Derrick Overholt: We have been walking through our Encounter series.
Derrick Overholt: It's been such a great time.
Derrick Overholt: We've been talking about, you know, just how the Holy Spirit moves in our lives.
Derrick Overholt: We've been talking about how he speaks to us and how he speaks to us for others.
Derrick Overholt: We even went through talking about, you know, the gift of tongues.
Derrick Overholt: We've talked about the proper use of the gifts and prophecy and things like that, and today we're going to be talking about the gift of healing and it's so exciting to talk about because I've seen a lot of healings and I wanted to share with some of those with you this morning.
Derrick Overholt: I got to see my first healing when I was 16 years old.
Derrick Overholt: Many of you may not know that my mom had a brain aneurysm bust and spent months in the hospital when I was 16 years old.
Derrick Overholt: She had two open brain surgeries and a full like cut the skull open the whole nine yards.
Derrick Overholt: But before the second one I told the doctor.
Derrick Overholt: I said you need to go back and you need to retest because I really believe that my mom is healed.
Derrick Overholt: And, of course, how doctors do, it's just a 16-year-old boy, he doesn't know anything.
Derrick Overholt: And so they went into the surgery.
Derrick Overholt: They cut her skull open.
Derrick Overholt: They dug around for four hours and closed her back up and come out to me and said I wish I would have listened to you.
Derrick Overholt: There was no aneurysm, we could have not have had that surgery, but God healed her and it was an amazing thing to see.
Derrick Overholt: So I already knew it then.
Derrick Overholt: And then, a few years later, I was at Trinity at the old building over here.
Derrick Overholt: Our pastor was Steve Fado.
Derrick Overholt: We would have seen different miracles, but this was a really cool one.
Derrick Overholt: I was up front praying with Pastor Steve and somebody came up to him and said someone just died in the back.
Derrick Overholt: There's a nurse that just verified that she's been dead for a few minutes.
Derrick Overholt: And he said not in my church, she's not.
Derrick Overholt: And we all ran to the back and I remember seeing the little nurse that she was like had the lady's head in her lap and she's, you know, checking her pulse and um, and she was dead.
Derrick Overholt: And Steve started praying, for a number of us gathered around, lay hands on her and pray for her healing and within a few moments she took a deep breath and I got to see the nurse's face as her face just went to shock of the pulse came back after like five minutes.
Derrick Overholt: So by the time the ambulance got there, they just nonchalantly took her to the hospital to see what was going on, you know.
Derrick Overholt: And so God brought her back to life, right there in front of us.
Derrick Overholt: There was another time where I was on a mission trip and we were standing up front, we were praying for people and this person came up in a wheelchair.
Derrick Overholt: And we were standing up front, we were praying for people and this person came up in a wheelchair and they couldn't walk their whole life because one leg was shorter than the other, and not a little bit, but enough to where you couldn't walk.
Derrick Overholt: And I got to be in the presence noticing this happen as others are praying for him.
Derrick Overholt: His leg grew and he got up and walked.
Derrick Overholt: That day A couple of years ago, you guys may have remembered when I told you about my story in Tanzania.
Derrick Overholt: I'm praying for an old, blind man with seven wives, but he got saved.
Derrick Overholt: He got saved and it was such a beautiful thing as he got saved and he called all his family over and he says all you need to know about this, jesus.
Derrick Overholt: And they all came and prayed and then they took him back to his room like, guided him back because he's blind, and all of a sudden I start hearing commotion, because I had started walking back to the van and I turned around and here's this older gentleman running straight at me, the blind man, running straight at me, and I'm like what is going on?
Derrick Overholt: And they said he says he sees, straight at me.
Derrick Overholt: And there's I'm like what is going on.
Derrick Overholt: They said he says he sees, he can see now, and so God saved his soul.
Derrick Overholt: You know, once was blind, but now I see, literally.
Derrick Overholt: He was once blind but now he sees such a beautiful thing, beautiful thing and uh, and so it's just amazing to see what God has done.
Derrick Overholt: I got another one when I was I bet this is about 13 years ago my first little guy was born.
Derrick Overholt: His name was Eli.
Derrick Overholt: We knew at a very like, we thought that the pregnancy was perfect, there was nothing there, but then he was born.
Derrick Overholt: He had some issues and so we spent two or three days every single week at the hospital and it came known that we were going to have to have a brain or a heart surgery and it was going to be one of many heart surgeries.
Derrick Overholt: So we took him to Vanderbilt and in the middle of this surgery he had a heart attack and they had to put him on life support, and so we prayed all throughout that night and that next morning I held my son as he took his last breath.
Derrick Overholt: Now I bring that up because I've seen God do miraculous healings.
Derrick Overholt: But then I've been in the very room as he didn't.
Derrick Overholt: And the question is is why.
Derrick Overholt: And that's the question that most of us have when something like this happens, because some of us have been taught certain ways and we believe it's supposed to be this way or believe that way.
Derrick Overholt: You know, we prayed with everything we had.
Derrick Overholt: I couldn't have mustered up another ounce of faith that God was going to heal.
Derrick Overholt: I just told you every story that I'd saw before that it was no question.
Derrick Overholt: Could my God heal my son?
Derrick Overholt: There was no question.
Derrick Overholt: Heal my son?
Derrick Overholt: There was no question.
Derrick Overholt: But to me that day God decided not to.
