I have lost many friends to cancer in the last few years, and I know so many more who are currently stricken with this horrendous disease and who are battling it with their very lives. It grieves me beyond words that so many people – so many Christians – will turn to the world of chemotherapy for their healing rather than simply accept that GOD is their healer.

Isaiah 53:5 says it very clearly – “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.”

And our salvation is made clear in Isaiah 53:10 – “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see his seed, He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”

If we can believe that Jesus is our Saviour and that through His shed blood we were redeemed back to our Father, forgiven for our sins and saved from His coming wrath, then WHY can’t we believe that He has also healed our bodies? Why do we insist on turning to the world to heal us?

When Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden after they’d sinned against God, they lost favour with Him. Oh, He still loved them, but there was “sin” between Him and them and He couldn’t be with them like He was before because God is Holy and cannot be in the presence of sin. He couldn’t bless them like He did before; He was no longer the Lord over their lives like He was before. They were exiled into the government of the devil who had tricked them into sinning against God, and whose law still controls this world. The freedom, wholeness and blessings of God no longer belonged to Adam and Eve.

“Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?” … Romans 7:1

And that is the state of majority of the people in our world today; they don’t belong to God and so their only hope for healing is in the world. They’re lost and separated from God just like Adam and Eve were separated from God and His outpoured love.

But we DO belong to God. His promises belong to US, and we CAN stand on them and expect to see them materialize in our lives. God has removed the curse from us through Jesus’ death because He became the curse for us on the cross.

“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” … Galatians 3:13

And Jesus redeemed us back to God our Father through His resurrection, Romans 8:34.

That means that Isaiah 53:5 isn’t just a nice verse, but it’s a powerful statement of our life in Christ.

“…by His stripes we ARE healed.”

So, if we are healed, then why do we get sick? How can cancer kill and destroy so many lives?

We need to understand that our bodies are not just for our own pleasure, but they are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” … 1 Corinthians 3:16

Therefore, we have a responsibility to care for our body and to keep it healthy. And when we get to a point where our body becomes ill, we need to make some changes to bring it back into a healthy state – and that does NOT mean pumping it full of poisons like the ones that are in cancer treatments. We get our body healthy by changing our lifestyle, cutting out all the impure foods such as packaged, canned and fast foods, and sugars and meat products and by products that are infested with chemicals and toxins because these are the culprits that cause the illnesses in the first place.

We need to return to eating food that God gave us to eat, to foods that are free of all toxins because these foods will build up the weak immune system, and a healthy immune system will fight off all disease. God healed us and gave us back the right to a healthy body, but we have to maintain the body and feed it good, wholesome food. We cannot just accept the healing and then treat our body poorly.

For example, if I take a hammer and begin to hit my finger with it, my finger will break, bleed and be in tremendous pain. If I cry out to God and accept His healing then I AM healed and with some attention my finger will be restored. But if I continue to hit the hammer on my finger, I will never see that healing and eventually I could lose my finger.

Many of us have become lazy and we want God to do everything for us, but we have to grow up sometime and begin to take care of ourselves – and that begins with knowing that we are healed and then becoming responsible for how we treat our body so it stays that way.

I know what I’m talking about because I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to have cancer and suffer from pain and distress, to subject myself to surgery and then learn that they “didn’t get it all”, and “sorry, but you only have a few months to live unless you do immediate chemo and then we might only be able to give you another year or so.” I’ve experienced the anguish and the torment. I’ve also experienced the peace when I accepted beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had healed me, and that all I had to do was get my body to line up. It wasn’t easy, and in fact, at times it was very challenging – but I did it!

I am now cancer-free because I turned to God’s ways and not the world’s ways.  I pray that everyone reading this will realize that with God all things are possible, and that by His stripes we ARE healed. But we have to choose where our healing will come from because that source will be the Lord over our life.

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” … John 10:10