Making the First Move

By Kenneth E. Hagin

The Book of Luke records the story of a paralytic man whose four friends tried to bring him before Jesus. However, when they reached the home where Jesus was, the place was so crowded that they couldn’t get in. So they carried their friend to the top of the house, broke through the roof, and lowered him in front of Jesus (see Luke 5:17–26).

Now this paralytic man was not, as is commonly supposed, healed through the faith of the men who brought him to Jesus. No, he was healed through his own faith. His healing was the result of his own exercise of bold, obedient faith.

The paralytic man was not healed the moment Jesus said, “. . . Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house” (Luke 5:24). It wasn’t until the man made an effort to rise up off his mat that the power of God was released. The faith of the paralytic man’s friends brought him to the feet of Jesus, but it was his own faith that took him off his bed of affliction.

At times, I have been led by the Spirit of God to tell people to arise and walk. And as some of them attempted to rise, we had to hold them up. I had to encourage them to keep their eyes on Jesus. “Don’t walk in your strength,” I would tell them. “Walk in His strength.” It takes faith to do that.

One time in 1943, my wife and I went to the home of a woman who was on her deathbed. Her husband had taken her by ambulance to three different clinics in three different cities. The doctors in all of the clinics said the same thing: “Nothing more can be done for her.”

This woman was so weak that you had to put your ear just above her mouth to hear what she was saying. It took all of her strength to speak in a barely audible whisper.

When my wife, Oretha, and I went to pray for her, I knelt by the head of her bed and Oretha knelt beside me. As I laid my hands on her and began to pray, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, “Take your hands off of her. Stand up and say to her, ‘The Lord told me to tell you you’re healed. Arise and walk.’”

After I stood up and told the woman what the Lord had said, she had only enough strength to kick one foot out from under the covers. Two of her neighbors were also in the room. I stepped outside while one of the ladies went to the closet and got her robe and slippers, and my wife and the neighbor ladies helped her put them on. Then they lifted her out of bed and called me back into the room.

This dear woman had wasted away to almost nothing. As the neighbor ladies held her up, her knees sagged almost to the floor.

Well, what do you do at such times? It looked as though nothing had worked. I said, “Let’s all lift our hands and praise God, because she is healed.” The neighbor ladies lifted up her hands while holding up their own hands to praise God. A time or two the woman began slipping out of their grip and almost slid to the floor. My wife tried to help them as they pulled her back up.

We all praised God for a few moments, and then they quit and looked at me with pitiful expressions, as if to say, “What next?” I said, “The Lord said she is healed. Lift up her hands and praise God, because she is.”

My wife tried holding her up by putting her hands around her tiny waist, and the two ladies pulled her up by her arms. And we all started praising God again.

And as we praised God, His power came upon this dying woman. She jerked loose from my wife and the neighbor ladies, kicked off her slippers,and started dancing barefoot before the Lord! The next Sunday, she was in church testifying about being raised up from her deathbed.

But you see, we made the first move. This woman used what strength she had to act on God’s word. And we praised God by faith for her healing when it hadn’t yet appeared.

We have to cooperate with God by believing in Him and doing what we can to act on His Word if we want to get His blessing. In one of the churches I pastored, one member, a very precious saint of God, had rheumatoid arthritis and was wheelchair bound. Now, anytime she was sick with the flu, I would lay my hands on her, and she would be healed as quickly as you could snap your fingers. However, we could never get her healed of the arthritis.

A group of ladies in that church met on Wednesday afternoons to pray. One day, the Lord told me to take the prayer group to this woman’s house and pray for her. In fact, before we left, I had a vision. I saw myself in her home saying to her, “Rise and walk in Jesus’ Name.”

So my wife, seven ladies from the prayer group, and I went to this woman’s home. After a short time of prayer, I pointed my finger at her and said, “Sister, arise and walk in the Name of Jesus!” The power of God came, and she rose up out of the chair until she was hovering about two feet above it!

The woman saw that she was up above that wheelchair, and she began to whine and cry. She reached back and got hold of the arms of the chair and pulled it up under her. Then she fell back down in it.

Without thinking, I said, “Sister, you don’t have an ounce of faith to be healed of arthritis, do you?”

“No, Brother Hagin,” she said. “I’ll go to my grave from this chair.” And I’m sad to say that she did.

You see, my faith and the faith of my wife and the ladies in that prayer group brought this woman into Jesus’ presence. Our faith brought the manifestation of God’s power upon her body. But that’s as far as our faith could go. If that dear woman had used her faith to take hold of the power of God that came upon her, she would have been healed. She would have risen and walked.

It’s up to us to “make the first move.” It may seem as if it is impossible, but if we will make the effort to act on God’s Word, His power will meet our effort and take over from there. Just as the paralytic man in Luke chapter 5 and the bedfast woman given up by her doctors to die arose from their impossible situations, we, too, can “arise and walk” in the mighty Name of Jesus.

Writing Your Ticket To Healing

You can write your own ticket to healing by following four simple steps:
1) Say it
2) Do it
3) Receive it
4) Tell it

This is what the woman with the issue of blood did in Mark 5:25–34. Her first step toward healing was saying that if she could just touch Jesus’ clothes, she would be healed (v. 28). Second, she acted on her words: she went to where Jesus was (v. 27). Third, she received God’s healing power into her body (vv. 29–30). And fourth, she told what had happened to her (v. 33).

If you will put these four principles into operation, you will always receive what Godhas promised you in His Word.