Derrick Overholt: And that's a hard thing to come to and there's a lot of directions that I could take the sermon today.
Derrick Overholt: But you know, I really started.
Derrick Overholt: We were talking about what we'd be talking about here, like six, eight weeks ago, and and Tyler told me that this was going to be my sermon, and talking about here, like six, eight weeks ago, and Tyler told me that this was going to be my sermon and I started right then studying.
Derrick Overholt: It was over six weeks ago, because this has been something to me that I have personally dealt with on the amazing, just incredible miracle side, but also in the he didn't answer as I wanted side, and something that I honestly wouldn't wish on the devil himself losing your child.
Derrick Overholt: My little boy was 10 months old, so when I think about what we were going to talk about today, I thought about something that is what most of us, like, have in our head most of the time.
Derrick Overholt: Listen, I was raised in a number of different denominations of churches.
Derrick Overholt: Listen, I was raised in a number of different denominations of churches, so I had so many forms of what I'm supposed to believe, how it's supposed to happen, what it's supposed to look like, and it wasn't until I walked through a lot of stuff that I came to what I believe today.
Derrick Overholt: And when I mention this next scripture, the scripture that we're going to focus on today, it's probably the scripture that's on most of our hearts and our minds.
Derrick Overholt: When we think about, when we talk about healing.
Derrick Overholt: You think about this scripture.
Derrick Overholt: Most of the time I actually wanted to see if that was true.
Derrick Overholt: So I asked a bunch of people over the last week when I said, healing, what do you think about?
Derrick Overholt: And they quoted this scripture.
Derrick Overholt: So I was like, all right, this is the one that we're going to talk about Now, just as a little bit of you know context here.
Derrick Overholt: This scripture I'm going to read is from the prophet Isaiah.
Derrick Overholt: Isaiah was a prophet given by God to his people.
Derrick Overholt: Every single one of the prophecies that this man wrote, all of them, came true.
Derrick Overholt: Every single one of them, to their deepest detail, like it was absolutely true.
Derrick Overholt: It wasn't a well, it might be like this.
Derrick Overholt: No, all of the prophecies that God gave to Isaiah in the vision that he wrote in Isaiah, all of them came true.
Derrick Overholt: And the one that we're going to read about here was five to 600 years before Jesus was born.
Derrick Overholt: And so we'll move on to Isaiah 53, 4, which is where this is at Isaiah 53, 4 and 5.
Derrick Overholt: Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we have seen him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
Derrick Overholt: But he was pierced for our transgressions and he was crushed for our iniquities.
Derrick Overholt: Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
Derrick Overholt: And with his wounds we are healed.
Derrick Overholt: So let's pray about that.
Derrick Overholt: Lord, we just thank you so much that you give us the opportunity to be here.
Derrick Overholt: God, I just pray that you would use me as your puppet today.
Derrick Overholt: God, all I want to do is speak the words that you have, god, and I just pray that you'd touch each and every one of our hearts, lord, and prepare us, lord, for what you want to do in Jesus' name.
Derrick Overholt: So this scripture I found in a couple of other places in the New Testament, of course, the part there that everybody kept saying when I would come to them and say, hey, what scripture comes to mind?
Derrick Overholt: They say by his wounds we're healed.
Derrick Overholt: And so that was you know.
Derrick Overholt: Then I'm like, all right, which one are you talking about?
Derrick Overholt: You know, because in second Peter he said it, and in Matthew he mentioned it too.
Derrick Overholt: So which one are they talking about?
Derrick Overholt: And it brings up two schools of thought in this scripture.
Derrick Overholt: Now, I was taught both of them by at different points in my life.
Derrick Overholt: All right, in the first school of thought is in first, uh or 24.
Derrick Overholt: He said he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin.
Derrick Overholt: Remember that word and live to righteousness.
Derrick Overholt: By his wounds you have been healed.
Derrick Overholt: So I had to look at the context of this, because this is one that even just this week, when I was talking to somebody, they said by his wounds you have been healed.
Derrick Overholt: And so I looked at the context of what Peter was saying and in the entire writing here Peter is clear.
Derrick Overholt: He's talking about sin.
Derrick Overholt: The whole entire section is on us being separated from God, needing a savior, and Peter is clearly in every way in this letter talking about how, by his wounds we have been healed, we've been given the opportunity for salvation.
Derrick Overholt: He has healed our eternal souls.
Derrick Overholt: Have it's done so concerning that section.
Derrick Overholt: So it led me down this whole long road and you can some of you in this room, I talked to you this.
Derrick Overholt: I actually had lunch with a couple of people.
Derrick Overholt: Multiple times.
Derrick Overholt: I talked to Neil and Tyler and Mark, because just there you know this was six weeks ago that I like studying this context.
Derrick Overholt: I'm like, wait, what is going on?
Derrick Overholt: Everything I thought and had I've been taught all these years, and then I just had to continue my study through it because right after that, like we.
Derrick Overholt: I start talking to somebody and he mentions in Matthew, chapter eight, and now in Matthew, matthew's fixing to write this.
Derrick Overholt: He says, uh, this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, that he took our illness and bore our disease.
Derrick Overholt: Now in Matthew, matthew is clearly speaking of healing, because he's talking about all the healings that Jesus has been doing, and he said that all of this was done to fulfill the scripture in Isaiah.
Derrick Overholt: So now Peter and Matthew are both going back to Isaiah's scripture.
