Transcription
You've been saying it wrong. Not the words. The words are right. "By his stripes I am healed." 1 Peter 2:24. Isaiah 5:35.
You've probably quoted it a thousand times. Maybe you've written it on a sticky note. Maybe you say it in the shower. Maybe you've stood in front of a mirror and declared it while your knees were trembling and your symptoms were screaming louder than your voice, and you're still sick.
And now, if you're honest, a part of you has started to wonder if it even works. A part of you is starting to think that maybe this is just something Christians say, something that sounds good in a prayer line but doesn't translate to Tuesday morning when the pain is real and the doctor's report is sitting on your kitchen table.
Let me tell you something. And I need you to hear me clearly.
The problem is not the verse. The problem is you don't know what you're holding.
When you walk into a bank and hand them a check, nothing happens unless there's an account backing it. It's not the bank's fault. It's not even the check's fault. The problem is you didn't know the full weight of the account behind it.
Most believers are holding a check drawn on the account of Almighty God, backed by the blood of Jesus Christ, signed at Calvary, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and they're mumbling it like a wish instead of enforcing it like a contract.
E. W. Kenyon wrote this more than a hundred years ago. And the church still hasn't woken up to it.
He said, "Faith is not trying to make ourselves believe something that is not [music] so. Faith is daring to accept what God says is so."
Say that again. Daring to accept what God says is so.
Not hoping. Not wishing. Not begging. Daring, because here is what is actually happening.
When a believer, one who understands covenant authority, speaks the words, "By his [music] stripes, I am healed," with legal understanding, you are not making a religious statement. You are issuing an eviction notice. You are not asking God to do something. You are announcing to every force in the spirit realm that a covenant [music] has already been executed. The price has already been paid. The deed has already been signed in blood, and any occupation of your body by sickness is a legal [music] trespassing on Holy Ghost property.
And today, I'm going to show you exactly what happens in the spirit, in the supernatural, and yes, in the very cells of your body, when that declaration is made with understanding, [music] because the difference between a believer who gets results and one who doesn't is not the quantity of their faith. It is the quality of their knowledge. And what you don't know is costing you your healing.
If this teaching is going to shift something in you today, I want you to do something right now before we go one sentence further. Type in the comments below, "I am the healed." Not "I'm trying to get healed." Not "I hope to be healed one day." "I am the healed." Let that declaration go into the record. Let it go into the spirit. We will talk about why that matters before this teaching is over.
Few Christians realize that Isaiah 53 is not a poem. It is not comfort literature. It is a legal document, >> [music] >> a covenant record written by the prophet under divine inspiration, 700 years before the events it describes. And it contains the most precise legal language in all of scripture concerning your physical body.
Look at the language of Isaiah 5:3-5 closely. "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."
Four separate legal exchanges occur in that single verse. "Wounded for our transgressions," that's substitution. "Bruised for our iniquities," that's an identification. "The chastisement of our peace was upon him," that's a transfer of punishment. And "with his stripes, we are healed." That is a declaration of accomplished covenant provision.
But here is where the revelation begins to open. The word 'stripes' in the Hebrew is chaburah. And chaburah does not simply mean a surface wound. Chaburah refers to a bloody bruise, a wound cut deep into the flesh, a welt left by a lash that tears through multiple layers of skin.
When Isaiah chose that word, he was not speaking symbolically. He was being medically and legally precise. The physical suffering of Jesus Christ [music] was specifically targeted, not random, not incidental, specifically designed to address the legal right that disease had claimed over the human body through the fall.
And the word 'healed' in that passage is the Hebrew word rapha. This is the same word God used when he declared his own name in Exodus 1:5-2:6. He said, "I am the Lord that healeth thee, Yahweh rapha." The covenant name of God bound up in the act of healing.
And rapha is written in the past tense. "We are healed." Not "we will be healed if God sees fit." Not "healing is available if you believe hard enough." "We are healed." It is an accomplished fact recorded in the vocabulary of eternity.
The great Apostle Peter confirmed this in 1 Peter 2:24, quoting Isaiah directly and reinforcing the past tense. He writes, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the [music] tree that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness by whose stripes you were healed."
