The christian Foundation Docrines Part 2
by: lebooa
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“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Romans 10:17
THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION DOCTRINES: PART 2
FAITH IN GOD
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1
THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION DOCTRINES: PART 2
FAITH IN GOD
CONTENTS
1. PROCLAMATION
2. INTRODUCTION
3. FAITH IN GOD
4. GETTING WHAT YOU WANT
5. WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE FAITH
6. SUMMARY
THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION DOCTRINES: PART 2
FAITH IN GOD
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Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are taken from the Good News Bible, Today’s English Version, Bible Society of South Africa. Copyright@ third South African edition 1993 published by the Bible Society of South Africa.
All royalties for this book have been assigned to Joseph Morakile Lebooa Ministries.
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Copyright 2001 by Joseph Lebooa
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THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION DOCTRINES: PART 2
FAITH IN GOD
Welcome to this program “Today with Joseph Lebooa”. I am very honored to have you with me this Sunday morning as we dwell into the word of God and reveal for you the secrets hidden in the word. God does not reveal His secrets to His enemies but to you who loves God and are obedient to His word the Bible tells us in the book of Deuteronomy 29:29 that:
“The secret things belongs to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
Many people out there are found of asking difficult questions and yet they cannot answer even the simplest of questions. It is unscriptural to ignore the revealed word of God and focus your attention on that part of the word of God, which is not revealed to you. God wants you to mind your own business and He in turn will mind His own business. Let us therefore focus on what God has revealed to us and leave what is not revealed to Him. Already as I speak it is virtually impossible to deal and exhaust all that God has revealed to us.
In order to bring about the Kingdom of God to earth we all need to focus on what God has revealed for us and do it. The revealed word of God is that each and every one of us must go out there to the world and preach this Gospel of Christ to all the nations and to disciple them. Not to be involved with this revelation is to be delinquent and undisciplined. Christians need to realize that this great commission is an order and not an option. Jesus Christ is not asking you or begging you, He is telling you by command.
Today as usual we shall resume our study with a proclamation of the word of God. Our proclamation for today comes from the book of Romans 10:17 and it reads thus:
1. PROCLAMATION
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
2. INTRODUCTION
Last week we started a new series of studies entitled “The Christian Foundation Doctrines”. We basically gave an introduction of this topic and highlighted the fact that the Christian faith is not an arbitrary religion. There is a definite and specific foundation to the Christian faith and that foundation is in a particular person. The foundation for Christianity is in the person of Jesus Christ and nothing else. This means that no one can lay any other foundation other than the one that has already been laid. Jesus Christ is the necessary and sufficient foundation required for the Christian faith.
We have also seen that the Bible refers to Jesus Christ as the rock and therefore by building our foundation in Jesus we are building our Christian careers on the rock. A house build on the rock will stand the storms of life but a house whose foundation was build on sand will not stand.
The Christian foundations can also be expressed in terms of specific doctrines or elementary principles of God. We have seen that there are six of such elementary doctrines and I have advised all Christians to study these doctrines first before you look at any other Christian doctrines in the Bible. The six foundation doctrines are:
1. The foundation for repentance from dead works
2. The foundation of faith towards God
3. The foundation of the Baptisms
4. The foundation of the laying on of hands
5. The foundation of the resurrection of the dead
6. The foundation of eternal judgment
Last week we started the study of the first foundation, which is the foundation for repentance from dead works. We said that repentance was the sinner’s first response to God. Without repentance, the truth cannot be revealed and there cannot be faith. The Bible tells us that even Jesus Christ could not be revealed to the world until there was repentance. This is why John the Baptist’s ministry was necessary, to baptize repentant people for the remission of sins. No one can accept Jesus unless He is revealed in their lives. Jesus Christ cannot be revealed in your life unless you confront the truth and repent to God for your sins. Today in study 16 we shall study the second of the six foundations, which is the foundation of faith towards God.
