I think people sometimes read the Bible wrong; they read it with a negative depression on them that interprets it wrong. We are going to read a Scripture that to some may sound a little negative, but I’m going to tell you how positive it is. When the man brought his epileptic son to Christ, he said, “But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” Christ answered, “ ‘If You can!’ All things are possible to him who believes.” On the surface, it sounds like somebody chopped the man down, doesn’t it? But you see, it wasn’t spoken that way, because the man responded, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. (Mark 9:17–24.)
And we wind up with this hour upon us knowing: the greatest thing that we can have, above all the wisdom and the revelation of Scriptures and truth that God has given us for many years—a lifetime of it, culminating in restoration truths that are fantastic—the greatest thing that we can have is faith.
If you don’t believe that what we have received are some of the greatest truths, go back and read Church history. Read how limited their understanding and revelation were compared to what God has revealed in the last thirty years. We have had some fantastic things revealed to us. But as great as that is, God says, “This is the day that faith, not wisdom, is going to be the answer.” You can know all of these things, but the thing that is going to make it work is that you’re going to be a believer. You really believe.
If there are four words that I could give you, just four words that you could live with every day of your life, they would be these: “I am a believer. I am a believer. I am a believer.”
You are going to hear some of the simplest things about this thing of faith. I want you to understand faith, because we think it is something we have to pump up. Of all things that we have, we can understand love more, or hope more, but it’s difficult to understand faith. How can I really believe? How can I have faith? This message is going to help you. I’m counting on it, because I want you to believe with me. I want you to have faith with me.
John 15:22–25: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. But they have done this in order that the word may be fulfilled that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’ ”
That sounds very negative. He was talking to all those people and He said, “They hated Me without a cause.” But you believe without a cause, just the same as you reject without a cause. Everyone who rejects Jesus Christ does so out of some measure of deception that is on them. Isn’t that right? Then they don’t really have a cause. There is no basic thing. You say, “Well, God did this to me and God did that to me.” That’s the way you have reasoned it out, and you have determined that that is going to be your decision. Or you can say, “Though He slay me, yet I will serve Him” (Job 13:15). You see, what happens to you, your circumstances, brings you to a place where you decide that you are either going to rebel against God and reject Him, or you are going to believe Him anyway, even though He seems to slay you. You come to the place where you say, “I’m going to love God and I’m going to believe His Word.”
That brings us to this: Faith is a decision, just the same as rebellion and unbelief are a decision. And that’s how God judges you—whether you accept the Word, accept the gospel, or you reject it. It’s up to you.
You say, “Well, I went through all of this and I had all of these feelings.” Yes, but people pretty much believe what they want to believe. Faith is a decision. Faith is an action. And you stand up and say, “I don’t care what I’m going through, what the symptoms are. I don’t care what the circumstances are. I believe. I am a believer.” Isn’t that beautiful?
Continuing in John 15: “… ‘They hated Me without a cause.’ When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me, and you will bear witness also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” Verses 25–27.
Let’s face what that means. In I Corinthians, the first two chapters talk a great deal about faith, and it tells us how we believe. It says, But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God … I Corinthians 2:9–10, 12, KJV.
Do you understand that? The senses are never going to tell you what God has for you. Your reason won’t tell you. Your feelings won’t tell you. Everything in this world that you see is very negative, because the last realm to be redeemed is this physical, material world. But Christ is exalted in the heavens (Philippians 2:9–11). He sits on the throne, waiting in expectation until His enemies are made the footstool of His feet (Hebrews 10:12–13). Now that means that on one level it is all over with; it’s done. It was finished when Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). It was all over with, in one realm. But the manifestation of it is difficult if we don’t believe. We’ve got to decide: “I believe Jesus did it. He did it. He won it. I believe that.” You say, “Well, but it doesn’t look like it. I have this problem and that problem.” I don’t care what you see, what you feel. It’s over with, in the spirit realm, and it’s up to you to just reach up and pull it down—“I believe”—and see it manifested in your everyday life. Have faith.
Some of these Scriptures can disturb you if you don’t follow this. Isaiah 53:4–5 says, “By His stripes we are healed. He has borne our sicknesses, carried our sorrows, all of those things.” Peter quoted that. He said, “By His stripes we were healed” (I Peter 2:24), because he saw that when Christ was beaten before He was crucified (John 19:1–2), those stripes were our healing. By His stripes we were healed. You say, “Well, a lot of people are sick.” The material world is going to go on in some kind of a program down here in the physical world unless we just reach up and say, “I take what is complete. I take what is perfect. He did it.”
