Knowing where our faith comes from

Heb. 11:6 tells us “that without faith it’s impossible to please God. For whoever would come near to God must believe that He is and is a rewarder to them that diligently seek Him.” Believe (in the scriptures) means, a total dependency on Christ for salvation and then we need to come into harmony and be in agreement with His ways of growing us up to be like Him. This believing is truth itself, a living entity. It also says that we must be diligent. In the Greek and Hebrew, diligent means to seek after someone who is the origin of life. That means we must hunger after Him. In turn, this will give our life a sense of meaning and purpose.

In John 14:6 Jesus says “I am the way the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.” We have to start with the premise that, faith is not a philosophy or teaching or an idea to toy with in our mind. It has nothing to do with belonging to a church, club or something we casually think about from time to time. If we have really been born again, we know that Jesus has risen from the dead and is alive today. I would question my relationship with God if I didn’t have a witness and a vibrant conversation with HIM EVER DAY.

Therefore, faith is the life of Christ himself living on the inside of us. His intent was to impregnate His D.N.A. into us, so His Spirit and ours would become one. With out him living on the inside of us we have no faith. We may have a concept and a definition of it, but there’s no quickening and confirmation of his presence. We can begin to understand why Jesus in John 15: 5 said, “I am the vine and you are the branches, if I live in you and you live in me, you will bear much fruit. Apart and cut off from a vital union with me, you can do nothing!”

Ephesians 1:13 tells us, “We had our first encounter with faith when we had a witness of Jesus coming into our lives. We were stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance. It was the down payment in anticipation of our acquiring complete possession of it.”

Romans 10:9-10 says, “ when we made a choice to accept the fact that Jesus had died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin, we chose to believe the fact that he rose from the dead and is alive today. In turn since we accepted this fact, we know that we can have a relationship with him because he is alive.” Common sense tells us that, you can’t have a relationship with a dead person. When we went through this thinking process and totally accepted in our being these facts. We had our first experience of meeting a living person, who we could not see, with our physical eye. If Jesus never rose from the dead, there would be no Christianity. He and He alone is author and finisher of our faith.

Hebrews 11:1 states, “Now faith is the substance of things hope for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith in the Greek says that when faith comes, we make a new friend and enter into a growing friendship. The word substance means, an essence or a very real being. We come together with this person and enter into a relationship (friendship) for a common cause. This friendship must grow through a continual testing between each other of mutual respect and agreement. On our part, there is a submission and worshipful appreciation, for someone who makes us feel very important. In turn, as our expectation and anticipation of this relationship grows, we begin to see into a spiritual world, that if we were to use our human understanding we could never comprehend him.

Romans 10:17 Says, “That faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit were led to put on parchment the story of God’s plan for mankind. This was told through story form of Jesus’ life encounters that He had with people, when He lived on the earth. The rest of the New Testament is made up of epistles written by disciples of the Lord, too different churches, teaching on the Christian life. This does not include the Old Testament and the ways God dealt with men through the Prophets of old.

Romans 12:1-3 Says, “That because Jesus loved us and died for us the least we could do is to seek after Him. We should not peruse superficial customs and live by shallow earthly values of does and don’ts. But we should be in a constant state of having our mind renewed, where we will be learning God’s way of looking at things and understanding how to cooperate with His perfect will.” This can only take place as we hear the Holy Spirit’s voice speaking to us about how He would handle things if He were in our situation.

If you look at the bible as only a book written by men with an ink pen and paper, it is no different then any other book written by somebody with learning and having authority about any subject. An example would be on how to do plumbing, electrical or gardening etc. So if we are reading, teaching or preaching it and interpreting it as merely a technical or instruction manual as these other technical books, it will give you some sound head knowledge of the right and wrong way of handling life, but it will not give you the power and quality of life God intended.

The bible is the book of life. When we read or hear the word from the text, we need to understand that it has to be heard by our spiritual ear, (given to us by Christ when we received Him into our heart.) This was part of the down payment I talked about earlier. Reading or hearing the word of God should be like the ink still being wet on the pages. That’s how real and alive the word should be to our spirit. God’s word has one interpretation, but many applications. Remember Jesus is alive today and He is the author of the book.

If we were on the hillside listening to Jesus when He walked on the earth, we would have heard one interpretation of truth. Not the countless interpretations we hear today. Is it possible that some of the gospel we’re hearing today is because of people’s private interpretations and not being taught by the Holy Spirit from within? The word of God is not something we pick up on occasions. We need to make it a natural way of life, just as we eat every day. We must be meditating on it day and night, if we are to rightly interpreter it.

