By Pastor Mitch Horton | June 2006 | Posted in • Archives | (0) Comments

“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world – our faith.” (1 John 5:4)

“…but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26b)

“Jesus said to him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” (Mark 9:23)

Faith receives what God’s grace provides us. (See Romans 4:16) You’ve heard the acronym for G.R.A.C.E., God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. God’s grace includes all that Jesus provided humanity through His sacrifice at Calvary. (See Ephesians 1:3; 2 Peter 1: 3-4) Grace is God’s hand extended towards us, holding in it everything we need that pertains to our natural and spiritual lives. And faith is our hand extended to receive from God!

In this issue, I want to present what I believe is one of the most important elements of receiving from God by faith, and that is believing that right now God is doing or has done for you what He promised. This is the timing of faith. And if you don’t get the timing right, you will miss God’s best in receiving answers from Him.

Hebrews 11:1 reads, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This verse suggests the time of faith, which is NOW! Please remember that faith and hope are two important but different attitudes towards the Lord. Hope dreams and plans, and faith carries out the plans. Hope always looks to the future to receive, while faith believes that right now it receives what God promises. Hope is like a dream, which seems real, until you wake up and find there was nothing to it! Hope is the blueprint from which the building is built. Faith is the work needed to bring the blueprint into reality. Faith is the actual process that accomplishes the thing for which you hope.

When you’re walking by faith, instead of thinking that one day you’ll receive the answer from the Lord, you believe that right now God is doing or has already done what He promised you. Faith takes the place of what you don’t have, but God promised you, until it actually manifests in your life.

Notice that Hebrews 11:1 reads, “Now faith is the substance…” The Greek word for substance is hupostasis, a compound word from hupo - which means under and stasis - which means a standing. It means a standing under; that which stands or is set under; a foundation; used in the technical sense of a title deed, standing under the claim to the property to support its validity.

Faith is the proof that what you have asked the Lord for actually exists. You can own property that you may have never seen, and you can prove its reality by presenting the title deed. Even so, when we walk by faith, we are sure that what we believe we will eventually see. We are sure of this because faith takes the place of what God promised, but can’t be seen, until it manifests. When you walk by faith, you’re confident that God has and is healing your body, or meeting the financial need, or intervening in the circumstance, not because you can feel it, but because God promised! When you walk by faith, the promises of God take the place of what you desire until it manifests.

Faith is not for what you have, can see, and feel, but is for what God promised you that you still can’t see or feel. Faith is the guarantee, the title deed for the healing, or the answered prayer, until it actually comes to pass. For this reason, when you walk by faith, you can be full of joy, even while it seems that nothing is working out and nothing has changed. You’re full of joy because you’re not looking to the future; you’re looking at the right now in the light of what God has promised.

Faith is always present tense. If it’s not now, it’s not faith! Looking to the future is to remain in hope instead of faith. And as I mentioned, hope is a great dreamer, but a very poor receiver.

God lives in a place without time because He is eternal. He has no beginning or end. From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God! He lives in the eternal now. To God, past, present, and future are all NOW! Because of this principle, Jesus is called “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8) Because of God seeing the future as present, He changed Abraham’s name from Abram (“exalted father”) to Abraham (“father of a multitude”). Because God sees past, present, and future as now, He “calls those things that do not exist as though they did.” (Romans 4:17)

The Amplified version of Hebrews 11:1 perhaps sums up the thought of believing you have something before it has manifested to the senses: ”Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things we do not see and the conviction of their reality – faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses.”

Several years ago I encountered a severe physical test with my knee. As an avid jogger, I had injured my knee somehow and was in a great deal of pain. It hurt to walk or put any pressure on it, much less to jog! I made a decision to act on God’s Word and receive the healing for my knee by faith. This decision came out of my own heartfelt convictions after spending time meditating on the Word about answered prayer and healing. I could have gone to the doctor, but I chose instead to act on my personal convictions. (Don’t try something just because it works for someone else. It will only work for you if you have the same faith they had, but has been produced by your own internal conviction from the Word.)

After a time of meditation on the Word concerning faith, healing, and answered prayer, I laid my hand on my knee and simply asked the Lord to heal it. I ended my prayer by quoting to the Lord Mark 11:24, where Jesus said “…whatever things you ask when you pray, believe you receive them, and you will have them.” I then lifted my hands and began to thank God for healing my knee.

The pain did not cease. In fact, over the next several days it seemed to get worse! I made a decision that I would live with the discomfort and pain and believe I had received my healing until it manifested. My responsibility was to believe I receive and to allow my faith to take the place of what I prayed for until it came. God’s responsibility was to manifest the healing after I believed I received it. Faith is now, and I began to believe, think, talk, and act as though God had answered my prayer now.

That’s when the real testing of my faith began. Everyday my knee hurt as I walked, bent it to sit, or lay in bed. I decided that I would continue to jog, since my personal conviction was that I believed I received my healing. As I jogged, every step felt like a knife was being pressed into my knee. I was reminded by the adversary that one of my friends had just gone through orthoscopic surgery on his knee and that I would have to have the same operation. I refused to give voice to the thought and chose rather to praise God for healing my knee. This went on for two and a half months every single day.

One morning I woke and as I placed my feet on the floor, the usual pain in my knee was gone! What I had believed for two and a half months had suddenly become a material reality. I continued to praise God that day for healing my knee just as I had grown accustomed to doing for two and a half months. Faith gave substance to my hope and took the place of what I asked for until it came. I have received so much from the Lord over my thirty years of walking with Him by following this simple principle of faith, and you can receive too!

Feed your faith on God’s Word today, and begin to believe that right now you receive what you have asked for from the Lord. If you do, amazing results will be yours. “All things are possible to him who believes!”