By one sacrifice He has forever perfected them that are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). How difficult it is to believe in your perfection! You hang on to your imperfections. You insist on being imperfect. It’s almost as if we insist on being sick. It’s as if we insist on being poor. Throw that away! It’s the will of God that we prosper and be in health, even as our soul prospereth (III John 2). We’ve got to come to believe in what God has done for us.
This is the thing I have been thinking about for several days. We’ve got to have faith without any “ifs”—faith without any “ifs.” We’ve got to believe. We are going to see changes come, even in the next weeks and months, that we have never seen before. Now rub that out and change the tense: We are seeing changes. It’s not “we will.” We are seeing. Things are changing. Everything is changing. Just believe God. It isn’t complicated. It doesn’t take brains; in fact, I think if you stop thinking about things so much it helps a little, because our ways of thinking, our patterns of thought lead us right back into conclusions that are negative. And then we try to struggle up from there. But we bypass that and say, “I’m a believer. I believe the Word.” And again, we change the tense. We don’t say, “I will believe it”; we say, “I do believe it.”
Is this making sense to you? People say, “Well, I have a real struggle with faith.” Everybody does when they are down here reasoning things out. Faith is not the conclusion of reason; faith is a determination. Make your decision: “I am a believer.” Are you getting this? Do you believe it? It’s a real challenge, isn’t it? You look at things, and reason says they’re not going to change. But you make a prayer and you say, “It’s all over with. It’s changed.” It’s all over with! You believe! You believe! You believe!
I want above everything else in this world to just believe. You see, you’ve got to pull yourself out of this area where you are confused, where you go through battles. We’ve got to get out of that. We’ve got to come to the place where we say, “I believe God. I believe God.” We have come this far, but you see, we are not supposed to be in an eternal struggle. This battle must be terminated. And faith is the victory. This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith (I John 5:4). Nothing else overcomes the world.
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. I John 5:4, KJV.
We believe. You see, the problem of pleasing God is a matter of faith. Hebrews 11 says that Enoch pleased God. Enoch walked with God and he pleased God, and he had this testimony that he pleased God; and it talks about faith. You have to have the faith to believe that. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death … for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. Hebrews 11:5, KJV. His faith did it. His faith brought him into pleasing God.
God can make all kinds of provisions, but the thing that pleases God is that you believe Him. The Jews asked, “What shall we do that we might work the works of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the works of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent” (John 6:28–29). Believe on Him. Just have faith: “I believe.”
You cannot imagine what happens to a person who abandons faith. He becomes rebellious. He reverts to believing what his senses and reasoning tell him about a circumstance. That’s where deception comes in, and it is totally wrong.
There are no facts that can be interpreted as truth without this faith and love. That’s the Kingdom of God: faith that works by love (Galatians 5:6).
Now let me point out something. Suppose that one of my dear friends actually, factually, went out and did some very stupid and wrong things. For instance, maybe he robbed a bank. And we know that those facts are indisputable. From that point on, what do we do? When he gets into a court of law, the lawyers will take the facts and argue back and forth. They’re not interested in the truth; they’re interested in winning a case and making money—totally. That’s all. That’s Babylon. But we who love him and have faith for him enter into a realm of revelation, and we see what he really is.
I don’t know whether you understand what I mean or not, but there is a totally different way of judging somebody for what he does. You ought to know that. Some of you have fouled up in the past, and you know that I loved you and had faith for you. I never abandoned you, never had an adverse opinion about you. You know that is true. And you feel the same way about me. You say, “Well, we hear a lot of things that are supposed to be facts about you, but we don’t care what people are saying—we have faith and love for you.” It’s the same thing. It doesn’t make a bit of difference.
Faith is a determination: you act upon something that you determine to believe. That’s why so many times the Lord would say, “Take up your bed and walk”; and the guy lying there who had never moved for years would have to take up his pallet and walk (Matthew 9:2–7; Mark 2:3–12; John 5:5–9). To the man with the withered hand (and Luke the doctor is interested; he says that it’s his right hand) He says, “Stretch out your hand” (Luke 6:6–10). Well, if he could have stretched out his hand he wouldn’t have been crippled, but faith acts with determination upon a Word.
