Part II – Healing is the life of Christ

 

by A.B. Simpson

 

 

Similarly, in my ignorance I thought that healing would be an it. I thought that the Lord would take me, like the old run-down clock, wind me up and set me going again, much as He might recycle a machine. It was not so at all. I found it was Jesus Himself coming into my life, giving me what I needed at the moment.

 

I wanted to have a great stock of healing so that I could feel rich. I wanted to have a great store of healing laid up for many years so that I
would not be dependent upon God the next day. But God never gave me such a store. I never had more holiness or healing at one time than I needed for that hour. God said, “My child, you must come to Me for the next breath. I love you so dearly I want you to come all the time. If I gave you a great supply of health, you would do without Me and would not come to Me so often. Now you have to come to Me every second and rest in Me every moment.”

 

God gave me a great fortune. He placed millions and millions at my disposal, giving me a checkbook and this one condition: “You never can draw more than you need at the time.” Whenever I have needed to make a withdrawal, there is the name of Jesus on the check! My frequent requests have brought more glory to Jesus. They have kept His name before the heavenly world. And God has been glorified in His Son.

 

I had to learn to take my spiritual life from Jesus every moment, to breathe Himself in as I breathed myself out. So moment by moment for
the spirit and moment by moment for the body we must receive. You ask, “Is not that a terrible bondage, to be always so dependent?” What? A bondage to be dependent on the One you love – your dearest Friend? Oh, no! it comes naturally, spontaneously, like a fountain, without consciousness, without effort. True life is always easy and overflowing.

 

And now, thank God, I have Him. I have not only what I have room for, but that which I have not room for, but which I shall have room, moment by moment, as I go into the eternity before me. I am like the little bottle in the sea, as full as it can be. The bottle is in the sea, and the sea is in the bottle. So I am in Christ, and Christ is in me. Besides that bottleful of ocean, there is a whole ocean beyond. While it remains in the ocean, that bottle can be filled over and over again.

 

 

 

Christ must be our faith

 

 

The question for each of us then is not “What do I think of divine healing?” but “What do I think of Christ?”

 

“You were healed by faith,” a friend once remarked to me.

 

“Oh, no,” I objected. “I was healed by Christ.” What is the difference? There is a great difference. There came a time when even faith seemed to come between me and Jesus. I thought I should have to work up the faith, so I labored to get faith. At last I thought I had it and that if I put
my whole weight upon it, it would hold. I said, when I thought I had faith, “Heal me.” I was trusting myself, in my own heart, in my own faith. I was asking the Lord to do something for me because of something in me, not because of something in Him.

 

So the Lord allowed the devil to try my faith, and the devil devoured it like a roaring lion. I found myself so broken down that I did not think I had any faith. God allowed faith to be taken away to the point I felt I had none.

 

And then God seemed to speak to me gently, saying, “Never mind, My child, You have nothing, but I am perfect power, I am perfect love. I am faith, I am your life, I am the preparation for blessing and then I am the blessing, too. I am all within and all without and all in all forever.”

 

It is to have “the faith of God,” as Jesus exhorted His disciples (Mark 11:22). “The life which I now live in the flesh I live – ” not by faith on the Son of God, but – “by the faith of the Son of God” (Galatians 2: 20). That is it! It is not your faith or my faith. We have no faith in ourselves, any more than we have life or anything else in ourselves. We have nothing but emptiness. We must be open and ready to let Him do it all. We must take His faith as well as His life and healing and simply say, “I live by the faith of the Son of God.”

 

 

Upcoming: Part III – Have you yielded?

 

(1 Peter – Part 34): Casting All Your Cares Upon Him by A.W. Tozer