Before we look at faith, hope, desire and truth, I need to address an issue that people often misunderstand: assumed spiritual responsibility in contrast to delegated spiritual responsibility. We can assume spiritual responsibility, but whether we have been delegated to that spiritual responsibility is a completely different arena. Responsibility is measured by our maturity. Maturity is the key here. Maturity in our character is the anchor that engages faith, hope, desire and truth. Character is represented by the thumb of our hand. It engages all these other four which are represented by our forefingers. Without the character supporting these, you can desire all things, you can hope all things, you can have faith for all things, you can know the truth about all things, but unless you have the character to support all that, it is useless.
1 Corinthians 13:7 – love… Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Character is founded on love. All of these, faith, hope, and desire, and truth, are intrinsically connected one with the other. You cannot just have one and assume that you have the others. The others must function together in everything you do. Character becomes a key, the trunk that holds all these things together.
Since my teachings became available, people think they have a little bit of knowledge and that they can immediately go and put into practice all that I have taught. I’m giving you a hope that there is more to this Christian life, than what you have been doing for years. I sat for 5 minutes with a Bible college lecturer once, who had many letters after his name. I simply quoted Scripture to him. At the end of our conversation he said to me, I need to go home and get born again. You have just undone many things that I believed about what I thought was the truth. You just unzipped it. I Only quoted Scripture to him, he did not even ask a question. That alone, just totally unzipped his belief system. The reason I do that kind of thing with people who are mature is so that they can go home and begin to get on their face before Yahweh to build their character to handle change, especially if they have responsibility for others’ lives. It is only character that teaches us how to handle responsibility for others. Everything comes back to character. Character is ground out in relationship with other people, not only just people who affirm you and say they love you, but the people who actually do not like you. It is also through conflict like this that character is built.
I know a group of young people that have been walking with YHVH, engaging in what I have been teaching and doing wonderful things together in disciplining one another. A church leader told them that they were in deception. When these types of experiences happen, it becomes an opportunity to build character. Either you know what you know and have walked with it and are affirmed in it or it is just knowledge and if so, you can easily get blown over when someone comes along and challenges you. The Bible talks about people like that in the book of Jude
Jude 1:12 – these are… Clouds they are without water, carried about by wind; trees whose fruit withers, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots: raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
Once you know something and have truly experienced it, no one can take it away. It does not matter what goes on around you, or who says what, because you know what you know.
The law of sowing and reaping
I love the fact that YHVH vindicates you when you understand maturity and responsibility. He vindicates you because your character has been and is being developed. He really does. I excessively dislike seeing what happens to people when they engage with others who do and say things that are contrary to the kingdom of God which derails them from their walk with YHVH. A couple of years later you see them in a mess. I hate seeing that. Our responses are so important and create a path for us that have evident fruit, but not always necessarily good fruit, because the law of sowing and reaping has taken effect. I’ve witnessed it taking only a couple years for the law of sowing and reaping to be seen. We can however, continue to reap what has been sown during that time for a year, or for a decade or more depending on your responses. When we start to sow differently with the right choices, we will start to un-sow and un-reap some of that destruction caused by the wrong sowing. Some people do not see these things. Everything is about responsibility in making right choices in the middle of life circumstances. I keep teaching people that everything to do with the kingdom of YHVH is about responsibility. It is not about just having shundy Bundy’ spiritual experiences are goosebumps on your goosebumps. It is about responsibility, not only for your life, but for the lives of others and for the sake of the kingdom. The Measure of your maturity is the measure of your responsibility in heaven not on earth.
The issue is not whether we have arrived at our destination. The issue is: are you on the journey? The more I know, the more I realize that I do not know, and that sometimes I have also been deceived by what I thought I knew because YHVH unzips my belief systems. You might’ve noticed I teach a little bit differently than I did 5 years ago. This is because YHVH is unzipping some of my old belief systems. Just when I thought I was so truly there, I now realize I only knew a little piece of what I thought I knew a whole lot about. This is how YHVH builds the tabernacle of your tent in the wilderness of life’s experiences.
Some families living in tents in the wilderness build a tent by adding a new piece for every child that is added to the family. This brings new life and experiences with it and over the years you add new pieces. I found that new truths and new experiences are always found in the new pieces. What you thought you knew had just been a little piece that lays the foundation for what is the come. YHVH walks his way through our lives like this, engaging us until we suddenly realize we’ve learned something new and say ahh that was what you were trying to tell me 10 years ago. I wish I had listened and understood then, it would’ve saved me 10 years of struggle! However it is the 10 years of struggle that helps to produce the character to handle the truth. The reason you cannot handle it before was that the character was not there for the truth to sit in. Our character is the framework and must not get filled with the wrong influences.
