THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF FAITH IN THE LORD JESUS – The New and Living Way Church, Ikorodu

THEME: STANDING IN FAITH

LESSON: ONE

TOPIC: THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF FAITH IN THE LORD JESUS

TEXT: Heb 11:1-4, Mark 11:23-24

INTRODUCTION

We are called believers because our journey out of death to life was through the provision of faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In this study, as we are being led by the Spirit through our Senior Pastors Pastor and Pastor (Mrs.) Emeka Egwuchukwu, and Pastor and Pastor (Mrs.) ‘Laide Olaniyan. We will be considering Standing in Faith as a topic and how we can stand in faith even in the midst of contradictory facts and circumstances. Man is different from every other creature on earth because of his ability to believe God and trust in the invisible through a facility called the heart (Romans 10:9-10).

What is Faith? Heb 11:1

God is a Spirit and all that will approach Him or receive anything of Him must go through a spiritual door. This spiritual door is faith. God created the heavens and earth by Faith (Heb 11:3). The things created are products of faith (Heb.11:2). Let’s explore some common definitions of faith below:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb 11:1KJV).
Weymouth translation defines faith as “a well-grounded assurance of that for which we hope, and a conviction of the reality of things which we do not see.”
Faith is grasping the unrealities of hope and bringing them into the realm of reality (Rev. Kenneth E. Hagin)

So in KJV’s translation of Heb 11:1, faith provides substances for what we hope for and gives evidence that what we hope for is real. God’s kind of faith (or Bible faith) is a supernatural ability to grasp the promises of God against the contradiction of our natural senses, and an assurance that what we hope for is now ours.

Faith in the Lord Jesus is the receiving of substance and assurance of what we hope for, based on the promises of God – as revealed in His word. It is the revelation/understanding of our rights and privileges in Christ and how we can appropriate them.

Faith vs Hope (Rom 8:24, John 11:23-24)

We often make the mistake of substituting hope for faith and when we do this, we will not get results. Hope has its own place and faith has its place too. There are three things that abide; faith, hope and love (1Cor. 13:13), and each of these three things that abide has its own proper place in our christian journey.

Faith is laying hold of the unseen realm of hope. Faith is the spiritual faculty through which we bring that which is not seen to the realm of visibility. Faith is the only avenue through which we receive anything from God. His promises are only made real when faith is activated.

Hope is a pleasurable anticipation or expectation of what is good, without the confidence in the possibility of getting it nor an assurance of when we shall receive our expectation. Faith, on the other hand, substantiates what we hope for and gives us spiritual evidence of God’s promise which has not yet appeared.

Hope is futuristic while faith is now (Heb 11:1). Hope is standing in anticipation of the future. For instance, we stand in the hope of resurrection, we stand in the hope of rapture, we stand in the hope of eternal judgement etc. All of these will happen one day whether we believe it or not. But faith is bringing that which we believe from the future to now. While hope is a good waiter, faith is a good getter. Hope expects healing, financial provision, etc. while faith says I get it now and it is mine.

Saved by Hope (Romans 8:24, 1John 3:1-3):

The essence of our Christian journey is to conform to the image of Christ. We stand in the hope of attaining this because we did not fully conform to this standard at new birth. As we hear the gospel, faith is released for us to journey into this great promise. This promise is arranged in stratas, meaning we do not come into it at once but gradually, as the power of God unto salvation (i.e God’s power to make us receive the promise) is released from faith to faith (Romans 1:16 -17, John 1:12).

This promise in the New Testament is calibrated in levels. Attaining a level by faith also places us in hope of the next level, even as we change from glory to glory (1Cor.3:18). This is what we experience when we are living by the faith of the Son of God.

We stand more in hope to receive this promise because the faith to attain this is mostly dependent on God and our obedience to the revealed commandments. It comes through the operation of God’s faith. So we stand in hope of the glory of God.

This, however, should not be our approach when we are handling the faith in the Lord Jesus (faith towards God). God has made provision for us to change the impossible, get our needs met, receive the healing of our body etc. We do not stand in hope to get these promises, but we stand in faith to get it and the attitude should be now and not futuristic. This is because the faith to get this done is dependent on us and not on God.

Faith vs Natural faith (John 20: 24-29 vs Romans 4:17-21):

The Bible kind of faith is spiritual but the natural faith that is common with all men is sensual (i.e. sense based). The natural faith is the Thomas’ kind of faith that believes in the things he can feel, touch, see, taste, smell or handle (John 20:24-29). This faith is natural and such is not the recommended type of faith in the Bible. The faith that comes from the word of God does not depend on our natural senses to operate. The Bible kind of faith believes then he receives, while the natural faith receives then believes afterwards. The Bible kind of faith is Abraham’s kind who believed against natural hope and then received what he believed.

Faith vs Mental Assent (Mark 5:25-29 vs Mark 9:19-25):

What most Christian call faith is mental agreement to the facts in God’s word. We often read God’s word and believe with our mind that it is true but in reality, we don’t believe with our heart. For instance, we believe that Peter’s mother was healed of fever by Jesus. But there is no faith in us to appropriate faith when we find ourselves in the same situation. This is often because our faith is from the mind rather than from the heart.

Faith vs Assumption (Acts 19:13-15):

Faith is not assumption, neither is it accruing another man’s faith account to ours. We step into another man’s account of faith most of the time with all assurance and boldness without a personal revelation from the word. We seem to have faith at this time, but faith in this dimension is an assumption; this was the case with the seven sons of Sceva. When we handle situations in this manner what we end up with is frustration, leading us to conclude that faith is an impossible task.

Faith built upon the wisdom of man (1 Cor. 2:4):

Faith is an assurance of getting what we hope for. Many believers build their hope on natural foundations/grounds (e.g. based on the words of man, assurance in certain provision in the flesh or some certain privileges in the sense realm). We often use scripture to back this up and conclude that we have faith. This kind of faith is logical and is based on calculation by the wisdom of man and not of God.

Faith vs Feelings (2 Cor 5:7):

Faith is not feelings as love is not feelings. Feelings are built on the five senses, but faith is built on the word of God. Faith does not deny feelings but superimposes itself on our feelings (from whatever circumstance we find ourselves), through a spiritual reality that does not depend on feelings for its validity.