ReceiveHealing.com

Reading Level: Gratifying

We have all heard stories of people who displayed incredible strength and courage in the midst of dangerous or hopeless situations. Heroes, whether mythical or in real life, are examples of strength and courage. However, we rarely picture ourselves as being one of those people.

Yet the events of our lives necessitate the qualities of strength and courage. It is terrible for a person to live in a state of fear, without peace. Fear disables one’s ability to make effective decisions, hinders personal relationships, and creates harmful chemicals in the body that promote illness and disease. In fact, God repeatedly expresses to His people the need to be strong and courageous. God said through Moses, one of His most famous spokespersons, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified … for the LORD your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you (Deut. 31:6).” Later God advised Joshua as he began his new career, “Be strong and courageous. Be strong and very courageous. (Jos. 1:6,7).” The need for strength and courage is so important that God not only repeated it, but repeated it with the added emphasis of “very” strong and courageous! Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

Ever been in training for a particular job? Or maybe you were the one training the other person. In either case, the whole concept of training is that the person does not already understand all that there is to know about the job. The training is a process to provide further education and increase various skills so that one can competently do the job. Even after one develops a level of skill and competence, rarely is he perfect.

There is nothing wrong with aiming for perfection. In fact, scripture specifically challenges us to do so (2 Cor. 13:11). However, when our failures are creating guilt or self-condemnation and hindering our life’s progress, we can encourage ourselves and release condemnation by reminding ourselves of two simple points. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

Perfectionist that I am, I tend to be very hard on myself for any situation that I, in retrospect, feel I could have handled better for some reason.

Due to the weariness that comes from extended trying circumstances, everyone has an occasional bad day emotionally when they feel discouraged, hopeless, unable to be strong for other people, lose their temper, etc. We make a difficult situation even harder if we then listen to negatives voices in our spirits which bring self-condemnation for not staying perfectly hopeful and strong every day of the trying circumstance, especially when we know we are doing our best to succeed.

I heard a great word of encouragement the other day Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Many people were raised with the perception that God is a harsh, unforgiving, almost evil person; however, it is the nature of God to give good to us. It would be impossible to list here all that God says that He delights in giving to us, but here are some gifts to ponder. Enjoy this flash video about God’s giving heart and meditate on the full awareness of the ways He enjoys giving to you!

Click Here to Open the God of the Giving Heart Flash Video

Reading Level: Gratifying

There is no doubt that extended illnesses, situations of extreme stress, and tragedies change us forever. Though we can become better people depending on how we handle them, that alone is not proof that God caused the hardships.

My parents were in a severe auto accident during the past year. The police officers and EMT’s at the scene, the doctor who operated on my mother, all told us that it was a horrible accident and that they should have been dead or completely paralyzed. We all were forced to grow in our faith and character by all the experiences we had never been through before. I grew weary of the well-meaning people who told my parents, “I hope you’ve learned what God wanted you to learn.”

There is a common illustration in Christendom which I refer to as the “broken leg heresy.” It is an enormous discredit to the nature and character of God.

Much of it stems from a book that someone wrote years ago comparing the nature of God to the habits of Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Gratifying

Throughout my life, the majority of the religious people that I have encountered feel that any illness or hardship they suffer has come to them by the hand of God and has not been removed as a sort of lesson.

In recent studies on such topics over the past few years, I have come to some quite different conclusions than those of the religious majority. Such teaching does have a crippling effect on one’s faith. Let’s first look together at the following quote from the book, “Faith to Faith,” by Ken and Gloria Copeland, page dated Oct 18th.

“Is there actually a divine purpose behind the bad things that happen in your life? Could it be that the sicknesses and calamities you experience are somehow a part of God’s plan for you? Before you can ever begin to experience the healing, delivering power of God, you’ve got to…settle [those questions] once and for all. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

As I’ve mentioned in some other Reflections, how we perceive God’s attitudes and actions toward us affect our ability to receive healing and other good from Him. A recent study of the Hebrew definitions of the words “prosperity” and “peace” used in God’s promises for His people in the Old Testament was very revealing and deeply moving. Immerse yourself in this video blog to gain a thorough sense of the broad spectrum of good God purposes for your life.

Click Here to Open the Prosperity and Peace Flash Video

Reading Level: Leisurely

It is an essential part of our healing, whether physical, emotional, and/or spiritual, to be able to believe that God wants our lives to be well.

I mention in various articles on this site how our view of God can either aid or hinder our healing. If we doubt God’s love for us, feel unworthy of His goodness, or struggle with poor childhood teaching which portrayed God as evil and vindictive, such ideas actually affect our ability to receive good from God. It is much like the psychological concept of projection. I’ll just briefly touch on it here; a person is hindered from good, positive progress in life with regards to jobs, relationships, etc. because he/she projects negative feelings and perceptions from past experiences into present job situations and relationships. Without realizing he/she is doing this, the person actually recreates a constant cycle of problems in the present situations similar to ones in the past. To put it in simplest form, a negative view of how others want to act toward you can cause people to “treat you poorly” and create more negative experiences; however, it is your own response and actions based on your negative perceptions from the past that make people again react negatively toward you.

In a similar way, our projection of negative feelings or actions onto God that do not exist in His person affect our receptibility to healing and other good from Him.

As I cover our own perceptions more in other articles, my purpose here is to briefly provide some comforting, health-giving passages about God’s activity in our environment that relay how much God desires that our lives be safe, well, happy, and whole. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Various Fears affect our Emotional and Physical Well-being. Strengthen Yourself with some Healing Thoughts to Relinquish your Fears in this video blog.

Click Here to Open the Relinquish Fears Flash Video

Reading Level: Impassioned

Growing in one’s understanding of God’s love–the way it actually is, not the incompassionate or unforgiving myth that many of us were raised to believe–opens the door to many types of healing.

As you read through various of my posts, you will become aware that this one of the recurring themes. For example, growing in the understanding of God’s love for you removes fears of His rejection or punishment, opening the door to receiving His love, comfort, and forgiveness, i.e. emotional healing. This in turn allows us to forgive ourselves–more emotional healing. The process sets off a chain reaction because the removal of our fears and forgiveness of ourselves with the unnecessary guilt that carries then allows a release of negative emotions and energies which both created illnesses and aggravated existing ones, i.e. physical healing.

The quote that got me started on this personal search for new revelations of God’s love was this one:
That you may have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

I began the other week to change my thought processes with regards to the various challenges that come my way during the day. I had heard a message by Joel Osteen on not allowing criticism to steal your dreams. In it, he mentioned a verse from Is. 61:7 which says, “Instead of your former shame, you will receive a double portion.” In other words, God says His desire is that life for you will be twice as good after the hardship than before. Joel encouraged people to rejoice when facing challenges, implementing via faith a forward, blessed progress for your life. I took this idea and ran with it.

Over the course of the next week, when another person took advantage of a weakness in my personality, I caught myself from feeling the pain and rejoiced that this weakness was brought to my attention; now that I am aware of the weakness, I can overcome it, avoid similar situations in the future, and be a healthier person overall.

Another example is the delay in the construction of this site. Rather than staying frustrated by the lost time caused by the initial software not working as we’d hoped, we chose to rejoice realizing that the delay actually caused us to find the present software, which has proved to have far more beneficial website functions.

I have applied this process to various challenges by immediately focusing on how I can be better off since this “problem” was brought to my attention. Choosing this new perspective has freed my mind, body, and spirit from needless stress. The less stress in the body, mind, and spirit, the more the body is free to heal itself of various ailments. I made the following statement about this new process of mine and it was a great encouragement to my spouse so I thought I’d end with it. “The greater victory is not freedom from problems. The greater victory is when I overcome the problems!”

Reading Level: Leisurely

While searching one day through various websites, trying to find help for another person, God gave me a word of encouragement from the description of someone else’s article.

It said, “God Can Do Things Instantly–a lesson that God doesn’t need time to do what He wants to do.”

I had been discouraged about a particular situation in which I had not yet seen the desired resolution. God reminded me that when the time came, it would be resolved in a “single second,” so I shouldn’t worry about the time that appeared to be wasted right now.

When that moment of resolution comes, “I will rejoice, and no one will take away my joy (Jn 16:22 )!”