He Paid the Bill

If you or your loved one has been diagnosed with a medical condition, chances are, you are also being confronted with mounting medical bills. And health care is expensive. Globally, health care cost is projected to continue skyrocketing. In 2016 researchers found that America spent almost twice as much on health care compared to other high-income countries like Australia.1 In 2017 total health care expenditure in America came up to $3.5 trillion or 17.9 percent of the US GDP.2

Maybe your take-home pay is just enough to cover your monthly living expenses and what you have been diagnosed with has put a strain on your finances. You have maxed out your credit cards to pay for hospitalization, medication, and all the scans you had to undergo, and you are now mired in debt. Perhaps you have no health insurance because you are between jobs and cannot afford it. And now, while the persistent high fever you have been suffering from worries you, you have not seen a doctor as the potential cost of seeing one worries you even more.

Beloved, do not be dismayed by all the accumulating bills.

The Lord is not just Jehovah Rapha, the Lord your healer, He is also Jehovah Jireh, the Lord your provider.

The Bible promises that He

will liberally supply (fill until full) your every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 4:19 AMP

I pray that you will be so much more conscious of the abundance of His inexhaustible supply than of the demands on your finances. Don’t ever feel like you have to handle the pressures all by yourself and take care of all the medical bills while ensuring your family has food to eat and clothes on their backs. Do not worry, for your heavenly Father knows you need all these things (Matthew 6:32). Let go of your worries and keep your eyes on Him. He will take care of you.

It Doesn’t Matter How Long It Has Been

Did you know the Bible records the story of a woman who found herself in a serious financial crisis because of her long-term health condition (Mark 5:25-34)? She suffered from a hemorrhage or “flow of blood” and had been constantly bleeding for an extended period. We don’t know what caused her condition. Her abnormal bleeding could have been caused by fibroids, hypothyroidism, or even cancer of the reproductive tract.

Whatever the cause, we know it was a terrible condition that put her through much agony for twelve long years. We also know she had gone to many different doctors in her bid to be cured and had endured much suffering at their hands. Over the years, she spent everything she had to pay for her treatments, but she did not get better. In fact, her condition grew worse.

As you read this, maybe you can identify with this woman’s predicament. Maybe you have been battling a medical condition for years, and your bank account has been completely depleted because of undergoing all the treatments the experts said would help you get better. You have been put through so many tests, been subject to so many probes, and tried so many “revolutionary cures,” you have lost count. But each time the treatment failed, and all you have been left with is a ballooning debt and a condition that has deteriorated despite your best efforts.

Perhaps it has come to the point where you are tired of trying and tired of hoping. The disease has ravaged your body and you have neither the will nor the finances to continue fighting.

If that describes you, please know it is not by coincidence you are reading these words. I believe the Lord wanted you to read this because He loves you. Do not give up.

Even if you have gone to specialist after specialist and tried various treatments to no avail, there is still hope!

And if you think you already know all about this woman’s story, please keep reading. I have studied and preached it umpteen times and thought I knew it inside out. But the Lord began to highlight a certain phrase to me over and over again until I saw something I had never seen before.

I really believe what I am about to share with you will help you receive your breakthrough both in your body and in your finances. Here is the apostle Mark’s account:

When she heard about Jesus, she came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment. For she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” Immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction. And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out of Him, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My clothes?” But His disciples said to Him, “You see the multitude thronging You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” And He looked around to see her who had done this thing. But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her,

“Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.” — Mark 5:27-34

If you have been believing God for healing, you might be thinking,

If only I could see Jesus with my own eyes or hear Him with my own ears, then I could be healed. The apostle Luke records that “great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by Him of their infirmities” (Luke 5:15). These multitudes heard Jesus themselves and they were healed. They heard, and they were healed.

But the apostle Mark’s account about the woman with the issue of blood doesn’t say, “When she heard Jesus.”

It says, “When she heard about Jesus.” Hallelujah! Do you know what that means? It means we can have the same faith this woman had just by hearing about Jesus. We may not see or hear Jesus in person the way the people at the Mount of Beatitudes or in the synagogue in Capernaum did. But just by hearing about Jesus, we can receive the same faith and healing breakthrough the woman did — even if the conditions have been in our bodies for years, and even if doctors and expensive treatments have failed!

