Listen to Part 1 here.

Why is it that some people get healed while others don’t? When a person does not receive healing, the most commonly taught idea is that God, in His sovereignty and infinite knowledge, chose not to heal them. God obviously didn’t want to, or He would have. But that idea does not hold up under an examination of Scripture. While there are some aspects to healing we may not have the answers to until we get to heaven, God’s word tells us that there are some very clear things that hinder people from being healed. Forgiveness — three facets of forgiveness — is one hindrance.

Episode 32 is pulled from sermon one in the Forgiveness and Healing MP3 series.

Additional Resources

Forgiveness and Healing full series
Lilian B. Yeomans

Transcript

Now, turn to Luke chapter four, I think it is. No, Luke five. One of the great hindrances to healing… I believe that there are a number of hindrances that are common. And I want to talk about one of the greatest ones in this week and the next few weeks. And that is that if a person does not have the assurance that their sins are forgiven, they won’t have the confidence to reach out to God for healing. Or even trying to receive, they’ll talk themselves out of it. They’ll, they’ll get discouraged. They’ll waver because they feel unworthy. Unworthiness, feelings of guilt, feelings of not being what God wants, somehow falling short, rob God’s people of his gracious merciful gifts. Now in this story, in Luke Five, verse 17, “Now it happened on a certain day as he was teaching, there were Pharisees and teachers of the law, sitting by who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.”

Now, think about this, here are the religious leaders come out to check out this prophet. Now, they don’t know he’s the Messiah, they don’t know he’s the son of God, they don’t believe that. But they’ve come out to check him out. And the reality here is that they got offended at Jesus, and didn’t receive anything from him even though the power of God was present to heal them, it says. See, so a bad attitude can block God’s healing power. Now their case it was self righteous religion. And I trust that that’s not a problem we have here tonight very much. We could have it in some places. In fact, I’ve preached in places where I couldn’t believe… I’ll tell you.

Pam and I were in England in 1984, five, and I was invited to speak at the Easter convention of a Pentecostal group over there. And I preached on walking in newness of life by the glory of the Father. You know, a real resurrection message. And then I had a word of knowledge that there was a woman. I don’t know if I said there was a woman, but there was someone there who was crippled in their feet. And this woman got up with one of those walker things, and came hobbling down to the front with this walker thing. And I put my hands on her feet and prayed for her. And she threw that thing away and started dancing around praising God. Well, you’d think, well, I think the meeting is on, you know. You know, you think, and she’s dancing around praising the Lord. And so I say, The Lord shows me this, and this, and this, and I’m calling out other things. And those people just sat there. I mean, God did a miracle.

You know, I don’t heal people. God did that. But God did it right there in front of them. And this lady is praising God and her thing that she walks with is over here somewhere. And so I’m thinking, well, now, I mean, having seen this, surely these people will rise up and lay hold of whatever God wants to do. Wrong. Why? Well, for one reason, they weren’t sure if they liked the way I ministered. Now, God healed a woman. But there was that religious spirit that says, “Well, I don’t know if I like this. It’s not the way we do it in our Bible school.” You know, you come up against that thing, that’s the hardest thing in the world to get through. “So what if God just did a miracle the way you do it? We don’t like it. If it would have been God, He would have used us.”

And I suffered through three days of that conference. The next night, God gave me a word of knowledge that he was going to come upon a man with power and deliver him from homosexuality. You could have cut the air with a knife to even suggest there could be somebody with a problem with homosexuality in the Christian church. How dare this arrogant American call something like that out in a public meeting? And the Spirit Lord came upon me and I rebuked those religious hypocrites. You know, they didn’t have me back the next year. I’m still waiting for the next invitation to come back.