There has to be a determination to act on the Word. You decide, “I’m a believer. I am a believer. I’m going to believe this. I’m not going to just hear this thing and have it stir up a few good feelings in me” (James 1:22–24). Isn’t that a terrible thing? It aborts. It’s like plowing the ground but never putting any seed in it. I’m going to be a believer. That Word is going to germinate. It’s the seed that is going to grow. Faith like a grain of mustard seed could split a mountain (Matthew 17:20). Don’t you find yourself encouraged to believe? Well, be more than encouraged. Determine to believe.
The Scriptures say, “He that is not for Me is against Me” (Matthew 12:30; Luke 11:23), because you see, anything that is not of faith is sin. Do you remember that in the Scripture? For whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Romans 14:23b, KJV. You could go into some church where the people say, “This is the way you live; this is the way we restrict your conduct; this is what you do, and this is what you don’t do,” and they put a lot of heavy restraints on you. And you say, “Oh, I’m scared of going to hell, so I’m going to do it.” That’s not going to save you, because whatever is not of faith is sin. If your religion is based on fear, you are going to go to hell anyway (Revelation 21:8). I don’t care how religious you get. You say, “Well, what about the fear of the Lord?” That’s something else. It’s a fear of the Lord, but it’s not the oppression of fear. The fear of the Lord means that I love Him; and because I love Him, there is a fear in my heart of displeasing Him. I want to believe Him. But I know that I’m not going to do it by saying ten thousand “Hail Marys” and lighting twenty thousand candles. That isn’t going to please Him. I have to do something more; I have to believe Him. That’s what He wants, because whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
John 16:8–9: “And He (the Holy Spirit), when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me.”
This means that the whole basis of sin is that you don’t believe in Christ. Here are all of these wonderful, religious people right down to the slimy devils, and they’re all lost if they don’t have faith. There is no way that fear is going to get you into anything, but faith believes what God has provided. Does that make a lot of sense to you, too? I think, for my own sake as well as yours, I’m going to be talking to you a lot about faith.
If you would ask me what the greatest goal of my life is, at this particular time in my life, it’s just to believe. Faith is going to open the door to this level of the Kingdom. We are going to be believers.
Faith is a decision. It is never an impulse; it’s not a worked-up feeling, but faith is a decision. Now, I’m not talking about the famous crusades where they have a time of decision and you make your decision for Christ; I’m talking about the fact that you decide, “I’m going to believe.” Have you ever noticed that if you have not made a decision about a thing, then you go through quite a period of ups and downs and ins and outs? You don’t know where you are. Confusion comes because you haven’t made a decision. Confusion is not of God (I Corinthians 14:33). Confusion comes because you are trying to balance the positive and the negative and weigh the circumstances. But faith comes when you say, “I don’t care what I see, what I hear, what anybody says; I believe.”
I can remember that at the beginning of this walk with God I brought basically the same truths I’m bringing now, maybe in an embryo form. It was just a seed of many things that developed later, but it was all there. There has been nothing but just an unfolding of the truth. And when I would bring those things, people would listen and forget it. After a while we had a lot of people who were listeners, but not doers (James 1:22–24). And do you know what God did? He threw me into the greatest persecutions I have ever had. I knew it was of the Lord; it was just like the Lord lifted a whole protection off of me and allowed the enemy to make me look like some devil. Do you know what it did? We finally got believers, for the challenge had come to say, “Will you believe what you hear, or will you believe the Word? Will you believe the revelation that you’ve had about this oracle of the Lord, or are you going to believe what other people are saying about him?”
The people have to hear the Living Word and they have to evaluate it and decide, “Am I going to accept this Word? It’s a revelation to my heart. Or am I going to reject it because of the oracle?” Jesus said, “If they reject My Words they will reject you also” (John 15:20). The whole issue of the Word and the oracle of the Word is tied together.
The people who are still standing, who are still moving on, and the third generation who couldn’t care less about what anybody says, are doing so because the Word is what they are determined to believe. They believe that Word. And they will go right into it. They act on it. They’re aggressive. Faith is an activity; it’s an action. But faith is a decision first. You decide that you’re going to believe.
Did I get through to you? God has spoken; we believe. “Though a host come against me, yet this will I believe” (Psalm 27:3). That was the determination of David. For every man of faith, you can almost trace some statement that he made, that even in the adversity of circumstances he determined; he decided; it was a decision. He said, “I’m a believer.” Isn’t that beautiful?
