The object of faith

Announcer: Welcome to Sword of the Spirit, written and presented by Colin Dye, senior minister of Kensington Temple and leader of London City Church. Sword of the Spirit is a dynamic teaching series equipping the believers of today to build the disciples of tomorrow. We pray that you find these programs inspiring, and a catalyst in deepening your knowledge of God, your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and your intimacy with the Holy Spirit.

Colin Dye: Hello, and welcome to The Sword of the Spirit, a school of ministry in the Word and the Spirit. Our topic is Living Faith—how to have a living faith in the living God. Now in the teaching so far, I’ve been defining what faith is. It’s not just about believing; it’s more than that. Because what we believe is very, very important. Some people say all that matters is that you have faith or that you have a faith. We actually have to go deeper than that, because not everything that people believe is trustworthy. People can make mistakes about what they believe. But when we come to living faith, there can be no mistake about it. Because faith is not what we invent. Faith is a response to what God has said and to what God has done. We know that this can only happen by the Holy Spirit. So the life of faith is, in a very real way, a supernatural life—a life that’s aided by the Holy Spirit. But it’s also a directed life. In other words, we have to follow the directions of God. Now where are these to be found? They’re to be found in the revelation of God’s Word. Faith has always to do with what God says. Faith, quite simply, is believing what God has said. Of course, once we truly believe what God has said, we will act on it. Our lives will change. If we have a living faith, we cannot disregard the word of God. Now at this point in the teaching, I’m going to go straight to have a look at what is the object of faith. It’s always faith in someone. It’s believing something. And of course, the answer to that is the Word of God and Jesus Christ Himself.

So that’s part of the overview. Number one, faith has a source—God. Number two, faith has an object. Faith has an object. When people speak about faith, sometimes, they talk about faith in faith—it doesn’t matter what you believe, only that you believe. And that’s a very popular teaching, even amongst people in the world right now. But it’s not faith in faith. I’ll tell you something, faith doesn’t work miracles. Faith has done nothing, ever. It’s not faith that does it, it’s the One in whom we have faith. It’s faith’s object—God. So faith doesn’t look to itself. Faith looks to God. So when you are in need of faith, look to God. And in seeing Him, you have faith. You have faith. I think faith is rather like a clutch in a car. The engine’s going, the camshaft or whatever that thing is—I don’t know a great deal about it—and all faith is is that clutch which spins in harmony with that engine. And when that little thing that’s spinning in harmony with that engine comes in contact with that living, moving engine, [makes noise] takes off. A lot of Christians are like cars in neutral. And they rev up the engine—vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom—and all they’re doing is creating exhaust. A lot of Pentecostals are like this. They vroom around the room. To say a loud Pentecostal is to say the same thing twice. But it’s not the noise of the engine; it’s the power of the engine. And as the clutch engages with the engine, then you can drive the car. That’s why Jesus spoke about faith the size of a mustard seed. Think about it. It’s an insult to God to suggest that we need an enormous amount of faith. I know a lot of people like that. It requires an enormous amount of faith to believe that they will show up to work on time, to believe they get out of bed in the morning, to believe they’ll pick up their socks off the floor. Maybe I’m talking about myself. I don’t know. You know people like that are so unreliable that it takes so much faith to believe that they’re going to show up when they say they’re going to be there. But that’s not our God. That’s why Jesus says a tiny mustard seed of faith in a big God is all that you need. See, faith always reaches out beyond itself to grip the hand of God—the almighty, omnipotent hand of God. Faith trusts upon—trusts Him. Faith looks to Him.

