Delightsome Agbabo

August 1 MOUNTAINS AND VALLEYS Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ . . . . — 2 CORINTHIANS 2:14 I hear people talk about being in the valley, and then on the mountain, and then back in the valley again. To tell the truth about it, I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ve been saved since 1933, and I’ve never been anywhere but on the mountaintop! You don’t have to get down in the valley. People talk about their “valley experiences.” I’ve never had any valley experiences. Oh, yes, there have been tests and trials — but I was on top of the mountain, shouting my way through it all, living above it. Praise God! You see, those who say they’re in the valleys are looking at life from the natural standpoint — from the physical. They are trying to get a spiritual answer from the physical — and you just can’t do that. Years ago, when I came among Pentecostal people after having been a Baptist, I’d hear them talk about “going through the valley.” And when I di...

July 31 SPIRIT WALK There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. — ROMANS 8:1 Conscience is the voice of the human spirit. Reason is the voice of the soul, or the mind. Feeling is the voice of the body. The Holy Spirit does not bear witness with our reasoning. The Holy Spirit does not bear witness with our feelings. The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits. I’m very careful about using the word “feeling.” When we sense the Presence of God in a service, people often say, “I felt it.” But we really don’t feel it physically so much as we sense it spiritually. So I am careful to differentiate between the two, because people slip into the feeling realm so easily. Then, when they feel good, they say, “Glory to God! Hallelujah! I’m saved! I’m filled with the Spirit! Everything is fine!” But when they feel bad, they get a long face and they say, “I’ve lost it all. I don’t feel like I did, so I must be backsl...

July 30 THE DOMINANT ONE . . . Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. — GALATIANS 5:16 I learned early in my Christian life to let my spirit, my inward man, dominate my outward man. So even as a teenage boy standing alone without the fellowship of other teenagers who believed like I did, I didn’t have the problems some do. If there was anyone in my Sunday school class who was saved besides me, I didn’t know it. They would cuss, drink, attend worldly dances, and they were all mixed up with one another in sexual activities. They’d say to me, “Why don’t you do those things?” First, my conscience wouldn’t allow me to do those things. Also, I’d reply to them, “I’m a new creature.” And they would ask, “What’s a new creature?” (That pretty well proved they weren’t new creatures!) You don’t need to be preached to about do’s and don’ts; just let your spirit dominate you. God will enlighten you through your spirit. Let the new man on the inside be the dominant one. Do...

July 29 TENDER Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron. — 1 TIMOTHY 4:2 Keep a tender conscience — don’t violate it — because it is your conscience, the voice of your spirit, that relates to your mind what the spirit of God is saying to you down inside. If you don’t keep a tender conscience, spiritual things will not be clear to you. During the mid-’30s, I pastored a country church and usually spent Sunday nights in the home of a dear old gentleman who was about eighty-nine years old. He and I didn’t get up as early as the rest of his family on this farm, so we had breakfast together about 8 o’clock. He’d have one of those old-fashioned coffee pots sitting on the woodstove with the coffee just boiling in it. I’ve seen him pour that boiling coffee into a mug, hold it up to his mouth, and drink the whole cup of boiling coffee in one gulp. The first time I saw him do it, I felt like I was burning all the way down! How could he do that? I certainly couldn...

July 28 INSIDE HELP And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men. — ACTS 24:16 Soon after I was saved and healed, I returned to high school. Now, I don’t know how it happened exactly — none of my family cursed — but we had a neighbor who could “cuss” up a storm, and I guess I picked it up from him. So at school one day, I said to one of the boys, “Hell, no . . .” The minute I said it — and I didn’t know a thing about the Spirit-filled life — in my heart I said, “Oh, dear God, forgive me!” What condemned me? The Holy Spirit? No. It was my own spirit. This new creature, this new creation, this new man, doesn’t talk that way. Now, the flesh may want to continue doing some things it used to do, or talking like it used to talk, but you have to “crucify” the flesh. And a good way to crucify the flesh is to bring any problems right out into the open immediately. That’s what I did when I realized I had cussed. I didn’t wait until I was...

