And when they came to the multitude, a man came up to Him, falling on his knees before Him, and saying, “Lord, have mercy on my son; for he is an epileptic, and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him.” And Jesus answered and said, “O unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.” And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it shall move; and nothing shall be impossible to you..” Matthew 17:14–20.
Jesus explained that it is the littleness of faith which prevents you from moving a mountain or casting out a demon. With faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move away from here to there,” and it will move; nothing will be impossible to you. In this end-time move you have to be a believer. Even people who love God may become persecutors of this move, because the challenge of it is too disturbing to them. It cuts through any religious veneer, demanding that we be absolute disciples of Jesus Christ, believing in a walk with God above everything else.
Let me share with you what I believe,
I believe in the absolute defeat of Satan by Jesus Christ on my behalf.
I believe that by the blood of Christ shed for me, I am absolved of sin and of the human nature to sin. I can appropriate the provision of Jesus on the cross, that my old man has been crucified with Christ.
I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Ancient of Days, the creator of the heavens and the earth, who fainteth not, neither is weary, who has blessed me with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (I must believe that every one of those spiritual blessings is mine in the Lord.)
I believe that I am guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit who dwells within me.
I believe that the Holy Spirit will reveal progressively the vast scope of all the things that are freely given to me by God. (This is verified in 1 Corinthians 2:12.)
I believe that as a member of the Body of Christ, I am the expression and the execution of the will of God in the earth. (I believe that for myself and for you.)
I believe in Christ destroying all the works of the devil.
I believe that the devil is a liar and the father of it.
I believe that this generation has been sovereignly chosen to see the culmination of the things prophesied in the Word of God.
I believe that Satan will be bound in this generation.
I believe in the coming of my Lord and in His eternal Kingdom.
I believe that all the kingdoms of this earth will become the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.
We Loose ourselves into the truth and the flow of the Lord Jesus Christ. Keep repeating to yourself, “I am a believer,” because the full potential of your status before God as a believer is very important.
What about your unbelief?
There are two words in the Greek for unbelief.
1-(apeitheia)-which means a willful decision to not believe. We see this in Romans 11:30 where the Jews refuse to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and a veil is over their mind.
And another 2-(apistia)- for the human of unbelief, which means uncertainty. The gospels record that even the Lord was amazed and disturbed at the disciples’ unbelief. He demanded that they believe Him.
What we are talking about here is the human nature of unbelief-Lord I believe relieve my unbelief-Mark 9:24
Do not have so much confidence in your unbelief, but respond like the father of the epileptic boy: “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.” One thing you can be sure of: nothing is impossible to him that believeth. Start believing now!
What shall we say about all the signs and wonders and exploits that we are to do in the end time? The answer to that question is no different today than it was in Christ’s day. When the multitude asked Jesus, “What shall we do that we might work the works of God?” He replied, “This is the work of God, that you might believe on Him whom He has sent” (John 6:28–29).
It is that faith in Christ—faith in His work, faith in every provision He made on the cross for you and me—that really counts.
Satan brings the great deception that the war is yet to be fought, that the victory and the outcome are still to be resolved. This is the day of the execution of the victory over principalities and powers—the victory that was won by Christ on the cross. It is time that God’s people become the expression of God’s will in the earth, and that they voice it.
When we cast out demons, we are executing the victory and the authority of the name of Jesus, bringing the full manifestation of His victory. We are not actually creating the flood—we are just throwing a bomb of faith at the dam. The flood will take care of itself.
How will the restoration of the Church, the spiritual Zion, be accomplished? Will it be just by teaching perfect doctrines and coming into perfect church order? Of course we believe in the teachings that God is restoring and in His divine pattern for the Church; however, we can have all of that and still produce an Ishmael movement if we forget that we are being brought forth as believers. Jesus rebuked the disciples because they were not really believing.
Faith is peculiar. It is the one thing that pleases God, and without it you cannot please Him, no matter what you do. God honors your faith by somehow tuning you in to His omnipotence.
If you believe, you can move that mountain and cast it into the sea. Do you remember how Jesus cursed the fig tree? When the disciples marveled at the tree that had withered away so quickly, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do what is done to the fig tree, but even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. Matthew 21:21–22. He laid it on the line: God does not honor your efforts and your labor; He honors your faith.
There is no need to struggle through until God gives an answer. We have the victory; all we have to do is appropriate it. A great deal of what God wants to do in our lives has already been divinely accomplished.
We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). As far as God is concerned, it is accomplished.
We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God (1 Corinthians 2:12).
Most of what we are seeking has already been provided from the divine side. It is from the human side that faith must appropriate the provision and act on it.
