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 TEACHING: What is faith, and what is it not? What is faith as opposed to hope, knowledge or presumption? How can we obtain faith? This article investigates faith, addressing these questions and others on this vital subject.
Edited by Laura Johnson
In 1 Timothy 6:12 are three commandments which Paul gave to young Timothy:
Commandment 1 - "Fight the good fight of faith"; Commandment 2 – "lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called"; and Commandment 3 – "and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses". Verses 13 and 14 continue, "I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing." So the question is, what is this commandment (verse 14) that we have to keep blameless? The answer is in verse 12: to fight the good fight of faith! So this is not an option for people that feel like it. It is a commandment that is mandatory upon everybody.
Paul wrote this in A.D. 68-69, and it is assumed (but not absolutely certain) that he wrote this during a brief release from prison. He had been in prison for a number of years, dragged around on a chain from place to place, and he had seen everything. He was not writing these words from an air-conditioned studio. He had seen cities shaken with the power of God and had seen mighty miracles happen. He had seen men raised from the dead at his hands, and he had seen young men like Timothy and Titus and Epaphroditus come out of pagan darkness and become wonderful young apostles. He had seen all those tremendous experiences.
But strangely, when he desperately needed God to show up, God did not show up. For instance, when he had been stoned and left for dead outside Lystra, we might ask, why didn’t God show up there? If you read the catalogue of his trials in faith in 2 Corinthians, you will find that he had been through five beatings with the whip, and three with the rod. He had been left shipwrecked. There were times when he had no food, and there were times when he was forsaken and abandoned by all the other ministries in Asia. So he knew what it was like to be let down by covenant brothers when they just walk out on you. He had seen churches wonderfully established and he had seen churches ravaged by the devil and ripped apart into pieces. If you have been through anything, this man had been through it.
He was looking back at this time over something like thirty years of ministry. In 2 Timothy 4:7, he said, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." He was just about to be executed and he knew that his time had come. Verse 6 says, "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand." That is how he summarized thirty years of ministry, as one long fight. The only other analogy that the Bible regularly uses for faith is the race of faith, which Paul also referred to here. In Hebrews 12 we are exhorted to run the race of faith. We have to see that it is a long-term thing. The alternative to fighting a good fight of faith is to come to terms with the devil and settle down to passivity.
So, we have no alternative -- we are called and commanded to do this. Let us have a look at that phrase, to fight a good fight of faith. The word for "fight" that is used here in 2 Timothy is the word "agonizomai". It is a Greek word (we get our English word "agonize" directly from it) and it literally means to struggle with perseverance.
We need to see that the race of faith, or if you like, the fight of faith, is not a short-term deal. In race terms, it is a marathon race. In fighting terms, it is a fifteen-round contest. If you win the first round and get knocked out in the third round, who wins the fight? The other guy does. So, we have to think in terms of winning the race, of completing the course, and all these other terms used in Scripture. There has to be a kind of faith that just keeps on going and going and going. Here was Paul, looking back on thirty-odd years of ministry and he said to Timothy, "Well, Timothy, it was one long fight. All I’m promising you as I hand to you the baton of apostolic ministry, is that it is going to be a good fight of faith, and you will have to fight that good fight!"
But notice one adjective always used: it is not just a fight of faith -- it is a good fight of faith. It does not say, "I have fought a fight of faith." It says, "I have fought a good fight." Every time the word "fight" is referred to, it always has the adjective "good" in front of it. What is a good fight? A good fight is one that you win! Before I was saved, I used to lead a gang. It was not like the modern day gangs in American cities. It was just a gang of school kids that would fight other gangs of school kids in the school playground, and the only thing we ever used was our fists. It sounds pretty mild these days. When I led one of these gangs, the fights that were good fights, as far as I was concerned, were the ones that we won. So a good fight is something that we win.
What is faith?
s we look into this matter of faith we really have to understand what faith is. There are many Christians who use the term "faith", but it is a word that is bandied around like many other words without any real understanding. Before we get into what faith really is, let me warn you of three close relatives of faith that look like faith, smell like faith and are confused for faith but they are not actually faith.
The first close relative is hope. Hope is not the same as faith although it is often a step on the way towards faith.
