COME TO HIS RIVER
By John Miller
-You will find healing-
"There is in Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people-the blind, the lame and the paralyzed- waiting for the movement of the water. God sent down an angel at a certain season and troubled the water. Whosoever then first stepped in, after the troubling of the water, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. Thus people received healing" (John 5: 2-3)
We often need healing because we receive wounds in life. Life is a tough experience
indeed; life is full of wounds. There used to be a perfect relationship between man and
God until he sinned.
The first wound that man experienced was his separation from God. That is the greatest
damage. At times, we are even unaware of that wound because we are separated from
communion with the Lord, and our spirit knows it. We may feel that everything is all right
because we may read the Bible, we may attend a Bible Study we may go to church, but
really, our spirit is hurt. If it is not in full communion with the Lord, it just dries up
as if it has been fasting. No matter what you do or try to do, there is no joy because
communion with God is broken within. Although you try to fill it up with other things to
make your life happy, there is just a deep feeling of uneasiness within. One feels so
empty as if one were dead inside. It is when you begin to draw near unto God again and
into communion with Him, one of the first things you experience is joy. You feel joyful as
though something is bubbling inside. When you come into communion with God again, you have
real joy because it is as if everything is all right. The Almighty Father controls
everything. That's why Paul said: "I rejoice even in the middle of
tribulations." He was rejoicing in prison. That's why the Christians could sing and
praise and rejoice even while they were being burned at the stake. Why? Because there was
a joy that is above all circumstances. Yes, there is an inner place, an inner joy. As
Jesus said: "My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives."
Joy faded away due to sin, when man broke his communion with the Lord.
What was the second wound that man had? Perhaps it was Abel's death, when Cain, his
brother, killed him. The pain Eve felt when she discovered that her son had died. Can you
think about Eve for a moment? Just ask a mother whose son was killed the way she feels. It
is certainly a trauma in her life. Adam and Eve lost their son (it was the second wound
that left a deep scar inside.) They lost their beloved son.
Do you have scars? I have lots of them but they no longer hurt because they have healed.
If a wound develops an infection, it gets red, it doesn't heal and in fact, it can take
your life because it develops gangrene.
Wounds must be healed. They need to be healed. You can try to put the blame on whomever
you want, you can try to forget the wound, but you cannot get rid of a wound unless it is
healed. That wound cannot be forgotten; it cannot be displaced. And, there are lots of
wounds throughout life!
I worked in an orphanage for a decade. We saw many children ill-treated, abused, even
sexually by their parents. There was a boy who was registered in our orphanage; he came in
as a child of seven. He never confessed it to anybody, but he was such a troubled person.
It didn't matter what people did to help him, he wouldn't even accept being loved. He was
almost like a hermit, living inside of himself. We fed him, we loved him, we took him to
church and taught him, but nothing reached deep in those wounds. All of sudden, when the
Spirit began to move in the river, God started to heal his wound. Later he gave testimony
and told about the sexual mistreatment, and how he hated us, God and the whole world. He
also shared how Jesus came down and began to heal him. Then he cried out: "Father;
Father!" It is obvious that the hatred he felt against his natural father was also
felt against the God. For the first time in his life he knew that the disgusting things
that happened to him were defeated and healed. For the first time in his life those things
that were still pending in the dark corner were healed and taken care of.
I have worked for more than thirty years with young people. There are so many hurts; hurts
in the family. Speaking about divorce, children and even young people believe that it is
their fault that parents have separated and divorced. Actually, they carry that heavy
burden on their shoulders; somehow they just convince themselves that it is their fault,
that they did something wrong.
There are also children that have been kicked out of their homes, that have been abused by
their parents, who have been used as slaves in labors, young people who later on went into
all type of sins, into experiences that leave deep wounds inside.
Young people get involved with drugs. Drugs represent the illegal door that leads up to
the spiritual world; it's a back door. When they take drugs they go into the world of the
devil. They incur in satanic things that leave marks on their lives and leave a record of
evil impressions.
Abortions leave a deep wound in women's hearts also. Some women carry this sort of wound
all their lives.
Think about single women... Single women who are over thirty years of age know about it.
