In the New Testament, Jesus heals people, the apostles heal people, and there are numerous times in church history where dramatic, miraculous physical healings have launched movements of God. Here's the question, does God still do that today?
And if so, how does it work? Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, an international teaching and discipleship ministry that encourages and equips Christians to live like Christians. Well, in just a minute, our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, picks up where he left off in his compelling series, Does God Still Heal? But before he gets going, if this is your first time listening to this daily broadcast, and you want to learn more about what we do, go to LivingOnTheEdge.org.
You'll find resources there on tons of topics and countless programs to enjoy. Or if you prefer, the Chip Ingram app is also a great way to get plugged in with our ministry. Okay, if you have a Bible, go now to James chapter five for part two of Chip's message, Physical Healing, a biblical assessment. Can I be as bold to say to us in our current culture, things that the Bible clearly calls sin are so common among some of us, we don't even recognize it. And when it causes the consequences of sickness, since we don't call it sin anymore, like being a workaholic. Have you thought of that as sin?
Or what about an addiction? I mean, I mean, how about this? I get five hours of sleep, I drink nine cups of coffee, I work 85 hours, I eat mostly fast food, I never work out, I don't take any vitamins, I'm really mad at my ex, and I'm just about ready to go through the, I have outbursts of anger. So what's the problem, God? Why won't you heal me?
Right? So that's why there's medical issues, there's spiritual issues, and there's lifestyle issues, and those things are interwoven. In fact, so much so that the application in verse 16, notice on the next part of your notes, it says the general application, how do you stay physically healthy then? Okay, how would you remain physically healthy? It's a New Testament time, it's not like there's lots of doctors.
By the way, sometimes you get sick because of bacteria. Okay, what we do is, you know, one group wants to spiritualize everything, and another group wants everything to be super empirical, and I'll tell you what, I sure don't understand it all, but I don't think anybody does. But here's what we can know as followers of Jesus that will highly impact our physical health. Therefore, notice, in light of physical illness, in light of what you should do when you get in a desperate situation, in light of what elders do and how God works, and in light of the high probability that that physical illness often is rooted in sin, not all sickness is sin, but a lot of it is, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, why?
So that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. And that group then, this was the very first book in the New Testament written, that group then would be like us. You know, hey, when Peter prays, yeah, I get it, you know, when the Apostle John prays, I get it, but I mean, we're just regular people. And so notice what James says, he says, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn't rain on earth for three and a half years. And then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
Literally what he's saying is, he's a regular guy like us. And literally the phrase here, when he prayed, literally it's with prayer he prayed. In other words, he really prayed in his prayers. I ask myself sometimes, do I really pray in my prayers, or do I just say words?
He's talking about fervent, focused, believing. I'm coming before you, God. This is the situation. This is who you are. These are your promises.
I'm asking you specifically to intervene, and I'm gonna keep coming, and I'm gonna press into you, and I wanna hear from you. If there's an issue in my life, or an issue in this situation, God often uses health issues to get our attention to bring about major things in our life and relationship with him and others. So let's ask a few questions of this passage. What is the presumed relationship between sin and sickness in this passage? Very high. Now, jot a note, okay, because someone's gonna walk away with, Chip said that people are always sick because they've sinned. Okay, no. But is there a very high correlation between a number of illnesses and sin?
Yes. Let me give you a list of some common sins that create physical illness. Unresolved anger, anxiety, and worry. I mean, if you're commanded not to worry, and you worry, I mean, because we all do it doesn't make it less a sin.
It's saying that, God, you're not in control. I can't control it, and I can't tell the future, and so I'm eaten up inside. And when you worry, your stomach acid goes, right? And when you worry, and when you're under stress, your immune system drops.
Stress, unbelief. God, I don't believe you're gonna come through. Therefore, since I don't believe you're gonna come through, I'm gonna take care of myself.
So I'm gonna buy things with money I don't have, presuming on the future. Now I feel all this pressure, and I'm overwhelmed with debt because I didn't obey you in my priorities. Bitterness, rebellion, addictions, gluttony. Gluttony gets like a lot of press in the Bible. When's the last time you ever within, you know, in a small group?
Let's confess our sins one to another. Can anyone remember a small group like gluttony? It's me. I eat too much. I eat bad stuff. I eat when I'm not hungry.
I use comfort food. I eat lots of food that has no nutrition. And by the way, my doctor, you know, he says I'm 32 pounds overweight. He says I have high blood pressure. He says I put too much salt in my diet.
