Instantly Healed or Working out Your Salvation?

I wondered for quite some time why I was not instantly healed when I asked God to deliver me from depression and severe anxiety. I felt I believed God could heal me and wanted to heal me. I knew the Word of God said that "By his stripes I WAS healed". So when my healing was not instant it was a mystery to me. I went through a season (or two or three) of searching my heart to see if I was ignorant to sin in my life. I asked the Lord to show me if there was any bitterness that had started to take root that needed to be yanked up. After making sure of those issues, I just kept seeking God on healing.

It was about a year ago I heard that we are "working out our salvation..." I was certain this was not talking about salvation from sin since that is only by Grace but this must mean something else. I found that the answer was quite enlightening and freed me from some misunderstandings about healing.

Working out your salvation

Phillipians; 12: 2
Therefore, my dear ones, as you have always obeyed [my suggestions], so now, not only [with the enthusiasm you would show] in my presence but much more because I am absent, work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ).


Strongs: Soteria or Salvation

1. deliverance, preservation, safety, salvation
   1. deliverance from the molestation of enemies
   2. in an ethical sense, that which concludes to the souls safety or salvation
      1. of Messianic salvation
2. salvation as the present possession of all true Christians
3. future salvation, the sum of benefits and blessings which the Christians, redeemed from all earthly ills, will enjoy after the visible return of Christ from heaven in the consummated and eternal kingdom of God.

^Rom13:11Besides this you know what [a critical] hour this is, how it is high time now for you to wake up out of your sleep (rouse to reality). For salvation (final deliverance) is nearer to us now than when we first believed (adhered to, trusted in, and relied on Christ, the Messiah).

and verse 14

¹⁴But clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah), and make no provision for [indulging] the flesh [put a stop to thinking about the evil cravings of your physical nature] to [gratify its] desires (lusts).

So working out your salvation is a process that we learn to not trust in our flesh but learn the Word of God and learn to know what He wants for His children as mature believers. And many times in the Word of God it tells believers to WAKE UP! Sometimes it takes years of mistakes and humbling our hearts to ask God to show us where we are messing up. Sometimes we just have to get to the point of being so tired of our misery to wake up and see that God has a better way.

It has not been very long and I have discovered that salvation is not just salvation from eternal separation from God. I grew up thinking salvation = saved from hell. I now realize that salvation is much more. It is equated with being redeemed or in other words Christ paid the price so I would not have to suffer under the curse that the Law dictated. Christ became accursed so I would not have to suffer with the curse under the Law.

The devil comes to kill, steal and destroy from God's people but if we realize we are not under the Law but under Grace then we will not allow him to ravage us with the things mentioned in Deut 28 in the list of curses. The blessings are your inheritance but the curses are fully paid for with the Blood of Jesus. Notice in verse 65 of Deut 28 " There the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart." It should be settled in my heart that an anxious mind is part of the curse and I don't have to live under the curse. Hallelujah!

Deuteronomy 28

Blessings for Obedience

¹ If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. ² All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:

³ You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

⁴ The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

⁵ Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.

⁶ You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.

⁷ The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.

⁸ The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

⁹ The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. ¹⁰ Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. ¹¹ The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you.

¹² The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. ¹³ The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. ¹⁴ Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them.

Read the list of curses after verse 14. If you find that one or more of them is attached to your life in some way, then you can know it is not from God but something the enemy is attempting to steal from you and rip you off from your inheritance. Don't let the devil rip you off!