Kenneth Hagin’s Healing

Testimony

Changing my hope to faith.

That’s the lesson I learned on the bed of sickness many years ago. I had lain upon that bed for sixteen long months before I was healed. In fact, I’d been sick all my life and I never had a normal childhood. I never ran and played like other children and at fi fteen years of age I became totally bedfast.

Five doctors, one of whom had practiced at the great Mayo Clinic, said that as far as medical science knew or had any record of, no one in my condition had ever lived past the age of sixteen. I became totally bedfast just a few months before I was sixteen years of age, and I remained bedfast until I was almost seventeen years of age.

I went through everything everyone does when they desperately want to be healed. Thank God for all the good books today on the subject of faith and healing, but there weren’t many in those days. If there were, I didn’t know about them, and didn’t get a hold of them. I was just a denominational boy reading Grandma’s bible, but thank God, it reads just like my Full Gospel Bible does because it’s the same Bible.

When I was trying to get healed, I cried and prayed, and said, “Dear Lord, please heal me.” I begged Him to heal me, and prayed all night several nights, and nearly all night several other nights. When you are bedfast twenty-four hours a day, you can do a lot of praying!

I prayed many hours a day, day after day, week after week, and month after month. I was born again — but I wasn’t getting any results as far as obtaining my healing. I’d pray and was sure God had heard me and had healed me because I sort of had the feeling that He had. I don’t mean I felt it physically, because I didn’t feel any different. But I just felt like He had heard me. I can’t say that physically I felt that God heard me; but I’m talking about a spiritual sense of some kind.

When I would pray for healing, I would sense, this is it; my prayer has been answered.

But then I’d feel my heart. It was still not beating right. Then I would look at my lower limbs and they were still paralyzed. My legs were just bones with a little skin stretched over them — there was no meat or muscle in the thighs or calves.

Then I’d start crying and say, “Lord, I thought You were going to heal me. I just felt like You did. I just knew it, but You didn’t.”

I couldn’t understand it, and for about a month or so I just wouldn’t even look at the Bible. I decided I might just as well give up on my prayer as a bad job. Then I’d start slipping away. I’d go right down to death’s door, right down in the throes of death, I held onto the head of the bed to try to keep from going. You could see where I held on to the bed, till all the varnish was worn off that headboard. I’d fight death with every fiber of my being. Then I’d come back to the Word of God again and begin to read it again.

As a young person I wanted to live so badly, so from the natural standpoint I fought death. But I couldn’t see where I was missing it spiritually. 1 would try to act upon God’s Word. And I’d get some results and recover from the attacks, but I still didn’t receive my healing.

Finally, on the second Tuesday of August 1934, after lying on the bed of sickness for sixteen months, I said to the Lord, “Dear Lord Jesus, when You were here on earth You said in Mark 11:24 What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have. I desire to be healed. You said, ‘When you pray.’ I have prayed. You said, ‘Believe.’ I have believed.”

I continued, “Dear Lord Jesus, if You stood here by my bedside in the flesh and I could reach my physical hand out and lay my hands on Yours, If You were to say to me, Son, the trouble with you is you’re not believing,’ I would have to say to you, ‘Dear Lord Jesus, You’re lying about it! I do believe.’”(I said this in kindness and sincerity, not in tones of arrogance.)

[You cannot believe beyond

actual knowledge]

Now Jesus does not speak to a person physically, like someone else might speak to you. He’s not here in the flesh, but the Holy Spirit is here. And Jesus said about the Holy Spirit, “...He [the Holy Spirit] shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak...”(John 16:13). The Holy Spirit spoke to my spirit on the inside of me; “Yes, you believe, all right, as far as you know.” (A person can’t believe beyond actual knowledge. It just can’t be done. That’s where many fail. They don’t really know what the Word says.)

The Lord said, “You believe, all right, as far as you know. But that last clause goes with that verse of scripture, ‘…and ye shall have them,’ it says, ‘... believe that ye RECEIVE them, and ye shall HAVE them” (Mark 11:24).

