Are You Living In God's Reality?

We have spent this teaching series talking about the two realities that we live in: the physical one and the unseen (or spiritual) one. Both of them are real, but we have been trained to put more credence on the physical one, because we can see, measure, and observe it. But faith operates more in the spirit realm. If we want to move in faith, we must learn to see into the spirit realm. We must never equate faith to wishful thinking or to blindly hoping that something will happen; faith is seeing what the Father is doing (in the spirit realm), and then doing it with Him here in our physical world. Physical healings take place in when we peak into the spirit to see that God the Father healing the person. Then we pray in accord with what God is doing, and we see His will break into our world with a miraculous healing.

We also learned that what we think of as "normal" is actually corrupted by sin; it is twisted from God's perfect will. For instance, sickness is not God's desire for us, it is a result of sin. God doesn't make people sick, the devil does. We see this clearly from Scripture. 1 John 3:8 tells us, "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." In short, one of Jesus' missions on earth was to destroy the works of the devil. Acts 10:38 tells us how He accomplished that: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, [and He] went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him." In short, the devil is the one who opposes God's will by making us sick, and Jesus destroys his work by healing the sick. That makes it pretty clear that God's will for us is healing, not sickness.

In fact, John 10:10 tells us that the devil comes "to steal, and to kill, and to destroy." In short, the devil is so keen on making people sick that he has a large group of demon's whose job is to make people sick. They vary in rank from low level spirits of infirmity (general sickens and infirmities) to higher ranking demons who specialize in things such as blindness, being crippled, blindness, muteness, to spirits of death (who bring terminal diseases like cancer, etc). Our last lesson looked at the role of demons in making people sick. We saw that some sickness is purely physical (germs, etc), but some sickness is spiritual demons). We also learned that when a demon makes a person sick, we have to get rid of the demon in order to get that person well.

But demons are not the only creatures from the spirit realm who are involved in sickness and healing. God's servants, the angels, are also active in this.

The bible gives us an example of this in John 5:4. It says, "For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had." This is the only clear-cut reference in Scripture to angels healing the sick, but there are other passages where we can take that inference. Randy Clark does an excellent job of developing that in his Open Heaven teaching series. I am not going to duplicate that in my lesson, but you can read Randy's teaching on the GodSpeak we page. The URL is: http://www.godspeak.net/hs_lessons/hs20_index.html.

I would like to share an experience that I had with angels and healing. I went on a missions trip to Brazil with Randy Clark in October of 2002. Randy taught the local pastors during the day and had outreach crusades at night. As members of his ministry team, we sat through his teaching in the day sessions and then prayed for the pastors. That meant we got to hear the teaching that Randy did for the pastors. The first day, Randy did this teaching on the role of angels in healing. It was all new to me and I took careful notes. What he said at that training meeting is very similar to the Open Heaven teaching I referred to in the above paragraph.

At the time, this was all new to me, and it was not easy for me to accept at first. I really respected Randy (I consider him a spiritual father and a role model), but I was not sure I could buy what he was saying about angels being involved in physical healing. We had some free time between the afternoon meeting and the evening one, so I prayed and asked God to show me if what Randy taught was true.

That night at the evening service, God whispered something to me just as the ministry time began. He said, "Teresa, I am assigning a healing angel to minister with you tonight. Watch and see how powerful the ministry time will be, then you tell Me if what Randy preached about angels and healing was true or not."

As soon as we were released to minister, I was mobbed with people who wanted prayer, and God powerfully touched just about every one of them. It seemed that as soon as I touched someone, before I could get more than a sentence of prayer out of my mouth, the power of God would hit them. There was a lot of shaking and falling and crunching and other manifestations of God's power on people. Because I had an interpreter, I got a report of what happened with each person. Almost everyone was healed to some degree and about 35 were totally healed. One lady had a cyst on her breast that disappeared while we prayed...she examined herself in the lady's room and came back to report the cyst was gone. That may have been the most powerful healing ministry time that I have ever experienced. There was such a strong anointing to heal that it was fun and exciting to pray. Time flew, so many were healed, God came in such power.

