Walking in Healing by Love: Feeding the Body and Soul

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Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Knotts, thanking you for tuning in today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message is very important and pertinent to anyone who has struggled with the need of physical healing. This message is not something I’ve read about or heard about, but one I have lived through and still apply every day for my own physical healing. Walking in healing by love. Now back to Exodus, and this time we’re going to look at chapter 23, and we’ll look at verse 25. And you shall serve the Lord your God. He shall bless thy bread and thy water. Wow, do we need that blessing today? And I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. There shall nothing cast their young nor be barren in thy land. The number of thy days I will fulfill. I’m claiming that one. What about you? Amen? So he’s saying that if you will serve me, I’m going to bless your bread and water. Now, if that was important to them, it is a thousand times as important to us today. Because we are now just beginning to wake up and realize that since the 1950s, our foods have been radically changed. They’re not just coming, you know, from a nice little farm somewhere to the store. The farms now have genetically engineered seed to grow the crops. Amen? In order for them to keep turning over many, many different crops because, you know, they’ll plant this plant and then as soon as they harvest it, they turn around and plant something else and they turn around and plant something else. And you know, in the Old Testament, God had a law that the seventh year, a field had to lie dormant. They could not plant anything in the seventh year. What was the reason for that? The ground, the earth was depleted and God wanted it to rest. See, he wants everybody to have their day of rest, even the ground, amen? And so they had to let it lie for that seventh year and then they could go back to planting again the eighth year. Well, today, they are not going to let a field lie dormant for a year. No, they’ve got to have some money, you know. We’ve got to sell these crops. So what do they do? Well, let’s just put fertilizer in. Well, let’s just put pesticides in. Let’s just put insecticides in. Whatever we have to do to keep the crops growing and growing more and more and more. Amen? And think about our meat industry and our poultry industry. The way they shoot them full of all the hormones and the antibiotics and all of these things. Amen? So we need God’s blessing on our food and we need God’s blessing on our water. Look what happened to that town up there in, I think it was Michigan, where they got the bright idea to switch from Detroit’s water or Flint’s water, one of those places, and what they ended up doing. Leaching. High amounts of lead. Into the water. And the people are drinking that water. And getting sick. And not only that. For children. Who knows what it will do in the future. Amen. If you don’t say your grace when you eat. You know you better start doing it. Not only because you need to be thankful. That God’s given you food. We don’t think about that much. Because none of us ever go hungry for sure. But we need God’s blessing on our food. Because honestly we don’t know what’s in it. Amen. We don’t knowingly eat something bad, but we don’t really know, do we? And now our waters are polluted? And you know, I remember when I was pregnant with Scott, I just loved tuna fish. And I ate tuna fish all the time, all the time. And back then, nobody said, you know, don’t do that. Now they’ll tell women, don’t eat much tuna fish. Don’t eat tuna. It’s got too much mercury in there. It could hurt your baby. And back then, I think I ate tuna every day. And I didn’t know it at the time, but later on, I learned that the particular thing that tuna supplies causes a baby’s brain to be more intelligent. And I’ve got to say, Scott’s pretty smart. I don’t know if he got it from the tuna or if he got it from his mother. laughter But today, they’re telling pregnant women, don’t eat tuna or eat very little tuna. You’ve got to have God’s blessing on it. Amen? And then I love the way it ends here. It says, and so you will fulfill the number of your days. That means whatever God has written in your book, when he wrote your name down on the day of your birth. Amen? And according to Psalm 139, we won’t turn there, but it says God knows all our days even before we were born. Amen? That you will fulfill the number of your days. Now, this says to me that it’s not absolute. I will fulfill them as long as I’m walking in that blessing and as long as that blessing’s on my food. But if I of myself blatantly ignore the dietary laws and go eat junk food all the time… And way too much sugar or something and end up with high blood pressure or diabetes or other things. Amen. That wasn’t what God’s will was, was