Derrick Overholt: So here we are.
Derrick Overholt: We see this.
Derrick Overholt: Yes, the scripture that in the New Testament is talking about healing.
Derrick Overholt: So the two schools of thought that I have personally like wrestled with through the years is one is I was taught that by his stripes we have been healed, and so today, if I'm sick which I have been this weekend, thank God I'm actually talking to you because I've had a sinus infection, but I have already been healed.
Derrick Overholt: So what I'm feeling is nonsense.
Derrick Overholt: I'm not actually sick at all and I just need to claim my healing because I have been healed.
Derrick Overholt: Okay, well, that didn't work, for my son did it, because he has been healed, but I prayed and prayed and prayed and he didn't.
Derrick Overholt: So then whose fault is it?
Derrick Overholt: It must have been mine, because he was an innocent child.
Derrick Overholt: So if he's not healed, it was my own fault that I didn't pray enough.
Derrick Overholt: So see how dangerous that form of thinking can be.
Derrick Overholt: So then there's the other side that says that we are healed, but it's in God's timing, and so today I want to lead us in that direction, because that's what I feel like God has revealed to me.
Derrick Overholt: Years ago, there was when I lost my little boy.
Derrick Overholt: I was really mad at God.
Derrick Overholt: I was screaming and yelling at him, as you could expect, and I remember like when, at this moment, I was like crying out my wife's crying all the time, like I just didn't know what to do.
Derrick Overholt: We couldn't even go home because we couldn't be in the house.
Derrick Overholt: We sold our car even because I couldn't look in the back seat and not see him.
Derrick Overholt: So here we are and I'm like just mad all the time.
Derrick Overholt: Like God, you said that we have the ability to have healing here, you know, and I was in the thought process of have been healed, like it was a guarantee, like I have the right to have it.
Derrick Overholt: And so, god, why didn't you?
Derrick Overholt: And I felt like the Lord said, and like one of those moments in your life where you really hear a voice.
Derrick Overholt: I heard a whisper in my ear it was my right ear and he said I did heal him.
Derrick Overholt: That's the four words that helped carry me along to where I'm at today, 13 years later, and I remember I shared that with my wife, that word with my wife, and it was at that moment that we started to understand the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Derrick Overholt: It was that word that I got from the Lord that really helped us to start putting things back together and trying to live again without our little boy.
Derrick Overholt: Amen.
Derrick Overholt: So the scriptures that we read and that we're looking at, both Matthew and Peter are both quoting back to Isaiah.
Derrick Overholt: So that's where we're going back to.
Derrick Overholt: All right, we're moving back to that place.
Derrick Overholt: There's a number of times, if we are talking about the New Testament, not everyone in the New Testament got healed.
Derrick Overholt: I heard a couple of people talk to me about that.
Derrick Overholt: Not everybody did, and we see one written down by Paul when he's writing to Timothy in his second letter in chapter 4, verse 20.
Derrick Overholt: And he says that he left Trophimus in Miletus ill.
Derrick Overholt: He left him ill there, and do I think for a moment that Peter didn't pray for him to get healing.
Derrick Overholt: No, he absolutely got healed, like I mean that he did go pray for them.
Derrick Overholt: I'm sorry, he absolutely would pray for them to get healed, but for some reason Trophimus didn't get healed.
Derrick Overholt: And so he's telling Timothy hey, trophimus is still sick, he's there in Miletus, continue to pray for him.
Derrick Overholt: So just so you guys hear me today because I know that it can go back and forth here that I'm not in any way saying that healing does not come from the blood of Jesus on the cross, because I fully believe that the ability to have healing through the Holy Spirit is done only through Jesus when he died and rose from the grave.
Derrick Overholt: That's the only way it happens.
Derrick Overholt: Now, if I say something today that might get you a little off, and well, derek, I don't agree with that.
Derrick Overholt: Let's do this in a really mature way.
Derrick Overholt: Don't leave the church, come talk to me, send a letter to Tyler at TCCKnoxcom.
Derrick Overholt: He'll rebuke me or he'll stand up.
Derrick Overholt: But no, it's true.
Derrick Overholt: So it brought me to this revelation that I had years ago.
Derrick Overholt: When I heard those four words, I did heal him.
Derrick Overholt: I really, when I was praying into this over the last number of weeks, I felt like the Lord expanded the revelation that I got way back then, and that's what I want to share with you today.
Derrick Overholt: It's super simple, but we really need to hear it, and it's this when we interpret the word of God, we have to look at it through the person's eyes who wrote it.
Derrick Overholt: Okay, it's the perspective.
Derrick Overholt: That's what matters when we're reading any scripture and when you're interpreting the word of God and you're reading it, you have to look at, like if we're looking at Matthew, we have to look at what Matthew's going through, what the world around him might've looked like.
Derrick Overholt: Was he, you know?
Derrick Overholt: Did he just go through something that really put him in a bad fog in his head?
Derrick Overholt: Did he go through something?
Derrick Overholt: Is he in a really happy time?
Derrick Overholt: What's it look like around him?
Derrick Overholt: Is there real war around him?
Derrick Overholt: Is it really messed up?
Derrick Overholt: All these things add to.
Derrick Overholt: Okay, this is what he said.
Derrick Overholt: This is probably what he was feeling.
Derrick Overholt: Now, how do I apply that to my life?
Derrick Overholt: We all agree with that, right?
