Healing - Our Covenant Right 1 | Pastor John Greiner

In this faith-filled message, Pastor John dives into the first installment of his series Healing: Our Covenant Right, making the case that physical healing isn't just a hope for believers, it's a purchased, guaranteed right under the New Covenant. Drawing from Matthew 8, 1 Peter 2, and Isaiah 53, he unpacks how Jesus literally bore our sicknesses and infirmities on the cross, meaning healing is already done, past tense. Pastor John challenges the congregation to stop seeing themselves as sick people trying to get healed, and start seeing themselves as healed people resisting sickness.

Transcript

Opening Confession And Praise

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Let's wave those Bibles around, make Jesus glad, devil mad. Let's say this together. Say, Heavenly Father, I am so glad that you get all the glory for the good things that have happened in my life. I'm going to focus on your goodness. I'm going to focus on the victory. I'm not looking at the battle. I'm looking at the victory. And I give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated and let's turn in our Bibles to Matthew chapter 8 and also 1 Peter chapter 2. And I'm going to begin a series entitled Healing, Our Covenant Right. And I thought it was appropriate because we're taking communion today, receiving communion, celebrating our covenant, and I wanted to get into this with you. Matthew 8. We'll start with that. Verse 17, or 16, rather. When the evening was come, they brought unto him, that is, they brought unto Jesus, many that were possessed with demons. And he cast out the spirits with his word and healed 49.7% of the sick. No, he healed all the sick. I mean, he healed all. You know, we ought to be seeing better results. The church has been given this commission to do the greater works. We ought to see, we ought to be getting greater results. That's why I'm teaching this, because we need to root our faith in the in what God has done in our covenant. And so it goes on to say that it might be fulfilled. So he healed them so that. So this healing and deliverance that is spoken of in verse 16, it is accomplishing something. What is it accomplishing? So that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah, the prophet, saying himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses. Well, now is took future tense, present tense, or past tense. Two people know English. The rest of you don't know anything. We're going to send you back to Miss Carroll, my English teacher, that taught me. No, took his past tense. That it might be. See, the might is not on God. The might, whenever you see the word might in our covenant, it means it's on you. It's something that's been provided that you have access to by faith. It's not going to just drop on you automatically or you know, whenever you have a conniption fit or whenever you start crying and all of that. Look, it's the might part is on our side, and that's why I'm preaching this, so you can stir your faith more and more. Amen. So Himself took our infirmities and bear our sicknesses. So if he took them, we don't have them. Alright, let's look at 1 Peter chapter 2, lest you think that that's just one verse. Well, I give you a second verse. There's lots of verses on healing. Lots of them. I'm just giving you these two here because they're kind of cornerstone to what I'm going to be sharing. 1 Peter chapter 2. Here's Peter. I mean, he saw the dead raised. He saw lepers cleansed. I mean, he saw lots of wonderful things. I think about the man at the gate, you know, beautiful. He yanked him up by the hand and told him, Rise up and walk. 40 years lame, and he was instantly healed. 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 24, talking about Jesus who, his own self, bare our sins in his own body on the tree or on the cross, that we, being dead to sin, should live under righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. Again, past tense. Past tense. So we have, thank God we have, a covenant with Almighty God. The God, the creator of heaven and earth and all the things that are therein. I mean, we we are in blood covenant with Him. And that covenant includes healing. You know, I think about Luke 5.15, it said that you know, when he was healing the sick and casting out devils, it said that the fame of Jesus spread abroad. I mean, when people get healed, Jesus gets glory. He began, his reputation starts to spread like wildfire. That's what happened in the book of Acts. When they started getting healing miracles and deliverance, I'm telling you, his fame went everywhere. And multitudes came in. Multitudes. We haven't seen multitudes come in here, but you know, multitudes are coming in other places. I just got a letter from Mark Hankins. You know, we're monthly partners with them, and we we have a significant uh partnership with them in the area of money, and they come here twice a year. But I I'm telling you, to get hooked up with people like that, they have their books in almost all the languages, and they're going back to Brazil. Brazil is just on fire. They've got their books in Portuguese. There's 13,000 Rhema students. Can you imagine a Rhema? This is Rhema Day. We'll talk more about it later, but I mean, just think about this vision that