Actually the pastor in whom I did that had me back every time I was in town, that I would come, because he saw God move. But you see, a lot of times supernatural ministry divides people. See, because God won’t let you have a comfortable religion if his spirit’s moving. He won’t do it the way you think he ought to, and he won’t give you polite words of knowledge. See, if God would have said there’s somebody with a hearing problem, everybody would have been thrilled, maybe. They still might have been mad. But the fact that it was something as controversial as homosexuality and that God was… They weren’t uptight because they were tolerant of homosexuality. They were uptight, because they didn’t want anybody to think anything like that could exist in their midst. It was a self righteous,religious hypocrisy. Well, God doesn’t like that. And this is the group that he’s ministering in front of. He’s at their Pentecostal conference, only they don’t believe in Pentecost. Well, we’ll give them a break, seeing as it hasn’t happened.

right, and it says in verse 18, “Then behold men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before him. And when they could not find out how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the house top and let him down. Let him down with his bed, through the tiling into the midst before Jesus. When he saw their faith.” I want to just stop on that phrase for just a moment. I did a series that some of you will remember years ago, called The Healing Ministry of Jesus. And what I did is I went through the Gospels, and I took all the various instances where Jesus healed people. And we looked at every story and talked about the various ingredients in those healings, and one of the things that was really quite, what would be the word, it was not what you would expect, or what is commonly thought. Every individual who got to Jesus and God healed, met certain conditions. And one of the conditions was, they were so determined to get to Jesus, they wouldn’t let anything get in their way.

Now, think about this. You’re having a meeting in your home. And you’ve got somebody in who’s got a good ministry, and all your friends are there, everybody’s come out. In fact, some of the church leaders have shown up. And all of a sudden, somebody’s prying one of your screens off your window and pulling your window out of the frame. So they can shove somebody through on a cot to get them to that minister. Now, think of what you’d think. “Well, I mean, if they were that desperate, we would have moved.” I mean, you’ve got to realize the kind of desperation these guys were operating in. They took the tiles off the roof. And think of this, I mean, you know, there’s some of you I really trust and love. But to let you lower me down on a cot from the ceiling. I’ve got to be desperate. “Just hang on Joe.” “Right.” “we’ll let down the ropes. We’ll keep it even, don’t worry.” I mean, think about it, you got to really be desperate to let somebody do that to you. You gotta be of a mind that I don’t care if I fall off this thing as long as I fall on Jesus. I mean, this guy was desperate.

And it says Jesus seeing their faith. What does that mean? He’s seeing how determined they were and how confident they were that if they could get to him. See? See, they had a focus they were going to get to Jesus. Now, I believe that kind of desperate determination is rewarded by God today, the Bible says God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. If you’ll diligently seek God. Let’s say, for example, you’ve got some problem tonight in your body, and you come forward for prayer, and it doesn’t get any better. Now, you know what some people do. They say, “Well, I tried being prayed for. I had some guy pray for me who’s actually seen some miracles in his ministry, and nothing happened. So I tried divine healing.”

Well, you wouldn’t have been one of the ones who received from Jesus. Because these people didn’t try it. They already made up their mind, they were going to get it. And they were going after Jesus, and they were going to make the connection, and they were going to overcome the obstacles to making that connection. See? They were the kind of people when you read through the Gospels, they were the kind of people that had already tried everything else. This was it. If this didn’t work, there was nothing else to try. So this is gonna work. Now, I’m not saying it came out of their human determination that they got healing, but their human determination was a factor in them getting to the Lord and receiving from him. They weren’t wishy washy about it. They weren’t double minded about it. They weren’t, “Well, I don’t know if I should, or if I shouldn’t.” They came to a place where they said, “I’m going for this thing.”

Now, let me just say to you, I believe that one of the main reasons that people don’t receive is because of doubt, fear, unbelief, and tradition. And week by week, we’re going to be teaching and pulling down the strongholds and kicking over the sacred cows of tradition. So that the doubt, the fear, the unbelief, the wrong ideas, the hindrances to healing can be taken out of the way. So if you don’t get it one time, don’t quit. Come and just keep hearing till you get it. Keep hearing till faith arises in your heart. See? “So I guess it’s just not for me.” Well, did you ever take the Bible, read, meditate, study all the promises concerning the Holy Spirit, asked the Holy Spirit to grant you illumination, to build your faith so that you would have faith when you’re prayed for? What would happen?