Derrick Overholt: Well, it's the same thing we do throughout the entire scripture.
Derrick Overholt: And again now we're talking back to Isaiah 53.
Derrick Overholt: Isaiah 53 is written down words from God himself, from a vision.
Derrick Overholt: So now we have to look at this scripture, the perspective of who is saying it.
Derrick Overholt: God said it.
Derrick Overholt: So when Matthew said something, he's in time.
Derrick Overholt: When Peter said something, all of his perspectives are in time.
Derrick Overholt: When Paul said something, everything is in time.
Derrick Overholt: Guys, time was only made for us in this universe.
Derrick Overholt: God doesn't.
Derrick Overholt: He doesn't live in that and, honestly, if we truly believe that we are sons and daughters of the most high God, who adopted us through the salvation given through Jesus Christ, we are eternal beings.
Derrick Overholt: So all of these answers and promises in the Word of God are eternal promises.
Derrick Overholt: So when we look at this, we can't take this Word that God gave and try to put that into our timing.
Derrick Overholt: And then what God gave me was this picture Isaiah and Malachi both heard God.
Derrick Overholt: When God said I'm going to send Jesus and he's going to look like this and he's going to be wearing these clothes.
Derrick Overholt: He's going to be over here in this building.
Derrick Overholt: He's going to be found over there.
Derrick Overholt: I mean literally detailed instructions of where he was going to be found.
Derrick Overholt: Okay, when he did that.
Derrick Overholt: God's perspective, we're reading it in his perspective.
Derrick Overholt: All right, isaiah, malachi, jesus is coming like this.
Derrick Overholt: It's going to look like this Boom, jesus was born, died, risen and he's back on his right hand.
Derrick Overholt: That's God's perspective.
Derrick Overholt: Now back to our perspective.
Derrick Overholt: Hey, isaiah Malachi, he's going to be born like this this bam wait 600 years.
Derrick Overholt: And we miss that today.
Derrick Overholt: But God said it.
Derrick Overholt: God promised yes, we're eternal beings.
Derrick Overholt: We're not in this timeframe.
Derrick Overholt: He doesn't speak in this timeframe.
Derrick Overholt: He speaks in an eternal timeframe.
Derrick Overholt: It would be great if he spoken within a lifetime.
Derrick Overholt: Jesus came, but it wasn't.
Derrick Overholt: It was 600 years.
Derrick Overholt: And what about the fact that Jesus, when he said I'm coming back, like, well, that'd have been great to be one lifetime.
Derrick Overholt: We're here at 2000 years, but we live eternally.
Derrick Overholt: Right, we're just here for a short time.
Derrick Overholt: So that's how we have to put all of this.
Derrick Overholt: And that was for me for many years.
Derrick Overholt: I struggled with that before, even before I lost my son, like when I'd, you know, be praying for somebody and they wouldn't be healed.
Derrick Overholt: But why?
Derrick Overholt: Why wouldn't you be healed?
Derrick Overholt: Like this is a, this is a promise, you know in this.
Derrick Overholt: Why, why wouldn't you be healed?
Derrick Overholt: Like this is a, this is a promise, you know in this.
Derrick Overholt: But then it.
Derrick Overholt: That was the incredible thing for me.
Derrick Overholt: I did heal him because I know that all of God's promises are true.
Derrick Overholt: They're yes and they're amen.
Derrick Overholt: So the question today is why we haven't been healed yet, because we're going to be.
Derrick Overholt: Every single person in this room is going to be healed.
Derrick Overholt: If you're going through something today, there is power in the name of Jesus Christ and you're just not healed yet.
Derrick Overholt: Now we don't know when.
Derrick Overholt: That yet is right.
Derrick Overholt: That yet could be here in 20 minutes when we have you guys come up and pray for healing.
Derrick Overholt: It could be next week, it could be next year, it could be next year.
Derrick Overholt: It could be like my son when he continued his eternal life and he was completely healed.
Derrick Overholt: There's the promise Healing is possible and we believe that.
Derrick Overholt: So today I did look and I'm studying a lot in the scripture here and I found some reasons in the New Testament of why we might not be healed yet.
Derrick Overholt: As I said, it's always a yet, okay, and now I'm not saying again this is a big disclaimer here out of these seven things I'm talking about, you're not guaranteed, if you're sick today that one of the things that you're dealing with is in here.
Derrick Overholt: Okay, it might just be as I'm going to talk about on the seventh one, it's God's sovereignty.
Derrick Overholt: But there are some things in the Word of God that does point out why we may have not yet got our healing or why we're fixing to have our healing.
Derrick Overholt: So we're going to start out with number one, which is faith.
Derrick Overholt: Now, again, you've got to be really careful with faith, because we don't want to say that we can have enough of it to get you healed.
Derrick Overholt: What that's doing is putting faith in faith instead of faith in the one who gives it.
Derrick Overholt: So we have to be really careful at how much we put on faith.
Derrick Overholt: But faith is very important because faith glorifies God.
Derrick Overholt: Faith points us away from ourself and from all that we think we can do.
Derrick Overholt: To him, faith turns us away from our own power.
Derrick Overholt: To him, faith says, lord, I'm nothing, but you are everything.
Derrick Overholt: Says I entrust in you everything and I cling to you alone.
Derrick Overholt: It's saying that I have confidence in you alone.
Derrick Overholt: As you see, it's constant pointing toward God and it has nothing to do with me.
