POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Strong Medicine

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Strong Medicine

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“Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.”
Dorothy Sarnoff

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Proverbs 4:20-22 “My child, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a human’s whole body.”

Studies show that prayer can be strong medicine. A study done at Dartmouth Medical School indicated that patients who receive comfort from religion were three times as likely to be alive six months after open-heart surgery as those who found no relief in faith. Another research study provides evidence that prayer is beneficial for recovery regardless of who’s praying.

This is true no matter what religion you are, as long as you have a deep abiding faith in God, and pray.

In the April 1999 issue of “Natural Health,” the article “The Power of Prayer” stated that “Advanced AIDS patients who received an hour of prayer six days a week for 10 weeks were significantly healthier than those who received no prayer, according to a study led by Elizabeth Targ, M.D., director of the Medicine Research Institute in San Francisco.”

An article from “Family Circle,” discusses the healing power of prayer citing that 30 U.S. medical schools have courses about faith in medicine. “Prayer is finding a place in medicine because research has proven it to be effective in healing.”

“Reader’s Digest,” March 1996: “Doctors and scientists are discovering the benefits of prayer. New scientific research confirms the healing power of prayer. According to different national studies, prayer can have beneficial effects on patients with high blood pressure, wounds, headaches, and anxiety.

A simple prayerful atmosphere where caring and compassion can be felt can set the stage for healing.”

“Ladies Home Journal” stated, “New research confirms that stress plays a significant role in the delay of body healing. A test conducted of two groups with identical flesh wounds affirms that patients exposed to stress took nine more days to heal.” That is incredible.

A study done by Randolph Byrd and Associates, with approximately 400 patients at San Francisco General Hospital, evaluated the effects of prayer on patients admitted to a coronary care unit. It was discovered that the people in the prayer group ended up with fewer of them suffering from congestive heart failure. Yet another study – the “Saudia Study” – confirmed that 97 patients considered prayer to be helpful with 70 percent giving the highest possible rating on the helpfulness of prayer in healing the bond.

Doctors say people who belong to a religious affiliation are healthier than those who do not.

Going to God in prayer has a powerful healing effect; and if I can communicate with God, then I can know healing is real, and healing IS possible. As you sit here, we are talking about real healing from God at the causation level, not just the effects.

We are spending time together in awareness of what God can and will do. When we need it, God can be called upon, and we can use the power of God for the healing of our physical bodies or the bodies of those that we love.

Psalm 41:2-3 “The LORD will protect them and preserve their life; God will bless them in the land and not surrender them to the desire of his foes. The LORD will sustain them on their sickbed and restore them from their bed of illness.”

Marion Theobald tells this story about her five-year-old granddaughter, Rachel. She rushed home from kindergarten one day, with a connect-the-dots project she had done. Her mother admired the artwork, and after heaping on the praise, continued with her chores, while Rachel and her three-year-old sister went into the den.

Sometime later, the mother decided her girls were too quiet. How many of you parents have been there?

All of a sudden, everything is peaceful, and you are wondering what is going on. She decided the girls were too quiet and she went to investigate. She found Rachel and her sister on the floor with the family pet. Rachel was using a purple permanent magic marker to connect the dots on the family Dalmatian.

Many times, when we are approaching our own healing, it is like trying to play connect-the-dots. We think that we ought to go here next, but we don’t know for sure. Even after we connect the dots, we do not know what the final picture will look like.

There is a story of a woman in Chicago, Illinois who was going to get a heart transplant. She had been in the hospital for some time awaiting a heart. On the other side of the country, there was a little boy who was dying. His name was Timmy. The little boy, on his own, decided to give his organs to science to help people continue to live. Timmy died. This woman had never met Timmy before but was told they had a donor and they had a heart.

She went into surgery and received her new heart. She woke up in the ICU.

It had been about three or four days and she was doing well. She looked over on the nightstand in her room and she saw a card. She now had the strength to raise her arm. She reached over and got the card. This is what was inside. “Hello, my name is Timmy. You have my heart, and I love you.”

