Message for Sunday the 4th of September 2016
Theme: Understanding the dynamics of Faith for the fulfillment of the word of God.
Topic: What Faith Really is
Introduction: In the few years I have walked with God, I have seen God replace man after man in his army. I have often wondered why this is so. I later came to a rude shock that failure of faith is mostly the reason why. For instance, some complain of lack of answer to prayer after they had prayed and fasted and done all they knew to get the answer without success. Some base their reason on the preposterous excuse of the behavior of so called Church leaders. This is really unreasonable because even those Church leaders are still humans who must win this war of faith. In addition, excuses show a lack of desire to take responsibility for one’s destiny. Every destiny experience is actually choice determined. Therefore, we cannot place the responsibility of fulfilling our destinies on the faith of others.
The reason many fail in faith therefore is that they have not applied themselves to the demands of understanding what faith is and how it works. God will never operate outside His set laws; so it behooves us to find out from His word what faith really is and how it works. This is what the theme of this month is intended for and I believe we would really be blessed and established in the basic understanding of faith to a reasonable extent in the course of this month so that God’s promises will no longer look like lies to us.
Today therefore, we shall be looking at what faith really is from the bible definition of faith.
What faith is: In most places in the bible, faith is either described or demonstrated. For instance, the faith of Abraham was mostly demonstrated [Gen12:1-4 and Gen.17:23]. When Jesus taught faith, he both demonstrated and described some of its functions like speaking right [Mk.11:23 and Jn.11:38-44].However, God did not leave us in the dark about what faith really is and His desire to enable us understand it. In Col.1:9-11, we see that we can believe God in prayer for spiritual understanding. The faith walk is a major are of life we all need spiritual understanding in. see also the importance of getting understanding in Prov.4:7; Ps.119:144 and Dan.9:22.
Faith is therefore clearly defined in Hebrews 11:1 (KJV) thus:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
“Faith assures us of things we expect and convinces us of the existence of things we cannot see.” God’s word translation
From multiple translations therefore, we understand the following truths aboutfaith:
1. Faith is something that is physically unseen when it starts: When God spoke to Abraham that he would become the father of many nations with a barren wife, he could not get it until God took him out at night and gave him a mental picture of the stars while comparing it with the extent he was going to multiply his offspring. When Abraham saw this, he became persuaded because of the mental picture God gave to him which he was to keep before his eyes until the actualization of the promise of God. Note here that the entire promise was not to be fulfilled in his lifetime and Abraham knew that. See Gen.15:1-6 and Heb.11:39-40.
2. It is triggered by words: What is believed for is communicated in words or pictures showing what can be described in words like a vision. The word is energized by the confidence reposed on it by the person to whom it is spoken. For instance when a person hears a promise from another and does not believe what that other says, he or she does not act on it or even remember the words. In this case, there is no faith because the words even though was spoken and therefore created an offer of faith, the lack of belief in the words by the desired recipient makes it dormant and would therefore never find expression. For instance salvation is triggered by the preaching of the word of God. When it is believed, whoever believes it becomes the faithful and can therefore be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. See Jn.3:16 and 8:30-32. From here it is clear that believing is just the beginning of faith. There must be continuity to get the freedom that faith brings.
3. The strength of the faith is dependent on whose word is the back of it or substantiates it: Since the source of a belief system has to do with words to which the adherents believe, we can understand why we have so many kinds of faith. This is why every religion is viewed as a faith. For instance in the contest at Mount Carmel we see a conflict between a religious belief system and the word of God through a genuine prophet of God. I believe the worshippers of Baal used to call down fire prior, but on this fateful day, there was a context between their God and the true God. They were therefore incapacitated that day because the proof of who the true God was would have been His ability to bring fire down at that specific time and Baal was not the true God. See 1Kings 18:21-39. Please note that Jesus did not bring another religion. He brought us eternal life. Elijah was representing the God of the nation of Israel who was operating the covenant of God’s promise to Abraham that out of his offspring shall come forth the Messiah of mankind from Satan’s curses to God’s blessing. See Gen.12: 1-3 – He later rescued them from Pharaoh and gave them laws to help them live in their own land of promise just like he wanted people to live. His intention was to multiply his influence around the world through them. This is why the gospel has gone viral today and is entering every nation on earth and raising a people for God who would walk in His ways.
Therefore, if your belief is based on the word of God, it cannot fail. If it is not based on God’s word, it may come to pass and it may not come to pass. Thus there is no assurance of it coming to pass if God is not the back of those words. People and devils have said things that came to pass before. But if those things had been confronted with God’s word, they would have failed. This explains why people had bad dreams that came to pass because they either did not know what to do about them or they were too lazy to do anything about them.
4. Faith has evidence and these evidences are seen before the manifestation of what is desired: In a court room, what is used to substantiate claims is called evidence. Evidence is either documented or verbal through an eye witness. The witness must he credible enough for his or her evidence to be admissible. For example, the presentation of a genuine title deed is sufficient to substantiate a claim to the ownership of the property represented in the title deed.
In the same vein, in the Court room of life, the only admissible evidence to claim any entitlement is the word of God promising you what you are trying to claim.
In the God kind of faith, the evidence is in two parts; the God part and the man’s part.
▪ God’s part is the promise which he initiated that whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ would be saved. This is the foundation of the Church and our faith. Man’s part here is to believe enough to receive Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord [John3:1-6, 16 and Rm.10:6-11].
▪ Next evidence is seen in the God part after man believes and receives salvation, God begins to lead Him. See Ps.23:1; Jn.1:12; Jn.16:13 and Rm.8:14-16. Every time the Holy Spirit shows us things to come, faith is again born and how we handle what he shows us is our faith walk.
▪ Then man in fulfilling his own part follows God’s leading and does what he is told. This is the faith life. As long as man keeps following God’s leading and doing what God tells him always, he would remain in faith and whatever promise God has made to him would come to fruition in God’s way and time when God considers the man to be fully persuaded of what God has promised. See Rm.4:17-22
We shall stop here for now. Next week, we shall continue to build on this. Meanwhile, someone reading this may feel the need to get into faith for the first time or be restored from backsliding due to former faith failure. Please do so right away by saying the following prayer out loud and continue to truly live:
Heavenly Father,
Have mercy on me a sinner. Today, I believe that Jesus died for me and you raised Him from the dead for my Justification. I therefore declare that Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord and from today, I renounce the fatherhood of Satan and embrace Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord. Thank you for this father in Jesus’ name! Amen.
Congratulations! For more information and resources that would help you grow in this new life, please visit our website at www.kingdomheirsministries.org and our blogs at www.flourishinggirl.blogspot.com and follow us on twitter at alero_nanna and on face book on www.facebook.com/flourishinggirlwww.facebook.com/khmii2015; www.facebook.com/thewellbeingcenter. Or www.facebook.com/kingdomjointheirsfamily email: jointheirsfamily@gmail.com.
Remain on top of your challenges in Jesus’ name!
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