The reason faith is so difficult is that sense knowledge has gained the ascendancy in our educational and religious life. Sense knowledge has all come through our physical contact with the world.
We have learned to trust so utterly in our eyes and our ears, and the senses of touch, smell, and taste, that spiritual things are hard to understand.
It is easy to believe in things you see.
The crowd said about Jesus, “We see the miracles; now we believe in thee.” (See John 6:14.)
Thomas fell down at His feet when he saw the wounded side and the holes in His hands and feet. He said, “Lord, I believe.” Jesus said, “Blessed are they who have not seen, yet believe.” (See John 20:28–29.) The Master touched the heart of things there.
Faith is independent of sense knowledge.
The antagonism of the scholastic world to the revelation called the Bible is that the Bible demands faith in things the senses cannot apprehend.
Hebrews 11:3 tells us that the worlds have been framed by faith through the Word of God. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
That explains the first verse, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), or, “Faith is giving substance to things hoped for.”
Hope is not faith.
Faith is always now.
Hope is always future.
God said, “Let there be,” and the sun, moon, and stars came into being. (See Genesis 1.)
He said, “Let there be an earth,” and the earth came into being.
He said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), and there was light. It was a warm light that encircled the whole earth and made it a subtropical garden, out of which have come our coal fields, oil, chemicals, and minerals.
Then He said, “Let the earth bring forth” (Genesis 1:11), and the earth brought forth.
He said, “Let the animals come,” and the animals came.
Faith is the mightiest force in the universe.
It is the creative ability of God.
It is the creative ability of man.
Animals act by instinct, not faith.
Man acts by faith.
Man was created in the image and likeness of the faith of God.
He is created in the image of love. He is created in the image of faith.
Whether you recognize it or not, man’s entire life, from the time he becomes conscious as a babe, until he steps off into the unknown, is a faith life; one has faith in his senses, the other in God.
When man loses faith, life has lost its objective.
Great financiers are faith men.
Frank W. Woolworth had faith in five and ten cent pieces.
Henry Ford had faith in an automobile.
Thomas Edison had faith in electricity.
Faith is the thing that brings success.
Doubt is the thing that brings failure.
The educational institution that teaches doubt becomes the unconscious enemy of civilization.
The modern trend of sense knowledge has been toward agnosticism.
The agnostic possesses the proud confession of “I do not know.”
Atheism says that God does not exist.
The two of them are twin enemies of success and mental spiritual progress of the age.
The agnostic makes no contribution but confusion.
God is love. He works by faith. It is faith that works by love.
He is the faith God.
Man is the crowning work of faith.
Being created in the image of love, he must live by faith.
Man is a faith creation.
When reason usurps the seat of faith, man becomes a failure.
Let us now consider what faith in the spiritual realm can mean.
SOME REALITIES
The bolder the faith, the greater is the success.
Faith wins.
When faith dies, success folds its wings.
We can take this as our slogan of life: “But with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
Unite this with these Scriptures: “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23), and “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
Who is in you? It is God!
Then to the God who is within you, all things are possible.
If you give that God within you liberty, let Him loose in you, you become limitless in your realm.
“All things are possible to him that believeth.” The Greek word here for “believe” means “a believing one.”
That is a child of God, a believing one.
You and God are linked together. You become invincible.
You see a glimpse of this in Martin Luther’s ministry.
We saw it in John Alexander Dowie.
We have seen it in individuals here and there, God and man linked together, doing the impossible.
We know that every step out of love means sin.
We know that every step out of faith means weakness and failure.
The word believing is a verb. The word faith is a noun.
Believing is acting on the Word.
Faith is the result of this action.
Jesus acted on the Word of His Father. He said, “The words that I speak to you are not mine but my Father’s.” (See John 14:10.)
All His works were a result of His words.
Matthew 8:5–13 gives us a record of the centurion. He said to Jesus, “Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed” (verse 8).
Jesus spoke the Word.
The healing of the lepers, the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, and the healing of the paralyzed man are miracles performed by His word.
Matthew 14:23–33 is the story of Peter’s walking on the waves.
Peter said, “If it be thou, bid me come” (verse 28). Jesus simply said one word, “Come.” When He did, the waters sustained the weight of Peter.
Again we see Jesus quieting the sea with His Word. He simply said, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39).
Jesus’s faith was in His Word.
Acts 3:1–11 gives us a picture of Peter’s faith in the name of Jesus on his lips. “Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (verse 6). The lifelong cripple became well and strong.
Acts 20:9–12 is the story of a young man falling out of the third-floor window and “taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him. When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed. And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.”
It was the name of Christ on the lips of Paul that raised the lad from the dead.
Faith, then, is acting and speaking the Word of God.
Sense knowledge speaks the word of man, and faith speaks the Word of God.
Sense knowledge man acts upon sense knowledge.
The faith man acts upon the Word of God.
Faith is giving substance to the thing that you had long hoped would become real.
One translation of Hebrews 11:1 calls faith “the title deed.”
Hope never gave a title deed, but faith is the title deed.
When you believe the Word, anxiety and fear leave you.
As long as you hope, you will be filled with anxiety and worry.
“Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God!’” (Mark 11:22 MOFF), or “Have the faith of God.”
It is Jesus’s challenge for us to have the God kind of faith. He had it.
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith cometh to pass; he shall have it. (Mark 11:23 ASV)
There are two things to notice: He believes in His heart, and He believes in His words.
You believe in your heart, and then you believe in the words on your lips.
That gives you power over demons and disease and circumstances.
All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:24 ASV)
They have not been in your possession, but it is just as real as though they were.
Faith counts the things that are not as though they were.
In Romans 4:17, faith counted the things that were not as though they were and they became.
Abraham counted that Sarah was able to give birth to a child when she was ninety years of age, and she became the mother of Isaac.
Abraham believed that his body would be rejuvenated, and it was.
Romans 4:19–21 (ASV) is God’s commentary on this:
And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
You can see the resistlessness, the absolute ability of faith.
Faith in you will conquer as faith in Jesus conquered.
Faith in your own words will drive disease out of sick men’s bodies.
When you say, “In the name of Jesus, disease depart from this body,” you have confidence in Jesus’s words on your lips as Jesus had confidence in His Father’s words on His lips, and the healing takes place.
Faith comes by daring to act upon the Word.
Your fear to act upon the Word is unbelief gaining the ascendency.
Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18:18)
Here is God’s challenge to united faith.
Every one of you should hunt for a partner who can believe with you, who can unite his faith with yours.
You become a resistless power the moment you do.
You may be mighty in faith alone, but you can be mightier in faith united with another.
He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14:12–13)
The word ask here in the Greek means “to demand.”
You are not demanding it of Jesus, but you are demanding it as Peter demanded the man at the beautiful gate to rise and walk.
You are demanding sickness and pain to leave bodies in the name of Jesus.
He said, “That the Father may be glorified in the Son.”
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. (John 15:7)
Satan has taken advantage of you. Disease and sickness have made an invalid out of you.
Circumstances have gained the mastery and made a slave instead of a master of you.
Now you abide in Him, and let His Word abide in you.
Let that Word abide on your lips and contend with your sickness and you will become the master again.
You simply insist that that thing is not for you.
You will not stand for defeat any longer.
You can look the adversary in the face and say, with quiet assurance, “Satan, you are defeated. In Jesus’s name, I demand my rights.”
Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:24)
Your joy cannot be made full while loved ones are sick, while men and women are captives of the adversary.
Your joy cannot be made full unless you can see the will of the Father wrought in the lives of men and women around you.
Go, then, and take what belongs to you in that name.