“Why me?”
Before you can receive anything from God, you must find answers to questions that are keeping you from receiving. As long as questions crowd your mind, there will be doubts. As long as you have doubts, your faith will be hindered.
I know from my experience on a sick bed there were questions that had to be settled before my faith could be effective. That is why I was bedfast sixteen months from ages fifteen to seventeen.
The devil tried to tell me that God had afflicted me and was punishing me for some wrongdoing in my life. I listened to this for a while, but finally said, “Devil, I was born with a deformed heart and internal trouble. What would be the use of God’s punishing me for something I don’t know about?”
The devil said, “You’re sick because of something your parents did.” The disciples thought this of the man who was blind from birth. They asked Jesus, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2).
People misquote Jesus’ reply as “Neither the man nor his parents sinned. He was sick just so God could heal him.” That isn’t what this Scripture says. It says, “but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me…” (vv. 3-4).
If one stopped reading here, he might say, “He is sick just so God can heal him.” Here is a man, blind from birth, and God made him blind just so He could heal him? If that were true, God wouldn’t be much of a God, would He?
Jesus said, “I must work the works of him that sent me.” He immediately did God’s work by healing the man.
When the devil saw I believed in healing, he tried to convince me that it wasn’t God’s will to heal me. He said, “Healing is real, but it isn’t God’s will to heal everybody. You’re one of those it isn’t His will to heal.”
(Many believe the lie that it isn’t God’s will to heal them. It’s illogical to believe that God heals, and believe that He won’t heal you.)
All I knew was what I heard preachers and people say. Some said, “Your sickness is God’s work. God is doing all of it.” I couldn’t accept this explanation. Others said, “Well, maybe god didn’t commission it, but He permits it for a purpose.”
I never was happy as a child. I never laughed. My daddy left when I was six. I was so weak I couldn’t defend myself from other children at school. Everybody could beat me up – even the girls.
When I tried to fight back, the extra effort caused me to faint, because my heart didn’t beat right. Many times I was unconscious forty-five minutes, and once I was out for an hour and a half. The school nurse told me sometimes I would turn black, and sometimes I would be blue.
Because of my physical condition and getting pushed around, by the second grade, I was mad at everybody. I was mad at the world.
The Questions Began
I was born again while bedfast, but even after that, questions arose in my mind: Why was I born this way? Is God the author of the sufferings that are in this world today? I remember asking myself: Who is responsible for all of this?
“Why me?” I asked God.
“Why was I a premature baby weighing under two pounds?”
“Why did I have to be afflicted all my life? Are You the One who caused me to watch as others ran and played?”
“Now I am bedfast. Doctors say I will die. Why me? I didn’t have anything to do with it. God, did You?”
I wept, “Oh, God, surely I don’t have to die! I don’t know what it is to live yet.”
I said, “I always have been pushed from pillar to post. I never have known what it is to have a family. Do I have to die?”
But God, and the Bible, has the answer. We can believe God’s Word and be delivered, or we can doubt it if we want to and remain bound.
I am so glad I found the answer. I found it in Acts 10:38, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.”
A New Revelation
Jesus went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed of the devil.
This verse told me Satan is the oppressor…Satan caused me to be born prematurely…Satan caused me to have a deformed heart…Satan caused my body to be almost totally paralyzed…Satan gave me an incurable blood disease…Satan kept me bound for sixteen months on a bed of sickness.
But Jesus is the Deliverer!
Jesus is the Lifegiver!
Jesus is the Savior!
Jesus is God manifested in the flesh!
Hallelujah! God’s Word is truth.
After I saw what the Bible said and received my healing, I crawled out of bed and said, “I am not going to die! I will live, and someday I will have a family.”
I was seventeen years old – just a boy. I had never heard healing preached.
My relatives warned me to be careful, but the Bible said it, I believed it, and that settled it. I told everyone I met what I was going to do. People didn’t want to believe my healing. They said I had stayed in bed so long I had lost my mind.
Today I am the result of what I said in those days. I have enjoyed perfect health ever since. God gave me a lovely wife and family. Faith works. That is the reason I get happy preaching about it. I know what He has done for me.
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.