Romans 4:16–20 is the heart of a passage which teaches us about Abraham’s faith and our faith. Like Abraham, we will find out who we are and believe it. For this reason it is by faith, that it might be in accordance with grace (the way this version reads is beautiful, but it is difficult to improve upon the phraseology of the King James version: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace”), in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, (as it is written, “A Father of many nations have I made you”) in the sight of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope he believed, in order that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” And without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.
Why did God originate the plan He has for us in the first place? Why didn’t He say, “If you do fifty pushups I’ll save you?” Why didn’t He base our salvation on works? He could say, “Give one thousand dollars to some charity, then I’ll redeem you.” Why should He base it on this simple thing of faith? Because He wanted to make everything available to you through grace.
Grace means His favor, the love which He gives you. Grace comes through the simple channel of your acceptance.
The simple process of your believing is all that is necessary to bring the divine provision into your life. He has ruled that everything He does for man is to come through faith, in order that grace can be the source of everything He gives to you. If this is the case, then you can stop trying to work out any favor in God’s sight by what you do.
The Jews asked Jesus (and this was a difficult question in that day of religiosity and legalism), “What must we do that we may work the works of God?” That’s a big question. “What are we supposed to be doing?” Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” John 6:28–29.
God does not expect you to do anything greater than to have faith in what He has already done for you. You might say, “I thought we were supposed to win the world to the Lord by preaching and witnessing. Now you tell me that all I have to do is to believe what God beamed toward me.” If you are just out to preach and win souls, you will lose the grace of God—the very grace which will bring about His perfect plan and the expression of His perfect will in your life. Even if you go out and do some mighty things, you could not dream of a life more important in the divine scheme of things than that which God already has in mind for you and has provided for you. He wants everything to be by His grace, not by human effort, human wisdom, or human ability. It is something He wants to do for you. He is asking you. “Just believe Me. If you believe Me, that’s enough.” Abraham believed God, and God said, “Good, I’ll chalk it down to you for righteousness.” Look at Abraham’s ledger. There’s not a blemish there. Why? Because he believed God, and God said, “We’ll just count the whole thing for righteousness.”
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:8–9. God wasn’t napping when you suddenly decided to become a Christian. He wouldn’t be God if He didn’t anticipate a few things. In His foreknowledge He knew you, and He had a plan for you, whether you will walk in it or not. He wasn’t caught napping when you decided, “Lord, I want Your perfect will.” God didn’t say, “Perfect Will. Perfect Will—now, let’s see. Angels, look through the files and see what we have on ‘Perfect Will’ for Sam Jones’.”
“We don’t even have a Sam Jones here.”
“You don’t have a Perfect Will on Sam Jones? What are we going to do? We will have to do something with him.”
And one of the angels says, “We might as well let him go into hell; we don’t have anything for him here.”
Wouldn’t that be a terrible situation? But that’s not the way it is. There is a file on Sam Jones. There is a perfect will, and there is a permissive will. In fact, God has quite a few possibilities worked out for you. He even has one written in red which is entitled, “Out of the will completely.” I don’t believe in fatalism, but I do believe God has a forechoice and a foreknowledge of us. He says, “Many are called and few are chosen,” but God would not be so unjust as to deliberately call a lot of people, knowing He had already predetermined that they could have nothing from Him. Anytime God says, “Whosoever will,” He means, “Whosoever will!”
God in His foreknowledge knows every time a man is going to be in a position to reach into Him, and He has an answer ready for him. “Who are you, Abraham?” “I’m a father of many nations.” “Who are you, Brother, and Sister?” We say like John, “Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3:2).
The Apostle John expressed all of the hope in our hearts. “We know we will be like Him.” What do we say in the meantime? “I’m a believer.” Because it’s all “by faith that it might be by grace, that the promise might be assured to all.” I would like to brainwash you from the sickness that grips your heart—a sickness that makes you feel your life is insignificant, that God has no plan, that He has no purpose, and that He doesn’t love you. I’d like to deal with the conditioning of your circumstances. They have all produced a monstrous lie in your spirit. The truth is that God loves you.
