Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. 1 Corinthians 12:1.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healings by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the discerning of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. 1 Corinthians 12:5-11.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
Today we continue our Life Lessons on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I share much with you in My Word about the Holy Spirit from the very first chapter of the book of Genesis to the very last chapter of the book of Revelation. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was waste and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” Genesis 1:1-2. And at the end of the Book of Revelation, “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.” Revelation 22:17.
Jesus came and took care of the sin that divided us, and for those who have received Him as Lord, I have given the gift of My Spirit to you so that you and I can share our thoughts, visions, dreams, songs, purposes, and plans. Jesus told you that when you know My plans and purposes and what I am about, you become His friends. You have taken hold in the handclasp of fellowship and partnership to bring My Kingdom into the world. You have been rescued out of the realm of darkness into My marvelous Light, the Kingdom of My Beloved Son. Your citizenship is now in Heaven and you are under a new jurisdiction wherein your provision and protection is secured. But best of all, you can now receive direction, warnings, guidance, and gifts of revelation, power, and the ability to hear and speak out utterances from the Kingdom to the earth. Every member of the Body of Christ has access to Me by the one Spirit.
I do not want you to be unaware that your very body is a temple of My indwelling Spirit and that you have full access to come with confidence to My throne of grace any time of the day or night and find that you are welcome. My Son comes with you as your great High Priest who gave His live blood for your redemption and has made you holy and blameless, without reproach, before Me. And He is the High Priest of your confession, that is, your homologia, which means your speaking words in complete agreement with Mine, such as divine healing, redemption, favor and victory. And it is My Spirit that has regenerated your spirit and baptized you into Christ, for no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit is My gift to you in Jesus, for He is only given to the believers, the Body of Christ, the Church on earth. I give Him without measure to those who obey My Word and abide in My Word. And the more of Him you let fill you, the more revelation and guidance you receive. It is impossible to know Me without My Spirit, for without Him spiritual things seem foolish to your natural dead spirit until you are quickened to the new life by Him.
And My gift gives you gifts! It is the Gift that keeps on giving, like Jesus, indeed, like all My gifts, and they all come from the imperishable seed of My Word implanted in your hearts with its power to save you.
I do not want you to be unaware of the gifts of the Spirit, in fact, you must desire them earnestly as you pursue Love if you want a triumphant supernatural life that truly helps others. And once you have experienced the Holy Spirit you will always be seeking to drink more of this precious gift of living water. If you are thirsty for gifts that profit all, it is time you got serious about seeking the gifts of the Spirit. For I give My Spirit to those who seek Him and obey My Words without measure. You can be filled up to all My fullness. And that is beyond all you can ask or imagine, a blessing there is not room enough to contain. Rivers of living water will pour out of you to bless, heal, and save a thirsty world. The early church community had a wonderful, joyful time going forth with My Spirit to witness, heal, bless, cast out demons, and open the eyes of men trapped in darkness to the Light.
But how do you do all this? By My Spirit, not on your own. By the grace gifts He bestows according to the needs of the moment to benefit all.
So far we have had life lessons on the first three gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12: the Word of wisdom, the Word of knowledge, and the gift of faith (supernatural faith), today’s Life Lesson will be on the next gift in the list: the gifts of healings. You see these gifts manifested throughout both the Old Testament and the New Testament, but much more frequently in the New Covenant. Gifts of healings happed but were rare under the Old Covenant. The difference being that in the Old Covenant it was only those in the offices of prophet, priest, and king that had the anointing on them for these gifts to be in operation but now all believers are a royal priesthood, anointed and appointed for ministry.
