Hello Friend,

I’m so glad you’ve chosen to spend this time with me! As you read this letter, I pray you receive all that the Lord has for you and allow Him to minister to you.

I have it on my heart to share with you about divine healing and my own experience with the power of God to heal and restore you. But first, let’s look at why some are not healed, because I believe it will help you see some things more clearly than you’ve seen them before.

In last month’s teaching, we looked at the goodness of God and His heart toward all His children. As the father of the prodigal son said to the older brother, “’…Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours’” (Luke 15:31), all that God our Father has is ours through Jesus Christ, and we can be sure of His will to heal all who receive that blessing by faith.

We can study God’s Word and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is the will of the Father that we walk in divine health. With that settled, how do we process the question, “Why is it that some very good Christians end up going into eternity without being healed?” Or, “Why do some believers live their whole lives with debilitating or troublesome physical conditions and fail to receive healing?” How are we to understand this?

First, it’s simply true that there are a lot of factors that we don’t understand in particular situations. It’s not because God didn’t do His part; He isn’t holding back or holding out on anyone’s healing. Psalm 145:9 says, “The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works”!

But I do know that people may have ways of thinking or dealing with situations in life that hinder them from receiving their healing.

We don’t know what is in the hearts and minds of the people who need to receive a touch from God. The Bible says it’s even difficult to know our own hearts (see Jeremiah 17:9). I came to realize this about myself during my journey that led to my first experience of receiving a miraculous healing.

I suffered for 13 years from a terrible skin condition on my face and neck from the time I was 12 years old. (I tell my full testimony in my book Redeemed From Shame.) The sores produced by the disease went clear through several layers of my skin. It was painful and terribly embarrassing. As a young woman, I was turned down from jobs and from singing opportunities because of the appearance of my face.

Even after I received the revelation years later that Jesus is my Healer, my healing didn’t just instantly manifest. But as I kept confessing God’s Word over a period of time, there came a powerful moment when the Holy Spirit showed me that there was something in my heart that was hindering my healing. Up until that time, I didn’t know what was in my heart or that there even was a roadblock that could keep my healing from manifesting. I was simply standing in faith, and the Lord was faithful to show me the hindrance!

All through my teens, I had to go to the doctor on a regular basis because of this skin condition. My mom spent a great deal of money on doctors to try to help me. I took a great amount of medicine over the years, but the medicines and treatments didn’t work for me; I just got worse.

These continual visits to the doctor gave me time to spend with my mother, and I enjoyed her attention. Even as horrible as the treatments were — having to endure the side effects of pain, blistering, and scaling — I still enjoyed those times of being with my mom and all the attention I received from her.

“Well, that’s normal,” some might say.

But fast forward years later to when I was 25 years old. Up until then, I just thought it was my lot in life to suffer with this chronic skin condition and that it was up to me to find a way to adapt and make the best of it. I had no hope for anything better. I had even resorted to buying very expensive, thick makeup to camouflage the disease.

Like many people who have a disease, the overwhelming reality of what I was experiencing — the pain, the embarrassment, the cost of treatment — canceled out the entrance of the Word about healing into my heart. So I hadn’t yet come to the revelation that Jesus bore my sicknesses on the Cross. I didn’t know He was my Healer.

For me, that revelation came one day as I just “happened” to come across a radio preacher teaching on healing. And as I listened, there was a moment when hope came alive in my heart as I heard him say, “By the stripes of Jesus, you are healed!” (See Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24.)

I said to the Lord, “You mean that I can actually be healed after suffering 13 years from this condition?”

It was that moment when hope entered my heart that my journey started. It wasn’t the kind of hope that says, “Well, I sure hope I’ll get healed.” It was the kind of hope that is based on the Word and is full of expectation that the manifestation of my healing was surely in my future!

At that time, I knew very, very little about the principle of confessing the Word. I just did it because the radio preacher I was listening to said it was important to do it.

When we start speaking God’s Word out loud, something starts happening inside us. I knew so little at the time that I didn’t realize that as I confessed the Word, my mind was being changed on the subject of divine healing. Nevertheless, from the moment hope entered my heart, I started to faithfully confess God’s promises in His Word and believe Him for my healing, and the power of His Word was doing a work in me.

