HOW TO RELEASE YOUR OWN FAITH

When I still was a young Baptist boy preacher—before I was baptized in the Holy Spirit—I woke up one Monday morning and half of my face was paralyzed. It wouldn't move. I had been praying for myself because I didn't know anybody else to pray for me, but I found out that some people had built a church called the Full Gospel Tabernacle in our town, and these people believed in divine healing.

I said to myself, I'll go down there Wednesday night and get that pastor to anoint me with oil. The minute he anointed me and prayed, I lifted my hands and shouted, "Thank God, it is gone!"
I said it in faith. I knew what to say. I was Baptist— and I didn't know anything about the Holy Spirit—but I did know something about faith. That was my point of contact when hands were laid on me. That was the point where I started believing "I receive my healing." No, I did not feel healed. No, I did not look healed. But I was not going by looks or feeling. I was going by what I believed.

That's what a point of contact is: It's the point when you release your faith and start believing for your healing. You must start somewhere. A man in a race would never run the race if he didn't get started. There has to be a starting place. Your starting place can be when hands are laid on you. That can be the place where you start believing: "I receive my healing." People in the congregation began asking me, "Did the Lord really heal you, Kenneth?" I said, "He sure did." They said, "Well, you don't look healed. How do you feel?" "Not any different." "Well, if you don't look any different, and you don't feel healed, and we can see that you don't look healed, what makes you think you are healed?" I said, "I don't think it ; I know it." You see, faith is knowing.

I've had people tell me, "I've got better sense than that." And I tell them, "Well, you go ahead and do without healing. You notice my face is straight, don't you? I got it. I got my healing." I knew what Jesus said was true. I knew that if I would believe that I received it, I would have it. I knew that if I really believed it, I would say that I believed it. Not: I will receive it (future tense), but I receive it (present tense).

An associate pastor of a Full Gospel church in Tulsa was once sent to pray for a man in the church who was too sick to go to work. He told me, "I had been hearing you preach, so I anointed him with oil, laid hands on him, and started my prayer when suddenly, without thinking, I stopped praying and said, 'What are you going to be doing tomorrow?' "The sick man said, 'I'll be here in bed.'” "'Well, there's no use finishing the prayer. I might as well leave now. You don't believe a thing,' I told him.” "The man thought about it a minute and said, 'That's right, isn't it?'” "I asked him, 'When are you going to get healed?'” "'Why,' he said, 'when you anoint me with oil—when you lay hands on me and pray—that's when.'” "This man turned to his wife and said—even before I finished that prayer—'Call the boss and tell him I'll be on the job tomorrow.'” "Then I prayed for him," the pastor said, "and bless God, he was on the job the next day."

A woman once ran up to the pastor and me on the platform and said, "Brother Pastor, Brother Hagin, pray for me right now." The pastor said, "Well, we're having a healing service after a while. I'm going to preach a healing message and Brother Hagin is going to lay hands on all the sick at the close of the service. It won't be long." The singing had already started. "Yes, yes," she said, "but I want you and Brother Hagin to lay hands on me now, because I'm going home and go to bed!" What good would it have done to have laid hands on her and prayed? She had already confessed it won't work.

When you pray, the Bible says, believe that you Receive and you shall have. The laying on of hands is the point of contact to release your faith. That's when you start believing. I lay hands on people as their point of contact. (Kenneth Hagin)