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You may not call it an attack. You may just feel it. The ache that will not leave. The fever that climbs. The pain that flares at the worst possible hour. You wake up and take inventory of what hurts before your feet hit the floor.

That is what the enemy does when he wars against your body. He speaks through symptoms. He wants you to bow to the diagnosis before you ever hear from God. He wants the pain to preach louder than the promise.

But that is not the will of God for your body. Jesus came to heal you everywhere you hurt. And today we are going to rebuke the physical symptoms warring against you.

Symptoms Are Not the Sovereign

Hear me. A symptom is real. I am not asking you to pretend it does not exist. I am telling you it does not get the final word. Symptoms are messengers, and you do not have to accept every message the enemy sends.

Jesus did not negotiate with sickness. He confronted it. Luke tells us of the day He walked into Simon's house where his mother-in-law lay burning with fever. "So He stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. And immediately she arose and served them." He stood over it. He did not lie under it.

The word Luke uses for rebuked is epitimaō. It means to charge sharply, to censure, to command with authority. Jesus spoke to a fever the way He spoke to a storm and the way He spoke to a demon. And the fever obeyed.

By His Stripes, Not by the Symptoms

Isaiah saw it centuries before the cross. "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed."

By His stripes you are healed. Not by how you feel this morning. Not by the report you are dreading. The stripes on His back already spoke over your body. Every symptom that contradicts that word is an intruder, and an intruder can be resisted.

David knew it too. He preached to his own soul. "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases." Preach that to your soul when the symptom tries to preach to you.

Submit, Then Resist

So how do you rebuke what is warring against your body? Not in your own strength. Not by gritting your teeth and shouting at your flesh. You rebuke it the way Scripture teaches you to war. "Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

Submit first. Come under the God who bought your healing. Then resist the symptom. Rebuke it. Drive it out. Command it to go. Stand on the promise and refuse the intruder in the authority Jesus won for you.

So I am rebuking it with you right now. I am rebuking the pain that will not quit. I am rebuking the fever, the flare, the affliction assigned to your body. It has no right to stay. It has no covenant with you. And it must answer to the name of Jesus.

Do not bow to the symptom. Bow to the One who bore it. Stand up on the inside. Your body belongs to God, and by His stripes you are healed.