Weeks passed, and I didn’t see any difference in my outward appearance or feel any different. Nevertheless, as I focused in and confessed what the Word says about Jesus being my Healer, something was surely changing in me. I was changing from the inside out.

The Holy Spirit Is the Revealer of Our Hearts

But then one day, as I was sitting in my car, listening to a woman radio preacher teach on healing, she asked a question that was a key. It unlocked a door to my heart and allowed me to see what was inside.

The radio preacher asked, “Do you really want to be healed?” When she said that, the Holy Spirit made it personal and asked me that question. And as He did, He revealed what was in my heart. He showed me that I had enjoyed the attention I had gotten from my mom because of the sickness, and I was unaware that I had, in a sense, “nurtured” that sickness instead of resisting it.

As I mentioned earlier, Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that in ourselves, we can’t truly know what is in our own hearts. But the Holy Spirit is a Revealer. He reveals the secret things that are binding us so we can be free! (See Daniel 2:22.)

The desire for my mother’s attention had been binding me to the skin disease that had afflicted me for so long, but until that moment, I had no idea. I could only have discovered that by the Holy Spirit. And when He spoke those words into my heart through that radio preacher, there also came the knowledge of what I had to do for deliverance. I immediately repented.

I prayed right then and there, “Lord, I don’t want any more attention because of this condition. I want to be healed!”

As I sat in the car that day, there was just something about the delivering voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to my spirit through this radio preacher. I didn’t have to wonder if the preacher’s words applied to me. I knew.

Suddenly I knew something about myself I hadn’t known before that moment. That is the revealing power of the Holy Spirit in action! And in that moment of revelation, I immediately dealt with the hindrance to my healing that the Holy Spirit had shown me.

Keep Believing — Stay in Faith!

Still, for the next several weeks after that experience, I didn’t see any change in the skin disease. In fact, two months had gone by since the revelation of Isaiah 53:5 first dropped in my heart. Judging from what it looked like, I wasn’t getting any better. Nevertheless, I believed that God was working, and I just stayed in faith and kept doing what I knew to do — confessing what the Word said about my healing.

Then one night I went to bed with that disease, just as I had every other night for 13 years, but when I woke up the next morning, I had received a complete miracle. My forehead, my cheeks, and my neck were clear — the disease was completely gone!

Why did that happen? What freed me from that disease? That happened because of the scourging of our Savior! Jesus didn’t take that scourging — those healing stripes — in vain. He took those stripes so we would believe on what He did for us and receive our healing. But we have to believe it.

That’s what happened in my situation. First, I believed God’s Word. And when the Holy Spirit’s delivering voice through that woman radio preacher revealed to me a key hindrance to my healing, I immediately responded and He dealt with it. Then in the weeks that followed, somehow as I saw His words with my eyes, spoke His words with my mouth, and heard His words with my ears, the power of those words made their way into my heart. And at some moment when my heart and soul agreed, I was healed.

Why would Jesus willingly subject Himself to such horrible treatment? Because it was His Father’s will to free you from suffering and torment. And it was also Jesus’ will. His will and the Father’s will are 100-percent the same — same in purpose, same in plan, same in power. So you can boldly proclaim: Jesus is my Healer! God is faithful, and His promises are true!

Thank you so much again for spending this time with me. If you would like more encouragement from the Word, I invite you to join me for my program TIME With Denise Renner on Wednesdays at 12:00 p.m. CT on YouTube and Facebook. You can also find me on the following:

• GospelTruth.TV — Saturdays at 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. CT
• PTL — Saturdays at 3:30 p.m. CT
• Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google — Mondays at 5:00 a.m. (new audio podcasts)

Will you let us know how we can pray for you? If you need healing or you have a special prayer request, one of our prayer partners is just a phone call or email away. Call 1.844.473.6637 or send us an email at prayer@deniserenner.org. We are believing for you to experience the fullness of God’s blessings in your life — including the healing power that is available to you today!

We are moving forward together,

Denise Renner