Healing Chronic Illness: By His Spirit & Through His
Resources
Book Review
by Connie Strasheim
1). What is this book about?
Healing Chronic Illness: By His Spirit, Through His Resources, is about supernatural and spiritual healing. It's based upon the premise that there is a living, loving God in the universe who is willing and able to heal people supernaturally as well as through the resources that He has provided on earth. It proposes that healing miracles are more common that we think, but unbelief, a lack of realization of how much He loves us, as well as other factors keep us from embracing this reality. It provides insights into many aspects of divine healing, and proposes solutions for resolving the roadblocks that keep us from wellness. It's based upon Biblical truth and history, and upon evidence that has healed multitudes, mostly in charismatic, Pentecostal and third-world churches.
2). Why did you write this book?
I wrote this book because not everyone who suffers from chronic illness is healed by medicine, and I felt led by God to explore the possibility that He can and will heal people supernaturally if they just believe in Him and His promises, according to the Bible. I am very involved with the Lyme disease community and have spoken with hundreds of Lyme disease sufferers and discovered that many have struggled in the swamp of disease for years, because either medicine has failed to heal them, they don't have the resources to get well, or other factors, such as emotional trauma, prevent them from recovering.
Through my research, I have learned that God has other answers to healing which medicine can't provide. Of course, He uses medicine to make us well, but healing isn't just about taking a few pills, especially in the chronically ill. Supernatural and spiritual healing through a relationship with God addresses dimensions of healing that are outside the reach of medicine, and are a solution for those that haven't been made well by it. But supernatural healing also provides a solution to the question of God's existence and nature.
Which brings me to the second reason why I wrote this book: I wanted to tell readers about a living, loving God who not only desires to heal them, but who also cares about and loves them deeply. I believe that often, the God of Christianity has been distorted by religion and people who have valued being in control over being loving. Such people have made God out to be a taskmaster whose sole intent is upon making people moral. He has become misrepresented to the extent that He is now seen, especially by those in a secular world, as a set of rules to be followed instead of as a person to be loved. Too many of Jesus' followers throughout history have valued being right over being loving, and have been quick to condemn and judge others when Jesus Himself would have instead reached out his arms to embrace them. But Jesus says in the book of John, in Chapter 3, verse 17, that He came to save the world, not to condemn it. So when He came to earth over 2000 years ago, it wasn't just to show humanity what God is like. He came to be a sacrificial offering for humanity's sins and to redeem people, not just so they would be offered a ticket into the afterlife, but so that they might be rescued from their tortuous lives here on earth. Sin is about our estrangement from God, but because of Jesus' death on the Cross and His resurrection into Heaven, we have been provided with the possibility of being reconciled to Him. He has also given us the power to live a new life by His Holy Spirit, who lives in us and helps us to overcome disease and our addictions to harmful thoughts and actions. Through Jesus' death, we have been given an invitation into eternal life with Him in Heaven and the possibility for redemption from sickness, sin and all that prevents us from living a life of peace and joy (this doctrine is explained in greater detail my book).
This book explains that concept, and teaches readers how to appropriate the healing gifts that have been given to us because of God's gift of Jesus Christ.
3). What else does the book explain?
The book is divided into twelve chapters. The first explains my healing journey and the factors that led me to believe in a God of miracles and supernatural healing. These include: my experiences of having witnessed supernatural healing in churches, what I have learned at healing conferences and in books, and what God has showed me through my prayers and other people.
The second chapter mentions reasons why God may allow disease. Most of these reasons are, ironically, to ultimately bring people to health in body, mind and spirit. For instance, I state that God may allow disease if the process teaches us to take better care of ourselves. Or He may allow it if we harbor unforgiveness against another person. Anyway, science has proven that bitterness can make the body sick. So healing involves learning how to create conditions in our lives that will enable wellness, which means that God may allow disease for a time if it will teach us how to do that. Also, illness better equips us to help others who become sick from the same diseases that we have suffered. So these are just a sampling of the reasons why God may allow disease for a period of our lives.
The third chapter of the book describes why healing is ultimately promised to us through Jesus' work on the Cross, and provides evidence from a historical and Biblical perspective as to why God is willing and able to do everything possible to heal us if we just believe Him. It isn't based upon whimsical suppositions, but historical evidence that has healed multitudes in churches in other parts of the world.
Chapter Four mentions a few reasons why Christian critics no longer believe that God heals supernaturally today, and then provides evidence to disprove these contentions. The Church has mostly indoctrinated its followers into believing that miracles were reserved for Jesus' day, but has based this doctrine upon false assumptions, a few of which I mention in the book.