The second one is knowledge. This is a common mistake people make. They come to believe only when they can touch it with one of their five senses. You pray for someone who is sick and when you ask them, "Have you been healed?" they will check on whether the pain or the swelling has gone. In other words, they are looking for physical evidence before they decide to believe that the change has taken place. If you are waiting for physical evidence, waiting for knowledge through your natural senses, then it is too late for faith! That is trying to live by knowledge.
The third word we have to watch for is the word presumption, which we will develop later in the article. The Bible’s definition of faith is found in Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the substance" (or the confidence or the assurance) "of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
I want to look at those two words, the word that is translated "assurance" or "confidence" and the word that is translated "evidence" or "convincing proof" because this is the key to understanding faith. First of all, note what it says at the beginning of verse 1. It says: "Now faith is…"
Faith is
Faith can never be spoken of in the future tense. It is in the present tense: faith is. It has to function in the present tense based upon something that has already happened in the past tense. I will explain that. In several places in Scripture in the Greek language (it is not so obvious in the English) two tenses are put together. It is strange grammatically but it makes perfect spiritual sense. For example, in Mark 11:24 it says, "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you have received them," (past perfect tense) "and you will have them." (future tense).
So the past perfect is put together with the future saying, before you can have something in the future you have to have already got it.
This will become clearer as we go. In both Mathew chapter 16 and chapter 18 when Jesus says, "Whatever you bind on earth…" or "whatever you loose on earth.. ." he uses the same past and future tenses put together. Literally it says, "Whatever you bind on earth will be because it has been…" So if you are going to see something happen on earth in terms of binding or loosing you have to know that it has already been done in the heavenlies. You will never see it on earth until it is a "done deal" in the realm of the Spirit. It becomes a "now" in this sense of the word although it is still going to happen. If you are going to see things take place through faith you have to know that it has already been. You have to be in the certainty of the "now" of that thing in order to actually possess the thing materially in the future. I have to be able to say, "Well, I know I am healed." That is the "now" tense. You know you are healed because you know that it has already been done, although the physical manifestation may yet take place in the future. So the language of faith is in the "now", based on the certainty of what has already taken place and with the absolute confidence that in the very near future there is going to be the physical manifestation of what faith has laid hold of. Faith cannot be "going to" lay hold of it, it already has to have laid hold of it before you can speak confidently in the "now" concerning the future.
eferring back to the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1, let’s look at the first of the two words that "faith is", which is "substance", or "assurance", or "confidence". The Greek word is "hypostasis" and it means literally, "to be put under the authority of something". This word came to be used in the legal profession, and at the time the Bible was written, it was a word that was used to describe a package of documents, which gave you undisputed title to a piece of land or property. In other words, it was a written document, which described the boundaries of the land or described the property. If you had that legal document, you were the undisputed owner of that land or property. Every dispute about the land came under the authority of that document. If you had that piece of paper, those documents giving you undisputed title, there were no more disputes about the land, it was yours because you had the title deed. You could say, that faith is the "title deed" of things hoped for. I will illustrate this.
Let us imagine that a large British company of chain stores decides to invade the American market. They are going to come to a big American city and put up a large store of the chain of Marks & Spencer. The chief executive officer of the company lives in London, presumably, and he has not got the time to come to that city. He hires a local agent to find a nice twenty-acre site. He puts fifteen million dollars in a bank account ready to pay for the land and build a nice building. He gets architects to draw out the plans. In his office he has all these drawings and he can see pictures and illustrations of the store he is going to build. As he sits at his desk he is already imagining the profit he is going to make. He can almost hear the cash-bell clicking. He has a big construction company ready to move onto the land to start building. But nothing happens because he is waiting for something. At this stage he is in the phase of hope. If you would ask him whether he is going to build that large store he would answer, "Well, I hope so."
What is he waiting for? He is waiting for the undisputed document giving him undisputed title to the land before he is going to move and do anything. He has not seen the land; he has never come over to that big American city. He has just hired somebody else to do it for him. Then a day comes when a federal express package lands on his desk in London. He opens the package and there is the undisputed legal document giving him the freedom and the legal right as the owner to come and build that store on that piece of land. That title deed changes everything. Once he gets that document on his desk, he is moving from hope to faith. He calls the bank to release the money; he calls the architects and the construction company to start building.
