The margin of a good reference Bible renders that last phrase, "... and medicine to all their flesh." God is interested in healing us if we are sick. He is also interested in keeping us well. For our healing and for our health, He has made provision -- God's Medicine.
What are those provisions? What are our rights? What actually belongs to us when it comes to physical healing and health? How can we ascertain exactly what was secured to us?
There's only one way. But a constant, careful, diligent, reverent, prayerful study of God's Word.
I was born sick. Never had a normal childhood. Never ran and played like other children. Never had a good night's sleep. Never had a well day until I was 17 years old. As a little child, and then as a tee-ager, I'd sit and look around almost with my mouth open and my eyes bugged at things normal children could do. The greatest consuming desire of my heart was to be well.
At the age of 15, I became totally bedfast. It was on this bed of sickness where I lay 16 months that I knew if there were any help for me it had to be in the Bible. It had to be with God. It couldn't be from anywhere else. For medical science had turned its face away and said nothing could be done. I had to come down to the brink of the grave before I'd do what I'm urging you to do -- come to God's Word in a constant, careful, diligent, reverent, prayerful manner and find out what God's Word has to say on this subject.
I almost waited too late. If I'd had something quickly acute I guess I would have been carried out into eternity. But because with my condition I lingered, I had time to do a little studying. For it wasn't just overnight that I found what God had to say on the subject.
Do you know why? Sometimes we have to unlearn things before we can learn the right things. Our minds have been clouded up and filled up with a lot of things which are not really so.
Every time I'd get a good promise from God's Word, the devil would be right there to tell me, "That just belongs to the Jews." Or, "That's not for people nowadays."
I didn't know if it was or not. I'd have to look a long time for a Scripture which proved to my own satisfaction that it belonged to me. Such as, our text: My son, attend to my words... God's Word doesn't just belong to the Jews. That God, it belongs to all of His people
Did you know God gives directions for taking His prescription?
He prescribes His Word for our health. Because He says, "My words are lift unto those that find them, and my words are health, or medicine, to all their flesh" (Prov. 4:20-22).
But medicine, even in the natural, won't do you any good unless you take it. You could go to a doctor. The doctor could prescribe medicine on the chest of drawers. Or even on the table right at your bedside. And you could still grow steadily worse. You could call the doctor and say, "I don't understand it. I got this prescription filled. I paid money for it. But I'm getting worse."
The doctor might ask, "Are you taking it according to directions?"
"Well, no. But, I've got it right here in the bottle at my bedside."
It won't work just because it's in the bottle. You've got to get it in you.
And God's Medicine won't work just because you have it on a table by your bed. God's Word won't work just because you have a Bible lying on the chest of drawers. It won't even work just because you read it. It won't work just because you memorize a few Scriptures. It won't work just because you say, "I believe the Bible's so." It won't work just because you say, "I believe in the verbal inspiration of the Word of God."
But it will work if you'll get it down on the inside of you! Into your heart! The way you do that is not by just reading it and forgetting it. But by meditating upon it. By thinking upon it. By feeding upon it. Until it becomes a part of your inward man.
God's Medicine in His Word -- and here are His direction for taking it.
1. My Son, attend to my words...
2. Incline thine ear unto my sayings...
3. Let them (my words) not depart from thine eyes...
4. Keep them in the midst of thine heart.
If I were to see a friend downtown I might call to him as he hurries along the street, "Wait a minute! I want to talk to you."
"Oh no, Brother Hagin," he might say, "I can't talk now. I have an appointment down the street and I'm already ten minutes late. I must attend to this business."
He doesn't mean to slight me. He's not angry with me. He likes me. He'd like to talk with me and fellowship with me. But there's something else he has to put first. There's something else he must give his undivided attention unto.
Dr. Lilian B. Yeoman's, a medical doctor who received divine healing for herself and then devoted her life to ministering and teaching this subject, would teach what she called "healing classes" in the daytime during her revival meetings. She wrote in one of her books to this effect, "I almost become angry sometimes. For when we're studying the Word of God on such an important subject as healing for the boyd, you can tell people are not paying a bit of attention to it. They'll thumb through the songbook. Stare off into space. Look out the window. Chew gum. And then those same people want you to pray the prayer of faith for them. Yet they don't want to do anything themselves."