Healing comes in many different ways. How many times have we said, “Oh God, I need a miracle and I need it now. I have been playing connect-the-dots and it doesn’t make any sense to me. I want to make some sense out of this sickness and I want to find out why I am sick and I want to be healed.” We try everything in the outer to manifest our healing.

We go to this specialist and then to that specialist to no avail. We are still sick. Then we try prayer. All of a sudden, something begins to happen. There is a movement inside of us. We say, “God, I need your help, I need a miracle.”

Matthew 9:35 “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing EVERY disease and sickness.”

If we consider the fact that your own human body that you are sitting in right now is designed by God for wholeness, it will almost seem impossible. It would seem as if it had to go to great lengths to deviate from that pattern. If this is true, then true healing inside of you, this morning, is NOT a far reach. It is something that is right here, right now, not something extraordinary, but a return inside of you to something ordinary from your Creator. Your Creator is constantly re-creating you.

I have a button on my television at home. The TV set has dozens of confusing controls.

I could do almost anything with this TV. When I mess it up enough, and I do through playing with it, I can push default and it will return to the factory settings – what it was supposed to be all along. So can we. Inside of us, we have factory settings too from our Creator, God. Prayer returns us to our natural state as a child of God.

If you cut your finger, do you know what would happen? The finger and everything inside of you would rush to wholeness, would rush to that site and begin to heal the wound. It is the same with a person who has lived 100 years, as it is with an infant, because your life that you have in your physical body is biased. Do know what it is biased toward? It is biased toward more life. You are on the side of life, even if you are sick this morning, even if you have been told dire things about your body and your condition. Everything is weighted on the scales of life, in favor of your life, in favor of your body. We just simply have to recognize it.

Even if we had someone here that was close to death, if they cut their finger, do you know what would happen? It would heal, because that is what the body naturally does. Everything is on the side of life, and the life inside of you wants to live. Every breath you take this morning, sitting there in that chair, is a communion. It is a communion service inside of you. It is a spiritual service toward more life. Your body, when it returns to the state that it is supposed to be in, that is right there within you now, it is functioning for one thing – to heal whatever needs healing.

We need to think about God and think about the pattern of perfection in which we are made. We do not need to reach far off saying, “Oh, if I could only get over there, my healing is on the other side of this country. If I could just get there, then I could be healed. If Jesus Christ says to you, “Do you believe? Can you accept your healing? Your faith (hear that? – YOUR faith) has made you well.” You focused on God, again, and you focused on that which is inside of you, again, and it came. There is no way it cannot come.

Revelation 21:4 “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

The new order is Divine order ever-renewing itself in perfection.

Bishop Coxe tells a story of visiting an old castle in England. This castle is still in pristine condition. It was built in 1558. He looked up on one of the beams high in the ceiling and this is the inscription that was one the beam: “This house, it is decreed in Jesus Christ’s name, shall never decay and shall always be preserved where almighty God is worshipped day by day.” A.D. 1558

It is the same with you and with me. This house, our body, is the temple of the living God. Every cell is attending worship service this morning. It is attending a worship service of vibrant health, alive health, strength health, happy health, joyful health, exuberant health. I want to be so alive, today. I want to be eternally alive and so do you, to feel so good, to thank God you are alive, and to thank God you have this moment in time.

Here is what we are not going to do. We are not going to say, “Well, by the clock, I say I am so-and-so years of age, and after all, this specialist told me I am beginning to have back pain. I really feel it, this morning.” But what if, in this moment, I say, “I am a child of God. I believe that I can return to health.” I do not stay stagnant. This body is constantly renewing and becoming well. Yes, I will seek the help of doctors as God directs. I believe in doctors, and I believed in medicine. I use every God created avenue to heal. But ultimately, I know that no one can heal except the Great Healer. Every physician will tell you that.