It hurts; they are acquainted with the feeling of being rejected, the feeling that no one
loves them and of that internal loneliness.
Marriage... it is not over yet! Oh! There are so many hurts! Discussions, quarrels,
aggressions, even adulteries and divorces; life is full of hurts and it leaves scars in
our lives, deeply in the souls.
A Heavenly Vision
Once, there was a Chinese lady. She was married but there was a deep wound in her heart. She told the story to our ministry later. Several years before, she had an abortion. They were a young married couple. They were still living with their family and they didn't want her to have a child due to the economical pressures in China. So the family convinced her husband and the husband convinced her, therefore she had an abortion. After she did that, she had a feeling of great dejection, her whole life changed, her personality changed, there was a feeling of profound sadness. After that she was converted. The Lord touched her in special way. All of a sudden, her eyes were opened and she saw that she was in the heavenly world. An angel grabbing a little girl by the hand in a ray of light, approached her and the little girl said: "Hello mommy, don't be sad! Don't cry! I am very happy here. This is my teacher, he teaches me many beautiful things. Some day we will be all together again." Then, the angel turned round and walked the child back. She felt that something happened in her inner being. Jesus came to heal the condemnation that she had had; the feeling that she had killed her daughter, which pursued her for several years. She was healed deep inside, the joy of the Lord began to heal her soul.
Human Wounds & Forgiveness
More than once, we are not only hurt by circumstances or things we do, but at times,
people hurt us. One hurts and gets hurt. There is no place for complaints.
I remember when a very close associate in the ministry hurt me. I was so hurt! Immediately
then, I went to my desk to pray. To forgive him wasn't an easy task. After a couple of
weeks he had almost a heart attack. God began to speak to him about what he did. He rang
me up to say: "Oh, please, forgive me! I answered: "No, I won't forgive
you!" "Why?" and I said, "Because, I already forgave you three weeks
ago". We have to forgive to take care of those things that come from the outside.
Jesus gave us an extremely clear message: "If you have not forgiven, do not expect Me
to forgive you."
Here comes a hard one. It is much easier to forgive someone else than to forgive
ourselves. Although many times we know that God forgave us, we still cannot forgive
ourselves for doing this or that, we have to pay for penitence.
Face it, we are human. There are people who hang on the evil things they have done and
they cannot forgive themselves.
There are people that believe they are so perfect that when they make a mistake, it is as
though: "Oh God, I made a mistake!" They are so just in their own eyes; they
always do what is right so when they do something wrong they cannot forgive themselves. We
have to forgive ourselves too and God will always make a way. Jesus Christ was sent to
heal us.
The River Flows
This is the acceptable year of the Lord and if you will believe Him and
open your hearts, this is a time when the Holy Spirit is moving the waters and the waters
are like a river, and in this river there is healing, much healing. The Lord began to
touch people's wounds during the "River Move", in October 1999, among us, and
said, "I want to heal you." Many of them saw Jesus coming nearer to apply His
anointing oil. On them. Perhaps, the most common thing I have seen in this move was that
when people began to open their hearts to the Lord, they almost simultaneously began to
cry and laugh. Later on, most of them coincided and said, "I think that laughter was
just like an anesthetic before He operated on me. He brought that laughter and joy and
when I opened my heart, He came down and began to clean my heart."
In these wonderful waters of the Holy Spirit, you have some people laughing, other people
crying and it is all done decently and in order, in God's order, not in our order; in the
order of the Holy Spirit. He brings joy to one; He brings repentance to another; He heals
the body of another. He does so many different and wonderful things and He does them all
at once. It's so beautiful to see some people crying, some people laughing, some people
speaking in different languages, being filled with the Holy Spirit; others being born and
repenting of their sins for the first time in their life; others completely drunk with His
wine. I know it does not look like order, but His idea of order is not the same as ours.
As we begin to tiptoe into the river, there are only a few drops of living waters, but we
can go deeper and deeper still. (Ezekiel chapter 47.)
That is God's work. He can take us deeper but we have to get off shore and go into the
water up to our ankles. If we don't go into His river, we cannot expect to be taken
deeper; before He can take us deeper, we have to cry out: "I want that, I want
that..."
He is inviting you: "Come to His River!