Foundations of the Christian Life. Chapter 13 - Activating Faith in our Lives.

Foundations of the Christian Life.
Chapter 13. Activating Faith in our Lives.

We have seen, on the one hand, how faith is a gift of God; but, on the other hand, we must somehow possess it, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:5).

The crucial question, then, for us must be this: “How do we activate God’s gift of faith in our lives?” This is the subject of this chapter.

Like all other spiritual gifts and blessings faith is released in our life through confession. God has made it so easy for us – the thing that nearly every person can do, talking, is the key to receiving his gifts and activating them in our lives.

What does confession mean?

Greek: Homologeo (and other related words). Literally it means, “the same word”.
It has two ideas that are brought together in the same Greek word. The ideas are:
(i) We come to agreement with God – our beliefs are changed to line up with God’s.
(ii) We speak that agreement out loud.


Romans 10:8-10.
“But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

In this passage the Apostle Paul tells us how faith works in our lives.
* He begins by quoting an Old Testament verse (Deuteronomy 30:14) which expresses the principle: “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart”. To activate the Word of God in us there are two things we need to do – put it in our hearts and put it in our mouths.
* Then Paul illustrates the principle with a specific promise – the promise of justification and salvation. But there is a difference between these two gifts of God. To be justified all we have to do is believe. However to be saved we have to both believe and confess with our mouths.

Why is there this difference?
The difference is to do with the respective spheres that the promise operates in. Justification is the legal acquittal from the guilt of sin that is given by God in heaven. Salvation is our experience of that worked out in the here and now on earth.

God, in his infinite grace, will forgive, justify, any sinner who believes in his/her heart that Christ has saved them. Nothing more is required. So if a person has, for some reason lost their voice – maybe through accident, maybe through illness, maybe they are in a coma and are unable to outwardly respond by speaking – then in such cases the grace of God will reach them if they only believe, and they will be justified. If they die, they will go to heaven. Justification happens in heaven and requires only that we accept the gift of forgiveness by faith in our hearts.

Salvation, however, is our experience of God’s grace on earth. For that to happen God requires that we be a co-worker with him and “Work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). The way we release the power of God into our situation so that what we believe becomes real in experience is by confession.

In Chapter 5 I outlined the seven-step process, the way of God, by which he brings us into all of his promises and blessings. One of these steps is confession. Faith is no different to any other spiritual gift or blessing. Christ has provided it for us, but to have that blessing released in our lives experientially we need to confess it.

Because God’s power to perform that which it says when we hear the message, the word, faith is quickened in us and released in us to cause the word to come true in our case.


THE FIRST KEY TO FAITH IS OUR BELIEVING.

Matthew 9:29
Jesus said, "According to your faith will it be done to you."

“according to” – shows there is a correlation between our believing and what we receive from God.
We get what we believe for, no more, no less. If we don’t believe God will do something or that he can do something then we cut ourselves off from the possibility of him doing it.

Believing is not just a weak assent to some ideas, but is a life committal to God's truth as we come to understand it.
James has some powerful things to say about Faith and lifestyle. He says "faith without works is dead", i.e. it is not a faith at all, it cannot save us.
We need to be clear on this – true Biblical belief demands a lifestyle change that befits the belief.

So the first key to an operational faith in our lives is what we believe – but it must be a real belief followed by actions.

Some Forms of Wrong Belief.

Wrong believing cancels faith. We are all believing something - rightly or wrongly. Unbelief is not NO belief, but is WRONG belief.

(a) Doubt.
Greek = "to weigh up like a judge".
The idea is one of someone judging the word of God against the external evidence. At the root of this is a basic mistrust of God, and a pride in one's own reasoning powers.

James 1:6,7.
“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;”

Mark 11:22,23.
"Have faith in God," Jesus answered. "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, `Go,
throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.”

We eliminate doubt by knowing that what we ask for is actually promised in God’s word and is not just a “wish list” of our own desires.

(b) Fear.

2 Timothy 1:7.
“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”

Fear is a wrong faith because it does not believe the word of God.

(c) A Mis-directed Faith.

Faith's object is God in Christ. A misdirected faith is one in which we place our trust in some other person or thing. Our faith may be in the person praying for us, or in the desired blessing itself and not in Christ. Faith must be based on the Character and Promises of God.

