When I began in ministry in the early 1980’s, I was part of a church that believed God did get involved in people’s lives, and that there was something happening between conversion and heaven; however, even in that church of over 1500 people, coming week after week, with the elders anointing them with oil, praying the prayer of faith, fasting and praying, and standing on the Word, people were not getting well from incurable diseases.

As I crossed America, I observed that, regardless of denomination, regardless of the Church, less than 5% of all of God’s people (forget about the world) were getting healed of their diseases. It is even worse than that today. I don’t know if you have ever been prayed for because of a disease and didn’t get well. If you went before God and believed Him, believed that He loved you and He would heal you, yet it didn’t happen, that is a staggering attack on your faith and your trust in the living God. Scripture tells us that God loves us, that He came and died for us in the person of the Lord Jesus. He healed the people of their diseases and cast out their evil spirits. The disciples did it, the 70 did it, and the early church did it. Then we entered into a dark age of time from which I don’t think we have ever recovered.

When I began in ministry, I wanted to know why God said in Psalm 103:3 that He not only forgives us of all our iniquities, but He heals us of all our diseases.

When I began to become involved with people in their lives, I prayed for them and believed God would heal them, but less than 5% of everyone I prayed for got well. I preached a gospel that got people saved and got them to heaven, but left them stranded between conversion and heaven. Would that be the gospel I would preach? Would I come up with a doctrine that would establish it? It would be easy to say, “Sorry, no help for you, no hope for you.” But in my heart, the scriptures I read seemed to indicate differently.

I went to God one day and said, “You’d better talk to me, Boss, because if you have called me to represent You to Your people, and to those yet unsaved, You’d better show me a little more fruit. If it’s not happening, You’d better tell me why or else I’m going to go back into sales and marketing. I’ll go to church, I’ll love you, I’ll be a good Christian, I might even be a deacon, but you can forget about me speaking. I’m not speaking for You if my words are not being honored, because that is fraud.”

In James 1:5, the Bible says—if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and God will give it to him liberally, and upbraid him not because he has the audacity to ask God for a little information.

One day my eyes were opened, and I saw something. I have never looked back from the ministry God set before me.

The Lord came, and He demonstrated the love of God and power over the devil and disease in spite of sin. He demonstrated it in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; His disciples and the early church also demonstrated it in Acts. Then, from Romans all the way through Jude, you will find the Scriptures teaching us about sanctification. You can’t have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts until you have dealt with Romans to Jude. You cannot expect God to bless us if we are separated from Him in an area that needs to be dealt with. I like to say it this way: “We have been taught so much about God’s promises and not much about His Spirit of discernment and the consequence of sin.” If somebody came to me with simple arthritis and asked me to pray for them as a pastor, I would say, “No, I’m not going to do it.” If they said, “But the Word says to come before the elders and be anointed with oil and be prayed for,” I would respond, “No, I’ve been there, done that!” Do you know how many times I’ve prayed for people with arthritis in the past? None of them were healed. I quit praying for them; it was a waste of my time.

But one day God opened my heart. I was ministering in 1985, when five ladies came up to me. Each of them had arthritis. Two of the ladies had gnarly disfiguration. I said to them, “You know, there is sometimes a responsibility before God for healing.” I want to tell you that healing and things you get from God, to a degree, are conditional to your obedience. I am not into legalism. I’m into grace and mercy. But I want to tell you that with freedom comes a degree of responsibility.

As you study through this teaching, I’m going to touch the very fabric of your lives. If you’re interested in your lives and your families’ lives, this is a good time to listen. I’m going to sow seed. Just as the rain comes down and waters the crops and returns to the clouds, the Bible says the Word does not return void (Isaiah 55:11).

The knowledge I have is not only accurate scripturally, but it’s also accurate medically. Coast to coast in America, I deal with disease. Even doctors contact our ministry regarding their own lives. There are doctors in America who call and discuss with me the implications of their patient’s disease. I have doctors who refer their patients to me to discuss the spiritual roots of disease. I sense the tide shifting across broad denominational lines. Our ministry is a trans-denominational ministry. What is a trans-denominational ministry? It is one that believes that, in spite of denominations, God is still on the throne. The Lord Jesus is still the Word that came in the flesh, and the Holy Spirit is still on the earth today—One Faith, One Lord, and One Baptism, until we come into the unity of faith (Ephesians 4:5, 13).

If I stumble over your sacred cows of theology, I’m sorry. It’s not in my heart to do that even unintentionally. I ask you to thoughtfully listen to what I have to say. You’ll find that what I have to say may bear witness and answer a lot of your questions.

I told the five ladies with arthritis that there would be a condition to their healing. I asked them to think about the people who had injured each of them in their lifetime, either through word or deed—someone who didn’t treat them right, victimized them, lied about them, abused them, either emotionally, physically, verbally, or maybe even sexually.

I asked them, “When you think of their name, or their face, whether they’re living or dead, what do you feel? Do any of you have that high-octane ping going off inside?” They all said, “Yes, there is somebody I have not had resolution with.” There was bitterness and unforgiveness. I told them that, in exchange for their healing, they would have to get that right with God, right then, or else we were wasting our time. They were going to have to forgive that person.