it? So we have to keep the laws. Amen. And then he says in Deuteronomy 33, 25, as the length of days, so will be your strength of days. Now that is the double blessing. That is the blessing I want. Not only length of days. I don’t want to live a long time and be sick for the last 10 years. And be miserable and wish the Lord would check me out. Amen. I want length of days and strength of days. And let the church say. Amen. So walking in love. Amen. Because if we don’t keep the commandments, then we’re opening up the door for the enemy. Now, in case somebody is sitting here thinking, boy, it sounds to me like you are implying that God chastens his children with sickness. No, a thousand times no. God doesn’t chasten his children with sickness any more than I would my kids or you would your kids. Amen. Would you put sickness on your kid just to teach them a lesson? I don’t care how bad they are. There are other ways that you will find to teach them a lesson. But you’re not going to put some disease on them and say, ha, there you go. Now learn a lesson from that. No, and God is a much better parent than I am. And then you are. It doesn’t come under the law of chastening. There are three laws of recompense. I have a CD on this, and it goes into it with a lot of detail. Three laws of recompense. Law of wrath, law of chastening, law of sowing and reaping. The law of wrath is only on the unbeliever and the sinner. God is clear. The children of disobedience have the law of wrath on them. And that’s the truth. And nobody can circumvent that and sugarcoat it. It is what it is. If you are a sinner and an unbeliever, the law of God’s wrath is on you because you have rejected the sacrifice of his son. And he doesn’t take that lightly. Second law of chastening. The law of chastening is on God’s children. And there’s many verses about chastening, but you’ll never find where God puts sickness and disease. He says, whom the Lord loves. He chastens just like a parent chastens his child. And you don’t love somebody by putting disease on them. He has ways that he chastens us so that we wake up and say, I’m going down the wrong path here, Lord. Forgive me and help me get it straight. The law of chastening is only on God’s children, and it is executed with love, mercy, and compassion. The end being, the desired end to be that the child gets convicted, asks for repentance, and gets together. The third law, the law of sowing and reaping is on everybody. Saints and sinners, Christians and non-Christians. Good folks and bad folks, whatever your definition of that is. The law of sowing and reaping is universal. It’s one of the first laws that’s instituted in the book of Genesis. Every seed after its own kind. What a man sows, that will he also reap. And many times when Christians have come up with sickness in their body, don’t let the devil sit on your shoulder and tell you it’s because you failed God. He’s mad at you. He doesn’t love you. That’s a lie. And you know there are even Christians out there that will tell people that. Well, you must have sinned. Well, you must have done something wrong. That’s a lie of the devil. But you may have sowed something you shouldn’t have sowed and now you’re reaping. And as I’ve already said, it could be you have a very bad diet and now you’re reaping what you’ve been eating for so long. Amen? And this can be physical, but it also has a spiritual element to it. Amen? You have to walk in love. If you don’t walk in love, then you get under that sowing and reaping. Whatever you sow… You’re going to reap. Amen? And you can reap it directly in your body. It is a proven medical fact, and I don’t think anyone here will dispute the fact that our bodies are directly affected by our emotional well-being. How many believe that’s true? The condition of your emotions, your spirit, your soul, your mind, what you’re thinking can have direct correlation in your physical body. Our emotions do affect our health. And doctors will tell you that. Amen. And there are many, many verses in the Bible that deal with this and look at this. But I want to look at a few of them and tell you that often in the scriptures, you will hear that God is pronouncing blessings on his people. And he says he wants to make fat our bones. How many know that’s in the Bible? He wants to give you fat bones. Now, we are all always trying to get rid of fat. Most everybody here. Amen. But one thing you do want is to have fat bones. You know, in the Bible times, people weren’t fat. Read your Bible. I can find two instances, and I’ve read the Bible through many times, two instances of fat people. Two. One was an Israeli and one was a non-Israeli. One was… The high priest Eli, he was so fat, he was heavy, he was way overweight. And he was sitting and his eyesight, he was losing his eyesight, he was almost blind. And he was sitting down and because of his weight, he fell. And when he fell, all that weight caused him to break his neck. The