Illustration: - John 11 - The Raising of Lazarus.
In this story Jesus spends a lot of time discussing with Martha the death of her brother. The aim of Jesus is to get her faith properly directed at him as the "Resurrection and the Life". She had her faith directed wrongly:
- at the necessity of the physical presence of Jesus (v21).
- at the future resurrection (v24).
Only as she confessed her faith in Jesus did the miracle begin to happen.

(d) A Wrong Faith.

What we believe is important. If we are in deception, or mis-taught, the intellectual content of our faith can be wrong, hence faith is invalid.

Illustration: - Romans 2:17- 24 - the Jews.

(e) A Wrong Self-Evaluation.

Hence being proud or self-effacing.

Romans 12:3.
“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”

Our self-evaluation needs to be based on the word of God - we need to see ourselves as God sees us, and understand WHO we are in relation to God and his plan for us in Christ.

(f) Independence.

Our attitude needs to be as little children, being dependent on our Heavenly Father and his perfect work in Christ.

(g) The Carnal Mind.
Because we are brought up in a fallen world we all get programmed in our minds to think in ways that are opposed to faith. These ways seem right to us but are really ways of death.

Proverbs 14:12
“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

(h) Disobedience.

Faith requires action to be real. The Action required is obedience to the will of God.

James 1:22 - lack of obedience is deception.
James 2:14-17.
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

Obedience is the key that opens us to the miracle power of God. Until we step out in faith, believing in, and trusting on, only the Word of God we will not see God act.

Sometimes we are required to begin to live AS IF THE PROMISE WERE ALREADY TRUE IN OUR EXPERIENCE, before God comes through. This is not always the case, but greater maturity requires greater boldness and trust in the word of God.

Sometimes for some reason God does not do his bit until we first put ourselves in the position where we are committed to his will by beginning to do it. Then he comes through to vindicate his word.

Often there is a greater thing God wants to give us than the physical thing we ask him for. Often the physical need is simply something God creates to drive us into relationship with himself.
Jesus said “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and don’t do what I say?"

(i) Others: self-pity, confusion, worry.


THE SECOND KEY TO FAITH IS OUR CONFESSION.

There are several aspects to this idea of confession that we need to be aware of.

1. Confession is the completion of faith on the human plane.
Like the other side of a two-sided coin, it helps to activate faith in us.

As we saw above Paul tells us that faith is released through putting the word in our mouths.

Proverbs 18:20,21.
“From the fruit of his mouth a man's stomach is filled; with the harvest from his lips he is satisfied. The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

Our words have power. God has so designed the universe that it was created by a word and hangs together by his word. This infusion of all reality with the power of the word means that our words have power

2. The law of faith.

When we understand the Law of Faith nothing is impossible to us.
Faith is like every other thing in life - it is not haphazard, but it works by law, or principle.

Mark 11:12-14, 20-24. "Whatsoever you shall SAY"
“The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it.…When evening came, they went out of the city. In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!" "Have faith in God," Jesus answered. "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, `Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Faith's law is that it speaks words, it operates through the confession of our mouths.

We will have what we say – not just what we pray – Jesus said so. So if we keep on confessing the negatives we will get them. If we start to confess instead the promises of God we will get them.

THE THIRD KEY TO FAITH IS TO GET THE WORD INTO OUR HEARTS.

It is only what is in our hearts that will come true as we speak.

Jesus says there in Mark 11 that “if we believe in our heart whatever we say, it shall happen”.
There is a difference between believing in the head and believing in the heart. It is a 15-18 inch drop. Our heads are where we doubt and fear; our hearts are where we know in faith.

How do we get the word of God from our head to our hearts?
There is one time honoured God given way that we can move any word of God from our heads to our hearts – Meditation.

The Hebrew word means literally “to chew the cud”. It is a metaphor from agriculture and suggests there are there are two things necessary for us in meditation:
1. We need to go over and over and over the word of God again and again until we know it, understand it and it fills our hearts with hope and faith.
2. We must put it in our mouths – chewing the cud requires repeating the promises of God verbally over and over again.

Bible meditation is the process of reading, or reciting, over and over again a scripture so that we memorise it and it is written in our hearts. The Bible was designed to be read out loud so that we “hear” it as we read it. The modern practice of “silent reading” is just that – modern. In ancient cultures all reading was “out-loud”.