I remember when the church had only been going a short time. We had an office up on Rose Hill, and we shared it with a Christian business that was in the other part of the office and owned the office. And the Secretary in there came into us one day, and she said, “Listen, I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And I said, “Well, wonderful.” And she said, “Well, what do I do?” And I had learned by then that people oftentimes have a whole bunch of funny ideas, and expectations that are not biblical, and a lot of things like that. So I gave her a little booklet. And I said, “Now this booklet is a teaching on the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and all this.” And I said, “Now you take this home. You look up every verse quoted in your Bible. Make sure that, in context, it says what this author says it says. You go through it. And as you go through it, you say, ‘Holy Spirit, show me what the truth is. Holy Spirit, show me what the truth is.’ You go through every verse he quotes. Make sure he quotes it in its context. And when you’re finished, and you’re convinced that God wants you to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and speak in other tongues, I’ll be glad to pray with you.” Well, about two days later, she came into our office and she said, “I’m ready pray for me.” And so I started to reach my hand up to touch her forehead and she started speaking in tongues. Well, what happened? She, she took in the Scriptures till the Holy Spirit could assure her that he wanted to. And then when she went to be prayed for she was so full of a heart to receive that it just was there.

Well, what if somebody did the same thing about healing? What if somebody just said, “I’m going to spend the next three weeks just going over from Genesis to Revelation to all of the promises of healing? I’m going to look at these promises of healing. I’m going to meditate in them, think about them. I’m just gonna let God talk to my heart. And then when I feel like I’m ready, on a Sunday night, I’m gonna have hands laid on me. And when I have hands laid on me, I’m believing God’s gonna heal me.” Sometimes, we’re not ready to be prayed for. Sometimes we are. Sometimes somebody can just hear a word in one message, and their faith is just quickened. They go, “I saw where I was missing it. I got it now. Lay hands on me. I’ll be healed.” It doesn’t have to take weeks. But what I’m saying is, my philosophy of ministry, concerning the promises of God is. we’ll try this and we’ll expect God to work. If this doesn’t work, we’ll try something else the Bible says. But what we’ll do is we’ll keep after it till we get it. Because we’re human, and we can miss connections with God, and not always make the connection, you see. And it’s not an unwillingness on God’s part. It’s our human failures and frailties.

The thing about it is we are totally capable of not responding rightly to God or not being in the right place with God or a thousand other things.So what? We can get so religious about things, “I was prayed for, and I didn’t get it.” So what? I mean, realistically, whatever you seek from God, you probably won’t get the first time you hear about it. Let’s say you say, “Well, I have got a financial need. And I prayed. And I asked God to meet that need, and nothing happened.” I remember a book I read one time, it was called healing in His presence. And this woman was miraculously raised up and healed. And she was having tremendous success praying for the sick. And what she did is she spent time instructing them working with them. She wasn’t in full time ministry, like we would call it, but she had been miraculously healed, and she was ministering to people. And she was having 100% results.

But this one pastor she knew had a hearing loss, was deaf in one ear, and she prayed for him. And he had a great change in that he could hear, but he still couldn’t hear fully. He went to the doctor, and he said, “Well, you still got…” I think it was like 20% hearing loss. But he’d had like 80 or 90. And so it was, you know, it was a noticeable improvement. And she just would pray about it. She’d say, “God, I don’t understand why he just, you know, I mean, everybody else I’ve prayed for, you know, they’ve been really, really completely healed. It’s been marvelous, Lord, I just don’t understand.” And she sort of felt like the Lord said, “Why don’t you ask him?” And so she said, “You know, it’s really troubled me that I prayed for you, and you’ve only, you know, you’ve got improvement, but you really don’t have the whole thing.” And he said, “Well, you know, back years ago, I really got away from the Lord and did some awful things, you know, and, you know, I’m really thankful for the amount of healing I got. But I really don’t feel like I deserve to be totally healed.”