When it was all over, God asked me, "Well, Teresa, what do you think now?" I had to admit that working wit a healing angel had made a huge difference in praying for the sick. God wanted to underscore the role that angels play in healing, so the next night He left me on my own to pray (e.g., He did not assign a healing angel to assist me.) I still saw healings, but I had to work much harder for each one. I had to pray for people for about ten minutes each instead of getting the instant healings. I ministered for an hour that night and I only saw about 5 or 6 healings. Then God asked me if I noticed a difference between ministering on my own or ministering with one of His healing angels. You bet I noticed a difference. That experience convinced me that angels really do play a role in healing.

I have since learned that God is capable of doing whatever He wants to do totally on His own--He doesn't need assistance or help from anyone-- but He loves to involve His creation with Him in doing His works. We see an example of this in the Great Commission, where Jesus chose us to be His witnesses. He did not really need human witnesses, He could have divinely appeared to people, or spoke to them in dreams or whatever. But He choose to involve us in a work that was important to Him because he loved us and wanted to give us a chance to do things with Him.

He used the same pattern with His disciples. He healed all sorts of sick people and did not need any help with that. Yet He choose to involve His disciples in what He was doing. He gave them authority to heal the sick and sent them out two by two to the towns He was about to go minister to. He sent them "to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick" (Luke 9:2). Jesus let His disciples participate with Him in what He was doing because He loved them. He does the same thing today with us for the same reason.

He does the same thing with the angels. He lets them participate with Him in what He is doing. We see it over and over in Scripture. When God wanted to speak to someone, He usually sent an angel to speak for Him. God spoke to Hagar through an angel in Genesis 16:7-11, He spoke to Abraham through an angel in Genesis 22:11. He spoke to Jacob through an angel in Genesis 31:11, He spoke to Moses through His angel in Exodus 3:2. The list of God speaking to His people through His angels goes on and on.

But that is not all God did with angels. When He wanted to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, He sent His angels to evaluate the cities, and to deliver Lot and his family out of Sodom before the judgment fell (Genesis 19). God used an angel to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness (Exodus 33:2). God used his angels to carry out His judgments, such as the Passover angel (Exodus 12), and the angel who struck the people of Israel dead when David did the census (2 Samuel 24). God used an angel to strengthen Elijah for his journey in 1 Kinks 19. God assigns angels to protect and deliver His people (Psalm 34:7). God sent His angel to fight and defeat enemy armies (Isaiah 37). God sent an angel to deliver Peter from prison (Acts 12). And God sent an angel to stir the waters in the pool of Bethesda, to heal whoever stepped into the water first (John 5:2-4).

God has a habit of involving His servants in doing His works with Him. So it should not surprise us that angels are involved in healing the sick, just like we are. Jesus has given us authority to heal the sick, as per Mark 16:15-18. We can heal the sick whether or not we work with (e.g., cooperate with) His other servants, the angels. But it is stupid to turn our noses up at any resources that God releases to assist us in doing what He tells us to do. One of those resources are His healing angels. If we are smart, we will learn how to cooperate with them in healing the sick and advancing God's kingdom.

People ask me, "Teresa, how do I cooperate with the angels in praying for the sick?" The answer is simple. Keep your eyes on God, not on the angels. Never exalt them to the point where you are worshipping them, because we are only to worship God. His angels are there to serve God, just like we are. Treat them with the same respect you would show an anointed human minister who was working with you on a project. Don't over emphasize them or over-exhort them, but at the same time make room for them to minister with you. You might try praying and asking God to send His angels to minister with you.

Never forget that we live in two realities at once--the physical world and the spirit reality. Both are equally "real." The more we can see into the spirit realm, the more we can perceive what God is doing and do it with Him. And as we do that, then Heaven invades earth and God's perfect will is accomplished in our midst. And part of God's perfect will is to cast out demons and to heal the sick.