Well, if Jesus told the truth, I'd better check up on what I'm saying; especially if I'm not satisfied with what I have. And I'm not just talking about being healed.
At a Full Gospel Business Men's Convention in a certain large city, a woman came up to me after one of the afternoon teaching sessions. She said, "Brother Hagin, I want you to promise me something."
I replied, "Well, I want to find out what it is first." She said, "I want you to promise me that you'll pray every day for my son. He's 15 years old. I'm a widow, and I can't do a thing in the world with him. I can't get him to go to church. He's in with a gang, and I'm afraid they're on drugs. He's out until 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning. I lie awake nights waiting for the phone to ring telling me they've got him down at the jail."
I interrupted her before she could tell any more about how bad her son was. I said to her, "I'm not going to do it." That shocked her. "You're not?" "No, ma'am. I'm not. I won't promise you I'll pray for him at all." "Well!" she said.
"You see," I continued, "in the first place, it wouldn't do any good, because you'd nullify the effects of my prayers by your wrong believing and your wrong talking. No matter how many people pray, as long as you keep telling your son that he'll never amount to anything and he'll wind up in reform school and the penitentiary—he'll never make it."
Her eyes got big. "How did you know I was talking that way to him?" I said, "To be in the mess he's in, you had to talk him into it. We're products of words. Children are products of words. Words will make a boy love an education. Words will make a boy want to go to church, or they'll keep him out of church."
"What should I do?" the woman asked. "In the first place, since you've done this so long, and because he's as old as he is, just leave him alone. He resents your talking to him and trying to tell him anything. Just leave him alone. Don't tell him anything. Don't preach at him. Don't nag him.
"Now for the second thing," I went on, "change your thinking and change your talking. At home, even when you don't know where your son is, say, 'I surround my son with faith.' You have been surrounding him with doubt. Now surround him with faith. And say it even if your heart doesn't believe it to begin with. Say it out of your mouth, and once it registers on your heart you will start believing. 'I do not believe he's going to the reform school. I do not believe he's going to the penitentiary. I believe he's coming to God. I believe (teens name)' and state what you believe."
"Well," she said, "I'll try it." "It won't work," I told her, "It won't work if you try it. But it will work if you'll do it. Jesus didn't say we would have whatever we tried; He said we'd have whatever we said."
That convention was in August. The Full Gospel Business Men had another convention in that city the next year in October, fourteen months later, and I returned to speak again. After the afternoon service, a woman came up to me and said, "Brother Hagin, do you remember me?"
"No, I meet so many people I don't really remember you."
"Oh," she said, "remember when you were here August a year ago and I asked you to pray for my boy, and you shocked me by saying you wouldn't"?
The woman continued, "I want to tell you one thing: What you told me works! Now, it didn't look like it was going to work. My son got worse. And keeping my mouth shut was the hardest thing I ever did. But I kept saying it. Every day I said it, every night I said it: 'I surround him with faith and love. I believe he's coming to God. I believe things are going to work out right in his life. I believe he's not going to reform school.' My head said that was where he was going because of the bunch he was running around with, but I said from my heart, 'He's not going to the reform school. I do not believe he'll wind up in the penitentiary.'"
She continued, "We went along that way for nearly a year. Then one Sunday morning, after he'd been out nearly all night, he got up. Ordinarily, he would have slept in, but he got up and came to the breakfast table. And while we were eating, he said, 'Momma, I believe I'll go to Sunday School with you this morning.'"
She said, "I just acted nonchalantly and said, 'Now, son, you were up awfully late; you probably need the rest.'" (Before, she had been nagging him to go.)
"No," he said, "I want to go."
"Well," she said. "It's up to you, but you only got a few hours sleep."
"I want to go," he said. And he went to Sunday School and stayed for church. "The very next Sunday morning," the mother told me, "he was out till 4 o'clock in the morning, but again he was up for breakfast."
"Momma," he said to her, "I believe I'll go to Sunday School with you this morning."
She said, "Son, you were out late last night. You need the rest, you know."
"Well, yes," he said, "but I can go. I'm going."
Her son went to Sunday School, stayed for church, and that evening he said to her, "I believe I'll go back with you tonight." When the invitation was given at the end of that service, the young man went to the altar and was saved.
"Since then," she told me, "he's been filled with the Spirit. Just like he was all out for the devil before, now he's all out for God! He's on fire for God! I believe he's going to turn into a preacher! I'll tell you, he's just a brand-new boy. I've got a brand-new boy!
"Thank you," she said. "At first I almost got my feelings hurt; you were so blunt with me. But I saw it. I corrected myself, and, thank God, I've got a brand-new son.
"You know," she added, "I'll tell you something else. He's got a brand-new Momma."
This woman was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and had been attending a Full Gospel church for years, but she told me that day, "I don't think anymore like I used to think. I almost pinch myself sometimes and say, 'Is this really me?' I used to worry, worry, worry, worry. Now I don't worry anymore.
"Not only that," she continued, "but I feel so good physically. I feel like a young girl. I've got vim, vigor, and vitality."
When this woman began to say the right thing, it worked for her. Jesus said, "...he shall have whatsoever he SAITH."
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications