Dr. Jay Snell Newsletter Feed and Free BonusesChapter Seven
Dr. Jay Snell Newsletter Feed and Free Bonuses
Psalms 107 and Proverbs 4 demonstrate the place of the Scriptures in the healing process. When a person makes light of, belittles, explains away, does not believe, and, therefore, will not act upon the Word of God, the Holy Ghost is powerless in that person's life. To be more specific, the Holy Ghost is powerless in that particular area in which the person has belittled, rejected, set aside, canceled, and gotten rid of the Word of God.
Ps 107:20
20 He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions. (KJV)
The above verse says that the Word of God is necessary for healing and delivering. That's why He sent it. He sent his Word and healed them, and delivered them out of all their troubles and their destructions. Consequently, we build our faith upon the Word of God. The Word of God activates the power of God in our lives. Having said that, look at Proverbs 4: 20-27 below.
Prov 4:20-27
20 My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.
21 Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.
22 For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.
23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
24 Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee.
25 Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.
26 Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.
27 Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil. (KJV)
Look closely at verse 22. "They," my Words, "are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh." Many people want a long life and healthy flesh. Moreover, there is a correlation between what you do with the Word of God and a long life and healthy flesh. The book of Proverbs says basically the same thing that the Psalmist said in Psalms 107, "I sent my Word and healed them." Both say that the Word is responsible for health and long life. So then, we must pay close attention to the Word.
Now what is the Word? The Word, first, is the Scripture. The Word, second, is that small, still voice of God, speaking to your spirit man. (This voice, however, will never contradict the Scripture.) The Word is a sermon that you hear, provided that sermon does not contradict the written Word of God. So then, health and long life are directly related to the Word.
Well, if they are directly related to the Word and God sent his Word to heal and deliver, why then, aren't all people healed and delivered? The answer is contained right here in the book of Proverbs. There are nine Healing Steps (in this passage) that you must do concerning the Word of God if you want to be healed and delivered, and have healthy flesh and a long life. Leave out any of these steps and you will miss your healing. Here are the nine steps.
Verse 20 says, "My son attend to my Words." How many sermons have you ever sat under that went right over your head because you were inattentive? How many times have you been taught a lesson on healing, and it went right past you because you were inattentive? You see, you are not attending to "my Words." Therefore, you are subject to run into a situation where your life is shortened or your flesh becomes unhealthy, because you were not attentive to the Word of God. If I have a bad disease, and I determine that God sent something to heal that disease, I am going to attend to what ever "it" was that He sent. If I can be convinced that a cure, a remedy, a medicine, or whatever, will handle my problem, I will give my attention to it. I will attend to what my "doctor" says.
God sent His Word to heal and deliver, and the Word of God can cause long life and good, healthy flesh. Therefore, if I am to have it, the Bible says that I must attend to what He said. He said, "My son attend to my Words." As long as things are going good and we are healthy and our family is healthy, we don't have to pay too much attention to this. As a matter of fact, a lot of folk don't pay too much attention to anything that God said, the Bible said, the preacher said, or some Godly person said, as long as things are going our way. When it is all going our way, we don't need God. Therefore, why should I listen to him?
The day will come, however, when things will not go your way. At some point, the devil will slip up on your blind side, and cause things to will blow up in your face. Then what will you do?
The Bible says that if you have been attending to His Word, you don't have to worry because you will come through. You will have health, deliverance and long life. But when you disregard the Word of God, you cut yourself loose from the very vehicle that God sent to maintain you in this world: HIS WORD.
Let me say it again. The Holy Ghost is bound and limited by what the Scriptures say. When a person starts playing games with the Scripture, doing mental gymnastics with it, explaining it away, reducing it to nothing, rationalizing it and spiritualizing it, the power of God and the Spirit of God are no longer operative in that person's life. He is absolutely on his own, because the Spirit of God only works through the applied Word of God. The Spirit does nothing "willy nilly." He does it in conjunction with the Word. Therefore, when we need healing, we must attend to His Words. We must pay attention to it. So when you hear healing sermons, don't let them fly past you. You need to reach out to them, grab them, and bring them into your life. You must attend to the Word.