3. FAITH IN GOD
The second foundation doctrine talks about having faith in God. The faith in God actually refers to one of the members of the triune Godhead and in this case it refers to having faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is very important because we need to remember that Jesus Christ is the revealed truth and we have already said that the truth is only revealed if there is true repentance. So another way to rephrase the second foundation is to say “the foundation of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ”. Notice here that this second Christian foundation is dealing with Jesus Christ in His capacity as God and not as man. The apostle Paul gives testimony to this fact that the member of the Godhead we are referring to here is Jesus Christ, let us look at the book of Acts 20:20-21
“I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”
So it is obvious that Paul here was referring to the first two foundation principles. Notice that the second foundation principle he mentions is faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. This proves that to have faith in God is specifically to have faith in Jesus Christ as God. I hope that my listeners will really discern this matter that I am trying to reveal that to have Faith in God is not to have faith in the Father or in the Holy Spirit but specifically, to have faith in Jesus Christ, the son of God. You see, the only way you can have faith in the Father or in the Holy Spirit is if you have faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Himself said it that He is the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father except through Him.
This is a very important point because some people want to put Jesus outside the equation and only believe in God the Father. Some people do not believe in a triune God and therefore teach error by making us believe that you can believe in God the Father outside of Jesus Christ. The second Christian foundation virtually tells us that unless you believe in Jesus Christ there is no way you will even come to the Father or the Holy Spirit. You see, God the Father is not the foundation for Christianity, The Holy Spirit is not the foundation for Christianity but Jesus Christ is the foundation for Christianity. Only through Jesus Christ can you gain access to the Father and to the Holy Sprit. And without Jesus no such access is possible. God the Father is only pleased with us if we approach Him through His Son Jesus Christ. Without His son, God is not willing to have any dealings with us.
Before we can define in detail what it means to have faith in God or faith in Jesus Christ, we need to first dwell into the subject of faith in order to understand first what faith is and how it operates and then finally see how it applies to Jesus Christ.
Faith is one of the very few words that have definitions in the Bible. The Bible does not normally have the tradition of defining words but in the case of faith there is specifically a definition contained in the Bible. This shows that God considers the subject of faith as very critical to a Christian and therefore we have also decided to also spend some time today to study this subject.
Faith always originates directly in the word of God and it is always directly related to God’s word. You cannot have faith outside the commandments or the promises contained in the Bible. So the entire Bible is the object of faith, every promise that is contained in the Bible can be the basis of faith. There is no basis to talk about faith outside the Bible. I have often heard people say that they have faith that their football club is going to win the match on Sunday and when you ask the person why he says that he has faith that his club will win, he then tells you that his club will win because it is the best club and because it has better players than the competing club. This is not faith because faith cannot be found outside the Bible.
The definition of faith is given in the book of Hebrews 11: 1 and it reads as follows:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
The word substance reminds me of Psalm 139:16 when King David says to God:
“Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.”
It is very important to note that this substance that King David refers to is something that existed in the spiritual world and not in the natural world. So the very first thing we need to realize from this definition is that faith as a substance exist and operates in the spirit of a human being or what we call the human heart and that secondly, hope is part of the human soul and therefore it exist and operates in the human head somewhere in the mind. In other words, faith is spiritual and hope is natural. Therefore faith defines the scriptural relationship that should exist between the spirit and the soul in a human body.
Faith tells us that the substance of the human soul must originate in the spirit. In other words, the spirit must predominate the soul and the soul must be loyal to the spirit. The provision for the soul is in the spirit. The definition of faith tells us that the human spirit must always be active in relation to the soul and that the human soul must always be passive in relation to the spirit. Put in layman’s terms we can say that the definition of faith tells us that the human spirit must be the boss over the human soul.
This is an outstanding revelation because the Bible tells us that God is a spirit and those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit. This means that the only way man can communicate and truly fellowship with God is if his spirit is active over his soul. If man’s spirit is active over man’s soul or said in another way, if man’s soul is passive with respect to the spirit of man then the Spirit of God communicates directly with the spirit of man without hindrance. But if for some reasons the spirit of man becomes passive and His soul becomes active then the communication between man and God is broken.
For God to be able to communicate with us it is important that the spirit of man must control his soul and the soul in turn must control the body. If this relationship is broken then what happens is that the body takes control over the soul and then the spirit submits to the soul. This is the precisely the definition of a carnal man because when the body is in charge the human senses control the entire human being. To have faith is first and foremost to have your spirit take charge of your entire life over your body and over your soul.