"Were" past tense. The healing existed in the past before your diagnosis existed in the present. >> [music] >>
And then Matthew, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, takes it even further in Matthew 8:17. He says, "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses."
The Greek word used for infirmities here is asthenia, meaning weaknesses, and the word for sicknesses is nosos, referring to diseases in their full clinical sense. Jesus did not take a concept. He did not take a metaphor. He took the actual biochemical, neurological, cellular disease process and bore it in his body on the cross. This is not theology reserved for seminary classrooms. This is the legal foundation upon which every cell of your body can stand.
Now, let me show you what the early church understood that most modern Christians have completely lost.
In the book of Acts, chapter 3, Peter and John are walking to the temple when a man who had been lame since birth called out to them for alms. Peter looked at him and said, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk."
And he took him by the hand. And the man leaped up. And he walked. And he entered into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God.
Notice what Peter did not do. He did not pray and ask God to please consider healing this man. He did not bow his head and say, "Lord, if it be thy will, heal him." He issued a declaration. He enforced a covenant right. He spoke [music] with the authority of someone who knew exactly what had been purchased at Calvary and what he had legal standing to release.
Now, walk into the average church in America today and tell me what you see. You see prayer lines where people plead with God to do something he already did. You see believers asking the Father to heal them as though Jesus never went to the cross. You see Christians approaching the throne of grace as though they are still on the outside of the covenant, as though they are strangers petitioning a reluctant king, rather than sons and daughters enforcing their inheritance before a father who already provided everything.
The early church was not begging. They were enforcing. And the difference between those two positions is the difference between a beggar standing at a courthouse door and a judge sitting on the bench. One has no legal standing. The other wields authority. The early church understood that Calvary had transferred authority to the believer. The modern church, in too many places, has traded that authority back in for sentiment and religious tradition.
E. W. Kenyon saw this with devastating clarity. He wrote, "The confession of the lips that has grown out of faith in the heart brings God upon the scene."
"Not pleading, not weeping, confession. Rooted in heart faith, spoken aloud, that is what brings the power of heaven into your physical situation. >> [music] >>"
Now, I want to walk you into the deeper mechanics of what happens in the spirit realm and in the natural realm when a covenant-aware believer speaks those seven words.
Think of it this way. Imagine a soldier returning home from a war that has already been decisively won. The enemy forces have been defeated. The peace treaty has been signed. The commanding general has declared total victory.
But in a remote province, a pocket of enemy combatants continues to occupy a village, not because they have any legal right to be there, but because no one has shown up to enforce the treaty terms. They are operating on the assumption that no one will come, and so they continue their occupation.
That village is your body. The enemy combatants are the spirits of infirmity, the works of the devil, the trespassing forces of sickness that Jesus addressed in Luke 13:16 when he said of the woman bent double for 18 years, "Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound lo, these 18 years, to be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?"
Jesus identified sickness as satanic bondage, not God's discipline, not sovereign will. Satanic bondage operating in a body where it had no legal right.
And when you say, "By his stripes I am healed," with an understanding of the covenant behind those words, you are not making a wish. You are arriving in that occupied village with the full force of heaven's legal authority, showing the enemy the signed [music] treaty. The executed covenant. The blood ratified agreement and demanding compliance.
This is why Proverbs 1:8:21 says, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." Not in the power of your circumstances. Not in the power of your medical reports. In the power of the tongue. Because words spoken in alignment with covenant truth carry legal force in the spirit realm.
E. W. Kenyon understood this when he wrote, "What I confess, I possess."
"Words are containers. They carry [music] faith or they carry fear. And they produce after their kind."
Your words are not passive. They are containers. And when those containers are filled with covenant truth, with the accomplished work of Christ, with the legal language of 1 Peter 2:24, with the past tense reality of Isaiah 53, those containers carry something that the spirit of infirmity cannot withstand.
But let us go deeper still. Because I promised you we would talk about what happens in your cells. And I am not going to skip that.
