POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Hold On To Faith
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The longest walk I pray you will never have to make is down a hospital corridor to visit someone you love who has been given a dire diagnosis. A lady was walking down the corridor one day. As she walked, she wondered, “What can I do? I’m not ready to lose my husband. How can I bring healing to him? What will it take?”
She confided that she felt so helpless. She wanted to spiritually know it all. She wanted to bring healing to the one she loved so very much.
As she walked along, she realized that it was not just going to be the surgeon’s knife, chemical agent, specialist, or doctor that would bring about a permanent healing – it was going to be God. As she walked toward the room and faced the door of where her husband was, she realized that as she opened that door she had to bring an awareness and remembrance of God into that room.
I am often asked, “How long will my healing take?”
And I answer, “About as long as it takes you to know, really know, that beyond the illness, there is an allness of God that is now.”
Imagine that you had a curtain in front of you, right now. With your human eyes, you could not see through it. You are standing on one side, while God and healing are on the other. It is so very close, like a mist that you could reach through, but you have to remember to reach through it.
Every day, prayer touches so many people who have experienced miracle healings, healings that have turned the word terminal into temporal.
The very foundation of Christianity is made up of cases of people who have been told there is no way they would be healed, but they were healed. When you walk down a hospital hallway to see a loved one, keep in mind that with God, ALL things are possible.
Have you ever heard the saying: “Time heals all wounds?” Bringing in God brings time and a half in, and time and a half heals faster. Healing with God’s speed! There is a time to medical science. If I go to a doctor and ask, “How long will it take me to be healed?” he/she will give me the exact answer learned from books. The good doctors will tell me about the process of cell renewal. The doctor will conform to set time schedules – skin cells are renewed every 3-5 days, stomach cells every four months, and so on. But spiritual healing deals with consciousness that transcends time’s limitations, and achieves a rapid acceleration of the renewal process, so that the result may appear to be instantaneous.
There is only one condition to be healed when you open that door – within yourself first, and then within the person you are praying with – this condition is misconception. When we open that door, let us know that no matter what awaits on the other side of that hospital door, with God all things are possible.
When you open that door, with faith, you carry a spiritual power with you. You are the carrier of the cure.
We do not stay within human mind and believe that the dire prediction will be permanent. We know that no matter what it looks like to our physical eyes, this is temporal, and in faith we know God has come to heal the situation.
Disease is simply “nothing” trying to act like “something.” It depends upon our belief in it to sustain it. Sometimes, the person lying in a hospital bed might be so weak that he or she does not have the power to believe. We have to bring that belief. When we visit that person, we have to live the truth of the winged soul. We have to rise above difficulty. We have to bring hope and a light into the room. Jesus said that you are the light of the world. That means when you are walking down a hospital corridor, open the door, and walk into that hospital room, may you be the light and the hope.
One thing you are not going to do is buy into the situation, shake your head, and think “Oh my, how awful this is.” You are going to bring a spiritual wellness and an awareness of healing.
The great revival of Divine healing is due to the application of the same law that Jesus used. Jesus demanded faith on the part of those whom He healed, and with that faith as the point of mental and spiritual contact Jesus released the latent energy in the Adam and cell structure of His patients and they were restored to life and health.
A change of mind will change the character of a germ, a cell, or an entire body. We can bring that change of mind to our loved one. We can facilitate that lasting spiritual touch.
I am talking to you, today, as Positive Christians. Positive Christians know that they can go beyond the physical. Positive Christians know that they stand on the foundation of God to go further than what they see with just their physical eyes, and know the truth of God.
In Acts 17:28, it says: “For ‘In him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.'” When you go into a hospital room, I ask you to recall that the person who is lying there with tubes and all the things humankind have put into his/her body to save him/her; this person is living this very moment, moving and having their being in God. And God, with and within this person, is perfection. God is doing God’s work.