other instance is in the book of Judges, and we have a fat king named Eglon. He had a big old fat belly. And Ehud, the left-handed man, that’s a message in itself, one of my favorite ones I’ve preached in the past. When he came, he had a dagger, and he got up close to him and stuck it in. He was so fat, it got stuck in there. But the thing is, is there weren’t many fat people, probably hardly any in Bible times. People were not overweight. But we all know that today it’s a major problem in America. Amen. In America, people have gotten way overweight. So here we are not talking about being fat, being overweight. We’re talking about having fat bones. Your bones is your skeleton. You all know that. Amen? So you need your skeleton or you would not be able to ambulate or move or do anything because, you know, you would just be jello. so that you need a skeleton for that but that’s not the only thing inside those bones what’s in there bone marrow and bone marrow is where healthy blood cells are produced someone whose bone marrow is unhealthy has come under a sickness or a disease and if it doesn’t get corrected they could die from that Amen. We know now it’s very common for people as part of their treatment plan to get a bone marrow transplant because their bone marrow has not been able to be cured of its sickness. So they put the bone marrow of a healthy person that matches and gives them that new bone marrow and they are cured. They get well. Amen. So having healthy bones means two things, being strong in our physical body, our skeleton, and also systemically to be strong. Amen? Now, some arthritis that people get is from wear and tear. It’s from old age. It’s just you’ve used your skeleton, especially if you’ve used certain parts of your skeleton repetitively. In certain sports, they get certain arthritis in certain areas. Amen? People today, who ever heard of carpal syndrome? I never heard of such a thing when I was a kid. But now, why? Because people are using this repetitive all the time with their hands typing on keyboards. Isn’t that right? So you know that arthritis comes from, as you age, wear and tear or an injury. You injured your knee or something, and as you got older, it began to give you problems. But there’s also an arthritis that comes… from your own immune system beginning to attack itself and deform the joints. Amen? And so this is a different type of arthritis. And this can be tied directly to your diet, what comes in your mouth, and to your attitude, what goes out of your mouth. What am I talking about? Let’s turn to Proverbs. There’s many verses, but we’ll give you a few and just give you an idea of what I’m saying. Proverbs 15 and verse 30. What goes in is food. What comes out are our words. And our words come out of our heart. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Proverbs 15, 30. The light of the eyes rejoices the heart and a good report makes the bones fat. You want fat bones? You need to be getting good reports. Turn to 1624. Pleasant words are as a honeycomb. Sweet to the soul and health to the bones. You’re going to get a double blessing there. You’re going to have emotional sweetness. Good words, pleasant words is going to make your emotional well-being better. be at a good temper and a good level and then it’s going to express itself in your physical body. Health to your bones. That means that you’re going to have good bone marrow and you’re going to be healthy and you’re not going to get arthritis. from your body fighting against its own self. Amen? Let’s look at 1722. You will recognize this one immediately. A merry heart does good like a medicine, but a broken spirit does what? Dries the bones. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want dry bones. Dry bones means that they are brittle. It means that they’re subject to injury and arthritis and degeneration. Amen? And if it’s in the bone marrow, then that means that it’s not producing the healthy blood cells we need to be healthy. But a merry heart is good medicine for that. Amen? Flip over to 1430. A sound heart is the life of the flesh. But envy the rottenness of the bones. Hmm. We got to stop here for a moment and see what’s being said. So if you’ve got a sound heart, that means you are emotionally stable. You’re contented. You’re happy. You’ve got peace. You’ve got joy. You’re walking in the love walk as well as the faith walk. Amen. You’ve got life in your body. But if you have a spirit of jealousy and envy and criticalness and fault finding, amen, and bitterness, it is going to directly affect your health and you’re going to have rotten bones. Rotten bones. Now, you know, even as I say this, you know I speak the truth because some of you can think of people that this describes that you know. that they’re always cynical and critical all the time. And when you are around, you can only take them in small doses. You know, after a while, you’ve got to get away from there because