Stop the Pandemic

“The Cross Heals”: Stop the Pandemic

God is good. I’m so glad we can all be together today. I’m so grateful for what God is doing. 

There’s healing happening. 

Healing is happening in hearts that have walked in so much pain, conflict.

It’s happening in relationships. 

Restoration is happening. 

People are being set free.

Jesus came for that. 

Jesus didn’t come just to sit with captives. Jesus didn’t come just to pity. The captives. Jesus didn’t come just to give money to captives. Jesus came to set captives free. 

This is His work and this is what the cross is for. 

And we’ve experienced some of that here already. And the healing that God desires most is in the depths of who we are, the places where sin has hurt and caused the most pain and tragedy; the places where you and I have walked in selfishness and greed, in stubbornness, in isolation. 

The cross comes to heal there so that it might spill over into all the other areas of our life, our relationships, our physical health, and even into the culture. There’s this powerful short verse from 3 John where he writes, 

“Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.”

God’s intention is to heal here first, and for that to spill over into all the other areas of our life. Hence our series “The Cross Heals”.

So there’s a word that we’ve all known up until the past couple of years, and this same word, though, all of a sudden has taken on new meaning. It’s one thing to know a word, but it’s quite another to bump up against the reality of it in your life. All of a sudden takes on brand new meaning. And that word is “pandemic” right? It’s not like someone said “pandemic” a couple of years back and we said, “Oh, what is that?” We all knew what it was, but now, all of a sudden, we know really what it is.

And “pandemic” is bigger than just a sickness. It’s bigger than just an outbreak. An outbreak is something that happens in a localized area. There’s also an epidemic that might happen in more like one nation, one specific geographic area. But a pandemic is when some kind of condition or disease spreads across nations or continent, and it begins to even be global, and we’ve experienced that. Over the last two years has been a pandemic. 

And as I’ve said before, the Bible makes a strong connection between the things we have in the physical as pictures of the spiritual. Right? There are pictures in what we see that reveal a greater reality.

So the Bible says that sin is like a disease, but it’s a soul disease. It’s not a physical disease. It’s a soul disease that can sometimes lead to physical disease. 

Don’t get lost with me here. Jesus came to heal our soul diseases, and sometimes even physical diseases, as we see in the Gospels. But that pandemic today of sin is rampant around our world.

I’m not talking about COVID at this point. I’m talking about a pandemic of a manifestation of sin that is different now than it was two years ago. Five years ago. Have you seen it? Have you recognized that that there is this presence across the globe that is different than a few years back? There is a greater darkness. There is a greater resistance to God, there is a greater spirit of the anti-Christ in the world.

Do you recognize that? You see it? You know what I’m talking about? The pandemic is rampant in our world. The spiritual pandemic. And the Bible said that these days would come- Matthew 24. And because iniquity shall abound, sin, the love of many will become cold. 1 Timothy 4:1 “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.”

That is what we’re seeing in our world today. 2 Timothy 3. “But know, this that in the last days, perilous times will come”. Who knew we would live in the days that we’ve read about so much? “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”

The pandemic is raging. The pandemic of sin is rampant in our world today. 

But let me assure you of this: as the church in our day, we are not terrified of this pandemic. We stand strong in who we’ve been called to be and who we are as the Church of the Living God. That the gates of Hell will not prevail against. This is not our day to run. This is not our day to isolate. This is not our day to hide. This is not our day to camo. This is our day to stand up with the bold truth of what Jesus had calls us, has called us to do. And that is proclaim the gospel. Amen? This is who we are.

So we are not afraid of this sin- pandemic. We stand with the message that calls all men to repent. As it says in the Book of Acts that their sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the Lord. It still can happen. There’s still a day of hope. As long as the church is still here, it is a day of hope.

So today’s message is called “Stop the Pandemic.” 

Stop the pandemic. 

Stop the spiritual pandemic that is happening across our world today. 

And the pandemic of sin, this resistance to God’s ways, a rejection of Him as the standard is not just in the world. Boy, it is starting to creep into the big church, church worldwide. It’s starting to creep into the church of America. It’s starting to creep in close. And the church, in many cases, Christians in many cases, are buying into the deception and the lies of the enemy. 

