Faith in the Face of Health Crises

0:00:00     Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. And the title of the podcast says it all. More faith produces more life. And do you know, most people don’t know that. They don’t put the connection to your faith, your faith, and connect it with your life that it produces. Faith produces faith, puts us into the realm of the unseen. Other people can’t see what you see. Other people don’t know what you know. They maybe won’t understand why you think the way you do, why you speak the way you do. I’m very careful of the words that I say because I want to speak faith words, all right?

0:00:34     I want to speak faith words because faith produces more life. And so I want you to get that principle. Now, we’ve been talking about uncertainty, faith in the midst of uncertainty. And the first one I believe we did was fear. And then the second one was talking about an uncertain economy. Today, we’re going to, you know, really challenge ourselves, and maybe the most difficult of all, and that is faith in the face of a health crisis or some kind of personal crisis or challenge. But I’m going to lean a little bit into the health crisis because that changes everything. You go, everything’s going, you know, you don’t feel good or something’s wrong, or your friend, wife, kid, whatever, you know, and you think, well, you know, I better go have it checked out.

0:01:20     And you wait a little while. You finally get into the doctor, and it hadn’t gotten any better. And then you get a report, and it’s not a good report. It’s a scary report. Frightening, scary, unknown. And it’s so fun because I’ve been there. I hope you can tell I’ve been there. My family’s been there. And I want to share that a little bit with you today. But I know what it feels like to walk towards the doctor, office or the hospital, whatever, and wondering and questioning.

0:01:49     But then you get the report. They tell you what they think is wrong, they tell you what you think you got to do, and you walk out of that hospital to that doctor’s office, you’re walking towards your car, you get in the car, and your whole world has changed. Your whole world just changed because of a scary or bad or challenging diagnosis. Or maybe they tell you you’re going to have to have surgery or whatever, and all of a sudden, you know, other things don’t matter so much.

0:02:17     You’re in a health crisis. It could be a personal crisis, too. And the same faith will work. But I’ve been in these health crisis, health Crisis. Kathy, My wife Kathy, she’s been in health crisis. My family’s been in a health crisis. And I might tell you some stories today, how we handled it and how it developed and what became of it. But I first want to remind you that our stories are not always normal with everybody else’s stories.

0:02:43     And the fact that we came out so good on our end isn’t always true with everybody. Some people do have to have surgery. Some people have to face chemotherapy or whatever. Or whatever. Okay, so years ago, it’s been, gosh, 20 years, say 20 years ago, I was traveling the world. We were. We had services here for. In Kansas City. We had four services a week. And you say that sounds crazy. Well, the reason being is there were so such crowds were coming every weekend to the revived church in Kansas City that we had to have a service Thursday night.

0:03:25     We had service Thursday night, prayer time and all that. And then we would have a service Friday night. People came from all over the world, if you know the story. We were on broadcasting live on the Daystar network, 90 minutes live every Friday night. And that, of course, people came from all over the world to watch, to be a part of those services and to watch in other parts. And so they got there on Friday.

0:03:46     And then what do you do with them? They came from all over the world. They flew into the airport. What are they going to do? Sit around on Saturday and do nothing? So people would fly in on Thursdays, some on Wednesdays, and they’d start lining up for the service in the afternoon just to get in the building. And we’d be packed out. And so we do Thursday, we do Friday. Well, what do we do? Well, we’ll do Saturday, too, and Sunday morning. So we did four services a week for about over three years, and I was doing that.

0:04:15     And then I would travel after that. I would fly in the afternoon. Sunday afternoon I’d catch a flight. Or sometimes Saturday, I would. And somebody would fill in on Sunday morning, and I would fly some somewhere in the world, somewhere in the country, and I would do more services. Well, this went on for those years. And so about 20 years ago, we got to the point where I was losing my strength and health. And I was in an airport, I think I was in Philadelphia, I think.

0:04:42     And the Philadelphia airport. And Kathy’s zipping along, pulling her bag. You know how you go through the airport and I’m pulling mine? And I couldn’t keep up with her. And I started slowing down and slowing down. And finally I knew something was wrong. But I mean, and Just like everybody, you know, I’m a man of faith. I believe God helps us. I believe in healing. I believe in getting better by the power of God.

0:05:04     But I also. I want to use. I’m not stupid. I’m going to use everything at my disposal. If I got a doctor, if there’s a clinic nearby, I’m going to go and ask him some questions. I’m going to ask for help. God doesn’t mind me getting every bit of help I can get, you know. And so I called a doctor friend and I did this. Nobody could figure, you know, they said, I don’t think. We don’t know. It’s probably indigestion. It’s probably just tiredness. And this went on for several months until I couldn’t do anything anymore because I’ve been having. I’d been having symptoms, and I was on a wave runner in the summer. This is before it happened in the summer. And I’m talking about the fall now, when I was in the airport and I was on wave runners with church people. We were in a conference and everybody wanted to arrive, the wave runners and jet skis in between services.

