Proximity: Jehovah Rapha
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 4: Doubting Thomas from Jermaine Coore’s book Proximity: Jehovah Rapha. The book can be purchased here.
4 Doubting Thomas
We are a spirit encased in or enclosed in a body. While we are accustomed to experiencing things on a natural level, the reality is that our predominant way of living is a spiritual experience. In Genesis 1, God created the spirit of man and the spirit of woman, or the spirit of male and the spirit of female (Genesis 1:26-28). At the beginning of Genesis 2, he gave the male a body (Genesis 2:7), and near the end of the chapter, he gave the female a body (Genesis 2:21-22). This order of events details the layers of our earthly experience. This chapter will focus on the doubt that stems from natural facets of our earthly experience.
While an increase in faith immediately offsets and neutralizes any agenda of doubt, having an accurate calibration of the weight of spiritual mechanisms compared to natural mechanisms in your life will enable one to perceive transactions occurring between Heaven and Earth and hold on to them.
We must realize that it is not what we experience on the natural level that determines, verifies, or informs what happens to us spiritually, but it is the opposite. What we experience spiritually dictates what we experience naturally in our natural man.
Thomas was not around when Jesus presented Himself to the disciples after His resurrection; Thomas only heard of Jesus's return. Because he only heard of Jesus's return, he doubted. He said, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).
Thomas delegated the reality of the resurrection to his ability to see and feel it. Thomas was in this state for eight days. Jesus reappeared to the disciples and instructed Thomas to examine His body, feel the places where He had been pierced, and confirm the areas where He’d been stabbed. It wasn’t until Thomas could see and feel Jesus' body naturally for himself that Thomas received the revelation that Jesus Christ, indeed, was the resurrection. Jesus responded, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
Jesus, being man and God, and being fully aware of what takes priority over the other, understood Thomas's doubt but also noted that those who could believe despite not seeing or feeling naturally as Thomas did were blessed because of it. This blessing is what stands at the crux of receiving deliverance and healing, but still having signs or flares of bondage and pain in the body.
Jesus is aware that for some of us, it will require us to see the healing and deliverance or feel it before we believe. “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses…” (Hebrews 4:15a). Because he's not consumed with the outward appearance but looks at the heart, most of the building blocks or catalysts to receiving healing and deliverance or facilitating it ride on one's belief, despite their experience.
But why are there still remnants of bondage and pain after receiving deliverance and healing? Sometimes it takes a moment or a season or two for your natural man to catch up to your spirit man. We understand this more in terms of revelation.
We come into an awareness of a profound principle, or the awareness of now knowing a thing, but also have to grapple with it because of what we previously knew before that moment. It sometimes takes a while for the revelation of a thing to overhaul, outrank, or take priority over things you may have previously known that contradicted it. So too, it is, as you experience healing and deliverance.
In a moment, Jesus can heal you. In a moment, Jesus can deliver you. But then there comes a point where you must grapple with your healing and deliverance because what your natural man has become used to and familiar with contradicts this new state of being.
As you perceive your healing and deliverance, and you're still experiencing the phantom characteristics of bondage and pain, it is essential to note that the healing and deliverance to your spirit man must go back through several generations to correct what may have been done to and established in your natural man. What you experience and receive on a spiritual level must now register on your molecular level. For some, this may be a moment, while for others, this may take time.
There have been accounts of individuals, including myself, who, upon dealing with an infirmity, come to the revelation that God is greater than the sickness, and experience a momentary breakthrough or momentary relief – but then the illness or infirmity seems to return. The return of symptoms can be confusing.
On a natural level, if we're going based on what we see and feel, then a natural response to this experience would be, “I wasn't really healed. I wasn't really delivered.”
Understanding the nature of healing and deliverance, and understanding all that has to be mapped to your natural man once transferred from the spirit realm and received by your spirit man, enables one to navigate their current experience based on what has already occurred. Going through the formalities is an act of faith to secure what's theirs. Having faith rather than having diagnostics is an internal battle that happens quite often during a person’s walk with God.
This dynamic of having faith rather than diagnostics is especially true regarding healing and deliverance. The occurrence of seeing or feeling the signs of bondage and pain after receiving deliverance and healing isn't a matter of false healing, not really being healed, or not really being delivered. It is a matter of being resolute in your belief in what you received to the point that it registers deep within the fibers of your natural being.
This approach often involves committing to a disposition of healed and delivered until the pain and bondage that used to be your norm is now the intro to your testimony. Declarations, and speaking those things that be not as though they were, is a helpful exercise that grants you access to deliverables that have yet to enter your reality. One declaration you can practice is this: Amongst the unknowns and unverifiable, something has undeniably happened, and things are no longer the same.