Hosea 4:6 — “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

Have you ever noticed how much Christians struggle to get more faith and to live by faith?

Maybe you have struggled with this also, but realize that if you are struggling with your faith —– it is not really faith because for real faith to work you must be at peace or at rest and simply believe that whatever you are exercising your faith for is already done and you are simply waiting patiently for the manifestation.

Remember when Jesus cursed the fig tree? He did not see the results immediately. It was the next day when He saw the result of what He had declared. Patience is the spiritual force that keeps your faith working while you are waiting for the manifestation to be realized.

Did you know that the first apostles that were with Jesus also struggled with this?

Look at Luke 17:5-6 – “The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you.”

This truth was taught to the apostles under the Old Covenant for the New Covenant hadn’t been made yet. This principle is also true under the New Covenant. Our faith, our authority, our dominion are all expressed through our words that we speak and believe they will come to pass.  The authority and dominion of a king are all expressed through his words.  We are ONE with Jesus the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

Mark 11:12-14 & 20-24 — “On the next day, when they had left Bethany, He became hungry. Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if perhaps He would find anything on it; and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” And His disciples were listening.

“As they were passing by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. Being reminded, Peter *said to Him, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree which You cursed has withered.” And Jesus *answered saying to them, “Have the God kind of faith. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore, I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.”

Again, Jesus was demonstrating how faith is used; by speaking to the obstacle or situation in your path and believing that what you say is done whether you see it immediately in the natural or in the future. Jesus said that if we believe what we say; it is going to happen.  (When we declare it, faith says it is already done as we declared and now we simply have to exercise patience until it manifests.)

*** VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND***Faith and believing are not the same thing. Believing works in the heart, or the hidden man of heart – the spirit. Faith is an action prompted by the heart, or what we believe in the heart, and implemented by speaking and actions.

Romans 10:8-10 – “ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”

Notice that the Holy Spirit, through Paul, told us that to become part of God’s family we must BELIEVE IN OUR HEART and SPEAK OUT OF OUR MOUTH to activate the faith required for becoming born from above by the Holy Spirit or for anything else we want from God.

An example of this in the natural would be if I went to work for someone and they said that if I work for them for 40 hours per week they would pay me $300. If I believed what they said to me, I would work for the next 40 hours without seeing a single cent, but fully expecting to receive $300 at the end of the week after I had worked the 40 hours. I believed his words and acted as though the money he promised was already mine; that I had the title-deed to that money. I would say to anyone who asked me that I receive $300 per week for my labor even before I physically had gotten the physical pay yet because I knew I had it even though it had not materialized yet. That is faith on a human level, but faith on a spiritual level works the same way.  We simply exercise our faith by believing what God has said.

In this example above, we believed what the employer said and we acted upon it. Do we do the same in acting upon what God says to us by His Word or by His Spirit within us?

Psalm 89:34 — “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.”

God, once He says something, He does not ever alter what He has said. His word is His bond. Whatever He tells us through His written Word or by His Spirit is absolute and He will not alter or change it. We can put extreme confidence in the integrity of what He says. We can rest with confidence that what He says will be done as He has declared.

Here’s the biggest problem we seem to have with exercising our faith.  When we speak our faith out if it doesn’t happen quickly or we see contradictory happenings we change our faith declarations to agree with what we see, hear, or feel.  That alters our confession of faith and negates its completion.  We MUST learn to act like God acts and not alter our faith declarations because of circumstances.

The REST of faith is having the supreme confidence in His Word that when we truly believe it in our heart and we speak those words out of our mouth “IT IS FINISHED” and we “REST”.  We cease from work and we rest.  We let patience hold our faith in tact until the manifestation has been completed.  We DO NOT change what we have declared to be finished.  We see ourselves in possession of what our faith was used to bring into manifestation on the screen of our imagination and we simply live with thanksgiving to our Father who is our Source.

Scripture tells us in Hebrews 12:2 that Jesus is the “author and finisher” of our faith. We don’t need to struggle to have more faith, we simply need to use what has already been given to us — “THE MEASURE OF FAITH”, Romans 12:3. We already have the measure of faith that God has given us, but we activate it by believing in the heart and speaking out of our mouth.

Have you really ever considered, or meditated on, the fact that we are “IN HIM” and that He is “IN US”? John 14:20 – “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” He has said that we “ONE WITH HIM”.

1 Corinthians 2:16 — “we have the mind of Christ”

2 Corinthians 5:21 — “we are the righteousness of God in Him.”

Hebrews 11:38 — We live by faith because “But My righteous one shall live by faith;”

Galatians 5:25 – “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”

Acts 17:28 — “in Him we live, and move, and have our being”

1 John 4:4 – “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”

****So, if He lives in us and we live in Him, we are ONE with Him; therefore, we are His body on this earth with His faith, His life, His Spirit, His power and authority, and we are to continue to do the exact same works He did. He is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven and we are seated with Him in the fourth dimension, but we are His spiritual body here on this earth carrying out the Father’s will.****

Ephesians 2:4-6 — “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions,
• made us alive together with Christ, and
• raised us up with Him, and
• seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”

Jesus said in John 15:5 – “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches that is another picture of being in union together. There is no life flowing through the branch without being in union with the vine. He said that if we are not in union with Him as ONE we can do nothing in this life that is pleasing to God the Father.

“I AM, WHATEVER THE GREAT I AM, SAYS I AM”

It is a finished work and we rest in that fact.

Revelation 19:16 —  “And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

For more on living the supernatural Christian life click here: https://www.robboardpublications.com/course-1-your-supernatural-Christian-life-training%20-course/