Word of Faith

By Mark Swarbrick

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The Word of Faith Movement

by Mark Swarbrick

The Word of Faith movement has spread through churches like wildfire and has left destruction in its wake. The Word of Faith doctrine teaches that God always heals in response to faith and that God will always give you money and material blessings if you speak and act in faith.

Also called “Name it and Claim it” or “Gab it and Grab it” or “the Prosperity Doctrine,” this movement’s teaching has split churches and shattered people’s faith. Adherents believe that anything you want can be received from God, provided you say the proper incantation. You just have to speak it into existence. According to their theory, we were all “little gods,” and since God spoke the world into existence, we, as little gods, can make anything happen that we want by speaking it and then fully believing it will happen.

This teaching is in contradiction to the teaching of Scripture. While the Bible does teaches that God is good and loving, that He still works miracles and often does answer our prayers in marvelous ways, nevertheless He is sovereign and sometimes he says “no.” God sees the whole picture. We see only partially. We see “in a glass darkly,” as the Apostle Paul put it. So when we pray, we should ask. We don’t demand. We don’t order God around. We supplicate with humility. We pray as Jesus did, “Not my will, but Thine be done.”

The Word of Faith doctrine can be very destructive, leading people to discard Christianity altogether when they learn that Christianized magic just doesn’t work. Word of Faith followers can be intolerant of anyone disagreeing with their position. They have the true gospel, they think, and anything else is of the devil as far as they are concerned and they can be quite militant in proselytizing others to their persuasion. Not all of them are this way, but some are. I saw it first hand when such people split my church in half with their false teachings.

We had one young man in a wheel chair from a broken back received in a 4-wheeling accident. He was told by one Word of Faith adherent that it was his own fault that he was in a wheel chair because he had not exercised faith to demand his healing. You can imagine the spiritual and emotional damage being caused by such teaching.

Name it and Claim it Doesn’t Work

I saw the failure of name it and claim it philosophy dramatically displayed one Sunday morning. After my sermon, a man came forward for prayer. The doctors said he was dying of heart disease and only had a short time to live. He was of the name-it and claim-it persuasion. I prayed for him that God would heal him and in my mind I asked God to overlook his errant doctrine. I understood that God loves us, not because we are right about everything, but because he is a God of love.

While I prayed for him, I could barely hear myself think, for this man was loudly and defiantly ordering God to heal him. He was claiming his godhood, calling his healing into existence, and claiming it was going to happen because he said so. I felt a sadness in my spirit, for I could clearly hear the Holy Spirit bearing witness to me that he was not going to be healed. He died not long after.

Shortly thereafter, on another Sunday morning, an elderly gentleman came forward for prayer. He was not of the name it and claim it faction. I asked what he needed prayer for. In a voice filled with pain, he said, “I just had open heart surgery a couple weeks ago, and today my chest is hurting terribly. I can’t stand the pain!”

I could see by the look on his face that he was in excruciating agony. He could barely talk. I reached out to touch him. I remember thinking I should touch him very gently, since he had recently had his rib cage sawed open. I closed my eyes to pray and gingerly let my fingers touch the front of his chest. I took a breath to speak but never got the chance, for  that is when the miracle happened.

Suddenly I felt his chest go POP! I felt it. I heard it. It startled me. I had not even said any words of prayer yet. I stepped back. I didn’t know what had happened. “I felt something!” I exclaimed.

“So did I!” He said excitedly, a big happy smile spreading across his face. “The pain is gone!”

We worshiped and praised God for this miracle. I don’t know what was wrong or how God fixed it. Perhaps because they had sawed his rib cage in two, it was a bit out of place and needed to be moved into place. I don’t know. All I know is, I did not touch him hard enough to do anything. When my fingers gently touched his chest, he was instantly healed of his pain. Did God push his bones back into place?

What is for certain is that he came forward, not to demand healing, but to humbly ask Jesus to help him, and Jesus did, because he is God, because He is sovereign, and because he cares. Miracles do happen when we approach God with the right attitude.

Unanswered Prayers

 “You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves…Why, LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?” (Psalms 88:6-7,14)

What we call unanswered prayer is part of the human condition, as the following true story illustrates:

New Mexico Territory, March 19^th, 1851

“Help! Help! Oh, for the love of God, will nobody save us?” The woman shrieked and screamed urgent cries to God for deliverance as the savage Indians fell upon this mother of seven. The band of Indians had approached their lone wagon on the old Fort Yuma Road near the Gila River crossing in what is today Arizona. After feigning friendship, the Indians pulled out their clubs and bludgeoned the family to death. Roys and Mary Oatman were killed, along with four of their children. Five, if you count the baby which Mrs. Oatman was carrying in her womb.

