“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a
man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or
sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them,
Depart in peace, be ye warmed
and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to
the body; what doth it
profit? Even so faith, if it hath not
works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have
works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my
works”. (James 2:14-18)
In
the earlier posts, we’ve established the power and potency of faith. Faith is
not a force; the force of faith is the word of God. We also concluded from the
scriptures that you have to “have faith in God”and not “put your faith in Him”
as is popularly said. Understand as we proceed that a man of faith is one with
a substance i.e. matter, weight, height. You should believe God for tangible
and specific things and not abstract things. We also established that faith is
the response of your human spirit to the word of God and that the currency of
faith has got two sides: faith and belief.
And when
they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling
down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and
sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And
I brought him to thy disciples, and they
could not cure him. Matthew 17:14-16 (Emphasis mine).
The
man in the scripture above brought his disturbed son to the disciples of Jesus
for healing and they couldn’t heal him but Jesus did. Obviously, the disciples
wondered why they couldn’t cast out the devil in the child and Jesus taught
them the dynamics of faith (basic truths of faith). By bringing his son to the
disciples, the man in question acted in faith, he believed and did not just
stop on the realm of believing, he took action.The first thing you should
understand is that every sickness has an ear; every demon and the devil
understand the word of God. As accounted in Luke 4:1-13 during the temptation
of Jesus, the devil quoted scriptures to Jesus to try to derail him. The
disciples did not have faith strong enough to heal the boy but when Jesus rebuked
the devil and he was healed. What did Jesus do that they didn’t do?
What
is fasting? Many Christians have often wondered what the place of fasting is in
faith. Fasting is the easiest and fastest way to cleanse a vessel but fasting
does not please God, faith does. Fasting does not change God or His
predestination plan for you because He’s known you before the foundation of the
world, predestined you unto adoption (Ephesians 1:4-5).
“For we are
his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, ‘which God hath
before ordained’ that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).God has and will always be faithful to His
predestination plan, His design, for you, so fasting will not change His mind.
Fasting is good but it has nothing to do with faith.A lot of people such as Hindus,
Buddhists, Muslims etc. fast religiously sometimes much more than many
Christians. Do they have faith in God because they fast? No, God is not pleased
by fasting but by your faith. Christians believe that there’s so much power in
fasting that they have created a structure for it, i.e. Lent. There’s nowhere in
the scriptures where Jesus stated that we should fast for 40 days or fast at
all in remembrance of Him.
Faith
is an action based on God’s word. In the dynamics of faith, faith must
substantiated with action. Sometimes, it’s a woman who desires a husband but
doesn’t take actions to make herself look good and presentable- it will always
be a dream and not reality. The bible says Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3).You see we’ve been
blessed with all spiritual blessings in “heavenly places” but converting these
blessings into the physical is called a process of faith and not mere belief. Real
faith is initiated by actions springing from the word of God, get into a faith
project, do more than believing. Work it! The woman in Luke 7 wanted
forgiveness from Jesus, but she didn’t just ask for it, she put it in action: “and
behold, a woman in the city which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at
meat in the Pharisee’s house brought an alabaster box of ointment and stood at
his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did
wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them
with the ointments… and He said to woman, ‘thy faith has saved thee, go in
peace’”(Luke 7:37-50). A lot of Christians are addicted to sexual sins
and habits just like this woman; they go for several deliverance sessions and
then go back to the same actions that stir up these weaknesses. What they need
is not deliverance but action faith; such people need to feed on the word of
God.
The
faith of Christianity is real, not magic. In faith you believe God for
something you cannot see and you get it, magic gives you illusions, faith gives
you a substance, a proof of what God has said. Do you have a proof for the next
level you believe God for? Or you aren’t far from magic. The audience don’t
have to do anything, they just watch it happen, that’s magic! The apostles said
unto the Lord “increase our faith”.
This unfortunately is the prayer of many believers today, for God to increase
their faith. We don’t want to do anything about the word of faith , just
increase our faith “And the Lord said if ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might
say unto this sycamine tree, be thou plucked up by the root and be thou planted
in the sea and it should obey you.” (Luke 17:5). Jesus explained to His
disciples that all they need is faith as a grain of mustard seeds not Him
increasing their faith. You must realise that God is not responsible for
increasing your faith because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of
God, this means that if you have the word you have faith. It’s not about the
worship songs of the choir or the preaching of a pastor but the word being sung
or preached, you have to get to a point where you look beyond the priest
ministering to the very word God is communicating to your spirit; it is this
word that nourishes you and brings faith. Faith is activated when you speak or
meditate on God’s word, encouragement comes when you meditate or speak the word
about any situation: that is faith at work. The word is the only source of
faith.
