Although the first Pilgrims established a peaceful relationship with the natives in America, the following generation struggled with bloody warfare. The war between Pilgrims and Indians, known as King Philip’s War, began in 1675 and lasted fourteen months. In March 1676, a group of nearly fifteen hundred Indians attacked the village of Rehoboth. Nathaniel Philbrick writes, “As the inhabitants watched from their garrisons, 40 houses, 30 barns, and 2 mills went up in flames. Only one person was killed—a man who believed that as long as he continued reading the Bible, no harm would come to him. Refusing to abandon his home, he was found shot to death in his chair—the Bible still in his hands.” ¹ What is the point here? Reading the Bible is not enough. You have to believe it. You have to act on it. We’ve been talking the last month on the subject of divine healing. The linchpin required to make healing a reality in your life is faith in God’s Word. In this weeks’ Light on Life we are going to begin to take a look at the subject of Real Bible Faith.

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Why is Faith Important?

You are saved by faith.

• If you didn’t have another reason besides this one, it would be enough.
• You simply can’t get to heaven without faith.
• Being saved is a faith proposition.
• You are going to have to trust God when you can’t trace God.
• There are people alive on planet earth who want you to prove to them that there is a God before they will believe.
• But the Bible never said to go into all the world and prove there’s a God.
• So, if you run into an atheist or an agnostic who says to you, prove it to me, Hebrews 11:6 is your response.
  • He that comes to God must believe that He is.
    • If you don’t believe that He is,
    • If you don’t believe that He exists,
    • Then you CANNOT come to Him.
• Salvation is a faith proposition. Always has been. Always will be.
• God is not going to come and prove to anyone’s flaky mind that He exists.
• You’re going to have to believe that He is.

[Tweet “The Bible never said to go into all the world and prove there’s a God.”]

Ephesians 2:8 (KJV)
⁸ For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

• What is witnessing? Isn’t it showing people how to trust God for the salvation of their hearts?
• So if mission one is getting people to Jesus, then mission one must also be showing them how to believe God for it.
• The importance of getting people saved should highlight in our minds the importance of faith.

Hebrews 11:6 (KJV)
But without faith it is impossible please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

• He who comes to God, sinner or saint must have faith in the God they are coming to.
• You need faith to find heaven.
• You need faith to come to a God you cannot see
• And you’ll be using this line of thought your whole entire life of walking with Jesus.
• This is one problem the early church experienced with the Roman government.
• Get used to the idea of not seeing God physically.
• You’ll see Him one day when you get to heaven.
• But for now, he that comes to God must believe that He is.

We are to walk our Christian life by faith.

2 Corinthians 5:7 (KJV)
⁷ (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)

• Not only does it take faith to come to God for salvation, it takes faith to walk with the God you have come to.
• Faith is required to walk out every part of this Christian life.
• Are you going to pray? The prayer life requires faith to pray.
• Are you going to worship? The worship life requires faith to enter in.
• Are you going to teach or preach a Bible lesson? It takes faith to believe God for the right message, the right words, the boldness and the utterance to speak.
• Are you going to witness? It takes faith to believe for someone who is right at the point of receiving Jesus?

[Tweet “Faith is required to walk out every part of this Christian life.”]

It takes faith to please God.

2 Corinthians 5:9 (GW)
⁹ Whether we live in the body or move out of it, our goal is to be pleasing to him.

• There are several areas believers should be mindful of if we are going to live a life pleasing to God.
  • Doing the right thing with your body according to Romans 12:1 is pleasing to God.
  • Living fruitful lives and increasing in the knowledge of God according to Colossians 1:10 makes God happy.
  • Obeying and respecting your parents according to Colossians 3:20 puts a smile on God’s face.
  • Praying for your leaders in government causes rejoicing in heaven.

1 Timothy 2:1–4 (KJV)
¹ I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; ² For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. ³ For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; ⁴ Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

• In all of these areas, faith is required.
• If we are encouraged to pray for rulers and leaders, don’t we need faith to do that?
• When we pray, we come to a God we cannot see, that’s faith.
• When we pray, we expect this God we cannot see to hear us, that’s also faith.
• When we pray, we expect this God we cannot see to answer the prayer we have prayed. Once again this is faith.
• To be pleasing to God, you need to believe Him. Faith is required.

Faith is the Identifying Mark of the Righteous.

Hebrews 10:38 (KJV)
³⁸ Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.

• The righteous are a faith bunch.
• That’s the company you should keep.
• People who are in doubt or unbelief is not your scene.
• You are a faith person walking with a faith God.
• Faith is a characteristic trait of the man who is righteous before God.
• The just shall live by faith.
• Which means what you live by, you exist by.
• Which means there’s no true existence without faith.

Who Has Faith?

2 Thessalonians 3:2 (KJV)
² And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith.

This verse gives us a classification of individuals who DON’T have faith.

• So, everyone doesn’t have it.
• Who are these people who don’t have it?
• Paul asked the Thessalonian church to pray for him they he might be delivered from wicked and unreasonable men.
• The word ‘unreasonable’ in the KJV is a weakly translated word for our day. The Greek word, the one the first century recipient of this letter would have heard is the word ponhros. The word means wicked, evil, bad, base, worthless, vicious, or degenerate ²
• All these kinds of men do not have faith.
• The wicked, the evil, the base, the vicious, and degenerate do not have faith because if they had it they wouldn’t be wicked, evil, base, vicious, or degenerate.
• They would be righteous, good, moral, gentle, and upright.
• So then who has faith?
• The born again believer does.

