During this intense Covid season, Pastor Samuel Rodriguez takes you through three days of God’s healing power. Whether you are sick, heart broken, or depressed, this reading plan can help you recognize obstacles to healing your heart and remedy the impediments by pointing to God’s Word.
Charisma House
Day 1
Scriptures: 1 Peter 1:3-7, Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalms 25:1
Wounds Lead Us to Rely on God’s Power
Long before the coronavirus sent us urgently searching for vaccines and treatments, for ventilators and masks, people often told me that they were unable to slay the giants in their lives because of their limitations, their losses, their wounds. They felt inhibited, impaired, and impeded from being the kind of conqueror God calls each of us to be. While the type of wounding may vary with each individual, the lingering effects are often similar: fear, doubt, anxiety, depression, worry, anger, and uncertainty.
With the advent of the pandemic, new fears trigger old traumatic reactions. We don’t know if we will remain healthy, if our loved ones will recover, if we will have enough money, if we can continue to live in our present homes. Our bodies fight exhaustion as depression and anxiety take their toll. We feel consumed by the ever-churning sensationalism of the 24/7 news cycle, afraid to ignore it for long but equally terrified to keep checking.
No one has escaped the pain, suffering, discomfort, and inconvenience caused by COVID-19. Regardless of our age, where we live, our level of education and income, our race and cultural ethnicity, whether Christian or atheist, no human being has escaped feeling the impact of the pandemic.
Similarly, all of us have wounds, including followers of Jesus. But the crucial difference for believers is that our wounds lead us to rely on God’s power and not our own. We discover that our injuries, wounds, and scars become prisms facilitating and magnifying what the Lord can do through our lives. They can even become beacons showing others the majesty and magnificence of supernatural healing and spiritual wholeness. When we experience what we cannot do for ourselves—what no human being can do for us—then everyone around us sees God at work in our lives. Our humility keeps us tethered to God’s healing power in us and through us!
Day 2
Scriptures: Matthew 6:12, Hebrews 11:6, 2 Corinthians 7:10, Acts 2:38
Obstacles to Healing
It’s important to realize that there are laws that govern healing. God makes it clear that we have to be willing for Him to work in our lives. We have to remove the masks we hide behind as well as the filters we use to distance ourselves from Him. We have to face the spiritual obstacles that are within our power to remove in order for God’s Spirit to work freely in our lives and bring about healing. If our relationship with God is not in order, then we get in the way of our own healing. We must be willing to be healed and able to align our hearts and lives with the Holy Spirit.
Keep in mind, too, that the devil wants you sick, broken, and wounded. He wants to take you out and leave you limping instead of walking by faith and running in the power of your Redeemer. This is the power Jesus won for us through His death on the cross and resurrection as He defeated sin and death once and for all: “Jesus of Nazareth was anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and with great power. He did wonderful things for others and divinely healed all who were under the tyranny of the devil, for God had anointed him” (Acts 10:38, TPT).
God’s Word outlines three deterrents to our healing: unforgiveness, unbelief, and unrepentance. Forgiveness is inherent to how we relate to God and to others. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus instructed us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us” (Matt. 6:12, NLT). Because God has shown such great mercy and amazing grace to us in the midst of our sinfulness, we are to share it with those around us. When we refuse to forgive others, we are basically elevating our standards above and beyond the grace and mercy of our perfect Holy God! When we refuse to forgive ourselves, we are doing the same thing and allowing our pride, guilt, shame, and fear to paralyze us.
Similarly, our unbelief applies to how we live our lives as much as to what we believe. In other words, do we walk what we talk? It’s not only our own doubts that get in the way of God’s healing presence and power in our lives, but it’s also the doubts of others. The unbelief of those around you can become as contagious as the COVID-19 virus and infect your thinking with doubts, worries, and anxieties. Your relationships reflect what you believe and reveal how you practice your beliefs.
When you harbor sin in your life and refuse to surrender it, you create an infection that blocks the divine flow of God’s healing power: unrepentance. Instead of admitting your sin and turning back to God and obediently following His ways, you follow your own path. Even after you have been saved by the blood of Christ, if you refuse to follow Him and obey God, then your rebellion becomes a barrier to all that His Spirit wants to do in your life. You can’t be healed unless you follow the Holy!
Day 3
Scriptures: James 5:14-16, Mark 5:24-34
Overcoming Impediments to Healing
The remedy for the three impediments to healing is revealed in Scripture:
Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.
—James 5:14–16, NLT
Notice the factors mentioned here that open the door to healing: prayer and anointing, repentance and confession. Notice, too, the importance of relationships within the community of believers. If you’re sick and in need of healing, then ask the elders of your church to pray over you and anoint you with oil. Confess your sins to one another and lift up your brothers and sisters in prayer, calling upon the name of the Lord for His healing power. When you turn to God, forgive others as well as yourself, and believe in the power of His Spirit, you know that you will be healed!
Easier said than done, right? I know having this kind of faith in the power of God to heal you is no small thing. When we suffer injury, betrayal, pain, and emotional anguish in life, we’re tempted to see ourselves as victims rather than victors in Christ Jesus. Our suffering feels so powerful and immediate that we struggle to see how we can go on. But that’s just it—we can’t go on unless we rely on God’s power! We may never make sense of our life’s losses and sad events, but we don’t have to understand them when we place our faith in the Lord.