According To Your Faith

Wavy Bibles Wryan and make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Let's say this together say Heavenly Father, I'm glad to be here today.

I'm not afraid of what the enemy is doing, but I'm shouting the hallelujah.

I answer unbelief all around me, I answer the trouble, and praise is my constant companion in Jesus' name.

Amen, amen.

Let's turn in our Bibles to Matthew, chapter nine.

Please Glad to have all of you here and I saw some of you hadn't seen in a while and you know people are coming back in and we're just glad every time you can get here.

And Matthew nine, and we'll start reading with verse 27.

This is toward the end of a very long day.

We'll get into some of his day.

Jesus.

I tell you what Jesus just went about doing good and healing 42.7% of the healing all who were oppressed of the devil.

That's some results right there all.

And in verse 27, when Jesus departed from there, two blind men followed him, crying and saying thou, son of David, have mercy on us.

The word mercy is the word compassion.

It also is equal to in the gospels.

It's for healing.

They're crying for healing.

And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him and Jesus said and then believe ye that I'm able to do this.

And they said, yay, lord.

Then touched he their eyes, saying according to your faith.

Everybody say that according to your faith.

According to your faith, be it unto you.

And their eyes were opened.

And so I just wanted to share a message entitled according to your faith.

According to your faith, not according to need.

According to your need, some people have great need, but it's not according to the need.

According to your tears, some people have been crying a long time and they haven't had any results.

But it's not according to your tears.

It's not according to your rank or your importance.

I mean, in the Bible you've got real important people and you've got poor people, and I mean when they came to Jesus, they were on equal footing.

Jesus didn't have any particular affinity one to the other.

It's not according to your financial status, in other words, but it's according to your faith.

Everybody say my faith and you know, since this thing broke open and we began to look at this, what they're calling a global pandemic, and we're not doubting that there's a real virus.

We're not doubting that it's kill some people.

There's no question about it.

But you know, I just happened to be of the opinion that it's overblown and that it was really a means to an end.

They basically said it was.

I mean, if you just listen carefully, the people that are behind this, you know.

I heard somebody say the other day you know, I think we need another opinion.

I've told people.

You know, I've had people come to me and say, well, the doctor wants to amputate my foot.

I said, get a second opinion.

I would leave that doctor and go, and you're sure enough.

I mean, there's been people they're you know, my brother-in-law was one they wanted to amputate.

I said, oh, you need a second opinion.

I started digging.

I found him a better doctor in a different city.

He went and I mean he had a procedure done and he's fine.

He didn't take anything off of him.

I mean, sometimes we need a second opinion and what do we got?

We've got two people in lab coats that are responsible for this whole country going down the tubes financially.

I think we need another opinion.

Why don't we talk to another doctor?

How about one that's treated patients?

That would help right there.

Somebody that's actually prescribed medication to somebody that all they've done is study medication, some medication, not all.

All right, okay, enough of that.

But, thank God, you know we have the Word of God.

It's not according to our need or tears or importance, but it's according to our faith.

In December of 03, I still remember we were pouring the slabs on the children's church building across the way and the lobby.

We hadn't even poured this slab yet, it was being prepared, and then we moved into this building the next May.

So six months later we were having our first service in here.

And you talk about fast.

I mean, this thing went up quick.

You know tents don't take long, but anyway, so, so and but God, I went away to pray in December of that year of 03, it's hard to believe it's been, you know, almost 17 years and he spoke to me.

He said there's a dearth of the Word.

He used an Old Testament word.

Not many people use the word dearth anymore, but it means famine, it means a shortage.

There's a dearth of the Word.

And I said, lord, how?

I know it sounds like it's you talking to me, but I'm confused.

Help me out.

I don't understand.

There's more churches than ever before.

I realized some of them are dead.

I realized some of them don't preach the Word.

But there's more word churches.

There's more churches like ours than ever in history.

How can there be a dearth of the Word?

And he said your children don't know what you know.

Now, he wasn't talking about my physical children, but he was talking about the next generation, and there's always a gap in generations.

There was a gap in my generation, the baby boomers, with what we've come to know as the greatest generation, the generation of World War II.

You think about that generation and you look at everybody out there, panic-stricken.

It's just kind of shocking to me that we could be that afraid and that we could be that panic-stricken about something and be so foolish just to think that a little distance and a little piece of cloth over our face is gonna stop a microscopic virus.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense, folks.

