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The Mercy of God
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He never corrected them. Anyone who ever asked for mercy received healing. What does that
prove? Healing is a mercy.
Friend, this is some of the best news you have ever heard. I don’t know if you realize this or not,
but mercy is unearned, undeserved, and unmerited. That means you don’t have to earn it or merit
it because it’s a mercy. It’s by grace, through faith. It’s a mercy just like forgiveness of sin, and
just like being born again. Just like going to heaven, it’s a mercy. So it has nothing to do with
how good you’ve been, or how bad you’ve been. It’s not based on that.
I’ve had people look at me and say, “Well, So-and-So is a good person. Why wouldn’t God heal
them?”
And I asked them, “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Well, they’re a good person.” So? That’s like saying that So-and-So was a good person, a good
humanitarian, so why can’t they go to heaven without believing in Jesus? Because nobody could
ever be good enough to be saved on their own merits. That’s why Jesus had to come and pay the
price.
That is why you can’t be good enough to deserve a healing. It’s the same thing. It’s a mercy.
“Lord, I’ll try to be better. I’ll try to do better, if You’ll heal me.” This is not Let’s Make A Deal.
You can’t buy a healing. You have nothing to trade. And if you do, it isn’t worth enough. No,
that’s why the verse says, “Our righteousness is as filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6) People sometimes
take that, and it’s the only verse they know. No, that’s why you can’t operate in your
righteousness—you have to operate in His. He has given us His righteousness, glory to God,
which is already accepted in heaven because ours could never be good enough.
Now we
should
do good works. We’re going to get rewarded for them. But that’s not how you
get healed. It’s not how you get your sins forgiven.
You also want to watch for any situation where someone is trying to buy a healing of any kind.
When I worked in Healing School, there were people who were brand new to these things and
didn’t know better, and they would come up to me, when I was the main one speaking, and offer
me a bunch of money. I knew in my heart they thought they could buy healing, and I couldn’t
take it.
Do you remember that Simon offered money? He said, “Let me have this power so the people I
lay hands on get filled with the Holy Ghost,” (Acts 8:18) and boy, Peter spoke roughly to him
and said, “You can’t buy the things of God!”
So we want to watch for that. Healing has already been bought and paid for. Forgiveness of sin
has already been bought and paid for completely. There was nothing in the universe that was
valuable enough to buy it except one thing: the blood of the Lamb. And He paid for it. He bought
it. The Bible says you’ve been bought with a price; you’re not your own. So glorify God in your
body and in your spirit. Both of them belong to God. (1 Corinthians 6:20)