Written by: Miriam Piper. San Diego, California

I have to admit, it hasn’t always been easy to declare God’s promises of healing over myself when I feel pain throbbing in my body. But I choose to believe that God is faithful to His word because Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow.” In a more amplified version that means the Word of God is full of energy and power; as we declare His Word, it pierces through problems and situations more sharply than a two-edged sword by the Holy Spirit. His Word will penetrate to the very core of our being where soul and spirit, bone and marrow meet.

Several years ago, I had a floating spur in my foot and a calcium build up in my toe that was removed surgically. One wouldn’t think such a small injury would hurt, but it sure did! After a few years, post-surgery, I started to feel pain in the same foot again. I had been facilitating a memorial service for a family of our church, on my feet for many hours. When I arrived home, I felt excruciating pain as I stepped out of the car on my foot.

I heard the Holy Spirit say, “You have two options. You can either confess healing over your foot that by My stripes you were healed (1 Peter 2:24), or you can walk in fear that your foot is going to cause you problems the rest of your life.”

Of course I chose the first option. I certainly didn’t want to have to deal with walking in fear that my foot would get worse as time moved on. As I went through the whole day, my foot was in pain. Throughout the day I verbally confessed, “By His stripes, I am healed.” That declaration of promise comes from Isaiah 53:5, which says, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”

“Stripes” refers to the 39 lashes Jesus endured by the whip called a “cat-of nine tails”—a whip used for severe punishment. At the end of it were sharp metal nails, glass, and bone pieces tied to leather. One can just imagine the visual of seeing someone’s back torn open after having been beaten with that whip.

As the day went on, negative thoughts occasionally ran through my mind, saying, “Maybe I’m wasting my time confessing.” Then, as I was trying to reach for something in my top closet, I had to get on my tippy toes. I heard a crack in my irritated foot and the pain got even worse. I didn’t give up but pressed in EVEN MORE because I knew I had heard the Holy Spirit—If the Holy Spirit told me to do something, I needed to be obedient!

I prayed Matthew 8:17, saying, “Lord, carry this pain because you took upon yourself our pain and sicknesses. I give it to You to carry because that’s what You did on the cross—You carried our sicknesses, diseases, and pains and made us well.” When Jesus went to the cross, He paid in full the debt we owed—it is finished! Jesus TOOK ON HIMSELF what we deserved as He was beaten with 39 stripes, mocked, and spit at. Jesus—who was without sin—took all the pain and suffering for us so that we could be free of sickness and disease. He took our sins, brokenness, poverty, oppressions, depression, discouragements, shame, guilt, fears, and the list goes on. 

He defeated all those things...why? So that we could both walk in victory, freedom, and wholeness and then partner with Him as image bearers and pray for others with the same difficulties we had (see John 14:12).

That evening, after praying Matthew 8:17, I was in bed turning my foot to the left and right side under the blankets. All of a sudden, I noticed my foot didn’t hurt! I pulled the covers off me and jumped on my feet. The pain was ALL gone! My foot was healed. 

The manifestation of healing appeared as I confessed the Word of God and believed in faith I was completely healed.

I have learned in life that God’s Word has POWER and that He’s able to heal me as I declare His promises over sickness and pain. It was in this way—declaring His promises over my body and having the elders anoint me with oil—that I was healed of typhoid fever while a missionary in Santiago, Chile. But that is a story for another time.

Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” Imagine...the word of God will live on until eternity. You can place all your trust in His word and watch Him move on your behalf. Be persistent in prayer—declaring and standing on the promises of God—and wait for the Kingdom of God to break into and heal every situation.