Brother Hagin had all those years ago, back in the 70s, and now here we are when Jesus is just about to return and it's just exploding, and they are in position to take advantage of this time of harvest. And it's because a lot of times it's because people get healed. So we have to be strong in knowing and appropriating our rights under the new covenant. See, it's not enough, there's lots of ways to get healed. We'll talk about some of that tonight. I'm gonna preach again on healing tonight. So if you need healing, if I were you, I'd come back. If you need healing, you don't be missing. See, I'm what I see is people miss church for some silly reason, like their relatives come to town. You know, when my relatives came to town, they knew I wasn't available on Sunday. So they didn't come to town as much. Praise God! I'm hitting where it hurts. Okay, so 12 out of the 19, there's 19 healing miracles recorded in the Bible. This record is more than 19, but some of them are repeated. So I'm not so 19 singular times when people were recorded in the gospels as being healed, and 12 out of the 19 mention the faith of the person that got healed. So it must be important. Now, Jesus did heal people independent of their faith. I mean, people do get healed independent of a person's faith. It's called the gifts of the Spirit many times. It's called a special, I mean, some people don't have any faith whatsoever, and all of a sudden, you know, they they get healed, and just it's an amazing thing. But the thing about it is, if you ever get healed on someone else's faith or because of someone else's gift, you're gonna have to learn how to defend that because the devil will come and try to steal it. So it's important that we see, he told me years ago, teach what you take for granted. I mean, I take this for granted because I've been taught this 45 years and lived it, had to live it in my house with my wife and my children. Still do, still have to live with it, still have to contend for it. You never get so high and mighty that your body doesn't want to get sick. You know, this body has not yet been redeemed. I'm looking forward to that day. I'm telling you, when Jesus just comes down and in an atomic second, in a nanosecond, my body's changed. I'll be so glad to get rid of this thing. Because it wants to be sick. It wants to be sick. You've got to rule your body and tell it, no, you're not gonna get sick. So we have to be strong in knowing our rights under the new covenant. We have rights, they they supersede any other rights you can talk about. Civil rights, all these rights to choose and all this garbage. Listen, this right, this Bible right that we have to healing, it's sealed by the blood of Jesus. And then if we are strong, then we can avoid or minimize opportunities to be sick. You know, if the enemy can establish a foothold, or I like to call it a beachhead. I think about World War II. I love studying about World War II, and and things weren't doing so good until the Allies established a beachhead on the beaches of Normandy, and it was all over for Hitler. Once they hit Normandy and they had a beachhead right there, yeah, they got a lot of soldiers died on that beach. There's no, and we got the worst one. You know, we've been getting the worst. America's been getting the worst for a long, long time. It's time for somebody to stand up and say, you know, you guys pay for things, okay? We're not gonna rebuild your entire country. You know, for years, that's exactly what we were told. If you broke, broke, you know, Colin Powell believed that, and so did all these patrician, you know, like Bush and all the Bush 41 and 43 both believed that. That if we break it, we have to fix it. That's a bunch of garbage. And it goes back to World War II. We fixed all of Europe. And we weren't the ones that broke it, they broke it. And we're still paying for it. Anyway, I'm off my subject. I'm talking about covenants. I'm talking about beachhead. Don't give him, don't give him a place. The Bible says in Ephesians, don't give no place to the devil. Don't give him any place to establish a foothold where he can grab a hold of your health and start uh taking it away from you and start it increasing what he's doing. You know, in Matthew 15, 24, Jesus told the Syrophoenician woman, you know, if she had a daughter that was grievously vexed with a demon, she's not a Jew. She really didn't have a Bible right to healing, but she came to Jesus anyhow. And Jesus said, Look, I'm just sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So most of Jesus' ministry was spent on getting Jews healed and delivered. I mean, you know, those people that that that were brought to him, the multitudes, there in Matthew chapter 8, they're Jewish people. And they were demon-possessed. You talk about drifting away from the covenant that they had. They hadn't had a prophet since John since uh Malachi, and then they had John the Baptist, and now Jesus, and so they they were backslid as a nation. They were far from God, and the devil took full advantage. And so uh in Matthew chapter 8, earlier up in the chapter, he, I mean, you've got the Jewish leper, you've got the Jewish servant of the centurion, you've got Peter's Jewish mother-in-law. I mean, he was healing people, multitudes of them. And they and all