God Requires Honesty and Compassion - Part 5

Only acknowledge your iniquity. I also believe this is the reason why many people are not healed physically. Let me read you a verse in James chapter 5. James 5 verse 15 and 16 says, The prayer offered in faith, it's talking about people who are sick, will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, they'll be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and then pray so that you'll be healed. So one reason why we're not healed, it's because we didn't make a confession to somebody.

I'm not talking about confessing some sin you did 20 years ago as a young man. That didn't affect this other person here. I'm talking about confessing to that person the way you hurt that person.

Not some sin you did somewhere else that hurt somebody else. No. Then you have to confess to God and to that other person.

I'm talking about, see, sin must be confessed in the circle in which it is committed. God is in every circle. Because every sin I commit is against God, I have to confess it to God.

But there may be another person in that circle. This person whom I hurt, this person whom I wronged. I have to go and confess to that person.

I'm sorry. Confess your sins to one another so that you may be healed. I want to be healed.

I want to be healthy all the time. I have only one life. And if I live up to 90, I want to be healthy to serve the Lord.

I don't want to be sick, I'll tell you honestly. I don't want to be sick a single day of my life. I don't want to have any sickness in my body.

I mean, you may accept some sickness in your body. I don't. And I'll do everything possible to get rid of it.

I'll use medicine, I'll take treatment, and I will confess my sins. And I will treat other people fairly. And I'll be kind to them.

Because I want to be healthy. Do you want to be healthy? Confess your sins. Don't pretend that you never did anything wrong.

Don't put the blame on others like Adam did. Get rid of that Adamic habit which is the great reluctance to say, I was wrong. I was totally wrong.

I'm sorry. That was my mistake. And I bungled up there.

And instead of that, we think of so many justifications and this and that and the other thing and this and that and the other. God says, okay, go your way. You know how much we have missed in the past? I learned this some years ago and I said, well, I'm just going to acknowledge whatever I see.

I'm not saying that we have to be artificial about it. But if you haven't done it, if you haven't ever acknowledged your mistake in the last few weeks, I would say you're pretty seriously sick. Because you were not God for the past few weeks.

So that's the first thing. And the second thing that I said was Jesus said, the Old Testament prophets and Jesus also spoke about being, treating other people right. One is acknowledging our iniquity and humility before God and before one another.

And the other is treating other people fairly. Having a good attitude towards them. You know, Jesus spoke a lot of parables about that.

And it's not so much in what you say. It's a hard attitude towards somebody. Well, I'll tell you honestly.

I believe with all my heart that many of you sitting here, your hard attitude to some people in this church is not right. And I have seen that in all of our churches. I've seen that in elder brothers.

Sometimes their attitude to one another is not right. There's jealousy, a hoping that something, I mean, an unhappiness when something good happens to someone. Can you imagine? To me, that is one of the clearest marks of a wrong attitude.

When you hear something wonderful happen to someone else, if you cannot rejoice wholeheartedly, that is a warning sign, like a sickness. First symptom of cancer. Take it seriously.

Don't let it spread. Because cancer gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. You ask yourself, when you hear that something really good happened to someone else, let's forget the world, in this church, do you rejoice wholeheartedly? I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands.

Go before God and see and answer to Him. And if you have a symptom of cancer, go back to point number one. Acknowledge your iniquity.

Lord, it's true. I could not rejoice wholeheartedly when I heard this very good news about something. It shows something seriously wrong with my heart.

After all these years of hearing about victory over sin, after all these years of talking, testifying and studying through the Old Testament and studying through the New Testament, look at the condition of my heart. What's the use going through the Old Testament and New Testament if my heart condition is still like this? Lord, please help me. My attitude to others is not right.

No wonder the heavens are like brass over me. No wonder the rivers are not flooding my heart. No wonder my life is not fresh with the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

No wonder the joy of the Lord is not flooding my heart. No wonder, because there's this wretched cancer that I can get rid of in a moment, but I don't. I don't even acknowledge it.

You can't get rid of it before you acknowledge it. So I want you to do some homework when you go home today. Really search your heart and ask God to show you that there's an atom of jealousy in your heart against any other person in the church because that person has something which you don't have or something good happened to that person which didn't happen to you.

See the two great dangers. One is this jealousy and the other is the person to whom something good has happened. He's also in danger.

He's in danger of being proud. Hey, it's wonderful what happened to me. I'm sort of better off than these other fellows.

There's danger on both sides. This guy's jealous of that person and that person's proud that something good's happened to him which is better than others. I tell you, sin is a terrible thing.

If you live close to the Lord, you'll get light on it immediately. First symptom of cancer, you get rid of it. But if you don't live close to the Lord, these things, you know the Bible speaks about a root of bitterness growing up.

Why don't people pull it out? I mean, if you found a poisonous weed growing in your garden, would you pull it out or say, well, let's see how it grows. You'll kill somebody. I can't understand how anybody keeps the root of bitterness in their heart, which is destroying them, sapping their spiritual energy.

See, many of us, I really believe that God could have anointed us and used us much more mightily than you are being used right now and being blessed right now and you walk with the Lord. If you would only take heed to these one or two simple things that I'm speaking today. I made it very simple today because it's only two points.

One, be quick to acknowledge your mistakes. To God and to man, humble yourself. And number two, treat other people kindly.