Verse 20 says, "Incline thine ear unto my sayings." Sometimes you have to force the ear to listen. There are times when our imagination and our capacity to day-dream get the upper hand of us. Sometimes it is easier to tune out what the preacher says than it is to incline your ear, because your mind will drift. You will be out there on the golf course while the preacher is preaching. You will be out there in a boat, reeling in a big one, while the preacher is preaching. You will be doing something else while the preacher is preaching. You are solving, in your mind, the problems of your business or your job while the preacher is preaching. You see, our minds are constantly on the move. What you have to do is incline your ear. In other words, you must make your ear listen.
This is something you must do. You must not play mind games, letting your mind drift all over the place. You must force your ear to incline itself and listen to the Word. The Word is meaningless to you until you hear it.
The Bible talks about faith and how it comes. One of the very shortest verses in the Bible tells us where faith comes from. It comes from hearing.
Rom 10:17
17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (KJV)
You must hear God's Words before faith can be built. God said if you want a long life, health and deliverance, you must force your ear to listen and make it concentrate on what He is saying.
There are two things here:
(1) You must force yourself to hear
(2) You must force yourself to attend to what you heard
This means that you have to concentrate on it. You have to meditate on it. You have to roll it around in your mind for days and hours. You have to attend to it. You have to think on that Word until that Word becomes a part of you. Hear them and then attend to them.
Verse 21 says, "Let them not depart from thine eyes." Our eyes are like our minds; they can dart to and fro. You can walk down the aisle in a store and get a headache because your eyes just pop and flash as you see what's one each aisle. (You will look at everything there and go back 35 or 45 minutes later and buy the first thing that you saw.) Boy, your eyes are just popping. They just bug out of your head. This is just natural! We see things that we don't even think we see. Yet, the Bible tells us that there are some things that we are to look at and some things that we are to shut out. The Words of God are not to depart from our eyes. In other words, I am to spend a great part of my time looking at what God said in His Word.
We must look on the printed page of His Word concerning those promises of God that we need for our healing. When we need healing or when somebody in our family needs healing, we must isolate those Scriptures that contain a promise of God for our healing and look at that. We are not to let those Words depart from our eyes. We are to look at those Words to the point that when we shut our eyes, we can still see them.
Some time back, I talked to a lady who had terminal cancer. I said, "We have a prayer meeting to pray for the sick, and we have seen people with terminal cancer get healed in this church on Tuesday night. Come on and join us." She never came. Do you know what else? She never filled her vision with the Words of God pertaining to her healing. She was hoping. She wanted to be healed. It was the greatest desire of her heart to be loosed from that cancer. But she didn't want to do it the way God's Word said it had to be done. She must hear what God said. She must force her ears to hear it. She has to attend unto it. She must not to let those Words depart from her vision.
So the third thing we have to do is, "Let it not depart from our eye." If I have a terminal disease, and I know there is a bottle of pills that will heal me, I will concentrate on that bottle of pills and nothing else. That's letting it not depart from your eyes. That will have my concentration. That bottle will fill my vision. My attention span is going to be centered right there. That's what it means to hear and not let it depart from your eyes. Let your attention be directed to the solution, not the problem. Concentrate on the solution.
Verse 21 declares, "Keep them in the midst of thine heart." This means concentrate on it until those Words are hidden in the human spirit, where it actually becomes a part of the inner you. There is an inner you, your "spirit man," and when you concentrate so closely on the Word of God that it becomes a part of the inner you, then you have arrived. This is known as "having the Word in you."
Before this can happen, however, you must pass through the first three Healing Steps listed above. You have to attend to it, you have to hear it, and you have to let it not depart from your eyes. When you have experienced these three, the fourth one is possible, because, at that point, the Word of God becomes a part of the inner you (your spirit man).
You have read my teaching on faith enough to know what it is and how it works. Faith is information that you get from God that you must act upon. When you receive information from God, whether it's through prayer or whether it's through searching the Scripture, you find God's will in certain areas and you concentrate and meditate on that until it becomes part of you. Then when a problem arises, you will not meet that problem by your own human ingenuity, wits and reason. Rather, you will solve it with the Word that has been hidden in your heart. That's what the book of Proverbs meant when it said, "Let it not depart from your eyes, but keep it in the midst of thine heart." You have to get the Word in your heart. And you have to keep it there. When you do this, guess what happens? At that very point, you are assured a long life and healthy flesh.