And those lies and that pandemic says, “You can’t really trust God’s Word to be complete in every age. There are sins and dysfunctions and disorders that you just have to accept as real and part of the culture. And you might as well just welcome all of that right on up into the church and get comfortable with it.”

I’m here to say this church will never do that. We will keep that door open so that sinners might come in, but our message will always be: Repent that your sins may be blotted out. The times of refreshing will come from the Lord This will always be our message.

You might come in with a disorder and dysfunction, but our goal will be to preach the gospel, live it out with you, walk with you through it, so that we don’t just pity you and your captivity, but we help you be set free from your captivity. 

So, to get a grasp on all of this, we go back to our board and we go back to some basics.

So, just a reminder of some things: 

God has created you and I as spirit.

You are spirit. 

I didn’t say you are the Spirit of God.

He’s created you as spirit. 

Sometimes we get this backwards. 

Let me put a few more words up here that you and I know, because we’ve talked about them already. 

Soul, our mind, will, and emotions, and body. 

Just some subtle word changes change everything. 

You and I tend to think that we are a body that has a soul and contains a spirit and therefore, we have to yield to the body because it has all these urges and appetites and longings.

We have to give in to it because we think we are a body that has a soul that contains a spirit-wrong. 

We are a spirit that has a soul that lives in a body for a temporary time. 

Because there’ll be a day, unless the rapture occurs, that you and I will be in a place where we will die and our spirit will leave this body and go to be with the Lord.

“To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”, so that that spirit is me. This is just a temporary home that I live in. I don’t owe any allegiance to this. 

I owe all allegiance to the One who has given me life in my spirit.

 And I tell my body, Look, Bud, you conform. You do what I say.

I’m going to put you in your place from time to time, in fact, because I’m going to fast and keep telling you, “you don’t control this. This is not your ride. You’re along for the journey. Get in the back of the van.” 

And I have a soul. I have a mind, I have emotions and I have a will.

But they don’t get to control either. 

Just because I have an emotion doesn’t mean I am that emotion. 

Just because I have a weakness doesn’t mean I am that weakness. 

Just because I have a temptation does not mean I am that temptation.

I am who I am in my spirit. 

And we can probably just stop right there and go home and think about that for a week.

That would be enough right there. 

But we got so much more to do, so much more because if we go back to the story at the beginning of Scripture, we know that this is how God created Adam and Eve. He first created a body for them, and then God breathed into them, and it says, and Adam became a living soul.

 When Spirit went into body, it came alive and not until then. And the Spirit was who Adam was. This is who Eve was in their spirit. They were not their body. They were their spirit. And their mind, will, and emotions or in submission to their spirit-who they were. And God said to them, “I’ve given you all that is here, that you might enjoy it, that I might walk with you and you might walk with me.I have one law, though, that I gave you. I said, ‘Do not eat from the tree that is in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’” God said, “The day that you eat from it, you shall surely die.” You are no longer have life. So, we know the story: They did eat from the tree.

Did they die? And did their body die instantly? No. 

Did their mind, will, and emotions die instantly? That one’s tricky. 

Did their spirit die instantly? Yes. 

There you go. In that moment, their spirit died. 

They were all of a sudden filled with guilt. They all of a sudden isolated. They pulled away from God. They ran and hid. They attempted to cover their own sin with their own covering, and they began to blame one another.

Their spirit was darkened on that day. Their mind, will, and emotions also were affected. Though they were still operating, they were operating in darkness. Their thoughts were dark, their emotions were dark, their behavior was dark because their spirit was dark. And there would come a day that they would die in their body as well. Make a little sense?

Here we are, a spirit that has a soul, mind, will, and emotions that lives in a body. 

But on that day, the Bible says they experienced death. God said that’s what would happen if you disobeyed, there would be death. And that happened.

You and I were born in sin. We followed the DNA pattern of Adam.

Every person ever born after Adam, with the exception of one – Jesus was born with the DNA of sin in them. 

You also chose to sin. And as a result of your sin, you were in death. 

If you’ve not come to Jesus Christ, you’re still in that place of death. 

Oh, you’re walking around physically. Your mind is functioning, your emotions are functioning, and your behavior and your will are functioning, but they’re darkened because your spirit is dark- it’s selfish, it’s bitter, it’s angry, it’s rejected, it’s cut off. It is dwelling in a place of death. And the Bible is clear about that. Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sinned, entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because all sinned.”

