This is a simple little message about reality, about the things that are really real and the things that are not real. We need to recognize what is the truth and what is not the truth.
Faith is the approach used by both God and Satan in the contest for human minds and spirits. Faith which is positive we call faith.
The negative faith that Satan uses we call fear or doubt. Fear is faith in reverse. Instead of trusting that something bad will not happen, you’re afraid that it will happen. You’re believing it will happen; therefore your heart is fearful. There is a negative faith and there is a positive faith, and we must understand the difference.
When God makes a statement in the Word and you accept it with faith, then the reality, the truth, comes to pass. But when you say, “I don’t believe it,” then it does not come to pass, and Satan’s lie becomes your truth.
If a prophecy or a revelation comes over you and you respond with, “Yes, I believe this,” and it comes to pass, that is faith which works a reality.
But if Satan puts doubt in your heart and you say, “No, I do not believe that prophecy; I don’t believe that revelation is going to come to pass,” then it does not come to pass. And you and the devil say, “See, we were right. It didn’t come to pass.” Satan’s lie has become your truth—the truth by which you live, the truth by which you are defeated. You come to accept the negative as fact and truth, and that is what it becomes to you.
It is very important that we understand this, for we do not believe in a thing because it has substance in the material or physical realm. When we come to believe a thing in our heart, it takes a shadowy substance or form in the spirit, because we believe it. Then it is transferred into the physical realm and takes form there.
That’s the truth, and yet the mind is always reasoning differently. I’ll use some Scripture passages as illustrations. We say that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3); that His divine power has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness; that He has given us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we might become partakers of the divine nature (II Peter 1:3, 4). No good thing will the Lord withhold from them that walk uprightly (Psalm 84:11).
These are tremendous statements, and you either believe they are true, or you don’t believe they are true. If you believe they are true, Satan still has a point when he comes to you asking, “Do you really believe you’re blessed with all spiritual blessings?” and then sneers, “You’re not either.”
How will you answer Satan then? If you say, “I believe that God has blessed me with all things that pertain to life and godliness,” Satan will say, “That isn’t true. You don’t have all things that pertain to life and godliness. Look at your needs. Look at your problems. Look at the lack in your life. You’re not blessed with all spiritual blessings. You don’t have everything that pertains to life and godliness.” Then will you agree, “Hmmm, Satan, you have a point there,” and begin to believe, with Satan, “I don’t have it”?
A man is as rich or as poor, before the face of God, as he believes he is. Believe in the promises of the Lord. But what about this argument of Satan that I still don’t have it?
Remember that you must accept that you have it in the spirit realm. And when you accept it there, it seems to take form in what we call the world of reality. All reality in the life of a believer has reality in the spirit before its reality is manifested. God wills that to be so.
In the course of the centuries, Christ was born and He died for our sins. But in the reality of the spirit, the Scripture expresses it this way: “Christ was the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). In the spirit there was the reality in the heart and the plan of the Father, and it had that form there before it finally came and manifested itself in the physical world that we call reality. Through the centuries it had to have reality in the spirit world and reality in the heart of the Father before we could finally see its reality.
That’s the way it is. Jesus breathed into His disciples and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” yet it was many days later that the Spirit came like a rushing mighty wind. Do you see how that worked? They were born again, but not filled with the Spirit. Weeks went by; it didn’t happen instantly. Oh yes it did! It happened in the spirit immediately, but it became manifested in the days ahead.
When God says to you, “I’ve blessed you from this day forth with divine health,” answer by saying, “Thank you, Lord.” And then go through the subsequent infirmities and sicknesses and afflictions glorifying God and declaring, “I have it. I have it. I have divine health!” Because you do! In the spirit you have it.
But this is when Satan says, “It’s a lie. You don’t have divine health. It’s not true; you do not have it.” Then answer, “Satan, you’re a liar. Whatever God says is the truth.” Let every man be a liar and only God be true (Romans 3:4). We claim His promises on that basis.
In this walk with God, we find that everything follows a simple little pattern. God gives us a promise and then we believe and wait for it—not with patience, but with a faith that chisels it out of nothing and gives it form and substance, making it come to pass.
Faith is not a passive thing; it’s aggressive and it’s violent. It takes something more than our own understanding. That’s why Hebrews 11:3 says, “Through faith we understand that the things which are seen were not made of things that do appear.” Some way they all came into being, but they didn’t come out of anything we can understand. Through faith we understand that the worlds were made and the ages were framed by the word of God. God spoke a word and it came to pass.
History reveals that there was a fantastic revival in England at the time of the Wesley brothers, but in France there was no one to stand in the gap. England was probably as immoral a place as you could find and they didn’t clean up overnight.
At that time France was so immoral and the people indulged in such lewd shows and parties, such weird and excessive sexual practices that we cannot even imagine or understand it. Then came the bloody bath of the French Revolution. Remember the scene in A Tale of Two Cities of the ugly old woman sitting and knitting as she watched the guillotine slicing off the heads of the French nobles? People will exclaim, “Why would God allow all these nobles to be slaughtered like animals?” They had it coming! You cannot imagine the depravity that existed during their reign.
In England it was different. One man, John Wesley, began to preach the Word of God, and a nation was saved to rise to a very high place in modern times. What made the difference? What was the reality? Satan would say both countries were immoral, filthy, and evil, and there’s a kind of truth in that. However, there were those who were contending for righteousness, and it came first in the spirit realm. Then it reached down and saved a nation. And the nation prospered for quite a while under the strength of that revival.