I mean come on, if you're wearing a mask, I'm not against you, but I'm just saying, hey, let's not trust that, let's trust in what God can do.

But he had a dearth of the Word and so I began to pray that and I said, well, I've got to do something about that.

I mean, there's a dearth.

My job is to make sure there's no more dearth, there's no more famine.

It's my job is to make sure that people are taught the Word.

I started looking at our church and looking at my messages and it implies a dearth of faith.

You know, faith comes by hearing the Word.

If you don't have any Word, you don't have any faith.

And faith is a switch that turns on God's power.

God's power can be present, but if there's no faith present, then the power doesn't have any pathway.

We've got power to every one of these light switches, but somebody had to turn the light switch on this morning and that's how we've got light in here, otherwise it'd be pitch dark.

So it answers the question then why is there no victory?

The answer there's a dearth of the Word.

Where are the miracles?

The answer there's a dearth of the Word.

I mean, you know, if you're waiting for miracles and there's no Word, preached Jesus, preached the Word.

And so I remember at the time, you know, I started looking around and I started thinking about our children church and I'd heard some kids, you know, after church and they were just jumping up and down.

They got something from children church.

One of them was holding a little something in his hand and, oh, my favorite children church teacher is so-and-so.

And another one's, oh, my favorite is so-and-so.

And I realized that our children church had turned into people not exalting Jesus.

They were getting to be favorites of the kids.

That made their job easier.

So I got up and Claire went with me and I began to say you know, god, we're gonna get on a schedule of teaching our kids the Word.

I want our children from you know, little toddlers all the way up.

That's been all those years ago and three of my teachers quit.

Rather than to submit to a schedule, see, they wanted to just be led by the Spirit, which means that they wanted to come unprepared and stand flat footed in just what a free association whatever came in their brains.

See, god was alerting me to my church, but he was also alerting us to this world.

I'll tell you, the world out there, right now, they need the Word.

The church needs the Word.

Romans 1.17,.

The just shall live by faith.

And when you look at that verse in the margin, it's quoting Habakkuk, 2.5, 2.4, rather and I read that verse this week and that's why I'm preaching this message to you, and Habakkuk says this this way and I like it.

You know, the just shall live by their faith.

By their faith, see, you can't live by your husband's faith or your wife's faith.

You can't live by your mother's faith.

You can't live by your children's faith or your parent's faith.

You've got to live by your faith.

If you don't have faith, then your life is gonna be at a lower level than what God has in mind.

Are you with me now?

And so there's no Word, there's no faith, and if there's no faith, then the power that is present has been wasted.

That's what.

When I went out to interview Oral Roberts back in 2005, I heard him say and it was a corrective word you know, oral Roberts is always a positive preacher.

He's the one that used to say a lot of you don't remember him, but a lot of you do.

But one of his favorite sayings is God is gonna do something good for you.

Today he would say that and the crowd would just go wild, but that's what he preached and believed.

He was a very positive preacher at a time when the church was all fixated on judgment and you know, you've got to watch out.

God's gonna knock you into the next county.

You could miss the rapture If you keep doing what you're doing.

You could just miss the rapture.

And so people came to church to kind of get beat over the head, and Brother Roberts was the one that just brought people up and they wanted to serve God.

After listening to him, I mean he had a tremendous message for his time.

And so he said in 2004, august of 2004,.

He said a number of things.

He said the church is not ready for the second coming of Christ.

That was negative.

It's not really negative though, because don't you want to know if you're not ready?

I want to know, I want to make sure I'm ready, I don't want to leave it to chance.

And then he said there is a wasting of power in the church.

Boy that hit me, and it kind of lined up with what God had told me in 2003.

There's a dearth of the Word.

One of the reasons I went to see him is because he was speaking in confirmation of what God had told me two years before.

There's a dearth, there's a famine, there's a rarity of the Word of God and there's a wasting of power.

Power has been poured out on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost came and he's on the earth, and yet people don't have any faith to turn the switch on and power is wasted.

I'll tell you, we can't afford to waste any of God's power.

We need to put it to work.

This world is going to hell in a handbasket.

They need Jesus, amen.

And so when Jesus walked the earth, he was always measuring faith, you know.

Remember when he told Peter after Peter walked on the water for a few minutes and then he sank, you know?

And he said, oh, you have little faith.

Wherefore did it sound out?

