Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. — PROVERBS 3:5

I said to this pastor when I laid hands on him, “Will you be healed now as I lay hands on you and pray?”

He said, “Brother Hagin, I sure hope so.”

“Well,” I said, “you won’t be.”

He responded, “I’m not going to say I’m going to receive something when I don’t know whether I am or not.”

I said to him, “Let me ask you a question.” I held up a hymnal and said, “Let’s say this songbook I’m holding is mine. And let’s imagine that there are some songs in here that no other songbook has. You’re a pastor and you’d like your congregation to learn some of these songs, but the songbook is out of print. So I decide to give it to you. It’s yours. Would you say, ‘I don’t know whether I’m going to receive it or not. I hope I am’?”

“No, I’d just reach out and take it,” he answered.

“Well, when it comes to spiritual things, you can’t reach out your physical hand and take it,” I said. “But there is a man living inside your physical body— your spirit man. The Bible calls him the hidden man of the heart, or the inner man. That inward man has a hand too. It’s called the hand of faith.”

He said, “Well, I’m not going to believe I have something I can’t see or feel.”

He wanted to see it first. He wasn’t trusting in God with all his heart. Instead, he was leaning to his own understanding. He was relying on natural human reasoning.

I said to the pastor, “Well, you go sit down and do without healing, because you’ll never get it as long as you’re thinking that way.” And he never did receive healing. Now if he had changed his thinking, his believing, and his talking, he could have been healed.

Confession: I trust in the Lord with all my heart. I don’t lean to my own understanding. I believe I receive healing before I ever see it with my physical eyes. I reach out and take healing with the hand of faith.