Romans 12:1-3 (KJV)
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. 3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

• God has dealt to every man the measure of faith.
• So, who are these men who have the measure of faith?
• Well, they can’t be the wicked. We have already seen they don’t have it.
  • The people who have faith’s measure are those who are presenting their bodies a living sacrifice to God.
  • It’s those who are not conforming to this world.
  • It’s those who are continually renewing with the Word of God.
• In short, if you are a lover of God, a lover of Jesus, a receiver of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, this person is you.
• You have faith.

1 John 5:1-5 (KJV)
1 Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. 4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. 5 Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

• If you believe Jesus is the Christ, if you believe He is the chosen one of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, then the Bible says the following about you.
  • You are born of God.
  • That is your born again.
  • Your saved.
  • You’re a child of God.
  • You’re a new creation in Christ.
  • You’re on your way to heaven.
  • You are also a world overcomer.
• Romans 8:37 echoes this same sentiment found in 1 John 5:1-5.

Romans 8:37 (KJV)
³⁷ Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

• Paul says the same thing that John says. We are over comers. This is the victory which overcomes the world.
• What Paul does here in Romans eight is give us an impressive list of what exactly we overcome.

Romans 8:35 (KJV)
³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

• This is a big list here isn’t it?
• We overcome tribulation.
  • The word tribulation in the Greek means an oppressive state of physical, mental, social or economic adversity.
• We overcome distress.
  • The word distress in the Greek means difficulty, anguish, or trouble which produces a constricting condition.
    • Constricting meaning that which limits, restrains or confines you.
  • Literally distress is a difficulty which has you boxed in.
  • You can’t do what God wants you to do because you’re trapped, boxed in, hemmed in.God’s Word says the believer in Jesus overcomes distress.
• We overcome persecution.
  • Persecution is the systematic hunting down of the adherents of a religion to inflict pain or death on them; specially to destroy the religion by destroying the adherent or by forcing the adherent to renounce their beliefs.
  • We see this in many places in the world right today.
  • In today’s news…
    • Muslim herdsman killed three Christian villagers in Nigeria’s Kaduna state.
    • In Iran, a Christian prisoner remains ill while Iranian officials refuse to transfer her to a hospital to receive the required medical care.
    • In India, police arrested a Christian in Chhattisgarh, India, for distributing brochures printed with excerpts from the Gospel.
    • In Vietnam, Pastor Dang Ba Nham, his wife and a church elder were praying with a recent convert to Christianity along a busy roadside, a large pickup truck with military plates suddenly veered across the street and struck them. The Pastor and the convert were both killed.
  • The scripture says, we overcome persecution.
  • “Yes, but they lost their lives,” you may say.
  • They didn’t lose anything.
  • They gained.
  • They gained glory.
    • They gained a new life.
    • They gained a martyr’s crown.
    • They gained. They didn’t lose anything.
  • We overcome persecution.
• We overcome famine.
  • Famine is a severe food shortage resulting in violent hunger, starvation and death.

Psalm 37:25 (KJV)
²⁵ I have been young, and now am old; Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his seed begging bread.

• We overcome nakedness.
  • Nakedness is the state of being without clothing or covering. We overcome that.

Matthew 6:25, 30 (KJV)
²⁵ Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?  ³⁰ Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

• We overcome peril.
  • Peril is a dangerous condition whereby one is susceptible to injury or harm.
  • We are overcomers of peril.
• We overcome the sword.
  • The word ‘sword’ implies the death or departure from life understood as a death that would occur by a sword.
  • Swords are no longer the primary weapon of our day. Guns have replaced them. Whatever the weapon is your day or generation we are overcomers of death by that weapon.

Psalm 20:7 (TNIV)
⁷ Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

• Paul sums this entire list we have just gone through in verse thirty-five for us in verse thirty-eight.

Romans 8:38 (KJV)
³⁸ For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

• Paul says we are overcomers of death, life, principalities, powers, things present and things to come.
• Now, how is it that we overcome?
• How is it that we come out of all this victoriously?
• John gives us the answer.

“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”

• So, who has faith?
• The believer does.
• The overcomer does.

Call to Action

If you’re saved, you have faith. So then, there is no use in praying for faith. Faith never comes by praying for it anyway. Have you ever heard anyway pray that God would give them more faith? You may have heard that in church or in a prayer meeting or Bible study. It’s totally unscriptural to ask God for more faith. Faith never comes by praying for it. Prayer does not make faith work. It’s the opposite. Faith makes prayer work. If you’re saved, you have it, so get out and use it.

Episode Resources

For more resources on the subject of healing please see the following:

1. How to Get Your Faith in the Right Tense
2. How to Get Faith for Healing [Podcast]
3. How to Grow in Faith: Five Questions to Ask

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If you have a suggestion for a Bible topic you would like to see taught, or if you have a question, please e-mail me at energized1@outlook.com.

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Now Its Your Turn: Share an area of testimony where God responded to you because you set your heart to believe Him. Please leave your comments in the comments section below.

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