[Believe you receive your

petition before you have it]

Then I saw it! It was just like someone had turned a light on inside of me. 1 saw it. I said instantly, “Dear Lord Jesus, I see it, I see it! I have to believe I receive my healing before I get it. I have to believe that I receive healing for my heart while my heart is still not beating right. I have to believe I receive healing for my paralysis even though from the natural standpoint I am still paralyzed. And if I believe I receive it, then I will have it.”

You see, I’d not done that yet. I wanted to get my healing fi rst, and then believe it. But you don’t have to believe it once you get it. Then you know it. Faith is not sight. In other words, once you see whatever it is you were believing for, you don’t need faith to believe for your petition anymore.

Instantly l saw what I had been doing. I had been hoping all of those months to receive my healing, and hope didn’t work. I could never receive an answer to my prayers through hope — only by faith. That meant I had to believe I had my petition before I actually saw it manifested.

One good thing about it is, you don’t have to have a Full Gospel church, a denominational church, or anyone else tell you how to receive from God. If you’ll just follow the Word and the Holy Spirit, you’ll find yourself walking in line with the Word because the Holy Spirit will always lead you in line with the Word.

You see, when I was lying there on my bed I could move; it was only the lower part of my body that was paralyzed. I could move my hands. No one told me to lift my hands, and I can’t tell you why I did, but I just did, I lifted my hands as I lay there fl at on my back on that bed. I lifted my hands up toward heaven and said, “Heavenly Father, dear Lord Jesus, thank God I’m healed! I believe I am healed!”

I finally had it in the right tense! I finally got it working for me.

“Now faith IS the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1) NOW faith is. If it’s not now, it’s not faith. The bible says, “Now faith is”, present tense. If it’s not present tense, it’s not faith.

When I said to the Lord, “Lord, I believe I receive my healing now,” that’s when I had faith working for me.

But when people say, “I believe I’m going to get my healing,” that’s not faith; that’s not present tense.

I said, “Thank You, dear Lord Jesus, for my healing! I believe that my heart is well; I believe that my paralysis is healed! I thank You for the healing of my body!”

A few minutes can seem like a long time, but I believe I must have praised God in that vein for about ten minutes. Although I didn’t look at a clock, I must have spent ten minutes thanking Him that my heart was well and my body was healed!

However, almost immediately, Satan challenged me. Yes, he will contest you on every inch of the ground you take from him. He will try to fight you every step of the way.

Immediately the devil said to me, “You’re a pretty-looking thing, you claim to be Christian and now you’ve gone to lying.”

Any other time the devil would have denied that there is a hell or a Lake of Fire, but this time the devil said to me, “Don’t you know that the Bible says that all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone?”

“Yes,” I said, “I know that, Mr. Devil.” (You see, I knew that was the devil speaking because anything that brings discouragement is from the enemy.) I continued, “yes, I know that, Mr. Devil, but I didn’t lie.”

He said, “Yes, you did. You said you were healed and you’re not. Now feel your heart.” I was in such a habit of feeling for my heartbeat that I unconsciously reached to feel it. When I realized what I was doing, I slapped my hand and said, “Don’t you do it. Don’t you do it.”

Immediately I said, “Mr. Devil, I did not say anything about how I looked or felt. I said I believe I am healed. I believe I am. I believe I have received the answer to my prayer. And if you say that I really don’t believe it, you’re lying. Besides that, you’re a liar anyhow, because Jesus said you were”(John 6:44)

I said, “When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was on the earth, He said, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them’ (Mark 11:24). Now Jesus said it, and what He says is so; I believe that. If I believe it, then I’ll have it. I didn’t say it anyway. He said it.” That put a stop to the devil speaking his doubt and unbelief to me.

I went back to praising God, thanking Him for the answer - thanking Him for my healing. I had been praising Him for about ten minutes, when on the inside of me, in my spirit, I heard these words: “Now you believe you are healed. But healed people — Well people — don’t have any business being in the bed at this time of day. They need to be up.”

