Day 3: Session 2 – Pastor Mark Hankins

Blog Admin Jan 25, 2015

The second Sunday service was also taken by Mark Hankins. In his characteristic manner, he stated he would share on ‘The Simple, Fundamental Principles of Faith’. The text used was, Mark 5: 24 -34 and is the popular story of ‘the woman with the issue of blood’.

Pastor Mark kicked off the sermon with a story of his little grandson who claimed that he knew how to swim, that is until he was put into the deep end of a pool and began to sink. Rev Mark said many times Christians think they’ve gotten the hang of faith because they had been splashing around in the shallow end. However, throw them into the deep end and they will likely drown.

In Hebrews 11, the phrase ‘by faith’ was used 20 times! This is the key to getting anything we require in life…by faith. The Bible tells us it is impossible to please God without faith. You cannot please God and not know it for “He is a rewarder of them that seek Him”.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.  Notice that hearing is repeated and this is for emphasis because there must be repetition for faith to develop.
Kenneth E. Hagin, before giving his life to Christ, was terminally ill. On his death bed, while reading Mark 5:34, the Lord ministered to him about the woman with the issue of blood, stating ”if her faith can make her whole, your faith can make you whole too”.

Jesus told the woman her faith had made her whole. So it is individual faith that will make any broken situation whole.
The steps of faith taken by the woman if taken by men and women of faith today will yield great results. The following are the four steps of faith she took to receive healing:

1. Say – the first thing the woman did after she heard the Word was to “say”. What are you saying today? The things we say, good or bad, determines the outcomes of our situations. This is similar to how the black box of an airplane is sought to determine, through analyzing the conversation in the cockpit, how the plane crashed.
   It is not enough to simply say, but we must keep saying.
2. Act – faith requires action – The moment we act based on God’s Word, He will take responsibility to bring it to pass. The church today needs to be filled with verbs (i.e. action) and not just nouns, adjectives and pronouns. How would you act if you received what you’ve been seeking from the Lord? The act of saying and doing something; always precedes the feeling and the healing.
   Your faith will move your mouth to speak and then move you to act.
3. Receive – the Bible records, she felt in her body that she had been healed. This shows she received the tangible power of God.  “Jesus will respond to faith”.
4. Tell it – after she had been healed, the woman told Jesus all she had been through.

Faith is motion activated and is open to any and everyone who will follow the principles. It is not reserved for ‘special people’; every Christian today can follow these steps. In fact it is actually easier for us today. As a result of Christ’s resurrection, Jesus fills everything everywhere. We don’t have to go to a physical location to find Him, we only need to call on His name and He will show up. Rom 10: 8-10 indicates that our confession that Jesus is Lord in difficult situations precedes our salvation. This salvation is close to us but the challenge is using our mouth to speak it.