Every Seed Has Its Own Season

Pastor Bob:  Right.  People come to church and they think that I’m their healer. Just watching this program won’t heal them. They’ve got to take what they’re learning today… What we’re talking about is not rocket science; this is so simple. Yet, if they’ll take this and apply it… The new testament says you need to be a hearer of the word and be a doer of the word. Pastor is not your healer, Joyce is not your healer, and the books they read are not their healer; but if they’ll take those things and apply it… A lot of times people consume books, listen to cd’s, watch a program, and then wonder why they’re not healed. Somebody else grabs one concept off of one program — in fact, it was so revolutionary they didn’t hear the other 30 minutes of the program — they just caught one concept, went and acted on it and their life was changed.  It really comes down to that choice:  I choose to use what I’ve heard today.

Joyce: pastor, the bible says, “if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples. You will know the truth and the truth applied to your life will make you free.” so, let me ask a question: if a person would start reading and studying the bible and yet their life just kept getting worse, why should they continue?

Pastor Bob: Well, two reasons. Number one is — just like we talked about — if you don’t apply it, it’s not going to work. If you just read it… The bible doesn’t say, “read to show yourself approved,” it says “study.” that means make it a part of you, meditate on it. I was raised on the concept of memorizing scripture, and that’s wonderful, but you know what? The bible never says, “memorize to show yourself approved,” it says “study.” and especially meditating… I heard one man say one day, he was needing healing and he started reading through Isaiah 53 and decided to memorize the chapter but he got hung up on one verse: surely he has borne our sicknesses and carried our diseases. He said he started thinking about that. He looked at all the other verses and none of them had a “surely” attached to it; only that one verse. He said he realized God said: that is going to be the most controversial verse out of this entire chapter from now on so I put a “surely” on the front of it to let you know this is really part of that verse. He said: all day long I thought about “surely, surely, surely,” and he said by the end of the day, he was healed because he meditated. That’s the power of one word of the word of god. The other reason why oftentimes it doesn’t work for you is because you’re not patient. Taking medicine and looking at the end of the day, “am I better?” — no, medicine sometimes takes a week, a month. In fact, oftentimes the doctor will say, “by the second or third bottle of this you should be doing pretty well.” but if we’re like most people, our patience level is “this” long and we want to feel better by the next morning.