What’s your attitude like?

I want to share another message of Joy.ce Mey.er with you on healing.  It’s a long one so I’m going to split it up again:

“If you are negative, grouchy, sour puss, hard to get along with, critical, jealous you are probably also going to be sick…  Somebody was telling me the other day about a relative who was just diagnosed with very serious situation with cancer.  Talking about the treatment, what to do and how to handle it and again to tell me that this person has just been so negative their whole life.  It is just so hard to be around them.  And he began to tell me how this person who is so negative was telling him about sitting next to somebody that was being so negative.  And how they got so tired about hearing this other person’s negative talk…

It’s like:  “Hello!”  You know what?  We need to look at ourselves honestly and we need to stop blaming everything on everybody else.  We need to ask ourselves sometimes:  “How easy am I to get along with?  How easy is it to offend me?  How easy do I get my feelings hurt?  What am I doing to make someone else’s life better?  How many days out of a year do I waste feeling sorry for myself?  Am I jealous of people who have more than me?  Am I judgmental?  Am I critical?”  You would be amazed what would happen if you would just have one 10 minute meeting a day with yourself. 

Proverbs 17:22 (Amp):   “²²A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.”

If you get happy you might get healed.  You need to laugh more, not be so deep and intense…  Jesus is a healer and if you look at Isaiah 53 it says and it says he forgave our sins and He took our sicknesses upon Himself. 

Isaiah 53:4-5 (NIV):  “ ⁴Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.    ⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

Now I’m going to say a few things that I’m going to try to explain less anyone get confused because I don’t want that.  Sickness is a result of sin.  Now it may not be your own personal sin, but sickness was not in the world until man sinned.  Man was so healthy that it actually took the devil about 900 years to teach him how to die.  That was not in our DNA.  We were supposed to be happy, garden life people, who fellowshipped with God, ate the fruit, loved everybody, had a good time…  But no, Eve had to have the stupid apple.   

We all know that sin entered, man died spiritually, and God made a plan right away to redeem us.  But the sin principle is still working in this world and where the sin principle is working there is disease and germs and all kinds of wretched stuff.  And so there is going to be times, just because you’re here in this world that you are going to run into some germ on a day when your immune system is kind of off or whatever…  So we can’t all avoid ever having any problems with anything out there because we’re in the world, but we can expect and believe God for healing and we can do everything that we should do to make sure that we are not just an open door for any kind of sickness or disease that Satan wants to load on us.  Amen? 

You know I feel pretty good for an old gal.    We have guys that work for us that are in their twenties who can’t keep up with me and Dave.    I’m telling you the truth – they are like:  “This is not normal!”  Well you know what? It is not normal.  It’s not!  But a lot of it is your mindset.  Don’t begin to think old, don’t think old people thoughts.  Amen?  Think strong; think positive, the more negative you are, the worse you are going to feel.  The less you laugh the worse you are going to feel. The more you judge and criticize other people the worse you are going to feel.  The less you do for other people, the more selfish you are, the worse you are going to feel.  I’m telling you that our joy is connected to our health. 

How many of you needed a reminder today that He is your Healer?  How many of you agree that sometimes we just get into the habit of putting up with stuff, and really just trying to handle in the natural?  And I’m not putting down anything natural, I’m not going to stand here and tell you not to take your medicine, I’m not going to tell you not to go to the doctor, If God tells you not to do that, you do what He tells you to,  but you know, I’m not going to tell you that.   I mean if I need that, I do that.  I take medicine, I go to the doctor, but I have also been corrected by God if I start leaning on that kind of stuff too much and not making it very plain that I trust Him as my Healer and that I’m expecting Him to keep me strong and healthy and well.”

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Who is God? Jehovah-Rapha

Here is the second part from that message of Joy.ce Mey.er:

“Who is God? Let’s look at Exodus 3:13-14 (NIV):  “¹³ Moses said to God, Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?      ¹⁴ God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.”