0:05:55     And so we were out there in the afternoon, and I started having this pain and tingling in my back. And it went on. And I said, something is wrong. I don’t feel right and all that. Finally, we’re done, and I think, okay, I get to go in now and find out what’s. You know, just catch my breath. And one of our pastors, Pastor Eric, he comes riding out with a big grin on his face. You’re not going to believe this, Pastor Steve. I said, what?

0:06:19     They just gave us an extra hour for free. And I go, oh, great. Well, that was in August, I think. And by October, I couldn’t hardly pull the luggage anymore. We went and did a church service. I knew something was wrong. And in the middle of it, I’m getting ready to. They asked me if I would do the offering that night and then preach. I got ready to do the offering, and I could not do it. I shut down.

0:06:41     I said, Kathy you have to do the offering. So she did. I left the platform, the stage, and I went into the pastor’s office, and they had a very tiny little bathroom there, you know, with a mirror. And I walked in there and, you know, I’m pale white, I’m sweating. I don’t look right. I don’t feel right. I’m confused. And I stand there and I look myself in the mirror, and I thought, you know what? You could go Any minute you are about maybe to leave this world.

0:07:07     And I didn’t, you know, and I thought, well, maybe, maybe not. And I thought. And I stood there and stared myself down in the mirror. I bore down by faith and said, I’m going back out there and they’re all expecting me to preach. I did. I went out and I thought, you know what? I’m not only going to preach, I’m going to preach long. I’m going to preach hard. I preached an hour and a half in that condition, just standing as hard as I could. And I thought, if I go, I go, but I’m going to go down preaching. Well, I made it through it and went back. We went back home. I’m feeling terrible. I’m still having all the symptoms.

0:07:42     Finally, I talk a doctor into doing some tests on me because they all said, you’re not having heart. No, just you’re tired. And when they did, then they do that angiogram thing and they said, why? You got 100% blockage in one of your heart arteries. Now you only got three, and now you only got two. You know, one of them is 100% blocked. And he said, what would you like us to do? I go, I just woke up. I don’t know what I want you to do. They said, well, here’s your choices.

0:08:10     We can try to break through it, but if we do, we might pierce the artery and then you could die. Or you can just go back and try to live with it and see the best you can do. I said, well, I’m going to try. My faith is saying, I’m not going to try. I’m going to go live with it. I’m going to get my faith going. And I did. To this day, now, 20 years later, I still have 100% blockage, and so I still have all that going on, but I’ve had no stent. I had no.

0:08:38     No surgery, no open heart surgery. I try to keep an eye on it. I get checked on it. There you go. Well, I prayed, I believed. What happened? Well, I don’t know, but somehow it’s not bothering me now. And I’m still going. And it’s just amazing, isn’t it? All the. And I kept traveling. I keep preaching all that knowing, you know, I got. I’m. I’m one. I’m a quart low, but I keep going. How does that happen? I don’t know.

0:09:06     There was a time when Kathy got a terrible diagnosis. She started wobbling, and she couldn’t even walk down the hall of Our house. And she was hitting the walls like that. And they died. They said, do you probably have this? You probably got that. So they did some tests and they did this, that, and the other. And then they sent us home. And it wasn’t good, you know. And one night I’m on the floor by the bed praying. And she’s up on the bed, and. I don’t know, she’s reading her Bible or praying, I’m not sure.

0:09:37     But suddenly something changed in the room. And it was like. The only thing I can call it is like a spirit of fear. Fear came in, not me, but on her. And all of a sudden, you know, the issue. Then I found. I realized the issue is not healing or deliverance or getting, you know, or the issue. We have a. We have a fear issue now. We have a fear issue because, see, faith is going to produce life, but fear produces death.

0:10:03     Fear produce. Fear doesn’t produce anything good, okay? And so all of a sudden, I thought, I’ve got to go after fear. Not. Not the sickness, right? Or whatever it was, you know. So I did. Well, I was slow about it. She said, pray for me. And I. And I stayed on the floor, and she said, pray for me again. I said, what are you doing? She said, I asked you to pray for me, and you haven’t done a thing. I said, you know what?

0:10:28     I’m gearing up for it. I’m gearing up my faith. I. Give me a minute. I’m going to get in the groove here, this faith groove. I’m going to press in. I’m going to think about who God is and what God can do. And I did. And then when I got up there, I crawled up on Ben, and you know what? When I laid my hand, just put my hand on her, I felt like something moved. It’s just. I don’t know, just something moved.

0:10:49     That’s all that happened. And the fear left, and we just. We made it through. Now we have to go back. We go back and they put electrodes all over her head because they said, we’re going to find out. And they weren’t expecting a good result. They put electrodes all over her head, and I’m waiting. So I go. I wait. It’s done. And they send her out, and we’re sitting there, and then you wait for the doctor to come, you know, and all the stuff. You’ve seen it.