July 27 WHEN YOU MISS IT For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. — 1 JOHN 3:20,21 If you’re a Christian, does the Holy Spirit condemn you if you do wrong? No. It is your spirit that condemns you. This is something we need to learn. We haven’t learned it yet, because we’ve been taught wrong. The Holy Spirit will not condemn you. Why? Because God won’t condemn you. Study what Paul wrote in Romans 8. He asked, “Who is it that condemns? Does God condemn? No, it is God who justifies.” Jesus said that the only sin the Holy Spirit will convict the world of is the sin of rejecting Jesus (John 16:7-9). I’ve found that even when I’ve missed it, the Holy Spirit in me is the One who shows me the way out. He comforts me. He helps me. He doesn’t condemn me. So it is your conscience, the voice of your spirit, that condemns you when you miss it. It is your spirit that knows the very mo...

July 26 OBEYING CONSCIENCE And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. — ACTS 23:1 It is interesting to go through the Epistles that Paul wrote to the Church and see what he said about his conscience. He always obeyed his conscience. Once I heard some preachers questioning one of the top evangelists in the world. They asked him, “We know God called and anointed you to stand in this ministry — but is there something that you do from the natural standpoint that contributes to the success of your ministry more than any other thing?” I listened intently to hear what he had to say. I knew he was a man of prayer, and prayer is important, but he didn’t mention prayer. He answered, “Of course, God called me to be an evangelist. But you are asking what has contributed to my success from my standpoint. And the one thing I do that has contributed to my success more than anything else is: I always instantly obey ...

July 25 CONSCIENCE . . . While as the first tabernacle was yet standing: Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience. . . . How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God,purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? — HEBREWS 9:8,9,14 Is your conscious a safe guide? Yes it is, if your spirit has become a new man in Christ. Remember Second Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” That’s talking about the inward man, the spirit of man. Your conscious is the voice of your spirit speaking to you. If your spirit is a new man in Christ, with the life and nature of God in it, then it is a safe guide. A person who has never been born again could not follow the voice of his spirit, or ...

July 24 NUMBER TWO: THE INWARD VOICE I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. — ROMANS 9:1 The number one way the Holy Spirit guides us is through the inward witness. The number two way is through the inward voice. The inward man has a voice just as the outward man has a voice. We call the voice of the inward man “conscience.” Sometimes it is also called intuition, inner guidance, or “the still, small voice.” It is not the voice of the Spirit of God speaking to us, because when the Holy Spirit speaks, His voice is more authoritative. The still, small voice is the voice of our own spirit. Yet our spirit picks it up from the Holy Spirit who lives inside us. For example, I relate in the devotion of July 19 how a “buzzer” seemed to go off inside me as I stepped inside that building that was for sale in Tulsa. I knew on the inside — This is it! But I didn’t want to listen. When my wife asked about it later, I said, “No, we’ll just stay w...

July 23 WHERE HE IS Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. — JOHN 14:23 As Jesus goes on teaching in John chapter 14, He begins to talk about the Holy Spirit coming to us: Jesus and the Father, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, come to abide in us. At present, Jesus literally — with His resurrected body — is seated at the right hand of the Father. Yet the Bible talks about “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” You see, the reason why Christ is in us is because the Holy Spirit is in us. The Holy Spirit said through Paul, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). And in Second Corinthians 6:16 we read, “. . . for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” We’ve never plumbed the depths of what this is rea...

July 22 LEARN TO LISTEN Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come . . . he will shew you things to come. — JOHN 16:13 A minister friend of mine had three serious automobile accidents in less than ten years. People were killed in these accidents. His wife was almost killed, and the minister himself was seriously injured. Both he and his wife were healed by the hand of God. When he heard me teaching along these lines of listening to your spirit, the inward witness, he said, “Brother Hagin, every one of those accidents could have been avoided if I had listened to that inward intuition.” Yet people will argue, “I just don’t know why those accidents happened to a good Christian. He’s a preacher.” Well, he had to learn to listen to his spirit just like you had to learn to listen to yours. People want to blame God and say that God did these things. But as this preacher told me, “If I had listened to the inward intuition I had that something was about to happen, I would have waited and pra...