What can you do of a constructive nature when someone is ill? Here are 6 practical suggestions:
1. Follow the advice of a prominent, medical school authority who said, “In sickness, send for your minister even as you send for your doctor.” In other words, as you are going down that corridor and turn into the hospital room of someone you love, know that God’s power is just as potent as the finest surgeon, specialist, or chemical agent in the world.
I ask you to make a call to ask for prayer help, and then make a call to your minister. Get all the strength of God with you when you walk down that corridor. When you make that journey with God, the walk becomes much easier. It will even become something you can tolerate. You’ll be surprised at the strength that comes to you step-by-step as you need it.
2. Pray for the doctor. This is something most people forget about doing. You are there, and you are going to pray for your loved one who is lying in that hospital bed. Always pray first for the doctor. I pray that God Mind will be in his or her mind, that the doctor will be guided by God to make an exact diagnosis and to see with higher vision and know more than just human mind in the way to proceed.
I believe it comes to pass. I believe there will be insight, guidance, and ways to heal that the doctor would have never found in any book. The doctor will have a feeling on a way to proceed and will proceed in that way. It produces marvelous, accelerated results in the one you love so very much.
3. Whatever you do, do not become panicky or filled with fear. I know this is easy to say and hard to do. Your faith will be tested the most when someone you love meets a challenge. You have to hold the highest thought in spiritual awareness, realizing you are a broadcasting station of consciousness. Whatever you hold in mind will broadcast out from you. If you hold the very worst in mind, it will send out a negative, destructive thought.
You are super-faith-filled people. Yet, when something like this occurs, you might find yourself falling into that area of feeling panicky, worried, and filled with fear. Instead, stop right where you are, generate up, and think about God, instead. Think about God’s power. Instead of sending forth a destructive thought, send forth a thought of healing and wholeness.
4. Completely surrender your loved one into the hands of God. By your faith, if you can place him or her in the flow of Divine power, there will be healing. This is very hard to do, also. We live in human mind, and we want to get in there and fix things. Yet, how much more does God fix things.
In that moment, before you open the door to the room, give your loved one over to God and know that the very highest and best is going to occur.
5. It is important that harmony prevail in the family. When I visit hospitals, I often see people who have been up all night long. I see disorder. I see people worrying out loud and thinking the worst out loud.
Imagine if I were to ask each of you to gather with me in a circle, to think and pray the absolute worst. You know that is absurd; we would never do that. Yet, families do it all the time, in their group imaginings of the worst.
What are you to do? You are the light in that situation. You bring people back to the positive energy of God. You are the carrier of the cure.
Disharmony and disease are akin. There has to be harmony in a situation like this, within the family unit. In other words, all people need to be working together, in a prayer consciousness for a common good.
Matthew 18:18-19: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven … “
There you are, waiting and praying with your family. You are binding health to your loved one.
You are sewing it into the very fabric of prayer consciousness … “and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” With all the power of God, the Great Physician, you are losing what you no longer want to be in the physical body temple of the one you love so dearly.
“Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
There you are, sitting beside your loved one. You are trying so hard, but you may not completely form a picture of your loved one as whole. You mind keeps coming back to the disasters you see with your human eyes. As you to close your eyes while in the room, sit in the silence of prayer and visualize the person as he or she would be totally well smiling, laughing, running. Then, your faith attaches to this, and you bring a great power to the hospital room. You bring the power of God. You are the channel of God’s healing activity. You are like the light that radiates out. Believe me, at some level of mind, the patient is feeding off you more than he or she is feeding off the tubes going into him/her, because you are bringing the remembrance of all the possibilities of God.
6. Be perfectly natural in your prayers. When you talk to God, say something like, “Please God, heal my loved one who I care for so much.” Then you enter into another room; you go across the threshold with your faith. You are not begging or pleading a prayer. You are coming from the position that God has heard your prayer and God HAS answered. Then, with everything in your spiritual awareness you say, “Thank You, God. I know you have heard my prayers.” That is the Jesus Christ method of prayer. It works because you are working it. You know God is working in your loved one. You will see.
