Understanding Faith, Hope, And Patience

You know life is so much easier when you’re a child of the King! Amen? God’s plans are so awesome! Every day I learn so much from the Holy Spirit from so many different channels. God is simply amazing! That being said, I hope you all don’t think I am presenting to you what I am learning as if I have already mastered everything I share. I feel lead to say to you like Paul said to the Philippian Christians in Philippians 3:12-14, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Amen! The things I post are the things the Lord has revealed to me and I’m just spreading the message. Thank you for understanding… Okay enough chat, check this out!

Everyone knows that is tough trying to be patient when you are waiting for something good God has promised to happen. It’s like Christmas morning when you wake up early to open up gifts and mom and dad want to sleep in. The anticipation is just about more than you can stand. I know in my life, even right now as I type, there are things I’m believing for that are huge life-changing events. And it’s tough to be patient, but what that really means is: I haven’t fully given it over to the Lord and put my complete trust in that God is going to do what He says He’s going to do. Often times we get caught up in trying to figure things out. I often find myself trying to predict the future. What I mean is I sometimes try to anticipate how God is going to work things out. How He is going to orchestrate it all. How He is going to do things. Every day I have to remind myself of God’s will. That can only be done by sitting before His Word and meditating on what He said in it. God’s Word is His thoughts written down on paper so that we can renew our minds and mold our thoughts after His. Godly people are Godlike thinkers. Without reading God’s Word we cannot truly have faith in God. Romans 10:17 says, Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So if I find myself entertaining the idea of how God is going to make things manifest, I have stop myself and get back into the arena of faith. This is completely natural to try to see how things are going to transpire and then believe it. But God’s ways are not our ways and our own thoughts that are produced by our own desires cannot even come close to God’s thoughts. He has access to way more than we can even think to imagine. Hebrews 11:1 says, Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things NOT seen. So by this scripture we can declare that if we are trying to reason in our heads and try to picture how God is going to do things, then we are not in faith. Faith believes without seeing it. Faith believes even when every circumstance or evil report says there aint no way! Faith believes that God is able to do what He said He would do.

Now that we know what faith is, let me say this: Faith is not hope. Hope is important, but faith is not hope. You see hope believes that there is a chance in the future that it may be God’s will. Faith takes the blessing now! Hope is future tense, Faith is present tense. You see, faith IS… the substance of things hoped for… Hope cannot stand alone and endure with patience without faith. Faith IS the substance that brings your hope to reality! Hope is very important, but when you find hope it’s important that you continue on and enter into the arena of faith where you find the substance to the things you hope for. So often times hope comes and we pray, and we pray, and pray, and pray, but no results manifest. It’s because we are not praying in faith. Kenneth E. Hagin quoted someone who quoted someone else that, “The believing prayer always ends in the glad confession: It’s mine, I have it now!” This is so true! Mark 11:24, believe you receive and you shall have! Jesus didn’t say you might have it or keep hoping that it is God’s will. He said believe you receive and you shall have it! Believing you have something before you see it, is walking out your faith in God’s Word. If we are to become godly, then we must train ourselves to operate like God. God would never tell us in His Word to do something that He didn’t do Himself. Romans 4:17 says, “…God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did;” God called Abraham the father of many nations before he ever had any children. The very next verse (18) we see Abraham, against hope, believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations. You could say it like this: Abraham, when there was no hope, had substance of things hoped for (faith), that he would become the father of many nations according to the Word of God. He believed God even though there was no hope! Now we see why Abraham was the father of faith. No where do you read where Abraham spent countless hours toying around with the thought of how God was going to make him a Father of many nations when Sarah’s womb was barren. However, we do see what happens when you get impatient and try to make things happen in your own strength. You create an Ishmael. But that’s another story for another time.

So often times God lays a purpose or vision in one’s heart, and hope enters. Then, more often than not, that hope disappears after patience wears off. This is not the will of God! God gives the visions with every intention of making every part of that vision become reality. It’s the thief that comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). To understand why things don’t manifest in the natural we must look at what is going on in the spiritual realm. When God gives you the vision, this allows hope to enter into your spirit. Immediately a battle in the heavenlies begins between the rulers of the unseen world (Satan’s cohorts) and God’s Angels and ministering spirits. The rulers of the unseen world immediately try to thwart the plans of God for your life. We see a good example of this in Daniel 10:13, “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia.” So often times as soon as the hope comes, hope is lost because of this battle in the heavenlies. Faith never gets a chance to bring the substance to hope because hope perishes due to the lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). So what can we do to be sure we are doing everything in our power to help defeat the enemy? We need to build ourselves up on our most holy faith praying in the Holy Ghost (Jude 20). By praying in the Spirit you speak mysteries to God (1 Corinthians 14:2). These are not mysteries unknown to God but they are mysteries unknown to us and the enemy. You see when you pray in an unknown tongue your spirit prays but you have no knowledgeable understanding (1 Corinthians 14:14). However neither does the enemy! This is one of the spiritual weapons God has equipped us with to defeat the enemy from destoying our faith to receive the blessings of God for our lives. You see, since we are locked in the natural realm we can’t see what needs to take place in the spiritual realm in order to turn loose the answer to our prayers. But the Holy Spirit does, and He dwells in us. He helps us to pray for the things we have no knowledge of. He is our intercessor (Romans 8:26). God has not left us orphans. He has equipped us with everything we need to rule and reign with Christ Jesus here in this life! If we would only learn to put our complete trust in God and not try to understand how every detail is going to unfold, the vision that God lays in our heart will become reality. This can only be accomplished by having faith in God! Kenneth E. Hagin always said, “I could never figure out how a brown cow could eat green grass, produced white milk, then churn it and you get yellow butter. But the whole time I’m trying to figure it out I’m drinking the milk and enjoying the butter!” I know that sounds silly, but there’s truth to that. We need to learn to just trust God. If we can allow God to work through us, then we can be sure that everything will work together for our good and according to His purpose. Hallelujah!