiritual discernment to know how to minister at any given time. And the embarrassed disciples approached Jesus later when they were over there having lunch and the Lord said to them: hey there are genres. That's the genre we're up against. Do you know that there are levels of opposition, levels of war, levels of demonization? Spirit levels also in the Realm.
There are very wise, very intelligent, very exalted spirits and there are stupid spirits that we have found. There are very strong spirits, there are spirits that create disciplines and doctrines and create artistic, political and historical movements because they are so developed and there are everyday spirits, of the tiny kitchen, they are mysteries. The fact is that the Lord told him: hey, that genre that we confront only comes out with fasting and prayer.
There are struggles in your life, there are ties, there are persistent problems, there are traumas; There are things that bind you that you are going to have like Jacob and grab hold of the angel and say: I am not going to let you go until you bless me. And you are going to have to fight for your healing, you are going to have to pay the price. You are going to have to show that you seriously believe in a God and God is going to glorify himself in that.
He knows that in those struggles we often grow, in those times of waiting when we drink away our tears because we don't know why the Lord doesn't answer us, we mature there, we grow there. And when healing comes, when liberation comes we are stronger than ever and we have learned a great lesson.
If the Lord ministered to us there right away, gave us food like an eaglet at once in our mouths He comes we would never grow, God wants warriors, God wants people experienced in the mysteries of healing and liberation and that is why sometimes it takes time. Sometimes there are things that are behind that have to be resolved, we have to learn the lessons so that the Will of the Lord is fulfilled.
Then there are demonic spirits that also manifest through illness. Sometimes the Lord took the initiative Himself and the person did not even ask Him to heal. Do you remember the paralytic from Bethesda I think it was? the paralyzed man was there by the pond, no one could help him, the Bible says there was an angel. Look how weird this is talking about weirdness, if I didn't know the Bible I would think this is a fairy tale.
The Word says that there was an angel, well I believe it, brothers, I don't know about you, but if the Bible tells me something, even if it is strange, I will believe it. The Scripture says that there was an angel who came from time to time, removed the water in that specific place and the first one thrown was healed. Again whether you believe it or not, I believe it. When I get there to heaven I'm going to ask him: Lord, but what an ineffective way was that to minister and I'm sure he's going to give me an answer that's going to keep me quiet and I'm going to laugh at how logical it was.
But the fact is that the first one to jump was healed and this poor man there all the time had no one to help him. The Lord approaches him, he goes around walking: and what happens to you? Lord I have no one to help me, hey: would you like to be healed? hey hell yeah! then the Lord touched him, grace. The comparison between the hard work of the law, jumping into the water, competing and the grace of Christ that heals freely, automatically. teachings.
This man was healed immediately but the Lord offered to heal him he wasn't even asking to be healed. On occasions people had to shout like Bartimaeus: Lord, son of David, heal me, have mercy on me, and not only did the Lord wait for them to ask for healing, but he acted crazy and let a good time pass and Bartimaeus shouting loudly: Jesus son of David have mercy on me and the Lord waiting there for it to simmer to teach us a lesson too, that we must persist, we must overcome obstacles as we also saw last Sunday, right? you have to be brave and carried away so that the Lord does the works in our life.
And finally the Lord stops and ministers to him. Bartimaeus had to ask the Lord and insist like the Syro-Phoenician woman also had to argue with the Lord because sometimes the Lord wants to take things out of us that are hidden there. We are very crude and very simplistic: Lord, heal me and I go on my way but the Lord says: no, it is not like that. I want to bless you, I want to do things in you. I want to go to the root of the evil because what good is it for me if I heal you and the next day you are doing the same little shame that led you to where you are now?
So the Lord was ministering. God is not there a sugar daddy who comes and gives you what you want and then you continue doing what you want. There are people who come to the House of the Lord for God to heal them, to give them a new car, to give them a girlfriend and after he gives them they never come back because they want to manipulate the Lord. He says: I am not a machine where you throw in 25 cents and a Coca Cola comes out, I require your life, I require your dedication, I require your heart, I want to do transformative works in you; I want to give you much more than what you expect.
And we have to understand, brothers, that we cannot manipulate God. We have a God that the more I analyze Him, the more I look at Him, the more I am amazed at the depth of His personality. Sometimes the Lord healed someone and told them to shut up and not tell anyone, as in the case of this blind man who told him: don't tell anyone that I healed you. On other occasions, as in the case of the ten lepers, he told them: go and report to the high priest so that they will put you in the New York Times tomorrow that 10 lepers were healed and confirm the healing, right?
