SID: Hello. Sid Roth here with Jim Richards. And we were talking about how the principles that he teaches get more miracles than most of the household words you hear names of people on TV that go into foreign countries. But he’s doing something different. And what I find out is how this even works for you. Tell me about the time that you had this chronic virus that is there day after day after day. You couldn’t get rid of it.
JIM: Right. Let me just say, any time I get healed this is really the process. I mean, we have to realize there are some questions I have to ask. When a sickness comes, when anything comes in life I have to ask myself this question. Did Jesus do anything about this with his death and resurrection?
SID: And the answer is yes.
JIM: And the answer, yeah. But I’ve got to decide that. I’ve got to get very deliberate. Yes. Well what did he do? Well he became the curse of the Law. Sickness has no right in me. Did Jesus conquer this problem when he was raised from the dead? Yes he did. Then what can I do about it? Well you know, I can believe the truth. Alright. Am I in Jesus? Yes, I am in Jesus. Do I share his inheritance? Yes, I do. Then am I willing to do something about this? That’s pretty much the process. But you know, you’ve got an internalize that process. And what I do many times is I will literally just envision Jesus on the cross, and I will envision myself there at the foot of the cross and just see this leaving, and see it go to him, and him taking on that sickness. And when I do that in my heart I just always acknowledge, I don’t have to bear this. You’ve already borne this. I don’t have to carry this. I can’t carry it. You’ve already carried it. See, I realize it would be in denial of what Jesus did for me to think I got to carry a disease that he’s already carried. And then I love to envision him being raised from the dead and leaving that sickness behind. See, he had to beat that sickness to come up out of the grave. But more than anything I love to envision myself in him when he’s coming up out of the grave, because that’s what the Apostle Paul said. He said, “We are in him. We are seated with him. We are raised up with him.” See, it’s all about being in him and what he deserves, what he obtained and what he has. That’s the Christian life. That’s what the normal Christian life is about.
SID: What caused you to fall so in love with Jesus?
JIM: Well you know, I was 21 years old. I was pretty much a drug addict. I had nothing but heartache and pain my entire life. You know, when I was as early as four years old I already had my father try to kill my whole family. I was basically sent off to live with my grandmother who was completely crazy. We could do five programs over the mental torment that I went through there. I went through physical and emotional abuse growing up. I ran away from home at 14 years old. I was living on the streets. I did every wicked despicable thing you could do to live, to survive, just to have food to eat. In the winter, you know, when you’re 15 years old and you’re sleeping in a cardboard box on the streets in the snow you do compromising things you just couldn’t ever imagine. And I’m telling you, by the time I was able to discover Jesus my life was nothing but pain and sorrow, and I already had two or three major life-threatening illnesses. But my biggest thing, Sid, was because of the way my grandmother treated me specifically, she convinced me that I was unlovable. My grandmother, she was crazy. She was literally crazy and she did everything she could to make me believe I was unlovable. So you could just imagine every relationship I got in, it was sabotaged from the beginning. Everything I got into failed. And it didn’t matter how much drugs I took, at the end of every night my heart was breaking, just barely able to breathe for the pain. And I’m going to tell you then Jesus came into my life.
SID: But this is so many years ago. Why are there tears in your eyes now?
JIM: Because the love of God today is more real to me than it was that day when I was 21 years old, 40 years ago, when I was crossing those railroad tracks as a drug addict hippy I gave my life to Jesus. I want you to know there hasn’t been any waning. There hasn’t been any drifting. There hasn’t been any getting stale. Everyday I get up and I feel the love of God. I want to emphasize, I feel it. I’m saying I get up and I think about it. You know, I used to wake up every morning and the first feeling I had was rage. I would wake up, Sid, and honestly if you touched me, like if you touched me to wake me up I would probably knock you out. People didn’t touch me when I was asleep. I’ve been stabbed in my sleep. I had all these horrible experiences in my sleep. But I tell you, I would wake up in the morning, and Sid, I’ve got to tell you, I wake up in the morning and I just feel the love of God. And the Bible says, we love Him because He first loved us. And you see, when you look at the cross of Christ, the Bible is very clear that the only place you can fall in love with God is when you look at the fact that Jesus was our propitiation. That means the satisfying of wrath. See, God has a million reasons to kill me if I got what I deserved.
SID: Not just you. He has a million reasons to kill if you if got what you deserved. But the truth of the matter is He didn’t create you to kill you. He created you to have this abundant life. That’s what Jim is talking about.
JIM: That’s right. And you know, no matter what you’ve done, no matter where you are, listen, I’ve done horrible things that wrecked people’s lives forever. And I can’t even imagine anybody being able to love me with the life that I had. But you know something, I look at the cross and I see that Jesus became my sin and he took the wrath that I deserved. He paid the price that I should pay, that you should pay so that you don’t have to pay it. He paid our price. And he didn’t just stop there. He came up out of that grave and said, “Now, everything that I receive from the Father, this inheritance that I get from the Father, I’m going to share it with you.” Everything that he has is mine. How can I not be in love with somebody who loves me so perfectly.
SID: You know, Jim, I’m having a thought. A friend of mine had an open vision of what is called the day of the Lord. That is a day that you don’t want to be without Jesus. You want to be in him. He said he never saw such fear on people’s faces. But this is the thing that impressed me. The people were saying, I thought I had more time. No. You don’t know when your end is going to come. And I tell you that now is the time to get right with God. Now is the time to tell God that you’re sorry for everything that you’ve done wrong. Now is the time to accept his love and his gracious forgiveness where he’s not just going to cover your sins, as we did in the Old Testament, my Jewish people, but he is going to wash them away as if they never existed before. The prayer is simple, but you have to mean it with every fiber of your being. Your part is to mean it. God’s part is to fulfill it. If you tell Jesus you’re sorry for your sins and believe the blood of Jesus washed them away, and ask him to live inside of you and be your Lord, I tell you, according to the Word of God, and God is not a man that He should lie, if he could love Jim Richards, if he could love me, for sure He can love you. Don’t go away. I’m going to have you fall so in love with Jesus in the next segment. Be right back.