Faith
thus becomes the corresponding action to what you believe. This is seen in the
story of the ten leprous men in Luke 17:12-19. It is the law in the Levitical
order that leprous people don’t go into the city or the temple because it is
believed that they would make other people unclean. However, Jesus flipped the
script and said to them in verse 14 “…Go show yourselves unto the priest. And it
came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed”. “Showing
themselves” to the priest includes entering the temple and having contact with
the Priest, probably giving him a holy kiss. This means they had to step out of
the boundary of culture and law to get their healing. In the dynamics of faith,
faith must be operated beyond mental accent and laws. The word of God is above
the law, it smashes the law. The word of God is a hammer, it is active and
powerful and it is able to travel through any situations and bring you a good
report –“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two
edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of
the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the
heart” (Heb. 4:12). But all this qualities of the word requires a
posture of faith. Only then can it subdue kingdoms and laws. The lepers
therefore knowing the law must go beyond it by their faith. The Law of Sin and
Death was interrupted by Christ so that we might have life but what if we
reject His sacrifice? You see this kind of thoughts will prevent Him from
dying, another question is, what if the apostles all run away after the
ascension? Wouldn’t the cross be in
vain? But Jesus used His faith to die despite the nature of sin. What laws are
holding you back? Smash them with the word of God! The word of God is designed to
overcome everything in the world but it takes faith to bring it from mere words
into manifestation. God does not run the world; it is the devil’s domain. The
children of God are in the world but we are not of the world. The devil runs
the world, this means he has the whole world to deceive us with against the
word of God, he has the whole systems of the world to deceive us and frustrate
out faith in the word but we can subdue his kingdom. “Ye are of God, little children,
and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you, than he that is
in the world” (1 John 4:4). We do not overcome the world by struggling,
instead, we rule from the inside. The material that makes men worldly is not
found in us because we are “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).Whatsoever
is born of God overcometh the world: this is the victory that overcometh the
world, even our faith (1 Jn 5:4).
The
lepers were not required to deny their situation; they were only required to
move beyond it by faith at His word. They took action and “as they went”, they were
healed. Blind Bartimaeus employed this type of Action in Faith (AIF). He refused to sit still and wait for Jesus
to notice him. He cried out in faith “Jesus! Thou Son of David, have mercy on me”
(Mark 10:48) As a result, he got his healing when Jesus said to him “go
thy way; thy faith has made thee whole” (Mark 10:52). Activate your
faith with actions today and experience a faith fiesta in your life.Without
faith, action will fail and without action, faith will fail. James asked in
verse 14, “Can faith save him?” Here, James is talking about a kind of
faith, the kind that has no works attached. You cannot just pray (faith) that a
hungry man will be filled without doing (works) anything about it; will your
prayer save him? When you say something and you’re not doing anything about it,
you’re not walking in faith. The Zarephath woman worked in prophetic faith when
she let the prophet have the last meal for herself and her child. Sometimes,
you have to leave your comfort zone in order to work your faith to the full. Don’t
just pray for missionaries, send your money to the mission fields. That is
faith! The bible says “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good
measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over, shall men give unto your bosom”(Luke 6:38).
Men shall give, not God shall give. God will raise men to give you, but when
will God raise you to give to people. As Christians, we have been entrusted
with the responsibility to give unto men because we are empowered for it. As a “Faithaholic”, there must be a
corresponding action to what you believe. A lot of things go on in our local
assemblies because we are not awakened to our faith that is backed up with
actions. Don’t just believe in your church, give your tithe, don’t just believe
in the choir, sow into their ministry. What do you have in your hands? The
bible says “he which soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly; and he which soweth
bountifully shall reap bountifully”(2 Corinthians 9:6).
Faith
is a fight. Paul says “I have fought the good fight of faith”
(2 Tim. 4:7).If faith is the word of God, (Rom 10:8, 17); fighting the good
fight of faith means to fight some things based on the word of God. Faith gets
you to wrestle and sacrifice your flesh based on what the word of God says.
Faith is not complacent, it’s not ordinary believing. James says in verses
19-20 “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also
believe and tremble. But thou know O vain man, that faith without works is
dead”. A vain Christian is one who only believes and has no works
attached. Many people misconstrue what James is saying in vs. 20 to be a
motivational spiritual alternative i.e. taking your life into your hands and
working everything out in your way (workaholic). James is not talking about
works but about faith springing out of God’s word. However, people emphasise on
works, hence they become workaholics. Workaholics are ruled by motivational
speeches- “heaven helps those who help
themselves”, “to be a man is not a day’s job”. They work outside the word
of God, not believing God for anything, hence their works are dead (Heb. 6:1).