You and I are born in a place of death. 

“I thought born means having life?” 

It’s true. You’re born with your body alive. 

You’re born with a soul that functions, but you’re born with a spirit that is cut off from God, that is dead. And as a result of that, because of what the Bible says, we live with a soul disease.

Our soul is diseased.

It is infected and it spreads to others and it spreads to every part of our life. It spreads to our decision making, it spreads through our relationships. It spreads to every part of who we are. And we are “dysfunctional”, to use a modern psychological term. It works. It applies. “Dysfunctional”- unable to function properly apart from Christ.

You and I are filled with being selfish, as I mentioned, angry, bitter. You and I also experience, in this death state, things like anxiety, greed, arrogance, lust, isolation, rejection, self-hatred, self punishment, being obsessive, lying, covering, denying, being plastic, all those things, though we like to “pretty” those things up and just call them normal behavior. They are sin, they are disease, they are dysfunctional, and they are disorders. They are not the natural order of things. This is not how God created life. This is not what His intention was. This is not what you have in Jesus Christ. This is what you have apart from Him. 

The world comes along and sees all of these things that I just mentioned: self-hatred, self-abuse, gender confusion, mental confusion. They see all of those things and they recognize it and they see it and say “Something’s got to be done about this.” But the world has no concept of God. The world has no concept of spirit, soul and body.

So, the world says “Well, uh. You know, I guess that’s just your dysfunction. That’s just your disorder. That’s just your thing. That’s just your permanent condition. This is who you are.” And so, then the world gives you a nice, tidy, sanitized label to go with that. “Oh, so you are a ________.” There’s a myriad of things we could put in the blank there.

You’re this. This is who you are. You always be this. And because you are _____ we’ll actually give you a treatment plan for that, because it’s permanent. It’s who you are. It’s just what you are. The world says all of this is permanent. The world says, “This is just to be expected and, if necessary, we’ll treat it.” This is the best the world has to offer people who are in their diseased soul, dysfunctional self, and disordered life. That’s all they have to offer. “Here’s a TED Talk to watch about it.” “Here’s a book to read about it.” “Here are 12 other people who have the same thing as you.”

“Why don’t you all get together and talk about how diseased, dysfunctional and disorderly, you’re all your lives are.” And so that somehow is supposed to make you feel better about life. But this is the best the world can do. 

And it’s into this that Jesus arrives on the scene. 

It had always been the plan. 

It had always been the purpose.

Even from the day that Adam sinned, God gave a promise. 

Oh, there’s one who’s coming, and the serpent may have bruised the heal, but there’s coming One who’s going to crush his head.

And there’s coming One.

And He will look like what I’m about to do for you. Adam and Eve. 

And God, in that moment, in their nakedness, in their shame, took an animal and sacrificed and made coverings for them and covered their nakedness and shame by the sacrifice of an animal. 

Do you see it in the garden? God was giving the gospel. 

There’s coming One who will be the Lamb of God, who will be sinless and spotless,

and He will be the one who can pay the price and remove the shame and cover those who will come to Him so that their sin might be covered. So they might be free from their soul disease, their dysfunction, their disorders, so that they might not ever have to say, “What I have is permanent, expected, and the best I can hope to do is treat it.”

Now, let’s turn to some Scripture today. 1 Peter 2:24. It describes what Jesus came to do, it describes where the healing begins. 1 Peter 2:24 let’s break it down, referring to Jesus, it says, “Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree,”. Since Jesus when He came, the righteous One who lived sinless among us was the One who took upon Himself the payment for sin, the judgment for sin, so that you and I could be free, free from the soul disease, dysfunction, disorder.

Jesus came and said, “I’ll take it upon Me.” Again, the first part of that verse, “Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree on the cross.” He bore the sins in Himself so that you and I might be free, so we wouldn’t have to carry around the resistance, the rebellion, the guilt, the shame, so we wouldn’t have to just accept all of this as our “new norm”.

But, that’s what so many are told today. “Oh, this is just your new normal. This is just how it’s going to be. Your gender dysfunction and disorder, you were just born that way. It’s the best you can hope for. In fact, you ought to take your dysfunction and disorder and celebrate it and live it and make everybody else adjust to you in it.”