He called Him little faith, little faith walked on the water.

And he came up to the disciples on another time, when they were afraid they were going to sink in the boat.

He said you know where, how is it that you have no faith?

How is it that you have no faith?

He had preached on the word as a seed.

You know, the sower sows the word and then they go out there and get afraid of sinking.

How is it that you have no faith?

And Jesus said to the Sire of Phoenician woman oh woman, great is thy faith.

And we're going to talk about the centurion in a moment.

But he said I have not found so great a faith.

No, not in Israel.

He marveled at the centurion's faith, and he wasn't even a Jew, he's a Roman soldier.

So Jesus made it a point to always measure and evaluate people's faith.

It must be important.

I said it must be important.

So when you see in Luke 18.8, you know really, right after that visitation I was reading my Bible and it said in Luke 18.8, when the Son of man cometh, will he find faith on the earth?

Boy, that's a kind of a tough question.

You know, will he find?

He didn't say he would find faith on when the Son of man cometh.

He will find.

But no, he said, will he?

So it's up to us whether he's going to find any or not.

It's up to not just the preacher, but you, are you with me now?

It's not something that we'll go through, something like this.

It's not just a means to an end, but it's a life.

It's just how we live.

We live by faith.

The just shall live by their faith.

And so in the miracles of Jesus, when you read the gospels, there's 19 recorded miracles of healing and 12 of the 19 mentioned the person's faith.

It got healed.

So it must be pretty important.

And then, when we were reading here about the blind men, if you keep reading on down through the end of it, in verse 35, jesus created the atmosphere for faith to work, because he went and he taught in their synagogues and he preached the gospel of the kingdom, and then he healed all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

So he created an atmosphere of faith.

You see, he had power, didn't he have power?

Jesus had the power to heal people, but it, much of the time, depended on those people opening the switch of faith and switching on his power, just like those blind men.

They were following Jesus, but they were still blind, and they believed that Jesus was the son of God because they said you know thou son of David.

So they believed he was the Messiah.

They believed he was the one to come.

They had seen all these miracles that he had, and yet when they got to him, they went all the way in the house.

His power was in that house, wasn't it?

What did he have to do?

He had to get them to turn on the switch of faith.

Do you believe that I'm able to do this?

Yeah, lord.

Then he laid hands on them and they got healed.

If they hadn't said that, if he hadn't qualified them, they'd have probably left blind.

Why do you say that he could have?

Well, jesus couldn't heal people outside of faith unless it was a gift of the spirit, and those are only as a spirit wills.

He didn't control it.

So the best way for people to get healed was to have the faith that comes with their covenant.

Are you with me now?

So every manner of sickness, every manner man, you talk about a message that the world needs right now.

They have forgotten the gospel.

They have forgotten what Jesus did on the cross.

I mean I'm talking about in our churches.

I mean I saw a church the other day that said well, we're gonna open on the 17th.

I thought why aren't you open now?

I'll tell you why because they don't know anything about what we just experienced.

When we had praise and worship, they wouldn't be putting it off.

Oh, the power of God in here is so thick, but we've got to have faith in order for that power to apply to us.

You could conceivably come here with some of the greatest need and you could leave with that need even though the power fell.

But you can hear the word of God and your faith can get turned up to self-clean.

That's when the lock, the oven door locks.

You know, can't open that thing.

Why?

Because this is the hottest, gonna burn the fire out of it.

I'll tell you, the world needs this.

So let's look at three examples, three levels of faith, I like to say.

And Jesus located them.

He would locate people as to where they were.

For instance, he asked the blind men do you believe I'm able to do this?

He didn't just oh, have mercy on us, Okay, little darling.

No, he didn't.

Just he didn't lay hands on them right then he asked them.

He located where is your faith?

Do you have the faith that I'm able to do this?

We're talking about two guys with blindness.

That's a pretty.

That's a pretty.

It's a pretty tall order.

And they said yeah, lord, that's all that.

He didn't.

He didn't ask them any further questions, he didn't interview them.

Well, where did you learn this?

What teacher taught you?

What was the name of your church?

Okay, no, they just said yeah, and he touched them and healed them right there, on the spot.

So he located them, and that's what I want you to do this morning.

So Jesus would go through and he would measure faith.

You can do that with yourself.

You can identify where you are in your faith walk.

Most of us have certain tendencies.

Most of us, when we have a need will think oh, you know, I need so and so to pray for me.