The human body contains approximately 37 trillion cells. Each one of those cells is responding at every moment to signals: chemical signals, electrical signals, hormonal signals. And this is where modern medicine has begun to document what scripture has always declared: vibrational and neurological signals that are shaped by the dominant thought and speech patterns of the person in whom those cells reside.
Research in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, which is simply the study of the connection between the mind, the nervous system, and the immune system, has documented measurable changes in immune function, cortisol levels, cellular regeneration, and inflammatory response based on the psychological and emotional state of a person. In other words, what you believe and what you say [music] produces a measurable biological effect.
Now, understand, I am not preaching science as the authority here. The word of God is the authority, but I am telling you that science is slowly catching up to what Solomon declared in Proverbs 4:22. [music] When God said his words are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh.
The Hebrew word translated 'health' there is marpe. It means medicine. Healing medicine to all their flesh. God was describing a physiological effect. His word, received and confessed, operates in the body as healing medicine at the cellular level.
This is why God told Joshua in Joshua 1:8 to keep the book of the law in his mouth, >> [music] >> not just in his mind, not just in his heart, but in his [music] mouth, day and night. Continuous verbal confession of covenant truth. That thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous. And then thou shalt have good success.
The health of your way—physical, emotional, material—was tied to the word staying in your mouth when you confess, "By [music] His stripes, I am healed." You are not merely speaking a religious phrase. You are releasing, through your voice, a covenant-backed signal into your own nervous system, your own endocrine system, your own immune response.
The spirit of God, who dwells in you, Romans 8:11, declares, "But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal body by His spirit that dwelleth in you." That spirit responds to covenant confession. He responds to the word being released through the voice of the believer. And when he moves in response to covenant confession, he quickens—that Greek word is zoopoyeo, meaning to make alive, to give life—your mortal physical body.
Your cells are not beyond the reach of the spirit of God. Your immune system is not beyond the reach of covenant truth. Your nervous system is not beyond the reach of a declaration made in faith from a heart rooted in the finished work of the cross.
Now, here is where most believers make the fatal error, and it costs them everything. They make the confession. They say the words, and then they immediately reach for the report. They immediately look for the evidence. They immediately check whether the symptom has changed. And when the symptom has not changed in the next 15 minutes, they conclude that the confession did not work. This is not faith. This is the sense knowledge trap that E. W. Kenyon spent his entire ministry trying to pull the church out of.
Kenyon wrote, "The reason many Christians never receive what God has promised is that they trust their senses more than they trust the word. They live in the realm of what they see and feel, rather than the realm of what God has said."
Think of it this way. Imagine a farmer who sows seed into the ground. The moment that seed goes into the soil, the biological process of germination begins. The seed cracks open. The root begins to push downward. The shoot begins to push upward. None of this is visible on the surface. The ground looks exactly the same the day after planting as it did the day before. And if that farmer, seeing no change on the surface, concludes that the seed is not working >> [music] >> and digs it up, he destroys the very process he initiated.
Your confession is the seed. The covenant of healing is the soil. The spirit of God is the life force in that soil. The moment you speak the word of God in faith, the covenant process begins. Healing begins to move in the realm of the spirit. The eviction notice has been served. The process has been initiated, and your job, your covenant responsibility, is to hold your confession. Stand on the word and refuse to give the enemy back the ground you have legally claimed.
Galatians 6:9 says, "And let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint [music] not."
Due season. Not immediate season. Not 15 minutes season. Due season in alignment with the sovereign timetable of God, which is always moving toward your wholeness. Hold the confession. Refuse to faint.
Now, I want to be very direct with you about the language you are using. Because your words are shaping your biological reality more than you know. And I want to give you specific covenant-grounded alternatives to the language that is working against your healing.
Stop saying, "I am fighting this sickness." The word 'fighting' positions you as someone engaged in an uncertain battle with an enemy of equal or superior power. Instead, declare, "Sickness has no legal right to my body. I am the healed of the Lord." Enforcing the covenant of healing through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Stop saying, "I'm believing God for my healing." This language places healing in the future and makes it conditional on the quality of your believing. Instead, declare, "My healing was purchased at Calvary 2,000 years ago. 1 Peter 2:24 is my covenant. I receive what is already mine in Christ."