Now, some people would have said, “Well, God is sovereign. He just didn’t want to heal him totally, just to keep him humble.” But see, it wasn’t on God’s part, that the problem was. It was exactly what I’m talking about, a sense of not being forgiven, that blocked the healing power. See, he thought, for some reason he didn’t deserve. He was deluded. He thought he deserved something for the right things he’d done. That’s the great religious delusion. “Well, I’ve been good God ought to.” You can’t be good enough for God to ought to. You can’t live right enough to deserve healing. The only reason healing is available is because Christ paid for it and freely offers it.
So why not just go ahead and freely receive complete forgiveness. Open your heart to God and receive complete healing.

Now is the refusal to forgive ourselves or the refusal to believe we’re forgiven The only reason people don’t get healed? No. There’s lots of other reasons. And we’ll talk about some of them in this series. One of them is the refusal to forgive yourself. Another one is the refusal to forgive others. Forgiveness has a lot to do with healing on three different levels. I must believe I’m completely forgiven. And because I believe I’m completely forgiven, I must completely forgive myself. And because God forgives me and totally lets me off of what I deserve from my sin, I must do the same to others. And we’re not going to talk about all three of those tonight, but I’ll just mention that to you, because they can all affect our ability to receive. Forgiveness is a major barrier, or unforgiveness is a major barrier to healing, or to answered prayer or to any other thing that we need from God. Victory over sin or whatever we need from God, the assurance of forgiveness is foundational. Forgiving ourselves is foundational. Forgiving others is foundational.

Now, when I read about Lilian Yeomans saying, “When I don’t receive what I pray for, I start changing,” I thought, you know, that makes good sense. So if I don’t receive something, I start asking God to show me what’s blocking it. Now, I don’t do that like some religious people I’ve seen. “Oh, God, I know, I’ve done so many things wrong. And oh, there’s probably 10,000 of them that are in the way. But if you could just graciously show me 9000, so that I could repent.” See, God has forgiven us. If you confess your sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive you. But you know what, we have to learn how to forgive, and I’m getting ahead of myself now. And we’ll be able to talk more about this in a few weeks. But you have to know how to forgive correctly.

There was a fella who was at this church some years ago. And he was a baby believer, and I had given him a book, or I had recommended a book that was not a Christian book, it was about your relationship with your parents. And while it wasn’t a Christian book, it was very good at diagnosing and had a test in it that helps you diagnose how you really felt about your own parents. It was nasty. Didn’t like that book at all. Anyway, I recommended this book to this guy. And I said, “Now listen, Jesus has the answer. Once you know what the problem is.” The way I used that book, is I said, “Listen, read this book. And this will help you figure out how you really feel about your parents deeply. And then once you know, we can pray and ask God to heal and we can work through the process, we get anything out of the way that’s there.” Well, he showed the book to his sister who had been a Christian for a number of years and attended another Pentecostal church, charismatic church. And she wrote me about a four page letter just railing on me for suggesting this book. And saying how that we weren’t supposed to dig around in the past because everything was under the blood. And she quoted me all the verses about it and everything as though I’d never read my Bible. And, I thought, now here’s exactly one of the common problems in Christendom. It was obvious why this book made her mad. The real reason why she’d never forgiven her parents. Her problem was, she’d thrown the Christian forgiveness blanket over her relationship with her parents. “Oh, they didn’t know what they do. I just forgive them.” In other words, she hadn’t forgiven them for anything specifically, she’d just thrown the Christian forgiveness blanket over them. But every time she got around them, she was full of resentment, anger, frustration, rage and hatred. I mean, I don’t know this, but it’s pretty good speculation based on past counseling experiences with dysfunctional Christians. Who would like to talk religious about forgiveness, but don’t like to really do it.