One 14-year-old boy was clubbed, tossed over a cliff, and left for dead, but later revived and survived. Two of the daughters, Olive and Mary, were spared and taken captive by the Indians and spent the next year being treated with cruelty as slaves of the Yavapai Indians. After a year, they were sold to the Mohave, who treated them with kindness and accepted them as part of the tribe, so much so that when the army “rescued” Olive from the Mohave, she cried and grieved deeply for some time thereafter at being torn away from the tribe that had become her family.

During their captivity, Mary was often sick. During a year of famine, she succumbed to the privations and died. Through all this the girls maintained their faith in God and set aside time every day to pray and worship. When Mary died, the Indians were amazed at how Mary faced death, without fear and with praise for God on her lips. In later years, when Christian missionaries approached the Mohave, they were welcomed and listened to because of the impact that Mary Oatman had made upon the Indians as she faced eternity. Many came to Christ because of the suffering the Oatmans suffered.  

The Oatmans suffered from unanswered prayer. It is a condition that is common to mankind. We have all experienced what people call unanswered prayer, but the fact is there are no unanswered prayers. Sometimes God says “No,” and other times he says “Wait.” God always answers. It is just that sometimes we don’t hear, because we only hear what we want to hear. All along, God had a greater miracle in mind for the Oatman family. A miracle that today, as they enjoy heaven, along with those who came to Christ because of them, they are eternally grateful for.

Philippians 1:6 says that “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion…” God uses pain and suffering to perfect us, and for the Christian, that usually means we will have unanswered prayers, for when do we ever have pain and suffering and not pray for deliverance? 1 Peter 4:1 tells us that “he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.” God does not deliver us from every hardship because he is the God who brings good out of evil, as it is written, “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God…” (Romans 8:28)

Suffering Molds and Makes Us

In the movie Star Trek V, The Final Frontier, Captain Kirk makes a profound statement. The villain Sybok has just taken over the Enterprise by using his mystical ability to remove from a person’s nervous system all effects of stress, pain and unhappiness. The resulting euphoria renders the subject malleable and a willing follower of Sybok.

After bringing Doctor McCoy (Bones) under his spell, Sybok wants to work his charms on the Captain. Doctor McCoy suggests being open minded about it. Kirk answers with this:

“Bones, You’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, that make us who we are. We lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away. I need my pain!”

Great lines, and what truth! The things we do suffer through as Christians do make us who we are and as we walk through the valleys with Christ, we become more Christ-like.

I have been blessed with seeing some amazing miracles in my life. I believe He does them in the lives of all Christians, and we will all see them if we look for them and not pretend they were matters of circumstance or luck. Yet I have also had many “unanswered prayers,” or to put it more accurately, prayers that were not answered the way I had hoped at the time.

The Apostle Paul tells of his experience with such times. He says, “There was given me a thorn in the flesh…I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-8)

Imagine that. The great Apostle Paul raised the dead, healed the lame and performed many other remarkable miracles, yet when he had a physical ailment (probably failing eyesight) and asked God for healing, God says “no.” Did Paul complain it was not fair? Did he demand God heal him?

Listen to what he says: “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

As a Pentecostal preacher I am fully convinced that God blesses us with miracles today in answer to prayer. The Bible says so and I have seen it with my own eyes and ears. God performs miracles today, but not always. Sometimes he does another miracle: He allows suffering and uses it to do His work in our heart.

And now I present the reader with a conundrum. Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24) So, if God does not always answer prayer as we wish, how can we pray with total confidence that we will get what we ask?

There are certainly theologians who can give a lengthy answer to this puzzle that would be far more sophisticated than I can supply. Let me share how I deal with it in my mind. When I pray, I am fully convinced that God hears and cares and that it is extremely likely, that if it is God’s will to answer as I ask, He will do so. If I have doubts about it being God’s will, then I ask him to do it only if it is His will. I don’t pompously demand; I humbly beseech. My attitude is one of expectation that God is going to do what is best and I trust Him with that. My faith is in God’s love and power, not in circumstances.  My faith is in Him, not in a specific result. I direct my mind to expect good things from a good God while trying to listen to see if God is saying “no,” or “wait.”

I believe this humble approach, asking with faith, but asking, not demanding, moves the hand of God more effectively than attempting the mental gymnastics of trying to work up a false faith that demands what we want from God. Consider which approach is most likely to work with our own sons and daughters: “Dad give me the car keys!” or “Dad, if it’s alright with you, I would like to borrow the car tonight.” The child who believes in the goodness of a parent to grant a reasonable request and trusts that the parent knows best if the answer is “not now,” is far more likely to receive the desired answers than a child who pompously demands their own selfish wants.

Let us remember that when we don’t get what we prayed for, when we encounter suffering and trials, that God is performing another miracle, one that will cause “all things to work together for good to those who love God…” (Romans 8:28). It is the miracle of unanswered prayer. Garth Brooks in his famous song Unanswered Prayers says it well:

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers

Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs

That just because he doesn’t answer, doesn’t mean he don’t care

Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.

 

 

 

 

 



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