David Hathaway

We receive all the promises of God by faith. When I had the throat cancer in 1964, and I said, “Lord if You want me to stay in my church, don’t heal me, but if You want me to leave my church and go to Russia and to Israel as an evangelist, I need a miracle,” – God healed me – and it was by faith that I went! Looking back, I can see that my life has been the fulfilment of all that we’re reading in Hebrews 11. I went by faith! And by faith I have receive the promises of God.

How do we please God? So many think we please God by what we do, and in a sense that’s true. But it’s more. Verse 6 says, ‘without faith it’s impossible to please God’! Wow. So, we’ve got to have a level of faith that’s beyond the simple, nominal faith of salvation. It’s got to be a faith that somehow gets translated into ACTION and becomes a driving motive.  Faith has been the motivation behind my life! Right from the beginning I’ve wanted to please God. When I received the Holy Spirit aged 13, I knew 1 Corinthians 12 says there are nine gifts, and Paul says choose, covet the best gifts… I can pray in tongues ‘more than anybody’, I can prophesy. But the one gift I wanted more than any other was the gift of faith. I saw faith as a GIFT, not just as a way of ‘thinking’, but as a GIFT that would change my life and enable me to do all the impossible things that, at that time, I didn’t yet know God was going to ask me to do! 

Faith that is demonstrated by what we do! Not just by what we say, but by our ACTIONS. Looking back on my life, I’m suddenly realising that this is what has happened with me. Faith is something practical, it’s substance, evidence – of ‘something’. But remember, right from the very beginning, we’re ‘saved by faith’. But by faith in what? We’re not saved by ‘having faith’… We’re not saved from sin ‘simply by faith’ – we’re saved by faith in Christ! It’s faith in Him, it’s specific. It’s very strong!

I want you, together with me, to look at this question of miracles, the gift of faith and how to receive healing. Miracles will come, but it’s not always easy. There are times when I am facing challenges so great that I have to say to the Lord, “Why can’t I do it?” Those of you who are seeking to pray with the sick and see miracles… When it doesn’t happen, ask the question, get alone with Jesus… Wherever your ‘place’ is where you go alone in prayer. I’m laughing at the joke that every man should have a ‘man cave’, a place where the husband can get away from his wife… But we need that equivalent with God. The Bible speaks of going into your ‘closet’, that’s simply somewhere where you can be alone with God in prayer…

We all walk through the valley of despair and heartache. In our spiritual experience we desire to stay on the mountain, in the glory and splendour – but God needs us in the valley where the problems are! You cannot live forever on the mountain. We have to come down as the disciples did from the Mount of Transfiguration. Recently, somebody sent me a message of encouragement, referring to my frequent prayer times on the mountains, he said that I face the valleys with the strength I receive on the mountain… Isn't that true for all of us? 

We all go through temptations and trials, because, they 'show that your faith is genuine' (1 Peter 1.7). I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had not experienced my cancers and imprisonment. There never comes a point when we are not tested. If you are trusting in God, this does not mean you won’t have trials and temptations and difficulties. You will! Because it’s through the trial and the fiery furnace that your faith grows. It makes me think of the three Hebrew children who were thrown into the fiery furnace, or Daniel when he was thrown in the lions’ den! This is the test of your faith. You go through the fire, you face the lions, you face the tribulations, the difficulties that you will have – tomorrow may be more difficult than any other day in the rest of your life! But your faith must not fail because it is being tested.

Faith is step by step, climbing higher! God can do amazing things! In my life, faith has grown through the trials and tribulations I’ve been through. The more miracles I saw, the more I expected. From my teenage years I had seen some small miracles, but when I was about 21, 22 – pastor of a church in Harrogate – one of my senior men, on whom I depended for support, was found to be terminally ill with bowel cancer. They removed most of his insides and sent him home with a colostomy and a catheter and only 3 weeks to live. The Holy Spirit put in my heart to pray that God would heal him. The miracle was so big, he was totally healed and back in the church. He never died of cancer! So you see, my faith was growing step by step. That’s what Peter is referring to, it’s putting your faith to the test. Sometimes your faith has got to go through a fiery experience in order to prove that it really works.

James 5 says that the prayer of faith shall save the sick. This is faith in a more powerful sense. It’s the action of praying and believing that sees the miracle. People know that I’ve been healed of cancer twice, but on both occasions, it was a far bigger miracle than you can realise. On neither occasion did I have any medication, not a tablet, no chemo, nothing. I took a step of faith and I was completely healed. I was standing very clearly by a very strong element of faith. 1 Peter 1:7 says, the trial of your faith is more precious than gold – gold perishes, faith doesn’t – although it’s tested with fire – this faith lasts! The real question of faith is when it’s put to the test.

I want to encourage you to seek the Lord in a new way. I know we are going through difficult times. Throughout my life I’ve been through difficult times. But through it all God has always made a way of escape, that’s His Promise, 1 Corinthians 10:13. In your greatest difficulties, God makes a way through. We’ve not been called to live a life of comfort and luxury, but we are called to ‘live a life’! In Psalm 37 David is urging a confidence in God. This is what I want you to have – confidence. God is in control and will give you the desires of your heart if you will commit your way to Him.

When your delight is in the Lord, when your pleasure is in the relationship you have with Him, He will give you the desires of your heart. When you love somebody, you ‘delight’ in them, you are happy with them. If your relationship with the Lord is like that, then, Scripture says, He will give you the desires of your heart. Many times when I’m praying, I’m asking for things which are not just my needs, but which are also the desire of my heart… I’ve always from my youth desired to be an evangelist. I never dreamt my ministry would be as amazing as it is. My dream was just to do it. To get on with the job. But it was my dream – it was a delight, and my delight was in the Lord! And God has given me far more than I could ask! 

