How Word of Faith Works

Kenneth E. Hagin would always say that whatever need you had in life, whether it is healing, finances or whatever – just find those verses of scripture which say you can have it, meditate on them and confess them.

Hagin’s teaching and testimonies would almost exclusively focus on faith for healing and finances. Hagin would also say that the same principle applies to any other legitimate need. But this does not mitigate the deluded, selfish fantasies that frustrated Christians bring before God. An overactive imagination does not help God, but hinders Him. The flesh nature and the divine nature are at odds with one another (see Galatians 5:17).

I just assumed that it was my role to read the best Christian teaching available and to discern the principles and formulas from the teaching and to somehow apply it to my own life. This is where my own imagination and selfish ambition came into play. But I realised after many years that this is not a practical or comfortable way to live the Christian life.

This way of life put a great deal of emphasis on me reading lots of books (the right books) understanding them properly, being able to remember what I had read and then to be able to somehow apply those principles and formulas to my own life. One of the wrong assumptions that can arise out of this process is that you can assume that just because God blessed or “used” another Christian in some way, then God will do the very same, or something similar, thing in your own life. But this is simply not true because we all have different callings, gifts and talents.

Word of Faith operates by finding verses of scripture which often pertain to specific circumstances of a person’s life, then twisting it so that it applies to your own life. It is true that we can apply broad-based Christian concepts to our own life, such as our righteousness in Christ, but just because God gave Abraham, Isaac and Jacob beautiful wives, for example, does not mean that you can use certain verses of scripture to lay hold on the promise of a beautiful wife. Just God gave Bezalel the abilities of a craftsman (see Exodus 31:2-5) – it does not mean that God will give you the same kind of abilities (unless, of course, that is your calling in life.)