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| The great late Kenneth Hagin, granddaddy of the Faith movement |
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!
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