The Scriptures say:

People ask me, “Pastor, does God forgive all manner of sin?” Yes and no. He wants to; that’s His nature. He said He does:

Christians, for the most part, believe we are saved by grace and by faith. But just because you are born again and your spirit has become alive in God, it does not mean you have resolved the consequences of the sin issue in your life. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need sanctification, would we? I told the five ladies that an exchange would happen for their obedience. I said, “If you, from your heart, will forgive that person of their trespasses, sincerely, whether you feel like it or not, I’m going to ask God to heal you. If you just do it because you want the healing for selfish reasons, and you are using this kind of like a mechanism, or a system, or a mantra, then we’re still wasting our time.” The Bible says, “If you, from your heart” … from your spirit, forgive.

I led them into a prayer of repentance and forgiveness. I am here to tell you that when I finished the prayer, I looked up to them and said, “How’s your arthritis doing?” All of a sudden it dawned on them that they had no more pain. Fingers had straightened; the pain was gone. All five ladies stood there totally freed from crippling arthritis and its pain. I never ministered healing one time.

When they met the conditions of His nature, He was there to heal. That’s the reason I am not too impressed by (I say this carefully) healing crusades that don’t take into account that disease may be a result of sin that has not been dealt with.

I don’t know if you are aware of this, but fear is a sin. Fear is a sin. Fear is the number one plague of America, and it’s the number one plague of the world—fear of tomorrow, fear of death, fear of man, fear of dying, fear of disease, fear of mothers-in-law, fear of your neighbor, fear of yourself. We are a people of God who are in bondage. We’re paying an incredibly high price. God’s people are being sent back into the world for help when the answer to setting them free is waiting in His Word.

I am more interested in getting you into a better life, not just getting you into heaven. The Lord’s Prayer says—thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.

In the Old Testament, if somebody had leprosy and later said they were clean, to whom were they sent to determine if they were healed? The priest! The New Testament says, if there be any sick among you, call who? The elders of the church.

In 1996, I taught in a church in Texas. A member of that church was healed of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS/EI). She had not been able to go to church for over 20 years. She was isolated: she could only eat 2 to 4 foods, suffered from electromagnetic sensitivity, chronic fatigue syndrome, and multiple allergies. God healed her. He healed all the peripheral diseases around MCS/EI. That church is really rocking because she is back singing in the choir every Sunday. They asked me to come and teach on roots of disease, so I went there and taught. I came back again that evening and taught for another 2½ hours on the spiritual roots of disease and the consequences of sin.

The next morning they brought a lady to me privately who had cancer of the lung and cancer of the bone. She had been to all the doctors and had all the bone scans and x-rays. She was the mother of two children. Because I knew the spiritual root of her disease, I just kind of laid it out. This is your disease; this is what I see. It took about 3 seconds, and she was bawling like a baby. I had touched her pain. I had touched her spiritual dynamics. God opened her up with discernment, and I put my hand right on that thing that had been festering for years, causing eventual destruction of the two sentries of her immune system (called anti-oncogenes) that protect us from cancer. When those enzymes are destroyed in our bodies, the cell is compromised, and cancer cell mitosis can begin at any time. I told her, “I don’t know what God’s going to do, but I do know you are going to have to get right with God in this area of your life.” She said, “Pastor, I’ve known that all the time, but I just couldn’t get there. I just couldn’t get over it.” I said, “Would you like to go there and get over it?” She said, “Yes.” I led her into a place before the Lord and before the Father, a place of soul searching, a place of repentance, a place of getting right with God. I just ministered to her and broke the power of the spirit of death, the power of cancer, and commanded its power to be broken. Thirty days later, I got a phone call. She had been back to the doctor and had bone scans and X-rays. There was no evidence of lung cancer or bone cancer.

Her pastor has already sent me two letters, asking me to train his deacons and his teams. He was ready to start learning how, along with members of his congregation, to care for the sheep, a more excellent way. He said, “Pastor, thank you for coming and allowing the Lord to speak through you about the connection between sin and disease.”

See, we think of sin as robbing banks. We think of sin as maybe prostitution; we think of sin as maybe lying and stealing. Would you consider fear to be sin? Would you consider bitterness to be sin? Would you consider self-hatred to be sin? Would you consider these things to be sin? The Word says they are. I think certain sins have become socially acceptable. We are paying too high a price for these areas of unrecognized sin in the area of disease.

About 30% of all cancers have a spiritually rooted component. I specialize in cancer to some degree, but I don’t have all the answers. We are somewhat familiar with uterine, ovarian, breast, and prostate cancers. We have insight into how these cancers develop. In the section on the spiritual roots of disease, I will go into this in detail.

About 80% of all the diseases of mankind have a spiritual root with various psychological and biological manifestations. I am not a doctor. I am not a psychologist. I do not mix psychology with ministry. I am a servant of the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. No man has taught me, but He has taught me.