The world says “All your anxiety, dysfunction, and disorders. Look, it’s just who you are. It’s just the way it’s going to be. This is your permanent condition. You might as well lean into it. Lean into your dysfunction, lean into your disorder. It’s what you’ve got. Go ahead and lean into your personality dysfunction and disorder. It’s just normal. It’s just the way it is, the way everybody is. What you’ve got is just a dysfunction, is just a disorder. And this is just you. We can maybe treat it. We could put you with some other people who have the same thing. And somehow this will make you feel better about yourself. Your eating disorder, your obsessive disorder, your behavioral dysfunction and disorder. All of that is just normal and expected.”

Did you know that that list is growing just daily, the list of dysfunctions and disorders? I found one recently that I was just I still shake my head about. Did you know I first heard this was for children, but now it’s for adults as well, that there’s a dysfunction called the Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

Wow. That sounds kind of scary. Sounds like I might need to see somebody for this Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Let me read to you the definition of what this ODD is. “It’s a pattern of negative, hostile and defiant behavior that last at least six months and includes four or more of the following symptoms: often lose his temper, often argues with family and coworkers, actively defies or refuses to comply with rules and laws, deliberately annoys people, blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior, easily annoyed by others, angry and resentful, spiteful or vindictive.” 

That is what the Bible calls a sin nature.

When I first heard this, I heard it was something that children had. “Oh they just have a resistance to being told what to do. Have a little defiance about them. And, you know, that’s a dysfunctional disorder.” Really? It’s been in every child I’ve ever seen. It just comes natural. They didn’t pick it up because they went through some traumatic experience. They didn’t pick it up because they went to some different kindergartens. Somewhere. No, it just came with the package. It comes in the package of being human is part of the sin nature. But by God, that is not to be your permanent condition.

You’re not to go on into life and say, “Well, I just have an Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It’s okay if I punch a coworker.” What? “Well I have it, you know? So, I need some more medication, keep me on more low key all the time.” Really? So that justifies just about everything you got because you got three little letters that sanitized the sin problem in your life, and you call it ODD. It is ODD. It’s for odd.

I’m not trying to downplay these issues. They’re very real issues. I’m telling you, we’re born with a soul disease, dysfunctional and with disorder. But the gospel says “This does not have to be permanent. This is not what has to be expected. And this is not something that you treat. It’s something that you get freed from by the power of the gospel.”

This is why Jesus came. Let’s go to the second part of verse 24 here.

Jesus bore these “that we, having died to sins might live for righteousness.” 

This gets intensely personal. This is meant for every one of us here in this room. And anybody who hears these words, you, by the power of the gospel, can be free from this. So that it’s not just something you carry around as your permanent disorder and label but you actually die to it.

You don’t live in that death anymore. You are cut off from it. You die to it because Jesus died for it. Jesus bore in His body all of this. By His stripes we are healed. You don’t have to carry around your dysfunction, disorder, and disease. You and I are called in to life. In this life we are forgiven. Let me just ask you this, because people misunderstand this term, even this whole idea of forgiven. Have you ever thought, man, it would sure be nice if I never had to think about my past anymore. All the things I’ve done, all the failures, all the mistakes, all the regrets. It would be nice if I don’t have to deal with that. But boy, I sure do. If you ever thought, “Man, it’d be nice to not ever have to feel guilt and shame again. Man, it’d be awesome if I could just know that my standing with God was at peace, that I never had to even fear that I had sinned too greatly, gone too far, or somehow He had turned against me. It’d be nice to know that I could put my head on my pillow at night with some certainty of without having to pray some prayer again, make sure I didn’t mess up on too much. It’d be nice if I could just know that it’d be nice if I could know that I actually have true peace with God. It’d be nice if I could just know that He’s for me. It’d be nice if I could just know that He really smiled on me, that He favored me, that He would bless me. It’d just be nice to know that.”

Look here, in Jesus Christ, when you received His forgiveness, that is all that you received. Every bit of that.

Because when He died for your sins and you received Him into your life, your sins, the ones you committed, the ones you commit today and the ones you’ll commit tomorrow have already been paid for and forgiven! You already have that peace with God. And you say, “Well, it doesn’t feel that way yet.” There you go letting feelings back up to drive your bus again.