the Jewish demonized that I just mentioned. So all of them were under the old covenant and had access to healing and deliverance, but they weren't, they weren't accessing it by faith. They had forgotten. The priesthood was so backslidden they didn't have a teaching priest. So there was no one teaching them like I'm teaching you this morning. They're supposed to, that's what it what does a priest do besides sit around and and eat everybody's sacrifices that came in there? Drink wine and eat, you know, lamb and everything, lamb chops, lamb with a mint sauce, lamb, lamb, lamb. I mean, whatever. I mean, how about doing some preaching, boy? They didn't have anything to preach, they didn't know anything. That's the that's the scene of Israel when Jesus showed up. And you talk about make a stir. Thank God. And so they were all, all these Jews were under the old covenant, and and under that old covenant, Israel bore the stamp of prosperity and health. Uh Psalm 105, let's turn over there real quick. Psalm 105. I love this one. This gives you a hint of how the Jewish nation began. You know, they were delivered out of out of Egypt. And it says in verse 37, he brought the God, brought them forth, Israel, brought them forth with what? Silver and gold. And there was not one feeble person is italicized. There was not one feeble among their tribes. Think about 400 years of backbreaking slavery, whipped every day, moving those huge stones, building cities, building pyramids, building all these things, slave labor. I mean, you would think somebody would have rheumatism, you'd think somebody would be lame. You would say, Thanks somebody. In fact, that word feeble really means lame, especially in the legs and feet. I mean, you drop one of those stones on your foot and break it. Nobody was even limping. Even the old people were upright and marched out of there like an army. Oh, come on, let's lift our hands right now. That's Israel under the old covenant. They bore the stamp of prosperity and health. Glory to God. And so after they were delivered from Egypt, they got out through the Red Sea, and right in the next chapter, in chapter 15, God revealed himself as Jehovah Rapha. I am the Lord that healeth thee. When you see the word Jehovah in the Bible, that is covenant-keeping God. And so he revealed his covenant fact of healing to Israel. And so healing was a covenant right for them. It was a covenant right. So we see by the time that Jesus showed up, they didn't know about it. There's a whole lot of Christians don't even know about it. A whole lot of Baptist people don't know about it. A whole lot of Ewiscopalians, I mean Episcopalians don't know about it. If they're Christian at all. There's a lot of people that are church people that aren't Christians. They've been preached churchanity. They've been preached religion, but are they born again? And it takes born again means more than a prayer. It means more than answering an altar call, saying a prayer, and then going back to the same old life. No, no, no. There's an action that goes with it. Your life changes. My life changed. It went from a guy that made his own beer. Because the stuff at Minimax wasn't strong enough. Forget about Bud Light. I wanted Bud. Light is too light. 3% is not. I need the 6% stuff. And that wasn't a nine. So I made my own. It was 14%. One of my beers is like a six-pack. You sit on my patio and drink some of my beer, you're going to leave drunk. Which happened. See, that guy died, and God saved me, put a new spirit on the inside of me, changed my whole life. I didn't go back to it. Are y'all with me now? So, but when Israel sinned, you know, then came poverty and sickness. I mean, when they, you know, and so Psalm 107, just a couple of Psalms over, it talks about the mercy of God and what He would do for them when they sinned. He said in verse 19, after they've sinned, after they've done wrong, he said, then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. He sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions. Well, guess what? He sent the word in the form of Jesus Christ to us and delivered us from our destructions. He healed us. It's past tense. The church, if Israel bore the stamp of health and prosperity, how much more should the church bear that same stamp? We ought to not be running around begging and running around broke and running around sick. Are you with me now? We have a better covenant than they did. Hebrews 8:6. We have a better covenant found upon better promises. So in Mark chapter 16, let's look at that real quick. Jesus is risen from the dead. The covenant is in effect. He's about to go to heaven. And on his way out of town, he says to them in verse 15, go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature. That also means the political world. Don't leave them out. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned or condemned. And these signs shall follow the apostles in the first century only, and after that. No, it follows believers, not necessarily just the apostles in the first century. He didn't say that. He didn't even say apostles. He said them that believe. Everybody say, I'm one of those. So these signs ought to accompany you when you give your testimony. These signs shall follow them that believe. In my name. See, in Jesus' name, oh, that name is healing in the name. There's no other name. Give it a men, give it to men whereby men can be saved, healed, delivered, provided for. In my name shall they first on the list cast out devils. It doesn't mean getting somebody to puke in a bag. It means getting rid of demonic opposition. You've got the power in Jesus' name to break the devil's power over your loved ones. See, some people just don't have that faith. They don't have so you can sometimes you can carry people on your faith for a while. And then after you've done it, then God expects them to do something. I found this out. I mean, you know, you can pray for your loved ones and you can get them healed, but if they don't follow through, well, then after that, there's not much you can do. They just they hit the skids, and what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to carry them the rest of the day? No, I can't do that. I shouldn't do that. I don't know who that's for, but anyway. So the church bears this stamp. Praise God. So then they cried out, uh, God blessed them and healed them. And when Jesus healed the sick, it was a fulfillment of Isaiah 53. So let's go back. He said it said that in Matthew 8. Let's find Isaiah 53. I mean, you know, I've heard Baptist preachers quote this verse. I don't know why they don't believe the whole verse. I don't understand it. I mean, I wish somebody could explain to me why they can't understand, you know, believe in healing. Why they don't preach healing. They got a whole crowd of people, you know, 5,000 people in front of them, all of them Baptists. And there's no healing. Nobody gets prayed for. Well, we'll we'll pray for Sister Bucketmouth this week. Y'all all pray for her. She's sick. Well, what are we supposed to pray? How are we supposed to pray? But there's no teaching on it. And so, people, you know, if it be thy will, God, heal Sister Bucketmouth. But they don't say this. But if it's not your will, go ahead and let her die. They might as well say that. Are y'all with me now? I can say that because Gladys was a Baptist girl. I married a Baptist girl. She she wasn't taught well enough to stay away from me, and so I benefited. Got the benefit of uh ignorance. All right. Did you find Isaiah 53? I'm still having too much fun up here. All right. Isaiah 53 is past tense. And he said, uh, verse 5. Verse, let's go back to verse 4. Surely he, this is prophesying about the coming Messiah, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. And so when they preach that, these people that don't believe in healing, they say, well, he's healed of iniquity. No, it's talking about, in fact, those those Hebrew words that are that are there can also be translated into pain, you know, and infirmity. They mean all the same. So that's why we're a full gospel church. I I was given the the new members on Discover Night on Friday night, you know what kind of church we're. We're a full gospel church. We believe that Jesus' substitutionary sacrifice uh did more than just give us a ticket to heaven. It provided healing, deliverance, protection, material and financial prosperity and provision. Are y'all with me now? So uh so these verses, both verses re-read in Matthew 8 and 1 Peter 2. If you look in your margin, if you've got a study Bible, it refers you back to Isaiah 53, where Isaiah prophesied that was what was gonna happen. And yet we have a better covenant than they do. So post-resurrection, the church has been set against sickness. The church is set against demonic opposite demonic uh things, cast out demons, speak with new tongues. I mean, every believer ought to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. That's what it's talking about. It also means you're gonna speak, you know. For me, it meant that I was delivered from a potty mouth. All my cussing. I'm in construction and I just hang around people that cuss all day. I cussed all day. I mean, you know. And uh I, you know, I'm like anybody. I have to battle that, you know, especially in traffic. But it's all right. Praise God. I'm winning. I'm winning the back victory. Speak with new tongues means you get the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I mean, believers are not designed to live on this earth without the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Pick up serpents. What is that? Snake handling? No, it just means that you get demonic opposition out of the way. Another verse, earlier uh they tread upon serpents and scorpions, see? In other words, you don't, the devil can't has no power over a believer if the believer knows his rights. Some sickness is demonically inspired directly. I mean, there's a demon involved with a particular uh ailment you've got. Well, then that needs to be dealt with. And you can deal with it, or or if you go to a church like that, we'll help you deal with it. We'll agree with you to deal with it. And so, if they if they drink any deadly thing, well, does it mean we can dare God and drink some poison? No, but when you're out giving your testimony, and if maybe God sends you to, you know, a Uganda, or sends you to Kenya, or sends you to China or somewhere else, you know, you're gonna need a little help because I mean, you know, they've got poisonous stuff. And so, you know, we've got protection to do what? What's