So faith has object. Who? Him. But number three, faith has content. Now Christian faith is nothing to do with us deciding what we’re going to believe, what we think should be done, what our ambition is and then going on and doing it. Creating our own reality—that is nothing to do with biblical faith. Biblical faith is about something specific that we’ve heard from God and then confessing and acting upon that specific thing. Now one of the specific things, specifically, is His Word. But faith has content. It’s not some kind of shapeless thing. It’s very clear. I’m laying this foundation again and again so it’s really strong in your life. We have seen in the last session that the essence of faith—pistis—is being persuaded of something that you have heard. Romans 10 verse 17 says very clearly, “So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” So this demonstrates that faith begins with listening to God. That’s the heart of faith. In fact, it undergirds everything, every aspect of the Christian life—listening to God. That’s why the listening to God Sword of the Spirit sessions are very, very important to everything that we’re saying. Unless we hear from God, our faith is not in what in God has said. Unless we hear from God, our faith is in something else. Unless our faith is related to what God has said, our faith is hopeless—useless. We’ve got to hear from God and test what we hear from God, if we’re going to move in faith. And this means, also, that it’s highly presumptuous to believe something that God has not said. If we believe it and act on it and God hasn’t said it, that’s presumption. But to fail to believe and act on what God has said, that’s being contemptuous. So we can hold God in contempt or we can be presumptuous. Now unfortunately, the body of Christ seems to be divided into two—those who hold God’s promises in contempt and say, “Healing isn’t for today,” and others who say, “Well, yes, healing is for today, so I’m throwing away my medicine,” when God hasn’t said to do so. That’s presumption. So we have to get the balance. It is to do with hearing from God. If God hasn’t said it, we cannot believe it. If God doesn’t do it, neither can we do it. If God isn’t doing it, we can’t. Now we’re going to look at these things a little later on. We must understand, however, that God’s Word is the major content of our faith, but it’s not the object of our faith—understand that. The object of our faith is God, is Jesus. We don’t [stutters] listen to me, we don’t even really believe, put our faith in the promises. Do you understand me? We only believe the promises because of the One who said them. Our faith is in God and what He said is the content of our faith. The object of our faith is Him, but what He says is the content of our faith. So we are not to have faith in faith. Now I know some people say that and I think they’re right. what they mean, however, is have confidence in the faith process because the God who is initiating it and who is the object of it and whose Word fills it, is a faithful God. So I’m not criticizing that as a saying. I think it’s misleading, though, if we try and—if we draw emphasis away from God onto ourselves. So we have faith into God and upon God. We believe and confess and act the words of God and believe His promises because they are His words. They are His words. This is a proper God centered emphasis in all of this. So our faith is in Him and it develops through our clinging to Him, but the content of our faith is what we’ve heard Him say. And it comes to us by revelation. And this is the work of the Spirit. It comes to us through Him, who is our Lord Jesus Christ, who tells us what the Father is saying. Can you see what I’ve deliberately done? I’ve woven together all the persons of the trinity to understand how divine this faith process is.

So we see, first of all, faith has a source; faith has an object, secondly; faith has content, number three; number four, faith has actions. We’ve already seen that faith is not just passive believing—inactive believing, but it is active. And we see this time and time again as we come to have a look at this. In Romans 10, we see that part of the action of faith is confession. I’ve already been building this up for you to show you that it’s not some wild American idea—we’re taught faith confession—it’s a Bible idea. It’s a Bible idea. I mean, it isn’t the invention of Kenneth Hagin. This is Jesus teaching. This isn’t some modern day apostle’s teaching, this is the apostle Paul’s teaching. Romans 10 verse 9-10, “That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness. And with the mouth, confession is made to salvation.” Oh yes. The first activity of faith is that you speak it out. You confess it. You confess it. You believe it. You confess it. And that’s an action. That’s an action. Now we know that this can only be a revelation from God. It’s not that you start speaking out what you think you want to happen. That’s a very important distinction. The New Age teaches you can have what you say. And some say, well therefore, that proves that faith teaching is New Age teaching. What nonsense they speak. Because New Age confession is when people out of their own strength confess what they would like to possess and create their own reality by drawing on their resources within them—spiritual, psychological, and so forth—and create their own reality, which is a delusion at best, and a demonic delusion at that as well. A demonic delusion. And if it ever works in their lives it works by demonic power. That’s not what Jesus is speaking about, that’s not what the Bible is speaking about, not what I mean when I talk about confession. You don’t confess in order to possess; you confess because you possess. Because you have the substance in your spirit, you talk about it as a reality because it is a reality even before you see it. Have you ever seen Jesus in the flesh? Please, don’t anybody lift your hand, because it’s the wrong answer. If you’ve ever had a vision of Jesus and you might have seen Him, it’s been a vision. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. We do not see Him. We walk by faith, not by sight. But do you confess Him? Of course you confess Him. Everything we’re doing today is talking about Jesus. This is a Jesus message. We know Him, we love Him, we embrace Him, we talk to Him, He talks to us—all by faith. Before we see Him. But we confess Him because we possess Him. So living faith—biblical believing—includes hearing, receiving the Word, confessing the Word and doing the Word. These are all to do with the actions of faith.

