We’re going to go through the natural aging process.  That day’s coming sooner now than when we first believed.  As these vessels wear out, “Threescore and ten, and eighty if you’re strong” (Psalm 90:10).  But He said as you experience the natural consequences of sin—getting old is the consequence of sin; amen?  Don’t think this way, don’t do like me and look in the mirror and say, “Man, you’ve been doing a lot of sinning lately.”

But it’s a consequence of the Adamic nature, of Adam’s sin.  What is it, every seven years they say, that our cells are replenished? But they’re replenished with inferior cells.  So now I have an inferiority complex.  But that’s how it is.  Or as the old country western singer said, “Sounds Like Life to Me.”  “…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

So here we are, with a great covenant promise.  Our heavenly Father says that He “will forgive all of our iniquities, and He will heal all of our diseases.”  This is God, revealing Himself to us as to Who He is.  This is His nature.  I want you to know something:  the essence of God is love.  God’s nature is to heal His covenant people.  It’s Who God is.  So often, you know, we lose sight of that.

In Mark 9 we get a little glimpse of the Lord Jesus.  There was this young man who was demon possessed.  His father was telling Jesus, as he brought him, believing for him to be delivered, he said, “I have brought unto thee my son, (verse 17) which has a dumb spirit…”  My dad used to say that a lot, but… “He foams at the mouth, and gnasheth with his teeth…”  That word “pineth away” just means that he becomes rigid and stiff.  “And I spoke to your disciples, and they said they could do nothing.”  Jesus didn’t like that statement.  He was not happy with the condition of their lives at that moment.  He said, “Those that see you will have seen Me, and the things that I did shall you do, and greater things than these shall you do, because I go to My Father, and I’ll send the Holy Ghost to you”; amen?  “And you’ll receive power to be witnesses unto Me…” (Acts 1:8), and part of that witnessing is not just sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, but revealing the power, the present power, of God.  Many of Jesus’ miracles and healings were the ways that He was showing them, through signs and wonders, so they would know and believe that He was the Son of God, that He was the Messiah.