NIV 1Pe 2:24  “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

KJV 1Pe 2:24  Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

I was so frustrated! While attending college I developed a rash across my stomach area. It was reddish and very irritated. I just wanted to scratch continually. The school nurse tried to help, but nothing worked. On Sunday I went up to my pastor to have him pray for me. I was attending a church that believed in and regularly saw supernatural healing. The pastor would preach every Sunday night on healing, for years this was the pattern. So going to the pastor for prayer was a normal thing for me to do.

I expressed to the pastor that I needed this healing now! I was in so much discomfort. But, his answer frustrated me deeply. He said, “Joe, the truth of the matter is that you’re already healed.” With the agitation I was still feeling his answer almost made me angry. I wanted the responsibility for my healing to be on him and he was pushing it back on me. He was challenging my faith. He was forcing me to face a reality of the past-tense nature of my healing. From where I was standing, my current reality was that I was not healed. He was telling me that my healing was past tense. I could only see it in my future because the symptoms were screaming at me, demanding my attention.

This is where it’s time for a wrestling match. When we’re faced with a truth and it doesn’t fit our reality, we need to wrestle with it in prayer and meditation until we ‘get it’. Our old or current ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ says one thing, but there’s a message coming to us from the scriptures, from preaching or from the Spirit of God speaking something to us. The old ’truth’ wants to stay in place and not give up its position in our minds and hearts. But the new ‘truth’ is Truth! You know that it’s right but you don’t see how it fits. You don’t understand yet.

Remember, in Mark chapter 4, in the parable of the sower, the word that is understood is the word that went deep in the soil and produced a harvest 30-60 and 100 fold of what was sown.

As we meditate and pray and seek to understand the Truth we are welcoming that new ‘truth’ into our psyche, into our soul. It begins to make sense. We are literally creating new neural pathways in our physical brain for this new truth to reside. The old ‘truth’ had its own neural pathways in our brains, but as the new Truth is installed the old neural pathways will quickly dissolve and be no more. Our mind is actually being renewed.

Well, when my pastor told me that I was already healed, my mind wasn’t renewed to this. The Truth of the Word had not been installed in my psyche. So I struggled. My healing did come within a few short days of the pastor praying for me, but the agitation of this new Truth started agitating me more than the rash had been in the physical. 

In the passage shown above 1 Peter 2:24 puts healing in the past tense. It’s not future. Is it a bad translation? Or is there a Truth there for us? Is this something we need to mine out of the Word, then wrestle with in our souls until we really get it.

He has already given us everything we need for life and godliness.

2Pe 1:3  His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

• There He goes again! It’s in the past. We’ve already been given everything we need. But what if we don’t see it with our eyes? 
• Is there a reality we don’t see?
• So the Truth is I already have everything I need?
• Where is it?
• How come I don’t see it?
• We need to learn to see with what some call
  • The eyes of our faith
  • The eyes of our understanding
  • Sanctified imagination
• We need to meditate these truths until they are fully installed in us so that we can see them clearly in our understanding.

Eph 1:3  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

• Again, He’s saying that He HAS blessed us
• It’s already given
• Well where is it?
• Is my healing unseen because I have to first see it in the unseen?
• That sounds paradoxical.
• But spiritual things are spiritually discerned.
• I’m assuming that if you’ve read this far, something from your spirit is pulling you to continue on with what I’m saying.
• God is demanding of us that we perceive something that to the natural man is unseen.
• This requires faith.
• This requires you being willing to believe that God is trying to draw your attention to something that He sees clearly but you can’t see at all.
• We will have to switch from seeing with our natural eyes to the eyes of our faith.
• Even now, by reading this, you are being told that something exists that you can’t see.
• So this starts a process with your inner eyes.
• They start looking.
• There’s something I can’t see? I want to see it. 
• So, even this process is awakening your inner eyes.
• What is there in the spirit that I need to perceive?
• What are these riches in glory that He wants to supply my needs with?
• What about this list of every spiritual blessings? What is on that list? I want to know! I have to look! If by faith I just start to look, I will start to perceive.

The healing you need in your body right now already exists. It’s already been given. We now need to look in the spirit and see. 

Isa 53:5  But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

• We need to take this scripture, say it, study it, pray it, meditate it, perceive it until we ‘get it.’
• Once you get it in this way, it can’t be taken away from you.
• Once you see what Jesus has done for you, you lay claim to it. You agree with the fact that it was produced and given to you, but you must receive it personally by faith. You know it is yours and you get a determination within you to resist anything that says otherwise. You even find yourself resisting circumstances. 
• My stomach area was itching profusely, but the reality of my healing had to overcome those screaming symptoms.
• Now the Holy Spirit was right there with me through this whole process, because not only was His objective to get me healed, but He wanted me get this process of receiving things by faith, from the unseen realm into the natural seen realm.
• He was nurturing me, guiding me, assisting me all the way to the victory that I needed. My stomach doesn’t itch and that feels so good.
• But it really feels good to know that I have the Holy Spirit leading me into every victory that I need. 
• Your healing has already happened. Now let’s meditate, pray and install this into your thinking, into your soul, so that you can believe it with all your heart and be fully convinced. That is the faith you’ve been looking for.