Our faith walk in Christ needs to be alive and we need to be able to walk naturally and comfortably in our relationship with Him. This is what walking in the spirit is all about. Remember we are eternity people. Our spirit man needs to be active and interacting with the Holy Spirit at all times and that we allow the Holy Spirit to give us His thoughts on what the word of God really means and how it applies to our lives. We can have the same relationship with Him now that we would have had with Him if, we had walked with Him in the days that He physically walked the earth.

Romans 14:23 says, “Anything that is not motivated by faith, or has its origins in the life of faith is sin.” Now we could spend another forty pages or more talking about different sins such as lying, stealing, adultery, fornication, hating, etc. Over the years, I have heard a thousand messages on sin and how we can get it out of our lives. I say these are the results of not walking in holiness and having fellowship with the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. Therefore, I will not deal with the results, but with the core, that causes these results.

We have said that without a living relationship with Jesus living in our hearts, we can have no faith. Let me remind you that, Jesus Himself is our faith. Adam and Eve lived in perfect harmony in their relationship with God for a while, and then havoc took over. We know the story of how Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and how they disobeyed God.

God never intended for them to know the difference between good and bad. In turn, they had to leave the Garden of Eden, Adam had to go to work by the sweat of his brow, and Eve had to have babies by childbirth. Now that we know Jesus on a personal basis, our spirit man (on the inside of us) has been restored by God, and we now can have a living relationship with Him. We can walk with God, just as Adam and Eve did in the garden, before they sinned. Even though our spirit man has been restored, our soul has to come under subjection to the Holy Spirit to maintain a living inter-dependent relationship with God on a daily basis. Our soul did not become restored like our spirit.

Before Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they walked with Him every day in the garden and they were naked. They had no shame because their life was totally focused on God and they had no concept of right or wrong. They were at total peace. They had no need to ask for forgiveness or worry about trying to be good. They did not have any of the every day battles we have at times in our lives. From the day they were created God gave them a choice and a free will to eat from all the trees of the garden, except from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil He told them not to eat. He said if they did...they would “surely die” (They did not physically die but they did die spiritually.) From that day forward this whole concept of trying to walk in obedience to God’s will started.

It grieves me to say; in to many cases we have put more emphases (and are still) preaching on our behavioral habits. We are focusing on our nakedness and imperfections, rather then lifting up the Lord. Adam got his eyes off the Lord and focused on the fact that he was naked. For the first time, he knew he had done something wrong. Had he run to the Lord, asked God to forgive him, and experienced His forgiveness and love, he would not have had to leave the garden. Its obvious God still loved him, because He made garments for them to cover their nakedness.

Adam decided to deal with his disobedience through his own way of thinking and left God no choice. God allowed Adam the freedom of this choice. When Adam made fig leaf aprons to cover his wife’s and his own nakedness Adam decided aprons were better then being humble and asking God for forgiveness.

It’s so important that we understand the freedom God gives us to interact with Him and how our choices have to be constantly under advisement by the Holy Spirit. We have the same choices as Adam had and we need to learn how to respond to God with a humble and broken spirit.

In John 12:32 Jesus tells us “If we would exalt Him, He would draw all men unto Himself.” The word draw actually means, that Jesus would wrap Himself around us as a garment and by having this kind of relationship with Him; our sins are lifted off us. He not only paid the price for our sin, but Him being wrapped around us and us having this kind of relationship with Him,

He covers our sins, just as though we never sinned.

If God the Father in heaven sees Jesus when he looks at us, why do we spend so much time questioning this spotless high position that He puts us in. We need to stop judging and looking at what we believe our condition is and just constantly allow the Holy Spirit to remind us what our Heavenly Father thinks about us. Since Jesus is our faith. We need to focus on having the relationship that Adam had before he disobeyed God in the garden. Let’s stop focusing on talking about our incompleteness.

We are covered and complete in Him

Galatians 5:6 says, “It’s not through any kind of formalism or rules that, anyone can obtain faith. Its only activated and energized through love.” Colossians 3:14 Goes on to say, “We need to put on love and enfold ourselves with this union of perfectness, which holds everything together in perfect harmony.” In the Greek translation put on literally means, that Jesus clothed us with a robe and we are to live in this robe and make it our home. What is this robe? The robe is! JESUS HIMSELF!