GRACE FOR HEALING GROUP STUDY THE CHARIS CHURCH Pastor Sbanga Ndlovu
GRACE FOR HEALING For Group Study GRACE MOMENT Share with one another the things you did during the week to show someone how gracious and loving our God is. Take time to praise God for such acts of kindness. INTRODUCTION The Title of today s study may depict that there are many graces. The Truth is that there is ONLY one Grace. And He is a Person. His Name is Jesus Christ. John 1:14 says The Word became flesh and made HIS dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Verse 16 affirms that Out of his fullness we have ALL {Meaning GRACE IS FOR EVERYONE, Hallelujah} received grace in place of grace already given. Jesus is Grace. When He came, He gave us Grace for salvation, healing, deliverance, giving etc. Grace is the undeserved, unearned, unmerited fullness of all that Christ accomplished for us on Calvary. Today, through scouring the scriptures, we will look at the manifestation of Grace that brings Healing to us. PURPOSE OF STUDY To understand that God really desires you to be healed and live in divine health. After this study, all those who are sick should be prayed for and be healed according to the scriptures. Additionally, out of this understanding each person should go and start exercising their faith to heal others. ACTIVITY Many people are robbed of divine health because they think maybe it is God s will for them to be sick. They think maybe God is teaching them a lesson. Or like Job, Satan had a private conversation with God and they agreed to check if you are strong in faith. All this ideology comes from the wrong interpretation of the scriptures. It is true that under the old Covenant of the law, God allowed sickness and disease to come upon the Jews because of their obedience. Check out Exodus 15:26, Deuteronomy 28:15-62 among other such scriptures. This was before the New Covenant had been established. This does NOT Apply to us today. Christ died, resurrected and established a New Covenant of w w w. t h e c h a r i s c h u r c h. c o m S i b a n g i l i z w e N d l o v u P a g e 1 4
Grace that allows those who do not deserve health to have it. The Old Covenant simple gives health to those who deserved it, when they fulfil all the demands of the law, a totally different position today. Today, salvation is by grace alone through faith and it comes as a gift from God. So is healing by grace through faith, also being a gift from God. So the million dollar question is, today under the covenant of God s Grace: Is it God s will that I be healed? Discuss. Check the following and other scriptures to substantiate your answers Matthew 10:1 & 8 2 Peter 3:9 Luke 9:1 Luke 10:9 3 John 2 Mark 1:40-41 James 5:14-15 Psalm 103:2-3 Matthew 9:35 Acts 10:38 Matthew 12:15 3 John 1:2 FAITH IN ACTION Now that through scripture evidence, you understand God s position on healing. If any of you is sick, bring them forward and minister healing to them. Check them out after if the healing has manifested. Remember James 5:15. Do not be intimidated that you are not elders according to verse 14. It is not the elders who heal, BUT the prayer offered in faith The reference of elders commands order in the house as they hold spiritual authority. Mark 16:17-18 (paraphrased) says believers they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover Also, do not be moved when the recovery is not instant. You will experience instant healings and some will take a period of time. PRAYER Prayer Items 1. For many to be added into the church, those who are being saved 2. The Word of God s Grace to be taught unhindered and that more doors be open to share it w w w. t h e c h a r i s c h u r c h. c o m S i b a n g i l i z w e N d l o v u P a g e 2 4
READ NEXT PAGE ONLY AFTER GROUP DISCUSSION IF YOU HAVE NOT GONE THROUGH THE CELL GROUP DISCUSSION, DO NOT PROCEED TO MODEL ANSWERS. Use model answers to compare with agreed answers as home group w w w. t h e c h a r i s c h u r c h. c o m S i b a n g i l i z w e N d l o v u P a g e 3 4
MODEL ANSWER When God created Adam, he was sinless (Eph. 4:24) because he was created to be like God and was NOT supposed to die or be sick. When sin came, it came with all its by-products which include sickness and disease and death (Romans 5:12), which became the fall of man. The human body became susceptible to decay, sickness and disease (Romans 8:11). Later on, by grace, God chose Abraham and blessed him (Genesis 18:18-19), establishing an eternal covenant of Grace (Genesis 17:7), initially for his descendants by flesh and eventually to all mankind by faith (Galatians 3:7, 29). Some 430years or so later, his descendants by flesh rejected their fellowship with God by Grace, rather choosing to be led by law, the Law of Moses (Exodus 19 & 20). Up to this point, none had died or gone hungry because God upheld them by His Grace from Egypt. At this point onward (Mt Sinai) God s blessing and healing could only be accessed by merit (i.e. conditionally). If one kept the law perfectly, diseases will not befall them (Deut. 28) this was a condition for the Jews. For the Gentiles there was no law for them, worse still they were at the mercy of sin at its worst, manifesting itself in all sickness, disease, death etc. at will. Under God s Grace, there is no Jew or Gentile (Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11). Jesus appropriated the blessing of Abraham to reach everyone in the world by His Grace (Romans 4:16). This meant that those who were not of the stock of Israel could access the blessing by faith. The law, for the Jews, that conditioned their healing based on their performance was abolished (Ephesians 2:15). Gentiles, who were never under any law, were grafted into spiritual Israel and now can access the fullness of the blessing (Romans 9:25, 1 Peter 2:10). Because of the new covenant of Grace, Jesus is willing that everyone be healed. The quoted verses (listed in the activity) above each demonstrate that Jesus was always, and still is willing to heal all. The question of healing should never be based on whether God wants us healed or not, it has to be how we get hold of the healing that Jesus accomplished more than 2,000 years ago. The beautiful challenge is to check from the scriptures how we access such blessing which is already ours and is in us. The scriptures are amazingly clear. We just believe that we have received and we will have. God is not angry at you as He was in the Old Covenant. All that anger was exhausted on Calvary when Jesus died for our sins by meeting all demands of justice. w w w. t h e c h a r i s c h u r c h. c o m S i b a n g i l i z w e N d l o v u P a g e 4 4