Its The Same!

I have to tell you… Reading in Romans chapter four this morning was like a walk down memory lane.  It was like a shot in the arm and the sound of the dinner bell all in one!  This particular portion of scripture talks about the faith of Abraham.  To me, the centerpiece is found in verse 17 where Paul describes God as the One “who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.”  (NIV) 

Back in the late 1970’s I was on staff as the Youth Minister at First Baptist Church in Santa Rosa, CA.  I was still relatively young in my Christian walk and found myself hungering for more of God.  I was studying my new Bible (that my wife gave me when we went to college a few years previous) and devouring any Christian books I could get my hands on.  One day when my wife and I were visiting her parents, I mentioned this hunger and seemingly unquenchable  thirst that I had for the things of God.  After awhile my Mother-in Law retreated down the hall and returned a few moments later with a small stack of books.  She handed the books to me and suggested that I look through them.

When we returned to our little apartment (just down the street from their home), I immediately sat on the couch and started looking at the books.  Near the bottom of the stack was one entitled “The Believer’s Authority” written by Kenneth E. Hagin in 1967.  The title intrigued me as I had never heard anything like that before and I tore into it like a starving kid at a McDonalds restaurant!   That book forever altered my understanding of God’s word and fired up my wife and I with a flame that has never diminished.

Over the years since then, I have heard Brother Hagin described as “The Father of the modern Faith Movement.”  What I have come to see since those early days of explosive growth for me in the 70’s, is that there is nothing “modern” about it!  As a student of the many revivals that have swept across the USA and the world, I have realized that the message of “faith” that Brother Hagin taught was part of the same message that many of the pioneer preachers brought to this country from Europe after the arrival of the New England Puritans. Many of the Circuit Riding preachers from various denominations brought revivals to the expanding wilderness communities before, during and after the Revolutionary war, with new revivals stirred up at the turn of the century into the 1800’s. 

Last week I mentioned the Pentecostal Revival that occurred at the beginning of the 1900’s and the Healing Revival that spanned the mid 1940’s through the 1950’s in America.  As I have read various volumes on the leaders involved with these revivals, I have come to see that the wide spread (public newspaper) reports (that we now NEVER seem to hear about) of the thousands saved, healed, and delivered, were received through the teachings of men and women used mightily of God who taught the same message of “faith” that Brother Hagin once again began to bring out.

That message of “faith” is the same old message that the Apostle Paul taught his readers in the book of Romans (and Ephesians and Colossians and…).  It is the same message that Jesus taught his disciples and then demonstrated in Mark 11:22-24. It is the message of the Good News of Jesus Christ that revolutionized my life!  And it was the remembrances of that early “light” of understanding and joy of who we are in Christ that I began to learn in the late 1970’s, that came back in like a flood to me today.  I was so excited that I ran up the stairs, grabbed the Bible next to my bed and started preaching to my still sleeping wife and our dog who was laying next to her!

I’ll share a little more on this tomorrow, but just know as you go forth in your activities today, that you are not alone, and that you are not unarmed!  God has provided an atonement for you that provides a guaranteed place in heaven as well as tools for victory in your daily life here on this earth.  Remember, its all in His book!  Jesus defeated the enemy of our souls over 2000 years ago and we are now “more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  (Romans 8:37 KJV).  So… have a great day, tune into His Word and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”