For example, if a million dollars were lying in a box and the Lord said that He had given it to you, that would be the divine provision. Your scrambling over everybody and everything to get hold of it is the human appropriation. Make it happen!
God has made every provision for us. We are not paupers, for God says that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We will find a way for our faith to take hold of those blessings.
Possessing the promises that God has given us is a battle of faith. Our prayer is not just a sustaining of our faith. We go after those promises by asking the Lord how to get hold of them.
It may not look as if we have them, but we will not waver. Whatever the Lord tells us, we must believe and act upon it. Do not pray for the Lord to deliver a man from all the demon oppression he is under. That deliverance is his heritage. Minister it to him and loose him.
We do not struggle from a place of defeat to a place of victory. By His stripes we were healed (1 Peter 2:24). We are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places and blessed with all spiritual blessings. We are seated in a place of victory, and from there we throw thunderbolts of faith at the devil.
There are given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Peter 1:4). Believe that God’s provision for you is absolutely perfect.
The defeat of Satan is a reversal of the very process by which Satan brought defeat to the human race at the beginning.
The devil planted the doubt, “Hath God said?” That doubt which caused Adam and Eve to sin is still evidenced in their sons and daughters today.
Now God is bringing a living Word that proclaims, “Thus saith the Lord.” When we receive it as a Word of God instead of as a word of revelation or doctrine from man, and we speak it as that creative vital force, we are bringing about the defeat of Satan in this generation.
As children of God, we are unconsciously submitting to too many limitations that God has already removed for us by provision in the Word of God.
We will be surprised to see what the earth can produce when we loose it from the curse. People are often ready to back away from this as being wrong doctrine, but we read in 1 Timothy 2:15 that women will even be saved from the curse of childbirth.
It is not right that women suffer in the bearing of children, when Paul gave a promise that the curse could be lifted and they would be delivered in the bearing of children.
I am not in favor of our submitting to the curse when Jesus has come as our Savior and Redeemer, regenerating our spirit and saving our soul.
It is true that we have to wait for the redemption of our body; but in the meantime, until God gives us the immortality of a new body, He still gives us divine healing.
We need to have more confidence in everything that the blood of Jesus Christ actually atoned for. We must believe in the complete redemption that is ours in the Lord.
Some Christians insist that they believe in the blood of Jesus Christ, and that every word in the Bible is the Word of God.
But if you suggest praying for someone who is sick, they will be just as adamant in insisting that God does not heal the sick today.
They would die for the one principle they believe—that they are saved—yet they bypass all the other promises even while they declare that they believe that every word in the Bible is the Word of God.
Instead of believing to receive the Holy Spirit, with His gifts and ministries, and the faith that was once delivered to the saints, they are just hoping to hold out until the bitter end.
They have more faith in what the antichrist will do than in what God is doing. That is an abhorrent kind of faith. We must not fall into that same trap of embracing a few more doctrines, yet not claiming any of them.
We must be believers! Turn your faith loose! Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth!
Believe for yourself and believe for your brother and sister in the Lord. This restoration move cannot bog down to become a little rat race of getting hold of some crumbs; we are contending for the whole loaf!
Some people are content with processed foods and processed sermons, processed doctrines and processed dreams. We believe to walk in the fullness of every blessing and promise that the Lord has given.
What is the key of the restoration? Are we asking the Lord to come back to us? No, for the Lord has never forsaken us. Let us not forsake Him. Let us defy everything in our mind and heart that is conditioned to the unbelief of this generation.
Believe for God to deliver you from this generation and all of its wickedness. Aren’t you tired of doubt and unbelief? Refuse to accept unbelief as a respectable sin, calling it merely confusion. Ask God to forgive you of your unbelief and to deal with it!
If you have difficulty believing the prophecies over you, then you need to understand that the prophecies in the Scriptures are far more audacious than those which have come in this generation.
We have only started to prophesy the full Word of the Lord. This move is right because it is returning to the Lord, magnifying Him as Lord and declaring what He has done for us.
The Lord will reveal the right steps we must take to see the full manifestation of everything He has promised and given. That is why we must move out in faith.
It may not be an easy path because we probably have built up many barriers of unbelief. We may have placed ourselves in a safe little world because we do not want people to ridicule us or call us fanatics.
We fear the reproach of trying to walk on water, of attempting the other “foolish” acts recorded in the Bible. The people in the world cannot bear men with such audaciousness, for they do not believe the miracles of the Bible. But we set our minds and hearts to believe with ruthless faith. Each day we will defy every circumstance that Satan brings to contradict the Word of the Lord.
We are believers, Lord!