you’ve already tried to turn the conversation around a couple times, but it always comes back. They’re always going to come back to the same old murmuring and things, so you have to make an exit because you don’t want their bitterness to affect your peace and joy. You love them, and you’re trying to help them, but when they start pulling you down… You’ve got to say, you know, I’ve got to get away from this. Especially if you are fighting for a miracle or healing in your body. You’ve got to keep yourself edified. You’ve got to be around people that are giving you a good report. Amen. Because people that have all these issues in their heart, they’re always coming out. They’re always coming out. They have never dealt with them to get rid of them, and they’re going to come out until they deal with them. Amen? Now, I don’t know if it’s true or not, because I’m certainly not a medical professional, but my understanding is that your skeleton replaces itself about every 10 years. provided you give it the correct nutrients you have a diet that it has enough calcium in it and vitamin D in it and other minerals and such and you have to start early in life this is especially true for women because once women get older then the calcium levels in their body really become depleted and the estrogen often gets depleted and this causes many women to get osteoporosis You don’t see it much in men. It happens in men, but it’s more common for women. Amen? So the idea is don’t wait till you get 55 or 60 just all of a sudden starting to check up and make sure you’re taking up calcium. I mean, if you haven’t, start then. It’s better than never. but it’s better to do it while you’re younger. You do it in early age because you’re doing that to guarantee in older age that you will have a healthy skeleton. Amen? So you have to take in those good nutrients. But not only is it important to take in the good nutrients that build your bones, it’s important to stay away from things that leach the good calcium out of your bones. I’ll give you just one example, and don’t groan. Soda. Soda, you know, soda pop, Coke, Pepsi, whatever is your favorite, doesn’t matter. Soda has phosphorus in it, and phosphorus leaches calcium out of your bones. So if you’re already not taking enough calcium in your diet and such, and then on top of it you’re a big soda drinker, you’ve got the double whammy. Amen. So that’s what I’m trying to say. Some of these things we have control over. We have control what goes in our mouth and we have control what comes out of our mouth. Amen. So we have to, let’s take this now in the spirit. We need a good spiritual diet. We need a good spiritual diet. We need to be built up on nutrients from God’s Word. We need to hear good preaching and good teaching and good reports to build us up. Amen? We need to feed ourselves outside of church. We need to be in the Word of God. You need to eat every day. And if you’re looking for healing or a miracle, get all the verses in the Bible and go through the Gospels, especially the book of Mark, and read them over and over again or get them on CD or whatever or MP3 and listen to them and build your faith up with a good report. You’re taking your spiritual calcium and your spiritual vitamin D and vitamin K and boron and all of these things that are important. for you to have strong, healthy bones. Amen? And if you will do that, you are going to find out that you are not going to be coming under those sicknesses and diseases. Amen? Wear and tear. This body has got to be changed. It’s getting older, and things happen as you get older. Things wear out, and when they wear out, sometimes things go wrong, and cells go crazy and mutate and all of that. But I’m talking about what we can control. Quickly turn over to the book of Job. I want to show you something interesting in the book of Job. Job 21-23. One dies in his full strength, being holy at ease and quiet. Oh, wow, that’s the way a Christian should go. Being holy at ease and quiet or being peaceful. Verse 24 goes on to say, his breasts are full of milk and his bones are moistened with marrow. But another dies in the bitterness of his soul and never eats with pleasure. Now think about this. He’s contrasting, we’re all going to die. How many know that? If Jesus comes in the rapture, then we won’t die. We will be caught up and be changed. But if he doesn’t come in our lifetimes, we’re all going to die. I want to be like the first guy or the first lady. Amen? I want to have my breast full of milk. And we’re not talking here now literally about a lactating mother with child. We are talking about it is a metaphor for good health. That’s what it means. A metaphor for good health. So this one dies with his or her, whichever the case may be, with their breast full of milk and their… Bones are moistened. The bone marrow is moistened. Amen? They’ve got life. They’re not dried up with bitterness and envy and jealousy. They’re healthy. They