Derrick Overholt: I only believe in the God who can.
Derrick Overholt: So we can't put too much on faith.
Derrick Overholt: And as well, they just and Tyler talked about it a while back where he was at a church and the lady died.
Derrick Overholt: And next week the dude got up and said yeah, if sister so-and-so would have just had more faith, I'm surprised you didn't punch him.
Derrick Overholt: Oh, oh, he was like eight or nine years old, five years old, wow.
Derrick Overholt: And so if you come to me at any time and say you just didn't have enough faith for your son, I'm going to have to repent to the elders because I'm going to punch you.
Derrick Overholt: Maybe you'll punch me first.
Derrick Overholt: Sam Storm said a really good thing and I'm going to put it up here.
Derrick Overholt: He says so.
Derrick Overholt: Sam Storms said a really good thing and I'm going to put it up here.
Derrick Overholt: He says Faith is not a weapon by which we demand things from God or put Him in subjection to us.
Derrick Overholt: Faith is an act of self-denial.
Derrick Overholt: Faith is a renunciation of one's ability to do anything in a confession that God can do everything.
Derrick Overholt: Faith derives its power not from the spiritual energy of the person who believes, but from the supernatural efficiency of the person who is believed.
Derrick Overholt: God.
Derrick Overholt: It is not faith's act but the object that accounts for the miraculous.
Derrick Overholt: It is God and God alone.
Derrick Overholt: Healing can only come from God and God alone.
Derrick Overholt: If you get a healing today, it's not going to be because you had a lot of faith.
Derrick Overholt: Now we must have faith that God can heal.
Derrick Overholt: And so if you come and pray doubting in your heart yes, that's what the scripture is talking about we can't come and ask for a healing to happen but then have doubt in our heart, like I'm going to come up and pray for you.
Derrick Overholt: You know God, yeah, yeah, I know that sometimes maybe you can heal to.
Derrick Overholt: You know we have to come.
Derrick Overholt: God, I know that you have the power to heal.
Derrick Overholt: I pray that you heal right now and we pray in faith until something happens.
Derrick Overholt: The whole word.
Derrick Overholt: I don't know if you've heard the acronym push.
Derrick Overholt: The whole word.
Derrick Overholt: I don't know if you've heard the acronym push pray until something happens, and that something might happen today and it might happen in eternity, but you don't stop praying until something happens.
Derrick Overholt: The next thing that can stand in the way of your healing, of why you're not healed yet, of your healing, of why you're not healed yet Sin.
Derrick Overholt: Sometimes healing doesn't come because of a presence of sin in our life where we've not had confession and repentance, and we see this in James, chapter 5, which we'll be reading again here in a few moments, but it clearly instructs us to confess our sins one to another that we might be healed.
Derrick Overholt: Confess our sins one to another that we might be healed.
Derrick Overholt: Now, remember I'm not saying that one of these is absolutely landing on you that's not always the case but if right now and I was praying about this just a few moments ago if right now something popped in your head and you're needing healing, but you just remembered something that may be the Holy Spirit revealing to you, deal with this, get this dealt with.
Derrick Overholt: If you've not made something right with somebody, you're holding a grudge towards somebody, you're upset, you're not forgiving Right now, as I'm saying that, you've got a thought in your head.
Derrick Overholt: If you do deal with it Because I have personally found that when I'm thinking about this and something pops in my brain, it didn't pop in there for nothing it's because I haven't dealt with it and I need to go repent, and sometimes that means that you're going to have to go to someone and repent.
Derrick Overholt: You know something that I realized with a certain sin that I'd been dealing with for many years.
Derrick Overholt: I had been asking God to forgive me many, many times, but I never went back to the first time and dealt with it Like that sin that began it all.
Derrick Overholt: I never went there, and so that might mean, yeah, you've asked God to forgive you a bunch of times for doing that to somebody, but you haven't went to the person, the one that you offended, the one that you hurt.
Derrick Overholt: You need to go and talk to them and it might happen today.
Derrick Overholt: Maybe they're in this room and you can deal with that, and we're going to give a time for that in just a little bit.
Derrick Overholt: But sin can hold us back.
Derrick Overholt: That might be a reason why we're not healed yet.
Derrick Overholt: Another one is do you want it?
Derrick Overholt: Do you want it?
Derrick Overholt: Now, this one sounds weird.
Derrick Overholt: Right, of course I want my healing.
Derrick Overholt: Yeah, but not everybody does.
Derrick Overholt: See, jesus asked the paralyzed man in John 5, 6, do you want to be healed?
Derrick Overholt: What might look really weird is that, honestly, some people either might be paralyzed by the fact that they've just not been healed and so they've just given up completely.
Derrick Overholt: I heard somebody praying about that this morning.
Derrick Overholt: Sometimes it's just the fact that they've prayed and then they like just given up completely and it's been years since they've really prayed about it.
Derrick Overholt: I'll tell you a little bit of my own testimony here.
Derrick Overholt: I've actually been praying for people in the past for long periods of time and realized that they don't want to be healed, and what I mean by that is they're scared of healing.
Derrick Overholt: If they get healed really healed they'll have to go back to work.
Derrick Overholt: I'm not meaning that in a bad way.
Derrick Overholt: That's scary.
Derrick Overholt: Think about this If you've lived 10, 15 years in some big sickness and it took you years to get where you're at right now, if you were to be completely healed right now, your whole life would change again.