Now, in that moment of moving from hope to faith, what was a dream and what were just paintings on the wall or just architects’ diagrams with no physical substance to them, suddenly are becoming substance because he has moved from hope to faith. The document he got on his desk convinced him. He never came to that big city, he never walked the land, he does not even know the land is there, except he has the title deed on his desk.
That title deed has the effect on him of being so assured that he owns the land, that he can build on it and that he can bring forth the physical manifestation of what he has been hoping for some time. And it was this document on his desk that changed him from a position of hope to a position of faith.
So faith is the title deed of things hoped for. It takes you from dreaming, longing and hoping to the place where you know you have got the legal right and ownership of the thing, which you are reaching out for in the realm of the Spirit.
et me come to the second word that "Faith is" (Hebrews 11:1), which is "elenchus". It is the evidence, the convincing proof. The verb "elenchus" was used in the criminal courts. When an attorney wanted to convince a jury that a criminal or an alleged criminal had committed a crime, he would persuade the jury with the convincing evidence. That is how this word is used. The attorney would stand before the jury, he would present all the evidence and by the time he had finished presenting the evidence, these people felt as if they had been at the scene of the crime, seeing this defendant do it. They were so convinced; without any shadow of doubt they were sure this person did the crime in the way that the indictment described it, and so brought in a verdict of guilty.
This evidence has the same effect upon them as if they had seen it with their own eyes, and causes them to behave like someone who has seen it with his own eyes, although they have not. If they had seen it with their own eyes they would not need the evidence. They end up like someone who was an eyewitness without actually being an eyewitness.
Faith has that effect upon us. We are persuaded by the activity of faith to see things as absolute reality, which we have not yet seen with our eyes. It brings us to exactly the same conviction and exactly the same attitude that a persuaded jury comes to when they are fully persuaded by a prosecuting attorney that the crime took place in that particular way.
That is the way the bible describes faith. It has the power to bring you from dreams to substance, from hope to faith. It has the power to bring you into behaving as if you are in knowledge although you are not in knowledge. You behave just as if you had seen it with your own eyes. Obviously, if you can only believe what you have seen with your own eyes, it will be impossible to convince a jury to prosecute anybody of any crime. Finally every jury has to make a decision on the evidence.
That is what faith can do. If you wait to see it with your own eyes, if you can come to a verdict based only on what you have seen with your own eyes, you would be an unpersuadable jury member, and you would never be allowed to sit on the jury. Faith has the same effect upon us. If we wait until we can touch it with our own fingers and see it with our own eyes, then it is impossible for God to bring us to faith. If we say, "I’m not believing anything if I can’t perceive it with my five senses," you are actually saying, "1 will only believe what I can touch with knowledge." But once you have come to knowledge, it is too late for faith. Once the healing is manifested, you do not need faith, it has already happened. When God solves your financial problem, it is too late to have faith about it. Faith, by definition, has to grab hold of something before it is there. Faith is the convincing proof of things not seen!
Hebrews 11:1 does not say faith is the title deed of imaginations, it says faith is the title deed or substance of things hoped for. I am sure you would agree with me that you couldn’t have a legal, watertight title deed for a piece of land that does not exist. How can you have a title deed for twenty acres of land in a city when it is not there? The fact that you have got the title deed, although you may not have seen the land, is enough proof to you that the land is there. We are not talking about "dreams", we are talking about "things". We are not talking about hopes, imaginations or a "let us try to make it happen" kind of deal; no, we are talking about "things". I am sure you would agree with me that you couldn’t have convincing proof for a crime that did not take place. So, if there is convincing proof, that convincing proof tells you that the reality is there, although you simply have not seen it. The fact that you have got a title deed tells you that the land is there but it is not yet manifested in this time or space, in this material world in which we live.
This is where many people make a terrible mistake, because faith cannot create, it can only obtain. Many people try to create by faith and faith cannot do that. You cannot create twenty acres of land when it does not exist by creating a title deed for it. You cannot get an attorney to plead a convincing case in court with evidence that does not exist. That is not faith; it is presumption. Presumption is trying to create things by faith that do not exist. Faith cannot do that. In order for faith to lay hold of the thing, the thing has to be there.