die from natural causes. Amen? The body wears out. It’s their time. But they die full of peace and tranquility. That’s a beautiful way. Amen? They die and they’ve got rest in their soul. They’re at ease. I have stood at the bedside of those who were ready to go to heaven, children of God, and there was just a spirit of peace there. And what I did was just read to them out of the book of Revelation where they’re getting ready to go, the city of God and what it looked like, and no more tears and no more death. You know, it was like it’s Sister Juanita when I went to see her just right before she died, and I sang that song, Where the Roses Never Fade. I’m going to a city where the roses never fade. And she had been totally oblivious to anybody being there. She didn’t recognize anybody. Murph didn’t think she even recognized him, did you, Murph? You weren’t sure. It didn’t seem like she did. She kept her head turned one way, just sort of looking with a glazed look on her eye. Murph happened to be standing there on that side that she was looking at. So I’m on the other side. Now she’s looking away from me, and I start singing the song, Where the Roses Never Fade. I felt led to do it. Something in my head kept saying, don’t sing this song. You don’t want to sing this song. No, you can’t sing this song. But I finally thought, I am going to sing this song because it won’t stop telling me to sing it. And I don’t claim to be a singer by any means. and i just felt led to sing it and i sang it and i’m not exaggerating murph is here to be my witness she turned her head and looked straight in my eyes and it was a purposeful move and then as we were leaving twice she tried now she had had a stroke and she was not able to use her limbs but she tried twice to raise her hand off that bed she got it about that high to tell us goodbye And to see a child of God who’s ready to step in that portal of glory that I told you about a few weeks ago. But I’ve also stood at the bedside of someone who had never surrendered to the Lord. And not only that, they had opened their home up to the demonic by letting… fortune teller come in there and do a seance. And it was a neighbor, so I felt compelled out of decency to go and see him. And when I tried to tell him, you know, let me pray for you, I don’t believe that stuff. And he was jerking and jerking and doing all this. It was awful to stand there. And then the next day he died. Oh, let me tell you something. When you walk in the love of God, when you walk in God’s peace, when it’s your time to go, amen, you’re going to go with the peace of God upon your life. And many of you have said goodbye to loved ones and it broke your heart to say goodbye. But you knew that you knew that you will see them again. They were stepping in that portal of glory. Amen. Amen. What an insightful and invaluable word for us today. Walking and healing by love. Do you know that in the book of Acts, the chronicle of the early church, the term love is not used once? However, the terms in one accord and in one mind are found 13 times in the first few chapters. You see, it was not necessary to have to keep talking about love when they were all walking in love. His great teaching on the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 says, Paul stopped midstream to write chapter 13 on the role of love in the operation of the gifts. He made it clear that unless love is the motivator for the gifts, I am nothing, I convey nothing, and I gain nothing. Not even mountain-moving faith can operate fully without love because, and this is the key to getting healed and staying healed, faith works by love. Paul concluded that there now abides faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love, because love never fails. But without love, faith fails and hope dies. This is why it is impossible to walk in faith and not walk in love. And it is why some Christians do not receive their healing and or keep it. Walking in love is both vertical and horizontal. When we know how much God loves us, we believe his word to heal us. And we don’t allow fear to paralyze our faith because perfect love casts out fear. We must also walk in love towards others in the body of Christ. So if you have done all you can do to purify and strengthen your faith and you feel your faith is rising and yet still you have not received your healing, it’s time to check your love walk. Where there is bitterness, criticism, judgmentalism, jealousy, a lack of faith is not the problem, but a lack of love. I learned all these things on my journey to healing that I still must apply every day. And this groundbreaking teaching is a two-CD set and can be ordered for a love gift of $15 or more for the radio ministry. To order Walking in Healing by Love, mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or shop online at soundoffaith.org, where it’s also available on MP3s. Until next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.