God put everything under faith so that it could come by grace. When you open up to the grace of God, He even has the works that are foreordained for you to walk in (Ephesians 2:10). It’s like getting on the conveyor belt at the airport. You say, “I’m going to serve God.” You step on a moving belt and stand there while you are carried along. There is no such thing as time or chance to a believer. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord.
This could present a problem because you may wonder if God is really in all the things that befall you. He is. You must shrink your devil down and get a bigger God. You have blamed the devil for many things which God has ordered in your life. These situations are what have kept some of you going. If you hadn’t been dealt with drastically, you would have no discipline in your spirit at all. Everyone needs to be self-disciplined. A human being who is completely undisciplined, either by an external source of authority or by an internal source within his own heart, will not accomplish anything. So when we are afflicted, we learn to keep the law of the Lord. “The Lord scourges every son whom He receives” (Hebrews 12:6).
When we look back in retrospect over the years, few of us say, “Oh, I thank God for all those wonderful, beautiful times God has given me, all the wonderful meals I’ve had, all the marvelous sleep I’ve had.” We never think about the blessings. When you get to heaven what do you think the people are going to be talking about—all the blessings? I doubt it. Daniel will be talking about those lions, and the three Hebrews will be talking about the fiery furnace. They will be remembering the difficult times they came through with the grace of God, because in these situations God made the greatest revelation to their hearts. He showed them His loving intentions and His purpose toward them in the difficulties they experienced.
He has a plan for you too. He has a plan in your life. If we would just begin to seek for the perfect will of God, we could step into that plan and find from day to day that God would inspire us and strengthen us. Our lives will be more effective as we walk in the life that was before ordained for us. Instead of struggling, “Oh I don’t think I am wise enough, I don’t know how to do many things,” just open up and let God happen to you. Let His will break forth upon you. He has a plan for you more thoroughly worked out than you believe. The longer I live in this ministry, the more I find this is true.
The Lord said to Peter, “When you were young, you girded yourself and went where you would. When you get to be older another will gird you and take you where you wouldn’t (John 21:18). Christ spoke of the death he would die, but you can make a mystical interpretation of this too. When I was younger, I could plan and execute a lot of things. I had many ideas of my own in many situations. I decided, “This is what I want to do. I want to take this course in school; I want to do this, and I want to do that.” And to large extent, I could follow through with my own ideas.
As I grew older, I found that God kept imposing the idea of His will upon me. I know now, that if I do not have the Lord’s leading on a situation or problem, I can try and try and try, and nothing will happen. This is because the older I get, the more I find I’m taken “where I would not.” I don’t feel I can order my days. I have tried several times to work out a schedule for a methodical way to approach all my responsibilities, but I can’t do it. Things start happening and I get caught in that stream of the will of the Lord. I can say however, that by following the leading of the Holy Spirit, my life is a thousand times more effective than it would be if I sat down and planned it out.
Why does God put everything under grace?… To the end the promise might be sure to all the seed. Romans 4:16b. God is concerned about this. He doesn’t want anyone excluded from what He is doing. He wants to be sure everyone receives the promises which He has issued. God made a promise to Abraham, and everyone who believes God receives that promise also. God made a promise to David and everyone who is in Christ winds up with David’s promise. All authority in heaven and earth, every blessing bestowed upon Christ by the Father—receive them all! Whatever He does, He does through His grace and faith in order that He might make the promise secure to all.
For as many as may be the promises of God, In Him they are yes; wherefore also by Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us. II Corinthians 1:20. There are a lot of promises from God, but in Christ, every promise will be answered “yes” to you. Dispensational teaching is deadly. It is not rightly dividing the word of truth. Dispensational teachers say, “You can’t have all these promises God gave to Abraham, those were for the Jews!”
“What about David’s?”
“Those promises belong to David and you can’t have them either.”