America is in a similar position. When we look at what is taking place in our country, we could say, “We’re heading for doom.” But I don’t think we ought to be mourning for America yet. I do think we ought to get down to business and begin to pray and claim things in God for America.
As a remnant that loves God, we should get promises from God and believe the Lord for them. If John and Charles Wesley could save England from destruction—from the revolution and bloodbath that baptized France under the same conditions—can’t we stand and believe that God can spare America?
By intercession for our country can’t we obtain something in the spirit and prevail? The Lord says, “I looked for someone who would stand in the gap. I looked for an intercessor” (Ezekiel 22:30). God delights in having someone who will claim a promise, in the spirit, and then hold on to God, believing until he actually sees it take form and shape right before his eyes. There is a way that God can bless us to do it.
The same thing is true concerning the things that you want for your own life. The devil’s trick is to get you to turn from the invisible world and look at the world of circumstance—as things are now.
Hebrews 11:24–28 tells about Moses, who through faith kept the Passover, and how he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing to suffer reproach with the children of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible. That means he kept his eye on the unseen reality of what God was saying. That’s what He believed.
He didn’t believe what he could see: murmuring Israelites all about him, wilderness, serpents, problems, Amalekites coming up to destroy them, the unbelief of the people. The circumstances themselves were very deadly, if he watched them and observed them. And whenever he did, he failed. But Hebrews says, “He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.” He kept his eye on God. He kept his eye on the unseen promise that he was claiming, the word God had spoken.
When God says a thing, believe it, even if there is nothing visible round about you to give evidence that it is the truth. If you believe in symptoms, you’ll always be sick. If you believe in circumstances, you’ll always be defeated.
You may be one who likes to analyze things scientifically. Most scientists are atheists. Why? Because they only believe the processes that they can see and analyze. But now every major science is in trouble, because of the fact that extrasensory perception, foreseeing the future, and various other psychic phenomena are proving to be true, and nothing in the laws of physics, or chemistry, or the other sciences makes any provision at all for this kind of experience. Metaphysics enters into it, and then we’re stuck with something that we thought we had left behind in the Middle Ages.
In recent experiments, oxygen has been changed from a gas into a solid, carbon has been used to make diamonds, and gold has been made from lead. Those who were scientific didn’t believe in that. The trouble with scientists and doctors is that they believe only the facts that have been proven to them in a former generation.
What about the things that are happening now, when the scientific world is opening up so fast that a textbook is almost obsolete by the time it is printed, because of the advancing, expanding world in which we’re living?
It’s a time for us to open our hearts. Some of you good folks say, “I was raised a Lutheran,” or “I was raised a Baptist.” That’s all very fine. But let me tell you something that Harry Emerson Fosdick stated in one of his sermons. He said, “The trouble is that Christians are not prepared to believe enough. They are always making little doctrines and building walls around their churches saying, ‘This much we will believe and no more.’ ”
This well-known minister went through a period of great unbelief, but at the time of his death he had swung back to what be believed at the beginning of his ministry as a fundamental Baptist. He left the Baptist church because their creed was too small, and in time he went into a period of agnosticism and modernism; but when he came to old age, he turned back to faith and he said, “We are not believing enough. Our world is too small.”
Let’s start believing for greater things. In this walk with God we come for ministry and sometimes the revelation sounds fantastic, but the people of God are still not prepared to believe God for enough. They believe their circumstances, believing their symptoms, believing that their limitations are valid and genuine, and that nothing can be done about them.
I believe, because I have seen it done, that hands can be laid on a person to enable him to play an organ in a superior manner. I know that someone who can’t play the piano at all, can have hands laid on him, and can then play a piano better than if he had taken lessons. I have heard it on occasion, when an individual played melodies we’ve never heard. Don’t you believe that abilities can be acquired? that skills can be imparted? Must we be so slavishly dedicated that we have to study to learn that one and one makes two, two and two makes four? Fine, you can work and memorize and finally learn, but somewhere along the line someone is going to learn again how to impart knowledge, as the Word says.
We’re limited in every respect. We need not go through what we endure physically. There’s the plane of divine health that we can reach. My mind keeps reaching up. With all my heart I must accept the promises of God. And as I do, and rejoice in them, I’ll see them manifested round about me.
If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth (notice where the focus should be). For ye died (note: you died), and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory. Colossians 3:1–4. You say, “Oh, I’d like to rise to that. I’d like to believe that.” I believe that it’s true right now. You say, “I don’t feel dead, and I don’t act like I’m dead in Christ. It seems sometimes as if the old flesh is still very much alive.” Will you go by appearances or will you trust God?
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Irishman, who in the process of working in the field, came across a large snake. He took a hoe and chopped it in pieces. It continued wiggling, so he chopped the pieces in two again. Another Irishman came over and asked, “Is it dead?” “Oh, of a certainty it’s dead; it just doesn’t know it.” Let’s take that view of our old flesh. It’s dead, but sometimes it doesn’t know it.
There are things that I have to accept, even if there seems to be evidence to the contrary. I’m going to believe in Christ dying for me. In Christ all died and in Christ all are made alive—I’m going to believe that. I’m going to believe in the holy water baptism by which I was buried to an old life and I came up in the new. Regardless of how many manifestations come along the way, I will hold fast to that and soon I will see it take form in the world that we call reality. What we believe today with all of our heart, we are by faith, and tomorrow we will be that in every way.