The Faith Movement

The great late Kenneth Hagin, granddaddy of the Faith movement 

Back in the 1980s I used to go to the CMI Bible Week and browse the CMI bookshop looking at all these amazing dynamic looking books that hinted at a life that contained so much more. Typically these books written by guys like Kenneth Hagin, or Kenneth Copeland, Buddy Harrison, or other American preachers. They had exciting titles and held out promises for ordinary believers like me to access into that realm of the impossible and unobtainable which we knew was there, but somehow never in our experience.

These were books about faith. FAITH! Yes, these books had the keys - how to be promoted in life, how to sow and reap finance, how to prosper emotionally, financially, in health, how to `succeed! The key was always faith. FAITH!

The basic teaching was along these lines - God wants to do you good, he said it in His word and we know His word is true, so if you simply believe, you will have it, faith is the key.

These books also spoke about laws, like the law of faith. One of the laws of faith was that of sowing and reaping. Sow offerings and reap a financial harvest sometimes 10 times, 100 or 1000 times greater. Another law was the law of confessions of faith - the word of God confessed with faith is creative. Key verses included Mark 10 believe in your heart,confess with your mouth that it will come to heart and it will be yours. Anything you ask for believe in your heart and it will be yours.

They had phrases like "God said it, that settles it, I believe it". They taught you that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, so you just had to repeat the word of God long enough until you finally heard it. Hearing meant that you finally believed in your heart and not just your head.

There were some good basic truth as well - such as the fact that we all have faith as a gift, but we need to learn to develop it, to develop our faith muscles, to be rooted in the word, believe the over circumstances.

This stuff was exciting, you somehow felt that these books, messages had keys and principles that we needed to know to access this realm.

Today Kenneth Hagin, who was the grand daddy of this lot, has passed on to be with Jesus. But his descendants are still with us and a new generation - Kenneth Copeland, Earl Johnson, Creflo Dollar and others. They preach a great message and basically the message hasn't changed much.

Now the Faith gospel had its critics. Firstly there were the corrupt TV evangelists who misused the messages for their own personal gain. But more substantially there were theological critics. Many people rejected this because it seemed like a great big bless me party, and it ignored the purpose of bringing in God's kingdom. Others drew theological lines in the sand when they heard teachings by Kenneth Copeland on the subject of suffering, which seemed to indicate that if you were suffering it was because you were not exercising your faith properly. In fact many people felt that there was a huge incongruence between the life of  unlimited success, prosperity and health that these guys preached and the life that Jesus himself lived.

Some movements not only rejected the Faith gospel, but they so completely rejected it that they have taken almost nothing from them,and left their people woefully ignorant of the basic principles of faith and the inheritance that they have in God. I consider the NFI movement broadly in this latter category (with some exceptions), whereas my earlier church group Ministries without Borders taught the principles well, but put them into a much more balanced church context.

Whatever you think about the Faith Church movement one thing you can say is that they have a good knowledge and foundation of the word of God when it comes to faith, principles and laws. Kenneth Hagin was a prophet, an excellent teacher of spiritual things and he totally lived the stuff he taught. He taught by example and his life was very supernatural. I'd also say that a core teaching message that ignores faith and the promises of blessing is also completely unbiblical. God wants us blessed and prospering supernaturally.

But the real problem with the Faith Gospel as it is called is that it just doesn't work. I know because I tried it for years. I tithed and sowed financially and saw little or no return. I prayed for healing and then saw no result and kept believing - i.e. trying to talk myself into believing it. I prayed for jobs and various things and did my best to confess, believe and  listen to the promises repeatedly. It rarely worked. lets be honest. This stuff sucks!

A faith minister would say "thats the problem you tried it", or "you didn't believe in your heart,just your head". They would tell me that God's word is true today, yesterday and forever, and if I rightly applied the word and believed I would have a result like a mathematical solution - literally. Promise + faith + confession = result every time. You see it is a science.

If you were in the faith movement and needed a healing you would meditate and confess the word of healing until you felt that you had enough faith, then you would go for prayer and decide/try to believe in your heart, because whatever you believe in your heart you shall have.  You would show your faith with your confession. Even if you were not healed you would hold onto the confession. You would not ask God or the preacher again for healing because that would indicate that you had not believed. If you weren't healed you knew it was because you didn't believe.