We need to understand the importance of faith, hope, desire and truth. As I said, character is represented by the thumb of the hand. Character is the trunk of the tree that lays the foundation for all the branches to hang on so that the tree can become fruitful. Remember the function of a tree is to produce fruit. The function of fruit is to produce seed and to protect the seed that is inside the fruit. The fruit is a sign of what the tree is. An orange tree cannot produce an apple. Everything must return to the original form of that which it has come from.
Many of those that are now being born in this generation physically are spiritually the purest form of human beings that I’ve seen in the blending of the human gene pool on the face of the earth since Adam’s day. I am referring to this present generation along with the generation of the children that are just being born. I think some of the kids that are being born now are just weird. I have friends with children that are under a year old. These kids will look at you and their eyes go right through you. I find myself feeling, that is my job, not yours! When they look at me I really want to see what they are seeing. They are very different from previous generations, because, I personally believe that this is the generation that is going to see his glory in creation.
The opposite to the trunk of character is a trunk of deception. Deception can grow its own tree out of faith in something, a false hope, desire and apparent truth. You may think you know the truth, and you may have the desires, but they might be based on something that you do not really know. You may hope in something, and you may even think you have faith for it, without really understanding it at all. You reap what you sow in your life. When you reap chaos you will eventually recognize that you have not got the character part right so you might have deception instead. That is probably a bit harsh, but I have got to lay this reality out so that you realize that it is actually about personal responsibility. It is about your personal life with YHVH, your development and your character. This is connected to who you are in the way that you engage the father in that place of awe and wonderment at the glory of YHVH. It is related to the realm in him that you are already in and that you can see yourself in. You need to have a full understanding and appreciation of yourself in his realm because that is what destroys the desire for sin.
The Lord began to speak to me about faith, hope, and desire and truth, and how they are all interestedly woven and connected together. Everything is about 4 dimensions. You will find patterns in the Bible. Once you find a pattern, stick with it because it will reveal a truth. This is very much the case with regard to the father’s realm and our ability to move in and out of it in these 4 dimensions.
As a 4 dimensional functional being ( which we should be), having 4 faces, we will be able to move in and out of time and space because where he is so shall we be, Scripture says – John 17:21. Being in the kingdom world empowers us to move in and out of time and space, because when we are in his world we are not in time and space anymore.
Faith and hope
There is so much teaching about faith: how to build it, what to do with it, how to culture it, how to cultivate it. We looked at some of it in the last chapter. You can hear more of my teaching on MP3s, available at www.sonofthunder.org on faith and how to build it.
Hebrews 11:1 – now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So, in my words, faith is the tangible reality of things that you have dreamed about, but are still in vision form.
Faith is one of the key ingredients of the tree of life that needs to grow inside our life. Faith, hope, desire and truth all form the tree of life around our life. Faith is one of the key ingredients in that.
Proverbs 13:12 – Hope deferred makes the heart sick: but when the desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life. When you are hoping on something and it almost gets there, but does not quite get there, you can feel like giving up, especially if the cycle keeps reoccurring. We must remember that the Hebraic way is circular not linear, so actually, our response should be, no. I’m not going to give up, because I know, that I know, that I know.
Hope is a really interesting substance of the tree of life. It believes all things, but does not know all things. Hope believes the possibilities, but does not look at the impossibilities. Hope engages with you to understand, but does not have all understanding with it. Yahweh engages with you and hope, to begin by faith, to believe something that is not yet evident.
Hebrews 11:1 – now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Faith is a spiritual substance that becomes the building block for materializing what you hope for. Faith is the substance of heavens provision. It is not seen with the naked human eye. It is seen in the world of YHVH, because YHVH paints the picture of the possibility of what can be. Then your hope must be set on that pictured possibility. One of the reasons the father asked Israel to make things according to very specific patterns was because he was trying to teach them that there is something in heaven that looks like that. He gave specific instructions about building the temple and the candlestick to Moses. To Noah he gave specific instructions on how to build the ark. It was to give them a hope of a pattern out of heaven, that when they would come into this on earth, and understand it, then they would be able to enter into that in heaven. Hope is supposed to produce rest, because hope is not based on your abilities in your provision. Scripture says, yes, my soul, find rest in God: my hope comes from him – Psalm 62:5. Hope is based on something that is outside of what you can do yourself and is only based on the actual substance of YHVH.
I’m looking forward to the day when the full reality of who we really are and what we are really called to be becomes evident. YHVH is giving us the ability to frame a testimony, an unseen reality into life, through our words. To be able to build, but never having to labor with our hands ever again to produce a building. We simply breathe everything into existence.