One of Satan’s greatest tools that he has devised to rob us of the blessing of reading God’s word and meditating on it is the modern practice of silent reading. Reading out loud releases God’s power to work in our lives. Reading silently is not the same thing at all.

We can actually release faith in our lives every time we read God’s word by reading it out loud – because as we read it we will hear it. And faith comes by hearing, not by looking at the words on a page.

Question: How long should we meditate on a scripture, a promise of God?
Answer: Until it drops from our head to our heart and faith is born in our hearts. Until we KNOW in our hearts with a firm assurance that, “This is true for me!”

Notice that Paul does not say that, “faith comes by the word”, but "by the HEARING of the word".

This can happen to us through:
(i) Someone talking to us, e.g. hearing a sermon, or someone just generally talking to us.
(ii) By reading – either the Bible or another book.
(iii) By God speaking to us directly – either audibly or by an inner witness.
(iv) Through meditation. This is God’s primary way of imparting faith to us.


STEPS TO AN OPERATING FAITH.

Faith operates in our lives through Hearing, Believing and Doing the Word of God.

Romans 10:17.
“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.”

This can be divided into seven stages in our experience:

(1) The written word, the Logos, the Bible, exists.
This contains the Hope that God has given us.

(2) The Holy Spirit takes this written word and quickens it to us.
It becomes a rhema, a spoken word. This happens through preaching or by direct revelation. (Romans 10:14-17).

(3) We believe this word (our mind) and trust ourselves to it (our will).

(4) To this God adds faith, a supernatural gift.
At conversion this is an outright gift, but once we are Christians he activates the latent faith in us which he has already given us. Faith at this point is released in us; we have assurance that God has heard us.
The releasing of faith in our hearts by God does not necessarily happen at the time we believe and trust. The timing is in his hands, but it will happen.

(5) We need to confess our faith by word of mouth.

Confession is the completion of faith on the human plane. Like the other side of a two-sided coin, it helps to activate faith in us.

(6) Then, usually, comes the test of faith.

Normally in the test of faith the circumstances, and our feelings, all of the external sensory evidence, will go against what we believe in faith. As we hang on to our faith we find that the promise comes true - the external evidence is a lie.

Without the test and the change we could not experience the FULLNESS of God's blessing.
When building a building the materials all have a "rating" based on their ability to stand certain stresses. Testing is necessary for the parts of a building to see if they can stand the pressure before they are built in. It is the same for us.

(7) If we persevere in faith we experience the promise.

Faith is not enough to inherit the promises, perseverance is also necessary.

Hebrews 10:36-39.
“You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him." But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.”

SOME OTHER KEYS TO FAITH.

(1) Faith has A Safeguard.

Because of the great power faith has God has put a safeguard on it.

Galatians 5:6
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

"expressing" - Greek = "is activated and energised by"
"love" - Greek = agape - God's special self giving love.

God will only let his power be used if it is in the context of his kind of love. His kind of love is self-sacrificing, self-giving, expecting nothing in return. When we begin to live a life for other people we find our faith increases.

(2) Faith is the True Reality.

As faith is based on God's promise, it is based on revealed knowledge. Hence two things are true:
* Physical sight, or experience, has no place in faith.
* There is no such thing as "blind faith". It is not a " leap in the dark".

2 Corinthians 5:7.
“We live by faith, not by sight.”

We need to learn to ignore the external evidence of our senses when it conflicts with the word of God.

Scientists, Psychologists and Philosophers have proven that the mind IMMEDIATELY reinterprets all that comes into it through the senses. Hence what we THINK we see is NEVER what we ACTUALLY saw, but is our own reinterpretation of it. SEEING IS NOT BELIEVING, nor is experiencing it through the Bodily senses.

Many people miss out on experiencing the promises of God because, in the test of faith, they believe the senses and not the word of God. In the test we are changed so that we can receive the blessing which God has promised.

(3) REALISM is necessary in faith.

We are not called to ignore the facts, but to re-evaluate them in the light of God's promise.

Example: - Romans 4:16-22.
“Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring- not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations." He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed- the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead- since he was about a hundred years old- and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness."”