Remember, you are not a body with a soul, and you are not a soul with a body. You are a spirit and you tell your mind, will, and emotions, “Back of the bus, Bud. Spirit’s driving here and God has said My Spirit has been forgiven by the blood of Jesus. 

The Bible so bold in all of this, and you and I are so dull to some of this sometimes because the Bible also says you and I are now blameless. We are favored. That we are accepted completely, not in our sin, but freed from our sin, that we are blessed with every blessing that Jesus has. This is who you and I are now- alive. The Bible also says that you and I have actually been given new desires.

If you are a believer, there are some things that you desire now that you didn’t before. Don’t you desire to pray to God and know Him? Yeah. That’s because His spirit is in you. He’s redeemed you. 

Do you desire to read His Word and learn from Him? Of course you do, because He’s put that new life in you.

Do you desire to obey him? Yeah. 

Do you desire to walk in his ways? Sure. 

Are you struggling along the way? Probably. 

But He has put new desire in you. 

Hebrews 10 says “‘This is the covenant that I will make with him after those days,’ says the Lord. I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds I will write them.” 

And He adds this: “Their sins and their lawless deeds. I will remember no more.”

God is giving you new desires. And the more you take in that you have died to this and are alive to this, that written law on your heart will begin to just pound more and more. You say, “God, I’ve got to have more. God, I want to pursue You. God, I want to know You. God, I want to pray more. God, I want to worship more. God, I want to surrender more.”

That’s because you’re alive in Him. So, that’s just awesome. How do I get that? And less of this? This part of the verse says “We having died to since might live for righteousness,” but it goes on.

It says, “by His stripes you were healed.” Every word of scripture is critical. Every word. Don’t pass over or dismiss any one of them. God chose at the right time to bring His Word to us. And He chose for it to come alive. At the time when the Greek language was operational and in function because the Greek language has some beauty to it that sometimes we miss in our modern English, especially when it comes to verb usage.

In the Greek, verb usage described when things happened: If it is happening now, if it happened in the past, but still has an effect, if it happened in the past that it was complete, or if it’s going to happen in the future. 

The Greek word here in this verse: “by whose stripes” actually in the Greek. It just says “you”. And then it it just has “Were healed” as one word. 

“By his stripes healed” and the verb usage is this in the Greek, if you’re going to get all technical, they would call the aorist tense and the punctiliar tense, meaning that it happened at a point in time and it happened once and it was done it was finished.

It happened right there. You see where I’m headed? By whose stripes you were at a point in time healed. Well, what is that point? Well, it could be that this point was when Jesus died, and that is when the stripes were inflicted, and in that moment, the provision for healing was completed once and done. But for you and I personally, it happened the day that you chose to receive and believe in that blood and mercy for you.

And in that moment, you were healed. 

It happened once at a point in time. You were healed in the moment? You believed a change occurred? A change occurred in your standing and in your identity or you may not have realized the extent of it.

How many of you remember your own physical birth? I didn’t think so. How many of you are aware of the extent of what your physical birth was like? Nobody remembers the suffering of your mother. Nobody remembers the doctor’s faces. Nobody remembers where you were. Where she was, where your dad was. Nobody remembers the time period. Nobody remembers what the room looked like. You don’t remember all those things? No. But you heard about it from somebody, I bet. And you didn’t have to look far to realize, hey, I was born! You’re here.

You don’t have to look further than the Word of God that tells you the day you received His grace. By faith, when you received the blood of Jesus, you were born and you were healed. You, in that moment, became forgiven, blameless, favored, accepted, blessed, and filled with new desires. This is who you became in that moment. This is what changes you.

Something changed in that moment. And so you, as a believer in Jesus Christ, in spite of what the world might say about your current struggles, in spite of what the world might say, that you’ve got a disease, you’ve got a dysfunction, you’ve got a disorder, and it’s going to always be there. You can expect it. You need to treat it.

You and I say, “No”, by the blood of Jesus. I am a new person in him, by the blood of Jesus, I was healed. It happened. I changed. And now, I am a new person. I am who I am in my spirit, not my soul. And for sure, not my body. You were healed.