This is all a positive response to the Word. God operates through and by His Word. In the Word, the Holy Ghost has freedom to act. The Word contains everything that God promised us. The Word gives eternal life. The Word gives a long physical life. The Word grants blessings for our family. The Word produces healing for our flesh. He sent His Word and it healed and delivered them. Next, God turns His attention to the heart in verses 23 and 25.
Look at verse 23, "Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life." Once those Words have been hidden in the heart, then keep your heart with all diligence. You can't keep your heart until the Word is put in it. You have to hear the Word to the point where faith is built. You have to hear the Word to the extent that it has assumed a place in your thinking. You have to hear the Word until it is more real to you than what you see with your physical eye. For when it gets that real, what you see with your physical eyes can be changed by the supernatural power of God, working through the Word that has been placed in your heart.
You can change your environment, though it defies explanation and though it defies medical science. When the Word has been hidden so deeply in your heart that it is more real to you than what you see with your eyes, that Word can change what you see with your eye through the supernatural power of God. Therefore, when a person with a terminal disease hears the doctor say, "All is lost," it is absolutely meaningless to him because he has the Word buried so deeply in his heart that it's more real to him than what the doctor says and what he feels in his body. It's the Word that changes things. So keep your heart with all diligence. Once that Word is in it, keep the heart because out of it come the issues of life.
God connects the mouth and the heart in the very next verse. Why does He talk about the mouth being connected to the heart? He said, "Keep your heart because out of it are the issues of life." Then He talks about being careful what your mouth says. He said, "Put away from thee a crooked mouth and perverse lips put far from thee." Why does He connect the mouth, in this context, with the heart? Because Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh."
Matt 12:34
34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. (KJV)
You will speak out whatever is in your heart. Whatever is in your heart is what's going to come out of your mouth. Guess what will come out of the mouth of a man that is filled with filth and dirt? Filth and dirt. But consider a man who is filled with the Word of God. Guess what will come out of his mouth? The Word of God, of course.
Suppose a terminal diseases attacks both of them. The guy who doesn't have the Word in his heart is going to speak human ingenuity. He will talk doctors and medicine, but the man who has the Word in his heart will talk Holy Ghost, Scripture, God and healing. He will find those things in the Word of God that concern healing. He will talk God's Word in the face of his own terminal disease. Guess what happens when he talks what God talks?
When he says what God says, he will see, either an instantaneous, miraculous, healing miracle, or he will see his situation gradually turn around and improve. You see, a crooked mouth and perverse lips speak things from a human heart that is not filled with the Word of God. Anything we say that does not match up to the Word of God is a perversion. We must learn to say what God says. We can only do that as long as what God says rests in our heart. That can only occur as you hear what He said, give attention to it, let it not depart from your vision, and keep it in the midst of your heart.
So what we say determines what we have, what we are and how we are. What we say is dependent upon what is inside of us. It's the Word that God sent that healed and delivered. These are the ways to make it work. We have to hear it. We have to tend to it. We must not let it depart from our eyes. We must bury it in the midst of our heart and then say what is in our heart.
Look at verse 25. "Let thine eyes look right on and let thine eye lids look straight before thee." In other words, watch where you go. Go only to those places where the Word that fills your vision says you can go.
To put it differently, you must fully understand two things:
(1) God sent his Word and healed and delivered those people (2) What He said then applies to us now also
When you understand these two things, you will have your eyes so filled with the Word of God that all you see is the will of God. If a terminal disease hits, you will walk in the way in which God said in His Word that you must walk for your healing. Let me say this to you in no uncertain terms. It is absolutely the will of God for all Christians to be healed. It is absolutely not the will of God for any one of us to get sick and remain that way. There is no middle ground. There's no gray area.
I can demonstrate from Scripture with no uncertainties that it is absolutely not the will of God for any of His children to be sick and stay that way. It is absolutely the will of God for all His children to receive Jesus as their healer and be healed. That is the will of God. Otherwise, why would God send His Word to heal them? Otherwise, why would God tell us to go through the exercises in Proverbs 4 if He did not will for all of us to be healed?
