Years ago, when I was pastoring a Full Gospel church in the blacklands of North Central Texas, I was walking uptown to get my mail at the post office box and I saw one of my members, Brother W___, staking his cow out in a vacant lot full of knee-deep green grass. This was 1939. (He could do that then. We didn't have all the city ordinances we have now; especially in small towns.)
As I walked up to him, he started to get up and suddenly he grabbed his back, moaning, "Ohhh…" I saw that he couldn't stand up straight, so I got hold of him and started to help him. "Oh, no, no, no! Don't touch me, Brother Hagin! Don't touch me! My goodness, that makes it worse," he said.
It took him between five and ten minutes to finally stand upright. He said, "That old rheumatism has come back to me."
He was a man about 63 years old. He had been backslid for 25 years. Then I'd held a meeting in that church eight months before, and he had gotten back to God. I had laid hands on him then, and he'd been healed.
I said, "What happened, Brother W____?"
"Well," he said, "day before yesterday, I was milking the cow and the pain hit right here in this hand, and it went up my arm and into my back. Ever since then, when I bend down, I can't get up. My back won't work right and my arm won't work right. I'm just in pain and misery."
I said, "Brother W____, you know I prayed for you last January and you were healed."
"Well, yeah," he said.
I said, "Well, how come it came back?"
"I don't know," he said.
I said, "I guarantee you that when that pain struck you in the hand and went up your arm, you said to yourself - or maybe right out loud - 'I thought the Lord healed me. I guess He didn't'"
He looked at me and said, "You must be a fortune-teller or a mind reader. That's exactly what I said!"
I continued, "I'm not telling your fortune or reading your mind. I knew you had to open the door for the devil to come back in, or he couldn't have gotten back in."
He said, "That's exactly what I said."
I explained, "When you said that, you opened the door and said, 'come back in, Mr. Devil, and put it on me' - and he obliged you."
"Yeah," he said, "but I'll tell you what I believe: I believe if God every does anything, it's done. If God ever heals anybody, they're healed forever."
I said, "You mean if a fellow ever gets healed, then he's always healed?"
"Yeah."
I said, "Well, isn't that something? Jesus didn't know that. He didn't know you couldn't lose your healing or the blessings of God. When He appeared in a vision to John on the Isle of Patmos and gave him a message for one of the churches in Asia Minor, He told them to "hold fast" to what they had. Why hold fast to it if you can't lose it? There's an enemy arrayed against you who's going to do his best to rob you if he can. That's why!"
I added, "Now I'm going to ask you a question: When I laid hands on you and prayed for you last January, how long had you had this condition?"
He said, "I was in pain and I took pain medicine every day for 25 years."
I said, "Then I laid hands on your head in the Name of Jesus, every pain disappeared, and for nine month you haven't had one pain, one symptom, and you haven't taken anything for pain?"
"Not a thing," he said.
"And you said, 'I thought the Lord healed me.' Why, Brother W____," I said, "a 12-year-old child with half sense would know he had been healed."
He said, "Maybe I'm wrong?"
I said, "I know you're wrong."
I stood there in that vacant lot and taught him for over and hour. And he got it. He told me afterwards, "I may be a little dense, but once I get it, I've got it!"
This time he got his healing and kept it.
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications