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How Faith Comes

Kenneth E. HaginBy Kenneth E. Hagin

When we understand how faith comes, acting on our faith and receiving from God become simple. God made faith easy to understand—the answers are all in His Word!

Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Notice particularly the first part of that verse: “Without faith it is impossible to please him.”

If God demands that we have faith when it is impossible for us to have faith, then we have a right to challenge His justice. But if He places within our hands the means whereby faith can be produced, then the responsibility rests with us regarding whether we have faith.

God has told us that without faith it is impossible to please Him, but He has also told us how to obtain faith. He has told us how faith comes.

ROMANS 10:17
17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

If we don’t have faith, it is not God’s fault. To blame God for our lack of faith is nothing but ignorance. God has provided the way whereby everyone can have faith.

The Apostle Paul said that we are saved through faith (Eph. 2:8). But how do you get the faith to be saved? Faith for salvation “cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

How does faith for healing come? In the same way faith for salvation comes—by hearing and believing God’s Word. In Mark 5:34, Jesus said to the woman who had just been healed of the issue of blood, “Daughter, THY FAITH hath made thee whole.” Faith has not been done away with. It still comes by hearing—and hearing by the Word of God! Jesus did not say that it was His power that made the woman whole; He said that her faith did it.

After preaching several weeks in a Full Gospel church in Dallas during the early 1950s, I stayed on three months while the pastor took a leave of absence. In addition to preaching at the regular church services, we also had a daily radio program.

One weekend we had some special missionary services. On Friday night after the services had been dismissed, one of the ushers told me that a man and a woman from Fort Worth wanted to see me. The wife was sick and wanted healing. Her husband related that as he drove to work one morning, he had heard our radio program. He had heard me make the statement that healing was for everybody, and he had gone home that night and told his wife about it. All that week they had tuned in to the broadcast.

This woman had had two serious operations and was facing a third. “We have been praying,” the husband said, “that if it is God’s will for her to be healed, He will give us the faith to believe that she will be healed.” And they had come to ask me to pray for her.

I began by telling them it is unscriptural to pray “if it be Thy will” concerning anything that God’s Word has already promised us. When you put an “if” in your prayer, you are praying in doubt.

Some people think they are being humble when, really, they are being ignorant. You will get no answer if you put “ifs” in your prayers when God’s Word has already made His will plain.

Only when you pray a prayer of consecration do you put an “if” in your prayer. This is because, in a prayer of consecration, you are not certain what the Lord’s will is. But concerning the prayer of faith, “if” is the badge of doubt, and it should not be in your prayers when you are praying to change a particular situation in your life, such as sickness or disease.

I asked the husband, “If the New Testament said that Jesus took your wife’s infirmities and bare her sicknesses, wouldn’t it be His will for her to have her healing?”

He acknowledged that it would. So we turned in the Word to Matthew 8:17, which says, “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.”

“It IS God’s will for her to be healed!” he exclaimed. His wife said that she saw it too.

So the couple said, “We know it is His will. All we need now is faith.”

I asked them if they were saved, and they replied that they were. I asked them to describe how they had gotten saved. They stated that they had gone down to the front of the church when an invitation was given and had knelt and prayed a sinner’s prayer.

“When you went down to the front,” I asked, “did you ask the Lord to give you faith to be saved?” Their answer was no.

The husband said that the preacher had preached that they could be saved. He had read the Word to the people. They had heard the Word, and faith came to them for salvation.

I told them that faith for healing came the same way. They had just heard the Word read to them, and they believed what it said concerning healing. They had faith to be healed!

“We’re going to have to throw our first prayer away, because it wasn’t any good,” the husband declared. I agreed with him. As soon as light comes from God’s Word, faith is there!

His wife agreed, too, saying, “I see that all I have to do now is accept Jesus as my Healer.”

I laid my hand on her head and prayed. Then I asked her if she was healed.

She confessed, “I surely am! And I know I am, because God’s Word says I am.”

During the following Sunday night service, the vestibule doors swung open and there stood this woman’s husband. After asking if he could say a word, he began to tell what had happened.

He said that when they arrived home that Friday night, his wife pulled off her brace, threw it into the closet, and said, “Thank God, I am healed!” The next day, Saturday, when he came home, he found his wife stooped over the sink, washing her hair—something she had been unable to do.

This Sunday night he brought his mother to be prayed for. She was in a wheelchair with paralysis. After prayer, she stood up and walked out!

When hands were laid on the young couple, they received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. Years later, I talked with them and she was still healed.

How did she get faith? From hearing and believing God’s Word!