Chapter Five describes factors that influence healing and why some people are blocked from receiving from God, even when their faith in Him as their healer is sky-high, at the same time that it provides solutions for removing those roadblocks.
Chapter Six describes why supernatural healing is more common in underdeveloped nations and is based upon my travels to other countries, and especially my experience of having lived in Costa Rica for two years, where I commonly witnessed healing miracles.
In Chapter Seven, I mention ways in which readers can experience God's love, which include: learning how to discern His voice through prophecy, prayer, dreams, the Bible and other people; spending time with Him, walking according to His ways, serving others, learning to see Him as a person, not a religion, and so on. In my opinion, not knowing how much God loves us is the single biggest roadblock to healing, but He is open to demonstrating His love to us and can teach us how to receive it, if we are receptive.
Chapter Eight describes how dysfunctional brain chemistry in the chronically ill and dark spiritual forces hinder our knowledge of God's love for us and consequently prevent us from receiving His healing, mostly because they influence our thoughts and ability to reason. I believe that spiritual forces are behind all that exists in the world, good or bad, and that sometimes there are spiritual strongholds that prevent us from seeing God's truths and will for our lives. Healing the biochemistry and dealing with the negative spiritual forces can enable us to adopt a new, more encouraging perspective on life and help us to dismantle the spiritual causes of disease. Homeopathic doctors often talk about miasms, which are thought to be energetic imprints of disease that are passed down from one generation to the next. These might be likened to generational curses, which are a spiritual cause of disease that is passed down from one family member to another. Fortunately, these curses can be broken through prayer. Addressing spiritual causes of disease is important because medicine can't heal disease when certain spiritual causes are at its root.
Finally, the remaining chapters of this book describe the strategies that God has provided me within the natural realm to heal from disease, as well as healthy ways to have faith in God for a miracle. The appendix describes the healing journey of a friend in Denver, who has suffered immense physical hardships but who has also been used radically by God to heal thousands.
4). What qualifies you to write this book?
I'm not a saint. I'm not the holiest person on the planet. I don't have all of my ducks in a row. In fact, eight years ago, I might have been one of the most wounded, sick people that I knew; emotionally, physically and spiritually. Lyme disease, and a plethora of traumatic life situations, had left me in a very
bad place. I think God took pity upon me and birthed in me a powerful desire to seek Him and my healing, because when my life started to fall apart in 2001, I began to read every book on mind-body and spiritual healing from a Christian perspective that I could get my hands on. Over the following eight years, I also read books on theology, psychology, and medicine. I went to counselors. I attended healing conferences. I traveled to find answers. I spoke with doctors, healers and mentors. But mostly, I spent many hours in prayer, with my face to the carpet, seeking answers from God as He guided me towards health.
So while I'm not a famous faith healer, I have learned from many who are, and have witnessed supernatural healing in churches overseas as well as in the United States. I have experienced it in my own body, and have also experienced how medicine can be supernatural when God uses it to heal others. So what qualifies me to write this book is what I have learned from others, as well as what God has taught me through my experiences with Him. I am a radically different person than I was eight years ago; friends and family members who know me well will testify to that, and I attribute the changes to God's healing power in my life, which has manifested in a variety of ways, and which I share in this book.
Ironically, I felt led to write this book when I no longer felt certain that medicine would heal me of Lyme disease. While I now test free of, or at least in remission from, Lyme infections via bio-energetic and ART (autonomic response testing), when I started out writing this book, I was yet sick. Yet God asked me to take a leap of faith and believe that He would heal me before I would witness the complete healing from my infections. The world normally works in reverse and demands that we see in order to believe, but in God's economy, things are different. So I decided to write the book while putting my best faith foot forward. Ironically, the day after this book was published, I tested free of all Lyme disease infections for the first time in six and a half years.
Am I completely well? That's a tricky question. I don't think anybody is 100% "well" and I may yet have further to go than the person whose body hasn't been ravaged by years of Lyme infections and other toxins, but in my mind and spirit, I am probably healthier than I have ever been in my life.
Thanks to God. The healing journey can be slow, especially when we don't know how much God loves us and that He wills for us to be well. It took me seven years before I was fully able to embrace that idea, and on my "off" days, I yet wonder if I have really come that far. But when I look back to the person that I was, way back when, I recall that unquestionably, He's healed me by leaps and bounds. My hope in writing this book is to shorten the healing runway for those who haven't yet learned to believe; to encourage the hopeless and the helpless, and to provide evidence for a loving God who heals, so that the possibility of health becomes radically real for those who have given up-on God, healing and even life itself.