July 21 CHRISTIAN EQUIPMENT But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. — 1 JOHN 2:20 Even as a newborn babe in Christ, still bedfast, I would know things by an inward witness. For example, my mother said to me one day, “Son, I hate to bother you, but something is wrong with Dub.” Dub, my older brother, had gone to the Rio Grande Valley to look for work. (He was seventeen at the time.) Those were Depression days. Momma was a Christian, although not a Spirit-filled one, and she just had a witness of uneasiness and trouble in her spirit. “I don’t know what it is,” she said. “He may be in jail or something.” “Momma,” I said, “I’ve known that for several days. But Dub’s not in jail. His physical life was in danger, but I’ve already prayed, and he’ll make it. Dub’s all right. His life will be spared.” Three nights later, Dub came in. He hadn’t found work, so he had decided to ride the freight trains home. A lot of people were “riding the rails” in those days. However, ...

June 20 HATH Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, HATH everlasting life [zoe], and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. JOHN 5:24 Hath! You’ve got eternal life now! You’re not going to get it when you get to Heaven; you’ve got zoe now! But if you don’t know about that zoe life — if you don’t know what it is, or how to walk in the light of it — you’ll never be able to enjoy the realities of it. You can have something in the natural and not know you have it, and it won’t do you any good. For example, sometime before Christmas of 1947, I decided to put away a little money for my wife’s gift. I started by putting a $20 bill in the secret compartment of my billfold. Then I forgot all about it. A few weeks later, I ran out of gas. I didn’t have any money to buy any gas, so I had to call one of the deacons of the church to come and get me. Sometime later I was going through the billfold and found that $20....

June 19 RECEIVE HIM But as many as received him [Jesus Christ], to them gave he power [the right] to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. — JOHN 1:12 Receiving Jesus Christ is an act of the will. So man acts on the Word of God by an act of his will. Man knows he is without a Savior, without an approach to God, without eternal life, so he can look up to God and pray, in essence: Father, I come to You in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know You will not turn me away, or cast me out, because You said in Your Word, “. . . him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” I believe in my heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe that He died for my sins, according to the Scriptures. I believe that He was raised from the dead for my justification, according to the Scriptures. “Justification” means that I might be set right with God. I believe that because of His death, burial, and resurrection, I am set right with God. So I receive Jesus as my Savio...

July 16 ABUNDANT PROVISION . . . Let them say continually, Let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. — PSALM 35:27 Here’s something else the Lord said to me during the vision I had in February 1959. It was not just for my benefit, but for yours too. He said, “If you will learn to follow that inward witness in all areas of your life, I will make you rich. I will guide you in all the affairs of life — financial as well as spiritual. I’m not opposed to my children being rich. I am opposed to their being covetous.” (Some people think the Lord is interested only in their spiritual life — nothing else — but He’s interested in everything we’re interested in.) The Lord has done for me exactly what He said He would do — He has made me rich. Am I a millionaire? No. That’s not what the word “rich” means. “Rich” means a full supply. It means an abundant provision. I’ve got more than a full supply. I’ve got more than an abundant provision. It’s because I learn...

July 15 GREEN LIGHT Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. — ISAIAH 48:17 A pastor once asked me, “Brother Hagin, do you ever go to small churches?” I replied, “Yes, I’ll go anywhere the Lord says to go.” Then the pastor told me about his church and said, “If God ever speaks to you about it, we want you to come.” But I just dismissed his invitation. However, several months later when I was praying about something else, this conversation came back to me. Then every day it kept coming back. Finally, after about the fourth day, I said, “Lord, do You want me to go to that church?” And the more I’d pray about it, the better I’d feel on the inside of me about accepting that invitation. (This wasn’t a physical feeling — but one I recognized in my spirit.) Sitting by my bedside, Jesus referred to this. “The more you thought about it, the better you felt about it,” He r...