the context of those signs that we're giving our testimony, that we're reaching the unreached, we're preaching the gospel, we're teaching the gospel, we're going to people that need what we have what we have need of. And then the last one, of course, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. Hands, the literal Greek, hands they shall lay, heal, they shall be. I mean, there's no there's no getting around it. It doesn't matter whether you, well, Pastor, I know I've done that. I I didn't see any results. Well, did you check back? Because not all healing is instant. I mean, you heal, you lay hands on somebody at the grocery store and never see them again, you're gonna know what happened. But after 40 years of laying hands on people, I mean, there's been a whole lot of people got healed. And I I hear about it later sometimes. And sometimes I I don't hear about it, but that's alright. I'm doing what the Bible says a believer should do. Are you with me now? So in God's mind, we were healed at the cross. Healing has already been released. We were healed. It's not something that we have to get. See, every time we resist sickness, every time we resist symptoms, symptoms come. I mean, your body wants them. Your body's, come on, come on, hit me, hit me again. I mean, as really, that's that your body is just designed to absorb every uh bacteria, every virus, every everything that comes along. Come on, come on inside. I mean, and what do you what do you do? See, you are not your body, you are in your body, and you have to exercise control. So you were healed at the cross, and every time we resist sickness, we fulfill Isaiah 53. We do that so that it might be fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah himself, bear our sicknesses and took our infirmities. You're completing the fulfillment of that prophecy every time. And then also every time you lay hands on the sick, every time you believe the gospel and you you share it with somebody. Are y'all with me then? So I've got three uh facts about our covenant of healing. Healing is our covenant right. So I've got three facts. Number one, Jesus bore it, Jesus took it, Jesus carried it, Jesus was stricken with it, Jesus was smitten with it, so we're all free from it. And what is it? Well, it is sickness, it's pain, it's disease, it's infirmity. Infirmity, when you look it up, it's frailty of mind and or body. I mean, we shouldn't just assume that we're gonna get Alzheimer's. We just shouldn't assume that now that I'm a certain age, I'm gonna have memory loss. We shouldn't assume that now that I'm a certain age, I'm just my eye is gonna be dim. I can be like Abraham. My eye's not dim, my natural force is abated. My eyes started getting dim, I needed intervention, so I went and got cataract surgery. Now I can see again. If they wear out, I'll get another pair. I am not gonna have dim vision. I'm gonna be able to see. Where's Gertrude? Gertrude, where's Gertrude? Gertrude right here. She's dancing, Gertrude. How old are you, Gertrude, now? 88? 88. So Gertrude drove by herself from Umball all the way Friday night in the rain to be here to welcome the new members. See that? She can see, she she doesn't have any trouble seeing at night. I hear people all the time that say, well, you know, I just don't drive it now. Well, she does in the rain. Why? Because she's got faith. She heard what I've been talking about, and she's been saying, I can drive at night in the rain. That doesn't bother me. Oh, I went over like a dead lead room. Some of you just want to cling to your excuses, but there aren't any. So what is it? Sickness, pain, disease, infirmity, frailty of mind andor body. So uh he took it. If he took it, we don't have it. Well, but the doctor said, Well, do you have faith in what the word says over uh over what you gotta you've got to take a stand. Are you gonna believe the doctor and say that his word is final? Or are you gonna say, well, there are symptoms, but the word says this? I was diagnosed with this. It's not wrong to say I was diagnosed with this, but the word says this, so I'm choosing the word. You don't have to lie to people. Oh, I I I'm standing with you for cancer. Oh, I don't have cancer. Well, you you know, you could say I was diagnosed with it, but I don't I don't give it permission to stay in my body. Teach you how to talk, right? All right, so the second uh fact, if we were healed, then we are healed right now. I mean, did God's word fail? Did God just create something temporary for the first century and then everybody else just has to make it the best they can? I mean, that doesn't even make sense. If you even if you just reason it out, it doesn't make any sense that God healed at one time, and all of a sudden, because of some particular time of, well, the age of miracles, there's never been an age of miracles. There's a God of miracles, and He's still here. He's still doing the same thing he's ever done. No age of miracles. So if we were healed, then we are healed now, not hoping to be, not trying to be. You know, we're not sick people, we're healed people resisting sickness. I had an exterminator tell me a few years ago, he says, uh, Mr. Croiner, you've got termites. Well, see, I knew what he was talking about. He didn't say he didn't mean that I had termites. You