Hot Water is Always on the Left, Right?

Perception is Stronger than Reality

My new faucet is fabulous! When the little leak in my kitchen sink became an enormous nuisance to my nervous system, a replacement was inevitable. Enough was enough. I had tolerated the noise from the nonstop dripping longer than I should have — especially since the solution was so simple.

Our faithful faucet of fourteen years had come with a lifetime warranty. The new updated version of the original was shipped via overnight mail and promptly received the next day. The exceptional customer service was shocking to me, to say the least. It took longer explaining to Mike (our plumber) why our hot water was not on the left, but rather on the right, than it did dealing with the manufacturer for a free faucet!

A few years ago while a friend from church was fixing our faulty sprayer, he inadvertently switched the hot and cold water connections under the sink. We never realized the mistake until after he left. Not wanting to impose upon him again, we decided to live with this minor inconvenience.

It took a little getting used to, but after a while we re-trained our brains to believe that cold water came from the left and hot water came from the right. Cold on the left, hot on the right — in my mind that’s what I would recite. Soon, I became comfortable with my flawed perception of the truth.

Stinkin’ Thinkin’ Hinders Healing

Although it’s been a month since Mike installed our new faucet [correctly], my husband and I still struggle with the hot and cold water positions. When you’ve been doing something wrong, as if it were right, for so many years, it’s difficult to change. I call this “stinkin thinkin!”

For many well-meaning Christians, our ‘thinking‘ is one of the major hindrances to healing. We must pay attention to what we’re thinking. Oftentimes, in regard to biblical healing, the truth of God’s Word has become skewed by inaccurate teachings and unreliable personal opinion. Faulty facts can be dangerous to your health! When you meditate on a lie long enough, truth begins to break up and eventually crumbles.

For example… A few years ago, I offered to teach biblical healing to a lady in our church who had been diagnosed with cancer. She graciously invited me to her home and seemed eager to learn. My sole teaching tools were a bible and a concordance, which allowed us to search the Scriptures in the language of the original manuscripts — Hebrew and Greek. This approach would eliminate popular opinion as we focused exclusively on the powerful promises of God for healing.

During my long 8-hour visit it became completely clear to me that this precious woman of God had been persuaded to believe a lie. She was fixated on some flawed information she had been taught years earlier. Her crazy contaminated theology was controlling her ability to receive the truth. The bible was clear: God wanted her well, but her ‘stinkin thinkin’ convinced her otherwise. She had allowed someone’s unbiblical opinion to supersede the Will of God for her physical body. So sad. She had nothing to lose but her pain, and yet erroneous preaching from her past prevented it. Her head got in the way of her healing!

Eat the Hay and Spit Out the Sticks

Be careful what you’re listening to. Your mind is just like your computer: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Weigh what you’re hearing up against the Word of God. Eat the hay, and spit out the sticks! If it doesn’t line up with the Scriptures, don’t entertain the thought.

Quite often, our perception of something is stronger than reality. In my mind, hot water was on the right and cold water on the left — but that was not accurate thinking, only my experience. Proceed with caution when someone is building a doctrine based entirely on personal experiences.

I find it far easier to minister healing to those who have zero knowledge of the Bible, than those who have been in church all their life. Why? Because the poison isn’t present! There’s no mixture of truth and error. We don’t have to go through the decontamination process.

Without exception, Jesus healed all those who came to Him requesting it. All means all! Regardless of what you may be thinking right now… all can include you! I’m praying for your healing today!