Hello Beloved Reader! I’m Faith and thank you for visiting me today! Today we are continuing with PART TWO of this healing series.

When it comes to healing, there can be a lot of questions. If I haven’t covered a particular question that you would like an answer to, then please leave a comment and the Oasis Team will do our best to find a correct and suitable answer for you.

PART ONE of this series went over what healing is, two aspects of healing, that healing is Biblical, and a couple of questions on healing. PART TWO is going over a few more questions: Is it acceptable to go to doctors and physicians? What about healing for people with mental disorders? What about going to see a counselor or psychiatrist?

Let’s get started.

Some people do not go to doctors for the sake of making a religious point. Sad to say, but this has not helped the death toll from sickness to lower. That is not to say in some cases this shouldn’t be done, but it should not be done with the sole basis of making a point.

Jesus did not command people to stay away from doctors. After all, Luke (one of Jesus’ disciples) was a physician. Doctors can be very wise in their understanding of the human body and indeed can be used as instruments for God’s glory in that aspect. But they cannot be the only source of healing. Take the woman with the issue of blood in Luke 8:43. It could be said that no one could heal her because of their lack of knowledgeable breakthroughs during that time, but even still, that proves doctors do not know all. Even today there are incurable diseases and ailments that doctors cannot seem to heal. Therefore, we cannot and should never put full trust in doctors. They did not create the human body and they most certainly do not know all there is to know about it. However, there is One who can identify with having all knowledge and creating all creation.

That being said, doctors should be accepted as a second opinion if needed. God can and will heal a person, but who knows? Maybe there is a doctor, a nurse, or even another patient that needs to be witnessed to. It might take going to the hospital to do that. So, a person should take their need to God first, seeking Him for His guidance in what should be done.

To heal means to become healthy again, but it also means to become sound again.

Now, “sound” can mean without disease, but it also means solid, stable, and showing good judgment and sense. This could represent the healing for mental states that are not sound such as mental disorders, depression, anxiety, and broken hearts. (Psalms 147:3 | Psalms 34:18) Healing for these things goes much deeper for with this healing comes a great change in a person’s life, not just outwardly, but inwardly as well. It changes a person’s mental state, in turn changing their physical actions.

Is it alright to go to psychiatrists and counselors?

God is the ultimate standard here. A person should never receive help like this from a human before they consider God and His counsel first. (Proverbs 19:21) There are many places in Proverbs where it speaks of having counselors and wise advice. It’s not a sin to receive counsel. It’s not a sin to ask for help. However, God is, again, the ultimate standard. With everything that is heard, with every word of advice received, it would be best to seek the counsel of the Lord for truth to those statements. Understand that those who give counsel should be dealing with the Lord first as well. Their words should stand with God and never against Him if a person is to get true help from them.

These healing blogs may be technical and frank, but I will state this: God is love. He has only the best interests in mind and will never try to destroy His people. Healing is in His will. His children need not fear sickness and disease.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. I hope it has helped you in some way. Before we close, I want to introduce to you the Healing Course on Oasis Academy if you haven’t seen it yet. You can click the following link to take this course and get a greater/better understanding on healing in the Bible. (https://www.oasisministries.com/courses/healing-scriptures/) You can also click this link to listen to one of Bro. Anthony’s sermons on healing. (Healing Scriptures Sermon)

Thank you again! God be with you and guide you in every minute of every day!

Faith Cross

Hello, Beloved Reader! I’m Faith. Thank you for visiting me today! I have a passage of Scripture I want to share with you.

“And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word,

By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:29-31)

There is more to this prayer, but this is the part I want to focus on today. The Apostles were asking for boldness to preach the Gospel. Not only that, but also to be the hands and mouth of God. The Lord loves to use people and I’m sure He was smiling down right then at this prayer. The Apostles wanted God to flow through them so that they might help heal the sick and witness with signs and wonders. In other words, they were asking God to perform miracles through them.

There are some people who don’t believe in the healing power of God. Some don’t believe miracles happen in this day and age. But, they fail to realize that they themselves are a miracle in essence.

The Bible explains that the world was created by God. Given our knowledge of science today, it is said Earth is one planet out of a solar system of 9 major planets that orbit the sun. The sun has just enough pull on Earth to keep it in orbit, but the Earth moves too fast to be pulled into the sun. Any closer to the sun and life would burn up; any further away and we all would freeze. It is said that we have discovered galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. Modern science suggests that the vacuum and darkness of the starry universe is limitless and grander than the mind can fathom.

But now let’s travel back to Earth.

