Are You Living In God's Reality?

What makes a person sick? Most of the time it is things from the unseen world. Some of the unseen things are physical and some are spiritual.

Science has taught us about the physical unseen things that make us sick: germs, bacteria, genetic weaknesses, etc. They are invisible to the naked eye, but they really exist--we can put slides under a microscope and see the germs that make people sick. Science has made this aspect of the unseen world real to us. We understand how germs and bacteria work so that we can change our behavior to be less susceptible to them.

For instance, when someone is sick with a cold, they are trained to do their best not to spread their germs to others; they cough or sneeze into a tissue to catch the germs, so they don't spread. When we are around someone who is cognations, we wash our hands a lot to kill the germs before they make us sick. We do our best not to breath the air that someone with a cold has just coughed into. We use antibiotic soaps and antibiotic sprays to kill bacteria that makes people sick.

Science has done a good job educating us about how to deal with germs and bacteria--it has become second nature to us. But that is not true in all parts of the world. I remember my first missions trip to a rural part of India, where we ministered in a remote village. The Indian pastor who we were working with was very intelligent, and he was well educated in the bible. But he lived in a rural village where the people are not educated in basic health care, and he did not know about germs.

He invited us to eat dinner at his house. His youngest son had a bad chest cold, and was coughing and sneezing. Since they did not know anything about germs, they did not try to do anything to stop them from spreading. The child ran around the dinner table and coughed into everyone's food, and into the faces of several of the family members. I tried to warn them about germs, but they could not comprehend (or did not believe) what I was talking about.

I did not want to get sick, so I politely "lost my appetite" and stopped eating after the child coughed into my plate. After dinner, I went back to my room and carefully washed my hands and face with antibiotic hand soap. I made it a point to spend as little time as possible in the same room as the sick child, who was sneezing and coughing all over the place. Why? Because I understood the unseen thing called "germs" and I understood how to deal with them. The child's family did not understand these things, so they did not take any precautions, and they all got sick.

The family did understand about demons, so they wrongly attributed their sudden outbreak of bad chest colds to the wrong source. They blamed it on the devil when the real culprit was germs. They rebuked the evil spirit that they believed caused their sickness. But they got no relief from it, because this particular sickness was not caused by a demon. In the end, we gave them cold medicine we had brought with us from the USA to help them, and the medicine did relieve some of their symptoms.

Here is why I am telling you this story: they understood one aspect of the unseen world that caused sickness--demons. But they did not understand the other one--germs. And because they did not understand how germs work, they were powerless to deal effectively with them.

Most of us in western culture have the same problem "in reverse." We understand germs and can deal effectively with them, but many of us are clueless about the other unseen cause of sickness--demons.

The bible makes it clear that demons cause many sicknesses and heath problems. Over and over again, they brought sick people to Jesus and He healed them by casting out a demonic spirit. Mark 1:32-34, tells us that Jesus healed some people by casting out demons. It says, "At evening, when the sun had set, they brought to Him all who were sick and those who were demon-possessed. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. Then He healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and He did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew Him."

Mark 9:17-27 attributes epilepsy to a demon. Matthew 9:32-32 attributes muteness to a demon. When Jesus cast the demon out, the mute man could speak. Luke 8 attributes a type of violent insanity to demons, and when the demon was cast out, the violent man became instantly sane and started behaving normally. Jesus cast out a great number of demons when he prayed for sick people. The reason He did that is because the demon was making the person sick. He had to get rid of the demon in order to heal the person.

Jesus taught this principle to His disciples. When He sent them out to heal the sick, He also gave them authority over demons. He tied the two things (healing the sick and casting out demons) together, because He understood that they were related. Jesus understood that not all sickness is caused by demons, and He did not do a deliverance every time He healed a sick person. But He also knew (and wanted His disciples to understand) that many times sickness is caused by demons. When a demon is the cause of a medical problem, then the only way to "heal" that problem is to get rid of the demon that is causing it. If you don't get rid of the demon, then the sickness will just come right back. When Jesus gave His disciples authority to heal the sick, He gave them authority over demons at the same time. Why? Because the two are closely related. Look at Matthew 10:1: "And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease."

