The Faith of God

The Gospel according to Mark recorded: "Now the next day, when they (Jesus and His disciples) had come out from Bethany, He was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, He went to see if perhaps He would find something on it. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response Jesus said to it, 'Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.' And His disciples heart it. ... Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, 'Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.' So Jesus answered and said to them, 'Have faith in God. ....'" (Mark 11:12 - 14; 20 - 22, NKJV, emphasis added).

Jesus had the opportunity for a miracle not to show off, but to reveal His divine eternal purpose. In fact, Jesus always spoke, acted and taught with eternity in view. Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered away. He told His disciples that they must have faith in God. If they have faith in God they not only can say to this fig tree "be eithered," but whatever they speak will come to pass (Mark 11:23, 24).

Faith of God and faith in God

The actual translation of the statement by Jesus, "Have faith in God" is this: "Have God's faith" or "Have the faith of God."

There is a big difference between saying, "Have faith in God," and saying, "Have God's faith." One is the act of man's willpower and the other is a work of God in our lives - not the work of a man, but the experience of God's power.

There is also a great difference between faith and believing. During my early Christian life, I have heard ministers said that, you are exercising faith when you go to a light switch and flip it on. Or they said, it takes faith to sit in a chair; you have to have faith that the chair will hold you up.

To take anything as magnificent as this tremendous manifestation of spiritual faith and relegate it to such natural, carnal, technical non-example does a great disservice to this power called "faith"! As a result it brings a lot of confusion into the Body of Christ.

God's Image in us

God created man in His image because He wanted to reproduce Himself. God's image in us, God's image in humanity that He deposited in Adam was an independent capability called free will. God entrusted in with Adam. He put no strings on him. He gave him a moral will.

God gave Adam the ability to act, to move and to think independently of God. The only relationship that God asked of Adam was that he be obedient and use his will to obey the words which God gave him.

God created man with five natural senses - taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell. Every one of us was created with these five natural senses. However there is not inherent in the human nature of man the quality or the characteristic of faith? Why? Because faith is a supernatural force; it is not a natural force. Through our natural forces, by our will, we have the inherent capability to believe. But there is a great difference to setting our wills to believe and in using the supernatural force of faith that "knows that you know that you know that you know."

Is every man born with a measure of faith?

Paul said: "For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith" (Romans 12:3, emphasis added).

It is true what Paul said - "God has given to each person a measure of faith." But he was speaking to believers and not unbelievers. Read one verse before and two vers after Romans 12:2 you will understand what I mean.

Paul was talking about "those who have presented their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is their reasonable service" (Romans 12:1).

Paul said: "For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another" (Romans 12:4, 5).

It becomes clear if we do not take Romans 12:3 out of its context.

A little reasoning tells us that not every drunk, alcoholic, prostitute and every dirty, rotten, filthy person who lies, who cheats, who steals walking the face of this earth has this fantastic supernatural gift of God in their beings.

Man is therefore not born with any measure of faith. Faith is a gift of God to those who surrender their wills to God, to let Him become the Lord of their lives. In other words, faith is given by God to true Christians!

Receiving the Faith of God

I believe everyone would like to have the kind of faith that moves mountains and does exploits for God. We pray for it, we seek it, we struggle in our spiritual life for such faith. We are involved in a very deep struggle to rise to highter heights spiritually in order to be used by God.

James said: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning" (James 1:17).

Paul said: "For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it" (1 Cor. 4:7)?

These are profound statements. Man has nothing in himself but that he receives it from above. Everything we have comes from above - every gift, every ability etc. There is not merit or ability or gift which we possess by our own struggling. That is one thing God will not allow.

However, in seeking to "obtain faith," "step out in faith," "trying" to have faith, etc, men have in effect, tried to put God in a vulnerable position. In doing this they have caused much confusion and frustration. They struggle to have faith and their unknowledgeable words regarding faith have caused untold stress and perplexity in the lives of people who have not received answers to their prayers.


What happens in the spirit world?

Someone has said that ninety perscent of the people coming to Christ, in an evangelistic meeting, do not know what it is all about. What is actually happening in their lives? What is taking place in the spirit world?

The Spirit of God comes and deals with that man. The man has the ability through the power over his will to surrender his life to Jesus Christ. He has the power to surrender, the power to believe christ when he heard the "altar call."

Paul said: "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" (Eph. 2:8, 9).

A person's salvation comes from grace by faith. This person is praying at the altar (or anywhere). He does not really know what it is all about, but he knows that he wants to surrender to the Spirit of God which he has felt in the meeting. His will is being broken, His rebellion is being broken down. God is getting the opportunity to rule his life. This is when the grace of God comes into action. By grace he is saved through, bot not of himself. It is the gift of God.