What we have just said explains the reason why God says that the righteous shall live by faith and that without faith no one can please Him. In other words, God is saying that anytime your spirit looses control over your soul and over your body you literally stop operating in faith and you loose the relationship with Him, you begin to displease Him and you loose your righteousness. So to come back to our discussion regarding the definition of faith, we have said that:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
From the above definition we are able to deduce at least five different aspects of faith, which are the following:
1. Faith is a substance
2. Faith targets things
3. Faith is directly related to hope
4. Faith is the evidence or prove
5. Faith deals with the invisible realm
So faith primarily deals with the things that are not seen but which are already hoped for. Faith is in the heart, which is in the realm of your spirit, and hope is in the head or in the mind, which is the realm of your soul. So we can say that faith is the response of your spirit to the needs of your soul. To be in faith is to have your spirit absolutely in control of both your soul and your body.
In other words, faith addresses only those unseen things, which are already in your mind or which your mind longs for. The things hoped for are the things not seen by your mind and the things not seen by your mind are the things contained in each promise of God. This means that all the material things that pertain to life and godliness that our minds can think of are already contained and exist spiritually in the word of God.
Another important thing to note is that faith is a substance and the evidence of things both things hoped for and unseen. Another way to say this is to say that faith is the proof of the material existence of things your soul wants but cannot see. This means that as a substance faith gives material expression to those things that are in your mind, it gives prove that the things that your mind desire and which are contained in the promises of God truly exist in the natural. Faith does not only prove the existence of unseen things but also it is God’s prescribed way of letting you have that which your soul desires.
We can therefore conclude from the above that faith is a practical way of transferring things from the spiritual world to the natural world. Faith is man’s only way of operating within the kingdom of God whilst on earth. Without faith there is no way a man will ever know the kingdom of God and how it truly functions. We live in the natural but God lives in the spiritual. Our communication with God has to happen in the spiritual and faith is the only channel that makes it possible for us to commute from the natural to the spiritual. If you are not able to commute from the natural to the spiritual then you have no possible way of knowing God and consequently you cannot be God’s person.
If we take the first part of the sentence that says “Faith is the substance of things hoped for” and then we lay this sentence side by side with the second portion of the sentence which say “the evidence of things hoped for”. An important revelation comes out of this and the first part of this revelation is that faith is both a substance and evidence and the second part of this revelation is that the things hoped for are actually the things not seen i.e. the invisible things. This means that faith brings about the scriptural evidence of the existence of the things invisible to our eyes. Said in another way, Faith is the material proof of the existence of the unseen scriptural things that your soul needs.
You see, God only provides it if you can prove that it is contained in the Bible. So how things work in God’s kingdom is that first you must prove that what you want, God has promised to provide in His word. If you can prove that what your soul wants is contained in the word of God, then God promises to give you that which you ask for. This is what we call faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Note that it is all about things and things include everything without exception, whatever things you want so long as you can present the evidence for their existence in the word of God; they shall be granted to you. God is basically saying that He will not grant you anything outside His word, if it is not contained in the Bible He will not give it to you but if it is contained and you can prove this scripturally then God has no option but to grant you your desires.
From the above we can see that Christianity is actually the simplest of all religions, it consist primarily of a legal framework wherein if you have the evidence or the proof you win. If for instance you want to sleep and you want your sleep to be that of faith all you need is to show material evidence in the Bible that sleeping is the will of God. Once you do that and with a little patience God will give you a good nights sleep. How difficult is that?
Let us look once more at another example and consider what it means to eat by faith. What this means is that we need to show material evidence in the Bible that eating is the will of God. Once we have done this God will give us food to eat. Let us go into the Bible and find our material evidence that eating is the will of God.
In Mark 7: 15 the Bible tells us that:
“There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile Him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.”
Further on in verse 18 and 19 Jesus says:
“ …… Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him,
Because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods”
So all foods are purified especially if we acknowledge that God is the one that provides.
Further more James 1:16-17 acknowledges that God is the one who provides us with the food with Eat. He says:
Do not be deceived, my beloved bretheren. 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.