There are things that hold you through all the years. You could see things happen in the church, you can have things happen in your family, in your own life, but you don’t have to interpret them negatively. Interpret them with faith. You know that all things work together for good to them who love God (Romans 8:28). Just haul out a Scripture and stand on it and believe it. Say, “I’m going to believe this. I’m not going to doubt it.”
I made a statement that I think the time has come when instead of our interceding over situations and persons, we’ll come to such a place of faith that we’ll just read a Scripture, and judgment will come in the earth. It has to be pulled out of this level of struggle, and confusion, and disturbances, and fear, and being in a corner over circumstances. It has to come to the place where it’s just voicing the Word of God.
It isn’t that we haven’t heard this before; but we are on such a deeper level that I think our requirement now is just staying before the Lord and drawing His faith. It isn’t faith to believe like we have ever known before, because what this Word is asking for is something that we have never had before. And I don’t think we can have it unless the Lord gives it to us, as He is doing; but I don’t think we can assume that we have it already. I think that we should really go to the Lord with this Word. That’s how I feel about it.
One of the most important Scriptures that was ever given to us was Hebrews 6:1. It’s where we got the title for the first book of outlines, The First Principles. Therefore leaving the elementary teaching (or principles, KJV) about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God. Foundation—it’s right there. Repent of the dead works of religion and have faith toward God. It doesn’t even say “faith in God” or “faith about this problem or that problem.” It says, “Faith toward God.” It gets to be just one thing: “I’m a believer.” But it applies itself to everything in your life—everything. He doesn’t say “You have to believe this truth; you have to believe this fact; you have to believe this doctrine.” That’s not enough. You just have a faith toward God: “I’m a believer.”
We’re not going to hear a Word like this and not apply it and make it give us what we need.
God help us—if we would only realize that this Word on faith opens the door that within twenty-four hours we can see everything done. Faith is not contingent upon time. God said, “Let there be,” and it was (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14–15, 20–21, 24). But yet, I think that with some things God creates, He starts something going and it becomes a process. However, this that we are in now is the plan and purposes of God being fulfilled, which means that we can’t start a process, because if these days aren’t shortened, no flesh will be saved alive (Matthew 24:22).
We don’t dare do anything else but press into this. Believe it. Create it. Do it. Faith is a determination. We determine it. Faith is an action. As a gift, faith is the highest thing in the Kingdom. There are so many principles about faith. I made a statement one time that even if there seemed to be some interpretation that this wasn’t the time or the season for fulfillment, by faith the ages are framed by the Word of God (Hebrews 11:3). They are determined by it. We could do it. We could just change the whole course of history. And we had better do it, because there are so many major nuclear potentials that something could be triggered off that would destroy the whole universe within a matter of days.
We are racing to get into the authority to see the breakthrough happen. We have to really get back to saying, “This is the Word of the Lord,” and believing it with a determination, but also acting on it, making it happen, activating it.
Faith in the Word is an action that activates the Word into its fulfillment. That’s why so many times the Lord would say, “Do this. Do that. Go wash in the pool of Siloam (John 9:6–7). Take up your bed and walk (Matthew 9:2–7; Mark 2:2–11; John 5:5–9). Stretch forth your hand” (Matthew 12:10–13; Mark 3:1–5; Luke 6:6–10). You see, faith is activated by action. Christ would say, “According to your faith be it unto you” (Matthew 9:29; 15:28). I think God dodges His responsibility, but who am I to complain? God is always throwing it back on us to believe Him. He doesn’t do much sovereignly apart from agents of faith. He always throws it back on us, but it seems that we don’t get anywhere with Him until we throw it back on Him.
I think there has to be an anger in faith, like in the Luke 18 incident of the widow. “Hit him under the eye” is the Greek phrase for continual persistence. That’s why a spiritual sign comes under the eye indicating assault. He said that He will avenge us speedily, if we cry unto Him day and night (Luke 18:7–8), but that is an aggressive thing.
It’s one thing to continually ask and plead and whine. It’s another thing to stand there and hit God under the eye. Give God the choice of being what He is, or of being something far less than He has revealed Himself to be to us.
We are talking about faith and actions. But what other actions are there? Is there any other action besides hitting God under the eye?