Abraham looked at the evidence realistically, but he considered the promise of God to be of greater value. We need to do the same. It is probably true that you cannot have real faith until you have realistically evaluated the evidence and THEN counted the promise of God to be greater.

(4) Submission to Divine Authority:

Illustration: Luke 7:1-9.
“When Jesus had finished saying all this in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." So Jesus went with them. He was not far from the house when the
centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, `Go,' and he goes; and that one, `Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, `Do this,' and he does it."
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."

Jesus here is called to go and heal a Roman Centurion’s servant and he sets out to do so. You all know the story – the Centurion says to Jesus, “Don’t come to my house – you don’t need to, only say the word and my servant will be healed.”
Jesus is amazed – he says that he hasn’t found such faith as this anywhere in Israel. But we need to look at the understanding of why the Centurion had such faith.

Luke 7:8. "I too am a man under authority."

The Centurion knew what authority meant. He knew how orders were passed down the chain of authority but were still absolutely binding at every level. He knew how to obey orders.

You see, faith works in a kingdom, the kingdom of God. Faith is the currency of the kingdom if you like. So it works under the authority of the kingdom. If you understand authority and how it works you can understand how faith works. Faith works down the proper divinely ordained chain of authority. The Kingdom of God, and the church, are not a democracy. They are a kingdom and a kingdom has an authority chain that must be respected. In a kingdom the king chooses who sits on what seat of authority and how much authority he has. The people below the appointed under ruler don’t have a say in the matter.

Submission to divine authority means submission to those God has delegated authority to. It is a chain of command. And blessing flows down the chain of command.

Psalm 133 – how blessed it is when brethren dwell in unity –it is like the oil poured out on Aaron’s head – it flows down.
In the body of Christ, Christ is the head and we are the body. The gift of the Spirit was given to Christ at Pentecost and he poured it out on his body. But it flows down the body from the head. We need to be in right relationship to the head – committed to and submitted to the other parts of the body – in order to experience the fullness of the Spirit flowing down.

It is amazing how often one sees people in church who niggle and complain about the leaders of the church all the time. But when something major goes wrong in their lives they call for those same elders to pray for them. And you know what? The prayers are not answered! Faith cannot be released in those situations because the hearts of those calling for prayer are in rebellion. The chain of authority is broken.

THE POWER OF FAITH.

What is the measure of this gift of faith that we have in Christ?

(1) Resurrection Power.

Ephesians 1:19-23.
“...and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”

"in/for us who believe".
The measure of faith in us is the amount of power that it took God to raise Jesus from the dead, and place him on the throne of God, far above every power and rule and authority. I.e. it is resurrection power and life in every one of us who believes. If we need more faith than this we might need to ask God for it!

(2) Transforming Power.

John 1:12
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

It is enough power to make us sinners into children of God.

(3) Miracle Power.

Mark 16:17,18
“And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

It is miracle working power.

This is the INITIAL gift of faith that is given to every believer by God. The problem is not that we do not have enough faith but that we do not understand how to release it.

HOMEWORK:
1. Think about some situation you have faced where you tried to activate faith in your life and failed to do so. Choose a situation that still has some relevance, i.e. if you could see a change in that situation it would make a difference to you. Use the faith release keys in this study as a tool of evaluation to see if there is a reason why what you were asking God for did not coke to pass. It may not be the case, of course. God may simply have said no to your request and he may have had reasons you don’t know why he said no. But often the failure to receive is on our side – we fail to activate faith correctly.

Did you:
1. Base your request on a promise in the word?
2. Confess it verbally – and keep on confessing it?
3. Meditate on the promise until faith was released in your heart?
4. Make the life changes necessary to receive the promise?
5. Operate out of a base of love in your prayer?
6. Hang on through the test of faith?
7. Have a good attitude to those in spiritual authority over you while you went through the test?

If you have failed in any of these areas, are you blaming God for not coming through when the fault may be your own for not following the ways of God?

Repent and then begin to press into the promise again. Hang on in faith until you get the answer clearly in your spirit.

TRANSFORMER VERSE:
Romans 10:8-10.
“But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

PRAYER:
Father God. I thank you for your word of promise. I thank you that you have made the way of entering into your promises so easy. I commit to pressing through into the promises of God. I will put your word in my heart and in my mouth – I will meditate on it and confess it until it lives in me and I experience the promises of God. Amen.