In Philippians 4:19 we are also told that:
“And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
Brothers and sisters, I would like to challenge each one of you at this point to come up with some scriptural evidence about some of your daily activities. Remember that if you can build faith for some of the most common activities in your life, you will build yourself some good works. The following are the activities I would like you to meditate about and dig out some scriptural evidence to justify that you do them by faith. At the beginning and for the purpose of this exercise, it will not matter if some of this evidence is not contained in your heart. What I want you to do for now is to search through the Bible and identify scripture that can justify these activities. A second phase would be for you to plant these scriptures in your heart and practice confessing them on a daily basis. The activities are the following
1. Waking up in the morning
2. Taking a bath
3. Putting on your clothes
4. Eating your breakfast
5. Driving to work
6. Working in your office
7. Attending a meeting at work
8. Playing some sports such as foot ball
9. Sleeping at night
Once you understand what it means to present evidence regarding the above things, it will soon become easier for you to realize that you need to deal with every other thing in life in the same way. When presented with sickness, financial lack, sadness etc, it is the same procedure that you need to follow. All you have to do is to present the evidence that the will of God is to be healthy, wealthy and happy . So God’s system is pretty much legalistic, you need to know the law in order to protect yourself and get what you want. If you do not know the law you will simply perish.
What you need to understand is that God does not like you on the basis of your family name or because you are a nice guy. God is not impressed with the way you dress or the way you walk or play football. God is also not impressed with the way you read your Bible or the way you tithe at church or even your church attendance. God is only impressed with your faith; nothing else about you can impress Him. Remember, you were just made out of soil. Who on earth can be impressed with soil? What impresses God is the ability of your spirit to control the soil, which is your body, the ability of your spirit to take charge of your soul.
4. GETTING WHAT YOU WANT
I am now trying to get into a more practical part of what we have been talking about. Let us say that you have obtained the scriptural evidence of the things you want and this evidence is stored in your heart, ideally from what we have said, God must give you what you want because you are able to present the evidence. However, that is not going to happen because this is not how it works. Having the evidence is still not the whole picture. First we need to look at what is it exactly that you have in your heart. Like in any legal system, the evidence is thoroughly inspected and scrutinized.
You see, faith is not just about storing evidence in your heart but it is about fulfilling the requirements of the evidence and confessing that evidence through your mouth. When you want something in your life and you want to have it by faith, you need to have the scriptures that will give the material evidence that the thing you want is contained in the word of God. Once you have the scriptural evidence you need to fulfill the conditions of that scripture and to confess it.
Let us look at an example in order to illustrate this matter. If a person is sick for example and wants to be healed by faith, first he needs to find the scriptural evidence that it is God’s will to heal him. In general there are a number of scriptures in the Bible that you may want to use for this purpose such as 1 Peter 2:24 or even Proverbs 4:20-22. let us say that you chose to use Proverbs 4:20-22 as the fundamental evidence which is stored in your heart and which you confess for your healing. We need to open this scripture and see what it really says and determine if you meet the conditions that it stipulates. Proverbs 4:20-22 reads as follows:
“My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes;
Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them,
And health to all their flesh.”
Notice that the above scripture has two parts, one part is God’s promises to you and the other part is made up of conditions that you need to fulfill in order to appropriate of the promises. The promises are two namely; that the word of God is life to those that find them and secondly health to all their flesh. The conditions that you need to meet are five and are listed below:
1. To be God’s son
2. To give attention to God’s words
3. To incline your ear to His sayings
4. To not let the words of God depart from your eyes
5. To keep the words of God in the midst of your heart
So in order for you to have life and health to all your body using the above scripture, you need to meet five conditions, which we just listed. If you do not meet these five conditions then the above scripture will simply not help you to get healed.
The same thing applies to all scripture that is contained in the Bible; each commandment of God has a promise and conditions attached to it. In general, it is very unscriptural to expect God to give you a promise without expecting you to fulfill certain conditions, which are attached to the promise. It is not enough to just store the promise in your heart but you have to do what the promise requires you to do. Let us look at another scripture just to make sure that we are consistent with the application of this principle. In Romans 8:28 the Bible says the following about believers:
“ And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
Note again in this case that the same principles we applied above are still valid. Basically we have once more a promise and two conditions. The promise is that in all things God works together for good. There are basically two conditions in the above scripture, which are:
1. You have to love God
2. You have to be called according to His name
If you do not fulfill the two above conditions you cannot qualify for the promise of goodness above.