I'm going to.

I'm going to go to church and have prayer made.

Or I'm going to call so and so and have them send me a prayer cloth.

Or I'm going to call, you know, prayer line so and so prayer line.

Somebody's going to pray for me.

And then there's some of us that that we just take the word of God and beat the devil with it.

Well, I'm not denigrating you if what you did worked.

I mean, that means you had faith.

So I'm not trying to take what you've got away from you.

I'm saying it's good to go from faith to faith and from glory to glory.

It's good to grow.

Everybody can grow in faith.

I can grow in faith.

You know I've been around a while, but you know what I found out.

I can grow in faith.

We can all grow in faith.

In fact, we all should grow in faith.

So that's what I'm doing.

I'm not trying to knock anybody in the head.

I'm trying to give you some ways of looking at this.

Three, three different ways of looking at faith, so that you can identify yourself, so you can grow to the next level.

All right, the first one we're going to talk about is Mark, chapter five and verse 22.

And y'all with me today, I know you know it's Mother's Day and I know a lot of you have Mother's Day plans, but this is this will set the table for your Mother's Day Matthew five, excuse me, mark five.

I said Matthew, mark five, 22.

And it says here that behold, there come with one of the rulers of the synagogue, jairus, by name.

Now, jairus, see, he's a ruler, so he's kind of a high muckity muck.

I mean he's got, you know he's got special clothing.

I mean he's probably got a fancy little hat he's wearing.

He's probably got some fringe on the bottom of his garments and all of that.

I mean he's probably got some real cool shoes, probably pointed toe Italian jobs.

I mean he's a ruler and he fell at his feet.

He fell at Jesus feet.

I like that part.

He fell at Jesus feet and be sought him greatly, saying my little daughter life at point of death.

I pray, be come and lay by hands on her that she may be healed and she shall live.

That's a heck of a face.

He spoke his faith and listen at the faith.

He said you come and lay hands on her.

She shall live, she shall be healed and she shall live.

There's no way out from shall Shall is the strongest word he could say.

It's a fact, it's a finished fact.

All it was is if you'll just come with me, come to my house, see his little daughter is lying just ready to die at any moment.

He's desperate for his daughter.

So the first level of faith is Jesus, touch me.

Are Jesus coming, pray personally for me, or you know, it's found in James, chapter five.

Is there any sick among you?

Let them call for the elders of the church and let them come and anoint them with oil, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord will raise him up.

So that's another element of it.

In other words, when you need someone to pray for you, come and pray for me, come and come to my house, come to my house or come to where I'm at and pray for me.

That's level one.

And so let's think about his faith.

His faith stopped Jesus right in the middle of a crowd I mean, they're so crowded around him he can hardly move and he gets up to Jesus close enough to fall on his face and say this faith statement and Jesus started moving his way.

They start moving through the crowd.

They're gonna go to his house.

I mean, I'm not denigrating his faith.

His faith was working.

Can you see that his faith was working?

See, that's not a bad way to do things when you're starting out, or even if you're you know, but this works.

And so then there was a delay, because the next one that we're gonna talk about the woman with the issue of blood, that all happened.

She came and the press behind and crawled on her hands and knees and touched Jesus' garment, you know, and he said who touched me?

And she got healed.

And all that happened on the way to J Ivers' house.

You can imagine J Ivers is a little uncomfortable.

He's looking at his watch, you know, or his sundial.

I guess he had a sundial.

Did they have a watch?

Did they have a wrist sundial?

I don't know if they did, but anyway he's thinking, ah, my daughter is at the time, is running out, and now this woman.

He's probably not just real glad for the woman, you know, he can't get all wrapped up in the woman.

He's thinking about his daughter.

And so then Jesus gets finished with the woman, you know, and your faith has made you whole.

She'd go in peace and she leaves.

And now they're about to continue on their journey, no telling how long that took it might've taken 10, 15, 20 minutes, we don't know how long it took and suddenly bears a really good news.

It says why trouble do you the master any further?

Your daughter is now dead.

You'll meet people like that, people that just can't wait to tell you the worst news ever.

Why trouble the master?

Do you think they really cared about the master being troubled?

Or they couldn't wait to tell him his daughter died?

Man, I mean, there's people like that.

I'm ashamed that there are people like that in church, but they're around.

They just don't really care about you.

They just they can't wait to share the most toughest news that they can find.

