FAITH

Charles Price / Derek Prince

Faith is easily driven from the spiritual chambers of the heart into the cold and unfruitful corridors of the mind by our emotions & desires.

Unless the faith is actually there, it is generally unwise to testify to healing on the basis of faith or promise.

Genuine faith manifesting itself without result is like the sun shining without light and heat.

To believe in healing is one thing, but to have faith for it is altogether something else.

We should trust Him when we cannot see or understand, however, this is not the same as faith.

Ask the Holy Spirit to lead us back to the fork in the road where, because of our blindness, we left the trail.

Faith is received, ONLY, as He gives it.

• God’s grace and truth must flood our hearts and minds and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
• We will behold the provisions of His love and cease to struggle and strive.
• Faith is received as God imparts it to our hearts.
• Scriptural faith is the deep consciousness that is divinely imparted to the heart of man.
• Faith is imparted by the Lord as we need it and in order that His will (not ours) be done.
• Faith works, moves, operates and accomplishes according to the measure and power provided by God.
• To each, a measure is given as children of God. A greater faith is imparted as well.

Belief is a mental quality.

• You can believe a promise but not have the faith to see it manifested.
• We cannot “work up” faith or believe ourselves into an experience.
• Mental is cold and calculated; faith is warm and vital, lives and throbs.
• Heart belief opens the door of communication between us and the Lord and a divinely imparted faith becomes possible.
• Romans 10:10 - For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

What is absent when God’s faith is present (imparted to us)?

• Rebuking, commanding, demanding, struggling and pleading.

What is present when God’s faith is imparted to us?

• A great calm and a deep settled peace in the soul.

 Old vs New:

Christianity grew out of Judaism just as the flower grows out of the root.  Hidden away in the ritual of the root was the color, fragrance and beauty of the flower of grace that was to come later.  Was not the flower better than the root?  Was the end better than the beginning?  Was not the blood of Christ better than the blood of the lamb on Jewish altars?  Was not Jesus better than the angels who had visited their fathers?  Was not the voice of God’s Son better than the voice of prophets?

The Author and Finisher of our faith:

• All true faith begins and ends in Him.
• When we want it, we must seek His face.
• Faith acts, but the act comes from faith, not faith from the act.
• Trust Him. Give Him your confidence and trust and you will find His faith will become operative in you.
• Come in the humble and innocent spirit of a child. Our foundation is Jesus Himself.

Gift or Fruit?

• Roots are ugly and hard in comparison to the beautiful greenery above ground.
• Faith is the divine life that flows into the roots. The mystical quality that only God can produce and give.  Roots do not the life / the life produces the roots.  This life is the faith.
• Our inner nature is like the roots. Our senses, approaches and expressions are buried below the surface.  The world sees what we produce and does not see our real selves.
• This life, or faith, will be shown to the world by the fruit we bear. Through God, this is manifested daily on the tree of our lives.
• The more the crucifixion of the self life with its spirit of pride, the more the resurrection power of his life will impart power and health to your soul and body.
• We do not possess faith to use according to our will but for the purpose in which he gives it and permits us to keep it.
• Faith is a gift and a fruit as it grows in our life. Trust Him when faith is withheld and praise Him when it is given.

He is Truth.  He is the Way.  He is Life and Faith.  He has in abundance what we do not have.  We cannot produce faith with the mind, thought or intellect.  God can put it there, as the river of His grace flows through your heart.

He came to make men free from doubt, fear, unbelief and sin.

The Holy Spirit not only imparts the conviction of the need of a Savior, but ALSO imparts the faith to receive Him.

• Jesus pours the oil of heaven’s joy into the lacerated broken heart.
• Jesus smooths the wrinkles of care with the gentle touch of a mother’s hand.