“My Bible says, ‘As many as are in Christ, the same are the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise!’ ” The whole purpose of everything God ever promised anyone in the Word was to finally secure it to all—to make the promise certain to all. God offered it by “grace through faith” that He might make it certain for everyone. Any promise God gives is designed to ultimately reach an individual, who then reaches out in faith to others who in turn lay hold of it. The promises are available to everyone who wants them. All these promises in Christ have their “yes.”
“Lord, can I have this?”
The answer is “yes.”
“All of these promises?”
“Yes.”
We sing, “Every promise in the Book is mine” and this is true. They are all yours. When you study the Schofield Bible, or Larkin’s “Dispensational Truth,” the first thing you notice is how they have all the promises lined up. They say, “This is all for Jews. This is all for an age past; this was in a transition period, and this belonged to the early church. Miracles ceased here, and now this belongs in the millennium.” The promises have all happened or are all about to happen in some future age. You wind up with nothing. I will not give all of God’s promises away when God says, “As many as are of the faith are the seed of Abraham and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). I don’t have to be Jewish to be the seed of Abraham; all I need is a believing heart to be the seed of Abraham. What a man is racially is not the issue. What a wicked thing it is for people to interpret the Word of God so they can excuse their unbelief and call it faith.
They say, “I have faith. I believe the Bible.”
“You believe it?”
“Yes, I believe it all, the whole thing from cover to cover. I believe it all.”
They don’t believe it all. They don’t believe those promises are valid; they don’t believe in miracles now. They think, “How fortunate we are to be living here in a bare, empty spot in time, not having to believe for anything because it’s all over with, or it’s all about to happen.” Their excuse is: “Nothing is happening right now, so we just grin and bear it.”
There ought to be something within our hearts that does not “make of no effect the promises of God” (Romans 4:14). The Word says, “In Him they all have their yes.” The promises all belong to you. If God’s will is not working for you, that is your problem. The promises are working for a lot of people because they believe.
God said, “I want to secure all the promises for everyone.” When God speaks that way He is lifting the fulfillment of these promises out of the realm of human capacity or human ability, and He is putting it all upon Himself. That is why the Word says, “What He has promised, He is able to perform” (Romans 4:20). This is all Abraham had to believe. He didn’t believe he had to perform; in fact, he couldn’t perform—he was one hundred years old. He looked at Sarah and she couldn’t perform either. Only one person could bring this promise to pass, and that was God. “What He promised He was able to perform.”
As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations. Someone ought to send God an English grammar. He is always mixing up His tenses. God may not speak good English, but He sure speaks good Scripture. “Father of many nations I have made thee.” Abraham believed and knew this would come to pass because God has a way of fulfilling His word.
Who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Romans 4:17. We have a lot to learn about God. The Word talks about things which don’t even exist as though they were. Imagine the heavenly Father chatting with the angels. He starts naming and talking about all the apostles and prophets who are going to come, and the angels say, Apostles? What’s apostles? Are they something like an Old Testament patriarch?”
“No.”
“What’s an apostle?”
“You’ll see.”
When God begins to talk about things that are not as though they were, then perk up your ears because something is about to happen. Imagine a universal darkness and the heavenly Father saying, “Let there be light.”
“Light, what’s light?”
“Here it comes.” And there was light.
Just imagine God calling a thing by name before it ever exists and talking about all those things that don’t even exist as though they did. But that is the way a thing happens. When it is born in the heart of God, and He has made provision for it in His Word, then He has committed His own integrity to you, based on what He said He would do. So God came to Abraham, poor old, limping soul, and called him, “Father of many nations,” as he hobbled along. When God says something and it does not exist in your thinking, realize you are limited by your senses. You are limited by what you see, what you hear, what you feel. You are limited by your reason. In fact you are just plain limited! But God isn’t.
When all things past, present, and future are before God, He takes the things which are not, to confound the things that are. He looks at all-conquering Babylon which seems so imposing and says, “See how Babylon has fallen!” He prophesies it ahead of time, and when there seems to be no cause to create such a disaster, it comes to pass.
