Derek Prince: Invisible Barriers To Healing (Full Transcript)

Full text of Bible teacher Derek Prince’s talk: “Invisible Barriers To Healing”

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TRANSCRIPT:

Derek Prince – Bible Teacher

John 16 verses 13, 14, and 15:

“However when He, the Spirit of Truth — that’s one of the titles of the Holy Spirit, and notice that He’s a He. Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit is not an It; He’s a He; he’s a person, and He wants to be treated as a person.

When He, the Spirit of Truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will tell you things to come.

Now Jesus is speaking, He says He will glorify me — Jesus — for He will take of what is Mine and declare it or reveal it to you. Then He says, all things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I say that He, the Holy Spirit, will take of Mine and reveal it to you. So everything the Father has is invested in the Son, and all the wealth of the Father and the Son is disposed of by the Holy Spirit. He’s the steward; He’s the keeper of the storehouse. Let’s make friends with Him; it’ll pay us.

Now, I want to say one thing: I realized that in the present state of the church, riddled as it is with so many spiritual problems and so much unbelief, there will be very wonderful sons and daughters have God who do not receive healing. Let’s be honest and face that fact.

I’ve seen thousands of people healed over the year, but I’ve seen some of God’s choicest children who didn’t receive their healing. Now I want to tell you I can’t explain that. All right, there are things I can’t explain. But as I’ve pondered over this and sought God about it, God gave me a scripture, and I want to read it to you; it’s Deuteronomy Chapter 29 and verse 29.

Deuteronomy 29:29, that’s an easy text to remember.

“The secret things belong to the Lord, our God but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law.”

There are two kinds of things: There are the secret things that belong to God, and there are the things that revealed that belong to us that we may do them, that when we may act them.

Now God has called me to be a minister of His Word. I don’t cry into God’s secrets, the things that God keep secret I don’t try to get to know, but the things that are revealed, it is my responsibility to minister to God’s people and to act on them. That’s what with the help of the Lord I’m going to do tonight.

Now over the years, in ministering to the sick, I have discovered — and Ruth and I have been made particularly conscious of this in the last few years — if there are any barriers, they are not on God’s side. When Jesus died, the veil of the temple was rent in two from top to bottom and every barrier on God’s side was removed.

But we have learned by experience that there are often barriers that remain within the hearts and lives of God’s people that are barriers to healing. And in order to be able to minister effectively, we have to deal with these barriers.

So in my teaching this evening before we begin to minister, I’m going to work systematically through the common barriers that prevent people from receiving healing. I’ve discovered that this saves endless time when we come to minister to individuals. We clear the ground first, we don’t have to check with each person that each person has met these conditions because we’re going to do it with all of you collectively.

And so far as we’re able, we’re going to remove all the barriers before we begin to minister. I’m going to give you now a list of about — it so happens that I’ve got seven in my list, but it could be more.

COMMON BARRIERS TO RECEIVING HEALING:

And the first is Ignorance. Ignorance of God’s Word and God’s will. And I’m sorry to say that this is a tremendously common barrier in the church today. Multitudes of Christians do not know the clear simple truths and teachings of the Word of God.

In Isaiah Chapter 5 and verse 13, God said: “Therefore my people have gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.” No knowledge of God’s Word; no knowledge of what was accomplished by the death of Jesus on the cross. Ignorance.

And then in Hosea Chapter 4 and verse 6, the Lord says something very similar.

Hosea 4: 6: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Now we can’t educate you tonight in one service but I believe last night and in what I’ve recapitulated tonight, I have laid a basis of knowledge of the Word of God and the provision of God that should help to dispel your ignorance.

So I want all of us collectively to confess to God our sin of ignorance. The fact that we haven’t sought God, we haven’t studied His Word, we haven’t taken the time to find out what God is saying, and we want to ask God to forgive us tonight. And we want to commit ourselves so far as is possible to seek to know the will and the Word of God; will you join me in that?

All right. I’m going to invite you to say a short prayer after me; would you say these words?

Oh God, we acknowledge that in many ways we are ignorant of your Word and of your will through our own fault. Tonight, God we confess this as a sin. We repent on it; we ask you to forgive us and to help us to seek the truth from this night forward more diligently; in Jesus name.

All right. The next barrier is also fearfully common in the church, it’s rather related; it’s Unbelief. In many of our churches, we regard unbelief as a kind of harmless weakness. Well, I don’t believe but after all does God really expect me to. The New Testament doesn’t call unbelief a harmless weakness; it calls it a sin.

And when we see that, we’re ready to get rid of unbelief and to open the way through believing God, to receive what He has for us. I want to read from Hebrews Chapter 3 verse 12 and 13. And this is addressed specifically to Christians.

Hebrews 3: 12-13: Beware brethren lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the Living God but exhort one another while it is called the day lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. You know what the writer calls unbelief? He calls it evil, and he calls it sin.

So I want to ask you to join with me in asking God’s forgiveness for our unbelief and proclaiming our faith. You see, in dealing with these spiritual conditions, what we have to do is replace the negative by the positive. So first of all we ask God to forgive our unbelief and there’s not one of us here tonight — and myself included — that doesn’t need to ask for forgiveness for unbelief. And then we’re going to proclaim our faith, very simply. We’re going to proclaim our faith in God, in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit and in the Word of God. And this can change the entire atmosphere in this auditorium from. This moment onwards there can be an atmosphere of faith.