All healing comes from Me. I put healing in your bodies knowing ahead of time what Adam and Eve would subject the human race to because of their sin as they unleashed the curse into the earth. So given time, your bodies will heal cuts, broken bones, bruises, sickness, and other forms of illness and pain and your immune system stops a good number of the forces of the enemy from entering and getting hold of your cell mechanisms, but though that is a gift, so to speak, I set up in your bodies, the gifts of healing do much more in a variety of ways, and that is why this gift is plural. Healing can just be that I speed up the natural healing process in your body so that what would have taken a long time to heal is healed instantly or within a much shorter time than expected. Healing can be that I dissolve a tumor or growth or just have you spit it out. Healing can be I give you new organs or limbs to replace those that have been removed or severed or died from disease. I can give you parts you never had, such as new eyes to the man born blind. Or I can just rebuke a fever or sickness off you like it had never been. You rebuke and cast out the demons of disease, sickness, cancer, fever, pain, and infirmity and then you pray healing over the damage done in the bodies of those who were being ravaged by the scourge of that affliction.
The earth now has been stained by that sin into the corruption of the curse and so I will have to create new heavens and a new earth, free of the effects of sin and of the curse, to take you back and beyond the original pure and good immortal creation of the first two chapters of Genesis. And I do not do that until the last two chapters of Revelation. But you, though still in the world, are not of the world and have been redeemed from the curse, which includes sickness, poverty, and eternal death.
In your life now the gifts of healing are very much needed in the Body of Christ for even though Jesus bore you sicknesses and pains, they are still in the earth, but you do not have to let them enter in or stay on you. If they have ravaged you, you can be healed as if they had never been. If they are trying to come on you, you can enforce your rights of redemption and get them off you. And let Me talk to you about that for a moment of why you need the gifts of healing even now in the New Covenant.
Your sins have all been forgiven and are remembered no more. Do you believe that? It is true. Jesus bore your sins and transgressions in His own body and took your sentence of condemnation for them. But let Me ask you a question. Can you still sin? If you are honest, you will have to say “yes.” My beloved John was writing to believers when he wrote, under inspiration of the Spirit, “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” 1 John 1:5-10.
Now if you have no problem with knowing you are forgiven and Christ took your sins even though sin is still there and available for you to yield to, but you can be its master, why do you have a problem with that you can still get sick, get diseases, and be in pain even though Jesus also bore your diseases and pains in His own body and by His stripes you are healed? Jesus classes sickness and sin together. “Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or you are healed?” And consider this Scripture, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.” James 5:16. And again, “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; 15 and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.” James 5:14-15.
You can have the same faith you have when you sin that I forgive you, that when you get sick, I heal you. But let Me show you how to respond to sickness and sin. Let Me take you to an incident in the life of My apostle Paul and I think you will make the connection.
When Paul returned to Jerusalem after a long absence from there where he had boldly preached to the good news of Jesus in many places, certain Jews started a riot trying to beat him and drag him out of the temple, accusing him of all kinds of wrong against the Jewish faith. And as they were crying out and throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust into the air, the Roman commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, stating that he should be examined by scourging so that he might find out the reason why they were shouting against him that way. But when they stretched Paul out with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?” When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and told him, saying, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman.” The commander came and said to Paul, “Tell me, are you a Roman?” And he said, “Yes.” The commander answered, “I acquired this citizenship with a large sum of money.” And Paul said, “But I was actually born a citizen.” Therefore those who were about to examine him with scourging immediately let go of him; and the commander also was afraid when he found out that he was a Roman citizen, and because he had put him in chains. Acts 22:22-29.
Do you see? You are redeemed from the curse and your citizenship is in Heaven but the curse is still in the earth. It will not be gone until the Heavenly city descends and joins with the earth and I created new heavens and a new earth with no curse. But for now the devil is still roaming due to having taken over Adam’s leasehold but you can enforce your rights and he has to back off. Submit to Me, that is, to My jurisdiction by being born again in Jesus, resist him, by saying your rights and benefits, and he will have to flee from you and take the sickness and accusations of unrighteousness with him. Just like with Paul. The scourging was still there, and if he had not asserted his rights he would have been scourged and examined, but he opened his mouth and declared who he was and his rights and they immediately backed off and let him go. But he had to speak and assert who he was.