The gift of God's faith

At that moment when he surrenders his will, the faith that is not of man but the faith of God, imparts into his life. The faith of God which is a gift of God has entered into his life and suddenly he is a child of God. He has a relationship with God. The gift of God's faith is imparted to him.

If this great truth of God's faith were taught to every little child of God, to all our dear people, how many struggles it would save them, how much heartache and how many problems. If only they knew that what they have inside them (God's faith) never has to fluctuate, because it is God's which never fluctuates. It meets evey circumstance, every test, every trial and every sickness that tries to enter our bodies.

The vine and the branches

The Bible says that the Lord Jesus is the Vine and you and I are the branches.

Jesus said: "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

The branch cannot bear fruit in itself except it abides in the vine. The live is in the vine. The Father is the Husbandman. He tends it. He gave it to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ gives it to you and me. You and I are just branches. You and I just bear the fruit but we do not produce it.

When it is God's faith, it never changes. it never changes. It never fluctuates. It is always there. The old roller coaster faith ride is gone. Your experience, your faith life is consistent because it is God's faith. It is extended in you and through you from the Vine (Jesus) through the branches (you and I) to the fruit - love, joy, peace, faith (or faithfulness), etc.

Paul said: "But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, ... (Acts 20:24).

Paul also said: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword" (Romans 8:35).

There is no doubt that Paul had God's faith.

What gives us our confidence is the fact that God is not depending on our faith at all. He is depending on His faith flowing through us. God's faith is the power that does not fail.

How to receive God's faith?

Paul said: "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).

We receive God's faith through God's Word. God's Word consists of the written Word and the Living Word. We have God's faith when God's Living word is living in us. The Living Word never changes for it is eternal. It always is. The Living Word is Jesus Himself.

God's Word is eternal. It does not have beginning of life and end of life. It is not just something people have written about God even under the influence of the Holy Spirit; it is God Himself. God Himself has no beginning and no ending. You cannot separate God from His Word. God and His Word are one.

John said: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).

When God sent Mose to deliver the children of Israeil from the bondage of the Egyptians, Moses feared that the Israelites would not believe him. He asked God: "Who shall I say sent me?"

God's answer was profound:

"Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I Am has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14).

So many people have faith in what Jesus could do when He was here on earth, and what He will be able to do in the future. Yet they fail to perceive Him as the now present Living Word. In other words, they fail to have faith in what Jesus is doing now.

This was the same problem Martha had even while Jesus was here on this earth. In John 11, when Jesus, the Living Word, came to Bethany where His friend Lazarus had died, Martha, the sister of Lazarus, accuse Jesus, saying, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died" (John 11:21).

Jesus assured the grieving sister that Lazarus would rise again. Martha said, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection in the last day" (john 11:24). But that was not what Jesus meant. Jesus, the Living Word, was on the scene now.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live" (John 11:25).

Martha was saying that Jesus could have healed Lazarus in the past, or that He could raise him in the future. What Jesus was saying was, "Martha, I Am here right now to meet the need. I Am is here!"

There is no such thing "A day of Miracles"

Jesus was telling Martha that there is no such thing as a day of miracles - not a past day of miracles, not a future day of miracles, there is only a God, in every day and in every age, with the power to work miracles and to meet the needs of people who need miracles. God is always is. His Word is always is! God had neither beginning nor end. He never was; He never shall be; He always is.

When Moses crossed the Red Sea it was not a day of miracles. when God fed the children of Israel in the wilderness it was not a day of miracles.


We often hear people who believe in miracles now say something like "Miracles days are here again," but we are not even saying that today is a day of miracles. What we believe in is a God of miracles-working power Who is alive in every day and every age. The days of miracles have never ceased because the God of miracles has never died.


The Devil's purpose is to attack the Word of God


The devil's purpose is to attack the Word - both written and Living. He tried to attack the Living Word, but God is the Living Word and so he did not succeed.


Now he wants to attack the written Word of God. How can he do it? The only way that he can attack the Word of God is as it is lived out in our lives.


The Devil comes to us when we get sick and he says, "What about the promises of God? Didn't God say, 'I am the Lord that healeth thee; (Exodus 15:26, KJV). What about it?


The Devil attacks the Word of God through the circumstances of our lives. It is the only way that he can attack God, the eternal Word. Don't let him do it!


With God's faith we have a knowing that no matter what our needs are, God will take us through. It is only a matter of time.


When you have the faith of God working in your live, you have a deep knowing that you know that you know that you know that you know. You will go through it because you know thati it is only a matter of a period of time. You are going to have the victory because God's Word will triump. It will never be defeated!