He says this and this and this. And because of that, I'm on blood pressure machine over here. And I've got this medicine over here.
I've got this medicine over here. Now, has it ever dawned on us as Christians? It's called gluttony. Or when's the last time in a small group someone in prayer said, you know, please forgive me because I'm materialistic. Well, how do you know you're materialistic?
Well, because I'm never satisfied with what I have. And so I have this humongous debt because, you know, the new TV came out and then a new car came out and, you know, I couldn't pay cash. And so I keep buying stuff and everyone does it. And, you know, it's the new plan. You can get a 12-year plan to buy a car.
I'm joking. And so I have to have the next best thing. So now I have overwhelming debt. The overwhelming debt has produced stress.
Now I have stress and I have conflict in my marriage. Now I've got a problem with this and I've got all this stomach acid. So now I've got migraine headaches that I can't explain.
I have ulcers. How much of that, how much of that if we just cleared the deck and said, you know, those are rooted in unhealthy, ungodly, sinful patterns and lifestyles. And you and I live in a therapeutic world where what we do is treat the symptoms with you can't watch a half-hour program without at least two of the commercials. What? Here's the pill that will change that. Here's the remedy that will change that.
And then at the last half of every commercial is what? They run the B-roll of people having fun, right, sunlight, while they're going, this may cause damage to your liver. Some people have died according to this. There are seven implications of people who have taken this.
If you can't choke, can't breathe, can't see, can't urinate, can't do anything, call your doctor, you know. Why the pictures of the people, you know, on the pond, you know. And so we're living in a world where we sinfully have lifestyles that are killing us. We create drugs to treat the symptoms, and our souls are starving.
So what's the solution? What are we told to do regularly for our health? Confess. It says confess your sins. Literally it's the sins specifically to one another that you might be healed and pray for one another. Literally the word is intercede.
Intercede means I've heard your struggle. You confess that you have resentment toward your husband. You confess that it's not a glass of wine, it's three or four. You confess that you have resentment toward your boss. You've confessed that your priorities are out of whack.
You're not giving your children the time that you know they need. You've confessed that there's someone at work that you have this emotional attachment and you're fantasizing. You've confessed that you're logging onto the internet. You confess that you're a shopaholic or a workaholic.
And these are unhealthy things, and I'm going to stand before God and I'm going to ask Him to help you. The power of sin is secret. If you go through church history, when revivals happen, whether it's the Moravians, whether it's the Westleys, whether it's movement in our country with Whitfield, the small groups in the Wesleyan groups, they would meet twice a week, and they had this set of questions like on a card they would ask one another. How is thy soul with God? Second question, it went something like this. They were all doing King James, so forgive me, but all right.
Has thou sinned against thy creator or anyone else by thought, word, and deed? And you know what they did in these small groups? They confessed their sins to each other. What we do is pose. We project we're doing better than we are.
And what I can tell you what we've all experienced? See, we start confessing when we get desperate, right, when there's nowhere else to go. That's like taking a bath once a year. You know, I just feel so dirty, and everyone's told me how much I stink. I'm just going to break down and go ahead and take that bath.
And where the prescription is like try a shower every day or at least every other day. Good for you, good for us, right? First John says if any of us claim we're without sin, we're a liar, and the truth isn't in us. And it is not something that Christians normally do, but I will tell you when someone says, and it goes something like this in a very unthreatening way. He's got different questions, questions about our finances, about our health, about our thought life. And someone will ask the question, and you'll have time, and you just pray, search me, O God, into my heart. Test me and see if there's any wicked thing.
And you know what? Condemnation is from the enemy. If you hear voices like you're a terrible mother, you're a terrible dad, you're a bad person, that's not from God. The Holy Spirit will speak like this. Last Thursday afternoon in that business meeting, you blew up. Oh, your son asked you to do so and so, and you blew him off.
You were tempted and you made a commitment that you were no longer going to, and you logged on. So be very specific, and the rules are that it doesn't go outside that room. I will tell you if we will follow Scripture and confess our sins to one another.
One, you'll be shocked at how regular everybody else is. And two, God promises He'll bring healing. This is preventative healing. I've practiced this and seen this in very, very powerful ways. We're to confess to one another. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and Chip will be back in just a minute to finish today's talk. But quickly, I want to remind you that this program is only possible because of the generosity of listeners like you. So if you'd like to support us, go to livingontheedge.org.
That's livingontheedge.org. Thanks for doing whatever God leads you to do. Well, let's rejoin Chip now for the remainder of his message. And then notice what kind of prayer has healing impact. It's earnest, fervent, believing prayer. Godly people shooting it straight, being for one another.