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Things hoped for, things not seen
his is the question: if the thing that you are reaching out to obtain by faith is non existent in the material time and space world but nevertheless it does really exist, where does it exist? The answer is, it exists in the realm of the Spirit. The Bible says, "For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal." (1 Corinthians 4:18) The unseen things of the Spiritual realm are more real, more tangible, more solid and more touchable with the fingers of faith and more lasting than anything of this material world, which we can easily contact with our natural senses.
In other words, we need a new faculty that can reach out into that spiritual realm and get hold of things with more certainty than my hands can get hold of a glass of water, for instance. It is the same activity but it is a different realm in which I am active.
All that faith can do is to get hold of things in the realm of the Spirit that are already existent, but not yet materially manifested on this earth at the present time. Faith cannot get hold of nothing and bring it into existence; faith gets hold of things and brings them into the material existence, but these things have to be there already in the realm of the Spirit in order for faith to get hold of them. Faith does not create anything - it only lays hold of what Gods’ Word has already created.
Only the Word of God can create
here is only one vehicle of creation and that is the Word of God. God speaks things into existence out of nothing by His Word. Then faith can get hold of what He said, and bring it into the material realm in which we live. It is normal for God to create things in the realm of the Spirit long before they ever become manifested in the material realm. God speaks, and out of His being comes forth what we call His Word. The Word of God is a part of God. It is God. It tells us that in John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
So when God speaks, He is actually sending forth part of Himself, and that part of Himself is a particular speaking about some specific thing. It carries the very essence of God, and the eternal being of God is in what He said. When He speaks it into existence, it comes into existence in the realm of the Spirit and it hangs there eternally alive, eternally throbbing with all the power of God’s eternal life waiting for faith to get hold of it. For example, in 2 Corinthians 5:17, notice the tense in which the Scriptures are written: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is" (not will be, but is) "a new creation; old things have passed away;" (here is your past perfect tense) "behold, all things have become new."
Consider, for instance, certain people that got saved two weeks ago. They are now trusting Jesus. They were on drugs, they are full of fear, they are 300 pound overweight, they cannot get up in the morning, and their life is a mess in every sense. You look at them and say, "Now where is this new creation in Christ?" In the realm of the Spirit they have already been remade and have already been spoken into total new life reality, but it has not yet become manifested in their lives. But it is there, all right! There is a glorious new person.
When we are born again, God takes the sperm (that is the word used in the Bible - 1 Peter 1:23) of His Son, and plants it into the womb of our Spirit (both men and women have a womb spiritually). He creates in us a new person that has our personality, but the nature of God. Before we were even born temporarily impaired with sin, God had already seen beyond that to the glorious new creation that you and I are in Christ; free from sin, with our personality now shot through, possessed and totally infused by the very nature of the living God. I am as Christ-like by the power of God as Jesus was Christ-like by the power of God during His 33 years on the earth. That has already been done in the realm of the Spirit because God spoke it into existence. To get that manifested on the earth, you have to get hold of it by faith and bring it from the spiritual realm into this material time and space world. When you get hold of it by faith it becomes manifested and the Word becomes flesh in you the way the Word was made flesh in Jesus. Isn’t it fantastic?
So it is all done! All that God has ever said is as eternally alive today as the day that He spoke it. When He spoke the Word, it was an eternal Word, and time has no effect upon it. It is as fresh, as powerful, and as mighty today as the day He spoke it. It may have been six thousand years ago in time, but it is throbbing with the same glorious eternal life that it had when it first left the lips of God and became self-existent as part of the great Word of the living God.
Faith lays hold of what God has done
aith reaches into the realm of the Spirit, gets hold of what God has said and brings it into the realm of this material time and space world, and it becomes manifested in physical form. It says in 1 Peter 2:24, "who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness-- by whose stripes you were healed". (Not going to be healed---you were healed.)
