Even though I wasn’t a teacher to begin with, I always had the greatest respect for the Word of God, and always was very studious. I spent hours studying and reading, digging things out for myself in my early years as a pastor, but I didn’t teach those things. I had no unction or leading to teach.

I did teach a Bible class in the church, however. That’s the custom in most Pentecostal churches. Sometimes Full Gospel, Pentecostal people criticize denominational people for formality and ritualism, yet Pentecostals are bound with customs! They’ll fight for their customs. All these things are bad.

I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues in 1937, and in 1939, as I say humorously, I received “the left foot of fellowship” from among the Baptists and came over among the Pentecostals. My wife and I accepted the pastorate of a little Pentecostal church in North Texas.

The people said, “It’s a custom that the pastor teach the men’s Bible class and the pastor’s wife teach the older ladies’Bible class.”
“Well,” I replied, “I just changed the custom.” I hadn’t been around Pentecostals too long at that stage, and I thought they were all sprouting wings. I found out later those were just their shoulder blades sticking out. They weren’t about to grow any wings. And I found out if you start changing their customs,
you’re in for it. So I had to maneuver and speak softly, but finally I got it over to them that my wife didn’t teach. They said, “Well, we’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll just combine the older men and the older ladies and have an auditorium class, and you teach it.” I’d rather have done almost anything else, but I taught it.

never was so glad of anything in my life as I was when that class was over each Sunday morning. I’d lay that teacher’s quarterly down and say, “Whew, now I can relax for another
week.”
I so detested teaching that I wouldn’t look at the Sunday School quarterly for the whole week. Sometimes I didn’t pick it up to study it until just before the class started the next Sunday morning!
I could get by with that because I had developed a unique ability—after I was born again—of being able to read something
once and never forget it. I didn’t have that talent before I got born again. But afterwards I could read a chapter in my high school history book once and recite it word for word for the teacher. It was because I learned to walk in the life of God.

Doing that will increase your mentality. I could hardly remember anything before.
So I could read the teacher’s lesson once from the quarterly and rattle it off. Then I’d say, “I’m glad that’s over! Now I can get back to preaching!” And I’d preach up a storm, going like an air hammer, waving my arms like a windmill. (I thought it wasn’t preaching unless you did that.) I was a preacher, and I loved it.

I’d have rather preached than eaten.
I preached for nine years. All I had was the evangelistic message. I never preached anything else. I didn’t have anything else!
But I remember one Thursday afternoon at 3 o’clock. (The year was 1943. I had been preaching since 1934.)

I’d been lying down. I walked across the parsonage living room and into the kitchen for a drink of water. As I was coming back across the living room, right in the middle of the room, something dropped down on me and inside me. It just clicked down on the inside of me like a coin drops inside a pay phone. I stopped dead still. I knew what it was. It was a teaching gift. The anointing to teach had dropped inside me. I said, “Now I can teach.”
If I get any gift from God, I prove it out first, and I would encourage you to do the same. Prove what you’ve got from God,and then you can talk about it. But if it’s never proved, proclaiming it won’t make it so. I never said a word about having the anointing to teach.

We had a little prayer group of seven or eight women who met Wednesday afternoons from 2 to 4 at the church. People would turn in requests and they would pray over the requests and pray about the church and the services for a few hours. My wife always met with them, and I usually met with them.
We trained this little group to pray. They became expert prayer warriors. If you didn’t want something, you’d better not turn in a prayer request to them, because they’d get it for you!

I suggested to them that we have a Bible lesson for an hour before our prayer time, but I didn’t invite anybody else to come.
It wasn’t an announced meeting.
I started teaching those seven or eight women, and the anointing would come on me. I hadn’t known you could stand in one spot and just teach the Word and get that strongly anointed to teach. I thought you were supposed to be hollering at the top of your voice, waving your arms like a windmill, and “spitting cotton,” as in preaching.

But just standing there with a handful, teaching them the Word, the anointing would come on me so strongly I couldn’t stand it. I’d have to say, “Lord, turn it off—I can’t stand it anymore!”

You talk about getting blessed! It was like getting hold of electric current. That anointing and the Word flowed out to the women. They went home and told their husbands and others.

Still we never announced the Wednesday afternoon Bible study.
Nobody was invited to come.
But people started coming Wednesday afternoons in spite of the fact that we had regular Wednesday night services, too. The
women’s husbands would take off from work to get in on that afternoon service. It wasn’t long until we filled the building. Wehad a bigger crowd Wednesday afternoon than we did Wednesday night!

I proved my teaching gift. It worked. I started out by faith and kept going, and the building filled up in the afternoon. That proved the gift, didn’t it?

I began to do more and more teaching as a pastor until the ratio was probably about half teaching and half preaching. Now I seldom get the anointing to preach anymore. Thank God for that teaching anointing! It’s a little different, but it’s still the same Spirit who anoints you for whatever He calls you to do.

– KENNETH E. HAGIN ( understanding the Anointing )