Stop saying, "Lord, if it be thy will, please heal me." I know this sounds spiritual. I know it sounds humble, >> [music] >> but Jesus already revealed the Father's will on this matter every single time he healed someone. In the Gospels, not once, not a single time did Jesus tell a sick person >> [music] >> it was not God's will to heal them. Every request for healing was met with healing.
Matthew 8:3 records the moment a leper said, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." And Jesus said, "I will, be thou clean." The will of God on the subject of your healing is not a mystery. It was settled at the cross. Instead, declare, "Father, your will on healing is already revealed in the covenant. By the stripes of Jesus, I was healed. I walk in the fullness of what Christ purchased."
Stop saying, "I just have to live with this." Never. You do not have to live with something that Jesus bore in his body, so you would not have to bear it. Instead, declare, "I will not accommodate illegal trespassers in this body. Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. I am not subject to this condition. This condition is subject to the name of Jesus."
These are not just positive affirmations. These are covenant [music] declarations. These are the legal language of a new covenant believer who has read the deed, verified the signature in the blood, and now refuses to accept anything that contradicts the terms of the contract.
Romans 10:10 says, "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." The word 'salvation' there is the Greek word soteria. And soteria is not just forgiveness of sins. Soteria encompasses healing, deliverance, safety, wholeness, and preservation. Confession of the mouth, covenant language spoken aloud, is how soteria, the fullness of redemption, is made operative in your life.
And now, let me bring this to the place where the rubber meets the road. Because some of you have been standing on these truths, and you are tired. Some of you have been confessing healing for months. Some of you have been declaring, and the symptoms are still there. And you are beginning to feel something. You are ashamed to feel doubt. Not doubt in God, doubt in yourself. [music] Wondering if you are doing it wrong. Wondering if there is something in you that is blocking the flow.
I want you to hear this next thing very carefully. The enemy's primary weapon against the believer who is confessing healing is not the sickness itself. It is discouragement. The sickness is the distraction. [music] Discouragement is the weapon. Because if he can get you to stop confessing, if he can get you to go silent, to give up, to decide it is not working, >> [music] >> then you have done his work for him. You have removed yourself from covenant ground.
Hebrews 10:23 says, "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful that promised."
Hold fast. The Greek is katecho, to hold down, to restrain, to keep from leaving. It implies that there is pressure trying to move it. That there is a force trying to take the confession away from you. And the command of the Holy Ghost through the apostle is to hold it down. Hold it fast without wavering, because the one who made the promise is faithful, not the one who made the confession. But the one who made the promise. God's faithfulness is your security, >> [music] >> not the perfection of your faith.
E. W. Kenyon said it this way, "Confession builds the highway upon which faith travels."
"Without it, faith has no road."
Keep building the highway. Keep making the confession. Keep putting the word in your mouth, because faith needs a road to travel on, and your confession is laying that road. One declaration at a time.
Here is what I want you to do right now, before you move on with your day, before this teaching fades into the noise of your week, I want you to speak out loud, not in your head, not in a whisper, but out loud where your ears can hear it and the spirit realm can [music] receive it as a covenant declaration.
Say this: "Father, I thank you that by the stripes of Jesus, I was healed. Healing is not something I am trying to get. Healing is something I already have. I receive it now in full as my blood-bought covenant right. Every symptom that is occupying my body is operating illegally on Holy Ghost property. I serve notice by the authority of the name of Jesus and the power of his blood. You have no right here. This body belongs to God. It was purchased at a price. I am the healed of the Lord, standing on the finished work of Christ, and I will not move from this ground."
That is not a wish. That is not a prayer. That is a covenant declaration backed by the blood of the Son of God and the word of the living Father.
Now, I want you to do one more thing. >> [music] >> In the comments below, right now, type exactly this: "By his stripes, [music] I am healed."