And so Jesus said well, we gave it a good shot.

You'll see her in eternity.

You know you've got treasure in heaven.

No, it'll be fine.

No, he said fear not, only believe.

Now.

I want you to get this now.

He had to move his faith from having faith for Jesus to come and heal his daughter and to a place where he could have Jesus come and raise his daughter.

That's kind of a quantum leap, isn't it?

How many people have you seen raised from the dead?

I mean, that's a quantum leap.

I've done a whole lot of funerals and I have not ever raised anybody from the dead yet.

I know people you know.

Smith-wiglesworth was the apostle of faith.

He had, I think, 19 recorded people being raised from the dead.

One was after they had been embalmed, took him out of the casket, stood him against the wall like this and raised him.

That'll blow your mind.

If you're a mortician, it will really blow your mind.

And so he said be not afraid, only believe.

And he clung, his faith clung, he didn't fall apart.

And then Jesus said now y'all all stay behind, peter James and John, y'all come with me.

He had to control the environment from that point on.

He couldn't bring all those fake mourners that came and told him that he couldn't let them come.

You stay over here, you stay away from him.

And Peter James and John, y'all stand on either side of him, hold him up, keep him surrounded in faith.

Let's go over here, let's go to his house.

So they go in the house, and what?

And so there's a big tumult, there's all this fall to all.

People are screaming and whining and crying and bawling and just a bunch of disorder.

And he said why do you make all this much to do about this?

This little girl is not dead, she sleeps.

And they went from crying to laughing.

Ha ha ha, they're a fool, ha ha ha.

See, I mean, this is how sincere they were.

They could cry and then they could laugh, just like that.

And he ran them off.

Get out of here, don't come in the house.

I want you to see this.

He controlled the environment and he brought Peter James and John and Jairus and I'm assuming the mother was there and here's the little girl and he says Talitha kumi.

Kumi means wake up.

And she woke up.

Glory to God.

He raised that little girl.

Then he said now feed her.

Isn't that interesting?

I mean, they had the feeder.

I mean, how long has she been sick?

How long is, you know, here?

She needs food.

So Jesus was interested in the way I'm raised her.

Now you feed her.

But I wanted you to see the second part of this.

The second idea is that the first idea was he came and he prayed for his daughter.

So that was you touch her.

That's level number one.

That didn't work, didn't it?

So again, I'm not trying to take anybody's faith away from you.

I'm saying find out where you are typically and try to move to the next level.

Level number two is I'll touch Jesus.

See, that's the woman with the issue of blood.

She didn't say if Jesus will come to me and pray for me, I'll be healed.

No, she heard about Jesus.

That's in Mark, chapter five, verse 25.

She heard of Jesus.

She heard he was the healer and she said if I'm but just touch the hem of his garment, I shall be whole.

Didn't say I the hemorrhaging will stop.

She didn't say that.

She said I shall be whole.

She must have heard about Jesus making people whole.

I mean it's one thing to get healed, it's one thing.

It's another thing to be made whole.

I mean she was hemorrhaging.

So she must have had after 12 years never, was ever better but grew worse and spent all of her living on doctors.

They couldn't help her and so she must have been anemic.

She must have had all kinds of other ailments that were akin to not having enough blood, constant blood, you know hemorrhaging.

And she said, and the amplified said, she kept on saying, and then she went to where Jesus was.

She said if I can just touch the hem of his garment.

So now she's unclean.

She overcame religion because if she, if she's supposed to say unclean, unclean, but she didn't say a word.

So she violated religious tradition and she overcame her weakness 12 years of hemorrhaging.

She must have been physically tired, physically weak.

I've seen people just right down the street would even come to church, live right down the street and they're saying, I find out well where, where.

Well, we've been kind of ill and I thought, well, why don't you come to church?

Now, right now, we're not asking people what, if you're ill, don't come to church, like if you've got a fever and things like that, let's, let's, but generally we don't ever even say anything about it.

I mean, people come here when they're feeling bad and they get healed, and sometimes they don't even get prayer, they just get healed because they just, they just cry out and they get their healing.

So, anyway, so her level of faith was I'll go, I'll touch Jesus, or you could say it this way I'll go to church and get healed.

See, some people they just say you know, if I can just get to church, if I could just get to church, it's not so much about calling a prayer line, it's not so much about calling sister so and so and having her pray for you.