Any healing is a gift from Me. Now let Me show you incidents of the gifts of healing in operation.
First and foremost, look to the life of Jesus and you will see nonstop operation of the gifts of healings, in fact, I tell you that when Jesus was present the power to heal was present. “And all the people were trying to touch Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all.” Luke 6:19. It was My power that flowed through Him from My Spirit in Him without hindrance. You must understand that Jesus emptied Himself and became like one of you in all things but sin when He took flesh. He worked no miracles until He was filled with the Holy Spirit at His baptism at the Jordan, but when that happened the miracles began and one of the biggest manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit on Him that brought people rushing to Him in droves was the gifts of healings. “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.” Matthew 9:35.
Every day Jesus walked in this gift, He healed the blind, the deaf, the mute, the lame, those full of leprosy, those with crooked backs and withered limbs, and cast out every form of sickness and disease. And people who so much as touched the tassel of His cloak were healed. The gifts of healing are power gifts, a flow through for My healing power. And that is resurrection power, for it is by My Spirit that I raised Jesus from the dead. And that is how Jesus will raise you too.
And Jesus sent out His disciples giving them authority to cast out demons and heal diseases. And after His death and resurrection and return to Me, the early church community was doing the same. “And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number, to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and pallets, so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on any one of them. Also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all being healed.” Acts 5:15-16. Do you see how powerful the gifts of healing are? The Holy Spirit distributed that power gift on Peter and he opened his heart so wide to it that the anointing of healing power flowed out as he passed by even in his shadow.
And My Spirit distributed gifts of healing, among other gifts, to My chosen vessel Paul, “God was performing extraordinary works of power (miracles) by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.” Acts 19:11-12. And this passage is a good description of how the gifts of healing operate, “God was performing extraordinary works of power by the hands of Paul . . .” You reach out your hand but the power to heal comes from My hand in yours, flowing out into your mortal body by My Spirit.
Philip, one of the seven chosen to wait on tables so the Apostles could pray and carry out the ministry of the Word, went down to the city of Samaria and began proclaiming Christ to them. The crowds with one accord were giving attention to what was said by Philip, as they heard and saw the signs which he was performing. For in the case of many who had unclean spirits, they were coming out of them shouting with a loud voice; and many who had been paralyzed and lame were healed. So there was much rejoicing in that city.” Acts 8:5-8. The gift of healing he operated in was healing for the paralyzed and lame.
And in the Old Covenant, Elisha the prophet operated in the gifts of healing when he sent Naaman the leper to wash in the Jordan seven times and when he brought the Shunammite’s five year old boy back to life. As did Elijah when he raised the widow’s son from the dead. The gifts of healing were upon Moses when Miriam became a leper and he cried for My power to heal her. And when Abraham prayed for Abimelech his household was healed. “Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children.” Genesis 20:17. You see the gifts of healings in operation for you note though Abraham prayed it was My power that healed. But I distributed that power through the prayer of Abraham, as I told Abimelech, “Now therefore, restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.” Genesis 20:7. And Isaac learned from Abraham, Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. Genesis 25:21. Your operating in the gifts makes a huge difference in another’s life who needs healing.
And just as Jesus gave authority to His disciples to cast out demons and heal diseases so He does for you. He has poured out My Spirit on you from on High and given you the authority to cast out demons in His Name. Jesus told you, “These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mark 16:17-18. This is for all believers, but the gifts of healings take you up another level where My power, the healing power, is upon you to heal by the gift bestowed by My Spirit so that even your shadow falling across another or a cloth touched to your skin being laid upon the sick healing takes place. Sickness cannot stay in My presence.
I love you. Desire earnestly the spiritual gifts so you can set the captives of Satan free from illness, disease, deformity, and pain. Be sure there will be great rejoicing.