It seems no matter where I travel to minister to people, it’s the same old thing.  The devil is hard at work to try to convince people that, for one reason or another, they won’t be able to get God to do anything for them.

People seem to think there’s a three feet thick brick wall up between man and God that God has put up to make sure you can’t get to Him.  I’ve seen people beg and plead with God to heal them.  They’ve gone to meeting after meeting, listened to God only knows how many teachings, read enough books to fill a library, and still, they pray and come away with nothing.  Why is that?

There is a lot of good teaching out there about healing, and I’m not the only one with an anointing for healing.  But sometimes I have trouble getting through.  In fact, there’s a record of Jesus having trouble getting through, in Mark 6:1-6;

 And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. 
  And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? 
  Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. 
  But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 
  And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. 
  And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.

Here we see something pretty astonishing.  It wasn’t that Jesus wouldn’t heal the sick, it says He couldn’t!  All this time we have thought our inability to hear from God or be healed was because God was saying “NO”, or “NOT NOW”.   Jesus was full of mercy and compassion for all who came to Him, including those of His own village.  He went about healing the deaf, blind, lepers, lame, casting out devils, no matter who it was, He never turned them down.  He never turned anyone down!

 It says “He healed them all” in Matthew 8:16, Matthew 12:15,  Luke 6:19.  But in His own village, it says there He could do no mighty work, save that He laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.  What was so different about His own village?  Was there some dread disease among them that even God Almighty could not heal?  Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

What was that which kept the people of Jesus’ village from being healed.  Mark 6:6 tells us:  And He marvelled because of their unbelief.  They were offended because they perceived Jesus as just the carpenter’s son, He was just plain ole Jesus to them, nothing special, and they had heard of and perhaps seen the miracles that Jesus did elsewhere and were just plain put out about it. 

 But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.  How well I can relate to that.  My own precious mother-in-law knew me as just plain ole Jerry, not a man of God anointed to heal.  I offered prayer for her to be healed from cancer of the pancreas, but she died anyway.  Why?  Because of her unbelief.  God wasn’t refusing to heal her.  Cancer of the pancreas is no big obstacle to God, and He had healed others for me with the same thing with no problem.  But to her, I was kin, and God couldn’t possibly work through kinfolk, could He?  She was a wonderful lady whom I will ever miss.  She didn’t have to die.  All she had to do was believe Jesus, but she just couldn’t bring herself to believe Jesus healed today, nor that He could work through me.

Funny thing, the farther I get from home, the stronger the healing anointing seems to get.  Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with God, He’s always with me.  But it has everything to do with people’s perception of you.  I remember praying for a man in a wheelchair in 1999 at Fort Worth, Texas, who had been quadriplegic for several years.  We were at a large conference.  I told him I would pray for him, and pull him out of the wheelchair, and walk him around the conference center, and God met him right there just like THAT, and POW! he was healed good as new. We walked around the place amid cheers and praises to God.  But could that have happened in my mother-in-law’s house?  Not likely.  There, I was too close to home and the wall was too high.  I don’t think even Jesus himself could have healed that man in my mother-in-law’s house.  And it says Jesus couldn’t do it among His own family, either.  Why?

Here it is in a nutshell; people, you have to get through your wall to reach God.  And God isn’t putting that wall there, YOU ARE!  That wall is there because people listen to the lies of the devil.  And he’s only too glad to whisper in your ear “God won’t heal you today, and tomorrow doesn’t look much better, either.”   “You’re going broke and you’re going to lose everything!”  Another of his lies is this; “Surely your pastor can’t lay hands on you and heal you.  After all, you KNOW him, and he has problems just like YOU do.  God can’t possibly use HIM’.  But let that pastor bring someone else in, like me, and now they get healed easy as pie.  Why?  They’ve let the wall down.

But people don’t have the wall down everywere I go.  It’s my job to persuade and teach the people of the goodness of God, how He loves YOU with an everlasting love.  I don’t just go in laying hands on people.  Jesus taught, and THEN He healed.  So, following the pattern of Jesus, I do likewise.  You’d be amazed how easy it is to get people healed once that wall comes down.  Come to one of my meetings, and you’ll experience that firsthand.

But that wall cannot be penetrated with unbelief.  My own mother-in-law was so full of unbelief, that God could do no mighty work in her family until after she died.  Now they’re all coming along, and one by one they are becoming new creatures in Christ Jesus. 

It’s amazing how that wall of unbelief can keep us out of all the good things the Lord wants to give it.  We put the wall up, and even God Himself cannot penetrate it.  We put the wall up, and blame God for not blessing us, and we make the wall so thick, and so high, that we end up walling ourselves inside with the devil.  And we wonder why our day is not going well? 

Listen, my friend, you may have walled yourself in with the devil, and you’re finding your life is a mess.  The devil loves being in there with you, all alone.  For it is then he can do his nastiest work against you, destroying your hope, your family, your health, your finances, everything you have.  And until you take the wall down, you can go to every conference, read every book, listen to every teaching, but nothing will help much. 

But once you punch a hole in that wall from the inside, and you’re the only one who can, by the way, then the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ will shine through that hole.  Oh, Boy!  The devil hates being exposed to the light!  He will run from the light and go back to the darkness from whence he came.  And the Lord Himself will shine unto you and make you whole!  Life without walls is wonderful.  I know.  I took all mine down and let Jesus shine unto me.

I invite you to let down the wall and let Jesus do for you what He has done for me.  And better still,  even use YOU to bring that light to others.