Isaiah 51:15 – for I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that it’s waves roar – the Lord of hosts is his name. I have put my words in your mouth and have covered you with the shadow of my hand, to establish the (renewed) heavens and to lay the foundations of the (renewed) earth, and to say to Zion (Jerusalem), you are my people.
All I know is that when we get to understand who we really are in the father, positioned in him, when we are in that perspective looking down, all this looks completely different. The problem is we have rarely been taught we can be there looking down. We are often taught we have to be here always trying to look up. This is not the way the father I believe wants it. The word says we are seated in him, high above all of these things:
Ephesians 2:6 – and has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
This means that we can see things that we cannot normally see because we have a completely different perspective from a completely different viewpoint.
Hope gives us a completely different perspective on the things that are around us so we can see them with a completely different eye. When we see this difference, we will be able to frame it differently from the way it is currently framed around our life today. Hope becomes an anchor for the soul, because it is the material substance of heaven.
Hebrews 6:19 – which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil.
Hope in faith empowers us to take what we do not see and materialize it. This is firstly achieved by dreaming. It unlocks the possibility of framing something out from the unseen world that was not there before. Building from the atomic structure that is in the universe and materializing it from the pattern of our dreaming and then being able to materialize it into substance,
Hebrews 11:1- now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Desire
The Bible says that desire, when it is formed, becomes a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12: Hope deferred makes the heart sick: but when the desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.
Now, the things that we desire have to be based on the desires of the father. The Bible says, delight yourself in the Lord; and he shall give you the desires of your heart – Psalm 37:4.
He gives them to us because our desires are supposed to be engaged in what we know in him. When we see him, and we see who we are there, our desires can be set upon engaging what we have seen there, in order for it to be fully revealed down here. But if your desires are set on something that is different from all we see there and based on you having a good life, or a self-centered life here then your desires will become a snare for you. When we have to hold on, especially when there is no evidence of what you are believing for and desiring, I have found that YHVH uses this in order to build our character. I’m not saying that I am any better than you. I’m just saying we need to set our desire in the right place and allow the father to unlock it for us, because when you desire a good thing the father will unlock it for you especially when it is in his heart and you have seen it.
If you desire something and you are at the center of it, so that it becomes the idol, YHVH may grant you the desire, but with it will come fire to break the deception. When people tell me that they so desire to be in ministry, I talk about desiring YHVH first, dying in the church first, serving another person’s ministry first, serving someone else first. All this is important. Faith, hope, desire and truth are all interlinked. Desire is also based on your dreams. I do not mean vain fantasies when I talk about dreaming. They are not the desire of YHVH. People say, oh, I am just desiring to be over here and doing this and doing that. Good on you, but you might find that it never comes to pass. When YHVH has given you a desire he triggers you about relationship: relationship with him, intimacy, connection, yearning, about all those things associated with intimacy and relationship. The reason he does this is because once you get to know someone, then you can understand their desires. Until you get to know someone, you do not really know what their desires are. You can only assume you know.
You can read an autobiography of a person but that does not mean you know them. You only know about them. The Bible is an autobiography that teaches you about him. But it is not until I come face-to-face, and look into his eyes that I actually realize there is a person in there. A transition must take place from knowing about someone, to knowing the person. This is so the desire the father can be formed in you by knowing what his desires are. In this way, he becomes the one that helps unlock your scroll. Then desire will become a tree of life and produce fruit of its own within your life and circumstances so that you can eat good food from your life. Faith, hope, desire and truth, will in the end, each become a tree of life in their own way. Each one becomes a thumb and an anchor then having 4 branches each. Everything is interlinked
Once you know what the father’s heart for your life is, then you can begin to dream about what that would be like here. This will in turn begin to unlock the potential for the framework for its materialization around your life. Once a framework is materialized, then your voice and your breath can fill it. until you have the framework do not try and fill it, because it will get shaken out by others and run all over the place, through the holes in your character, achieving nothing, even if it weirdly makes you look good, until no one is going to relate to what you are doing, not even the father. We want to materializing of the father’s glory in the face of the earth.
One of my desires (and I know it is the father’s heart) is to have a fountain of the river of the glory of YHVH visible in the land of the living – Isaiah 66:12.
I desire that the light of the glory of the countenance of Christ would be seen in the physical world that is around us – second Corinthians 4:6.
So, when we stand up to preach there is a visible fountain that is flowing. Instead of hearing someone talking, they will all just be looking at the fountain and being taught by the fountain, because the fountain is the river of the voice of YHVH to his people. That is what the Bible says,… And they shall all be taught of God – John 6:45.