0:11:16     All the stuff. And here’s where they came. They said, you know what? We did all the tests on her brain, and we found nothing. I Said, well, I could have told you that I lived with her all these years. You would have found nothing. Of course, I started laughing because that’s a funny joke. We looked at her brain, and nothing was there. How does that happen? She walked away from it, never had another symptom, and just kept going.

0:11:42     Well, that’s some of our stories. We’ve had other challenges, and we’ve had other family challenges yet. I’ve had people get sick, and they call me the hospital, and they didn’t make it. They said, pray for me. They’re struggling with something very, you know, very terrible. And they died, and they died, and they passed on. And people then wonder, why this, why that? Why did this person make it and this person didn’t make it? We don’t have all those answers.

0:12:12     One answer we do have is a little theology here. You got to get this in your head, all right? And in your heart. God does not cause sickness, okay? If you read your Bible or study good, do a good study on Genesis. Humans cause sickness. God created the Garden of Eden and perfect life. There was no sickness in. Adam and Eve were on the earth, but because of sin, entered the world. What else entered the world? He said, through humans, sin entered the world, and sin then brought death.

0:12:45     Okay? And so death came in the world because of humans. Now it’s here. I’m sorry. It’s here. It’s still here. Jesus came, though, and he defeated death, didn’t He? Yes, he defeated death because they killed him, they murdered him, they crucified him, but he rose again from the dead. Now the day is coming when all death will be gone. Death will disappear. There will be no more death when Jesus returns. All right?

0:13:16     Right now we have the kingdom of God with us, which we can call on, and we can live by faith and start grabbing things from the kingdom of God. Our faith tells us we believe in the death of Jesus that brings us eternal life. But we also can pull on other things by faith that bring life like we’ve talked about, like blessings, prosperity. God will help you financially. God will help you just get rid of your past and get rid of the weights and things that drive you and things that drive you crazy and drive everybody else crazy.

0:13:50     Yes, all that by faith. And we start attacking things that rob us of life by faith. And faith can say, I may not be there now, but my faith is going to get me. My faith in God, my faith in the Word of God. And so faith happens in uncertain times and in the. In the. In the midst of a health crisis that Is tough. It is really tough because you’re going to hear stories like mine, I just told you and Kathy’s, where we got through ours.

0:14:20     And then you’re going to hear stories about people who didn’t. I’ve had people that were dying on the bed, prayed for them, and they didn’t die. People say, what were they raised from the dead? Death went. I don’t know, but they were dying. And then they didn’t die. And they went on, lived years and then died, you know, because death is still in the world. Okay? Now, once you know that, you know, a health crisis, it’s dangerous.

0:14:46     It is hard. It is challenging. If we use our faith and start in the faith, we can do two things. We may defeat it. We might defeat sickness, disease. I have many times, and I’ve helped other people. I’ve also prayed for people that were dying, and then they died. And the family begged me to raise them from the dead. Okay? And you know what? I didn’t. I tried. I mean, I prayed. Just I prayed because they asked me to.

0:15:14     But I knew in my heart that we’re not here as a pastor. I’m not here to defeat death every single time. I can’t raise everybody from the dead that’s going to die because death is part of this process that started with sin and death, and death has been defeated by Jesus, but it’s still here because the kingdom of darkness is still here. But it’s going to go. It’s on the way out, and Jesus will return, and then we’ll have no more death.

0:15:44     So right now, you know what? We’re doing the best we can. We get some great things from the kingdom of God. Sometimes we get a miracle. Sometimes we get health. And we’re going to always listen. We’re going to always try, never lose hope, always keep trying. Always keep your faith. Because that’s where our real victory is. Let me get this straight. People get healed. Some people go on, they die. Some people live on all these things.

0:16:11     But faith is what glorifies God. Faith, faith in the system and the bottom line. A lot of people miss this. They miss the bottom line. Because I would like everybody. I go to the hospital. I mean, years. That was part of the ministry. I had a hospital ministry when I was very young, just starting out. They’d send me to the hospital to pray for sick people. And, you know, and I wanted everybody to get healed and everybody to get better.

0:16:40     Sometimes I could tell their faith was so low that I couldn’t use the word healing because they didn’t have the faith to be healed. So sometimes I use it. Well, how about we just pray for you to get better? Let’s pray right now for you to start feeling better. And you know that was their faith level. Well, I can do that. Let’s pray. And I’ve done that hundreds and hundreds of times in our own church. You that know me know that I do that. And sometimes I see their faith level isn’t in my language.