It is saddening and maddening to see believers in Jesus still believing in the enemy’s deception that they can’t live righteously, that they can’t live forgiven, that they can’t live favored, that they can’t live blessed. And they have no right or new desires within them. I’m sick of the enemy doing that. I’m sick of seeing him have his way among God’s people and us living less than the life we called to in Him.

We died to this life, and we have been given now the gift of righteousness and new life. We were healed. And I and you have to go back to that continually.

And we have to intentionally renounce the lies that tell us where anything less than this we have to call them out. We have to pray against them, do warfare against them, and stand in who we are in Jesus Christ, and help set captives free and proclaim to a world: “You don’t have to live in your dysfunction. You can be functional in the spirit of God.

You can have new life within you.”

Don’t miss this moment. Because applying this truth is what will set a captive free. This is what it all comes down to. This is where life is. Let me give you a promise as we wrap up today. The last chapter in the Old Testament- Malachi 4:2 gives this promise “But to you who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in His wings,” To you who fear my name, to you who will reverence, yield to submit, to call out, to repent before to you who will fear my name, there is a Sun of Righteousness rising up- it’s Jesus Himself. For those who will fear His name, the Sun is rising, and with Him there is healing in His wings. 

I don’t know what the label is, the dysfunction is that has been whispered to you by the enemy. I don’t know what that has looked like.

I can imagine because I’ve been in that spot. I’ve listened to it. I know what it’s like to crawl back into the bed and not want to get out again. I know what all that’s like to be covered over in guilt and condemnation and shame, but this promise says that we have been healed because of what Jesus has done and because of our faith in Him, and that those who trust in Him, those who will believe in Him, those who will keep their faith locked on Him, not in themselves, those who will believe that what His Word declares is true.

Not my word, not our self assessment of life, not what the world says. Those who will believe that name, those who will believe in that promise for their marriage, for their own mental emotional state, those who will say, “I’m living in the midst of the dysfunction right now.” Those who will cry out. However, those who will believe, those who will trust, He has promised that He will rise up like the sun on a new day, He will bring new life, He will bring hope, He will bring change and He will bring healing.

Amen. Let’s just make it real personal as we close today.

For you, what’s the message that the enemy has been whispering to you? 

What’s the dysfunction disorder and disease that he wants you to think can never be removed? 

What’s the situation? 

Is it something in you or something in a relationship? 

Is there something about your future? Is it something in your marriage?

Is with your kids? Is it your family?

Is it what’s happening in our world today?

It’s time to renounce every one of those lies in Jesus name. It’s time to stand against them. It’s time for us to be the church who stand up and know that the gates of hell will not prevail against us where we stand on the authority of Jesus. It’s time for us to stand in faith. It’s time for us to believe.

It’s time for us to be who He has called us to be and nothing less. Don’t give in to his deception. You are not your disorder. You are not your dysfunction. You have been freed in Jesus name. You were healed. 

You might need to begin the process of renewing your mind. You might need to begin the process of renewing your emotions.

You might need to begin the process of changing your behavior. But this is what we do as God’s people. We don’t come to a moment like this and stare at a truth and think, “That’s sweet.”

We come to a moment like this and we repent, and we change. So that we might see the Sun of Righteousness rising up in our faith in our family so that lives might be changed. 

Bow your heads with me.  

Father, I just ask you to forgive us for living so far less than what You’ve called us to. 

So far less than what it means to be dead to our past and alive to who we are in You. Forgive us for thinking we’re alive to our disorder and so dead all of your blessings. 

God, forgive us for that. We repent of that today, and we make the conscious, willful choice to believe that we were healed. It is done. It is finished. And we will stand in that. 

God, I know as we do, you’ll begin to heal places of darkness, and pain, and fear, and anxiety, and bitterness, and self-hatred, self punishment. You’ll begin to set captives free and we’ll be different and truly times of refreshing will come. Healing will happen, and stories of that healing will overflow. I pray that be so, Lord.

I pray that this place, this church, is where that happens. Stories so powerful, so numerous that we just can’t even stop the flow of the radical change that You have brought into our life. The places where your cross truly has healed us. So we repent we choose to believe and we will walk in the healing that is ours in our spirit, to transform our mind, to change our emotions.

To change our behavior, and to spill over into every other part of our life. In Jesus name, we pray with conviction and boldness and the awareness that we are now more than conquerors. Amen.