According to science, every bit of matter in this universe is made up of one of the smallest things known to mankind: atoms. To give you an idea of how small they are, think of a cell in the human body. One single cell cannot be seen without a very strong microscope. You have about 100 trillion cells in your body and for every single one of those you have about 100 trillion atoms in each!

I promise, I’m not here to give you a science lesson, but to inform you that you are made up of a number of atoms that you can not even comprehend. Every single thing is made up of atoms and if we tried to understand such a magnificent number of how many atoms exist, our brains would burst.

Now, let me ask you a few questions: Did you create your atoms? Did you know how many atoms it took to make up your skin, your hair, your eyes? How small is the atom? How vast is the universe? How magnificent are the things we know nothing about and can never hope to know until we cross from time to eternity?

Miracle – a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency

Science not based on Biblical history can try to explain the existence of all things from a humanistic point of view, but it always comes up short in some form or another. Yet, when a divine being is the base of all creation, things seem to make more sense.

That is why I say you are a miracle in its essence. For God, who knows every atom needed for the possibility of existence, put each atom in their perspective places to make you and your world.

And the very same God who placed the entirety of the universe into motion, lives inside the heart of born-again man.

How is this possible? Why would such a grand and eternal being place His power and magnitude into the heart of weak and mortal man. I cannot even tell you how such a miracle can unfold, but I can tell you of the greatest miracle of all.

The greatest miracle is not our existence and not the placement of the stars. It’s not the brilliance of the sun or the mystery of the universe.

The greatest miracle is God’s love.

Despite the constant rejection, blasphemies, sin, iniquities, the never-ending hatred, vile words, ludicrous acts of violence and terror, and all the horrors men have caused one another throughout thousands of years, God’s love has remained faithful to the soul of man.

It is by nothing we have done that He loves us. We cannot earn such love, nor be separated from it. There is nothing that can destroy it, and nothing that can waver it. His love is infinite, steadfast, unconditional, insurmountable, and completely undeserving to any human being. Yet, such a miracle of love is given to us freely, without any reason of our own, even as we betray that love.

It is because of this love that we are alive. This love holds us in deepest of troubles and carries us through the roughest of storms. Even as we were sinners, it protected us. This love heals us, strengthens us, encourages us, and is our best friend. The very same love that created everything in existence, lives on the inside of us. With God in us, we have power for signs and wonders as evidence of this love working through us to help those in need.

If that’s not a miracle, then I don’t know what could be.

Faith Cross

Hello, Beloved Reader! I’m Faith. Thanks for visiting me today! In this post, we will be continuing with Part 2 of our Salvation series and the question we will be answering is this: Why is salvation important?

Imagine for a moment, that you enjoy ice skating. From the time you were born, you were on the ice and it’s all you’ve ever known. There’s a river not too far from your house and you like to go there when it’s frozen over to skate the day away. One particular winter, when you go down to the river, you stay a bit longer than you meant to. It’s alright though. When you get home, everything seems fine with your family, and the next day you go out skating again.

This time you stay longer than you did yesterday. This happens more and more as you get better and better at skating. But while you are skating, there are people at home who are suffering without you. They have to take care of things you normally would because you are spending all your time enjoying yourself. Yet, you don’t see it, for you’re too caught up in the pleasure of skating. You even miss the special days, like holidays and birthdays, that come by while you are out on the ice practicing different moves and tricks for hours on end.

One day, you make your way onto the ice. It’s particularly warm today, but you ignore the threat of the spring weather trying to ruin your fun. You get on the ice and start practicing your spin. The world twirls about you as you turn and the wind nips at your nose. You haven’t noticed it yet, but instead of staying in one spot, you have started spiraling toward the center of the frozen river. You also haven’t noticed that the ice here is thinner than you think it is.

When half your body plunges into the freezing abyss, you find yourself scrambling to get out, but the ice that was once your friend keeps breaking. As you panic, it continues to betray you, forcing you to stay in the cold, cold water. This ice has held you up for a season, but now the season is changing and revealing what’s really going on under the surface of the pleasurable ice. Repaying your affection with an evil, murky trap.

This is where you find yourself in need of a Savior. For without one, you are doomed to freeze in the deep, icy blue that surrounds you.

I guess you’ve figured this out by now, but let me explain anyway. We aren’t talking about ice skating here. Now, ice skating may not be a sin, but I’m using it to represent sin in my story. 

In my story, you had been on the ice since you were born. We, ourselves, are born into sin. (Romans 5:12. John 3:3.). Sin is something that satisfies our fleshly desires, whether that be executing anger by hurting someone’s feelings, or stealing something from a store because it’s easier than working to pay for it.