Seven words. That is your covenant declaration on the record. That is your public confession made according to Romans 10:10. And when you post it, notice what happens in your spirit. Notice the shift. Notice that something in you recognizes those words as true, >> [music] >> not because a feeling confirmed it, but because your spirit bears witness with the spirit of God to the word of God.
Let the comments fill up with that declaration today. Let this comment section become a record of believers who are done begging and have started enforcing. Let it be evidence that something changed here today, not in your circumstances yet, but in your understanding. And understanding always precedes manifestation.
The men and women who walked with the early church were not supermen. They were not spiritual elites. They were ordinary people who possessed one thing that most modern believers have given away: the knowledge of what they had.
Peter knew what he had when he looked at that lame man at the beautiful gate. Paul knew what he had when he said in Ephesians 1:3 that the Father has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Not some blessings, not the blessings he gets around to granting. All spiritual blessings, already in Christ. Past tense. Done.
The body of Christ is not waiting for God to release blessing. The body of Christ is waiting to wake up to the blessing already released. And the moment a believer wakes up, the moment knowledge of the covenant replaces religious tradition, everything changes. Not theoretically, in practice, in the physical world where symptoms either bow or they hold their ground, they will bow.
Because Isaiah 5:35 is not a suggestion. It is a covenant. It is signed in blood that has never dried. It is backed by a resurrection that has never been reversed. It is enforced by a name, the name of Jesus, at which Philippians 2:10 declares every knee shall bow. Of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth. Sickness has a knee. And in the presence of that name, spoken by a believer who understands the covenant behind it, that knee must bow.
You are not the sick trying to get healed. You are the healed resisting a trespasser. And there is a massive difference between those two positions, >> [music] >> not just theologically, but practically, legally, and yes, biologically.
The declaration you make in faith, rooted in covenant knowledge, does something in your cells that no pill can do and no surgery can replicate. It releases the quickening power of the Holy Ghost, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead into the very flesh and tissue of your body. And that power does not return void.
Isaiah 55:11 says, "The word that goes out from the mouth of God shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
You are sending the word. It will accomplish. It will prosper. Hold fast. Stand firm. Keep confessing. Due season is on its way.
But, before I let you go today, there is one more thing you need to understand. One more dimension of this revelation that most believers completely miss, and without it, even the most faithful confession can eventually run dry.
Because here is the deeper question. You now understand what the words are. You now understand the covenant behind them. You now understand the legal authority you carry. But, there is still one element, one interior reality that determines whether your confession carries the full weight of covenant authority, or whether it remains as words on the surface with no root beneath them.
It has to do with what you actually believe about yourself. Not what you believe about God. Not what you believe about scripture. What you believe about yourself. What you believe you deserve. What you believe about your standing before the Father right now. Today, with all your failures and shortcomings and moments of doubt still on your record, because here is what I have discovered.
After years of teaching this truth, many believers confess healing with their mouths while their hearts secretly believe they are not worthy to receive it. And when the heart and the mouth are in disagreement, when the confession [music] and the inner conviction are pulling in opposite directions, the inner conviction wins every time.
Because 1 Peter 2:24 is a covenant fact. But Romans 10:10 says it is with the heart man believeth. The heart must align with the mouth before the full force of the covenant flows.
And that brings me to a truth I want to spend our entire next teaching on. Because there is a reason, a specific, scriptural, deeply understandable reason why so many believers confess with their mouths and yet never see the manifestation. And it has nothing to do with their faith in healing. It has everything to do with what they believe about their righteousness.
Because until you understand what God says about who you are—not just what Jesus did, but who that makes you—your confession will always carry a shadow of unworthiness that diminishes its power.
And in the next teaching, we are going to go after that shadow directly. We are going to expose the lie that is standing between your confession and your breakthrough. We are going to show you from the word of God exactly who you are in the sight of the Father right now. In this moment. And why that identity is the final key that unlocks the full force of the covenant of healing in your life.
Do not miss what is coming. Because what I am about to show you in the next teaching is the missing piece that most believers spend their entire lives searching for. And it is not complicated. It is not hidden. It has been in the word of God all along. But the enemy has kept you from seeing it because he knows that the day you see it his occupation of your body ends for good.