Sunday, July 20, 2014

THE SPIRIT OF FAITH

The Word of God is voice-activated! This could just be the missing link in the effectiveness of your faith. God’s Words remain potentials in our lives until we speak them out. When you speak His Words, you are coming into agreement (partnership) with God and His Word in your life and the power of the Word can now manifest what it talks about! Amos 3:3 says “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” Therefore, for you to work with God, you must come into agreement with Him via His Word. Thank God we can. It really costs nothing to just voice out the Word of God, saying the same thing with God, just making God’s Word your word and it pays off as sure as God’s Word is true. Praise God! “What’s the big deal about speaking God’s Word?” You may ask. “Isn’t God’s Word so potent to work without me having to speak it out with my mouth?”, “Can’t God’s Word work in my life independent of me?” Well, these are great questions and the Word of God has the answers. 2Corinthians 4:13 says “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;” Now, understand that the word ‘spirit’ here isn’t referring to the Holy Spirit or a spirit being, but to an attitude – the attitude of faith – the same the psalmist who Paul quoted had. He believed and spoke out (Psalm 116:10). It’s just like saying: “that’s the spirit of the game.” We need to understand this because it tells us on whom the responsibility is placed. For instance, if you think the word ‘spirit’ is referring to the Holy Spirit, you’d be waiting for the Holy Spirit to do the speaking or even think He has to do ‘something’ before you can say something. Simply put, you’d become irresponsive about your responsibility. Well, if you’ve been on this faith walk a while, you’d have discovered that God wouldn’t play our roles and we can’t play He’s! He has His role and we ours. Therefore, we must take the responsibility of speaking out what we believe in God’s Word. 2Corinthians 4:13 makes it so plain that Bible faith has an attitude, a characteristic. We can see that there is a way Bible faith operates. We can actually identify Bible faith by a definite sign: Bible faith speaks what it believes! That’s the sign of Bible faith – it speaks! Faith is active and not passive. Faith has a voice – our words. Your words is actually your faith speaking. Your words are the first expression of your faith before even your actions. Faith always speaks what it believes! A lot of ignorant people mock this principle of confessing the Word of God to their own hurt. They think it is just blabbing some things, they think it’s just positive speaking or talking oneself out of ‘reality’, unknown to them that this is the very principle by which God does things. Yes, I know there are erroneous teachings on this subject, but we have the Bible to see for ourselves what God says about the matter. God created the heavens and the earth through Words – faith-filled words (Genesis 1). In fact, Hebrews 11:3 tells us “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” You see, words have creative abilities. Words are so powerful! Hebrews 1:3 tells us that the whole world is sustained and kept in order through words – the words of His (Jesus’) power. Can you just imagine that for a moment? God created man in His own image and after His likeness and gave man that creative ability through the privilege of words – no other creature has it. You know, sometimes we make faith look so mysterious. But when you study the Word of God carefully, you’d find that faith is never mysterious, men make a mystery out of it! Without faith it is impossible to please God and so God makes the subject so clear, clear enough for anyone to function in and with it. What is faith? “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1). However, Romans 10:17 tells us how faith comes. It says “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” This is exactly how we receive faith for the first time (salvation) through the Gospel-Word preached to us and this is still how we stay in faith as believers – hearing the Word of God. Every believer ALREADY HAS FAITH (Romans 12:3)! Now then, the more of the Word of God we hear or receive, the stronger and more effective our faith become. Acting on the Word is acting in faith. Your actions tell so much about your faith life. When you do the Word, you’re walking in faith. So you can know whether you’re in faith or not. It is not so much about the size of your faith as it is about WHAT you do with your faith. Even a mustard-seed-size-faith can reposition a mountain, Jesus says in Matthew 17:20. Just use your faith! Every Christian has got faith, otherwise they are not saved (Eph.2:8, Rom.10:9). We use our faith by speaking God’s Word. You can speak words without faith but you can’t operate in faith without speaking words! That’s the attitude of faith! Faith is a force, it causes you to speak! When you’re actively functioning in faith, you just find yourself speaking words! The attitude of faith is to speak what has been spoken, speaking the same thing with God. We must develop the habit of confessing God’s Word daily and in every situation we find ourselves. That’s really how to come out of problems. Simply find out what God has said about what you’re going through and begin to confess or declare it to yourself, instead of confessing what you feel about the situation because that won’t help the situation but gets it complicated and remember you eventually have what you say (Mark 11:23). God said something so that we could say something and have it manifested (Heb.13:5,6). The proof that you are actively in faith is that you are making God’s Words your words – you’re confessing His Words instead of yours. You can create your world through faith-filled words, just like God created the universe (Heb.11:3)! So, what do you want in your world? Oh! I’m so excited that God gave man the opportunity to create his world, to fill it with what he wants. If you speak bad words, that’s what you’d have in your world because your words is your faith speaking! Wisdom demands that you start by creating a salvation-dominated world by confessing with your mouth the Lordship of Jesus Christ (Rom. 10:9). That’s the foundation and then you can make God’s Words your words and just speak those words into your world and create heavenly realities in your world. Praise God! The Lordship of Jesus is the Lordship of His Word!