Derrick Overholt: That's abrupt.
Derrick Overholt: That's not any condemnation toward anybody.
Derrick Overholt: That's scary, but that's real faith that we'd have to have.
Derrick Overholt: So if you got healed so that does happen Some people and again I've seen this in a few cases they really enjoy the dependency on other people and they love the special attention, and so they've come to me and asked me to pray for them.
Derrick Overholt: But yeah, you can see they really don't want it because they really enjoy what they receive from it.
Derrick Overholt: So that might be a reason why we're not healed yet.
Derrick Overholt: Now remember, I'm not saying that if you're sick, any of these seven are absolutely going to line up with you.
Derrick Overholt: They might not, but if I'm speaking one and it hits you today, we want to pray for those so that you can receive your healing.
Derrick Overholt: Along with that one is are we asking?
Derrick Overholt: You know, as I said just a minute ago, you get so tired of asking that you stop.
Derrick Overholt: Maybe you prayed for healing a few times and then you've just kind of given up on it completely.
Derrick Overholt: But we have to continue asking.
Derrick Overholt: Some people are not healed because they have a lack of asking and asking God.
Derrick Overholt: But a lot of times healing comes from continual prayer, long time of prayer, fasting prayer, much of it.
Derrick Overholt: That's why I said pray until something happens.
Derrick Overholt: Never stop praying, Fast over it.
Derrick Overholt: Ask others to pray with you.
Derrick Overholt: Never stop asking because you're just not healed yet.
Derrick Overholt: You're going to be, you're going to be healed and we pray that it's right now.
Derrick Overholt: Another one, number five is there an unclean spirit?
Derrick Overholt: Some people are not healed because of demonic oppression.
Derrick Overholt: We see that in Luke 13 with the woman with the disabling spirit.
Derrick Overholt: She had that for 18 years and Jesus said Satan had bound her and he set her free and she stood up for the first time in 18 years.
Derrick Overholt: So it could be that someone has the spirit of infirmity.
Derrick Overholt: It is a real thing and we do have that.
Derrick Overholt: So when you're praying for somebody for healing.
Derrick Overholt: You have to constantly ask God and really be discerning in these God.
Derrick Overholt: Is there something here that we need to cast off, because they've allowed that to be on them or they don't even know it's there and they've not told it to go away through the power of the name of Jesus?
Derrick Overholt: Number six this is one that's really hit me hard over the last little bit, and it is are we stewarding our temple properly?
Derrick Overholt: This is the temple of the Holy Spirit, right?
Derrick Overholt: And I'm only here on earth because God gave me this body to dwell in until this time's over with, and it is my responsibility to steward it.
Derrick Overholt: Well, you know, most of you know I'm all about stewarding all of God's possessions that he gave us, all the way down to a toothpick in your closet, I don't know Like.
Derrick Overholt: Your lawnmower belongs to God.
Derrick Overholt: Your car belongs to God.
Derrick Overholt: All of it belongs to God.
Derrick Overholt: If you have it, he gave it to you.
Derrick Overholt: So steward it right.
Derrick Overholt: It's a 50-year-old lawnmower, I don't care.
Derrick Overholt: Make sure it's still working, because it's what God gave you.
Derrick Overholt: Use it right.
Derrick Overholt: How many times I've said that?
Derrick Overholt: But when's the last time you heard Derek say I've got to steward this and I've not been doing a great with is anxiety, and I just wanted to share with you just a moment what anxiety does to your body.
Derrick Overholt: Anxiety causes damage to your nervous system.
Derrick Overholt: It causes damage to your heart.
Derrick Overholt: It causes damage to your digestive system.
Derrick Overholt: It causes damage to your heart, it causes damage to your digestive system, your immune system, your respiratory system.
Derrick Overholt: That's just anxiety.
Derrick Overholt: That's worrying about things that you can't control.
Derrick Overholt: Just that alone.
Derrick Overholt: If we just stop there, we're destroying our body because we're worried about those things that we can't control.
Derrick Overholt: We're tearing it up and it is throughout like all kinds of medical books.
Derrick Overholt: There's all kinds of things that we do to our body that leave lasting term bad effects to our body and can cause disease.
Derrick Overholt: So in that, like onto that, what if we're not eating things that are good for us?
Derrick Overholt: So when I say that, uh, maybe you're praying for god to heal high cholesterol, but you won't stop eating bacon, I'm just saying like the god.
Derrick Overholt: Like if you go to the doctor and the doctor says, hey, this, this, this and this is bad.
Derrick Overholt: I need you to stop eating this, and you're like, okay, what was bad, see you later and you don't listen to the fix, stop it.
Derrick Overholt: I can't tell you how many times I have seen people in my own family deal with diabetes and not stop eating cake at every 30 minutes and their blood sugar is going nuts.
Derrick Overholt: And they're sitting there like checking their blood sugar while they're eating the cake.
Derrick Overholt: And I can eat three more bites and you know, no, no, we know it's killing us.
Derrick Overholt: How many people who are dealing with asthmatic issues but you refuse to stop smoking?
Derrick Overholt: How many people are dealing with things in their gut?
Derrick Overholt: And it's because of overindulgence in different foods.
Derrick Overholt: Not all foods are bad.
Derrick Overholt: You know.
Derrick Overholt: We talk about alcohol.
Derrick Overholt: People talk about that one all the time, right?