The infusion of God’s divine strength and nature:

• Knowledge that God is willing to give.
• We must feel our need for God’s strength.
• Don’t look at Jesus but actually behold the sweetness of His presence.
• Lay our burdens at his feet. Leave them there and never again carry them.
• God’s faith cleans our hearts of all debris, fears, and doubts.
• As our lives become empty of the world then there is room for the things which God can impart.
• The heart will accept the unreasonable as it believes what the mind says is impossible.
• We love with God's love. It is not our love that has been made cleaner and sweeter because of what He has done in our hearts and lives. It is the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is God's wonderful love that fills the rooms of the heart and only the possession of that love divine makes it possible for us to love our enemies.
• The worldly man can have his synthetic joy which is the plaything of environment and the slave of circumstance. The Christian can have imparted joy in the Holy Spirit and rejoice in its manifestation under every condition of life. It is not dependent upon surroundings nor is it the slave of circumstance. It is the gift of God.

Only as He gives His pardon, am I saved.  Only as He imparts His strength, can I fight the good fight of faith.  Only as He gives His love can I forgive my enemies.  Only as He lifts me, can I rise above the world of sorrow and sin.

Seek the Healer, not the healing.  All great healing services have been preceded by nights of consecration and seasons of prayer.

“Something passed from Jesus to him, and he felt as though a fog had rolled away from his heart and mind.  From that moment on he knew his struggles were over and a sweet and holy peace was wrapped around his soul.”

Focusing on our plans and future opportunities leads into doubting which destroys confidence and trust in God.

• Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by a “rhema” Word of God.
• Wait on Jesus to speak to our hearts. This dispels doubt and fear.

How does faith come?

• Let Jesus breathe a little word to this poor mind of mine and heaven is brought to earth, fear is gone like a shadow in the light of his glorious truth. Let him say, “bring him to me”, and then comes faith, God's faith, his faith, and my poor heart will cry, “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” Let Jesus breathe on me with his love and presence and mountains will tremble and the fingers of the foundations will lose their grip.
• Jesus speaks, the soul is lifted, and that one word from Jesus is worth ALL the words in the human dictionary.
• When Jesus speaks, hope is kindled and becomes a fire that burns away doubt and unbelief. The warmth of a divine and beautiful faith brings healing to the soul.
• As the soul waits before God in the quiet and beautiful attitude of trust and rest in His promises, faith comes.

How does faith not come?

• Not through human concepts.
• Not along the path of human understanding.
• Not by the ability of the mind to comprehend.
• Not by the power of the intellect.
• Struggle and groan as if reaching for the moon and you will not possess it.
• Faith does not come in the turbulent atmosphere of our noisy strivings and amidst our focus on future plans and opportunities.
• Often people will say, “If the Lord will heal me, I will serve Him as long as I live.” They are looking for the manifestation of His power from the outside in, when actually His power operates from the inside out.

FAITH:  The quality or power by which the things desired become the things possessed.

• Faith is like the atom which has a world within itself containing such a powerful energy it is hard to imagine.
• When faith takes over we may say and do things that if our reason or intellect had been allowed to take over we would hesitate to say or do.
• If faith is powerless, it ceases to be faith. You cannot have faith without results anymore than you can have motion without movement.

The thing we sometimes call faith is simply trust. We trust in the Lord but faith has feet and wings and power. A man could not have faith for salvation and not be saved. He could trust the Lord, and promised that someday he would come to Christ, but when he has faith for salvation it means he is saved.

No Christian is entirely devoid of faith. It is implanted in the heart as a gift or a fruit; faith enough to maintain your salvation, to obey the Lord, to do the things which are pleasing in his sight. We are continually dependent upon him for its perpetuity. You cannot keep the light and dismiss the sun or have faith in God unless you have the faith of God.

