Faith Bible Study Guide
You see, you’ve got to get the revelation of God’s Word in your heart. That’s the reason we have to depend upon the Spirit of God to open and unveil the
Word to us. For example, just because a preacher brings forth a Bible truth, people don’t necessarily understand it immediately. It’s very difficult sometimes to get people to see some truths from the Scriptures because they sometimes try to figure it out with their minds, instead of with their spirits. We have to depend upon the Spirit of God to unveil and unfold the Word to people.
As a young boy, I lay on the bed of sickness for months. Most of the time I tried to figure out how to act on Mark 11:24 and get results. Mark 11:24 says,
“… What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” In the first place, the devil told me that scripture doesn’t mean what it says. Well, if it doesn’t mean what it says, then Jesus told a lie about it! But Jesus doesn’t lie.
The devil told me, “Now that scripture doesn’t mean what things soever ye desire naturally or physically or materially, like healing. [You see, I desired healing.] That just means what things soever ye desire spiritually.” I am sorry to say, I listened to the devil at first. I decided I would send for my pastor and ask him what Mark 11:24 meant. So I asked my grand-mother if she would contact the pastor of the church where my mother and I were members.
My pastor promised to come, but he never showed up. I wept about it when he didn’t come because I had great confidence in him, and I was so sure he would know what Mark 11:24 meant. But after I got healed and went back to the same church, I found out what he believed. He didn’t believe Mark 11:24 meant what it said at all. Thank God he never showed up!
You see, it was a good thing he didn’t come to see me, because at that time I would have believed whatever he would have said. When he found out I did believe Mark
11:24 meant what it said, he commented, “The poor boy stayed in bed so long it affected his mind.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get some more minds affected like that, because as soon as my mind was “affected” – as soon as I believed those words in Mark 11:24 spoken from the lips of Jesus – my paralysis left me! As soon as my mind was “affected,” my heart condition left me. Praise God! I was healed and raised up from the bed of sickness!
When my pastor didn’t come to see me as I lay there bedfast, my grandmother finally said, “I’ll walk over to the north part of town and see another minister who is a pastor in the same kind of church you and your mother belong to.” I had great confidence in this minister too. She walked to that part of town and asked him if he would come to see me, and he said he would. Thank God, he never showed up either! He believed just like the first minister believed.
But I wept when he didn’t come. I am thoroughly convinced now, however, and have been for a long time, that God may have stopped those fellows from coming to see me because He knew I would have believed what they said. But as I lay on that bed, I was still trying to understand Mark 11:24 with my mind, and Satan was still doing his best to talk me out of the notion of believing that Jesus meant what He said in that verse.
Finally my aunt, who belonged to another church, said that her pastor would come to see me. I was thrilled about that because I had gone to Sun-day School there before and had met the pastor. I didn’t much believe that he would come either, but one day I heard the sound of his voice at the front door. I couldn’t see too well and most of the time I couldn’t hear too well, but the minute I heard the voice at the front door, I knew it was he. My heart sort of leaped within me for joy as he came in.
Only one person was allowed in the room at a time to visit me. The doctors wouldn’t allow anyone else in, so no one else came in with him. I couldn’t see more than a few inches away from my face, but I could hear him coming. As he stooped over my bed, his face suddenly came into focus, and I felt him put my hand in his.
I was partially paralyzed and my tongue wouldn’t work right. My throat was partially paralyzed, too, so it would take me some time to say whatever I wanted to say, and then sometimes I would say it backwards. I was trying to ask this pastor to get my New Testament and read Mark 11:24 and tell me if it meant what it said. Isn’t that strange that you should have to ask someone whether or not Jesus meant what He said?
I was struggling, trying to get those words out, and if he would have waited long enough, I would have eventually spoken them out! But before I could say what I was trying to say, he just patted the back of my hand and put on a professional tone of voice and said, “Just be patient, my boy. In a few more days it’ll all be over.”
Well, I got an answer, all right! And I want you to know, spiritually speaking it was dark in that room after he said that. The pastor laid my hand down on my breast and turned around and walked out. I never did get out an intelligible word! This pastor put out the only light – the only beam of hope – I had, just like you’d turned the light out in a room. Then he went into the other room to talk to my family. As a usual thing, I couldn’t hear very well, but I think the devil must have let me hear extra well that day. The pastor went into the other room and my family gathered around him, and I could hear him pray.
He said, “Our Father, we pray that you would help this grandmother and grandfather who are about to be bereaved of this grandson.” Something rose up inside of me. I couldn’t holler it out loud, but I was sort of like the little mischievous boy who had to stand in the corner of the class room. The little boy said, “I may be standing up on the out-side, but on the inside I’m sitting down.” And so, on the inside I just yelled out, “I ain’t dead yet!”
And then this pastor prayed, “Dear God, bless this dear mother. Prepare her heart for this hour of darkness that’s about to overtake her.” On the inside of me I hollered again, “I ain’t dead yet!” And the pastor left. After that incident, I just lay there on that bed for about a month without even reading the Bible. That pastor had just knocked all the props out from under me and had put out all the lights. And so for a little more than a month, I didn’t even look at the Bible.
But finally when I did, I turned to Mark 11:24 and said, “Dear Lord Jesus, I’m coming off this bed of sick-ness. And if I don’t get off this bed, it’ll be because the Son of God told a falsehood, and I’ll just have to tell people to throw the New Testament away.” But I still lay there for eleven more months before I came off that bed. I thought about Mark 11:24, and I meditated on it. I’d pray, and many times I was sure that God had healed me. Then I’d look at my body and feel for my heartbeat, and I still wasn’t well.
As I said, the Word is spiritually understood. The Word is by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, for holy men of old wrote as they were moved by the Spirit of God (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). On the second Tuesday of August 1934 at about 8:30 in the morning as I meditated on that scripture, I finally saw what Mark 11:23 and 24 said. The light came. It was as though someone had turned on a light inside of me.
And in my ministry I keep teaching people about the truth of this scripture over and over. Yet I know they’ll have to understand it with their spirits in order to see the truth of it. But I must keep teaching about Mark 11:23 and 24 because the more you teach a truth, the more folks will eventually catch on to it. I can tell when the truth of that scripture dawns on them, for their eyes kind of light up. Some of the rest of the folks who have not yet seen it just sit there and I can tell that they don’t understand.