Why I’m getting off on this, it must be God, because I had no intention of dealing with this. But here was the thing, rather than face honestly: “You know, my parents were abusive. My father was cruel. My mother abandoned me emotionally. And I’m deeply hurt by what they’ve done to me. But because of Jesus Christ, I choose to forgive them for all the pain they’ve caused me. I call their sin, their neglect. I call it sin. But I forgive them in Jesus name.” Rather than dealing honestly with what they actually did, and really forgiving them, She just said, “Oh, it didn’t matter. It’s all in the past. It’s all under the blood. I’m a Christian now. And walked on in her pain. Walked on in her denial.

Let me tell you how I know that Christians can go on for years full of anger and unforgiveness and not know it. I once read a book that talked about this. And I thought, “Well, gosh it’s possible. It could be two or three people I haven’t forgiven. And so maybe I should get out a piece of paper and write down, maybe a couple of names will come to mind.” Fifty-three, fifty-four,-fifty-five, fifty-six. “Holy Spirit if there’s anyone who I haven’t forgiven.” Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, one hundred-twelve. And so I had to go through that list. “Father, I forgive them, forgive me for my resentment, forgive me for my own forgiveness.” But you know what? My mental and emotional life began to respond to truth, a whole lot better after I dealt with some of those things.

Forgiveness: receiving forgiveness and extending forgiveness and forgiving ourselves are three major keys to healing. Now, God, He’s healed some people who haven’t ever forgiven anybody, just to show He’s boss. But God hasn’t called us to live by events. He’s called us to live by faith. And he’s called us to grow up. See the best kind of healing is not getting sick. I mean, think about it. See, I mean, God in his graciousness, heals people that get really sick. But you know, wouldn’t it be nice if when the flu blew through town, it didn’t stop at your house. Because you and your confidence towards God could stand on the Word of God and resist it effectively. Or whatever. Let me say again, never condemn anybody who’s sick. Never look down your self righteous, religious nose at anybody who who wasn’t healed. I mean, it’s only the grace of God, any of us get anything. And we need to cultivate that attitude of heart and not be judgmental or criticize anybody.

Sad, when people don’t know that God wants to, but let me tell you something, it’s a battle to receive, sometimes. Sometimes you have to stand and stand and stand and stand and study and pray and meditate and get in the Word and just I mean, it’s work. It takes time and determination, you see. And, you know, if you’ve never had to face anything that’s fear producing come into your life, don’t be judgmental of somebody who’s been diagnosed with something serious, and they’re having a struggle. Get behind them and help them. Pray for the. Don’t condemn them. There’s some people have never faced anything and are masters at telling other people what they should have done. Like one old prophet in England told Paul Hughes, he said, “I don’t trust anybody whose lips haven’t been burned and who doesn’t walk with a limp.” He was referring for those of you who may not know, Jacob wrestled with the angel, and he got his hip out of joint. And Isaiah saw the Lord and His lips were cleansed with a coal fire. And so he says, “I don’t trust anybody who hasn’t gotten burned lips, in a hip out of joint.” In other words, if you haven’t walked it shut up. Don’t appoint yourself an expert over what others ought to do, concerning things you’ve never faced. Or even if you’ve faced them, and by the grace of God come out victorious. Well, actually, I’ll tell you what, when you do face them, and in the grace of God come out victorious, it’s usually because you learned humility. Because you realize if it’s going to happen, it’s going to be God, not you. So you lose your pulpit to preach at others from and you become compassionate about people that are facing difficulty rather than a critic. Hallelujah. Amen.

All right now, Jesus, in this house. They let him down through the rooftop. “And when he saw their faith, he said to them, man, Your sins are forgiven you.” Now, Jesus, you know, I guess he didn’t get enough sleep that night. He’s forgiven the guy’s sins and he’s a cripple, and he wants to be healed. What could be wrong with Jesus here? Maybe he knew what the real problem was. Maybe the man never realized it. But at the root of his paralysis.