It's about if I can just get to church.

There's a lot of people that got faith at that level and that was her.

That was her faith.

I mean, she overcame the crowd, man.

That crowd was so fit that they were thronging Jesus.

And so she goes and she crawls on her hands and knees.

Why do you know that?

Well, because she touched the hem of his garment and that's down on the ground.

So she crawled through there and grabbed his garment, just like she said she was gonna do.

If I can just touch his garment, I shall be whole.

Her faith made a demand on Jesus anointing His power.

Why do I say that?

Because he said who touched me?

And she's felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

So she felt the power come out of him.

And he felt the power go out of him.

He felt, she felt are you with me now?

And they said what are you talking about?

Who touched me?

I mean, people are thronging you.

They're on every side of you.

Why do you say that?

He said I felt virtue go out of me.

I felt power go out of me, who touched me, who, who, who?

Who did this?

And so she came and told him all the truth.

And he said to her in verse he looked around to see her that had done this thing and she knew what was done.

And she came and fell down before and told him all the truth.

And he said unto her daughter Thy faith hath made thee whole, go in peace and be whole of thy plague.

She got what she said I'm gonna be made whole.

He said be whole, be whole of your plague.

Or you could say it this way according to your faith, be it unto you.

According to your faith, be it unto you.

You could say the same thing.

It wouldn't be against what he said.

And so she went her way.

She was made whole of her plague.

So item number two was I'll touch Jesus or I'll go to church and get healed.

Well, if that's working for you, that's not a bad thing.

That's one reason why we pray for people here.

Hardly a service goes by that we don't lay hands on people.

Sometimes we'll just have a Holy Spirit, holy Ghost Church In words of knowledge.

You'll come and we'll call people up like that for specific things.

But I'll tell you this is Houston's Healing Center.

We believe that because for 25 years people have been getting healed here.

Brother Hagin used this when he was a bed fast on the bed of sickness, had been paralyzed in bed for like 16 months and he was reading these verses in his Rand Maul's Methodist Bible and when he read this about the woman with the issue of blood, he said her faith made her whole.

Your faith can make you whole.

The Holy Spirit showed him that Her faith made her whole.

Your faith can make you whole.

He didn't have any preacher to pray for him.

Nobody had faith to pray for him.

In fact, the preacher was trying to get him to come to grips with the fact idea that you're gonna die.

You're gonna die.

There's nothing he can do.

If you were gonna get healed, you'd already been healed.

God healed some people, but healing basically passed away and you'll just have to get used to dying.

That's just here.

He is 16 years old and the preacher?

Well, he's dumb because he wasn't taught any better.

I mean, you can't teach what you don't know, any more than you can come back from where you ain't been.

That's why we're teaching this, because people don't know.

They don't know they have a Bible right to healing.

And so I mean he did get his healing.

He came off that bed.

Nobody ever prayed for him, nobody came and laid hands on him, nobody encouraged him.

Are you with me now?

Aren't the third way of looking?

So the first one was Jesus, come and touch me, somebody come and pray for me.

The second one is I'll touch Jesus, I'll go to church and be and I'll get my healing or get my need met.

Sometimes there's other needs that people get met.

Now the third one is in Matthew 8, and this is the Roman Centurion, and we know the story.

I mean he came to Jesus and he said my servant live home, grievously sick of the palsy.

The palsy was a terminal disease, like cerebral palsy, and he's not gonna survive.

I mean there's no cure for it in that day.

And Jesus said in verse seven I will come and heal him.

See, I mean you know, he just threw it out there.

I'm willing to come.

And the Centurion says oh no, oh no, jesus, that's not, I'm not worthy that you'd come under my roof, but just speak the word only.

And my servant will be healed because I'm a man under authority.

And I say to this man come.

And he comes and this man go, and he goes into this other man do this, and he does it.

So in other words, he's saying to Jesus I'm a man under authority, I recognize that you're a man with authority and that's all you need to do is use your authority.

That's good enough for me.

It's good enough for my servant.

And Jesus marveled Now listen, this is a, not a Jew.

This is a Roman Centurion.

And when you're a head of a hundred soldiers, you're a guy, you're a tough guy.

You know, you're a mean motor scooter.

You've learned how to kill with your bare hands.

You can kill people with your bare hands, or with the sword or with anything, and he has to teach others the same thing.

I mean he.