God wants His children to grow spiritually. And He has provided the means whereby we can grow. The Holy Spirit, through Peter said, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
I believe that God wants each of His children to grow spiritually, to develop a prayer life, to develop a faith life, until he can stand on his own two feet. Until he is no longer a spiritual babe who has to depend on somebody else to do his praying for him, somebody else to exercise faith for him, somebody else to get his healing for him.
I would be concerned if I didn't know more about praying and have more faith than I did 30 years ago. In this day in which we live I would become fearful. Not knowing what might happen to me. But, thank God, we can walk with God, We can walk h=with His word. His Word can be more real to us today than it was last year. We can learn how to pray until our prayer can be more effective this year than they were last year. Our faith can be greater this year than it was last year. And God can be more real to us today than He was last year. He will be if we do what He said. My son ... attend to my Words...
"Man shall not live by bread alone," Jesus said, "but my by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4)
God said, "Attend to my Words." That means, "Put my Words first." That means, " Give my Words your undivided attention." That means, "Other things out -- my Word in."
Incline your ear to what? To my sayings... Open your ears to what God has to say.
"But I just don't understand it," somebody says.
God doesn't ask us to understand His Word. All He asks us to do is believe it. I don't understand how a lot of things work. But thank God they do. And they work because we believe.
You couldn't give an explanation from the natural viewpoint of just how the new birth works. And just how that because of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and receiving Him as your Saviour, and confessing Him as your Lord you were born-again. And just how the Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you're a child of God. But thank God you know it.
You couldn't explain the workings of just how a person is filled with the Holy Spirit and speak with other tongues. But thank God it's so.
Well, I can't tell a person just how divine healing works. But I know that makes it work. It's faith! Faith makes it work.
That's the reason God said, "Put my Word first. Attend to my Words. Incline your ear to my Word." For "...faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17)!
When the Word gains entrance into your heart, into your spirit, faith will be there automatically. You won't have to seek. You won't have to search. There will be no effort on your part. Faith will come unconsciously into your spirit as you feed upon and accept His Words.
And faith is the clue. It's the secret. It was the secret in the healings Jesus performed when He was upon the earth.
He said to the centurion, "Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee" (Mat. 8:13). And in the selfsame hour his servant was healed.
When the woman with the issue of blood touched His garment, Jesus said, "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague" (Mark 5:34).
Jairus came on behalf of his little daughter who was lying at home at the point of death. He besought Jesus saying, "Come and lay thy hands on her that she may be healed; and she shall live" (Mark 5:23). But as Jesus started toward his house the woman with the issue of blood came and touched His garment and was healed. And Jesus was detained. Some individuals from Jairus' house came then and said, "Don't trouble the Master anymore. Your daughter is dead."
What could be more hopeless? It's all over.
But Jesus turned to him and said, "Be not afraid, only believe" (Mark 5:36). Fear not -- only believe!
Jesus made His way to that house and that little maid was raised up and healed.
Two blind men followed Him from Jairus' house, crying, and saying, "Thou son of David, have mercy on us." Jesus said to them, "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" (Mat. 9:28). They said, "Yea, Lord." Then He touched their eyes saying, "According to your faith be it unto you" (Mat. 9:29). And their eyes were opened.
Faith is what makes divine healing work. And God has told us exactly how faith comes. In Romans 10:17 He says, "So then faith cometh..." We know it comes. From where does it come? How does it come? "...faith cometh by hearing..." It doesn't come by seeing. It doesn't come by feeling. It comes by hearing. Hearing what? "...and hearing the word of God." It comes by hearing the Word of God.
No wonder he said, "Incline thine ear unto my sayings." That's how faith comes!
That's how faith for healing comes. Let me repeat again that 22nd verse of Proverbs 4, "For they (my words) are life unto those that find them, and health (or medicine) to all their flesh."
I never could figure out why Christians, especially Spirit-filled Christians, if they do get sick -- and they do -- wouldn't take time to find out what God has to say about it. Or wouldn't listen to what God says. Instead of opening their ears to what God has say, they'll listen to what everybody else has to say.
People can be right in their hearts and wrong in their heads. I don't mean it wrongly, but I learned long ago that unless people are going to give you the Word of God on a subject, you can't listen to what they say -- even preachers. Good men sometimes give you natural advice which would cause you to miss it spiritually.
God said, "Incline thine ear unto MY saying." If you're going to listen to God, you sometimes have to shut out other things.
We have to listen to what God says in His Word to enjoy the blessings of His Word. We have to listen to what God says along any live to enjoy the blessing God has for us. Incline thine ear ... Listen to what God has to say...