Now there is a whole lot of great things about the “I AM,” but one of the great things is that he is ever present.  So we need to think more about the “everywhereness” of God, that He is omnipresent everywhere all the time at the same time.  Isn’t that cool?  God is with you and with me at the same time even if we are on different sides of the planet.  He is all knowing.  There is nothing about your life that surprises God.  He is never like not ready.   “O no!  I wasn’t expecting that!  Now what are we going to do!”  You don’t even surprise God.  Your foolishness doesn’t surprise God!  Your hang-ups, your failures don’t surprise God.  He knew about them before you ever did them.  God knows everything from the beginning to the end.  He is all powerful; there is nothing that is impossible to God!  So when the disciples were in the storm in the boat and they started to get all excited, Jesus just said:  Why are you so fearful and timid, He did not tell them what He was going to do – He told them who He was – He said I AM.  He does not want to tell us what He is going to do – he didn’t tell the disciples what He was going to do, He just simply said – you don’t need to worry about it because I’m here.  And so when we realize that God is here then we can be peaceful because we know that if our trust is in Him – whatever needs to be done He is going to do it!  “I AM THAT I AM.” 

God’s character is wrapped up in His name.  The first name that God gave Moses was a name that could not even be pronounced.  He said that I am: “Yhwh,” which is unpronounceable because it’s got no vowels in it.  You could not even say what God was.  God is so far above us that you cannot even say what he is.  We just know that He is wonderful, that he is amazing that his power that He is unlimited immeasurable and we can know Him and get this:  He wants to come live within you!  I mean how can we sit around, discouraged and full of self pity and…

You know why?  Because we meditate on the wrong thing.  We get too caught up on what we see and what we feel and what other people say and we think too much about our problems and we don’t think about God enough.  Then you know, we think the answer is to just live in Church all the time and live in meetings and you know become a meeting junkie.  Because you know we feel good there.  But the point is:  it gets strong enough; now listen to me, on your own between you and God that you can stay happy all the time. 

All right they added some vowels to His name and it became Yahweh, then it became Yehovah, then Jehovah, which meant Lord God and then they took it even further and began to add other names to His name like Jehovah-Rapha, which is what we are going to talk about today which means the Lord my Healer.  God’s name is so important that one of the 10 commandments is:  “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.”  And I have to take the time today to tell you that taking God’s name in vain is not merely saying God’s name and sticking a cuss word on it.  As a matter of fact that is probably the least way that people take the Lord’s name in vain.    It means to use Gods name uselessly or frivolously.  And one of the ways that people do it all the time is simply by saying:  “O, my God!”  Now it’s interesting – of all these people on television, many who claim to not even believe in God, every time something happens they say:  “O, my God!” Isn’t that stupid?  “My God”, but you’ve already said you don’t want anything to do with him, now you say: “My God”, because you have a problem.  It means nothing to them; it’s just become a phrase.  I’m not trying to make more out of it than what it is. But I think it is more than we think it is.  I just want to encourage you to realize that there is power in that Name!

Now all of these “Jehovah-“names, all are wrapped up in the name Jesus.  We don’t really have to know them all today, except for education, because we have the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee has to bow, His name represents everything that God is.  Jesus!  Amen.  You certainly never want to use that name frivolously or foolishly!

My intention is today take some time to talk to you about something that I really rarely ever spend some time to do a whole teaching on anymore, but I really feel that it is needed and that is just Jehovah-Rapha the Lord our Healer.  Now 3 John 1:2 (NIV):  “²Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.”

Now we know that our spirit is much more important than anything physical so the first and most important thing that we need to do is mature spiritually.  We need to be men and woman of God and not just stay little childish brats all of our life, we need to grow up in God.   With that being taken care of and God wants to load on the outer fruit, two of the things he wants you to have is to be prosperous, to not only have your needs met, but to have enough of an overflow to be able to bless other people and I’ll just put it as simple as I know how to – God wants us to feel good. 

Exodus 15:26 (NIV):  “²⁶ He said, If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.”  

You can sit here and listen until your sweet little bottom is flat, but if you don’t go out and do what you hear it is not going to do you any good nor will it change anything in your life.  And actually every time you come to the church doors you need to set you mind that you are going to go in there and you are going to learn something and that you are going to go and apply it to your life. 

OK, so let’s all understand one thing right now, Jesus is our physician – I thank God for medicine, I thank God for doctors, most of us would have been dead now without it, but we are making a huge mistake if we bypass God.  I believe God gave medical knowledge and I believe that God gives these wonderful surgeons that can do the intricate things that they can do.  I believe its God working through their hands.  Now you are much more likely to have the medicine help you, to have the doctors help you if you go to God first and you say to Him:  “I know that they can’t help me if you don’t help them.  As a matter of fact they could do something that could kill me, if you don’t help them.”  So no matter how many doctors you go to, no matter how much of anything else you do, I want to bring you back this morning to the foundation:  “I am the Lord who heals you”  God is your Physician, the Word of God is your medicine.  Healing is for your whole being, not just physically but mentally, emotionally, financially, socially.

Proverbs 4:20-22 (NIV):  “²⁰My son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words.  ²¹ Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; ²² for they are life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body.”

So the Word of God is like medicine.  One translation says that the Word is medicine, so obviously one of the things that you want to do, especially if you need healing, or if you want to take it a step further and want to walk in divine health.  How many of you would like to have an upper hand in this and not just to get healed, but would like to walk in divine health and stay healthy?  We need to be on the offensive and not just one the defensive.  We don’t just want to get a problem, try to resist it, get another problem, and again try to resist it.  We want to be more on the offensive where we are doing what needs to be done ahead of time to make sure that we are strong in an area. 

So you need to learn different scriptures about healing and about the goodness of God and how God wants to meet your needs and you need to learn how to meditate on those and think on purpose about those things.  Meditation means to mutter under your breath.  So you might get up and say: “God you are my healer, by your stripes I’m healed, I thank you that your word is my medicine and the more I meditate on your word the better I feel.  You are my energy, your strength is in me, your life is in me and every day I get better and better in every way and I believe the healing power of God is working in me right now!”

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Another update on us:

My mom got the results from her PET scan yesterday.  The Para aortic lymph nodes are definitely enlarged, but it does not seem to have grown since her last CT scan in May.  The report stated that it might not be malignant – I guess they don’t really know…  The doctor says it cannot be operated on so the next step is to see another oncologist and go for chemotherapy.  She will see a new oncologist next week and will then know what the treatments are going to involve.

Radiation is out of the question as the previous round of radiation did some damage to my mom’s intestines and her whole pelvic area is very inflamed.  She is very glad that she went for a second opinion as the previous oncologist just wanted to blast her with both radiation and chemo straight away, without doing any other tests… Although it’s not the news we were praying for, it is not too bad either.  The doctor believes that it is not a fatal disease, so we are praying for complete healing and a full recovery soon!

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We decided to name our puppy Katie, and she has adjusted completely to our household.  She is just too adorable and I’m really enjoying her a lot!  I cannot believe how much she has grown in just over a week.  This time I have a better picture of her as she actually sat still for a few minutes.  Last week I could only take pictures while she was sleeping as she moved around too much and I just ended up with blurry pictures and maybe an ear or a tail in the picture! 

We spoiled them yesterday by buying some toys for them and Shumi got another squeaky toy.  They are his absolute favourite!  He just loves getting our attention by letting it squeak!  He bites it very softly, just enough to let it squeak without breaking it.  Here is a video of Shumi chewing his squeaky hot dog.  We are still praying and confessing scriptures for complete healing for Shumi – I will not let go of him, I just love him too much…

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About our IVF – I never took the birth control pills as I was supposed to – everything was just too much all at once when my cycle started… I was actually supposed to be on the lucrin injections already, but I just cannot go through an IVF at the moment, so I don’t think we will start next month either.  The official stance is – we are on a little break!  We will see when or if we will do another IVF again….