He says that in that case the Lord wanted it to be published and sometimes also to the demoniac Gadarene who wanted to go with the Lord Jesus Christ. made for your life Sometimes, good Lord, do I shut up or do I speak? tell me. The Lord has for each one a different way of doing things.
We sin because we are simplistic, the Church of Jesus Christ needs wisdom and spiritual discernment because we have a tremendously complex God. Furthermore, there is a case about diversity, there is a case that the Lord involuntarily healed, who can tell me who it is? (laughs) that is, the woman with the issue of blood we have here theologians, people who know their Bible. The woman with the issue of blood.
The Bible says that the Lord was walking through the crowd and this desperate woman in dire need for many years had lost all her money, all the doctors had failed her and she was a woman on a mission. She approached from behind Jesus and what is more, I believe that superstitiously this woman could only reach the edge of the mantle of the Lord and she said: here is energy to light up an entire city if I touch the edge of His mantle a little it's going to touch me.
And when he touched, he says that immediately the flow of his blood stopped immediately at the same moment. And the Lord says that she felt the discharge of power that had come from Him. Notice that she did not ask the Lord for permission, she did not have all her theology correct, I do not believe that this woman knew that Jesus Christ was consubstantial with the Father and that there was been begotten and not created and that all these things that we sometimes, she simply knew that this rabbi had power and that he was from God and had faith, a crude faith, a crude faith but it was faith in the end.
She had paid the price, she had taken risks and she had identified that in Christ there was power and when she touched the Lord the Lord felt because the Lord is living grace and when we approach Him even though sometimes there are things that are not resolved in our lives and our theology is not totally clear, the Lord is pure grace, the Lord wants us to confidently approach the Throne of God's Grace to receive timely help.
And then the Lord felt that his power had been stolen and he says: who touched me? And the disciples again said: but Lord, if you are surrounded by people, who touched you? everyone is touching you and the Lord said no, someone touched me because power came out of me. There was no special request or anything there, but simply a naked faith, a living need that caused this woman like an animal that could smell water out of the desert to go where she had to receive her healing.
So there are different ways, brothers, different ways in which God ministers to our lives, give me a little more time, this is a fairly broad teaching and perhaps I will continue it next Sunday, but I want you to understand that God is sovereign. God heals who he wants and when he wants. And I think that precisely because of this breadth of His healing capacity is that we should not hesitate to come and ask the Lord when we need an intervention from Him. Our part, what touches you, what touches me each day I learn this more, you know? the responsibility is not mine, the way is the Lord's; what is up to you is to ask, trust and leave the rest to the Lord.
When you have to pray for someone, if you see a need, pray, don't worry, your reputation is not on trial or at risk, it is the reputation of the Lord and He does not care what people think, if He wants to heal, He will heal. if he wants to heal immediately he will do so, if he wants to heal within ten years he will do so but your part is to be a channel of the Word and the blessing of God and leave the results to the Lord; do not be afraid to ask the Lord. If God doesn't heal you, glory to God, one day you're going to die and He's going to heal you definitively then. Do you know what is the greatest healing of all? when we die and go to the Presence of God, there are no more headaches or anything, we are completely healed for all eternity.
The children of God win anyway. We haven't said that sometimes God heals immediately when we pray, instantly. I have learned, however, to greatly appreciate gradual healing, I have learned to appreciate God's processes. Say with me: process. Do you know that God is a God of processes? science is based on God's processes. The universe is a universe of processes. I love the God who manifests himself through systems, sequences, complex things.
We Pentecostals suffer because we believe that God is all about quick action and let's get back to where we came from and God likes to set up a whole stage and take His time and show His glory. Look at all the time that He took with Pharaoh, He wanted to display His glory before humanity and before His Hebrew children and He took and hardened the heart of Pharaoh and how many plagues did they have to go through? seven plagues, and how long will each of them have taken? weeks, we don't know. But a plague was coming, Pharaoh was sorry and: ok take it away but when they were going to leave with their suitcases ready: no, not that they return, oh well it's fine but I'm going to give you another plague and another one, another drama .
The Lord likes dramas, you know? we like things fast and if we like dramas it's one act but He likes to create wonderful and complex things. Seven times until he finally culminated in his intervention with the death of the Egyptians and still after that they are going towards the sea and Pharaoh is still coming after them for one last display of the Glory of God before the Red Sea, because God is a God is complex and we have to live up to it, ask God to open our understanding to us.
For that Almighty God who likes processes as in the case of Abraham and Sara. At the age of 75 it occurs to the Lord to tell Abraham: you are going to have a son. Abraham and Sara suffered from sterility. Sometimes we only blame women, women are the ones who are sterile in the Bible, we don't know who knows maybe it was the man who was sterile but let's say I'm going to believe what he says I'm not going to get into trouble of what I owe right now.
