Faith Chapter Eight
So! How's your faith this week. Growing, I pray!
This week I want to share with you about believing. Your faith is based upon
what you believe to be true and the more God reveals Himself to you the more
the bases of you faith will change. If I ask you, "Are you growing in your
faith?" Your answer should be, "Yes! My faith is stronger than it was
last year because our Father is revealing Himself line upon line and precept
upon precept!" Isaiah said in Is. 28:9-10,
"Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom
shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the
milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line
upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:"
When I was young I was taught in Church a lot of facts about the history of the people God used to write the books of the Bible but I usually got myself in trouble when I would ask how that applied to us today. Paul said in Gal. 3:23-25,
"Before faith came, we
were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be
revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto
Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come,
we are no longer under a schoolmaster."
I will forever by grateful
for having to memorize scripture and facts of the Bible but I have always been
more interested in what God was saying to us in these scriptures and how it can
be applied to us today. What you believe today will greatly influence the
growth of your faith. If you believe that you know all about the purpose of God
in your life and don't need to know anymore, you have just frozen the growth of
your faith.
We are privilege to be the
generation in which knowledge is being poured out, the likes of which the world
has never known. Just think back over your life time how much knowledge has
been given to mankind. Some of you may not be old enough to remember when man
first set foot on the moon but most of you will remember when we didn't have
cell phones, ipods, remotes, etc. Just as God is inspiring men to new heights
in the material world He is pouring out
revelation about Himself to those who have an ear to hear. As a result, our
minds are being enlighten as not only to who He really is but who we are also.
Therefore, we must allow our
minds to be renewed and what we understood as truth last year may not be what
we understand as truth this year. We should forever be learning who God is and
also who we really are. If we are rigid in what we believe we will be stymieing
our faith.
It is one thing to
acknowledge truth and an entirely different thing to believe the same truth.
For example, it is one thing to believe that God is the source of all healing
but an entirely different thing to believe that He will heal you. It is one
thing to believe what Jesus said about, "All things are possible to those
who believe!", but it is an entirely a different thing to believe what we
determine to be impossible for us to obtain!"
Did you ever
think that we are calling Jesus a liar when we say something is impossible for
us to do when He said we could do it? Probably not, but that is what we are
doing when we say we can't do something. It's easy to believe that all things
are possible with God, but an entirely different thing to believe that all
things are possible for us. The truth is what Jesus said in Mk. 9:23,
"Jesus said unto him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him that
believes."
You may say, "Well,
Dave, I believe that Jesus said that and that it is the truth, since He said
it, but I try to believe that I can do anything that I want to but in reality I
just can't do something's." Let me take you to a scripture where Peter had
done something that is impossible for us to do and what Jesus said to him. In
Matt. 14:28-31,
"And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if
it be thou, bid me
come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the
ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning
to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught
him, and said unto him, O thou of
little faith, why did you doubt?"
Have you ever walked on water? Neither
have I and yet when Peter did Jesus rebuked him for having little faith! Peter
had just walked on water and Jesus said that he had little faith. What would
Jesus have to say about our faith? Here is where we can learn a valuable
lesson. Doubt will always
kill belief! We can believe that we can do something but if we have
doubt it won't come to pass. James said in James 1:5-8,
"If any of you lacks wisdom,
he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it
will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who
doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man
should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a
double–minded man, unstable in all he does."
James said this because
doubt is the exact opposite of belief. Doubt will cancel out faith every time.
With our carnal mind we can accept a truth but when we entertain a doubt it
will cancel out our belief. Truth must come from our spirit. How do we get
truth into our spirit? By hearing the word of God! We have been given an ear to
hear what the Spirit is saying and what He is saying must get down into our
subconscious mind. When that happens, our subconscious mind will not believe or
entertain those thoughts of doubt from our conscious mind that what we are
believing will not come to pass. The way to get a truth into our subconscious
mind is by meditating on what God has to say about something to the point that
we know, that we know, that we know what we believe will come true.
One of the best ways to do
this is by confessing what the word of God says we can do and thus
reprogramming our subconscious mind. If what we have accepted as truth is
opposite of what is revealed to our spirit, we must drive out of our mind what
it has been programmed to believe. I do this by confessing things like the
following:
"I can do all things through Christ who gives me
strength!" (Phil. 4:13)
"Nothing is impossible for me because I am a believer
and not a doubter!"
(Mark 9:23)
"My God is supplying all of my needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:19)
"The
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want for anything!" (Psalm 23)
Our testimony, or what we
confess, is very powerful because if we declare what God says about us we are
prophesying the truth and are in agreement with the word of God. Rev.
12:9-11says,
"And the great dragon was cast out,
that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world:
he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,
Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power
of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them
before our God day and night. And they overcame
him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their
lives unto the death."
If you really want to overcome the devil
and make him of no value just quote what the word of God has to say and he will
leave you alone. Jesus overcame him by quoting what the word of God says and we
can also. Forget about the devil. He is a defeated foe and only has power if we
give it to him. In some churches he is worshiped nearly as much as Jesus is.
They are always talking bout him and how much he is after them. Jesus defeated
the devil and he has no power over a son of God. Paul said in Eph. 4:27,
" Neither give place to the devil. "
Jesus said in Jn. 14:30,
"Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the
prince of this world comes, and has nothing in me."
If the devil has nothing in
Jesus then he has nothing in us because we are in Christ and Christ dwells in
us! John said in 1 Jn. 4:4,
"You are of God, little
children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he
that is in the world."
Begin to prophesy today and
declare what the word of God says about you and do it each time you pray and
begin to see just who you really are in God's sight.