When we commit our way to Him, even our steps, our direction, are ordered by the Lord. They are planned by Him, in advance, fore-ordained. Because the Lord knows the end from the beginning. And if a man’s steps are ordered by Him, v23 says, ‘He delights in his way.’ This means, God will be delighted in the way that you are going! We need to put our lives in God’s Hands!

‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures… Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.’ The valley of the shadow is where the light of the sun is cut off. I love walking in the mountains. On the mountain top the sun can be bright, but when you drop down into that valley, there’s no sunlight, it can’t penetrate the valley walls – that is the valley where the light of the sun is cut off! I want to tell you that wherever you go in your life, whatever trial, whatever problem, whatever difficulty you are going through – even if you feel the light of the sun is cut off – then God will not fail you. He says His rod and His staff will comfort you, and you will come safely through.

I love the promises in Psalms. There comes a time in your life and mine when only God can satisfy. In my teenage years my prayer was, “My flesh longs for You Lord, I’m thirsting for You, I’m hungry for You,” – but more, the next verse, I’ve never forgotten it, “to see Your Power and Your Glory, NOW, as I have seen You in the past, in the sanctuary” – this is my heart’s desire, NOW! That just as I have seen the Power of God in the past, I want to see MORE, NOW, IN THE FUTURE. I have to live, I cannot die, they can’t take me until I see Your Power, Your Glory, NOW – GREATER THAN ANYTHING I HAVE SEEN IN THE PAST!

When our delight is in the Lord, there will be a tangible, physical evidence! We will be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth fruit in season! Our leaves shall not wither! And whatever we do shall prosper! That’s a phenomenal promise and encouragement! 'Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.' (Psalm 1.1-3, NKJV)

The Lord’s Coming is as a thief in the night. But for the believer, the Apostle Paul teaches that we should be living in expectation and anticipation of that Great Day, because in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 4, he writes, “YOU, brethren, are NOT in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief!” Paul is saying, as far as the world is concerned, the Coming of Christ will be a sudden unexpected happening – but you, brothers and sisters in Christ, should not be in such darkness that the Coming of the Lord will overtake you as a thief! The suddenness of the Coming of the Lord is a shock to the world, but not so to the Believer, who should be expecting it, because we are children of the Light and children of the Day.

If we are looking for revival, for the Power of God, it will come through a greater outpouring of the Spirit, a Latter Rain just as Joel prophesied. The church celebrates Pentecost year by year, as long as you think of it as something that happened two thousand years ago, you will never experience the fullness of what God intends. The prophecies, the Words of Jesus are quite clear, a GREATER outpouring MUST happen in the last days before He comes back.

I believe we are now literally living in the days of the latter rain, and that we should experience those same things the prophet Joel and Peter describe – but with an even greater anointing now, than happened originally with Peter and the disciples in the Acts of the Apostles! I have always believed this. From my earliest days of seeking the Holy Spirit, I always believed that there would come in the ‘last days’ a further and even GREATER outpouring of the Holy Spirit before the Lord returns. In my own ministry, I’m always looking for the increasing, GREATER miracles. I have seen phenomenal things, but I don’t want to say that they have been greater than the miracles Jesus did – but they ought to be, they HAVE to be! Come on! If Jesus was right in what He said, “YOU will do GREATER miracles than I do”, then we MUST…

What happened on the Day of Pentecost was an explosive start to the Church! Too many say, “That was in the past, it’s over, we can’t expect that to happen today.” Well, I’m sorry, I believe it CAN, MUST happen. I have seen most of the things outlined in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles HAPPEN, and I EXPECT to see them happen in my life, in my ministry – NOW! We are all so familiar with Acts Chapter 2, we know what happened on the Day of Pentecost. We know Peter described it very clearly, saying, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, And it shall come to pass in the last days, God says, I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” Acts 2:16-17. We are all so familiar with this and with its fulfilment. But I want to deal with something which I believe is becoming something of a controversy. I expect these things in Acts 2, spoken of by the prophet Joel, to happen in my life and ministry. That’s what the Scripture says!

Why did God bring Israel out of Egypt into the Land by such a difficult route? They could have gone a different way. But God WANTED them to cross the Red Sea. Firstly, because it needed a miracle that God opened the waters, and once the Israelites had crossed over, there was no way back! But secondly, in opening the waters, the Egyptian army – at that time, the most powerful army in the world – was drawn into the sea with all its might, its chariots and warriors – so that when God released the pent-up water, the whole of the Egyptian army was drowned! The power of the enemy was destroyed! I believe the Red Sea typifies the Blood of Christ. God opens a way into the Promised Land through the Blood of Christ – and also destroys the power of the enemy! But we have to fight to possess the land. I challenge you – your life needs to be a spiritual battle. The reason I have so much strength and health at my age it because I haven’t finished the battle yet! 

So many look at the Promises of Scripture, at the Promises of Pentecost, and they say, “That’s for the past, it’s historic, it doesn’t apply today.” It is so easy to know what is in the Bible, but then dismiss it. We read it, study it, preach it, ‘spiritualise’ it, until there is a danger that we make it mean something else. But everything in the Bible can happen today! Don’t limit God. I want to challenge you to a new kind of faith. We are commanded to go in and possess all the blessings which God has promised.  1 Corinthians 12:31 says, ‘Covet the best gifts’. When I first received the Holy Spirit, I was thinking, “What gifts do I want?” I said, “Lord, more than anything else, give me the Gift of Faith” – because I saw that one gift as the major key that would open the door into all the rest of them! I can never claim to have the Gift of Faith, because I want to tell you quite bluntly, that gift is only as good as your ‘today’ – you have only got the Gift of Faith if you can put it into action today!!!