Okay, so what is my point? It is not that the faith gospel is nonsense. It isn't. Of course the faith gospel isn't the whole counsel of God, and of course it has been badly applied at times.  But there are foundations of understanding there that we need. Guys like Todd Bentley, Bill Johnson, Randy Clark all understand these principles even though they aren't in Faith Churches themselves.

But no, my point is this - the faith gospel doesn't work quite simply because it has reduced the whole thing down to principles and laws. The key to breakthrough in the realm of faith is not how well or not you are applying the principles and laws but relationship. The key is RELATIONSHIP.

God doesn't give you break through, blessing and favour because you applied law but because He loves you and you asked Him. Its because He is your father and you are His son.

For the first time in my life I began to discover break through in areas like finance and healing when I started to come to Him and seek intimacy with God. I started by asking Him to show me how it worked. I started to develop my own relationship with the Holy Spirit and learnt how to let Him guide me in the way I pray.I began to discover the secret place, that sanctuary where there is intimacy with the Father. In that place I found that God started to reveal His secrets to me. In that place God showed me one time that I had everything I needed in heaven, and if I gave an offering ,I'd be able to release these riches.

From that place I decided to sow. I sowed 200 euros and received a 2000 cheque the following day from my agency as a back paid bonus that I had asked for 12 months earlier which they had pretty much refused and I had forgotten about. I have no idea why they suddenly changed their mind. I carried on sowing, and my boss called me in and told me she was giving me a £5 an hour pay rise I hadn't asked for. With the bonus my salary jumped by £7.50 and hour. That was about £1300 more a month.

A year later, facing a crises in work and the real threat of redundancy I went into that place and I felt led to decree under the leading of the Holy Spirit that I would not be laid off but that I would come into a greater responsibility, a promotion. I stood in His presence and decreed this. Three months later my boss took me aside and told me that I was being promoted to another two grades. I took over a new team. The following year it happened again and I am taking over an entire section.

It was after spending hours seeking God's presence and asking God for healing that I saw my first healing in early 2009 at church after 20 years. It was almost the only healing the church had seen in two or three years, and it came as a first fruit before healing became a feature in that church. I've seen more healings since and the church has come into a lot of healing since then. But I saw a change because I started to come to Father and to ask Him,and to cultivate that relationship. Not because I applied laws and principles outside of relationship. I never saw a single person healed ever when I applied faith laws and spiritual mathematics.

By the way, another key to this was putting God's kingdom first. God showed me that this didn't mean putting God's commitment to God and the church above my career as I had been taught, it meant seeking His kingdom  - you know - break through in healing, salvation and seeing the heavenly world on the earth. If this is where your focus is then the faith promises will awake and come alive to you. They will find you and seek you out. You won't need to spend hours quoting verses, the favour will seek you out. It will come to you!

Having said all this,I have to say that knowing the basic principles of faith - thanks to these faith teaching guys - is and was an essential foundation. These teachings give you an educated basis from which to understand God and His kingdom and then move out in faith. But if you really want these principles to work, soak them in oil from His presence and exercise them in the place of intimacy with Him.

One of the things that this new move of God has brought in is that emphasis on relationship and intimacy with God. And there seem to be more healings, manifestations and supernatural activities and break throughs in these movements than in the large well orchestrated Faith churches I see around today. Could it be that God is saying something?

Just a thought!

Miracles are easy in France

What would happen if instead of talking about God we actually went out with Jesus to do miracles in the street? The other day I had the chance to find out. We were at a meeting in Ales with a small group from the Bethel church in Redding, a guy called Chuck Parry and three of his team.

I kind of knew it would be good, but I wasn't expecting it to be as amazing as it turned out to be. That morning when I awoke the first thing in my head was "today I am going to see the hand of Jesus at work". I think that turned out to be a thought from above.

Anyway, we turned up at the meeting, there were not that many people there, and it was a very rainy wet day. There was not much of a warm up before they announced that we were going out to do some miracles on the street. I wasn't aware that this was going to be part of the day, so okay...lets go. They asked who wanted to do a "chasse au tresor" (treasure hunt), and I reluctantly lifted my hand, really regretting that once again I had put myself forward for one of these dreadful assignments that somehow never seemed to come off when I did them, but I hey, surely it would work one day, right?