He dealt with your sicknesses 2000 years ago on the cross at Calvary when He bore all our sicknesses, all our diseases, all our pains in His body on the cross and paid for the whole lot so that you and I can live free from sicknesses. He did the same thing with our sins. It is a done deal. It is finished. So in the realm of the Spirit there is complete physical healing for all those that can get hold of it by faith. It does not become manifest in your body until faith lays hold of it. It comes into created existence by the word of God but it comes into physical manifestation by the activity of human faith. That is true of every word of God that has ever been spoken.
There are many Scriptures that tell us that we have the right to inherit everything that God’s promises have said. There is not a magic time when God is going to fulfil His particular Word. There is a time when people lay hold of it by faith, and cause that word to become manifested. Where does the faith come from? It comes from God. God motivates us to lay hold of it by faith. There is a sovereign side to it. Anything in God’s Word that God has spoken into the realm of the Spirit is hanging there in the realm of the Spirit waiting to be laid hold of by faith. The more we learn about faith, the more we are able to possess these things.
God speaks, and it is
n Romans 4:17 we are told this wonderful truth. God speaks to Abraham while he was absolutely barren, childless and impotent, and Sarah was barren too! There was not much hope physically in either of these two dried up prunes. And yet God says to Abraham, "’I have made you a father of many nations’ in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did."
In the Greek, this has a kind of "newspaper-boy calling out the headlines" flavor to it. It says actually; "God speaks into nothing and it is!" It is as stark as that in the Greek; God takes what is not and it is, just by His speaking. God does not need a little bit of something to get a lot of something. If you are completely without any discipline, He can speak discipline into your life. If there is no trace of holiness, if you are the biggest screwed up mess there ever was, He can just speak and the new creation in Christ comes forth. You can have the most horrendous background, you can have been abused all your life or you could have been told all your life that you are just a piece of rubbish and God says, "You are my chaste beloved virgin in Christ."
The activity of faith
e speaks that Word and it is! Now you have to get hold of it in Christ, by faith. Then, what He has already said becomes material substance in your life, and now, through the activity of faith, you are living out what the Word has already said. There is a vast storehouse, a treasure house of all the things that God has said, and none of them will become manifested in your life except through the activity of your faith. If you can move in faith you can have the lot. You can see faith is pretty important.
In Hebrews 11: 6 it goes on to say, "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." This is a pretty strong statement. You have to believe that, and you have to believe that this will work for you.
If you can take that step to personalize this teaching, then it is going to work for you. It worked for Paul, and now he is desperately trying to impart this to Timothy.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God
omans 10:17 tells us, "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Note that it says "hearing", not reading. There is a way that you have to hear God speaking into your heart, and you have to see in your spirit the things that God has written down. With your spiritual eyes and with your spiritual ears you have to hear it and you have to see it. It has to come alive for you. In Romans 10:17, "the Word of God" literally in the Greek means "the specific spoken word about the Christ". It is not general information about the Word.
For you to come to faith you have to hear God speak to you precept by precept, word by word. If you say, "I need to be healed," you need God to speak to you that you are healed. It is not sufficient that you have read it in Scripture. It is not sufficient that someone else has taught it. It is not sufficient that your next-door neighbor has experienced healing; you have to hear God say it to you. It is the specific spoken Word about the Christ.
"Rhema" is the word that is used in this verse. It is that particular Word that you personally need at this time. You have to hear God say it, and you have to be able to say, "I’ve seen it, I’ve heard it and I know that I know. I’ve got the title deed of that particular Word." You may not be able to get the title deed for the whole of Scripture; the only way to get the title deed for the whole of Scripture is to get the title deed of specific Words one at a time. Wherever you need it, get it for that thing and know that you have got it.
Galatians 3:2 says, "This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" What is the answer? It is the hearing of faith. You have to hear God’s Word, and say, "I believe that and I receive that." Then you can receive the Spirit. Becoming filled with the Holy Ghost is a matter of faith. Getting saved is a matter of faith. You have to hear the Word of God and you have to get hold of it by faith.
Galatians 3:5 says, "Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" What is the answer? Once again, it is the hearing of faith. If you want to continually live in the Spirit, how can you do that? How do you feel that fresh continuous supply of the Holy Ghost? It’s not simply by seeking Him; it is by faith. He will supply the Spirit and He will work miracles among you through the hearing of faith. If you want miracles to be happening, come to faith and they will happen. It is not enough just to be in an atmosphere, you have to be in faith.