July 14 STOP LIGHT Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth . . . . — JOHN 16:13 For the three days prior to my vision of the Lord, I had been trying to write a letter to a pastor, confirming a date I was to hold for him. I’d get half a page written to him and then I’d tearit up and throw it in the wastebasket. The second and third days I did the same thing. As the Lord sat by my bedside, He said, “I’m going to show you how the inward witness works so you won’t make the same mistakes you’ve made in the past. You see Me now sitting here talking to you. This is the prophet’s ministry in manifestation — and a manifestation of discerning of spirits [discerning of spirits is seeing into the spirit realm]. You hear Me talking to you. And I am bringing you, through the vision, a word of knowledge and a word of wisdom. I’m telling you not to go to that church. The pastor wouldn’t accept the way you minister. But I’m never again going to lead you this way....

July 13 SUPERNATURAL GUIDANCE . . . I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. — JOHN 14:16,17 The inward witness is just as supernatural as guidance through visions, angels, and so on. It is not as spectacular, but it is just as supernatural. Many people are looking for the spectacular, and they miss the supernatural that’s right there all the time! Let me go back to what Jesus said to me when He appeared to me in an open vision in February 1959 in El Paso, Texas. I heard footsteps coming down the hospital corridor, so I looked up to see who it was. When I saw Jesus standing in the doorway, it seemed like the hair on my neck and head stood straight up. Goose pimples popped out all over my body. Jesus was wearing a white robe and Roman sandals. He was about 5’11”...

July 12 NUMBER ONE: INWARD WITNESS He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself . . . . — 1 JOHN 5:10 The way God confirms the most important thing that can ever happen to you, is also the way God leads His children: by the inward witness. The most important aspect of your life — becoming a child of God — is confirmed to you by God’s Spirit bearing witness with your spirit, that you have been born again (Rom. 8:16). This will help you understand that the number one way God leads His children is through the inward witness. That is almost always the way I am led. Yes, I’ve had revelations, and I’ve had God lead me in other ways, too. But most of the time, I am led by the inward witness. And you can be too! Confession: I am a child of God. I have been born again. I am born of the Spirit of God. God’s Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they arethe sons of God. I am a child of God; therefore, the Spirit o...

July 11 BEARETH WITNESS The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. — ROMANS 8:16 God is going to guide us. God is going to lead us. We have scripture that says so: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”(Rom. 8:14). How does God lead? Romans 8:16 gives us a clue: “The Spirit itself [Himself] beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” You don’t know you are a child of God because someonenprophesies that you are. You don’t know you are a child of God because someone says they feel like you are. That’s not how you know these things. You are not a child of God because you had a vision. (You might, or you might not have a vision, but that’s not what makes you a child of God.) How, then, does the Bible say we know we are the children of God? God’s Spirit “bears witness” with our spirit. Sometimes you can’t explain exactly how you know, but you just know it down on the inside of you. You have an i...

July 10 LOOK INSIDE For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. — 1 CORINTHIANS 14:14 In every crisis of life, I’ve learned to look to my spirit inside of me. I’ve learned to pray in other tongues. And while I’m praying in other tongues, guidance comes up from inside of me, because my spirit is active when I pray in tongues. My mind is not active then; my spirit is active. And it is through my spirit that God gives me guidance. Sometimes while I’m praying in tongues privately, I’ll interpret what I’ve said; and through the interpretation,I’ll get guidance. But this doesn’t happen most of the time. Most of the time, while I’m just praying in tongues, from somewhere way down deep inside, the knowledge of what God wants me to do will rise up in me. (It’s difficult to explain spiritual things in natural ways, but I can sense something rising up within me.) It begins to take shape and form, and although I can’t always put it into words (because...

July 9 MY SPIRIT PRAYETH For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. — 1 CORINTHIANS 14:14 God is a Spirit. Man is a spirit. God contacts us and deals with us through our spirits. He leads us through our spirits. He does not communicate directly through our minds, because the Holy Spirit does not dwell in our minds. And God does not contact us through our bodies either. It should be comparatively easy for Spirit-filled believers to locate the human spirit. Those tongues come from your spirit, down on the inside of you. You speak the words out physically — but they don’t come out of the physical senses. You yield your tongue to your own spirit, and the Holy Spirit in your spirit gives you the utterance. The tongues don’t come out of your mind or your soul. When you pray in tongues, your mind, your understanding, is unfruitful. Your understanding doesn’t know what you’re saying. When you pray in tongues, the words come out of your innermost ...

