Imrah Ministries

Courtesy to www.telfordpct.nhs.uk

By Sidharth Mohandas

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” [Romans 10: 13]

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Two things I like about it: one, it’s absolutely universal, and two, it’s a cure-all. Let me explain what I mean by “cure-all”… The Greek word used for “saved” here is “sozo”, which means “complete salvation”. It is a salvation that covers every area you could ever imagine!

This same word, sozo, was used when Jesus delivered the demonic at Garderene [Luke 8:35], when He healed the woman with chronic bleeding [Luke 8:48], when He raised Jarius’ daughter from the dead [Luke 8:50], when the cripple at the Beautiful Gate got healed [Acts 4:9] etc.

God’s plan of salvation is complete. He not only saved you and me from sin, but His salvation meets all of our needs and is a solution for all our problems. Your debts? Yes, absolutely! Deliverance from your sexual sins? Indeed yes! Laziness? Over-eating? Anger? You name it! As God’s Word says, Wherefore also He [Jesus] is able to save [Gk: sozo] to the UTTERMOST them that draw near unto God through Him [Jesus] [Hebrews 7:25] To the uttermost! Do you know what that means? It means “to the last bit”.

But then why are we struggling even after we have cried out to Him? If deliverance from sexual sin was so easy, why are you struggling with it so much? Why is it that you’re not getting out of your debts? Why is it that you’re still fighting with anger and gluttony? Why?

The answer lies in that small word: call. But this word is not just an ordinary call. It’s a call based on what you have heard. Some verses down, Paul says, Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God. [Romans 10:17]. God prescribes His medicine, the Word. It’s an all-cure! Panacea! But just like you’d be regular with those pills your doctor prescribed, you have to be regular with God’s Word. This is the key to Sozo.

By Sidharth Mohandas

I heard a friend relate about his struggle with smoking, and his testimony brought to light something that is a common hurdle to deliverance.

My friend was sitting in his room playing his piano… he had accepted the Lord just some months back… but he was still struggling with the smoking habit. He tried quitting a number of times but he was failing miserably. He had no idea what kept him from being delivered. As he was playing his piano… his brother came into his room and said… “Hey bozo, I heard you’re now one of those Jesus freaks!”. Putting on a religious air, he just ignored his “sinner” brother and continued playing the piano. His brother looked around and asked him, “So , you have a cigarette?”. My friend looked straight into his eyes and said, “No, I’m a Christian, I don’t smoke!”. But as soon as his brother left, my friend took out a cigarette and started smoking. The Lord started dealing with him. He said, “What you need deliverance from is not smoking, but lying.”

There are principles for deliverance, you reap what you sow. You can’t expect deliverance if you sow the seed of bondage. Scripture tells us “You shall know the truth and the truth shall deliver you” [John 8:32]. If truth sets you free, lies will bind you. Many people don’t even realize that they lie. In fact majority of Christians lie to themselves! They think, “I’ve failed so many times, I’m not going to do any good”, “Probably I’m an outcast and God doesn’t want me”, “I can’t give up drugs, I’ll die if I do”, “I’m going to fail again…”, “Probably all of this is hum bug. All of this written in here is just make-believe”, “God wants to punish me with sickness”, “God hates me enjoying life”, “God wants me to be stiff and religious for me to be accepted by Him”… and the list goes on.

Analyze what you speak to yourself, what you think… Are you speaking lies to yourself? Or you maybe like my friend, a compulsive liar, you lie about everything and anything… you’re scared if you tell others the truth, they’re going to look down upon you and you lie, lie, and lie! If this is you, let me tell you, you’re not on the ground of deliverance. The ground of deliverance is TRUTH.

Remember, “as a man thinks in his heart so is he”… It’s time to do some cleaning up and fill in with truth. Again, truth delivers, lies bind.

By Sidharth Mohandas

Mark 2: 1-5

“A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that He had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and He preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

I marvel at the determination of the four men to reach Jesus and would love to talk on that, but today I draw your attention to the man whom they carried. We don’t know how long he was a paralytic; we don’t know if the four that carried him was in any way related to him, we don’t even know who this man was or where he came from. All that we know is that he was a paralytic. He was known by his problem. How horrible! But when Jesus saw the paralytic He saw the person and not his problem…He said, “SON, your sins are forgiven…” In the world today we have people address others by their problem- “oh he’s a drunkard!”, “that guy is an AIDs victim”, “eww…she’s a homosexual”, “he’s a heart patient”, “he’s a liar”, “she’s a prostitute”…Do you see how we are so accustomed to looking at the problem rather than the person who is afflicted with the problem?

I remember telling a girl who was being treated badly by her dad- “Your dad is a person, he is not the problem. The problem is that he lacks Jesus”. Can we make the decision today to look beyond the problem into the person? Probably, you have someone in your life that always keeps finding fault with you, and keeps on nagging you. Will you choose to see the person and not his/her fault? Pray for the person and love the person unconditionally. I know that could be hard, but it’s not impossible because God says you can do it.