I dream about these type of things all the time and often wonder what it would be like to actually stand up in a meeting and have all of heaven begin to invade around us and shine out of us. Then our existence would be to become a fountain of the river in which everyone is hearing themselves being taught by YHVH, instead of everyone hearing the same thing that everyone else is hearing.
You have got to dream about these things to give it some foundation work with. You need to realize that, in reality, you are not the only one standing here. I want to stretch you a bit now. Are you in YHVH? Am I in YHVH? So if all of you are in YHVH, and I am in YHVH, then I am in all of you, and all of you are in me, and we are in all of them, and they are in all of us. That we might be one with him as he is one with the father, as they are one with the father.
That they all may be one; as you, father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us… The glory which you gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and you and me, that they may be made perfect in one… That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them – John 17:21 – 23, 26.
So, when we become one with the father, we are all in the father. Therefore, all those that are in the father are all in us, so we fulfill all in all. The Bible talks about, the all in all in
1 Corinthians 15:28: then shall the son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all and all.
Ephesians 4:6 says, one God and father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
So, what happens if you are a fountain of the all in all? Who else is going to be speaking? These are the kinds of things I think about. I wonder what they would be like: Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, Enoch. We are all in him. These are concepts that we try to get to grips with, but it is not always easy, because often we have not allowed our brain to expand to the measure of YHVH.
Paul says let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus – Philippians 2:5.
He is talking about the full potential all of that being fully revealed in all of this. This is what happened with Adam. When YHVH breathed into Adam he became a perfect revelation of himself. That is why the Bible says, let us make man in our image, after our likeness – Genesis 1:26. Desire is very important for us.
Truth
Thus says the Lord; cursed be the man the trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord. for he shall be like the shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited – Jeremiah 17:5 – 6.
Basically, what YHVH is saying here is hey, if you trust in man you are going to find yourself in a rather unlikeable place.
For he shall be like the shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes. It is amazing how some of the church is so caught in their belief systems(because of self-idolatry) that they do not see the good that is coming. That is what is happening when people are looking at the earth saying, oh, the three blood moons are coming and the world is going to die! It is because their heart is in a parched land. Remember, I said that I believe we are still here in the your 2057.
Blessed is the man that trusts in the lord, and whose hope the lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat comes, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart; I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings – Jeremiah 17:7 – 10.
Truth gives YHVH the reins of your life so that he can try your life and train it to make it his own. Having truth on the inward parts means truth about who you are, not what you want other people to think you are. It is truth about what is going on inside your life. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part you shall make me to know wisdom – Psalm 51:6.
One of the things that we need to deal with is what is going on inside our heart, things like: I dislike you excessively! I do not like your shirt today. Many years ago I had to go through a situation in church life. I talk about it in the way of the cross in my book realms of the kingdom volume 1 in the chapter the dark cloud. If you have not known the way the cross you need to read this.
I can remember having to go through a circumstance in which the person whose hand I was shaking had said things behind my back. A knew word for word what they had said, because I’d been back and seen it in the spirit. They did not know I was there, as I had not told them. I had to deal with my own offense and the injustice. We must have truth on the inward parts because truth forms character. The Bible says, and you shall know the truth, and the through shall make you free – John 8:32.
The word says when you know the truth. Not when you hear about it. Knowing means your inner man has come to the full revelation of it. Not the outside man, it is the inner man. If YHVH is all truth, then the only way to come into the truth is to see him. That is why the pure in heart shall see YHVH, because truth purifies your heart. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God – Matthew 5:8.
Faith, hope, desire and truth
Faith, hope, desire and truth become the branches that set up the four sides or facets of your operation as a functional son within creation. These 4 branches form 4 corners, with character being in the middle as the trunk functioning through these 4 things. Actually, they form a cube, because your whole life is based around a cube. This is because you are part of a building. You are a stone fitly joined together to the cornerstone, forming part of a building. All of us are a cube. Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom all the building fitly framed together grows into a holy temple in the Lord: in whom you also are built together for habitation of God through the spirit – Ephesians 2:20 – 22.
We are a cube so that we may know the height, the depth, and the breath of our calling in Christ.
These 4 things ( faith, hope, desire and truth) empower us to know the height, the depth in the breath of our calling.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the breath, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God – Ephesians 3:17 – 19.
Activation
Holy Spirit we want to thank you for faith, hope, desire and truth. Lord we thank you and ask that you would engage with us as we read these pages to reveal the truth of who we are based on your character. Holy Spirit we asked that you would reveal to us the ways and the purposes of the father for our lives, and that these two would become an arc opening up a window for YHVH to come into us and an open window into heaven that we might go into him. We asked this in the name of Yeshua mahashiah. Hallelujah! Amen!