The ice pleased the fleshly desire to ice skate. A person looks at sin and sees it appeals to the fleshly lust of whatever their evil heart wishes to accomplish (Jeremiah 17:9). Sin gives pleasure to the flesh, so people do it. 

Sin takes you further than you want to go, keeps you longer than you want to stay, and costs a lot more than you want to pay. Bro. Anthony has referenced this saying many times.

In the story, it started making you stay longer than you meant to. In turn, you started dismissing the people in your life, only deeming yourself as most important. Once you were okay with that fact, it started taking you further and further into the middle of the sin. Then finally, when you were so far into sin, it stopped being fun. See, sin is fun for a season. After that season, its mask breaks and reveals its true intention to destroy you. In turn, costing your life, which is a lot more than you would want to pay.

It wants to destroy you before you see there is a better way.

This is why salvation is so important. We have a part of us that is eternal. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says that the spirit returns to God when we die and our bodies return back to the dust from which we were made. If our actions in the body determine where our spirit goes when we die, the devil wants nothing more than to keep us trapped in sin so we will suffer the same eternal judgment he will in Hell (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).

Salvation is an opportunity for escape from this reward of Hell.

Let’s go back to the story for a second. You are still in the icy water, but you see someone on the bank. You believe He will help you, but you have to cry out to Him. When you do, He comes running and with no regard for Himself, He jumps in the water. You ask Him to save you and He shoves you out of the water and onto the solid ice. Your Savior is now covered in frozen water.

Jesus became sin, who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus died, suffering the death that we deserve. He did this so that we could have the opportunity for eternal life in Heaven. Salvation is what makes this possible.

Out of the freezing water, a person will most likely want to run as far from the ice as possible. Where is there to go from the cold of outside, but into the fiery warmth of the Holy Ghost-filled house of God? When you are truly saved, your spirit will be towards God and not towards the sin that you know will so easily destroy you.

Do you see? Salvation is important because we refer to it as the turning point in our lives, where we start to refuse our flesh the pleasure of sinful lusts which will ultimately destroy us and send us to the terrible place of fire and torment.

Not only does it save you from this place, but once a person is truly saved, they will start to witness to others about the warm love they can find in Jesus. Your salvation starts a series of events that changes the lives of those around you, and those around them, and so on and so forth.

I hope by now you understand the importance of salvation. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you will join me next week as we talk about how you can achieve this salvation!

— Faith Cross

Hello, Beloved Reader! I’m Faith. Thanks for visiting me today. 

“I don’t need people. I can get along with God just fine without them.”

The old man sits across from the younger one and listens to him rant. The young man goes on about how he doesn’t have to have all the people around him. Obviously, this young man had gotten hurt. People get hurt and used by others, even in church families. This young man was not exempt. 

The older gentleman eats away at his plate of food, never looking up. The young man defends his stance on the subject and finishes his speech. The old man finally looks up after he completes his chewing and leaves the young man with one simple statement.

“Iron sharpens iron.”

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man the countenance of his friend.” — Proverbs 27:17

Whether we want to admit it or not, we’ve all been hurt by someone somehow. Each and every one of us have been angry at another person for doing us wrong. To be honest, I think it’s inevitable in this life to have pain from the actions of others. It will happen regardless of what you do to try to stop it.

Sometimes the Bible references us as trees, so think of yourself as the trunk of a tree. Some people in your life are leaves. They are there to provide shade and sometimes give you a little nourishment here and there. But, don’t be fooled. They are only around for a season. After that season, they fall away.

Some people in your life are like the branches. Some are stronger than others, and some stay longer than others, but be careful because when storms come or pressure comes, they aren’t strong enough to support you.

The branches will break away.

But, there are some people in your life that are like the roots of a tree. Those people are grounded. Roots hold the tree in place and gather nutrients from what the tree is planted in – the soil. If you can find a few good roots in your life who are grounded in Jesus Christ and His Word, then you will be good to grow.

Those roots are the iron that sharpens iron. Those roots will be those who help strengthen you and help hold you up. Those people will be the ones with you through thick and thin. They will encourage you in God and care enough about you to let you know when you’re about to make a mistake.

We’ve all been hurt. I’m not disregarding your pain. I know it aches. But, think about the people in your life who are seasonal, those who are around for a little longer, and those who have always been there. Let the seasonal ones go, the branches too, because you can’t cry over them forever. You’ll make yourself miserable. 

Be thankful for your roots and cling to Jesus. For He will never leave you. He’ll always be there.

—Faith Cross