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Having Faith in a Faithful God

By Kenneth W. Hagin

We can take God at His Word, believe it, and receive His promises as ours. We can have an unshakable faith in God and be fully persuaded that what He has promised, He is also faithful to perform.


As a parent, if you tell your children that you’re going to give them a gift, and they come to you later begging for what you’ve already promised them, you might be upset with them. By their actions, they would be saying, “We know you said you’d do it, but we don’t believe you will!” That’s basically what we do to Jesus our Healer when we conclude our prayers for healing with the statement, “If it be Thy will.” God has already given His Word to us about healing: “With Jesus’ stripes, we were healed!” (1 Peter 2:24).

Instead of basing our prayers for healing on the way Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “If it by Thy will,” why not base our prayers for healing on the way Jesus prayed for healing? Actually, if you’ll notice how Jesus ministered to sick people in His earthly ministry, you’ll find that most of the time, He didn’t even pray for their healing; He just spoke words to the effect, “Be healed!” and the sick were healed. Jesus did pray, however, when He raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus said, “. . . Father, I thank thee THAT THOU HAST HEARD ME” (John 11:41). Then Jesus commanded, “. . . Lazarus, COME FORTH.” (v. 43). And if you’ll study the different accounts of healing in the four Gospels, you’ll notice that Jesus never refused anyone who came to Him to receive healing. Not one time will you find Jesus praying to God, “Father, heal this person if it be Thy will.” Jesus never prayed that way because He already knew God’s will on the subject of healing!

HealethOf course, opponents of divine healing always cite cases of sick people who were prayed for, but didn’t receive their healing. When people aren’t healed, many automatically conclude, “It must be God’s will that I’m sick.” But if that’s true, then why do they go to the doctor for medicine so they can get well and get out of the will of God! If it’s not God’s will to heal—if it’s God’s will for His people to be sick—then according to that kind of thinking, sick people shouldn’t do things in the natural to be well. And well people should pray to be sick!

You might say, “That sounds ridiculous!” Yes, it certainly does! But I said it to help you see the absurdity of some of the teachings we hear today which try to prove that divine healing is not God’s will for us, or that healing is not for us today.

Healing is God’s will because God’s Word says it is, and it is impossible for God to lie (Num. 23:19). It is God’s will for us to be well, whole, happy, and blessed because the Bible says that God is our heavenly Father, and as a father, He loves us and wants only the best for us.

MATTHEW 7:7–11
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
11 If ye then, being evil [or natural], know how to give good gifts unto your children, HOW MUCH MORE SHALL YOUR FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN GIVE GOOD THINGS TO THEM THAT ASK HIM?

Many people believe that God afflicts people with sickness and disease in order to discipline them or to teach them a lesson. But how many of you who are parents would discipline your children by making them sick? If you could, would you get some cancer and inject it into your children and tell them, “Now, I’m going to teach you a few things”? Of course not! Besides, if you were to do that, I guarantee, you would spend quite a few years locked up behind bars! Well, the Bible says if natural parents know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more does God our Heavenly Father know how to give good gifts to His children! Yet our Heavenly Father is accused of giving His children cancer, tuberculosis, and every other kind of malady and sickness you can think of. That kind of reasoning doesn’t even make sense!

JAMES 1:17
17 Every GOOD GIFT and every PERFECT GIFT is from above, and cometh down FROM THE FATHER of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

We can readily see from this scripture that it is God who has provided the many ways for us to be helped, healed, and blessed in this natural realm in which we live. God doesn’t object to people obtaining healing though natural means—through medical science, for example. But on the other hand, His Word clearly states that He has also provided the means whereby His people can receive divine healing! God is the author of both means of obtaining healing.

God has provided the avenue of medical science through which mankind can receive help and healing for the physical body. We know this because of James 1:17 which says that every good gift and every perfect gift is from God above. And doctors and medical science are certainly a benefit to mankind. So it is God who established the means whereby mankind can be helped through medical science.

Looking in the Old Testament, we also need to realize that it was God’s idea, not man’s, to establish a statute of divine healing for His people. It was then that God revealed Himself as The Great Physician—as Jehovah Rapha—“The Lord that healeth.”

EXODUS 15:22–26
22 So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days into the wilderness, and found no water.
23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.
24 And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?
25 And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made from them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,
26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God . . . I will put [permit] none of these disease upon thee, which I brought upon the Egyptians: for I AM THE LORD THAT HEALETH THEE.

The Israelites were making their exodus out of Egypt where they had been in bondage to the cruel slavery of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. They were on their way to the Promised Land, and on their journey, they ventured into the wilderness of Shur and sojourned there for three days without any water. Then when they came to Marah and found water, they couldn’t drink it because it was bitter. Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree and told him to cast it into the water. When the tree was dipped into the water, the water became sweet so the children of Israel could drink it (Exod. 15:25).

The tree Moses cast into the waters is a semblance, or a type and shadow, of the tree that Jesus was to die on—the Cross of Calvary. In many places in the Bible, water is representative of people. Isn’t it interesting that in the same way the tree was dipped into the waters at Marah and used to heal the waters, Jesus Christ, who died on a tree and rose again from the dead, was “dipped into the waters” of humanity, so to speak, to obtain our healing and redemption!

EXODUS 15:26
26 . . . If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put [permit] none of these disease upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I AM THE LORD THAT HEALETH THEE.

In Exodus 15:26, God established a statute of healing for His people. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that this statute of divine healing has been revoked, changed, or altered. In fact, Malachi 3:6 says, “. . . I am the Lord, I change not. . . .” The Lord has never changed His mind or His will concerning the statute of divine healing.

BelieveWhen God makes a covenant, or an agreement with His people, He abides by that covenant until it is revoked, stopped, or superseded by a better one. Therefore, since healing is also found in the New Testament, we know that God’s healing covenant is still in force today. Actually, because of the redemptive work of Christ, the Bible says that we have a better covenant than the Israelites had, established upon better promises (Heb. 8:6)!

“Yes, but I know someone who was prayed for and didn’t get healed,” you hear people say. But just because someone fails to receive healing doesn’t mean the Word of God is false or that God’s covenant of healing is not in force today. I don’t know why some people receive their healing and others do not. However, I do know that a person must mix faith with the Word in order to receive healing or any blessing or promise from God.

HEBREWS 4:2
2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, NOT BEING MIXED WITH FAITH in them that heard it.

In other words, if we need healing, our faith has something to do with receiving healing from God, because God’s Word will always work when we act on it in faith. Just because someone failed to receive healing doesn’t change the fact that healing belongs to us and that it’s God’s will that we walk in divine health.

Many times we don’t understand why some good Christian people become sick and, instead of receiving healing, they die and go on to be with the Lord. We may not understand why things happen as they do, but a lack of understanding on our part does not discredit the Word of God. The Word says, “Believe you receive and you shall have” (Mark 11:24).

Regardless of what happens with other people and regardless of what is going on in our physical body, we must continue to have faith in our God because He is faithful. He is faithful to keep His promises and to perform His Word in our life. He is faithful to be Jehovah Rapha—“the God who healeth thee.”