Does He have anything to say about sickness? Much. here is a sampling.
His Word says, "... Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses" (Mat. 8:17).
His Word says, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).
His Word says, "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil..." (Acts 10:38). He calls sickness Satanic oppression.
This has to do with healing because He talks about life, and health, and medicine in the next verse. So -- get the words on healing. Get the words on health. Get God's Word and look at it. Don't let it depart from before your eyes. Don't look at anything else. Just look at that Word.
And that Word says, "By whose tripes ye were healed." Past tense. Ye were. Then, if that Word doesn't depart from before your eyes, you're bound to see yourself well. You're bound to see yourself with what God says belongs to you, if that Word doesn't depart from before your eyes.
If you see yourself sick. If you see yourself unhealed. If you see yourself getting worse. That Word has departed from before your eyes. You're looking at something else. You're seeing yourself with something else.
No one told me. I had no teaching on the subject. But it's amazing how the Holy Spirit as your teacher, will lead you in line with the Word. He's the author of it. And I didn't realize until afterwards that the Holy Spirit could lead me. It was unconscious direction. But I remember what was the turning point in my case of receiving healing for my body. I was bedfast for a total of 16 months. This happened in the month of March, the 12th month.
For the preceding 11 months I saw myself dead. Oh, I went through it a thousand times. Probably ten thousand. When you're bedfast 24 hours a day with nothing to do except to live with your physical symptoms and trouble, you can think a lot. I saw myself getting worse. I saw myself dying. In the night time, when all the lights were out, when everybody was asleep, and I was left alone with my thoughts, many a time, night after night, I saw myself dead.
But somewhere!... And I can remember, it was after I read this portion of Scripture. Let them not depart from before thine eyes. Somehow I knew it would word. I didn't understand it. I'd never heard it preached. I was just a boy of 16. But I knew it was God's Word. I knew He said, "My Words are medicine." I knew He said, "It's health to all their flesh." That meant from the top of my head to the sole of my foot! I also knew five doctors said they couldn't do a thing, that I had to die. But -- I began to see myself well!
When some of those heart attacks would come then, and I'd seem to get worse, I'd laugh. Just laugh! Right in the face of them! I'd see myself well!
I asked myself the question, "What would I be doing if I were up?"
I answered, "I'd be preaching."
So I said, "Give me a pencil and paper." And I started working up some sermons. I only preached one of them. They were unpreachable. But eventually i had a whole box of them. I saw myself well.
Can you see what I'm talking about? Don't let His Words depart from before your eyes.
Why?
They are life!... They are life!...
Now -- what are the results? Thank God, God's Word produces results. What are the results of following these directions?
The Results: For they are life unto those that find them (my words), and health to all their flesh.
I believe it! As a Baptist boy on the bed of sickness I wrote in red ink on the fly leaf of my Bible: My motto -- The Bible says it. I believe it. And that settles it.
To me, when I read the Bible, it's God's Word. I believe it. That settles it. And that's the end of it. There's no use in discussing it. Because the Bible says so, His Words are Health. They are medicine. To all their flesh.
Someone asked, "Brother Hagin, are you ever sick?"
"No."
"Well, yeah," he said, "but you know what I mean." And this man was a Full Gospel preacher, a Spirit-filled preacher praying for the sick! He said, "I'll tell you what I take. I've found it helps me so much." And he gave me a long rigamarole of all he was taking -- to keep him going -- so he could preach divine healing. Then he asked, "What do you take?"
I said, "I take what I preach." If it doesn't work for me, I don't know how in the world it would work for anybody else."
"Yes, but do you ever feel just a little draggy?"
"Not often," I said.
"Well, if you do feel a little under the weather, what do you do?"
I said, "I just double up on the medicine. I just double the dose. I double up on my Bible reading. And it works wonders!"
What often happens though is this. People read certain promises, perhaps they can even quote them, and they endeavor to act upon them without really getting them into their spirits. It's more in their heads than in their hearts.
I always do it this way. I don't pray about somethings just right away. For example, in March of 1952 I was in a meeting in Texas City, Texas. Pat, our daughter, was a little girl at the time. She had developed a growth, not a sty, but a growth of some kind near her eye. Before I left home to travel to the Texas City meeting I had laid hands on her and prayed. But when my wife wrote me on Monday, the growth was still there.
