“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-11-30/
Healing is a gift from God that comes very easy and almost imperceptible when a person becomes saved and infused with the Spirit of Christ. Yet, it is still there just the same and all Christians have that gift because they are part of the body of Christ. They are instantly baptized into the Holy Spirit. The baptism of water is part of the ritual of Christianity and occurs mostly inside churches, as a symbol of your faith and love for Jesus Christ. You are baptized into the body of Christ, immersed in the water, and brought up again resurrected into the newness of living again after death.
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/John-1-32_1-33/
There is also another part to this fantastic phenomenon of being saved. You are healed and begin to heal others. Your mental attitude has changed and you no longer have a heart made of stone, because it becomes pliable and willing to do the things that God wants it to do. The whole outlook of being a Christian has changed and now you try to accommodate God in all his work.
“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-10-8/
This was not just a calling for the very close disciples of Jesus, who knew him and what he expected. It is a characteristic of all Christians. The Holy Ghost is not just some isolated minutely timed event or pinprick of a recorded instance. It is an all-pervading and omniscient part of the Trinity of God who comes to live and breathe inside your very soul and being. You are not healing yourself or healing people around you, God is. Great and strange phenomena are happening all around you. There is a great long list of supernatural things that suddenly and slightly unnoticed begin to happen. Maybe money does not come flooding in, but somehow miraculously you suddenly manage to make ends meet. A great chemical change begins to happen within your own body that aligns the normal healthy attributes for healing. You might begin to eat the right foods, clearly out of the blue. Especially noting that your body is the temple of God, you begin to think that smoking is bad for your health, as is drinking excessive alcohol and taking drugs. So, you change dramatically in that way, especially if you were inundated with sins. You breathe better and begin to think better, more clearly and confidently. There could also be clairvoyant happenings all around that you don't fully comprehend or understand. Your perceptivity is enhanced and you begin to avoid conflict, thus saving your body from accidents, criminals that might want to harm you, and outright freak events that don't happen because your fate did not collide with your own specific space in time. You don't have that tragic car accident since you are now especially paying attention.
Because you are now avoiding places where sin is rampant, your whole life begins to take on that equilibrium that makes everything that happens a totally pleasant event or at least not specifically malevolent, as it once had been with constant temptation all around you. That car accident that might have once plagued you, making your life a total living hell at a certain intersection--doesn't happen. The lightning bolt that was doomed to strike your body, while you were walking down the street in a violent thunderstorm hits some inanimate object. It's not that you have suddenly entered into some strange twilight zone; the whole compass of your soul has taken a completely different direction of travel in life. Not only has your own life taken on a bizarre enlightenment, but people around you suddenly feel better about being around you. They are healed as well as you, getting inspiration from your very words, instead of being repulsed by your violent and caustic behavior that once plagued the office you work in, the factory, or even your own family. Christ doesn't stop healing there, he spreads out into all directions, changing the very fabric of the Universe, bending time and space to find resolutions to many of your problems and completely destroying the evil within and without your periphery, whether you realize it or not. For some of your problems, you don't get answers, and therein remains the crux of the situation. There are some sins that you don't want to give up or will not give up.
In the New Testament, the people around Jesus that he ministered to gave up their sins willingly and were healed instantly. Others remained for a time and then fell away and followed him no more, not being able to fully understand and appreciate his valuable teachings. He even told them that his body was a sanctified representation of God. They wanted to see God, and he said that if they have seen him then they have seen the father because he was in God, and they were in him, and he was in them.
“At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/John-14-20/
“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/John-6-63/
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-24-35/
Time itself is not constrained by the limits of the physical universe when applied to the words of Christ. His words are eternal and omnipresent, breaking the veil of the temple from top to bottom, allowing the Christian believer to enter into the presence of God through his Son. Only by reading and meditating on the words of Jesus Christ, you are effectively traveling back through time in your mind and body since Christ has always been here from the beginning of time, physically walked on the Earth, and is eternal. Don't let anyone tell you that a Priest or a Preacher has to magically convert a wafer into His body and the wine into His blood, in order to have Communion. Jesus's very words in the New Testament are the essence of His body and blood. They are the Communion with God. They are Spirit, and they are Life. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.
At the time of the crucifixion of Christ in Jerusalem, the Jews were observing the Passover. Jesus is the Passover Lamb that was sacrificed and eaten before Passover. His blood is smeared on the doorposts and the lintel, allowing us to enter into the Holy of Holies, as the Spirit of the Lord passes over. The Lord's Supper observed in all Christian churches is at the same time the ritual of the Jewish Passover and should be participated in by all Christians. The observance of the Lord's Supper is the ritual never to forget the words of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that he made, remembering at the same time that God sacrificed his Son. Only by reading the Bible and keeping the words of Jesus Christ in our hearts, do we have prayer and Communion with God.
“And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Luke-22-19/
It is very strange that some people refuse to even consider the great gift that Christ has to offer. Unfortunately, it was by design that this sadness occurs. God knows infinitely the best for all his followers, and he did not want the unbelievers to understand the words that his Son has given us. Maybe they are too hard-hearted and too involved in sin and evil. Nevertheless, he even told us that they would never be accepted into heaven or able to change their evil ways. That part of salvation we also have to accept and understand. We also are given the task to try and attempt to convince some of those more stubborn people to change their dispositions, their attitudes, and become followers also. The Holy Ghost is also the same Spirit of God during the time of Moses that passed over the doorposts smeared with the blood of the innocent lamb. It does not linger long, yet knows intimately the secrets of all the hearts of men. That spiritual presence knows who will give up their sins willingly and makes a division between those who will and those who will not be saved.
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Mark-4-11_4-12/
The whole theme of Christianity is a very easy yoke and a light burden. There is nothing difficult about becoming a light-bearer, the lifting of sinful burdens, and the gift of salvation with forgiveness. A healthier life and a constructive mental attitude are predominant effects and observable attributes of Christianity on all believers. Every convert has a personal relationship with God. Not all are immediately healed, some are never healed, or have instantaneous wealth, an elevated state of usefulness, or a loving relationship with all people around them. Some people take years of work that eventually does promote better health and mental benefits. However, they do all experience the grand phenomenon of life after death. Psychology and Psychiatry often talk about the great benefits of their counselors, their medication, and an improvement in mental clarity and the usefulness to society that their patients eventually achieve. They do not, however, have the vast scope and promise that Christianity offers into everlasting eternity. Christianity uses Psychology and all forms of medicine in fulfilling God's great promise of a better life for the believers. The medicinal gifts of an advanced civilization are not to be thrown away or squandered by following egotistical charlatans, who imagine benefits of some elevated mental state that might be achieved by outlandish rituals. If it is Biblical and approved by those who were closest to Jesus, then it is food for thought, and appropriate for study and meditation. God drew the wisest of men from the East to pay their respects and adoration for the child at Bethlehem. Modern medicine is a great miracle from God to help people of all faiths. Christianity is also a great healer but does not make experiments on people, require followers to murder people of other religions, kill those who decide to leave the faith, have medicine that reaches an expiration date or subscribe to malpractice by Doctors, who are not artistically adept practitioners in their chosen field. Christians commune directly with God through Jesus Christ and experience all the great supernatural benefits as those same people in the days of the New Testament, who touched the hem of his garment, felt his healing hand, and the soothing words that directly changed their lives and brought salvation. By reading the accounts of his life, we also can hold sacred in our memories the same experiences as those who sat around the campfires of the Disciples, eating the same fish and bread, and hearing the healing words of Jesus on the days following his resurrection.
by Cliff Rhodes
January 4, 2018