How does He do it? When God speaks, it is the most amazing paradox in the world. When God speaks, He limits Himself; and at the same time He turns loose His lack of limitation. When God speaks a word, worlds can come into being showing how unlimited His power is. When He speaks a word declaring what He is going to do, this also eliminates every other course except that spoken course. That word limits God in what He is going to do.
Every promise is designed to loose you from your limitations into the omnipotence of God. But every promise is also a divinely imposed limitation which God places upon Himself. When God says, “Pray, and I’ll bless you,” He has limited Himself to blessing you when you pray; He can’t do anything else. When God makes a promise, He is limiting Himself to do exactly what He has said He would do. This is so that His omnipotence is turned loose toward you. When God says, “All things are possible to him who believeth,” He means He has committed Himself to making everything possible if you believe. It can’t work any other way.
God loved you before you were ever born. He anticipated you. He had a plan for you. He loves you. God is not caught unaware of your need. He knows you. The whole issue is: Can we believe God’s Word?
This is where most human beings miss it. They say, “Unless I can see it, I won’t believe it.” But God says, “Unless you believe, you won’t see it.” He has put it all on a basis of faith so that it might be by grace. You must believe; then His grace will come flowing into your life, and then you will walk in it. God is saying to you, “If you’ll accept this promise, this is the way it will be.”
When God says, “Hail, you mighty man of valor,” don’t look around to see whom He is talking about; He is talking about you. When He calls you an elder and calls you His bondservant, believe it. No matter what you see happening that would seem to the contrary, no matter how appearances are, believe! If you believe what He says, then that is exactly what happens. When He says something, that’s it! There is reality in what God says. Reality is not found in what you see; reality is found in what God says. “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4). This is how worlds change. This is the way ages change. This is how you can overcome your heredity, your circumstances and your environment. You can conquer all by just believing what God says.
And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead. (The New American Standard Version, words this passage positively and gets the same idea across: “He contemplated his own body, now as good as dead.”) He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief. Romans 4:19a, 20a. This is just what happens. If I keep on considering the problem from a human viewpoint, with human limitations, I’ll stagger at the promises of God. But if I go ahead, not considering my limitations, I won’t stagger at the promises of God because of unbelief. The only time I tend to waver is when I concentrate on the problem. If I concentrate on the Lord, I don’t stagger in the promises.
We are going to move into a greater period of faith and intercession. Good things are going to happen in the Lord. It will be a year of tremendous things. It will be a year of intercession, a year of prayer. How are we going to get into these things? Just believe God. I will not believe in the illusion of things; I’m going to stand in the fullness which the Lord promised for this year. There are many things we must believe for in these days. I see nothing in the future but unlimited blessing and resources at the disposal of those who will believe God and walk on with Him. This is God’s program and it is going to have God’s fullness all the way through. It will not be part God and part human emotion. We are not going to follow in the steps of other groups that have become financial programs rather than churches where the power of God is really manifested. We must believe in the miracle power of God; we will believe it all the way.
If you are going to walk on water, keep your eyes off the waves. It is when you look at those waves that fear hits your heart. This is a time we cannot afford fear; we cannot afford to judge after the natural. We have lived with the need for a continuous miracle, and we continue to need a miracle almost every day in this walk. Actually, this walk can’t happen; it is impossible. The things which are happening in these churches are impossible. Have you ever seen one of those old cartoons where someone is running along, comes to the edge of a precipice and runs fifty feet out in the air before he realizes there is no ground under him? He looks down, and zoom … that’s when he falls. The moral to that story is: Don’t look down. It’s too late to turn around; just keep walking. If you keep looking up, it will never make any difference because you won’t know you left solid ground a long time ago. If you keep looking up you will never know that you are walking on those airy things which humans call “elusive promises of God and vague promises found in the Book.”