What You Hear About Jesus Matters

Now what do you think the woman heard about Jesus that was so powerful?

For twelve years she had been bleeding. According to Levitical law, she was “unclean.” Whoever touched her or even touched anything she had sat on was also considered unclean (Leviticus 15:19-25). This means for twelve years she had been shunned and ostracized. For twelve years she was not allowed to touch anyone so she would not defile them. Can you imagine living a life where every single day, you are painfully reminded of how unclean, how impure, and how disqualified you are?

But then she heard something about Jesus.

She heard something that caused hope to spring up in her jaded heart and gave her the faith to believe she would be made well simply by touching His clothes.

She heard something that gave her the boldness and resolve to press her weakened body through an entire crowd, even though Levitical law forbade her from touching anyone.

Most of all, she heard something that caused her to believe that in spite of the fact she was unclean, she could receive healing. That is what I want you to hear about our Lord Jesus today.

In spite of the fact you are unclean, in spite of the fact you have failed, in spite of the fact there is sin in your life, you can receive healing!

Don’t allow man’s traditions to keep you away from your loving Savior. Come to Him just as you are. You do not need to do anything to qualify yourself. You do not need to wash yourself clean before you can approach Him. You do not have to long for His touch from a distance, wishing you were good enough or pure enough. Come to Him with all your sins and all your burdens — He will make you clean. The same Jesus who gave His body for your healing also gave His blood for your forgiveness. Just come to Him!

You Are Qualified for Every Blessing

Years ago, when I first started preaching, I taught on why Christians are not healed. One of my spiritual heroes back then had said, “There’s nothing wrong with God and nothing wrong with His Word. When you don’t receive from God, there’s something wrong with you.” So that’s what I taught my church too. I wanted the people in my congregation healed and whole, and that’s why I taught them a list of reasons they were not receiving their healings, but that list just kept growing.

One day, when I was teaching this subject really strongly, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit on the inside of me saying, “Stop disqualifying My people!”

I felt sad the Lord would say that to me, and I told Him, “But Lord, I love Your people. I want them well.”

And the Lord said, “Then stop disqualifying My people.”

I countered, “But Lord, I am not disqualifying them. I am trying to qualify them for Your healing.”

As I said that to the Lord, my eyes were opened, and I repented.

I cannot qualify anyone for healing, and neither do I need to try.

God has already qualified us through the blood of His Son.

Let me show you what the Word of God says:

Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. — Colossians 1:12-14

Today you and I can give thanks to the Father who has qualified us. We are already qualified to partake of every blessing.

And not only that, He has already delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Don’t you love how the Bible says it? We are now in the kingdom of the Son of His love, and that means the devil no longer has any hold over us. He has no power over us. He has no authority to rob us of our health.

Whatever sin you might have committed, whatever mistakes you might have made, stop disqualifying yourself. Nothing you can do is so powerful it can wash away the finished work of Christ.

Maybe you don’t think you deserve to be healed. Maybe you think you deserve this sickness in your body. After all, you chose to fill your body with all that unhealthy junk food for years. After all, you have not been exercising. After all, that sickness is a result of your bad decisions.

Am I saying you shouldn’t eat healthily or take care of your body? Absolutely not. What I am saying is that even if you have made mistakes, you don’t have to disqualify yourself. That’s what grace is about —

grace is for the undeserving!

There is nothing wrong with God, nothing wrong with His Word, and definitely nothing wrong with you because Jesus has effectively and perfectly removed all your sins through His blood.

Now receive your healing. You can boldly declare, “Yes” and “Amen” to all the promises of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). He has already qualified you to freely receive His healing, His provision for your financial needs, His favor, His joy, and His peace.

1. Irene Papanicolas, Liana R. Woskie, and Ashish K. Jha, “Health Care Spending in the United States and Other High-Income Countries,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 319, no. 10 (2018): 1024–39, https:// doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.1150.
2. “National Health Expenditure Data: Historical,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, accessed January 7, 2019, https://www.cms.gov /Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports /NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical .html.

Excerpted with permission from Eat Your Way to Life and Health by Joseph Prince, copyright Joseph Prince.

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Your Turn

Are you in need of healing? Are the bills piling up and leaving you weighed down with worry about how they will get paid? Seek Jesus! Trust Him for all that you need! Come share your story with us on our blog. We want to hear from you!