Ever felt sick on the inside. Sometimes it's physical. Other times it's emotional. Sometimes it's spiritual. And sometimes, we really don't know what it is. Well, if healing is what you need, then today's message … is for you.

The reality is, that some people aren't well. We all get sick, sometimes it's just a cold, or the flu for a couple of days and we feel miserable, but other times it can be much worse. My Mother, who's seventy-five years old, just had shingles, which is an incredibly painful disorder and a bit dicey at that age. She's out of the woods now and on the mend.

I, for one, am a shocking patient. I'm so active and out there doing things, that within about half a day of getting sick, I've had enough. I just want t get back on my feet. Fortunately, I'm a pretty healthy beast so it doesn't happen too often. But when we're sick, it's easy to see the rest of the world getting on with life and we feel like we've been left behind or deserted.

At our website www.christianityworks.com, lots of people come and ask for prayer. Often, we have people ask for prayer, either for themselves or for family, or friends in times of sickness. It's a very common reason why people ask for prayer. A couple that just came in this other week; was to continue to pray for someone who was involved in a tragic motorcycle accident (just recently). And to pray for a friend who was in hospital with a critical condition of pneumonia. They asked us to pray for full recovery for him and that Jesus would give him the strength to fight this.

It happens you know, people have accidents, and it happens so quickly, a motorcycle, a car. I remember when I was younger, my young two-year old son reached up and caused me to pour boiling water over myself and over him. It was just a normal everyday morning and within a split second, it all changed, and boiling water was all over my face.

Sickness can be so unexpected. Everything is going fine, we're just drifting along and then the doctor tells you … you have cancer or your husband has a heart attack. We feel so helpless, so lost. We go into shock and when that sinks in, despair, and anger, and all sorts of different emotions. Or there's the person suffering from chronic pain, arthritis, back pain, all sorts of disorders, or mental disorders – both sufferers and carers. How can a loving God let this happen?

Come on, how can God let these sorts of things happen to people? Then we look around at all the other people and think, "Well, we used to be like that. We used to have a normal life-like that until, until this happened." And it hurts so much. People pay a bit of attention to us in the first week or so, and then they just get on with their lives. You even watch a high-profile Christian preacher on television and they're talking about how to succeed and stuff. Or you listen to some joker on the radio and you think, "Well, it's okay for you, God's with you but what about me? I'm sick?" Got the picture?

My hunch is … this is pressing a few buttons out there. God seems to be doing stuff everywhere else, except right here where I need him at the moment. That's how we tend to feel so often when we feel sick. Have you ever felt that? Have you ever had this sense of abandonment and, "Well, what's going on in my life? How long is this going to last? How long is it going to hurt? How long am I going to be disabled?"

Imagine what it must be like to be perfectly healthy and fit one minute and a quadriplegic the next, for the rest of your life? That would take an enormous amount of adjustment – take an enormous amount of courage.

So, whether we have a serious disease or whether we have the cold, or flu, or feel miserable, sometimes we get this sense we have been left alone and deserted. I'd like to shine just a little bit of light into that, with a very simple statement "Jesus, Jesus specialises in sick people". It's not the "hoi faloitin" preachers He hung around with; it wasn't the wealthy businessmen.

When they accused him of hanging out with the flotsam and jetsam of society, you know what He said? He said, "Look, the physician came to heal the sick people not the ones who are already well". Jesus specialised, specialised in sick people.

You know how we get this funny thing when we're sick and we're crook, and we're lying on the couch or the bed, and we're thinking "Jesus can't possibly be here with me. He must be with that fancy preacher out there, or He must be with that wealthy Christian business person out there. That's where Jesus is, He's not with me." Exactly the opposite is true, exactly!

You read just one of the four historical accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, the first four books of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Just pick one. Mark's the shortest one, it's a two to two and a half hour read and have at look at who Jesus spent his time with. And it wasn't the people that we expected Him to spend His time with. It was the sick people – the ones in the lonely place, in the nursing home, and the hospital, and the bedroom, and the lounge room – so alone.

When we're sick Jesus chooses to be with us in that place. Now, we can know that in our heads. We can hear some guy say that on the radio, we can hear that, read that, write that a million times. But all of a sudden we get sick (when the doctor tells us we have skin cancer, when the doctor says you've got five times the risk of having a heart attack because of your blood disorder), all of a sudden when the reality of sickness hits us – the reality of who Jesus is and who He wants to spend His time with, and His compassion, His grace, and His desire to bless us in the middle of sickness – all of a sudden that disappears out the window.

Maybe you're sick right now and maybe you need to hear this right now – Jesus Christ is in that place with you. And maybe God's plan, the reason that you're listening to this program today, maybe God's plan is just to tuck that away in your heart. For one day, when you might need it. To tuck away the reality that Jesus Christ spent His time with people who are marginalized, people who are hurting, people who were alone and people who were sick, He healed some of them.

And some of them He healed in such an amazing way but others He didn't. Why does that happen? How come God does some amazing miracles in some people's lives and not in others? If I could answer that I'd be God and I'm not. I don't know why God chooses to heal some people and not others. I just don't know, but He does, and He cares.

And when we're sick, He is more powerfully, profoundly, amazingly, intimately, personally, beautifully present with us than we can ever imagine. That's a blessing. That is an enormous blessing! Jesus is a healer.

The Old Testament says that He is a God who heals our every disease and He's the lover of our soul. He's there to be with us when we're sick.

I know that when someone has cancer and when someone has a serious health issue, they can be Christians, they can pray for healing but it is not always God's plan that they should be healed. We all die eventually, our bodies all give out eventually. And the only instance in which that won't happen is if Jesus Christ comes back before it's my time to die or yours. That's the reality of the life we live, we are mortal, we will die physically but never spiritually.

Spiritually we will live on, either in the presence of God or in the outer darkness called hell away from Him. Jesus is in this place when you are sick.

And Father, I pray for anyone who is sick today, that you will just give them the most amazing sense of your presence with them right now. Father, I pray for their complete healing in their body, their soul, their mind, everything that's wrong with them. And above all Lord, whatever your will is in terms of this person's health and future and life, I pray that you'll bless them with the knowledge of your presence that is indescribable. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.