Yes. There are actions that are beyond reasonable instruction—like the woman who gathered the vessels because she was in debt. Then she took the little cruse of oil that she had and filled all the vessels; and when they were all full, the oil stopped and that was the end of it (II Kings 4:1–7). But that wasn’t a reasonable thing to do. The reason for it is that the soulish realm, the psychic realm, the emotional, the feelings—actually, the whole field of religion—have to be bypassed. Somewhere a person’s spirit must reach in to believe God and act accordingly. But that action often has to bypass the reasonable actions.
How should our faith respond to the Word God has spoken regarding resurrection life? Some people say, “We’ll combine medicine and prayer,” and it can seem very reasonable and acceptable. But it has to be something more than that. It has to be the faith that bypasses the procedures and decisions of reason. It is a faith that gets in there and just grabs God by the throat and says, “I’m going to have this.”
What are we really looking for? Are we wanting to put off the day of our death? Or are we wanting to break into life? It’s a strange thing how much fear is generated in mankind by the expectation of the termination of life. We have to get into the faith that gives the expectation of longevity, of resurrection life, the whole procedure. It’s two different worlds, two different directions. You have to decide, “I’m not going to be afraid of death, because that is not going to interfere with my faith for life.”
Just the same as you determine to believe, you can refuse unbelief. You really can. There is something so deadly about unbelief that opens the door to fear. But you say, “I refuse it.” But there is also a refusal of not seeing a fulfillment. We talked today about the determination to believe, but we need another message on the determination of fulfillment.
Faith can be an acceptance of the fact without the evidence of sight, but it also has to result in the insistence of it coming into appearance.
We’re demanding to see, because I know I believe.
I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13, KJV. Not in the sweet by-and-by, but right now. It meant that he believed something. There are Scriptures that David brings out that sometimes really bother you. He said, “I was young and now I’m old; yet I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalm 37:25). But many generations have come and gone since then and you have seen the righteous forsaken; you have seen them begging bread. It means that David was not only a king, but as a mighty prophet of God, in his lifetime he never saw it. He never saw it. May God raise up other people who have the same faith. You see, there are a lot of promises that don’t have one bit of fulfillment until somebody comes and insists on it. Faith is not only a determination, but faith is an insistence upon fulfillment.
Faith has to start out with no visible evidence of its fulfillment (Hebrews 11:1), because if it doesn’t start that way, then it is not faith. But if it is faith, then it is going to end with the thing totally being there.
Faith is never the result of an evaluation of symptoms or circumstances, or possibilities or feelings. You have to understand that Christ approached the cross as the dedication and the accomplishment of His whole existence on this earth in His incarnation. He did it. He was not facing some inevitable thing. He said, “I lay My life down. No man takes it from Me” (John 10:17–18). And still people will speculate: “Did Pilate do it? Did the Romans do it? Did the Jews do it? Who did it?” He did it. Christ committed Himself to death for us (Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36–37). But He knew that the will of God could be circumvented, so He used great faith to pass through their hands when they wanted to throw Him off a cliff at the beginning of His ministry (Luke 4:28–30). It had to go for three and a half years before He was going to be on a cross. He determined it. He didn’t even go into certain areas because He knew they would kill Him (John 7:1). It’s a strange mixture of the sovereign will of God for us, and our faith to make it happen and to prevent the things that would keep it from happening, too. This is deep, but we are going to have to live with this.
You can say, “I’m going to believe,” but faith often has to be expressed in the negative. You have to face the things that come against your faith and say, “Though a host come against me, I will not fear” (Psalm 27:3). You get into the determinations: “I’m not going to fear; I’m not going to doubt; I’m not going to be confused.”
The miracles and the authority are on us now, because we are determined. I know I am; I’m determined not to fear. Death has to be overcome, swallowed up in life (I Corinthians 15:54; II Corinthians 5:4). How is it going to happen? The first thing you have to realize is that you have to lose your fear. In Hebrews it said, “Those are delivered who all their lifetime were subject to the fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14–15). You will never overcome death until you are not afraid of it.
When Jesus was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, He wasn’t afraid of Lazarus dying. He stayed where He was and let him die (John 11:6). And there is a great sense in which we are facing that same thing, in almost a symbolic, spiritual sense. We go through it. Maybe we go through it a thousand times until we know we are not afraid, because perfect love, like perfect faith, casteth out fear (I John 4:18). As long as there is torment—fear hath torment—we are not made perfect in love. What we really need to do is just move on these two things—faith and love. Determine it. Act on it. Full steam ahead.