Who qualifies to be heard by God for healing and the miraculous? Ordinary people like you and me. So my wife is interesting. When I'm teaching things and studying things, you know, I run them by her, and what do you think? And she goes, oh, Chip, this is really interesting. I have a question for you. This is my sweet wife, cute little blond-haired wife, you know.
So there's like four different reasons for sickness. Why do you think you're back? What do you think God's up to? I said, look, I just teach this stuff, okay?
And actually, I've laid on my back for a lot of hours. I said, honey, I think God's revealed to me, and He may intervene in a supernatural way, but God made it very, very clear. I confessed it, but last fall I violated the Sabbath. There were some real important meetings on Friday, and I started going to those.
I was on a board that they only could meet on one Friday a month, and so I went to those. And I was very, very disciplined for a lot of time where I really set my phone aside, an email, and I began to slowly violate that. Honey, I think during the fall I got myself into an unsustainable pace, and I did not take 24 hours and honor the Sabbath principle in life. And I feel like God graciously, I actually think He's been kind. And what He did to Israel when they didn't honor the Sabbath, He said, hey, you know what, we'll make it up here for 70 years.
And He did. And I feel like God said, Chip, I love you a lot, and you're living in a way that's unhealthy for you, it's ungodly, it puts you in a bad spot, it's going to hurt your lifespan. At the heart of it is something, it's not just work, it's grandiosity. What makes you think that the world can't go on without you for 24 hours? We've been down this road before. You broke this pattern before. You have slid back into go, go, go, go, go. And so it's a lack of faith and unbelief.
You think if you don't make this meeting that the church won't catch the next wave or you're going to miss out on something. I'm God. Cease striving.
Shut it down. Believe me. And so I confess my sin to the Lord, and I've known this. We've privately been talking about it, but it was really interesting this week in preparation to come clean with my wife. And when your wife's voice and the Holy Spirit sound exactly like, it's a little hard. And she kind of looked at me like, that was rocket science.
I've seen that one. But it's freeing. I want to summarize because I want to give you something that's very tangible that you walk away that you can think through healing in a very, very specific way. And as you do, the big picture is you're going to meet people that have very strong emotional views and they've had experiences, and all I'm saying is I'm all for everyone's experience. I just don't want to build my theology on anyone's experience or anyone on radio or anyone on TV or myself. I want my theology about everything to be around what's the Bible actually say. And I would encourage you to take these notes, look at these passages, and agree or disagree, but get your convictions from God. But by way of overview, I think there's three things we can learn about healing. Number one is at times it's called the intervention of God. It's Acts 3, right? Peter and John are on their way to the temple, and there's a guy there. They don't have any money.
He's been lame since birth. Over and gold have I none, but in the name of the Lord Jesus, arise and walk, reaches up, bam, miraculous intervention. I always pray for that one. The second one is the interaction of God. 1 Timothy 5. Timothy, you're my son in the faith. Paul had a lot of faith. Paul healed a lot of people. Take a little wine for your stomach.
In other words, there's some medicine you should take. God is going to use the medicine prescribed to heal your body. It's going to be the Spirit of God using medicine to heal your body. And third is what I call the enabling of God, and this is like the Johnny Erickson Tada answer to prayer. The apostle Paul said, Paul had faith. Paul believed.
Paul had been to the third heaven. Paul healed people. Heal me, God. No. Heal me, God. No. Heal me, God.
No. Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. Here's the deal with healing. It's not primarily, even when Jesus did it, it was never primarily about simply solving a physical problem. Every miracle and every healing almost always was to affirm or make clear or deliver a person, but it was to make a major, major point. Sometimes God heals to make that point.
Sometimes you endure it and His grace is sufficient and He gets glory through it. Sometimes He uses a doctor and an MRI and a medicine and a surgery. Biblical, medical, spiritual integration is what I believe the Bible clearly teaches and is the call of God for us to believe He can intervene, to believe and step out, to have lifestyles of nutrition and rest and wisdom and obedience and confessing our sin to one another, and finally, where at the right time and the right way we use medicine that God's given us, that's what He uses to bring about transformation. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and the message you just heard, Physical Healing, a Biblical Assessment, is from our series, Does God Still Heal?
Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. Do you know someone fighting a lifelong disease, battling depression, or wrestling with their faith? In this insightful series, Chip tackles the question that haunts many.