So we can conclude that this same principle runs across the entire Bible. All the commandments of God are in two parts, the one part is the promise and the other part is the conditions that you need to meet in order to appropriate of the promise. The apostle Peter states this very same truth in a more vivid way when he says:
“… His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises.” 2 Peter 1:2-3
Whenever a need arises in your life and you need to be in faith, there are three essential steps that you should take.
1. Ask the Holy Spirit to direct you to the particular scripture that apply to your situation and meet your need
2. You must obediently fulfill the particular conditions attached to that scripture.
3. You must expect the outworking of that scripture in your experience
WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE FAITH
Before we can look at what it means to have faith we need to find out how a person obtains faith and for this purpose we shall turn to our proclamation and bring back that scripture into our study. It reads thus:
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Romans 10:17
According to the above statement faith comes, so if you do not have it you can get it because it comes. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. So what is critical in the formation of faith is your ear, all you need to do is to ensure that you control what your ear hears. If you put through your ears the word of God then you will develop faith. The ear is like a gate to the heart just like the mouth is a gate to the stomach. The ear tastes words for the heart in the same way that the mouth tastes food for the stomach.
For the word of God to reach your ear it could be coming from the following sources:
1. Your own mouth
2. From a transmission source (radio, TV)
3. From preaching (in church or in the street)
4. From recordings (tapes, CD’s etc)
5. Others (angels and God Himself)
What is important is that the word of God should reach your ear in an audible way that you can hear and understand. The most important and inexpensive source for hearing the word of God is when you hear it from your own mouth. The word of God received in you ear is a seed, which is destined to be planted in your heart. So your heart in this respect is the soil and the word is the seed. Let us see a scriptural basis for this that we have just said. In the Gospel of Matthew 13:3-23 Jesus tells the following parable:
“Behold, a sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.
Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth.
But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.
“And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.
But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty.
“He who has ears to hear let him hear!”
In Luke 8: 11-15 Jesus goes further to explain the parable of the sower.
“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.
“Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
“But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away.
Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures if life, and bring no fruit to maturity.
“But the ones the fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.
So the word is the seed and the heart is the soil upon which the seed is planted. Usually it is the heart of men that normally presents problems. The above scripture describes four different conditions in which the heart may find itself. These conditions are the following:
1. The heart may lack understanding and therefore the devil can steal the word.
2. The heart may lack roots and therefore cannot stand tribulations and temptations
3. The heart may be full of the pleasures of life and therefore these cares and pleasures choke the word of God and bring no fruit to maturity.
4. A good heart retains the word and bear fruit with patience.
So it is important for us to regularly test our hearts to find out if our hearts are good and this we can only know if we retain the word and bear fruit with patience. The word of God, which comes by hearing, must come into your body through your ears and it must be planted into a good heart. If the word is not planted in a good heart it will not bring no fruit to maturity but if the word is planted in a good heart it will bring the fruit to maturity.
Notice that the word planted in a good heart yields a crop that springs up, increases and produces some thirty fold, some sixty fold and some a hundred. So a word that falls on a good heart produces a crop in the heart and this crop grows up to produce fruits in the proportion of thirty, sixty and a hundred fold. What it means is that the word in a good heart is better than money in the best account. God gives you a minimum return of thirty times, sixty times or a hundred fold. Mind you these are not percentages like in the normal banking system. The highest interest rate you can get with most banks today on any savings account is around 13% or 16% at best.
God is not offering you a 16% increase but rather, God is increasing what you put in 30 times in the worst case, this is an equivalent of an increase in interest rates of at least 3000%. Let me ask you a question my brother and sister, if I gave you an option to put your money in the earthly bank where the minimum interest rates per month on whatever amount you put is 16% and a bank in heaven where the minimum interest rates on your money is 3000% per month. Which of the two banks would you chose for banking your money?
Notice from the above that if you put in for an example R10 into the earthly bank your interest earnings at 16% by the end of the month is R1.60 end the total amount of money in your bank is R11, 60 but if you bank in the kingdom of heaven and you deposit the same R10, the minimum interest rate is 3000% and therefore your interest earned at the end of the month is R300, and when you reconcile your monies at the end of the month you will now have a total of R40. So we can conclude following the above example that in the world if you invest R10 with the best possible interest rate you will end up with R11. 60 but in the kingdom of God if you invest R10 in the worst case you will end up with R40. So the worst heavenly case is far better and much more profitable than the best earthly case.