Yeah, I’ll tell you an amazing story. I know two internationally known blind performers. Who if I were to mention their names, you would know both of them instantly. I won’t tell you their name, but one of them does commercials for a soft drink. And the other used to go by the name Little. I read both of their stories. Now listen to this, this is amazing. Both of their stories. In both cases, a traumatic experience happened in their life. In one case, a friend drowned in the presence of one of these guys, I can’t remember even which one now. And he started going blind after that. And the other case was similar. And you know what that means? That means guilt, or some such emotion was behind the blindness, not anything physical. Now, I remember, it blew my mind because I read both of the stories of their lives, and in both of them there’d been a traumatic event that from that point on, they began to lose their eyesight. What would forgiveness do? Now, I’m not condemning these guys. This is stuff that happens in real life.

People get sick because they’re guilty. You can imagine that if you saw a friend drowning, but you were so afraid to jump in or didn’t know what to do, or something, you could be hit with incredible guilt. “I let my friend die. I just can’t ever forgive myself.” Now, I don’t know that that’s what the brother said, you know, I mean, I don’t know his story. I don’t know what he believes about God, I don’t know what he believes about the event. But when I read that with spiritual eyes, I saw here is a situation where a traumatic event produced likely either fear or guilt or some such emotion in him, and his body began to shut down. “I don’t want to see things like that. I couldn’t stand watching him drown. Send a signal to his brain. You don’t want to see. It’s too traumatic. You can’t stand it.”

So Jesus said, here’s the paralytic lowered down, Jesus said, “Man, Your sins are forgiven.” Jesus. Right to the root, he knew what it was. He knew why that man was like that. Somehow guilt had opened the door. Now the religious people said, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sin but God alone?” Religious people often don’t know what’s going on. You know, there are people that make things happen. People who watch things happen, and people who wonder what happened. The first group are facilitators. The second group are spectators. The third group are tators.

What if most Protestant churches began to teach divine healing? And they said, “Well, God wants to heal the sick.” And people heard that often enough that their mind started to say, “Well, yeah, it’s not a big deal for God to heal. I mean, it’s a greater miracle for him to save me. Nothing for him to heal me. I mean, I just expect him to do it. I think I’ll just have prayer, have hands laid on me, and I’ll bet God will just heal me.” Well, you see, it’s a gradual changing of our minds where our expectation grows. All right, praise God.

Now, Jesus said to this man, “Your sins are forgiven.” That’s what he needed to hear. And then he said, “Rise up and walk.” Now, I want to I want you tonight, you know, because I brought something similar to this this morning. Probably many of you that were here this morning have already thought this through and dealt with it perhaps, but I want you to, any of you that this applies to, I’m gonna ask you just to close your eyes for a moment. Now I’m gonna ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your mind anything that you think at some level God hasn’t forgiven you for. And I’m gonna have him do that, so you can believe on purpose that He does forgive you.

Holy Spirit. I ask you to come now and bring to mind in your servant’s hearts anything that they think they’re not forgiven for. Any failure, any sin, any backsliding, any falling away from God, any unfaithfulness, or anything they’ve done. That the devil has convinced them somehow that you’re unwilling to forgive them. I want you to bring that to their mind Holy Spirit, so they can accept your forgiveness. Holy Spirit, I just ask you to do this right now. There’s anything that’s been done, that people do not know of forgiveness, I ask you to bring it to mind. And I want to remind you that 1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins, and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” So if you’re willing, whatever the Holy Spirit has brought to mind, if you’re willing to just confess that to God right now. Say, Lord, this is the thing that I have not received forgiveness for. Maybe there’s more than one thing. Just give it to God say, “Lord, I confess it to you as sin. I confess this to you, Lord. I thought I couldn’t be forgiven or I thought I didn’t deserve forgiveness. But Lord right now, I bring it to you. Right now. I bring it to you. And I accept your forgiveness.” I want to just lead us in a prayer together here. Just say this with me: “Father, right now in Jesus name, I bring to you the sins that have been brought up by the Holy Spirit. I confess them to you. I ask you to forgive me and to cleanse me of all unrighteousness according to your promise. And Father, in Jesus name, I choose to forgive myself. I forgive myself in Jesus name. Father, I receive your forgiveness. And I forgive myself in the name of the Lord, amen.