I have a friend who is a very godly woman. She loves the Lord passionately and is on fire for Him. Her husband is also a believer, but he has not made a serious commitment to obeying God. He has had a lot of medical problems and has been on medical disability for some time now. I believe he is effected by some spirits of infirmity. We pray for him and he gets a miracle healing, but shortly after that, he gets a different (but similar) medical problem. We can heal a specific illness or problem, but as soon as we do, the demon causes a new one to surface. It doesn't do a whole lot of good to cast the spirits of infirmity out, because they are attached to areas of his life/thinking that he hasn't turned over to Jesus. It is like he has an open door for these demons; anytime we cast them out, they just come back again. They will keep coming back until he gets rid of the sins and attitudes (unforgiveness, etc) that they latch on to.

As I said, he has been prayed for and miraculously healed many times. But shortly after he gets healed from one thing, a new similar thing pops up in his life. He is slowly growing in the Lord, and I am looking forward to the day when he will make that commitment to give Jesus total Lordship in every area of his life. When he does, he will be set free from a lot of bondages and oppressions and besetting sins, and at that time we should be able to permanently get rid of that spirit of infirmity. When that happens, we will be able to get him all healed up and off of disability.

One time his wife, my friend who is on fire for God, got a serious stomach aliment. She felt nauseous all the time and threw up most of what she ate. She tested for pregnancy and it came back negative. At first she through the stomach problems were emotional, possibly related to an inner healing issue that she was working through. That motivated her to work through it quickly and release true/complete forgiveness. She achieved complete emotional freedom from the issue, but the stomach and digestive tract problems continued after that. So she went to her doctor, who ran tests, but he could not find anything medically wrong with her. He even ran the serious tests, like stomach cancer, but (to everyone's relief) they came back negative. Of course, she also got healing prayer from many different sources as this was going on, but the problem persisted. By then the problem had been going on for several weeks and she was getting really weak from not being able to keep her food down and absorb nutrition.

We were talking on the phone and suddenly this idea hit me. Since she was married to a man who we believed had a spirit of infirmity, perhaps her husband's spirit was causing her problems? This occurred to me because husband and wife share a very intimate contact, and some people believe that demons can transfer from husband to wife during intercourse. So I suggested that we pray regarding a spirit of infirmity from her husband.

She was open to the idea and came to my house for prayer. We prayed for about half an hour. I took authority over any unclean spirits that may have transferred to her from her husband. Something came up during that time and the Lord revealed that she had believed a lie about her father not caring about her. God healed the effects of that lie. Then I rebuked any spirit of infirmity that may have entered from her husband to cause this digestive problem. I cancelled it's assignment in Jesus' name and commanded it to leave her. Right then, her stomach pain decreased very noticeably. After the spirit was gone, I switched to straight healing prayer to get rid of the remaining symptoms.

My friend experienced about 80% relief from stomach pain and the nausea totally left her. Over the next couple of days, her problems continued to improve until she had 100% relief--she was able to eat without any nausea or vomiting or stomach pain.

In my friend's case, a spirit of infirmity was causing her problems. It came from an unexpected source--her husband. The spirit was able to attach to her because of an old wound (related to her father's reaction). She had been hospitalized as a teenager with a stomach problem and her father was nervous about hospitals. He sort of joked nervously the whole time he visited her, plus did not come often or stay long. That got translated in her thinking into the lie that he did not care about her. After God broke the power of that lie, the spirit of infirmity had nothing to hold on to and it was easy to get rid of. Once the demon was gone, the majority of the problem left with it, and simple healing prayer took care of any residual problems.

The reason I shared this story is to illustrate how demons play a role in making us sick. When this happens, we have to deal with the demon in order to get the person well.