Derrick Overholt: And overindulgence in alcohol can kill you.
Derrick Overholt: It'll take everything away from you, let alone kill your body.
Derrick Overholt: It will take everything from you.
Derrick Overholt: But a drink every now and then is not going to hurt your body.
Derrick Overholt: But it's overindulgence in these things.
Derrick Overholt: So it's okay to eat some chocolate.
Derrick Overholt: Just stop eating it every 30 minutes, right?
Derrick Overholt: So we're not taking care of our body.
Derrick Overholt: Some of us refuse to exercise.
Derrick Overholt: I'm right here.
Derrick Overholt: I'm right here, okay, I'm not.
Derrick Overholt: So I'm not pointing at anybody, but we refuse to exercise.
Derrick Overholt: What we know is bad for our body is to leave our body setting steel and vegging out on TV while eating Cheetos.
Derrick Overholt: It's bad for our body, which brings up my next point Cheetos are terrible, it really is the next one.
Derrick Overholt: So, which brings up my next point Cheetos are terrible, it really is the next one.
Derrick Overholt: So are we eating unknown poisons?
Derrick Overholt: This one's the one that's kind of got me recently.
Derrick Overholt: You've heard a lot of it come up in the news.
Derrick Overholt: Kennedy's been talking about it and talking about all the things.
Derrick Overholt: In America that we eat every single day, that's totally legal, but in the rest of the world is completely illegal.
Derrick Overholt: It's considered poison in the rest of the world and yet it's in 50% of our foods.
Derrick Overholt: And so, like praying God, is it something I'm eating Like, is there something that I'm consuming on a daily basis that's causing me to get sick?
Derrick Overholt: I didn't know for years.
Derrick Overholt: You know, I've always been told I had ADHD and when I look back of all the things I ate when I was growing up, what was in most of those foods were red 40, yellow 6, yellow 5, blue, whatever these crazy numbers.
Derrick Overholt: And I realized that when I looked at my meals that I would normally eat on a daily basis because when I grew up I didn't eat good.
Derrick Overholt: My mom tried, but I didn't.
Derrick Overholt: She tried so hard, but when I saw what I was eating, red 40 is known for causing ADD in children and I had it in probably 50% of my daily food.
Derrick Overholt: It was in 50% of everything I ate.
Derrick Overholt: And yet I'm like God, help me right now to focus, you know.
Derrick Overholt: And so then I was even thinking about what if today you're asking God to heal you and God's like I want to heal you right now but tonight when you get home you're going to eat this and it's going to cause the disease again, and so that's where we have to pray and ask God is there something I'm not saying?
Derrick Overholt: You got to take this overboard.
Derrick Overholt: I will tell you, my wife's tried to keep me wrangled in, because we did clean out half of my pantry over the last few weeks and got different foods, and there are people in our body that really do care about this and they're educated in this, and so they're more than willing to help you in this.
Derrick Overholt: If you feel like God's leading and saying, you might have some things in your house that you're eating that's causing these issues.
Derrick Overholt: You know, catherine Jeffries is great at this.
Derrick Overholt: We got Doc Hagerman.
Derrick Overholt: We got John back in the bag.
Derrick Overholt: You got people in the body that know and care about getting these things out of our life and know how to find out what might be.
Derrick Overholt: So there are people here.
Derrick Overholt: We want to help you with that.
Derrick Overholt: So there's six reasons so far that we're not healed yet.
Derrick Overholt: All right, the last one is this one.
Derrick Overholt: This is the one I don't like.
Derrick Overholt: I don't like this one.
Derrick Overholt: You guys see it up there, right?
Derrick Overholt: This one hurts.
Derrick Overholt: Oftentimes God might be working on something else, like spiritual growth, moral development, an increase in the knowledge of God.
Derrick Overholt: God desires our spiritual health way more than our physical health.
Derrick Overholt: Sometimes, what we're going through, that might be the only way, in his wisdom, that God has determined that you'll learn what he's wanting you for, for your spiritual self.
Derrick Overholt: This is the hardest thing for me, because I know God loves me and I'm not saying here today that that God is putting it on you.
Derrick Overholt: We know that we live in a falling and dying world.
Derrick Overholt: You know the moment you're born, you're counting down your days to death.
Derrick Overholt: You're born to die.
Derrick Overholt: You know we were talking earlier about the fact that, like well, we pray for healing, we pray for healing, it's given in the atonement and blah, blah, blah.
Derrick Overholt: Well, so is death, but all of us are dying, we're all going to, and God uses things, and he says that in Romans 8, 28.
Derrick Overholt: He says that I'm going to work all things together for the good of those who are called according to my purpose.
Derrick Overholt: So we see, even in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6 through 18, he says so.
Derrick Overholt: We do not lose heart, though, that our outer self is wasting away.
Derrick Overholt: Our inner self is being renewed day by day, for this light momentary affliction is preparing us for eternal weight of glory, beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Derrick Overholt: Our bodies are breaking down.
Derrick Overholt: They are Again.
Derrick Overholt: I'm going to quote Sam Storms again.
Derrick Overholt: Sam Storms has got some really great things on healing and the spiritual gifts, and I found another great thing that he said when it came to the sovereignty of God.
Derrick Overholt: He said let me personalize the God sovereignty principle.
Derrick Overholt: So let me personalize this principle.
