Names of Sickness

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The first step on the road to healing and health is understanding what sickness is. If we can see sickness in the light of the scriptures, we will know what healing is. We don't have healing because we don't know. "How my people perish for lack of knowledge?", says the Lord. The dictionary defines sickness as an 'infirmity', 'debility', 'binding', 'holding down' and disease as 'not at ease', 'unnatural softening or dysfunctioning of the physical organs'. How often, we as Christians have called sickness a blessing in disguise. Ultimately, sickness can turn out to be a blessing in many ways (as all things will work out together for good to them that love God), but it is not God’s way of blessing us. We will see this clearly as we go through all the lessons and scripture references carefully and prayerfully, earnestly seeking God’s perfect will. If sickness is really a blessing, why do we try to escape or prevent it? Why don’t we ask for or allow more of it? In truth, calling sickness “a blessing in disguise” is our terminology. God's names for sickness and diseases in the Bible are startling. A deliberate study of the scriptures shows us that God calls sickness or disease 1. A Captivity          Job 42:10 - "The Lord turned the captivity of Job". Job's suffering and sickness were not the Lord's blessing but satan's captivity. Many who have learnt to live with illness will not admit that sickness is captivity. But, remember the first time the illness struck. Was there not a sense of frustration or a great desire to be set absolutely free? In Luke 4:18 our Lord said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” 2. A Curse Deuteronomy chapter 28, the 'Blessings and Curses chapter' in the Bible, clearly reveals sickness to be a curse and health to be a blessing from the Lord. The 61st verse, "Also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the Book of This Law, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed “, warns the Israelites to fear the Lord and obey His voice, lest prolonged plagues and sickness come on them. "Sickness was a curse - the fruit of disobedience." As life is disrupted, huge amounts of money are spent and all visions shattered or readjusted, have you truly in your heart considered sickness a blessing? God has set before us a blessing and a curse, life and death. (See Deut 11:26, Deut 30: 1,19) 3. Destruction          Psalm 107: 20 - "He sent His Word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions". Sickness is the work of the one who comes 'to steal, to kill and to destroy' (John 10:10). Does not sickness pull you down? Does it not destroy cells in our body? If not attended to, will not sickness finally keep you cowed down and render you ineffective or atleast less effective? All sickness is incipient death of something in our physical and or mental constitution. 4. An Oppression          Acts 10: 38 says, "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him” In this verse, we see the Godhead combining to free those oppressed of the devil through the healing ministry of Jesus. Now isn't sickness an oppression indeed? One can and should glorify God in any situation, but consider how Jesus attacked sickness with His healing power. 5. A Bondage          Luke 13:16 "And ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham whom satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?" When our precious Lord healed this crippled, bent-over woman, he said he was loosing (freeing) her from the bondage of satan. That can mean only one thing –  sickness is the binding of the devil. Beloved child of God, if you are crippled in your body, Jesus sees it as a bondage and is intent on loosing you. Many Christians have cherished misconceptions about sickness. But nowhere in the Bible does God call sickness a blessing, but only by the above names. If sickness is really a blessing (many believe it to be so) and if it teaches us God's ways, would the Bible not exhort us to pray to be sick?    ............. Antioch House Email : wecare@antiochhouse.org