know, I knew that. I knew that I didn't have any termites. But my house had termites. And we were able to treat my house. And we were able to kill the termites before they ate all my. You know, they they they I don't know, they skipped the good wood and went right into my study and ate the the they ate the uh wains coating. I had some plywood, quarter-inch plywood wains coating in my study, and they they and I kept seeing sawdust, and I thought, where is the sawdust coming from? It was the termites just bit, man, they were having a feast there day and night, just having a feast in my turn, eating my wainscoat. It didn't take any, it wasn't but even a$500 worth of damage that they we were able to catch it and kill them. And uh, but see, you you know, you you might have uh uh your body might might be invaded with symptoms, but you don't have them. You are a spirit. You have been healed. You are you with me now? So I think about Brother Hagin's testimony. You know, he he had a malformed heart. He had several, I can't remember how many blood diseases. He said if you didn't, and the doctors told him when he was 15, if you didn't have any of the blood diseases, then your heart would kill you. And if you didn't have anything wrong with your heart, the blood diseases would kill you. And he's you're just there's nothing we can do for you, son. They talked to his mother and grandmother, just get him to accept death. He's gonna die, he's not gonna live much longer. And he wouldn't accept it. He found his Bible and he and he got his healing, and he got in the ministry, became a you know, a little Baptist boy preacher hanging around in Pentecostals, and he got baptized in the Holy Ghost, and then you know, the rest is history. So he began to get out on the field ministry, and he was by this time he had already pastored for years, and he was staying in the parsonage of a church where he was ministering for two weeks at a time, and he awoke one night in his bedroom with alarming symptoms. And if you read, take take a lot of note about his life. He he had numbers of times when he had to stand on his covenant of healing because symptoms like he had when he was paralyzed and when he was young, the same feeling, the same symptoms came back on him. I thought he was healed. Yeah, he was healed, and he and he got up and he lived and he got married and he had kids, and but yet this these alarming symptoms. And so the devil said to him in the night, that's what the devil does. He likes to come in the nighttime. He's the prince of darkness, he's a liar and the father of lies, he's a murderer from the beginning. And he said, This time you're not gonna get your healing. He said, This time. So, you know, he'd gotten healing before. This time you're not gonna get your healing. And so Brother Hagin didn't say anything, he just started laughing. Ha ha ha ha. Did he really laugh like knee slap laugh? No, he just did what I just did. Ha ha ha. You know, just mechanical, because the devil's so stupid he doesn't know the difference between real laughter and just mocking him. So, you know, brother Brother Hagin, he said I must have laughed for 20 minutes. Ha ha ha ha. You know, you've got alarming symptoms, and your only thing you're doing is ha ha ha. And after 20 minutes, the devil said, What are you laughing at? He said, I'm laughing at you, Mr. Devil. Ha ha ha ha. Another 20 minutes goes by. What are you laughing about? He said, I told you I'm laughing at you, Mr. Devil. You said, This time I'm not gonna get my healing. I'm not planning on getting my healing. Jesus got my healing for me. Now get out of here, pack your bags and get out of here. And he did. Every symptom left him. See, I mean, he knew his rights. He knew what had already happened. He wasn't looking for the emergency room. Now, I'm not telling you to do this. I'm not telling you to ignore symptoms in your body and laugh at them and then die. We have a different world today than they did 40, 50 years ago. We've got access to emergency treatment, and sometimes, you know, our faith works in time. It's a seed that's planted, it's not instant. And sometimes you're trusting and trusting, and you run out of time because your body, we don't catch up with the symptom. We don't catch up with a with a problem. Are y'all with me now? There's a time to, we ought to always speak the word, but sometimes you need to seek uh intervention, medical intervention. So praise God. Number three, in fact, our part in the covenant is to obey God's word. For instance, you know, he said, love. Love one another as I have loved you. Another place he says, uh, love your neighbor as yourself. And in 40 plus years of ministry, and I've seen a lot of people that are hindered and love others because they don't love themselves. They've been beaten down, they've been depreciated, they've been lied to by people, they've been abused. Maybe a uh a parent or maybe a a spouse has spoken so harsh words that they have just uh lost all love for themselves, and maybe I maybe I deserve this. And so when you're in that condition, how can you love anybody else? You can't. You can't even love your own kids. If you loved them, you would leave that rascal in the dust and take your kids and and make him pay. Child supporter. And if he doesn't do it, put him in