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Confessing the Word:

I have the book “The Wo.rd, the Na.me, the Blo.od” by Joy.ce Mey.er and in the book it describes the incredible power that is in the Word of God, The name of Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus Christ.  I want to concentrate on confessing the word today as I’ve found it so helpful in the past.  I have confessed scriptures of healing, promises of God regarding children and infertility, verses of faith and verses concerning fear out loud and I can testify that it has helped me tremendously!

I have been healed of my sciatica pain, some other ailments and now God has blessed us with the miracle of pregnancy within one month of confessions regarding my infertility.  You see, I always thought that it might not be God’s will for us to have children.  I thought that He might have another plan for us, but I could not see what the other plan was.  Now I know that I believed a lie from Satan and that’s what hindered us all along.  As soon as the lie was exposed I got pregnant.  Isn’t that amazing?

Hebrews 4:12 (NIV):  “¹² For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

I want to quote Joy.ce Mey.er from her abovementioned book as she says it so much better than I ever can:  “The Word of God is light; it overpowers darkness.  The Word of God is life; it overcomes death.  When we begin to learn the Word, it starts dividing things for us; it begins separating truth from lies.  As a result, we begin to realize what is of the spirit and what is of the soul.  Soon we know what actions are approved of God and what actions are not.  The Word exposes wrong motives, wrong thoughts and wrong words.

John 1:1,4,5 (NIV):  “¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”

The reason Satan hates and fears the Word of God so much is because it is light, and he can only exist in darkness.  That’s why we must learn and use the Word of God – because it’s a spiritual weapon.”

Mark 4:14-15 (NIV):  “¹⁴ The farmer sows the word.     ¹⁵ Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.”

“ A believer who knows the truth is a major defeat to Satan.  The devil’s work in the life of the Christian is based upon deception.  Deception is a result of lies that are believed.  As long as I believed the wrong thing, I was deceived.  When I learned the truth, the deception was uncovered, and I was set free.  Satan hates and fears the Word.  He will do anything possible to prevent us from learning God’s Word.

If we do hear or study the Word, the devil will attempt immediately to steal it from us.   He does not want the Word to take root in our hearts and begin to produce good fruit in our lives.

Beloved, we must be informed about how the enemy hates and fears the Word of God.  This knowledge will cause us to become more determined than ever to make the Word of God a priority in our lives.

If Satan works so hard to keep us from the Word, then there must be a good reason why.  The reason is simple:  he knows that the Word of God is a powerful weapon against him.  It assures his defeat!  That’s why it’s imperative that we learn to wield the spiritual sword. “

I can highly recommend the above book if you are interested in learning more.   Joy.ce Mey.er has another excellent book: “The sec.ret po.wer of spea.king God’s Wo.rd” which has a lot of scriptures in specific categories that you can study and confess out loud.  If you want a specific book regarding infertility, miscarriages and pregnancy I would recommend “Super.natural Child.birth” by Jac.kie Mi.ze where she concentrates on scriptures regarding barrenness, miscarriages and pregnancy and the fears associated with it all.  There are also some amazing testimonies in that book!

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Let God do the Impossible:

I have been thinking about a specific message of Joyce Meyer a lot lately (I first heard about it about 2 years ago).  It has changed my life a lot and I have seen some big differences in my life since then.  Last night when I watched Joyce’s program “Enjoying everyday life”, she was talking about change and she used the same scripture again.  I thought I share it with you and tell you how it’s impacted my life:

Luke 18:27 (NIV):  “²⁷ Jesus replied: What is impossible with men is possible with God.”

Joyce says that one day when she was meditating on this verse she was suddenly struck with the realization that the reverse is also true:  It is time to do what I can do, and just leave the part that I cannot do up to God.  God has no obligation to do what we can do ourselves. 