So number one, faith has a source. Number two, faith has an object. Number three, faith has content. Number four, faith has actions. Number five, faith deals with the unseen. Oh, it sounds so easy when you talk like this. But so often we still want to live by the worldly principle of ‘when I see it I’ll believe it.’ God says, “No, when you believe it, you will see it.” It’s the exact opposite. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things unseen.” Hebrews 11 verse 1. This teaches us that faith deals with those things which we have not yet seen, which have not yet been realized in our lives. It’s so important to grasp this. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 18, “While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” This is a mighty revelation. It’s so simple. We’re so familiar with this verse. And we can, everybody, quote, “We walk by faith, not by sight,” and yet we scream when we don’t see as we want to see. “I’m believing God, but I just wish something would happen.” Keep on believing and it will. But did you notice how Paul says the things which are seen, they are temporary things? The things that you can see and touch and taste and feel and hear—those are temporary things. They belong to the temporal world, the temporal realm, the physical realm. But the things that you cannot see, that you cannot appropriate with your five senses, those things are the spiritual things. Those are the eternal things. And yet he says we fix our eyes not on what we can see—that’s the world of sense data—that’s the physical world. It’s there. We don’t ignore it. But we don’t fix our eyes there. Our focus is not in this world. Our focuses are not on what we can see, touch, taste, smell or hear. Our focus is upon the unseen realm. That’s where faith really comes into its own. That’s where faith really begins to operate. Faith is the faculty by which you appropriate the unseen spiritual realities. And he says these are eternal. There is a sense—don’t take this too far—but there is a sense in which the world that we can see and touch is less real than the world that we cannot see and touch. Now I’m mixing words, really, to make a point. We do not deny the reality of the physical world. That is the error of the false cults, such as Christian Science, that came out of metaphysical mind science, which denied the reality of the physical world and even denied the reality of evil itself. It’s a false view of the world. The Bible’s view of the world is that God created the physical world, it is a real world in which we live, it matters, it’s important, but it is not, in its present form, the eternal order of things. And yet, we are called by faith to reach out of the visible world into the invisible realm and to lay hold of the unseen eternal realities of God. And those things are eternal. You can say they are more real. I can say Jesus is more real to me than even you are. I’m not denying your existence or your reality by saying that. I’m saying that living by faith, Jesus is more real to me. He is with me where you can never be with me. And when I am gone, He will still be with me. Or put it a better way, I will be with Him. But I’m with Him now. So you see, we’re defying language as we talk about the spiritual dynamic. So why should we be surprised that when God calls us to believe something we don’t see it? I believe here, but I don’t see it. Come on, now. I really believe that was the case, but I was proved wrong. I believed that God was going to heal me. You believed it? You really believed it? well if you really believed it, you weren’t looking at what was happening in your body; you were looking at what God said in His Word and you had your eye fixed on that and that’s all that counts. Oh yes, faith has to do with the unseen realm. And now we see this repeatedly in the scriptures as God calls us to live by faith—that we’re trusting in that realm which is not yet visible to our natural eyes, but it’s visible to the eyes of faith.

So number one, faith has a source. Number two, faith has an object. Number three, faith has content. Number four, faith has actions. Number five, faith deals with the unseen. Number six, faith fully recognizes spiritual truths. Faith has to do with spiritual truths. Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” What is this word ‘substance?’ Very important word. It’s used in Hebrews 1 verse 3 to describe Jesus as the express image of God’s person, or substance. This means that Jesus carries the same nature as God. He shares the same nature as God. So when we speak of substance, we’re talking about the real essence of that thing. And that’s what God—that’s what faith deals with. It deals with these invisible realities—the real substance of the thing. It’s not as it appears. Faith doesn’t deal with things as they appear to be. Faith deals with things as God says they are and as they really are. Faith has to do with substance. It embraces the genuine substance of something. In the New Testament, this word ‘substance’—hupostasis—often is translated as ‘confidence.’ Confidence. So faith is laying hold of something solid. We can be confident. It comes from a word meaning ‘under understanding.’ Hupostasis—a standing, and under. So that’s why there’s confidence, because there’s something standing under you. There’s a reality here. It’s solid rock in the Spirit. It also means something that is a firm foundation. It also means that because of this, you can be firm. You can stand under. You can endure. You can undertake anything with faith. So faith’s substance enables us to see what is promised before we can see it with our eyes. This is the confidence that we have. We’re embracing something before we see it.

But finally, number seven, acknowledge this—and here’s the good bit—faith fully realizes these unseen realities. In other words, faith just—doesn’t just hold on to the unseen forever. By faith, the unseen gets seen. The invisible becomes visible. The spiritual becomes manifest. So that healing you’re believing for remains in the invisible world of substance until the moment faith reaches out and takes it from the invisible realm and brings it into the visible realm and your body is healed. Our substance will give way to sight when we see Jesus face to face and we embrace Him. By now we cling to Him by faith. But later on, we’ll cling to Him physically as well. That’s why faith is real certainty—the evidence of things not seen. The evidence of things not seen. This is the word that means conviction—it’s a legal word where you prove somebody guilty. This is solid evidence. It has to do with facts. It’s evidence. It brings absolute assurance, total certainty. “I know whom I have believed,” the apostle Paul says, “and I am persuaded that He’s able to keep it for me.” Things that God has given to us are the unseen realities which are made real to us in our lives by faith. Now there is a basic biblical overview of faith and the rest of this course will take you into each of those areas so that you can have a clear understanding of how faith operates. And you’ve already seen and I’ve been teaching, I’ve come back to the same things again and again from different perspectives. I’m laying a foundation. But from here onwards and in the rest of the sessions, I’m going to begin to build on that foundation and to show you what the Bible says about living faith. So God bless you at the end of this session. Look forward to seeing you next session. Continue to read through the manual and read through the scriptures and meditate on these things. God is going to bless you as we study together. Amen.

Recommended reading

Dye, Colin. Living Faith
Kensington Temple, 2007

Price, Frederick K. C. Faith, Foolishness, or Presumption?
Harrison House, 1979

Hagin, Kenneth E. Bible Faith Study Course
Faith Library Publications, 1992

Additional reading

Dye, Colin. Breakthrough Faith: Power in an Uncertain World
Hodder & Stoughton, 1998

Prince, Derek. Faith to live by
Whitaker House, 1998