In our previous lesson, I talked about the fact that it is God's will to heal, and that healing is part of the atonement. Much more could be said, because even if you accept it and have seen it in the Scriptures, it still raises a lot of questions such as, "If it's God's will to heal us, why isn't everyone healed?" There are many reasons, and I'm just scratching the surface on the things I know. There is a lot of information that I simply am not able to get into here, but if it's God's will to heal, I want to address part of why people are not healed. One of the reasons is ignorance. You cannot operate in something you don't know or understand, and in my own life that certainly was true.

I was trained to believe God's will automatically came to pass, that I had no authority, power, or say-so in it. So through my ignorance, a number of things happened. My dad died when I was twelve-years old and two or three people had died in my presence by the time I was twenty-one. I was praying for all of them to be healed, but I didn't see healing manifest, not because it wasn't God's will, but because of ignorance on my part. Ignorance is a reason why things happen, but it's not an excuse. It's like the law of gravity: a person could say, "Well, I didn't realize that if I walked off a ten-story building it was going to kill me." You don't have to realize it to have the full impact of that law to work against you. People are ignorant about some of God's laws. They don't know how His healing system works, so ignorance is killing a lot of people.

Another thing that can hinder us from receiving healing is sin. It really upsets people when you say that, because they interpret what you are saying as all sickness is a result of some sin on our part, which is not true. That's not what I'm saying. In John 9, there was an instance where Jesus was coming out of the temple, and His disciples pointed out a man there who was born blind. His disciples said in verse 2, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" In other words, they were trying to relate his sickness directly to sin, asking if it his sin or t his parents' sin that caused this sickness to come on him. Jesus' answer was that neither of them had sinned. That's not saying that the parents nor the son had ever sinned but that it wasn't their sin that directly caused his blindness. It's untrue to say that all sickness is related to sin, but it's also untrue to say that sin is not one of the factors.

In John 5 there is an instance when Jesus was at the pool of Bethesda, and He healed a man supernaturally. There were multitudes in that place, and only one person was healed. Later the chapter shows that the man didn't know who healed him when the Jews asked him in verse 12, "What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?" Verses 13‑14 continue, "And he that was healed wist [knew] not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place, Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" (brackets mine). Jesus said right here that sin would cause something worse than his paralysis to come upon him. He tied the result of sickness to sin. He also said in John 9 that it wasn't because of anybody's sin that the man was born blind.

Some things just happen naturally, but there are times when sickness, disease, or problems can be a direct result of sin. Even in such cases, it doesn't mean God is the one who is doing these things to us. Take, for instance, a person who lives a homosexual lifestyle, which is a perversion of nature. The human body is not made to live that way. Sexually communicated diseases come from that lifestyle. God is not the author of these diseases—it's just nature rebelling because it's not set up to live that way. For instance, if you go out and eat the wrong food, your body will respond, and it's not God doing it to you. There are natural laws, natural factors here. So it is true that sin can be one of the reasons people aren't healed.

If there's a known sin in your life and you are believing God for healing, you need to stop the sin, because through it, you are giving Satan a direct access that's hindering you from receiving what God is doing in your life. Romans 6:16 says, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servant ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" That's not saying that Satan becomes master in the sense that you lose your salvation and go to hell, but it means that whether you are a Christian or not—if you're out living in sin—you're giving Satan an inroad into your life. John 10:10 says that the thief comes for no other purpose except to steal, to kill, and to destroy. But Jesus came to give you life. So you've got Jesus trying to bring His life and health into you, but you've also got Satan trying to make you sick. If through sin you're yielding yourself to Satan, you are empowering him and giving him an opportunity in your life. You can pray and ask God for healing all you want to, but your actions are allowing the devil to come in and bring sickness. So, if you are living in sin, you need to stop it.

I need to add that you could become so introspective that you would say "Well, I'm always less than what I should be" and get to a place where even though you believe God can heal, you believe He won't because you don't deserve it. That certainly is wrong too. None of us are ever going to obtain healing from God because we deserve it. God's never had anyone qualified working for Him yet, so you don't need to associate God moving in your life only to your performance, your holiness. It needs to be based on what Jesus has done for you and your faith in Him. At the same time, you can't ignore your actions and yield yourself to the devil without him hindering you. You'll see healing work much easier, much better in your life if you repent and quit anything you're doing that would give Satan an inroad into your life.

Another factor that concerns healing that some people don't think much about is the negativity and unbelief of other people that can affect you. One of the classic examples of this is in Mark 6 where Jesus was in His hometown, and the people didn't respect Him because they remembered Him as a little boy. They knew His father and mother, brothers and sisters, and didn't respect Him the way some people did. They came against him and criticized Him. Mark 6:4‑6 says, "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief." This doesn't say that Jesus wouldn't do any mighty works, but that He couldn't. Here is Jesus, the Son of God, who came to earth as a man, who had no lack in His faith. And there certainly wasn't any inroad of sin in His life. Yet He was limited to what He could do for other people because of their unbelief. Put this together with Matthew 13:58, where it says "And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief," and we see that Jesus, who had no limitations in Himself and certainly no sin in His life to give Satan an inroad, was limited in what He could do because of the people around Him.

This is really important to understand that I'm saying it is God's will to heal everyone all of the time. If you believe that, you might possibly make the mistake of going to a hospital and trying to empty it of every sick person because you believe it's God's will for them to be healed. It is God's will for them to be healed, but He will not move against their own will. God will protect their right to be sick, their right not to be healed. No one can force them to be healed—and they can't get healed off of someone else's faith. Someone's faith can help them if their struggling, but no one can do it for them. You can push a car when it's in neutral, but you can't push a car in park or reverse. If a person is set against healing, you cannot overcome it. Because of this, you can't empty a hospital or go into a church service and see every person healed without their cooperation.

There's so much more that could be said about this. When Jesus healed people, even raising the dead, He would go up to someone and say, "Weep not." He would tell a mother not to weep and then raise her son from the dead. Somebody's faith has to be used somewhere. There needs to be faith on our part, and there are so many, many other things involved in healing. I've discussed just a few here today, and hopefully they will help you, but one of the main things you need to get out of this is that God is faithful. It is His will for you to be healed, but you have to learn how to cooperate with Him. He can't do it for you; He has to do it through you. It will come from the inside of you.

I pray that these things will help you to start yielding yourself, to allow the power of God to flow through you, and to walk in His supernatural health.