And yet here he is tender about his own Jewish servant and he comes to Jesus on behalf of his servant and says no, you don't have to come all the way to my house, just speak the word.

I recognize the authority.

Jesus marveled.

He said I have not found so great a faith.

No, not in Israel.

He said that to rub the Pharisees nose, you know, tweak them a little bit, kind of like Trump does with the media.

He tweaks them, hits them across the nose and they start, and so are you with me.

Now Speak the word only.

And so Jesus.

Jesus was so thrilled he was, he marveled.

He marveled at this Centurion and he said in verse 13, go by way and ask thou hast believed, so be it done.

In other words, according to your faith, say top level, that level of faith is willing to receive their healing, or whatever their breakthrough is needed, on the authority of the written word alone or the spoken word.

You don't need personal attention, you don't need anybody's agreement.

It's good to have people agree.

Nothing wrong with agreement.

A lot of what we do down here is just basically agreeing with you.

But at the same time, the higher level of faith is when you take the word of God for yourself.

I mean if you've got an emergency.

Brother Hagen talks about an emergency.

You know he had I don't know 14 different things wrong with his heart.

He had all kind of malformed heart.

He was what we'd call a blue baby.

Back in the 50s and 60s.

They called children like him blue babies, because they didn't.

I had a cousin that was a blue baby.

He never really had a normal color because his arteries were messed up and he had that the veins, that the blood was an oxygenated properly and so he was kind of blue-tinted.

You know, and I don't know if that's exactly what happened to Brother Hagen, but he had all these things wrong with him, blood diseases, plus a malformed heart, and the doctors say you'll never be normal and you'll if you do some.

You know, okay, you got some temporary help here, but it's not gonna last, you're gonna die at an early age.

So he would have the devil would bring symptoms on him from time to time, and so he talks several different times of symptoms alarming.

He would call them alarming symptoms.

I don't know what they were.

One time he had a symptom of stroke.

Half of his face was completely paralyzed and it happened overnight.

But he did go to church and have that pastor pray for him.

See, when he was a younger Christian he had his pastor pray over him and nothing happened immediately, but he just hung on.

Oh no, my pastor prayed for me.

He prayed the prayer of faith I'm healed, I'm healed, I'm healed.

And the next morning he was healed.

But what if you had some terrible thing happen to?

You had alarming symptoms, but your faith was stuck in.

Well, I've got to call the prayer line and the prayer line is busy.

The prayer line doesn't answer at two o'clock in the morning.

What if you can't come to church in time for you to get hands laid on you?

Number two, you know, if I can just get to church and then you die before you can get to church?

I've had it.

I've seen people do that.

So it's good to let's grow in faith, let's get up to the place where we can believe God's holy word for ourselves.

And so here is Brother Hagin.

One night he's in another, a parsing of the church where he's preaching, and he's in a spare bedroom and these symptoms come on him.

And I mean it looks like he's not gonna make the daylight.

He's just got all these alarming symptoms.

And so the devil appears to him and says this time you're not gonna get your healing.

That's what the devil said.

This time you're not gonna get your healing.

And so Brother Hagin says you know, I had all those symptoms and I just started laughing.

Did I feel like laughing?

No, I didn't.

I just pulled the covers over my head because I didn't wanna wake anybody up, I mean the pastor's over in the next room and his wife.

Ha ha, ha ha.

And he laughed for 20 minutes like that Ha ha, 20 minutes.

You time 20 minutes next time.

You start to laugh and you think how hard is that to laugh for 20 solid minutes?

And finally the devil comes back, says what are you laughing at?

He said I'm laughing at you, mr Devil.

Why are you laughing at me?

He said this time you're not gonna get your healing.

He said I don't have to get my healing, jesus done got it for me.

Ha ha, ha, ha ha.

See, he had the authority of the Word of God.

You see, if you're dependent on somebody else, if you're according to your faith, the just shall live by their faith.

Or die or die, or die by their faith.

The just shall live by their faith.

Somebody else's faith ain't gonna help you.

At two o'clock in the morning, when symptoms come raging against you, the devil was trying to take him out.

He tried to take me out two years ago.

But guess what?

We're here.

Praise God.

We're still preaching, we're still going.

God reset my clock.

Hallelujah, god can reset your.

Come on, let's lift our hands right now.

According to my faith, everybody say according to my faith, I have what I believe.

Hallelujah, glory to God.

Thank you, jesus.