Knowing the Healer
About this sermon
Dean Odle teaches that Jesus still heals and that healing belongs within the gospel witness, while rejecting formulas that blame every unhealed person or forbid medical care. He begins candidly by saying that he has witnessed striking miracles and answered prayer, but has also seen faithful people suffer and die. Drawing from Isaiah 53, the Gospels, Acts, and Paul’s testimony, he connects Christ’s suffering with forgiveness and healing while refusing to turn that conviction into a guarantee that every prayer will produce an immediate visible result.
Chronological teaching outline
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Odle begins candidly: he has witnessed striking healings and also times when God did not grant the requested outcome. Large financial pressures and deaths in ministry settings are mentioned to reject a triumphalist account in which faithful people never suffer.
Isaiah 53 and Jesus’ suffering are used to connect forgiveness and healing while distinguishing faith from rejection of legitimate medical help. He says Jesus began shedding blood before the cross through His suffering, yet explicitly denies that visiting a doctor necessarily demonstrates unbelief.
He insists that signs serve the message of repentance, holiness, and Jesus’ lordship rather than becoming an end in themselves. Mark 16 and the ministry of Jesus connect healing signs to gospel proclamation, but Odle asks whether a healed person will repent and live faithfully.
Gospel accounts of healing and judgment show both Christ’s compassion and the responsibility created by witnessing His power. Scenes from John and the Synoptic Gospels show Christ making people whole and rebuking communities that saw mighty works without repentance.
Odle critiques extreme Word of Faith claims and uses Paul’s afflictions to show that biblical faith does not guarantee freedom from every weakness. Paul’s thorn and other weaknesses prevent healing doctrine from becoming a mechanism for accusing every sufferer of deficient faith.
He recounts severe physical pain and family circumstances, describing prayer, treatment, and endurance rather than a simple instant cure. The extended account does not conceal continued pain; it shows a believer praying, seeking help, caring for family, and refusing to deny Christ’s power.
The sermon opposes the view that healing gifts ceased, while warning listeners not to condemn sincere believers whose healing is delayed. He asks listeners whether they still believe Jesus heals and then separates that conviction from pretending that every prayer has already produced a visible miracle.
Odle invites the congregation to align with Scripture and expect God to work without pretending certainty about each result. The congregation is told what it is about to do and invited to agree in faith before individuals are called forward.
The service turns toward anointing and corporate prayer, emphasizing that authority rests in Jesus’ name rather than the minister. Anointing is treated as an act of biblical obedience, while the repeated confession is that Jesus’ name stands above sickness.
The conclusion consists of intercession for specific needs, repeatedly asking the Father to let healing flow through Jesus Christ. The prayer names needs and asks persistently for healing, leaving the result with the Lord rather than announcing outcomes not yet seen.
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Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:05:22
You are an awesome God, King of kings and Lord of lords, creator of the heavens and the earth. Lord, we are just in awe of you, Lord. You're the same yesterday, today, and forever. You have not changed. Lord, we know that God, every miracle you did in the Bible, Lord, is available for us today. Lord, we just want your kingdom to come and your will to be done in our lives, in this church. Lord, we want your kingdom and your will to be done in earth as it is in heaven. And Holy Spirit, we just ask you to fill us with the knowledge of his will in every matter, in everything, and order our steps. And God, I love your word where it says that the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and though he falls, he will not be utterly cast down because you uphold him. So we thank you, Lord, that when we confess our sins and repent, there is forgiveness. That you restore us. You get us back on the path that you have for us. We just thank you, Jesus, that your precious blood shed on the cross made all of this possible. Your resurrection from the dead. We thank you for it all. Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. You may be seated this morning. Welcome everybody here to Fire and Grace Church this morning. Those watching and listening before we get the message, I just have a testimony to share. I think I shared it with our folks on Wednesday night. But as some of you know, we are really close to closing on the land. So as I said before, the Lord has provided the finances already to buy the land. I knew for some time that it would be around one hundred fifty thousand and that we would be close to my house. I just felt like that's what the Lord wanted. And sure enough, we found just that fifteen point six acres. And I think it's going to be one hundred fifty five thousand is what we are going to do. And of course, I said when I first announced it that, of course, we can buy the land. We're just taking a step of faith. We don't really have the money after that to build a building with. Well, in the two weeks following, I've had one check handed to me for. It was said, well, sent to us, I guess you'd say mail. But we've had sixty five hundred dollar one and eight thousand dollar one, a thirty thousand dollar one and a hundred thousand dollar one. Yeah. So we will be able to get started on doing something here pretty soon. So God is providing what we need to do, what we need to do. And I believe it's not we're going to do anything fancy or huge or anything like that. But I think in the days ahead, we're going to have to have our own spot because they almost canceled Skyfall on us like a week out after all those all that money spent and plans made.