Once a month a nurse came around to the grade schools and checked their eyes and ears, etc. Pat knew that when the nurse found that knot she would ask if we'd taken her to a doctor. And he hadn't. So Pat wanted to know was, "What am I going to tell the nurse?"
That night after the service I returned to my hotel, listened to the news from 10:00 to 10:15, turned off the radio, and at 10:15 I picked up my Bible and said to myself, I'm going to read the Bible for an hour on the subject of healing.
I dare say I could have quoted 90% of all the verses in the Bible on the subject of healing. They were all marked in my Bible. But I started with the Book of Genesis and read these verses -- very slowly -- right on down through the New Testament.
At 11:45 I closed my Bible, turned off the light, and said, I'm going to lie here an hour and meditate on these Scriptures.
Dr. Roy Hicks points out that one meaning of the word "meditate" in the Old Testament is "to mutter." That's what I did. There in the nighttime in bed I muttered those Scriptures to myself.
At 12:15 I said to myself, I'm going to sleep for and hour, then I'm going to wake up and meditate on these Scriptures an hour. Then I'll sleep and hour and wake up and meditate an hour until morning.
And I did that. The Holy Spirit dwells in your spirit. Your body needs rest and sleep, but really your spirit doesn't. I have an alarm on the inside of me. I just said to my spirit, I'm going to sleep an hour, and in an hour my spirit awakened me. Then I would meditate on these Scriptures on healing for an hour.
What I needed right then was healing for my daughter. There was no use in my meditating on anything else. No use in thinking about Scriptures that promise finances. That's not what I needed right then.
I did that right on through the night. And the next night I did the same thing.Then on Thursday afternoon I wrote my wife. I said, "In the letter you wrote me Monday you said Pat wanted to know what to tell the nurse."
(I didn't tell her what to tell the nurse. You see, I had taken the Word of God and built it into my spirit. And I didn't go on what I knew about it in my head.)
I wrote, "You tell Pat that Daddy said she's healed. And I know in my heart that she's healed, just as well as I know in my head that two plus two is four, and three times three is nine." And that's all I wrote about it.
(You've got to know God's Word in your spirit -- that's real faith -- just like you know other things in your head.)
My wife told me later that she got the letter, read it, then put it aside till Pat cam in from school.
"Pat, we got a letter from Daddy and here's what he said, You tell Pat that daddy said she's healed. And I know in my heart that she's healed, just as well as I know in my head that two plus two is four, and three times three is nine."
My wife said Pat stood there a minute as if she were thinking about it. Then she said, "If Daddy says so, it's so." She turned around an school-hopped outside about to play.
By Monday, the growth had disappeared. It was gone. She didn't have to tell the nurse anything. And I never did answer that question.
Get the Word of God -- God's Medicine -- built into your spirit.
A wife may know about cooking. She may be able to sit down to a table with nothing on it and explain to her husband all about a delicious recipe, every ingredient in it, and just how to prepare it. But just because she knows all that won't put anything into his stomach. Just knowing that won't put anything in her stomach.
You have to cook up the dish you know how to fix, and then you have to eat it. Even prepared and sitting on the table, your talking about it won't do anything for you.
That's how it is with the Bible. It's right there -- and we talk about it. We discuss the Scriptures. And we quote them. But it really doesn't get in us. It doesn't get down into our spirit like it should. THat's why it doesn't work for us.
To keep your faith strong -- keep feeding it. Constantly feed along faith lines. I often tell folks that just because I ate a T-bone steak once doesn't mean I'm going to say, "I know how that tastes. I've had one so I'm never going to eat another one." No. I'll eat one every chance I get. Continual feeding and exercise of the body keeps it strong. Continually feeding the spirit keeps it strong.
I took something from P.C. Nelson many, many years ago. He said, "Constantly feed along the line of faith and healing. Constantly -- with whatever else you read."
Every day, as a usual thing, no matter what else I'm reading, I'll read something along the lines of faith and healing. I constantly feed along this line.
Now somebody might say, "I'm just going to believe it will work. It worked for Kenneth Hagin so it will work for me."
But if they don't do the same thing I did, it won't work for them. Because their faith is not being fed. Jesus said, "According to your faith, be it unto you."
Like Dad Nelson said, "The time will come that you will need faith, either for yourself, or for some member of your family. And if you haven't kept your faith strong, you'll be at a disadvantage."
Get the Word of God -- God's Medicine -- built into your spirit!