God kind of faith 6
by Ivan Ho 10 Nov 2019
Some people tend to think that faith is some supernatural, inexplicable belief that a person has towards God, a personal conviction that is put there by God as He pleases. In other words, one day faith all of a sudden arises in someone’s heart because God puts it in there. Someone said to me: “I believe if God has chosen me, I will become a believer one day.” The problem with such idea is to suggest that, whether an individual has faith in God or not, it is entirely dependent on God and man seems to have no say in the process.
Jesus said to the woman with the issue of blood: “YOUR FAITH has made you well.” In other words, it was not God’s but the woman’s faith that led her to be healed by the power of God of a condition that inflicted her for many years.
Mark 5:25-34
Faith is a personal conviction but how does faith originate? How does faith actually come to us?
Faith comes by hearing
This is what God says in the scriptures:
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Romans 10:17
While it is true that God initiates the process by delivering His word to you, it is your personal response as to whether you choose to believe in what you hear, or not. You must decide: Is what I am hearing the word from God and if it is, do I put faith in what he says?
If you receive the word of Christ and choose to believe in what he says and adjust your life accordingly, you have faith. If not, you don’t have the God kind of faith until you change and put your trust in His words. If you do not set aside time to hear God’s words on a regular basis, you will not develop faith, for faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
If you believe in all that God says to you about Himself, you have faith in God. However, if you say: I believe in God but I don’t believe Jesus is God, then you don’t actually believe in who God says that He is. This is what God declares through the apostle John :
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-3, 14
The Word in John 1 is speaking about Jesus. Jesus is the Word and the Word is Jesus.
Perhaps you may say: “I believe Jesus is God but I don’t believe He is the only God”. If you think like that, then you don’t have the God kind of faith because your belief is not based on what God says.
This is what our Lord says about Himself:
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father EXCEPT through Me.”
John 14:6
Jesus makes it very clear that He is the way (not one of many ways) and that He is the only doorway to God the Father.
If you don’t yet have the God kind of faith, it is not because you are stupid, or that God has not chosen you. It is simply because you have either never heard the word of God delivered to you, or having heard, you choose not to believe.
Since you have come this far in reading what I have been telling you about God, or you have been reading the bible, or you have been hearing someone share the word of God to you, God has already been speaking to you. One way or another the word of God has already come to you. However, it is one thing that the word of God is delivered to you, it is quite another whether or not you are connecting with God’s voice in your own spirit.
According to the parable of the sower , the same word was sown but there are typically four different kinds of responses, and only the seed that was sown on good soil would bear fruit.
“But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”
The written and spoken word of God
The scriptures says in Romans 10:17: “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God”. You may say: “Wait a minute, isn’t this the word of Paul?”. You are right, the book of Romans was written by Paul and he wasn’t God. But you need to know that, although the bible was written by various human writers, the real author was God Himself whose Spirit inspired His chosen vessels to write the scriptures with the purpose to reveal Christ to us. Through the word of God, we can now know and establish relationship with God, and through obedience to His words, we can walk with our Lord.
The word of God basically comes to us in two ways: the Written Word which refers to the words written in the bible (Greek: LOGOS) and the Spoken Word (Greek: RHEMA) which refers to words that proceeds from the mouth of God. Both of these two different Greek words are translated in English as WORD. The truth is: there is no real distinction between the two as what was written in the scriptures originated from what was spoken by the mouth of God. In other words, what is spoken and what is written are the same word of God. I can speak what I am writing and whatever way I deliver my word, it is still my word.
God is not restricted to speaking through the bible alone. In fact, throughout history, God has been speaking to individuals either directly Himself, through His prophets, through dreams and visions and, in the last days, God speaks through His Son. If you want to hear God speak, you must connect personally with Jesus the Word of God become flesh.
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Hebrews 1:1-3
Connecting to the right spirit frequency
If you want to hear the voice of God, your spirit needs to be tuned in to the right frequency in the spirit realm. There are different kinds of frequencies out there which have the tendency to jam the voice of God that comes to you, if you allow yourself to be tuned in to the wrong voices, just like what Eve did when she listened to the voice of the serpent. Not only did she listen to the wrong voice, she responded to it which diverted her away from the original voice of God. Have you tried to speak with someone who in the past was responding to you but all of a sudden seems to have changed his or her tone, like you are speaking with a different person? This was what happened to Eve after she spoke to the devil. The frequency in her heart was changed by the evil one.
They are of the world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
I John 4:5-6
Faith comes by hearing, unbelief also comes by hearing. It depends on which voice you are tuned in to. Sometimes the greatest enemies are the ones closest to us whom we listen to day in day out. We cannot allow their words to divert us from the pure voice of God and in so doing lead us to destructions and ultimately death. I cannot emphasise this more strongly enough as so many of God’s people become disconnected with God and His destiny because somehow they allow themselves to be connected to the wrong frequencies.
Hearing by the word of God
Not everything that you hear on a daily basis is the word of God. In fact, most things we hear from the non-believing world around us, such as the books we read, the tv programs we watch, the information we get from the internet etc. are not the voices of God. If this is all that you hear everyday, how can you obtain faith? What kind of spiritual food are you eating regularly? If all the while you are eating junk food, you won’t be able to hear God’s voice let alone have faith in Him.
If you are constantly tuned in to the wrong channels, hearing the noices of the world sown by the devil, you will become an unbeliever. If you want to hear the pure word of God you need to tune your spirit to the right channel in which the pure word of God is being spoken. Just because there is a cross in the building does not necessarily mean that the word of God is being preached there. You must seek God and ask Him to direct you to the place where the word of God and not the word of man is being preached.
In order to develop faith in God, we need to read the bible regularly and other pure sources which carry God’s frequency, and put ourselves in environments where the word of God is spoken.