Everyone is bothered by these promises. Theologians try to explain them away, but no one really wants to come to grips with them. We are coming to grips with these promises though. We are walking by faith. We are finding out that we are the people God says we are. It is very startling. We hear prophecies over us: “Walk with God, you’ll be an apostle; you’ll be a prophet; you’ll be an elder.” And we keep thinking, “One day that will be true.” Then one day we realize we left land a long time ago, and we are walking out on air. God says we are something, and God says we can do something; then one day we find that we are something and that we are doing it. It will take a long time for our heads to catch up to what God says we are. If we could only take off our heads and stand on them, then we could go on and trust God with all of our hearts.
Will you believe the Lord for the things He has set before you as a people? You must come to grips with what God has said. Your thinking has to change. What God has said is what you say. Begin to think of yourself in terms of what God says you are. When God says you are something, believe it. The story of Gideon illustrates this. Gideon was hiding away, threshing out grain, when the Lord said, “Hail, mighty man of valor.” Gideon said, “I am the least of my father’s house. My father’s house is the least in the tribe, and our tribe isn’t worth much either.” He was hiding out from the Midianites, but the Lord was calling him “a mighty man of valor.”
Well, was he a mighty man of valor? In God’s sight he was, because that is what God intended to make him. Of course, Gideon and the Lord argued about it for a while. Although Gideon knew he had to work for the Lord, he put out the fleece and waited for a strong confirmation before he made a move. Finally, the Lord let him creep down and listen to what the Midianites were saying. One of them had a dream, and the other was interpreting it to him. They were saying “Gideon’s God has given Midian and all the camp into Gideon’s hand” (Judges 7:14). So Gideon went back and said, “It is really so. I am a mighty man of valor. I am what God says I am.”
God is saying to you, “Come on, open your heart and believe. All things are possible to him that believeth.” Begin to move into the new life God has for you. Have some of the brothers with a real prophetic gift minister to you and prophesy over you. We have seen people change their whole personality, from the inside out, because they believe. This is not a contest in our minds; it is a necessity. “I have to change, and I’m going to change. I’m going to be what God wants me to be. I am what God says I am. I’m going to be His child. I will walk with Him. I don’t have to be submissive to these restrictions and limitations I have inherited from the old Adamic nature. I will walk with Him. I don’t have to submit to the limitations and circumstances around me. I could find a new life, and I’m going to do it.” This must be our thinking.
We must press in zealously. There are no limitations. Everything God says will be fulfilled, and even more. We are going to stand on the promises; we must believe what God says. We are going to release everything belonging to the abundance and fullness of the promises of the Lord. God has provided all things pertaining to life and godliness. We are “blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” We will stand on every promise made, in the name of the Lord.
I want the last hesitancy of my heart in fully accepting what God says about my life to go. I want to accept totally, absolutely, without reservation, the prophecies and the promises of God. If there is any subconscious dragging of the feet, I want to know about it, and I want to deal with it. I want this to be a release of faith so there are no hindering things in my life. My cry is, “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.”
I want my faith to expand. I’m sure I don’t know enough or believe enough. Every year the areas of our ignorance are expanding rapidly. There is so much more to be known than we know, and every year there is more to be known. While this is happening, the areas of believing are expanding also. I want to keep up with this. I want to be able to believe. The churches today are trying to whittle their doctrines down so they can believe less and less. They say, “We must minimize our doctrinal differences so that we can agree.” The churches are breaking down their beliefs until you don’t know what they do believe in. Some can’t even say, “We believe in God.” One of the branches of theology now is Christian Atheism. I don’t know what they believe in, and neither do they. It’s like the fellow who cut out all the verses of Scripture with which he disagreed. Finally he had to change the cover too. It had said, “Holy Bible,” and he had a “Bible of Holes.”
