Smith Wigglesworth didn’t actually understand how he got his anointing.  It is true that he received it by faith, but his faith was a living faith and not a dead faith.  He and his wife had spent twenty years preaching to the poor and giving of their livelihood before his anointing came.  In fact his healing when he was at the point of death was a product of faith, but it was a faith working by love.

            Galatians tells us that faith works by love, by charity and the letter of James tells us that faith without works is dead.  To have a living faith, a faith that is not dead, a faith working by love or charity, one must be sensitive to the poor and needy.  In Acts we read from St. Paul that it is more blessed to give than to receive and by being a cheerful giver, not just in the offering, but with respect to the poor, we in turn are blessed.  If you want to know how to receive simply bless the poor.

            Much of contemporary Christian faith preachers spend all their time on how to receive.  They talk about confessing scripture and trusting God but they spend little time on teaching people the necessity for giving and recognizing the poor.  People who are self-consumed, only interested in what they can get, people who find themselves in a pickle but never concerned themselves with the poor, will find it difficult to receive from God.  But if one has been faithful in little and has blessed the poor and trusts God and knows how to confess scripture, that person has a good chance of receiving from God the blessing and the fruit of their labor.