Regarding faith for healing, I’ve noticed that I fight fiercely against new problems that try to come on me, such as sickness, but an old problem is harder to fight. I have successfully fought off allergies, colds, flu, back pain, removed a mole by faith and more. Applying the faith for healing to anything new seems to rise up out of me almost reflexively. Yet there is a passivity involved in dealing with an old problem that I’ve had for many years, paralysis.
When we are tolerant of a sickness or condition for a long time, it becomes familiar and comfortable. We lack the discomfort that comes with a new problem. At first a sickness is uncomfortable and easy to reject. Now that I know I’m supposed to reject everything that is part of the curse, I do it. However when I formerly believed that I had to accept whatever came my way with patience and endurance instead of resisting, I passively embraced it without realizing that it was a dangerous thing to do. Un-embracing something is like a divorce. As painful as the situation is, it’s also uncomfortable to get rid of it. It’s emotional. It’s deliverance. Deliverance is emotional. If you’ve ever experienced deliverance, the separation of yourself from an entity you have been united with by your own choice, you would know that it is attached to you emotionally. Sin and everything evil, even sickness, can become as much a part of us as any person with whom we have a relationship. You cannot say you are not emotionally attached to something you have been living with for years. Nobody likes change. This is why abused women find it difficult to leave their abusers. We call them enablers. It’s simply a case of emotional attachment to a present situation. We don’t like being abused or sick or handicapped; but fear of the unknown change seems to outweigh our ability to reject our abusers. Complacency with a sickness or other entity is merely an attachment to the familiar. We call demons ”familiar spirits,” and that is exactly what they become to us. And familiarity breeds contempt but contempt does not necessarily cause action. You can have contempt for somebody or something and yet still keep putting up with it.
Like a frog who does not jump out of a slowly boiling pan of water, we tend to stay in familiar territory until it kills us. Present situation seems to trump the fear of change, even a change for the better. The remedy is simply to treat a long-standing illness or handicapped as if it is something new that you will not tolerate. Detach yourself from it. Dis-embrace it. Develop an intolerance, disgust and hatred for it. Hate it like the plague that it is! You can tell it to leave but do you mean it?
It reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld, where George was breaking up with a woman but she wouldn’t go. It was a humorous depiction of a case where someone oddly enough, did not believe she was being rejected. George was unconvincing in his attempt to break up with her and she refused to believe him. This is what we do with our familiar sicknesses and infirmities. We say, “this isn’t working out” and it says back to us, “you’re not giving me a convincing argument!” We say, “I am ending this relationship” and it says to us “I don’t think so.” Then, like George Costanza, we say “all right…” And we continue putting up with it. The Word of God is our divorce papers for sickness and disability!
We must say to infirmity, ”In Romans 8:2 it says the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets me free from the law of infirmity/sin and death, therefore, you have been served your divorce papers legally! Get out!” And don’t use any flowers to deliver this. Speak it boldly and with conviction!! Be convincing and emotional! Stomp your foot and shake your fist! Do not give up and it will leave. “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed” so don’t look back and don’t let it in again. Then celebrate and praise God enthusiastically. Get emotional over your healing today!