If somebody performed the exercises in this chapter (the nine Healing Steps) and were not healed, we must tear this passage right out of the Scripture because the Bible says that these Words (verse 22) are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh. This must work for everybody reading this page or these Words must be torn out and this page of the Bible must be re-written.
Let me show you another thing about healing in Proverbs 4:10. We must both hear and receive for a long healthy life.
Prov 4:10
10 Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many. (KJV)
"Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings, and the years of thy life shall be many." Hear and receive. That's the same thing He said in verses 20 - 22. He said "attend and incline, let not depart and keep." This is saying the same thing. "Hear and receive my sayings and the years of thy life shall be many."
In addition, He said in verse 11, "My sayings have taught thee in the ways of wisdom and I (through my sayings) have led thee in right paths and (because of my sayings in verse 12) when thou goest (my son), thy steps shall not be hindered and when thou runnest (because of my sayings) thou shalt not stumble." (Parenthesis mine.)
Prov 4:11-12
11 I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths.
12 When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble. (KJV)
He said, "Hear my sayings and receive them, and you are going to have a long life." Not only a long one, but a healthy one.
There are two ways to deal with everything in your life. You can use your own human ingenuity or you can deal with life's problems based on what the Word of God says. When you operate based on what the Word of God says, you will to be a winner.
But when you operate with your own ingenuity, you will always be a loser. It may take a year; it may take two years, but the day will come when you will be leveled in the dust, and the Word people will walk victoriously over you.
Verse 13 says, "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life."
Prov 4:13
13 Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life. (KJV)
He is talking about His sayings and His Word. He has called them His doctrine, His teachings, His sayings and His Word. Now, He calls them instruction and He personifies His instruction. He named this instruction a grand lady. He said take fast hold of her. Place a value on her. These instructions are your very life.
As Christian people, God has left us instructions and these instructions are our lives. They are our lives concerning our homes, our marriages, and our children. These instructions are our lives concerning health for our bodies. These instructions are our lives concerning the salvation of our soul. These instructions are our lives concerning healthy flesh. These instructions are our lives concerning our finances.
Here is something that is amazing. If there is anything else in this world that God's people can do, rather than come to the house of God and receive instructions to get the abundant life that Jesus promised, they will do it as though that was their life. But that is not their life. It will bring them down to death. The instructions from God are their life. Hang on, then, to that lady called instruction. She is your very life.
He sent His Word and healed them. He sent His Word and delivered them from their destruction. Take fast hold of the Word, let it not go, keep it. For the Word is your life. Oh, please listen to me. Isn't it time that we become Word people? Isn't it time that we become people of faith, grounded and based on the Word? Isn't it time that we based our lives on the Word of God and do things God's way? God's way is life. God's way is health. God's way is deliverance. God's way is prosperity. God's way is peace of mind. God's way is joy. God's way is access to the throne. God's way is the best way and it is contained in God's Words, the instructions in this blessed old Bible.
The people who are sick and feed themselves a steady diet of the Word of God will see, either a marvelous change right then and there, or they will see a gradual change. They will gradually improve and ultimately, they will recover. The Bible says "They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." Notice, Mark 16 does not say they might, perhaps, maybe, or seems like they should recover. It says that they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover (Greek indicative mood future active). They shall recover. Indicative in Greek is the mood of reality. It says what is. It says what's reality. It says what is fact. It does not talk about potential, it does not talk probably, seems like, and I thought maybe, but it talks about what is. It says, "They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover."
The person who gets the Word of God in his heart and bases his life upon it, has something that the Holy Ghost can use when things go against him; he will rely upon the Word that is in him, not upon his own ingenuity. The moment that he relies on the Word of God that's in him, the Holy Ghost acts in his life. Based on the indwelling Word of God, the Holy Ghost gives total deliverance, including freedom, healing, health and a long, prosperous life.
He sent His Word and healed them. Therefore, take fast hold of instruction, His sayings, and His Word. Take fast hold of her. Let her not go. Keep her, for she is thy life, a life composed of health and longevity. Take the instructions, live them, and those instructions will be your life too.
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Date Last Updated:
June 01, 2010
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