I want to believe more; I don’t want to believe less. Instead of Christians believing less and less, we are being called upon to believe more and more. We are being called upon to believe more in every realm. A doctor needs to know more than he did ten years ago in order to practice medicine effectively. Everyone needs to know more. They have to accept more. There isn’t a science book that is up to date. The ink isn’t dry on a book before it is out of date. All fields of learning are expanding. Astronomy, for instance, is an area which has scarcely begun to be explored. This last moon trip revealed a wealth of information which the world will be feeding upon for years. You couldn’t possibly keep current in any science, the fields are expanding so rapidly.
Some think that God is narrowing us down until we believe less than we did in the horse-and-buggy days. They say, “Let’s have a revival meeting. Everyone stand; we’re going to sing, ‘The old time religion is good enough for me.’ ” It is not good enough for me! It had a lot of flaws and defects in it. This is no fault of the Bible because all of this truth was hidden there in plain sight of everyone. With all my heart I want to be a believer. It is a miserable, confused thing to be an unbeliever, because you can’t even believe in yourself. For an unbeliever, questions such as, “Who am I? Where did I come from? where am I going? why am I here?” are the quest of philosophy.
I know who I am: I’m a child of God. I know where I came from: I was born of the Spirit of the Lord. I know why I’m here and I know where I’m going. You say, “But I have so many questions.” Don’t worry about the questions. Worry about some of the answers you already have that you’re not doing anything with. I never worry about something I don’t understand, because I don’t have to do anything about that. I do worry, however, about the things I know. Those are the things which haunt me in the night. I know who I am. That is what bothers me now. It is the glorious assurance of who you are and the destiny you are to fulfill that troubles your spirit. Like Abraham saying, “I’m a father of many nations,” he strutted around with his cane, believing God. He must have been quite an old man when he took those mighty strolls with God. While looking up at the stars God asked him, “How many are there? That’s how many your seed will be.”
“That’s a lot of children. The stars don’t bother me. What bothers me is being that great father of the faithful.”
One thing which will help us to realize, “It is of faith that it might be of grace.” It isn’t enough to say with determination, “Oh, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it,” deciding that you are going to do it in yourself. You must reach up to believe that the grace of God will come to you and God will work it out for you. Change is not worked when you lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. You don’t do it that way. Have faith to believe and the grace of God will flow. Submit to what God is doing in that new creation. This is a glorious time for us to get over feeling that we are not what God says we are. God must look upon us and marvel at our stupid ideas. We say, “I’m going to believe everything God has said about all the elders.” What about you? “Oh, I’m nothing.”
How can we honor the work of God in another person and call ourselves believers when we dishonor and reject the work of God in our own being? Surely we know how much He has loved us and dealt with us. Let’s not waver. Let’s have faith in what He has said we are. You say, “Well, I don’t see everything working out for the prophets and elders either.” You just have to accept by faith. I see that they are men in motion. They are constantly growing. We can marvel at their growth and development, but don’t think they are perfect. None of us have reached that stage yet. We are in motion, we are changing. Can you see what new changes and developments are happening? Can you believe to change?
You can be anything you want to be. The idea that you are stuck in a rut with the old Adamic nature is not true. “We are new creatures in Christ Jesus.” The idea that you are stuck in your circumstances is not true. The Bible is full of people who broke out of the restrictions they were under. The only limitations you must worry about are the ones you impose upon yourself. You are limited in your thinking and comprehension. “Eve hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (I Corinthians 2:9). You are not thinking big enough; you are not believing big enough. You are not accepting yourself in a walk with God. Instead of linking yourself to His omnipotence, you are trying to impose upon God the limitations that you have imposed upon yourself. Let’s try another tactic. What you believe for, and appropriate, is all from His hand.
We receive from Thee, O Christ, through faith, cleansing from unbelief, from doubts, from fears, from that lazy, passive conditioning of our minds. These things have caused us to live not expecting miracles, not expecting Thy power. Lord, we want to be reconditioned; we want the deadness of Adam’s thinking to leave us. We want the newness of Christ, the mind of Christ to come. We want to be loosed, O Lord, into Thy supernatural omniscience and omnipotence. We want to link ourselves with You. We want to loose our limitations in Thy fullness, in the name of the Lord. Amen.