Saturday, September 3, 2016

The Spirit Of Sickness

The Spirit Of Sickness
Written by Amanda Hawkins

     I have had a bad cold for the past few days. Before the virus, I had been reading the bible, praying, and really worshiping the Lord intently, and I woke up with this sickness. Sore throat, stuffed nose, my head felt heavy, my body ached, and I couldn't walk upstairs without being winded.
     There have been multiple times in the past that I started to feel closer to God, and end up coming down with a cold, and I forgot to read scripture, and I prayed less, and I grew farther from the Lord.
     I find the correlation between the two to be no coincidence. I've always believed that sickness is a spirit. It is spiritual warfare against you to keep you away from the Lord, which explains why every time we start going to church more, or reading the bible more, or worshipping more, we become sick. It explains why contact with people that are sick often makes us sick, and it explains why prayer and laying on hands can heal sickness.
     Why does medicine heal sickness? Because when people use medicine to rid a condition, they are showing lack of faith in God, and instead are placing their faith in the medicine to heal them. There is no need for that person to be sick, because they show no faith in God as it is.
     I knew a lady that said once, "God told me that if I would go to church He would take away the migraine I've been having. So I took a migraine pill just in case, and went to church." If she had any faith in God she would not have to take a pill, 'just in case.' She would do as God told her, and God would keep his promise.
     Do I think that there is a place for medicine? Yes. But I believe that prayer and discernment is important in deciding whether or not to take medicine, and that it should not be used for everything.

     God is bigger than the spirit of sickness, but if we do not recognize that it is a spirit, we cannot cast it away. It simply will have to run its course.

     Sometime last year I was beginning to come down with a cold, and the moment I noticed the symptoms, I began to pray. I asked the Lord to take the spirit of sickness away from me if it was in His will to do so, and I cast the spirit out in the name of Jesus. The same day my symptoms did not escalate, and the following day all symptoms were gone. And I praised the Lord for the small miracle that He had done.
     As Christians we need to recognize this spirit, and if we don't it will hinder us in our walk with the Lord. We need to put our faith in God. Sickness is not of God, sickness is of the world, and of the devil, though God can work miracles through sickness, by the prayer of faith.

"And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." -- Mark 16:17-18

     We belong to Jesus. We have the power, through Christ, to lay hands on the sick and heal them. When did Christians stop using the gifts that God gave to them? We can cast out spirits and demons, we can heal sicknesses, in the name of Jesus Christ. Yet we don't. Rather, we go to the doctor to be diagnosed with multiple conditions, and to be prescribed drugs. Then we go to church on Sunday and during the prayer requests we ask, almost as an afterthought, for the congregation to pray for us. We don't really believe it will work entirely, because we have believed for so long that sickness needs medicine, even since we were children we were taught this.
     According to the bible, the sick should go to the congregation, ask the elders to pray for them, and the elders are to anoint the sick with oil in the name of Jesus, and pray in faith laying hands on the person.

"Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." -- James 5:14-15

     The bible doesn't say you need to go see a medicine man or a doctor. The bible says the prayer of faith shall save the sick.

     If any who read this are sick, I pray that you see the truth, and recognize that sickness is a spirit and that it needs to be treated as such, and prayed over in faith. I pray that you recover from sickness in the name of Jesus, may the Lord raise you up.