According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord; in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.
(Eph. 3:11-12)
We need boldness to act. Sometimes during intercession the Holy Spirit may bid us to go to the one we are interceding for. I recall an incident in the life of a great intercessor, Charlie Hollandsworth of Spokane. One day he entered into intercession for someone. He did not know for whom he was interceding.
After a time of agonizing in the Spirit he was bidden of the Spirit to go to the Monroe Street Bridge. He hurried to the bridge without delay. As he arrived, in the middle of the bridge the Holy Spirit pointed out a man with one leg over the railing ready to jump to his death. Charlie stopped his car quickly and grabbed the man.
He persuaded the man to get into his car. He drove the man out into the country where they could be alone. It took between two and three hours to get the man to accept the Lord Jesus as His Savior.
The Holy Spirit Always Knows
We may not know for what to pray, but thank God, the Holy Spirit does. We need boldness to act on God’s Word. We need boldness to act on what the Spirit of God may say to us. I can sense the Spirit of God searching through the Church trying to find all of those whom He can trust to pray and to act with boldness.
He needs them.
Many people have jobs and duties which do not allow them to give themselves wholeheartedly to intercession. Yet I have found that as you go about doing whatever you have to do, on the inside of you, you can be praying.
God will not lay a burden of intercession upon you unless you are available to move. He might move on you to pray for someone while you are working if the work is such that you can pray.
There are jobs where it would be very difficult for you to pray while working. So God would then seek out someone else.
Praying Always
But there are some jobs, particularly if you are not working with your mind, but with your hands where you could give yourself to prayer even while you’re working. Don’t throw off that burden to pray when it comes. Be bold to act on it.
One day while I was still pastoring, I was driving along attending to some business and visiting people. Suddenly, I had an urge to pray for my younger brother. He was backslidden at the time and was not walking with the Lord.
An alarm went off within me. So I went along praying on the inside of me, even while I was talking to other people, on the inside of me something was reaching out to God on his behalf.
I carried that thing around with me two or three days until it just lifted. I didn’t know what it concerned. Later on, in conversation, my brother said to me, “I’ll tell you one thing, the Lord sure helped me the other day.” At the time, he was a businessman, and he owned a ranch. He told me that he was out on the ranch when a five gallon can of gasoline he was holding in his hand exploded. He was not the least bit hurt. He said everyone who saw it was amazed.
The ranch manager said, “That beats anything I ever saw in my life. I can’t believe what I saw.”
But three days before it happened, I was praying. I am satisfied if I had thrown that off and not yielded to it, he could have been severely burned and perhaps killed. You see, God didn’t want him to leave here in that backslidden condition.
Have No Inferiority Before God
The believer has covenant rights in prayer, as well as other covenant rights. Yet there is one outstanding problem that defeats believers in their prayer life. When we come to God, we have a feeling of inferiority, a sense of sin-consciousness, because we know we have failed. We have a guilt complex.
Some begin their prayers with, “I’m so weak and unworthy,” and then harp on their weakness and unworthiness throughout the prayer. And when they come into the presence of God telling Him that, they talk themselves out of faith and into condemnation. They don’t know whether God hears them or not. All they do is beg for crumbs.
But look at what God said:
I, even I, am he that blots out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.
(Isa. 43:25)
Why did he say He would blot out our transgressions? He couldn’t have blessed us without it.
When we know that He blotted out our sin, that He doesn’t even remember that we ever did anything wrong, we can come to Him with confidence. We can come with faith. We lose sin-consciousness and now we have Son-consciousness!
We don’t have to sit on a curbstone out in front of our mansion, begging for favors. We can come in boldly through the front door and enter the throne room to fellowship with God. We are sons of God. We are joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. We are covenant people. We have a legal right. A gospel right. A son right. A family right. A Body right to enter the very throne room of God.
When Jesus went into the presence of the Father, He didn’t go in with just His head, leaving His little finger outside saying, “Oh, I’m embarrassed.” No! He didn’t have any condemnation even in His little finger.
We are the Body of Christ. That means the Body can go into the Presence of God with the same confidence and assurance that the Head can! Boldly!
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications
Rev. Hagin served in Christian ministry for nearly 70 years and was known as the "father of the modern faith movement." His teachings and books are filled with vivid stories that show God's power and truth working in his life and the lives of others.
Rev. Hagin was born on Aug. 20, 1917, in McKinney, Texas, a son of the late Lillie Viola Drake Hagin and Jess Hagin.
Rev. Hagin was sickly as a child, suffering from a deformed heart and an incurable blood disease. He was not expected to live and became bedfast at age 15. In April 1933 during a dramatic conversion experience, he reported dying three times in 10 minutes, each time seeing the horrors of hell and then returning to life.
In August of 1934, Rev. Hagin was miraculously healed, raised off a deathbed by the power of God and the revelation of faith in God's Word. Two years later, he preached his first sermon as pastor of a small community church in Roland, Texas.
In 1937, Rev. Hagin was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began ministering in Pentecostal churches. During the next 12 years he pastored five churches in Texas: in the cities of Tom Bean, Farmersville (twice), Talco, Greggton, and Van. In 1949, he began an itinerant ministry as a Bible teacher and evangelist.
During the next 14 years, Jesus appeared to Rev. Hagin eight times in visions that changed the course of his ministry. In 1966, he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he opened a ministry office. That same year, he taught for the first time on radio—on KSKY in Dallas. In 1967, he began a regular radio broadcast that continues today as Faith Seminar of the Air. Teaching by his son, Rev. Kenneth W. Hagin, is also heard on the program.
In 1968, Rev. Hagin published the first issues of The Word of Faith magazine, which now has a monthly circulation of more than 250,000. The publishing outreach he founded, Faith Library Publications, has circulated more than 65 million copies of books by Rev. Hagin, Rev. Hagin Jr., and several other authors worldwide. Faith Library Publications also has produced more than 9 million audio teaching tapes and CDs.
Other outreaches of Kenneth Hagin Ministries include RHEMA Praise, a weekly television broadcast hosted by Rev. and Mrs. Kenneth W. Hagin; RHEMA Correspondence Bible School; RHEMA Alumni Association; RHEMA Ministerial Association International; RHEMA Supportive Ministries Association; the RHEMA Prayer and Healing Center; and a prison ministry.
In 1974, Rev. Hagin founded RHEMA Bible Training Center USA and in 1976 moved the school and ministry offices to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where they remain. To date, RHEMA Bible Training Center USA has 23,000 alumni, and RHEMA Bible Training Centers have opened in 13 other nations: Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Samoa, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand. Together, the 14 schools have more than 28,000 graduates worldwide.
RHEMA Bible Church, pastored by Rev. Hagin Jr., began holding services in October of 1985 on the RHEMA campus in Broken Arrow and has since grown to become a thriving congregation with more than 8,000 members.
Rev. Hagin's daughter and son-in-law, Pat Harrison and the late Doyle "Buddy" Harrison, founded Harrison House Publishers in 1975 and Faith Christian Fellowship International Church in 1977. Both organizations are based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Until shortly before his death in September 2003, Rev. Hagin continued to travel and teach throughout the United States and into Canada conducting All Faiths' Crusades and other special meetings.