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Many say, "Oh, wouldn't it have been wonderful to have lived in the days of Jesus and the disciples? Wouldn't it have been wonderful to have watched Jesus ascend into heaven?"

I disagree. This is the greatest hour there ever was, because this is the day and hour we're going to see Jesus come back! This is the greatest hour in history! I'm excited about working for Jesus.

The Real Purpose of Faith
God is giving dreams and visions to pastors and others all over the world. We in the charismatic movement must realize that God is giving people these dreams and visions for one purpose only: to snatch mankind from the hands of the enemy—from the very fires of hell itself!

Millions and millions of people are chained with the chains of sin—sickness, poverty, disease—when all we charismatics do is talk about believing for another expensive car, house, etc.

This faith message we preach is not a get-rich-quick scheme. I believe the Word of God teaches it, but the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ does not exist for you to live in a fine house, wear fine clothes, and drive fine automobiles. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ exists for the salvation of men's souls. The main message is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

All of these other things, such as prosperity, are fringe benefits of the Word and power of God. Do you want to know how to have all these benefits? Get out and start winning souls. Set people free from the devil's bondage. You'll find you can't keep success from falling on you. God will see to it if you'll take care of His business first.

Thank God for our good homes and so forth, but I wonder how many of us would still be willing to follow Jesus if we didn't have all the prosperity we now enjoy. (That will tell you how sold out you are to God.)

We Can Never Forget The Vision
I realize some people have taken the things we preach and perverted them. However, if they would listen to what Brother Hagin had to say, they would discover that the first thing any born-again, Spirit-filled Christian should be involved with is a vision for the lost and dying world.

I have a vision of the world. I have dreamed a dream of the world. I have traveled in it. I have preached in those mud huts and brush arbors in Africa. I love those people. They need God.

My heart cries within me when I think of all the preachers and teachers who are sitting around doing nothing.

My heart cries within me when I think of the teeming millions around the world who have heard about Jesus and have accepted Him in some big crusade, yet they've never been able to mature spiritually, because nobody has taught them the power of faith in God.

I asked a man the other day, "Did God call you to minister?" "Yes" he replied.

"Then why don't you get out and get into the ministry?"

"Oh, I don't know if I could make enough money," he said.

I said, "That's part of your problem. You don't believe in God because if you believed God called you, and if you believed in yourself, you'd be out there doing something about it instead of sitting here, waiting for somebody to hand you something on a silver platter."

Something For Nothing?
In God's work, as in anything else, you don't get something for nothing.

"You're not preaching faith now," somebody will complain.

Yes, I am. You don't get something for nothing. You've got to have faith before you get anything. You spend something to receive: You spend your faith. And faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

Our problem is that we dream one minute and want it to be manifested the next. It doesn't happen that way, either in the spiritual or natural worlds.

When a man has a dream for a big shopping center, an apartment complex, and so forth, he doesn't sit in his office with his architect on day and expect to see the finished complex the next. Sometimes the project will be built in phases. It may be years before it's completed.

God has given some of you a dream, yet all you see is the bare ground. But the dream is real, even though it's not happening as fast as you want it to.

You've got to continue to see the dream or vision God gave you with the eye of faith. It's got to be real to you. You must see your dream in its completed form, even though the devil is harassing you.

Every time you take a step, it seems he digs the foundation out from under your feet, and you slip. Your dream loses its inspiration and reality. Finally it dies dormant deep within your spirit.

You may feel that way right now—trapped, distressed, an utter failure. But you must look at your present circumstances and you must begin to believe God and the dream He gave you.

Whenever your circumstances say, "There is no way this is going to happen," you must dare to dream big! You must realize that God has placed you where you're at for this particular time in your life. And He put you there for success, not failure!

Your dreams have to live big inside of you. That dream must ring true within your soul, despite all that the devil is throwing at you. Through it all, you must look through the haze of circumstances and see the finish line down the road.

A man running a natural race has only the natural, soulish part of man to draw from. You who are running a spiritual race also have the spirit part of man. Therefore, you can reach into your spirit, push through the last fifty yards to victory, and make the dream God gave you come true.

Dare To Believe
No, it won't be easy. But you've got to dare to believe what God told you. It doesn't matter whether anybody else believes it or not; You've got to believe it. God gave you that vision. Don't quit now.