Derrick Overholt: If I believe that Romans 8, 28, that God sovereignly orchestrates all events in my life for my ultimate and spiritual good and, preeminently, his ultimate glory, I can only conclude that, all things being equal, I'm not healed.
Derrick Overholt: If I'm not healed, it is because God values something in me greater than my physical comfort and health that he, in his ultimate or intimate wisdom and kindness, knows can only be attained by means of my physical affliction and the lessons of submission, dependency and trust in God.
Derrick Overholt: So sometimes you might be in it because God's guiding you through and he's going to make you stronger.
Derrick Overholt: Now I believe that, no matter what, even in all seven of these, god's making us stronger, because if it is sin in our life that we need to ask God to forgive us for, he's making us stronger.
Derrick Overholt: If our bodies are decaying because of something we're eating and we find out what that is, god's making us stronger.
Derrick Overholt: He's revealed that to us.
Derrick Overholt: All the things faith.
Derrick Overholt: He's making me stronger.
Derrick Overholt: By having and believing that God can do it, he's making me stronger.
Derrick Overholt: So, all seven of these, it's all about making us stronger.
Derrick Overholt: And, again, might not be that all of us will have one of these seven, but if today I've mentioned one of these and you're going through something and you need healing, today I've mentioned one of these and you're going through something and you need healing If it's hit you in your heart.
Derrick Overholt: Maybe one of those might be it.
Derrick Overholt: I just want you to start praying to God and asking him Lord, like is that?
Derrick Overholt: It?
Derrick Overholt: Is that something I need, and even if that sin is always going to be one that holds us back, it's always.
Derrick Overholt: It's never going to be a bad thing to repent.
Derrick Overholt: It's always going to be a good thing.
Derrick Overholt: But I want to leave you today with this that you are not healed yet, and we've been praying for the last couple of weeks that today, some of you will be healed.
Derrick Overholt: So whoever's coming up to lead us in worship, come on up.
Derrick Overholt: What we must do is pray in faith.
Derrick Overholt: That's all we can do.
Derrick Overholt: God heals.
Derrick Overholt: It's not how much I can muster up faith, it's not how much I can do.
Derrick Overholt: Anything that goes back to pointing at me is not going to work.
Derrick Overholt: Oh, he didn't have enough faith because it's not about him, it's about God.
Derrick Overholt: Oh, I didn't have enough faith because it's not about him, it's about God.
Derrick Overholt: Oh, I didn't have enough faith, it's not about me, it's about God.
Derrick Overholt: He's the only one that can heal.
Derrick Overholt: He's it.
Derrick Overholt: It's all for him and his glory.
Derrick Overholt: And so I want you to just start praying and having faith and knowing that he can do it.
Derrick Overholt: James 5, you guys can start playing anytime you want.
Derrick Overholt: James 5, we talked about a moment ago that we're just going to read James 5, 13.
Derrick Overholt: Is anyone among you suffering, let him pray.
Derrick Overholt: Is anyone among you cheerful, let him sing praise.
Derrick Overholt: Is anyone among you sick, let him call for the elders of the church and let him pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.
Derrick Overholt: And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
Derrick Overholt: Therefore, confess your sins one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed.
Derrick Overholt: The prayer of a righteous person has great power, as it's working.
Derrick Overholt: Elijah was a man with a nature like ours and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it didn't rain.
Derrick Overholt: Then he prayed again and the heavens gave rain and the earth bore its fruit.
Derrick Overholt: There's power in the name of Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: We read it earlier there's power.
Derrick Overholt: Or we sung it earlier there's power in the name of Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: And so today I felt like the Lord wanted us to use the PRAY acronym.
Derrick Overholt: I'm into my acronyms today Praise, repent, ask and yield.
Derrick Overholt: We need to come to God always before we ask for anything and giving him glory and honor and praise his name Because he's worthy God, if we're here and sick for the next 60 years, we praise God because he's so good to us that he allowed us to know him by name, the fact that he knows us.
Derrick Overholt: I can live here and be sick if he knows my name, so let's praise him.
Derrick Overholt: Then we're going to ask or we're going to repent.
Derrick Overholt: We're going to repent for anything in our lives that we haven't let go of yet.
Derrick Overholt: We're going to ask God to show us God.
Derrick Overholt: Is there anything else that I need to repent of?
Derrick Overholt: Majority of us are going to have something I know I will, because we all need to repent.
Derrick Overholt: And then we're going to ask God to heal.
Derrick Overholt: I've got us loaded up with a bunch of anointing oil.
Derrick Overholt: It's all in our pockets.
Derrick Overholt: We're ready to pray that God does some miraculous today, because we believe that Jesus heals.
Derrick Overholt: I think Tyler said it earlier God is the God of healing.
Derrick Overholt: I think it's Jehovah Rapha, is that correct?
Derrick Overholt: He is and he does, and he does and he can, and it might be today, and we're going to pray that it is.
Derrick Overholt: We pray that we can get that healing right now, because he can, absolutely In every way.
Derrick Overholt: But if it doesn't happen today, it's just not yet.
Derrick Overholt: We don't stop praying, don't stop praying.
Derrick Overholt: Don't stop praying.
Derrick Overholt: You pray until something happens.
Derrick Overholt: I've been sick for 20 years.
Derrick Overholt: Don't stop praying, keep praying.
Derrick Overholt: Your healing's on the way.
Derrick Overholt: It's not here yet, but it's on the way.