jail. See, why don't we have the courage to love ourselves enough to leave abuse? Don't stay in abusive. I don't know who this is for. Somebody. There's a lot of people in here. Well, I'm just believing. See, something about women, they think they can change a man. No, you can't change him. Only God can change anybody, and we can't change anybody. We can live our life in front of them, but after a while, when they continue that, that's not God, and you need to get away from it. So love yourself enough. You know, brother Osteen one time grabbed me by my lapels. He said, John, do you love yourself? I said, Yes, sir. He said, Do you love the anointing God has given you? Yes, sir. He said, Always believe God to travel first class. And uh at that time I thought, oh my God, you know, I can I I'd have to believe God just to travel, much less first class, you know. Couldn't buy, I couldn't buy a bus ticket at that time. But when we started traveling, going all over the world, you know, I found a way to travel, at least business class, and when I could, first class. And uh I had a couple that were coming to the church at that time. They both worked for Continental Airlines as flight attendants. And I was sharing that testimony with them, and they both got offended and left the church. They didn't think I deserved, they did, they didn't think I deserved to travel first class. I should be, I should be in the back of the plane like a sardine for 40 hours. I'm going someplace, it takes 40 hours to get there, back there and back. And uh I have uh a ministry to perform when I get there and one to perform when I get back. I'm not on vacation. I'm not going to lay in the sun. I'm not there to, you know, sip, you know, margaritas at the pool side. I'm there to hit the devil in the face. And I love myself enough to protect the anointing on me to where I can get some some rest where I'm not just zapped out with jet lag. Boy, you talk about jet lag to Asia. That's jet lag. You've never had jet lag until you've been to Asia. Are y'all with me now? See, I know what Jesus did for me. I, you know, I know he was made poor so I could be rich, I could have an abundant supply. It's not wrong to do things in the service of the Lord. Are you with me now? So, but we do need to obey God. We need to love ourselves, we need to love others, we need to forgive others, we need to walk, you know, walk in in the Word of God. And when we don't, then we open, we give a beach head, we give a stronghold to the devil, and then we need to close the door. You wouldn't go to sleep at night with your door open. You'd lock it, wouldn't you? So let's keep short accounts with God. Let's be tenderhearted. Let's make sure that when we don't do the right thing, we don't say the right thing, that we are quick to say, oh Father, forgive me. You might do that a hundred times in a day. It doesn't matter how many times. Have you ever done it 490 times in a day? Jesus said, forgive 70 times seven. You think he could do that? So, I mean, you know, you just as you make errors and you it's a sin, and you do something that hurts your conscience right now, you're just gonna be, Lord, I'm sorry, I'm just saying, please forgive me. I mean, and then it's over. You don't think about it again. No, you don't think about it again. The devil will bring it up and you can just I don't know, that's under the blood. I'm not talking about it. So our healing is our covenant, right? And uh engaging this, and we're gonna teach it in three weeks, and I believe that your faith will grow, and I believe that your health can grow. And I want us all to stand up before we receive communion together, and we're gonna go through this confession. Let's all stand up, please. I've got a confession for you to make, and then after that, you'll sit back down and we'll do communion and seal this all up. I'm so glad we're celebrating our covenant with uh taking communion. All right, let's lift our hands to heaven right now. Everybody say this 2026 is my year of the new. I'm possessing new health, health as never before. The blood of Jesus purchased for me eternal salvation. I have a covenant with Almighty God. The moment I was born again, my status changed. I went from lost to found, I went from damned to saved. I went from cursed to blessed, I went from sick to healthy, I went from bound to free. I went from poor to rich. I have the covenant right to say I am healed. I don't have to get my healing. Jesus got it for me. I am healed, I am a believer. I believe the gospel. I believe the word. The word says I'm healed. I believe that. Therefore, supernatural power is being released. All symptoms, all contrary conditions, all negative diagnoses are being expelled from my body in Jesus' name. My health springs forth like a watered garden. Okay, let's now let's rejoice. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Whoa, hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Now sometimes you just got to preach to yourself. You got to get up in your house and get up in the face of the devil and every symptom and say something like we just got through going through. I wrote that one down, but I seldom do that. I just it just comes out. The word. The word is medicine. And so, uh, did you get anything out of this today?

unknown 45:06

Amen.