James is not saying work and leave God alone, the deadness of faith is what
he’s talking about i.e. when you pray and believe without doing anything about
it, being so concerned about work and not have faith and on the other hand,
have so much faith and no works, expecting God do the working is a dead faith. The
fight of faith is not physical; it’s fought with the word of God. You can’t
fight with the word of God using your physical strength. The word of God is the
sword of the spirit in your mouth after being revealed in your spirit. The
bible wont remove a yoke, it’s is a book made by man but when the words leave
the pages and comes alive in your spirit, that’s when you have a sword of the
spirit.
The
relationship between faith and works is illustrated in the story of Abraham in Genesis
22. It took faith for Abraham to leave his house and take his only son to the
mountain to slaughter because God commanded him to. It also took faith for him
to believe that God will provide. However, the bible says it was works that
justified him “was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered
Isaac his son upon the altar?”(James 2:21). Abraham added works to his
faith when he took the knife in full obedience and laid it on Isaac and it was
at this moment that God provided the substitute. There’s always a realm of test
that comes in your faith, have you passed it?
Satan
is not a Christian problem. So neither give room to the evil, nor to his agents
i.e. cancer, headache, pains, poverty etc. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist
the devil, and he will flee from you”(James 4:7). Submission is key. It
is not an act that you carry out by bowing down or walking slowly. Submission
to God is submission to the word of God. It is accepting wholeheartedly and
facing the reality of what the Word of God says about you. It also entails
vocalising God’s word about your life and situation. The opposite of submission
is pride and this is when you refuse to accept the word of God concerning you
or you seek to add to what he has said. We have been made the righteousness of
God in Christ Jesus when we gave our lives to Christ. If anyone then adds unto
himself what is not in the word of God, he is seeking to undo his righteousness
and it becomes unrighteousness. The bible says “all unrighteousness is sin”
(1 John 5:17). The most dangerous Christian in the world is one equipped with
the word of God, he’s got it in his spirit and he vocalises it.
Faith
is given (Eph. 2:8), faith is dealt with (Rom 12:3) and faith cometh (Rom
10:17). Moreover, a peace symptom is the solace of faithaholics. Faith has a peace symptom, there’s peace in your
spirit about what you’re releasing your faith for. Faith that comes by the word
of God in your spirit causes you to operate in peace in all things despite
physical reasons that may disagree. The word of God is faith and it is this
same word that brings victory to you when you open your mouth. One of the
greatest ways to walk in faith is to speak the word of God. The mouth is an
essential part of your manifestation. This is why music is very important. What
you sing is a confession to your life. On the one hand, when you sing
scriptural songs such as Don Moen’s, you’re confessing the word of God into
your life; hence, you’re confessing and working in faith. On the other hand,
when you sing unscriptural songs, you’re speaking words that are not in the
bible and you’re not speaking faith. The devil has used the music strategy to
take a lot of people out of church and to keep them out of it because music
appeals to a lot of people and has a wide reach. Worldly songs say antithetical
things against what you have confessed in the word of God, therefore faith is
weakened until it is dead. Even in church, there are songs that weaken our
faith because they are not totally based on the word of God; rather, they are
based on emotions and cultures. These songs weaken faith because they give
neither evidence nor substance to the word of God. A lot of popular “christianeeze” sayings are not
according to the word of God. People sing songs that tell God not to leave them
and telling the devil to return what he has stolen. You have to understand what
the word says: God has promised not to ever leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews
13:5) and what you have can never be stolen by the devil because your blessings
are in heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3). The devil doesn’t have legal rights to
steal from you: if you lost something, it may be as a result of your
faithlessness or God testing you. Your blessings are strictly between your
father and you. Go for the word of God always and let faith come alive in your spirit
and from your throat.
Do
something about what God has called you. Let it rest on the word of God. What
scripture are you standing on? Don’t just believe God for a job, a business, a
wife etc. Get a word from the bible, stand on it and add your mustard seed
faith to it. Don’t operate in faith in a way that makes God weak. Faith is
strong. “So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans
10:17). The creativity of faith is seen when the word of God determines a
corresponding action from you. Got faith?
‘Bowale
Abrahams
Visionary
Pastor, The Burning Church.
*NOTE: All
scriptures are taken from the Authorised King James version.
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