The Kingdom of God also gives you and increase of sixty times in the average case and a 100 fold in the best case. Notice that 60 times is an interest of more than 6000% and a hundred fold is something truly beyond definition. A hundred fold is not the same as saying a hundred times. A hundred fold means that this money will produce itself a hundred times a hundred fold. This is like an apple tree, which produces fruit in every season forever. The apply tree keeps on producing the fruit all the years and yet it was planted out of only one seed.
So one seed of God’s word planted in a good heart produces so much fruit such that at some point the heart begins to overflow because of the abundance of the fruit in it. When the heart overflows, it spills the fruit just like a bucket of water overflowing and spilling water on the ground. The drainage system for the heart is the mouth. In other words all the abundance and overflow of the heart comes out through the mouth. This statement is supported by Biblical evidence, which we can find in the scriptural passage of the Gospel of Matthew 12: 34-35.
“Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”
So the mouth always speaks out of the abundance of the heart and this means that what you hear with your ears when planted in the heart produces fruit, when the fruit begins to overflow in the heart they spill over through the mouth. It is important therefore to always be mindful of what we hear or how we hear with our ears because in the ultimate whatever we hear will manifest in our speech. Your words are the fruits of your heart. This is the primary reason why we oppose in the fundamental TV and movies in general. It is important for all of us to protect our ears from foreign talk and from anything that may infect our hearts with bad fruit.
So what it really means to be in faith is to have fruit in your heart and to have this fruit in abundance spilling over all the time. So your mouth must be confessing the world of God all the time and your ear must be hearing the word all the time. In this way a fruit will be planted in your heart all the time and this process becomes a vicious circle of talking the word, hearing, planting, overflowing and talking again. Notice that by so doing, the fruits of your heart, which is the words, you speak is replanted back into your heart and this way you begin to virtually live in faith.
So to be in faith is not only to have the word planted in your heart but also to confess it through you mouth. Faith speaks and when you have it you will have to speak it out and to show it. There is nothing like secrete faith because for as long as the fruits overflow in the heart the mouth cannot be kept shut. Even our Great grand Father Abraham had to change His name from Abram to Abraham because when you are in faith it will show. Abraham believed and God imputed it to him as righteousness.
Have you ever imagined a man above seventy five years old who God tells that he will have a son of promise with His wife who must have been at least sixty-five years at the time. The man’s name had to be changed to Abraham, which means “ Father of Many nations”. Have you ever thought of someone at the market calling or even shouting this 75 year old man’s name Abraham, Abraham, Father of many nations. Mind you Abraham had no children, people must have though that he was crazy to accept a name like that and to believe that at his age and that of his wife he would conceive a child of promise.
Well I am sure that most of you know the rest of the story that when Abraham was around 100 years old and Sarah about 90 years, they conceived Isaac who later became the father of Jacob and Jacob became Israel and from Israel Jesus Christ, the messiah was born. Today if you will accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior the Bible tells us that then Abraham becomes your father.
You see one thing you need to know is that Abraham was a man of faith, he believe what God told Him. At the time there was no Bible, there were no prophets, there was no law and there was no Jesus and yet when Abraham heard the word of God regarding him been a father, he believed. He heard the word with his ears and he planted it in his heart and it produced fruit, which began to overflow through his mouth. If a historian were to investigate the story of Abraham He would probably tell us that this was a man who went about telling everybody that he was the father of many nations. Even his wife Sarah must have probably felt embossed sometimes because Abraham saw in his heart the womb of Sarah conceived a child by the name of Isaac.
Today if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lords and savior, you have become a descendent of Abraham. This is the appropriate message for father’s day. I want to say to all the fathers out there that you also have an earthly father by faith in Christ and that father is Abraham –the man of faith. You have another Father in heaven and that Father is the almighty God but the reason you are a father is because you ought to have faith in Christ. I want to say to all the fathers that the most appropriate way to be a father is to relate to some mother in the capacity of a husband. Fathers must be husbands and this can only be achieved by faith. Fathers in the strict natural sense are fathers because their wives bore them children. They are fathers because they are in covenant with God and with their wives.
For those fathers who exist outside this marriage covenant we shall continue to pray because whilst God loves all the fathers it is unscriptural and often sinful to be a father outside the marriage covenant and without a wife.
May the love of God, and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you.
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