July 8 RIVERS OF LIVING WATER In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) — JOHN 7:37-39 Jesus used water as a type of the Holy Spirit. Notice that there are two different experiences referred to in our texts for yesterday and today. One, the New Birth, is a well of water in you, springing up into everlasting life. The other, the infilling of the Holy Spirit, is rivers. Not just one river — but rivers. The water in the well (salvation) is for one purpose: It blesses you. It is for your benefit. But the rivers (the infilling of the Holy Spirit) flow out of you to bless someone else. The purpose of being filled with the Holy Spirit is so that...

July 7 A WELL OF WATER Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? . . . Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. — JOHN 4:10,11,13,14 Bible scholars know that water is a type of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself used water as a type of the Spirit. When Jesus told the woman at the well of Samaria that He was the Giver of living water, she got it confused with the water in the well — natural water. Then Jesus said, “. . . the water that I shall give . . . shall be . . . a well of water spr...

July 6 BORN OF THE SPIRIT That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. — JOHN 3:6,7 Under the New Covenant, every child of God has the Spirit of God. First, they are born of the Spirit. Then they can be filled with the Spirit. And they can expect to be led by the Spirit. Born of the Spirit. The spirit of man is the part of man which is born again. The Christian’s spirit has the life and nature of God in it. The inward man is born of God’s Spirit and has the Spirit of God in him. Filled with that Spirit. The born-again Christian can be filled with that same Spirit which he already has in him. And when he is filled with that Spirit, there will be an overflowing of that Spirit. He will speak with other tongues as the Holy Spirit gives him utterance (Acts 2:4). Led by the Spirit. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Even the born-again one who has not be...

July 5 LED BY THE SPIRIT For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. — ROMANS 8:14 The sons of God can expect to be led by the Spirit of God. Believers can expect to be led, or guided, by the Holy Spirit. Jesus, referring to the time when the Holy Spirit would come,said, “He will guide you.” So we don’t have to look to man for guidance — that’s unscriptural. All of God’s children have the Spirit of God within and can expect to be guided by Him. In February 1959, Jesus appeared to me in an open vision. I heard His footsteps coming into my hospital room. He sat on a chair by my bed and talked to me for an hour and a half about the ministry of a prophet. One of the things He said was, “The prophet’s ministry is not set in the Church to guide members and tell them what to do. Under the Old Covenant, people would go to the prophet to seek advice, or direction, or guidance, because he had the Spirit of God and they didn’t. No one under the Old Covenant, except the ...

July 3 THE LIVING WORD For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.1JOHN 5:7 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . . — JOHN 1:1,14 How can I make Jesus Lord of my life? Jesus is the Living Word. And God has given us the written Word to unveil the Living Word to us. Give the Word of God — primarily the New Testament — first place in your life. By doing so, you are putting Jesus first! Let the Word of God govern your life. Let this Word be the Lord of your life. Let the Word dominate you. By doing so, you are really allowing Jesus to lord it over you — because Jesus and His Word are One. We are living in an age when we need to get serious about spiritual matters, and we need to learn what the Bible has to say about love, life, home, marriage, and children. Let the Word of God be your guide in life. When you do, you are...

July 2 THE LORD CHRIST And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. — COLOSSIANS 3:23,24 When Jesus becomes your Lord, He will want to have something to say about the kind of books you read — about the amusements you enjoy — about the governing of your physical body. If Jesus is your Lord, He will want to have something to say about your finances — how you make your money — and howyou use your money. If Jesus is your Lord, He will want to have something to say about your marriage — about your children — about your home. He will want to dictate to you regarding your vocation in life and where you live. Yes, Jesus will want to enter every area of your life, if He’s your Lord. I want Him to be my Lord, don’t you? That’s what makes the Christian life blessed. The lordship of Jesus strips life of its weakness, frailty, and human guidance. It lifts life out of the...