I said, “That’s right! Yes, Lord, that’s right. I’m going to get up. Praise God, I’m going to get up.”

You see, now I was in faith. I was believing and taking God at His Word. Believing faith is having by faith what you asked God for. Believing is taking a step of faith. And to be in faith, you have to take steps of faith because faith requires corresponding action.

In my case, I had been bedfast, and I needed to get up out of bed. That was the corresponding action I needed to take in order to act in faith. I didn’t look better. I didn’t feel better, and I didn’t have any feeling from my waist down. If I had gone by feelings, I’d have to say I wasn’t healed because I was still partially paralyzed. But I knew I’d been healed regardless of how I felt.

I pushed myself to a seated position in bed. Then with my hands I pushed my limbs and feet off of the bed, and twisted my body around so that I was sitting on the edge of the bed. My feet fell down on the floor like a couple of chunks of wood.

I knew my feet were down there on the floor. I couldn’t feel them, but I knew they were there because I could see them. The devil was trying to fight me every inch of the way. Negative thoughts were coming to my mind, just as fast as a machine gun fi res bullets.

The devil said, “You can’t walk, and you know you can’t. You’re not healed, and you know you’re not. You’re lying about it, and you’ll fall right here on the floor, and you’ll have to lie there.”

Then the devil continued, “Don’t you know, it hasn’t been thirty days since you last fell out of bed, and you had to lie there forty-five minutes until your oldest brother came in, picked you up, and put you back in bed. Your grandmother is old, and your mother is sickly. They can’t lift you.”

I only weighed eighty-nine pounds, but I was just as tall as I am now. Then the devil said, “None of the neighborhood men are home, and your oldest brother has drove back to Oklahoma. You’ll just have to lie there on the floor until 5:00 this afternoon, until you grandpa comes in from work, and then he’ll have to put you back in bed.”

But you know the best way in the world to put the devil in his place is to just completely ignore him. The Bible says, “Neither give place to the devil”(Eph. 4:27). I ignored him, and just simply acted like he hadn’t said anything.

I grabbed a hold of the bedpost, but my knees wouldn’t function. My limbs wouldn’t function, so with my arms around that bedpost, I just hung there, sagging at the knees.

As best I could, I lifted one hand a little bit, and said, “Thank God, I’m healed. I wanted to declare in the Presence of Almighty God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the angels of heaven, and in the presence of the devil and evil spirits, that the Word of God is true. I believe I’m healed. I believe it!”

That old room started spinning because, you see, I’d been lying flat on my back for sixteen months. The floor seemed to be where the ceiling was just minutes before, and I could see the chest of drawers moving as that room seemed to spin around and around. Everything was just spinning. I just shut my eyes and held onto that bedpost. In a few minutes I could tell everything had quit spinning.

I opened my eyes and everything was in place. I said it again, “Thank God, according to the Word I’m healed. I believe that.” Then for the first time in many months I felt something. Feeling actually returned to me. It seemed to start in the top of my head, and went down over me, like you might take oil or something warm and pour it over someone’s head.

For example, if you poured a lot of oil on someone, it would just run down over the whole body. This feeling, like warm oil being poured on me, went down all over my body. And when it got to my waist, feeling came, as that warm oil went down and out the end of my toes. Every nerve in my limbs was reactivated, and I felt like two million pins were sticking me in my limbs.

Then I just simply felt normal. My paralysis was gone. I said, “ I’m going to walk now,” and I did. And I’ve been walking ever since!

That is when I first learned what it means to have faith and to act on my faith.

Story from Kenneth E. Hagin,

Bible Faith Study Course

I want to note here that he had revelation (a word from God to his heart and understanding to his head). There is no formula, a 1,2,3. You must not get ahead of God. You must pray for revelation and when you seek for God you will find Him when you seek for Him with your whole heart and He will give YOU revelation for what you need.

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