Do you identify with your illness? Today I consider the challenge of how to see yourself clothed in Christ (when the symptoms in your body steal your attention all day long).
How you see yourself matters.
By the end of this post you’ll have a greater understanding of what it means to walk in divine health as you rest in the Finished Work.
When chronic illness sets in, we condition ourselves unconsciously by way of neuropathways and predictive coding. The illness becomes a part of us whether we realise it or not.
You may cognitively recognise that illness is not your identity but unconsciously your thoughts, behaviour may tell an opposing story.
If this is you, I hear you and I understand, I’ve been there. This is your reality, your truth. BUT IT IS NOT YOUR IDENTITY.
We can separate ourselves from the illness that consumes us and live a life from a place of victory.
STEP 1 YOU ARE CLOTHED IN CHRIST
If well-meaning Christians are telling you, you’re already healed, you may find this hurtful and devaluing of your experience. All I could feel was the pain in my body. ‘How can this be true when all I feel is pain?’
I can see now what they were referring to.
It was their way of telling me that because I was clothed in Christ, I was complete in Him. They were calling forth my identity in Christ, my authentic self.
The Bible says we were healed past tense. See IS IT ALWAYS GOD’S WILL TO HEAL?
This is your true authentic identity.
“He himself took up all our infirmities and carried all our diseases”.
This is why it’s not necessary to plead with God to heal you or to even ask him to heal. Isaiah tells us that “by whose stripes you were healed..”
The word ‘sozo’ means to save and to heal.
God sees you clothed in Christ. He sees you as He sees His Son. He knows you’re suffering, He knows all about your symptoms and He knows what you need.
But He still sees you healthy, healed and whole, the same way He sees you saved and forgiven. This is your True identity.
Jesus healed us at the cross 2000 years ago. We don’t receive the bread at Communion in order to get God to heal us but to proclaim that the healing is complete.
Then we walk in that Truth.
Often we think healing is the destination we need to meet. God is asking us to bring that ‘end result’ to where we are today and walk out from that place.
STEP 2 RECOGNISE YOUR MISTAKEN IDENTITY
You are not the illness. You are a precious child of God, clothed in Christ, who is living with symptoms. Our True identity is in Christ.
Adam and Eve forgot who and whose they were. They had union with God and were already like Him. This was their identity. But when Eve met the serpent, she forgot this Truth.
You and I are already healed at the cross. When we forget this truth, it impacts our thoughts and behaviour. Just like Eve, we operate from a mistaken identity.
We put on the old self.
We think we need to perform to get the blessing; repenting from every sin in the book or trying to be mega obedient in order to qualify for healing.
We serve more in church or we read more of the Bible, unconsciously thinking it will cause God to heal us. Sometimes we feel unworthy because of our failings and try in our own strength to put them right.
We’re taking from the wrong tree, just like Eve.
The Bible tells us that “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags” Is 64:6
We become self-righteous when we don’t know who we really are, trying everything we can in order for God to heal us because we don’t have the realisation that we already are.
Some of us pray and pray that God will heal us. We operate from a place of discord rather than a place of rest but we just don’t recognise it.
Does this sound familiar to you?
STEP 3 CHOOSE LIFE
God says we’re healthy and whole.
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness
Col 2:9-10
We are complete. 2 cor 5:17 tells us we are new Creations.
When we focus on sickness we reinforce the old man. Do you talk about it all the time? Post ‘sick’ photos of yourself on social media?
See life through the lens of pain?
By doing this you’re continually fortifying neuro pathways in the brain making healing harder to receive.
Image: Rebekah Ballagh. Journey to Wellness
Can you flick the switch?
I am trying to focus on good things and I don’t talk about it much.
The more you identify with the wholeness of being clothed in Christ, the more you increase your capacity to receive the manifestation: You create new pathways in the brain.
You are choosing LIFE and blessings. (Deut 30:19)
STEP 4 MEDITATE ON THE FINISHED WORK
The challenge of course is that our bodies scream the opposite. Do you remember Abraham who ‘considered not his own body’ ?
He called himself the Father of many nations, for many years prior to the birth of Isaac. Faith for healing isn’t desperately trying to believe for as long as possible, then God will heal us.
Faith for healing is believing that healing is complete in the spiritual realm, then walking in it, despite what our bodies may say.
When we learn to do this, there is a rest. We walk in the finished work the way Adam and Eve did in the garden. This gives a peace in the storm, confidence in the valley and an empowerment to operate in God’s strength.
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.
Eph 2:6
To see ourselves clothed in Christ is to see ourselves whole and walking through the lens of the Finished Work of Christ and not the lens of sickness.
When I was a school teacher, I learned to separate the child from the ‘bad’ behaviour. In the same way we separate our identity from any diagnosis.
…we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.
1 John 4:17
Seeing yourself healed at the cross, isn’t denying or devaluing your symptoms.
Knowing your identity in Christ isn’t about pretending those symptoms don’t exit, rather you’re giving weight to God’s Truth and elevating the Word above your circumstances.
STEP 5 PRACTISE PRACTISE PRACTISE
Just imagine how different life would be if we all embraced the Truth of our identity and If we rested in the finished work of Jesus. 
Image: Rebekah Ballagh. Journey to Wellness
If we learn to believe the Truth that we are already healed? The same way Abraham believed he was a father.
We would operate from a place of ease and grace with no more pleading for healing. Our words and topic of conversation would change as our thoughts align with God’s Truth.
How wonderful it would be for you and those around you to no longer see you through the lens of illness because it is not who you are.
Keep on listening, keep on renewing your mind. I hope this makes a difference to your world today.
God Bless Lorna
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