QUIT FIGHTING OTHERS AND WALK IN LOVE

I was reared a Southern Baptist. I got healed on the bed of sickness as a teenager, got the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and developed a little bone of contention with the Baptists. Here I had gotten healed and I'd seen healing in the Bible, and I thought they'd be glad to know that this was right. They weren't. They would rather I'd have died than got healed,

because that would have proved them right—that healing's not for us. When I got healed, it was an embarrassment to them. Here I was a Baptist going around testifying about being healed! My own doctor, who belonged to the same Baptist church I did, admitted it was a miracle. He couldn't deny it. He put it this way, "I said all the time unless a higher power intervened, you weren't going to live."
I believed God's promise. I got Grandma's "Methodist" Bible, studied it, and exercised faith. My healing came about as a result of a combination of things. It wasn't just what God did for me; it involved my believing God. He responded to my faith and prayers.
My Baptist pastor, however, said, "The poor boy stayed in bed so long his mind went. Healing's not for us today." He'd been taught that way.
So the Southern Baptists wouldn't accept my testimony. It's easy to develop a little bone of contention toward people who won't accept your testimony. I backed up a little. I continued preaching healing, but I didn't hold public healing services. I prayed for the people privately.

Then I began fellowshipping with Full Gospel people. The Baptists had warned me about them, saying that tongues was of the devil. But these people believed in healing like I did, so I fellowshipped with them. And like a fellow in East Texas said, "It's like a slippery creek bank. If you keep fooling around on it, you'll fall in." I fell in and got the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Unconsciously, I began fighting the Baptists. I never won one of them to my way of thinking, and I never got



one of them filled with the Holy Spirit. I never changed one of them. You can't do it that way. If some of them came to my services and I knew they were there, I'd let them have it! But God corrected me. The Spirit of God will do that, but He'll do it in love.
It happened while I was praying in tongues one day. I thought I'd been praying for 15 minutes. I found out later I'd prayed four and a half hours. While I was praying in tongues, the Spirit of God interpreted the tongues and took me over into the first three chapters of First Corinthians.

This Corinthian bunch was carnal. There was envy, jealousy, strife, division, and debate among them. They walked as "mere men." Yet Paul started off by bragging on them, and he wound up by saying, "Ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's" (1 Cor. 3:23).
The Lord said to me, "If it had been you and some preachers you know writing to that bunch, you'd have said,
'You bunch of backslidden buzzards ought to pray through and get right with God.'"
And until that moment, that's exactly what I would have said. But the Lord said, "Paul didn't do that; the Spirit of God didn't do that. Paul found a place where he could join up with them and encourage them to grow. He told them, 'Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's. All things are yours. Come on—rise up to the level of what belongs to you!'"
And the Lord said to me, "If you'll find the place where you can hook onto the Baptists and quit fighting them, you'll get them."
I quit fighting them that minute. I just went over and hooked onto them—and other churches, too—praise God.



There's always somewhere we can hook on.
The minute I did this, pastors and their wives started getting filled with the Holy Spirit. When you start loving people instead of fighting them, you can help them.
So we may have to judge ourselves sometimes. When we do, let's correct ourselves. Remember, it's not a disgrace to be wrong; it's a disgrace to stay wrong. If we're wrong, thank God we can straighten up and do right, no matter who we are.
(Kenneth E. Hagin)