Is there real hope for those suffering physically, emotionally, and spiritually? Journey with Chip through James chapter 5 as he unravels the true meaning of healing and what it looks like in our modern world. You'll also discover prayer's influential role in navigating life's most difficult trials. You're not going to want to miss a single program of this meaningful teaching. Well, before we go any further in today's program, here's Chip.
Thanks so much, Dave. I want to take just a moment to talk about something today that's very important. God, to my amazement, and it humbles me, is using Living on the Edge in incredible ways.
And I just have to tell you, we get testimonies from people about restoration and healing and God using them to help other people. And then I want to tell you very, very candidly that we are very serious about using the money and the resources that God gives very carefully and very wisely. But I also want to bring to your attention that it actually takes money for airtime and these teams that create these resources and all the things that happen behind Living on the Edge. There's a group of people with costs involved that allow you to hear me or be in a small group or get teaching.
And here's who I'm talking to. If you have been helped, encouraged, I mean, literally blessed by Living on the Edge, you tend to be one of those people that has never given financially to the ministry. I just want to just pause and say, would you consider partnering with us to help us help other people? And maybe it's a one-time gift. Maybe it's a small amount that you want to do monthly. I don't know. Here's the deal. Would you just be willing to say, Lord, do you want me to do this?
And for some of you, you can't. That's fine. But just ask that honest question, and if God leads you to give, I will tell you we'll use it wisely. We'll invest it in ministry, and we're going to help a lot of people. So thanks for prayerfully considering to do whatever God chose you to do. Thanks, Chip.
Well, if you're already a financial partner, thank you. With your help, Living on the Edge is ministering to more people than ever. But if you're benefiting from Chip's teaching and haven't taken that step yet, consider joining the team today. To send a gift or to become a monthly partner, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003, or go to LivingOnTheEdge.org. Help listeners tap donate.
Well, with that, here again is Chip to share his application for this message. As we close today's program, and I really think about how controversial this is, what I know is, in light of, I've been through cancer with my wife. I've been through some major issues. I've been pastoring for over 35 years, and I have been by the bedside of people I love that are dying. I have anointed people with oil with the elders, and I have prayed. And I want you to know that everything I've talked about, I've tried to the best of my ability to follow and have experienced the miraculous intervention of God. I've seen him miraculously heal people. I have also seen him use chemotherapy and radiation and medicine to, over a period of time with great suffering, bring people to either full health or relative stages of health.
And I've also done all of those things and put my arm around a husband or a wife or a child and talked about the death of their mom or dad or mate who the Lord has taken home. And so I don't want to give any quick, easy answers, and I know some of you are just really, really hurting. God does intervene, and he wants you to follow what it says here.
If you have life-threatening disease, go to the elders. Be anointed with oil, and I think that's both, as we've learned. Get the best medicine, but also it's the Holy Spirit's work.
And then this critical part, if there's sin, you know, this passage presumes that often we have issues that need to be dealt with. Confess them and believe and expect and trust God will intervene to heal. He may choose not to, but if you go into it thinking, oh, he probably won't, that's not exactly faith. And then when you know before God that you've done all that you can, we trust the enabling of medicine. And by God's grace, in so many times with my wife, praise God for radiation and surgery and the surgeon who's an amazing guy that put my back back together.
So I don't have some simple thing for you, but what I want you to do is to seek God and to believe and say, Lord, would you want to heal me or God, I'm willing to go through this. And for some, you know, it's that picture I gave you where he will enable you to go through a horrendous time and he won't deliver you physically, but he will give you grace and joy and power and he'll do some things through you that are actually in the kingdom agenda and in your character agenda and in the impact agenda, actually more amazing than if he would have healed you. I know you don't want to hear that, but what I want you to know is at the end of the day, this is, can you trust God's heart? Can you trust his character and can you trust his wisdom?
He loves you and he's for you. So believe with all your heart, pursue. I always say, you know what, Lord, this is Chip. I'm asking for a miracle. A, B, give me the best medicine in the world and C, I will endure this with a good attitude by your grace for your purposes and let me just encourage you. There's a good God who loves you.
Hang tough, hang tight and trust him. Thanks for that encouragement, Chip. As we close, if you're looking for a way to get more out of our teaching, let me encourage you to download the Message Notes. This helpful tool is available for every program.
They include a clear outline, all the scripture references and lots of fill-ins to help you remember what you're learning. You can get them at livingontheedge.org under the Broadcasts tab. App listeners, tap Fill-In Notes. Well, thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Drewy and I hope you'll join us again next time. .
