What Is Faith?

āAnd when he had come into the house, the blind men came to him. And Jesus said to them, āDo you believe that I am able to do this?ā They said to him, āYes, Lord.ā Then he touched their eyes, saying, āAccording to your faith let it be to you.āā Matthew 9:28-29 What IS faith? There are āWord of Faithā teachers who teach that you can have anything you desire if youāll only have faith. They present Scriptures to back up their false teachings, and many believe them because they donāt know the Word of God in its fullness. Then when the expected results donāt come to pass, when what the person is trying to accomplish by faith doesnāt work, theyāre worse off than they were in the beginning and many fall away because of it. I saw such a thing happen before my eyes. There was a young woman who had cancer and she was being told that she would surely be healed. She had children, and they were assured that their mother was going to be healed. This went on for months, and many prayed over this woman with determination that she would be healed. They āconfessed it,ā and āproclaimed itā over and over and over again. They rebuked the cancer and declared she is healed. Finally ...she died. What do you suppose was the effect that had upon her children? This teaching is deadly. It can actually destroy faith. Isn't that the goal of the enemy? No, faith isnāt something you āproclaimā or āconfess.ā Faith is something that has to come from God himself. āSo then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.ā Romans 10:17 There are two Greek words translated āword.ā One is logos which means the written word, and the other is rhema which is a word spoken. Faith comes when THE LORD speaks a word TO you, not the other way around. When God has spoken to you, your faith will rest on that word until you see it come to pass. My sister, brother and myself were called home because our mother was going to have surgery and we were told she probably wouldnāt survive it. The night before the surgery, my sister and I were praying together for the strength to get through this and for the strength to support our father through it. Very suddenly and totally unexpectedly the presence of the Lord was in the room and he said, āEverything is going to be alright.ā Stunned, I ran to the living-room where my father was and told him what the Lord had said. He didnāt believe it, of course. The next day, my mother had the surgery ā¦and everything was alright. She lived many more years after that. Now letās take a look at that āfaith.ā First of all, it came totally by surprise. According to the āWord of faithā teachers she should have died, because up until the time the Lord spoke, we all were expecting her to die. That expectation was not āfaith,ā we were just proceeding with what we were told by the doctors and expecting it to turn out that way. According to the āWord of faithā teachers, she should have died because we were āexpectingā her to. They would have called that expectance āfaithā - faith that she was going to die. But was that expectance āfaith?ā We were expecting it, believing it, so it should have gone that way, and would have ā¦except that the Lord SPOKE. When he said everything was going to be alright, we KNEW it was going to be alright because HE had said so. THAT ...is faith. We didnāt have to work it up, we didnāt have to grit our teeth and āclaimā it, we didnāt have to āspeak it,ā no, the Lord had spoken therefore we knew it was going to be. And it was. Faith is never something worked up. You can āconfessā a thing a hundred times because you believe you SHOULD and that youād feel guilty if you didnāt. Those false teachers put all the burden on you as to how a thing is going to work out. That, my friends, is NOT faith. Faith is KNOWING. You donāt work up "knowing." You donāt āproclaimā it, itās not a struggle. Itās just there when the Lord puts it there. āNow faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.ā Hebrews 11:1 Itās the substance, itās the knowing. When you know, when God himself has put that knowing into your heart, that is the substance of it. But the bottom line is that God has to put it into your heart. Itās not you, itās HIM. And if he has not put a thing into your heart, then there is no way you can forcefully do so. It wonāt work. Faith comes from God, not from you. " "For by grace you have been saved through faith, AND THAT NOT OF YOURSELVES, IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD, not of works, lest anyone should boast." Ephesians 2:8-9 Brothers and sisters, come out of the guilt that has been imposed on you. When something has not gone the way you insisted it would, donāt let false teachers say that it was your fault, because it wasnāt. In every situation, take your cares to the Lord, and surrender them to him that he might work them out according to his own will. Sometimes you will just know that a thing is going to go this way or that, but unless that knowing is put into your heart by the Lord himself, you cannot conjure it up because you think you should. It doesnāt work that way.