The doctors come in, shake their heads, and say: “I can’t believe how quickly you are healing. We thought you would have some serious problem, but now you don’t.” They will be amazed, and YOU WILL, TOO.
And that is right and good, because prayer should always be fresh, new and wondrous. Answered prayer never gets stale. It brings great joy to your life. You will find that as you walk out of that hospital, you have been changed as profoundly as your loved one.
In the last few moments, let me talk about “absent healing.” Let’s say that you can’t get to your loved one in person. You wish you could. You are willing to drop everything, but for some reason you can’t be there. The truth is, you can get to your loved one in prayer.
There is no boundary of time or space in prayer. If I pray with you, one-on-one, it has great power because we are joining in prayer, and we are making a connection. If I am not here, but I am sitting in another state in the silence praying with you, visualizing, and speaking the word in faith, it has the exact same power. There is no time or space in prayer.
When you sit down and think about the very best that is going to happen through the doctors, the nurses, the medicine and God, you are bringing it to pass in an accelerated way.
Now, I ask you to join me in prayer.
I ask you to think about someone in your circle of friends or family who needs a healing right now. We are going to concentrate on that healing, and believe the very finest and that with God all things are possible.
Dear God, I ask for Your healing to take place now. I pray for the doctors and the nurses that they can have Your mind working within their mind to guide them with great efficiency of healing.
Thank you God for hearing my prayer.
In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen
PRAYER / MEDITATION _________________________
Let us pray a prayer of healing:
With an understanding faith, we know that with God, from a tiny scratch to something perceived to be more serious, You, dear God, are already providing for all the healing that is needed. Through the gift of life, You gave within the person for whom we are praying, we claim, in faith, visualizing and believing without doubt, a perfection and wholeness of mind and body through the Christ.
Rest in the silence of prayer …
We boldly claim the gift of the Christ health in this person. As this person heals, may he or she realize the power of the Divine. May this person receive a manifestation in the outer of the perfection of the inner self. May this perfection reach through the mist and create a demonstration of perfect and complete health. We are decreeing, in total faith and in the spiritual battery of belief, the gift of life that continues to show forth perfection.
Rest in the silence of prayer …
We pray that our loved one works in Divine harmony and that the body works in perfect order. We pray our loved one is able to breathe easily and deeply, that the heart is beating in perfect rhythm, that the digestive system is strong and able to take nourishment. We are praying, together in a complete conviction, that through Christ, this loved one is whole and well now.
We praise and give thanks for the miracle of God making every disease temporal and bringing healing to all situations.
Allow yourself to rest in God. The greatness of God is here. The power of God is active in those for whom we pray.
Meditate on these words found in I Corinthians: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that is within you?”
You are created in the image and likeness of God. God’s life and health flow through every part of your being. God’s vital energy is in every cell of your body. God’s order blesses every function of your body.
God’s breath is your breath. You are whole and perfect. You give thanks that appearances are not the truth in God’s sight. You give thanks that all things are possible with God. You give thanks that you are created as a spiritual being first, and that your life is filled with Christ. In God you live, move, and have your being. This is so true.
Rest in the silence of prayer …
We feel a great surge of healing life through our entire being. We know that omnipresent God life is part of our lives, and that we are immersed in healing. In our minds we think health. Uppermost in mind is the thought of perfect health as our natural physical state. Our God-given heritage becomes the dominant thought of this hour.
We are thinking complete health and wholeness of God. We do not rehearse aches and pains; rather, we rehearse God. The healing essence of God within us is doing perfect work right now.
Our bodies are temples of the living God – living within every organ, tissue, and atom of our being.
In appreciation and thankfulness, we rest once more, in the silence of prayer …
In Jesus Christ’s name we pray … Amen.
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