The prayer of faith
t says in James 5:15, "And the prayer of faith will save the sick". It is not just prayer, it is the prayer of faith. Prayer without faith is just frankly a waste of time. It is just a religious exercise. The prayer of faith is what heals the sick.
You may have unsaved relatives for whom you have been praying for years. How long have you been praying for them with faith? How have you got the title deed for them?
I was saved because of a praying grandmother. She was a "praying in faith" grandmother. When I finished my education, I was an arrogant intellectual. I was a scientific atheist, and I was making a fat lot of money working for the Kodak Film Company, heading for a high position, and I was absolutely ruthless and ambitious. My grandmother spent the last few years of her life living in our home in England. She was a wonderful praying old lady, and she looked with dismay at my total godlessness. She used to give me a New Testament every Christmas, and I am ashamed to say I used to throw them away. (I don’t need that silly old book. She needs it -- she is an old lady who is going to die soon -- but I don’t need it.) One day she looked me in the eye, and said to me, "One day Jesus is going to save you and you are going to serve Him." I laughed and said, "Granny, bless you. I’ve got more important things to do."
That is what I said. She died not having received the promise but she died in faith. You can cash your faith-cheques in heaven; they do not all get cashed here on earth. If you do not see the answer in this life, you take your cheque to heaven and it is automatically tripled and quadrupled in purchasing power. I do not know what she did in heaven when I got saved. She probably danced a jig and said to Jesus, "Well Lord, since I didn’t get this prayer answered before I got to heaven, I am going to ask for an increasing value. I
don’t just want him saved, I want him to be a terror to the devil." I was in the middle of success, I was happily married, I was making a bomb financially, and everything was going well for me. I had just bought my fantastic new home and my fantastic new car, I was a Mr. Success, I didn’t have any needs, I was not in trouble, I was not on drugs, and in the middle of that God just burst into my life and saved me. I was accidentally led to Christ by two Mormon missionaries. They were furious when I got saved. That’s how powerful God is. I didn’t even believe in the Bible, but it still convicted me and saved me. There is an incredible power in God’s Word.
Start getting faith for your relatives or for your neighbors or for your colleagues at work, and see how many are going to be saved. If you wail and moan and grieve and pray, that cannot be the answer. But if you pray with faith there is going to be a response from heaven.
Galatians 3:7 says, "Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham." You cannot be Abraham’s heir; you cannot inherit what
God has promised Abraham without Abraham’s faith. But if you have got Abraham’s faith you can inherit all that God has promised Abraham. God promised Abraham that He would bless every community on the face of the earth by turning it away from its iniquity. You can come to God and say, "God, I’m going to get hold of this specific community in my city. That’s what I’m going to have faith for." If people start getting faith for things, then that releases God to fulfil His Word through their faith. You can say, "I’m looking to God for a powerful move among children in this church. I’m going to target the children until the Holy Ghost visits them with wave after wave of His visitation. I’m going to get hold of the young people or the black community; I’m going to get hold of all the rich businessmen of this city, because they are as much held down as any drug addict. God is going to break into their lives by His power through my faith. Regarding every community, every people group, God says, "I’m going to turn them away from their iniquities! If you have Abraham’s faith, then you can inherit what God promised Abraham. "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham." (Galatians 3:8-9)
Conclusion
God says He is going to save the nations by faith. He is going to save cities by faith. He is going to save people by faith. My question is, who’s faith is He going to save them through? Can they have faith for themselves? No, they cannot. Someone is going to have faith for them. What will happen if you will stand in the gap, and not just pray for your country and all its needs, but come to faith for your country! Come to faith that God gets hold of the media of your country and that it becomes cleansed and purified and starts to be a channel for God’s blessings to the nation. Get hold of the public school system and say to God, "God, I’m not just going to moan about it, I’m going to come to faith about it that You are going to remove the wicked people and replace them by God-fearing people and change the whole system until it glorifies You."
Those are the kinds of prayers we can pray, and through faith God will hear. God loves that! It is already spoken in the realm of the Spirit, but it needs faith to become manifested on the earth.
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