Step One

Step One

I understand that you may not like step one. But there is no way of getting to step two in your healing process without first getting pass step one. Step one is simply repenting of your sin and putting it away for good. This first step may go against your lifestyle that you may not be ready to give up. The question is how bad do you want to be healed? Are you willing to give up your sin in exchange for a complete healing? Do not skip this step!!! I am not just going to tell you to stop sinning: I am going to equip you to empower you to stop.

But first let’s explore this truth that rebellion against God can prevent healing. I mentioned already that God promises peace to His people (Psalm 85:9). While eternal salvation is unconditional through faith in Jesus, receiving God’s peace is very much conditional. For the second part of verse 9 reads, “But let them not return to their folly.” Let’s look at another. Isaiah 57:21 reads, “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” Isaiah 57:21 is the reverse statement of the beginning of Psalm 85:9. Psalm 85:9 says that “God promises peace to his people, his saints,” Isaiah 57:21 promises that there is no peace for those who live ungodly. Please do not overlook that both are promises. Some of us are the way we are because we are living a wicked lifestyle, and God takes away our peace because of it. In John chapter 5, Jesus heals a paralytic. Jesus later says something important to him in verse 14, Jesus said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” I’d hate to think of what worse than being paralyzed might be. The guy had been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus makes a critical connection between the guy’s condition and his sin.

Thirty-eight years is a long time to be paralyzed. Some of us have been suffering from anxiety for decades. And anxiety has paralyzed us much like this paralyzed man. It would have been great if Jesus met this guy at least 37 years ago. That would have saved him almost 4 decades of suffering. But this guy’s root problem was not his being paralyzed, but it was him holding on to his sin until he met Jesus who forgave him and healed him. If only he’d made that connection 38 years ago! Let us make that connection now. You can save decades of your life! Not only do we see that sin was this guy’s root problem, we also see that returning to the sin, after receiving God’s healing, may incur a worse condition because we take lightly God’s gift of healing.

Jesus gave this guy his healing for free. He didn’t wait for this guy to stop sinning. He healed him first and then commanded him to stop sinning. By all means, God’s healing is free. Retaining the healing is not free. We must commit to a godly lifestyle to retain it. (Honestly, receiving God’s peace is easy too because it’s a promise—I can’t wait to show you.)

I’m going to show you through my blogs how to be completely set free from all fear according to the bible. And IT WORKS!!!!! Take it from me. I’m living it! It absolutely works!!!! But I have to be honest with you—if you want to be healed, you will have to make a true commitment to repent and put away that sin stronghold that is holding you captive. Repent simply means changing your mind. It is not talk. It is action. It is a literal submission of your former will and a complete reception of God’s will. This may be difficult for some who are caught in sin, or who love their sinful ways and don’t want to give them up. If this is you, and you are ready to stop reading, you don’t really want to be healed. You might not be ready. But you might waste some decades of your life until you realize that this is the only way. God can wait. He has all the time in the world. You must be ready to commit.

Going back to verse 6 in John 5, Jesus asks this invalid, “Do you want to get well?” That seems like a strange question, but the issue is how bad do you want it? We must make a commitment to serve him when we receive His blessing. This is the NIV version. The Greek really reads a little differently. It literally reads, “Do you want to be made whole?” God is not just interested in healing us. He is more concerned with making us whole. It is not enough for God to take away our anxiety. God wants to make us whole by taking away our sin too! The two go intimately together! You are not made whole just being free from fear. You are only made whole only when you are free from both sin and fear. That is my goal to lead all readers to. We will be set free from both fear and sin.

I cannot stress enough that we must get rid of our sin because even if God were to heal us, our sin would cancel the healing. When I say sin, I am not talking about any sin: I am referring specifically to rebellion. Rebellion is a sin that our hearts go after that takes priority over God. Rebellion is when our hearts love the sin more than God. Rebellion is a refusal to listen and conform even though we know that God is commanding us in the opposite direction. That’s different from just committing sin. Committing sin is not necessarily rebellion. I’m sure that the reader knows …if he or she honestly questions his or her self, they will know if they are rebelling and which sin or sins they are.

So when we speak of healing anxiety, we must first answer how to be cured of rebellion. We cannot skip the rebellion and expect the healing. I have great news! God equips us to break our sinful addictions. Even if you are addicted to your sin, God gives us the power to break that addiction!

Let’s start with Jeremiah 3:22. It reads, “Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding.” I like that he uses the word “cure” because it shows that rebellion is a sickness that needs curing. When we rebel, we are sick. To be sick means that something is wrong. Not only is something wrong, that is the root cause of sin, but whenever there is a disease, the root cause of the disease, say, cancer, gives negative effects that are the outgrowth of the disease, say, a weakening of the body. Sin is very much like cancer. It is a disease that negatively effects the body. But when we observe it from a macroscopic perspective, some of the negative effects, isn't really negative at all. God the doctor will prescribe trials and storms (negative effects) to cure us of our disease of sin. As we saw, He can take away our peace because of backsliding. But we must not look at these trials the wrong way. Our trials are good. God gives us trials because He loves us. God takes away our peace because of discipline, because of His love for us! Paul was thankful of his thorn from Satan that God gave him that caused him to suffer. The purpose of our trial is to lead us to repentance, humility and complete reliance on Jesus. God loves us so much that He will not let us continue in rebellion, but will send us a trial to bring us back to Him. Looking back at our verse, we see that God is the doctor. It says that he will cure you of backsliding. Rebellion is a sickness and we need a doctor. When we backslide, we tend to run away from the doctor. That’s the wrong thing to do! We need to run to the doctor when we rebel! We first have to know and acknowledge that we are sick in order to know the need of the doctor. When we first connect our storms to our rebellion and realize that God is the doctor of backsliding, then we are on our way towards being made whole.

Notice lastly that God is the one curing us of backsliding. He is not asking us to just stop our sinful addictions. It is difficult to just suddenly stop an addiction. Even if it is not an addiction, it is difficult to stop a course of lifestyle that we are used to and suddenly turn right. God is saying that He will cure us and do it for us. In other words, He is offering His power so that we can pull it off in His strength and not our own. My next blog will be about how to put away our sin for good. There are several verses that tell us just how to do that. After that we will go into our healing from anxiety and fear.