If I am honest, I will say that I have been a part of a malpractice – not from a doctor who has performed a medical malpractice on me of injurious neglect or improper practice, but a mental malpractice that I have performed on myself. I am going to think about my organs and physical body and myself in a new way, beginning today. I am going to know that I can do it. There is only one way to heal. It is in your new body, in your new mind, your new energy, your new happiness, the way you get up, tomorrow morning. Get out of bed and say, “Thank God I’m alive!’ Instead of “Oh God, it’s morning.” There is a huge difference.

Dr. Deepak Chopra, in his book, “Quantum Healing,” states that we have constantly changing bodies. The liver is new every six weeks; the skeleton is new every three months; the stomach lining is new every four days; atoms in our physical body temple are 98% new every year; and skin is new every month. If you do not like your skin, wait until next month. When you look at that old mug in the mirror, you are going to see a new mug of the soul woman and the soul man that is manifesting God – fully alive and feeling good.

Here is something I want you to remember this morning. I say that nothing is as contagious to your body as your mind filled with God. You will get it. You will catch it. You will have it manifest through you. It will not be a dis-ease, it will be an ease. You will take the “dis” out of disease and throw it away. You do not want that anymore. You want God-given ease. You want to feel at ease, ALL the time.

The whole point of Christianity is that you can. It is as if we brought on this stage an old rusty car. Imagine that it is all dented, rusty and its motor is going out. We decide to scrap it for parts. We start to take off the fenders and everything, and to our surprise, underneath the sheet metal that looks so bad is a brand new vehicle, never driven, zero miles. We say, “My, all this time, I thought I had a junker.”

So, when you look into the mirror, when you think about yourself, when you begin to pass judgment on your future and what you can obtain in your life and what is possible for you to obtain, I ask you to look, again, and to return to the natural state of healing that you have within you.

I would like to close with prayer.

Let us pray.

This morning, as I sit here in my seat, God, I stand firm in my faith. God, what this means is that with my human mind, I believe with 100% certainty in You, in wholeness, and that it is possible for me, because I have it within me. I believe with 100% knowing that I can be healed. I have the ability to command to perfect health every cell and every fiber of my mind and my body. I decree, in the name of Jesus Christ, that my body is responding.

God-life at the center of my being is healing and restoring everything that is out of adjustment. Naturally and easily, I relax, I work with prayer, I work with God, and I prove my own research studies. I do not have to go here and there, I simply have to go within and return, as I am doing right now, to my natural state. I know this is true about me and I will know this for the rest of my days.

In Jesus Christ’s name and nature. Amen.

God bless you!

PRAYER / MEDITATION____________________

This is an important prayer time for you and for me.

We will make a covenant with God in awareness of what God can and will do

Allow me to speak for you. Dear God, Creator of the universe, Lord of my being, I acknowledge Your power as the source of my life, Your intelligence as the director of my cells, Your essence as the fiber of my tissues. I give thanks for Your life within me. God, I apologize for my past mistreatment of Your holy temple – my body. I know now that I must work with Your life force if I am to fully express my potential for perfection.

Therefore, on this day, I do, earnestly and joyfully, make this covenant with You, God, for God-life to manifest in and through my cells.

I promise to work with You, not against You, by appropriating into my mind only thoughts of health and wholeness, envisioning my cells as the perfection they were created to be – worthy of my most noble attitudes and aspirations.

I know now my body, like everything else in life, is a mirror of my inner thoughts and beliefs. Every cell responds to every single thought I think and every word I speak.

I promise to appropriate into my body only foods of health and wholeness, knowing God resides in the foods God created. Knowing, too, that what I eat today, I become tomorrow.

I promise to appropriate into my lifestyle only actions of health and wholeness. To this extent, I will seek abundant fresh air and adequate rest, and I will engage in regular, constructive exercises, knowing that as I move every muscle, I improve that muscle, and that which is constantly improving and regenerating cannot perish.

I enter into this covenant in the full realization that God’s laws are unchangeable. I have unshakable faith in the fact that as long as I honor my commitments to perfection, God will work within me rewarding me with unlimited health and the wholeness I so fervently seek and desire.

Manifesting this in the temple of the living God, I say, “thank You, God.”

In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen.

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