0:17:09     My language is healing and deliverance. But their faith level’s not in my language. But their faith level can go to what if we believe right now? You just start feeling better, or you can move something around, or you’re just having a better day, you know, and that’s where their faith level is. So let’s go after that on our faith level. But the bottom line of our faith level that I think God wants us to have and Jesus wants us to have is in the resurrection power.

0:17:37     So yeah, I’ve prayed for people that we thought were going to die and they didn’t die. And I’ve prayed for people that died and they stayed dead. I wish they didn’t. But that’s not where our faith level is. Our faith level is we just have to wait. It’s just a time thing. You see, if all we have is life in this world, then Paul says we’re miserable, it’s almost hopeless if this is all we have. But this is not all we have.

0:18:05     We can lose a loved one, we can have a health crisis that enables disables us and it’s no fun and it’s a challenge and it doesn’t seem fair and all those things. And then you see somebody else and they tell their story. They got healed, they got delivered, okay? But the bottom line is our faith says there is the resurrection from the dead. Dead is not going to stop you because by faith you will come back to life.

0:18:36     By faith you will not be disabled. You will be able. It’s not fun, it’s not a good system. It’s not God’s system. It’s what humans did to God’s system. So we got to kind of live with it. But we have help in a health crisis. So there’s where we know our faith is. If you go to the doctor, you get a bad report, or your family or whatever, your faith is going to be tested. But let’s let it be tested. Let’s not go faithless.

0:19:06     Let’s put it to the test. Let’s do the best we can. Let’s go for it, pray for it, believe for it and stay there. And if we don’t get the total victory right now, we’re going to get it eventually, right? That’s where we want to go. And then we can stand before the Lord and we say, that wasn’t fun. I didn’t like it. I lost a loved one, I lost a friend, or I had to deal with some pain for a while or whatever, but I kept the faith as Paul said. He said I kept the faith and now I can stand. And I have a deep respect for you, Lord. And I’ve got deep faith, I’ve got deep trust.

0:19:48     And if it doesn’t work out right this very minute for me, I have faith it will. And the best part about it is how about I just start believing you’re going to come quickly. Come, Lord Jesus, come, come quickly. Because if I go, I want my family to not. I don’t want them to, you know, be in pain and sadness. I want them to say, maybe the Lord will come soon, come quickly, Lord, because I know we’ll see that person again.

0:20:15     Because there’s going to be no death, there’ll be no crying, there’ll be no tears. So yes, we want to believe. God is both a healer and God is a comforter. Whether we get what we want instantly or we have to wait a little while. But our faith produces life. No matter what. I’d like it to be instant, I’d like it to be right now. I’d like it to be that for you. If you’re going through something today and it’s scary or it’s uncertain, I’d like it to be right now. Let’s just, Jesus, heal people right now.

0:20:49     Comfort them, heal them, strengthen them. Let’s use our faith to say somebody somewhere could be getting a miracle right now. Somebody else might go, I don’t. I don’t know. I prayed, I believed, and then it didn’t turn out for my friend like I thought it would. But even if healing doesn’t come the way it doesn’t come right now, it is coming. It is coming. And we’re not going to let circumstances. We’re not going to let fear, we’re not going to let finances, we’re not going to let rumors of war, trouble, we’re not going to let that shake our long distance faith.

0:21:27     And when our long distance faith is not shaken, then our short distance faith is just day by day, we walk it out, we get the best we can from God. And knowing the faith is going to produce life today, tomorrow and forever. We’re going to be sustained. So I encourage you to pray for sick people, pray for struggling people, pray for them. Let’s be a community. Let’s be a community of support. And, you know, the Bible teaches us that if any money, anybody sick among you, to call the leaders.

0:22:02     Sometimes it says elders. We could say pastors. Call the leaders of the church, the elders of the church and pray, and they should lay hands on the people and people will be healed. Well, a lot of people struggle with that. And they struggle because churches today, many churches never pray for healing. Many churches, they’re Christians, they carry Bibles, they’re preachers, and they have no faith that God can even do anything in a health crisis. And I don’t want that to be you.

0:22:29     I want you to be on the faith adventure with me. We may not get everything we want instantly, but we’re going to get everything we want. And we want to be able to stand before the Lord and say, I kept the faith. Wasn’t always easy. It was testing. It challenged me. But I was part of a faith community. I have resilience, I have strength. I want to encourage people and I want to help everybody faith face their health challenges in the name of Jesus.

0:23:00     So let’s have faith. In the midst of uncertainty in all three areas, fear goes, financial troubles go because it is uncertain. There’s an uncertain economy in the world. And most of all, we’re going to help people through their health challenges by producing faith and encouragement. And that bottom line, whatever happens, you’re going to be healed. Whatever happens, you are going to live forever. And faith in God means you’re going to live with God in all eternity, forever and ever. It’s a great plan that God came up with. In spite of humans who produced sin and death, God has given us faith for the future of eternity.

0:23:39     Till next time, Bye.