But the fact is that they were both barren and the Lord at the age of 75 says to Abraham: I am going to give you a son, and when will he fulfill the promise? at the age of 100, 25 years later, he finally decides to heal Abraham and Sarah of their shame and gives them a son. And then he wants to take their son away from them and says: sacrifice it to me now because God loves complex things, brothers, and that makes me fall in love with God and inspires me to believe, even though I can't explain everything, I want to obey him. Although sometimes there are contradictions in science and in the events of my life and in other things I tell him: Lord, you are sovereign, you do what you want. In the long run, history ends where you want to take it and that is why our work is to obey the Lord.
Even though you can't explain all the mysteries today many people in the Church are rejecting the Word of God because scientists are supposedly saying different things. I have always said: look, I am going to bet my life on what the Bible says, if there is something that I cannot explain, the Lord will have to explain it to me later when I get to heaven, but we cannot contradict the promises of God and the ways that God works because science has supposedly found either a complicated question or a more complete solution.
We are the people who believe what the Word says because here we have the heart of God displayed. Here we have the workings of His mind, here we have the mysteries of His ways expressed. Men know a small segment of what is the complex personality of the God we serve and our goal is: Lord, teach me Your ways, show us Your heart and wherever You say we go, we will go and the rest we will leave to You Lord.
The Lord does what he wants this morning we went in another direction and despite the translation we made more progress than we did today but I want you to have that teaching because I think it is very important that we understand all these mysteries, these complexities of the miraculous God , powerful that we have. But I want you to lower your head for a moment this morning and thank that God who loves you, that God that you will never put in a box, you will never be able to limit him, he is a God wonderfully generous and good, a God who wants to do His miracles but who tells you: son, daughter, give me your heart. Make yourself meek, make yourself humble, bend your intellect, let Me guide you and let your guard down and do not want to put me in a little box because I do not fit inside it.
Surrender to Me, accept My Lordship, join the complexity of what I want to do in your life, ask Me for wisdom to understand My mysteries, inquire into My Word. Ask Me and I will answer you. The Word says: "If anyone lacks wisdom, ask God who gives abundantly and without reproach and it will be given to him" I believe that one of the things that the Church requires most at this time is wisdom, discernment from the Lord. And if there is something hidden in your life, we are going to ask the Lord to give you wisdom and understanding right now.
If something is obstructing the Grace of God, if something is preventing the blessing that God wants to give you is stopping right now, we declare that the Lord gives you understanding, gives you wisdom, opens the windows of heaven.
Last night I had a dream, I can't suppress this and then one day maybe I'll tell him but it was fascinating. I had the dream and at the time I did not understand but I do not know if it was minutes or hours later but the fact is that the Lord revealed something to me and I believe that a very, very interesting miracle has occurred and now I am asking the Lord for confirmation. But much of what I am talking about now I see the concatenation and the relationship between one thing and another.
Brothers: God is mysterious, it is a bottomless abyss and the Lord at this time wants to choose the humble-hearted people who want to pay the price so that, like Joseph, like Daniel, give them wisdom beyond what they imagine and if you Do you dare to seek the Lord in the morning, at night, if you make yourself humble like a child God will bless you, God is telling us: look for me and you will find me but do not put preconditions for me and do not limit the level of your dedication .
If you dare to believe Me and ask Me, I delight in giving revelation to those who hunger and thirst for it, but you have to pay the price: sanctify yourself, search My Word, pray and cry out, fast. Lay everything at My feet and I will reveal great and hidden things that you do not know because the Lord loves to share His secrets with His children.
I declare upon Your people a spirit of wisdom, a spirit of understanding in these times, Father, when there is so much deceit in the world, when a spirit of unbelief has fallen on Earth, when the nations and the Church are still falling prey. of doctrines of demons we ask Father that Your Grace invade us and that You take the humble and give us knowledge to know how to interpret the times, to know how to minister in the power of Your Holy Spirit. Give us understanding of Your Word Father and seal our hearts and forgive our unbelief.
We love you. Spirit of God prepare that time of prayer that we are going to have on August 16, anoint it and declare Lord that the windows of heaven will open, Your blessing has to rain on us who love you Father your little ones we want to see Your Glory Lord, take us where we do not want to go even Father but do not leave us useless, do not leave us sterile Father, revive us with Your Spirit. Thank you Lord thank you we adore you we receive Lord all the nutrients Father right now we receive them Father thank you. Thank you Lord, thank you in the Name of Jesus hallelujah. Amen, glory to the Name of the Lord.