The first time I saw that message it was applied to health.  Joyce said that if you have health problems you should take care of your body – we cannot expect God to heal us if we are not doing our part.  You should start eating healthily and exercise regularly.  She said that we should stop complaining about what we can’t do and at least start doing what we can do.   God does not bless laziness, procrastination or passivity.  This message is of course not only applicable to health, but is applicable to anything in your life that needs change or anywhere where you feel you need a miracle.

The first thing that came to mind was my fertility problems.   I decided that I was going to watch what I was putting into my mouth and I joined a gym.  I cut out sugar almost completely, I stopped drinking all fizzy drinks (that was hard – I’m sure I was addicted), I started reading labels and tried to avoid any food with any artificial additives in it, I tried to avoid greasy foods as much as possible and I started to eat more natural and fresh foods and increased especially vegetables in our diet.  It was also spurred on by the fact that my DH has had IBS (or that’s the official diagnosis due to the fact that the doctors and a professor cannot find anything else) for the past +/-15 years.  We even went gluten free and lactose free for a while – but that was only to help DH.  I started to exercise 3-5 times a week, starting at first with 30 minutes per day and increasing it to 45 minutes and now recently I’m trying to do 60 minutes.  In the mean time I have also cut out coffee and I am drinking a lot more water.

At that stage the only other health problem I was really aware of was a sciatic nerve pinching, and causing (I must say extreme) pain in my lower back and down my right leg.  I was unable to sit for longer than 10 minutes, standing was a little better but not much and lying down was the best position to be in, but off course it’s impossible from day to day, especially if you take into account that I was in pain for about 11 months.  I went to see a chiropractor and the combination of her treatments, together with the stretches she gave me and the exercise I was getting helped to get rid of the pain.  But it was a slow process, and one day many months later I realised I was pain free.  Please note that I still have to do my stretches regularly otherwise the sciatica is aggravated again – but the last time I had treatment for it was 9 months ago.

I reflected back and suddenly I noticed that other problems I’ve regularly had, have also been sorted out.  I used to get vaginal infections about 12 times a year (almost every cycle, sometimes twice in one cycle),  I also got UTI infections regularly but about 4-5 times per year, I lived with a headache almost every day and I was almost always very constipated (TMI I know, sorry!).  I realized that I haven’t had a cold or flu in a very long time and that I’ve been really healthy since I changed my lifestyle. 

The last time I saw my FS (about 3 weeks ago) I was not expecting good news… We had just heard that our FET did not work and to be honest the embryo’s did not look good on ET day.  The doctor did not say it in so many words, but I could see it in his and the sister’s eyes.  I had nine frozen embryo’s of which almost all were at 8 cells on day 3 when they were frozen.  When they defrosted them only 2 survived the thaw, both were 3 cells and one was very fragmented.  Later I was told they lost too many cells, and that was not good.  I was convinced that we should give up hope and stop with treatments altogether.  I was only there to get closure, but then my FS dropped a bomb I did not expect:

He said that he does not think I should give up with IVF.  He said that my body’s response to the medication and our embryo’s do not look like a 39 year old women’s usually look like, and that physically I’m much younger than my actual years.  Our embryos did not freeze well, so he suggested a low dose IVF in future (also due to the fact that I very easily get polyps from the estrogen in the medication).  He said that he can definitely see a baby in my future, he just cannot see when.  He is sure that I will get pregnant!  He even said I can afford to take some time off and think about it.  Can you believe that?  At 39?  I believe my physical health had a lot to do with it, two years of eating and drinking healthily and exercising regularly.  I believe I got a miracle after all!

The closing point that Joyce made was that if you bring your side and do what you can do, then God will do what you cannot do and He might bring that miracle in your live.  God might just give you double for your trouble!  Isaiah 61:7 (NIV):  “ ⁷Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs.”  Just look at Job – he lost everything, his family, all his possessions and his health, but in the end God gave him double of what he had before.  Job 42:10 (NIV):   “¹⁰ After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before.”

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