However, that afternoon during the worship I also knew that I was going to pray for someone in the street and see them healed, something I had been wanting to do for a long time. So I had a sense of anticipation.

So a small handful started out with the "chasse au tresor" thing - where you ask God for clues as to where to go, someone's name, their appearance, their need and anything else that comes to mind. The theory is that God will give you clues and you'll find the treasure that you are looking for - a person that God wants to do good for. My only problem is that I couldn't get any words of knowledge. Whatever I came up with seemed ridiculous, and I had no confidence that it was from God.

Anyway, an American guy from the team called Kris joined us and took us out to go find our clue.  Kris was a lot more confident about my capacity to hear from God a word of knowledge than I was. I guess its not supposed to be that way around? Anyway, two of us had the word "fish" on our list of clues, so we headed to the super market with the clue, ridiculous as that sounds. On the way we passed a garage and Kris stopped us and asked one of us who spoke French to go into the garage and ask "where is the guy with the problem with the hip". Okay, I thought, so he has had a word of knowledge, great, so in we went and asked this small group of guys. Guess what happened? They looked really blank, and confused, and said no-one had a hip problem! Hmmm....

In fact they looked at us really weird and asked who had sent us. I evaded answering, thanked them very much and left. Kris didn't seem too put off by this, and told us:

"you know what, I'll tell you something about people - they don't always tell the truth."

Hmm, I thought, those guys didn't seem to be telling us any lies. This is sounding a bit like a scam so far...hmmm. But I decided to give it more time and keep an open mind. Unfortunately things didn't get any better! We found a place with blue and electric light, which was someone's clue and Kris went in to see the lady with a translator and came out five minutes later with no joy. Hmmmm.....maybe this stuff isn't all its meant to be?

Then we went to the fish counter and I saw a woman wearing a blue coat and boots which was on my list so Kris encouraged me to go speak to her, show her the list and ask if she had any particular health needs. He had asked me what came to mind, and nothing had, so he tried a health problem such as a bad leg or knee. Sounds suspiciously like guessing, hmmm. So, anyway, I approached, and she was very nice but had no health problem in her knee, and in fact assured me that she had no health problem at all, but was very nice about it.

Hmmmmmmm....some how this wasn't reassuring, and we wandered around wondering where to go next. It would have been easy to get discouraged or cynical at this point, but that wasn't in anyone's mind, and we walked around looking for someone we might pray for.

Then Kris saw a woman in the supermarket aisle who obviously had a problem with her foot, and he went over to her, so I followed and began to translate and speak to her with Kris. We made friends, asked her about her foot, and she confirmed that she had a problem with her left foot. We asked if we could pray for her and she said yes. Then Kris said "I can see that you love Jesus", and she agreed. She was a Catholic. Then he said "you have a problem with your hip" She said "yes, thats right, I have a prothesis". Then he said "you have a problem with your left shoulder as well, God wants to heal that" She looked surprised and said "yes, I do, I was born congenitally deformed on my left side". (It wasn't evident to me that she had a hip and shoulder problem, just that she walked oddly). Then Kris said you have a problem with your stomach here, and indicated just below the stomach. She said "il devine tout!" (literally "he devines everything!") and said she had had three caesarian sections and this had left her with problems there. So I explained this was God revealing this, that it was because God wanted to heal her and not to invade her privacy etc. She was very open. He then said " also the bladder" and I said "sorry I can't translate that" so he showed again where and she agreed again. In fact this woman seemed to be a walking health problem, and Kris had correctly seen four or five specific problems that she had.

We prayed for her, commanding health and healing into her body in Jesus name, and she went really quiet, and and Kris said "from today things will be different". Then Kris asked her to put her hand on her heart and pray for the Holy Spirit to fill her, which she did, and we asked if she could feel that. She said she did and she said she had these "frissons" go through her body when we'd prayed for her healing. You could see a peace on her. We asked her to test out her healing and she bent down and said yes that better now. She was really blessed and wow.

Thank you Jesus!

We caught up with the other guys and explained what had happened. As we stood there Kris told one of the guys to approach a woman nearby and ask her if she had a headache. So he did and they both walked off in a long discussion that went on for about ten fifteen minutes.