John 15:5 - I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

Inside / Out:

• What we are is more important than what we do.
• As darkness moves out, The Light moves in. As self goes, Christ comes.  Rivers of Living Waters begin to flow producing healing streams in the desert of our lives.
• His coming and abiding “in” our lives brings life, light and health. He is crowded out when we become preoccupied with our fleshly desires and purposes.
• The light which Christ brings, does not shine from the outside in, but it radiates from the inside out. He does not give light, He is the Light.  He does not impart health, He is the Health.  He does not give sanctification to anyone, He is our sanctification.  It is not what He gives but who He is.  He is the resurrection life, He is wisdom, He is righteousness and He is healing.
• We are to live in a constant acknowledgement of His indwelt life. The life we live now we do by the faith of Jesus who dwells within us.  This brings us into vital union with Him.

1. Transformation begins in the spirit.

• The Spirit brings light, understanding and a deep settled peace.

2. As we rest in God’s drawing of us and in His grace at work within us, His resurrection life is manifested within us and the physical body begins to respond as well.

• Not struggle, but rest
• Not agonizing, but peace
• Be still and know that I am God

It is not enough to have head knowledge that in Christ is health, virtue and saving power.  We must be indwelt by Him.  Christ does not impart power separate from Himself.

The only cure for our fallen nature is His holiness and this is not possible apart from Him.

When we receive Him, the self life has to go.  There cannot be 2 headships in one body.

People foolishly imagine that they have to strive and strain and groan to measure up to a life that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Nothing could be further from the truth! Does a river struggle to roll down hill? Does its water strive and strain as it gently flows on to where the great arms of the sea are opened wide to receive it?  We are the riverbed and His life is the river.  He flows through us, constantly giving, radiating, imparting and infusing our very lives as we are hidden with Christ in God.  Our natures are transformed by His glorious and divine nature. Our sickness, suffering and pain cannot maintain their grip in the warm flow of his divine love and power.

Maturing in our faith is not the development of human understanding or an increase in our intellect but the unhindered outflow of the knowledge of Christ Himself, giving us understanding of the heart proportionate with our spiritual ability to receive Him.  The growth of the Christian life is the increasing manifestation of His life.

Why do we light the little candles of our own lives when the sun (Son) is brightly shining?

Jesus is Living Water, not just some water from a pool dumping over a pile of stones we call an altar.

In Him we find wholeness of life.  In Him we turn from agonizing and petitioning in anxiousness to the realization that He, abiding in us, produces life, peace and the continuous assurance of His presence and the privilege of joy that from our innermost being flows the Living Water that is Christ Jesus.

Derek Prince

• Our senses connect us to the visible world; faith takes us behind the visible to the invisible.
• Faith is so real that it is actually called a substance. Faith is the underlying reality of things hoped for.
• If we walk by sight we do not need faith. If we walk by faith we do not need sight. Each excludes the other. The world says seeing is believing but the Bible says we must believe then we will see.
• Faith lifts us above the realm of our own abilities and makes God’s possibilities available to us. As we maintain a relationship with God through faith, we are enabled to endure and to overcome the tests and the hardships that confront us in our daily lives.
• An essential difference is that faith is in the heart, while hope is in the mind. Faith at work in the heart produces hope in the mind.  Faith in the heart is the substance, the underlying reality. This provides a valid, scriptural basis for the hope that we entertain in our minds.
• Hopes that are based on true faith within the heart will not be disappointed.
• Many people who say, “I believe God will heal me,” really mean, “I hope that He will heal me tomorrow.” That is not faith, because faith is not for tomorrow; faith is something that we have now. If we keep directing our expectation toward the future, we are substituting hope for faith.
• God lives in the eternal now. To faith, He never reveals Himself as “I was” or “I will be,” but always as “I am.” When we apply this principle to petitioning God, it will revolutionize this aspect of our prayer lives.
• At the very moment that we ask, we receive. Granting still remains in the future, but receiving, by faith, takes place when we pray. The receiving is our part of the transaction; the manifesting is God’s.
• When the gift of faith is in operation, a man becomes, for a time, the channel of God’s own faith.
• The faith we develop as fruit of the Spirit may be defined as a quiet, steady, unwavering trust in the goodness, wisdom, and faithfulness of God.