- 0:08:22
And it was about to be a disaster. God just intervened. But I don't want to be renting a place. And then all of a sudden, at the last minute, they say we can't do it there. So anyway, that's kind of the reason behind that. If you have your Bibles this morning, I want to get your Bible out and turn. Oh, goodness, I guess we had just turned first to Isaiah fifty three. Isaiah fifty three. What I feel like the list one's been brewing for some time and I've been waiting on the Lord when he wanted me to get into this topic again, though I talk about it all the time. I feel like there's still some misunderstanding and there's some balance that needs to be brought to this. But what we're going to title today is knowing healing, knowing healing. Let me tell you, I've been in this charismatic, Pentecostal aspect of the church world now for going on thirty seven years. I've been in every type of meeting and revival meeting and healing service and prophetic meeting that you can imagine. I've been in primarily white churches. I've been in attended primarily black churches. I have been around word of faith preachers. I've been around crazy backwoods, Pentecostals that will walk the pews. I've seen a little bit of everything. There used to be a minister around here. He's passed away now. Brother Leon. Brother Leon was wild. Brother Leon was one of those old time Pentecostals. I remember one time they made the mistake down at Pine Grove United Methodist Church of asking Brother Leon to preach. Brother Leon said, the devil is in this church. And he ran. He said he was right, too. He said, we're going to run him out. And he ran down the aisle screaming at the devil, ran out the front door. You could hear him running around the building, just running around the building, came back in. We got rid of him. I mean, he was wild. So I've seen it all. I've been to places, places out in the woods. I've been to some good ones and bad ones. All right. And all in between. I've seen miracles and I've seen disasters. All right. I've seen God heal and do great miracles and I've seen God say no. And this is the hard thing for some of us Pentecostals and Charismatics to get a hold of because this is one of the errors. I'm going to say this at the outset. I listened to you. You wouldn't believe the rabbit hole. I went down yesterday. We don't even have time to get into all that. But one of the problems I heard Bill Johnson say this in one of the videos I watched yesterday, that it's always God's will to heal in every situation. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that that's not biblical.
- 0:11:24
God does heal. God does miracles. But is he going to do it every single time? No, he's not. And it's not always about a lack of faith. Sometimes the Lord is allowing something in your life because if you did not have that in your life, as the Apostle Paul showed, he said, if it were, if it, you know, because of the abundance of revelations, he said that he would have gotten into pride in the Lord allowed the thorn in the flesh. We're going to deal with that. Now, I know I've heard somebody say, well, you're not the Apostle Paul. Let me tell you what Paul said in First Timothy chapter one. He said that God had made him an example of the believers. So I don't want to hear this. You're not the Apostle Paul type thing. Paul was an example for us to learn from. He was in fact, in fact, he said he was a pattern of a Christian that God made him a pattern. You look at him and say, there's a man that lived the Christian life and we can learn from him in many aspects. All right. But let me just go ahead and say this. It is God's will to heal and to do miracles. He hasn't changed. But does that mean it's that he is going to do it in every situation, every time we want, the way we want, how we want? No, he's not. And this is something I've witnessed over thirty six years. And this is somebody and unless you've walked into I see used to pray for people that were dying. Don't talk big stuff to me unless you've walked into people's homes that have four year old dying of cancer. You ever done that one? I've been in some places that were difficult and I've seen great miracle happen and I've seen death happen. And this is something I think we need to get a hold of as Christians is that death is part of this life. And it's going to come to us. It's going to come to us one way or the other unless we go in the rapture. Other than that, it comes to us all so pointed unto man. What wants to die. And after this, the judgment. Now, we get all been out of shape sometimes about how that may or may not happen. But I want to tell you right now, our job as born again, Bible believing Christians, our first up when it comes to the issue of healing, we should always believe that God wants to heal. And we should always move in that direction. It should never be the first thought should never be. Well, he's not going to do it in this situation. That's not for us to decide. You understand? Our job is to believe him.
- 0:14:24
Our job is to lay hands on the sick and believe that they will recover. Our job is to cast out demons. Our job is to first believe and ask for healing in the situation. God's intervention. And then after we've done all we can do to stand the results, the rest of the matter is up to him. But we can't get been out of shape if he says no. I've seen people situation years ago, a friend of mine, his sister, 19 years old, dying of cancer. Let me tell you what we did. We spent weeks and I'm talking about weeks at the hospital in the chapel, praying, fasting, asking God to do a miracle, laying hands on her, anointing her with oil. We did. We got everybody we knew praying for her and she died. But there's other stories like the woman that we knew in Montgomery who was in ICU. She had some type of serious blood disorder. She was bleeding out of her eyes and ears and everything. They even said that she only had maybe three days to live and she was unconscious. And we went and prayed for her in the name of Jesus and asked God to do a miracle. And I prayed a certain scripture over. I pray that she would live and not die and declare the works of the Lord. Again, do I have any power to do anything for anybody? No, no, none of us as a human being is just a regular normal human being. We don't have anything. If God doesn't do it, it doesn't get done. I'm sorry, but you can ask him. And I remember asking him and I said, Lord, I do. I pray. I said, Lord, would you walk in here and lay your hands on this woman and heal this woman? And I said, I pray that she will not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord. In fact, put that one up for me. I think that's Psalm 118, something 20. I don't remember now or one. I don't know. They'll find it. It's been a long time ago. But I remember that when like the next day we heard not only was she awake, she was completely healed and went home. They were in awe. They could not believe it. And you know what she said? She said that she felt death start creeping up her legs. She was she was unconscious, but she knew what was going on. And she said she felt death. She said the next thing she knew, she saw four angels at all sides of her four corners of her room. And then some she said she never saw the Lord, but she felt like it was Jesus leaned over in her ear and said,
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