So we waited around, and, the other guy with us who was a young 24 year old American with YWAM asked Kris how did he see illnesses. Kris said that he sees them when he looks at people often, or it comes into his head. So he turned to me and said what do you see when you look at him?  Kris looked at me and said "nothing", and then he asked and what about me? And Kris looked at him and asked why, what do you have wrong? So the guy said I tore a ligament in my right knee three years ago whilst doing a marathon and I have have constant pain, constantly as a result and can't run. So Kris turned up his piece of paper and he had pain in right knee written down on it! So he asked me to pray for him. So I tapped his knee and said "pain jump off for good in Jesus name".

One second later, Kris asks - so how is the knee now, and the guy said "its gone, its completely gone". So we double checked whether he was usually in pain and he yes constantly, but it has completely gone.

Whoa! Thank you Jesus! We were really surprised for some reason.

So, we caught up with the other guy who had just finished speaking to the lady with the shopping trolley, and he said that yes she does have along standing really bad headaches, but she wouldn't let him pray for her. The American asked Kris how he knew to ask that, and Kris said, "word of knowledge". Kris advised the guy who had been speaking to her that if he saw her later he should just go and say "the headache is leaving in the name of Jesus" and just let her get healed.

By this time our time way up and we headed back. Not before we prayed for another woman who turned out to be in our meeting. At the meeting afterwards we had a feedback time from the various teams who had been out. The stories came in thick and fast. There was a non christian healed in a shop of metal in their body who was able to move following prayer. Another who was healed of some long standing problem who was so amazed that they asked someone to come and pray for their mother who was also very unwell. (I heard that someone did that several weeks later and the mother was also healed!). Someone who got healed asked where the church met so that they could come along.Others were touched and amazed. It seemed like everyone came back with a story to tell. Jesus had been out on the street that day with his people.

I thought we were finished,  and headed off for something to eat with the Bethel team. Unfortunately we found we had 30 minutes to kill before the restaurant opened, so we wandered back to the shopping centre.

Clearly Kris wasn't finished, and he saw a guy with his daughter buying a mobile phone in a kiosk. The guy had this huge leg brace on and Kris started to get enthused about what God was going to do. He said he could feel the power of God in his body. We waited for him to come out and then said hello and asked him about his leg. He said that his leg had been paralyzed in a car accident about seven years earlier. The guy was of Arab origin and probably a Muslim. Anyway I told him that we had seen miracles that day in the supermarket and we'd like to pray for him, would he mind if we prayed for him too? He was very amiable and agreed. So we prayed for his leg. Nothing seemed to happen, and he looked relatively nonplussed.  I felt I'd come to the end of what I could do, and said he needed to try it out when he got home. Kris told me to tell the guy that when he - Kris - put his foot on the guy's foot he would feel electricity going up his leg. So Kris gently put his foot on that of the guy, and he sort of went quiet and watched, then Kris said and God is healing your elbow as well, and the guy immediately began to stretch and twist out his right arm, clenching and unclenching his hand, looking surprised and taken aback.

Next to us Helen began translating for one of the women from the Bethel team who addressed the girl and said "I see that you like dancing" and the father confirmed that yes she does hip hop. Then the girl from Bethel said "you are going to teach dance" and various other things about God liking her dance etc. The girl was welling up and clearly touched. The dad was too.

Kris finished by telling the guy that Allah loved him, and wanted to show him His father heart. They left a bit kind of blown away.

Then we went to dinner. During the whole time I felt a sort of weightiness on me that I wasn't used to. Even during dinner I became aware of it, and it was so strong that I had a hard time concentrating and joining in the discussion. I knew it was God or from God, but even so it was slightly disconcerting. During dinner Kris prophesied over a couple of people, and they both went quiet and seemed moved - something I had now seen happen several times that day.

After dinner we had another meeting where Chuck Parry spoke. I strongly recommend people to check this out on the Ales church website: (in French and English)

http://beta.messages.ac-ac.fr/messages/193

Later we again prayed for people in the meeting and the guy in front of me with a problem of his leg was completely healed. I knew by now that this was easy, and was completely unsurprised when he was healed. Thank you Jesus! That's what is supposed to happen!

 This was the biggest activation I have had in walking in the miraculous. As the guy from the team said before we went out "I believe God is going to hit the 'easy' button". I found out that doing miracles is easy in France.

Who wants to go out and do some more?