It may look like it's hopeless. But if you'll listen to your spirit down on the inside of you, that spirit is saying, "You can't quit now! There's the victory just over the hill!

You see, God by His Spirit is leading you and me. He's showing us the way to success. But many of us don't like the road to success our dream has taken us on. It's not paved with the soft cushions and the silver lining we thought it would be paved with. Our dream is not being accomplished with the ease with which we though it should be accomplished.

When God gave you a dream, He never told you it would be easy. Nowhere in the Word did He ever say it would be easy. But He did say in Mark 9:23, "all things are possible to him that believeth."

Keep believing the dream. Let it manifest by phases as God gives it to you. You'll see the reality of it eventually. Don't be discouraged because it's not happening quickly. Grab hold of the dream God gave you and never let it go!

When God gives you a dream to carry out, you can walk up to the devil's territory if he's holding onto it, and say, "In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is where my dream is supposed to be. You devil, get out of here right now!"

Then you plant yourself there, saying, "In the Name of Jesus, I can do all things through Him. I will build what God has given me to build on this spot, and neither the enemy nor anybody else will take it away from me!"

Or you can have a pity party, pat yourself on the back, and say, "Well, I'm nothing."

I'm tired of hearing that so-called religious jargon, that we're the meekest and the lowliest; "Here we wander like a beggar, through the heat and cold…."

Believe in God! Believe in yourself! There never was a person who succeeded in life who didn't believe he could do it. A farmer must believe he can grow crops before he'll ever grow any. Otherwise, he would never go out and till the soil and plant the seeds. And you're certainly not going to harvest anything unless you plant it.

Dare to believe what God has said in His Word. Dare to believe in yourself. You've got to dare to believe in yourself—that you can accomplish it through Jesus Christ who lives inside you.

You may argue, "but I don't want to be egotistical. I don't want to be stuck up." That's a lie the devil has concocted to cause people not to succeed. Somebody's always talking about being humble. There are some people who are so humble they are proud of their humility!

Religious people will tell you, "Don't get conceited. You can't have people looking up to you. You've always got to lift up Jesus." We know that—but the devil tries to rob people through false modesty, too.

When someone tells them, "That was a great sermon," or "You did a wonderful job building this church," they say, "Oh that's nothing. I'm nothing. It's just the Lord."

God can't do anything on this earth without a man or a woman who will do it for Him. Yes, we know God is behind it all, but God has so ordained it that He would work through mankind. It's God's plan of action; therefore, we need to begin to believe in ourselves. We need to read Philippians 4:13; "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Notice it says, "I can."

In Acts 3:4; we find Peter and John walking by the gate called Beautiful. Peter wasn't suffering from false modesty when he looked down at the crippled beggar and said, "I don't have any silver or gold in my pockets, BUT LOOK ON US!"

People want to preach about everything else in this passage of Scripture. They want to preach about the man who was healed. They want to preach that Peter was a pauper. (It so happened that he didn't have any money at that particular time, but that's not enough to build a doctrine on!) They want to preach, "We're not supposed to have anything." They are missing the point.

They never want to preach that Peter looked at the beggar and said, "Hey! If you want something, LOOK ON US! We've got something!"

When Peter said that, he knew he had the power of God inside him. It wasn't Peter's faith that beggar saw. All of a sudden the beggar began to see the hand of Jesus and the faith of Jesus Christ reaching down to him, because the power of God inside Peter came out to him.

You need to dare to believe in yourself the way Peter did. That is different from being conceited.

I don't believe there is anything I can't do. Why? Because God saved me by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, and He gives me my strength. Therefore, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. ALL things!

We who are in the ministry need to get the idea across to believers that they are somebody. They are children of God. And they have the right and privilege of walking through this earth using the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ as their power of attorney.

Source: How To Make The Dream God Gave You Come True by Kenneth Hagin, Jr.
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications

Author Biography

Kenneth W. Hagin
Web site: Kenneth Hagin Ministries
 
Kenneth W. Hagin, President of Kenneth Hagin Ministries and pastor of RHEMA Bible Church, ministers around the world. Known for calling the Body of Christ to steadfast faith, he seizes every ministry opportunity to impart an attitude of “I cannot be defeated, and I will not quit.”
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