GRACE promotes our salvation.GRACE strengthens our assurance.GRACE enlarges our hope.GRACE compels our obedience. One of the great gifts of GRACE which our Father God Yehovah has shared with us by His
Ruach is the measure of FAITH. I have shared many lectures on the subject (and necessity) of faith over the decades. The Bible has much to say about faith. Here are a few of my own favourite biblical statements concerning faith which I would like to share with you.
“What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it ahead” (
Hebrews 11.1).
“You can never please God without faith, without depending on Him. Anyone who wants to come to God must believe that God
IS, and that He rewards those who diligently and sincerely seek Him out” (
Hebrews 11.6).
“Faith that doesn't show itself by good works is no faith at all – it is dead and useless” (
James 2.17b).
“Faith comes from listening to this Good News – the Good News about the Messiah” (
Romans 10.17).
“Anything is possible if you have faith” (
Mark 9.23).
“Whatever things you ask for in prayer, having faith [not doubting
that you already possess what is being requested], you shall receive” (
Matthew 21.22).
Now, of course, I am only skimming the surface of the iceberg when it comes to Scriptures about faith. But these particular quotes are vitally important when it comes to living the Christian (or, Messianic) life. Certainly this last quotation from Yeshua is most interesting. It is qualified by another statement in
Hebrews 11.1 which I have already included in our list of Scriptural
imperatives on faith. I'll mention it again now as it appears in most Bibles.
“Faith IS THE SUBSTANCE of things
hoped for” (
Hebrews 11.1).
“Substance” in Greek is
hupostasis which means “title deed.” So, “Faith is the title deed of what is anticipated.” To make faith SUBSTANTIAL – in other words “of substance” – you must carry an
ASSURANCE in your mind that you have already received that which was requested or “hoped for.”
Here is where VISUALISATION becomes paramount. DARE to SEE that which we have “hoped for” (really,
desired) in your mind in a completed STATE as if it has already taken place in reality – that God the Father has
already given it to you. You see, a “title deed” is that certificate of OWNERSHIP for a piece of property (of whatever nature or substance)
which is already yours. This will involve appreciation and a display of emotional gratitude! Paul wrote of this need to
be thankful in advance of receiving that which is wanted. “Be anxious for nothing! In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (
Philippians 4.6).
I have a personal mantra which I repeat each day:
WHAT YOU WANT WANTS YOU. It's the undeniable biblical truth. It's the holy Spirit revealed truth. It comes directly from the loving heart of the eternal creative God, Yehovah. I encourage all our students to
adopt it,
chant it,
inculcate it,
believe it, and
get excited over its claim on YOU. Always DAILY EXPECT (anticipate) A MIRACLE OF GRACE. God will help
you be
all the REAL
you can be, but Yehovah will never let you be successful
at becoming someone else. Have you met your Inner Child yet? It's YOU hiding within – deep inside – still sucking your thumb. Little children, I might remind everyone, invariably
LOVE getting presents. Yah is our “Dearest Darling Daddy” and he enjoys sharing gifts with us.
A WORD FROM JOSEPH CONRAD – POLISH-BORN ENGLISH WRITERJoseph Conrad (I won't even begin to try to write or pronounce his Polish name) was born in Poland (actually the Ukraine) in 1857 and died in England in 1924. He wrote voluminously and some of his best works were
Heart of Darkness (1899),
Lord Jim (1900), and
The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897). He wrote something remarkable in
Heart of Darkness and I want to utilise his insight as a further introduction for this lecture.
“The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.”
I'll deliberate more on his insightful assessment a little later. But please try to keep it in mind as we progress.
SALVATION IS ALL BY GOD'S GRACESalvation is ALL by God's Grace. But so very few “unbelieving believers” can readily accept the undeniable truth of this matter. In reality they believe that
their salvation came by
their decision to accept Christ. GRACE is thereby jettisoned from the miraculous Salvific equation. But we are confidently told by the emissary Paul that we were “
dead in our sins” when
God the Father intervened in our life by His Spirit. In effect, if we accept what Paul penned, we were all
corpses when Yeshua saved us.
DEAD. Spiritual
corpses cannot use (or utilise) some “free will” to make a decision to revive back to life any more than can a literal, cold, deceased, rotting physical corpse on a chilled metal morgue slab. Or do you know someone who got saved differently from the truth, charge and judgment of the biblical revelation? I'd sure like to know about that one. Clearly all my students would have to agree to this assessment.
We really need to happily admit that “By GRACE are you saved”
BY Messiah's FAITH,
not a faith that somehow belongs to a decaying corpse. James wrote:
“As a body is
dead without the spirit, so faith
without works is also
dead” (
James 2.26).
A little thought about what James noted will deduce that on this matter (while there may have been disparity between James and Paul on certain issues) at least on this acknowledgement
about death in respect of faith and works both apostles seem to be in agreement.
One thing for certain.
Our faith
cannot save us. It is
Messiah's FAITH that saves us (take a deep breath and look again at this second latter proposition and realise to what you've hopefully now, finally, agreed). Paul made it abundantly clear:
“But now without Torah
righteousness of God is manifested, borne witness to by the Torah and the prophets; righteousness of God
BY THE FAITH OF Yeshua the Messiah
TOWARDS ALL [the world],
AND upon ALL those who believe [the
ekklesia]: for there is no difference [i.e., between the two], for ALL [the world
and the
ekklesia] have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (
Romans 3.21-22 Gk).
THE CHANNEL OF FAITHSalvation comes by Grace through the channel of faith. And that “faith [is] not of yourselves – it is the gift of God” (
Ephesians 2.8-10). The Person of Christ is God's GIFT to us. While the
Ruach haKodesh can and does impregnate faith within our hearts and minds, Christ's FAITH is an essential aspect of His character (
Galatians 5.22) and of His loving
imputation to struggling faithless humankind
which the Messiah exercises on behalf of His brothers and sisters in the One Faith. Let us get it right once and for all. Christ's FAITH saves us.
On the physical, material, bodily plane of our present existence we also need to develop
our faith in Him. Exercising
our faith in Christ can make us WHOLE when in doubt, when ill, when in crisis mode. The exercise of faith ushers forth in so-called spontaneous remission of cancer in some people, and evidently in the pile of crutches at Lourdes. There
are people who seem to
be able to change their state of being instantaneously, or within days and weeks to the chagrin of physicians who shrug their shoulders wondering what on earth just happened to their patient. But the exercise of our faith can
never save any of us spiritually. The faith that saves us is the
always firm,
always steady,
always positive,
always exercised,
always paramount,
never ever ever ever undulating, fluctuating, nor in any way appearing impermanent.
Attempting to be saved by the exercise of our faith is a monstrous distortion of the biblical truth of our salvation – and the very effort we exert annuls God's wonderful Salvific Blessing toward us.
Being saved by the flesh is a death-fantasy in a
cycle of death. How true was the assessment of Jewish political scientist Hannah Arendt who mused “In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in [the pursuit of] perfectionism.”
WHAT'S YOUR RED SEA?Some of us are very much like the prophet Moses (blessed be he). And I don't mean that we share his
good character qualities of administrative leadership. How many times have I
stopped at my own personal “Red Sea” and cried out to God to save me? How many times have you done the very same exact thing with your own personal encounter with the “Red Sea”?
Well, we are not alone in this matter. We all possess a hesitant
yetzer ha'ra. Moses stopped at the Red Sea and cried to God for Israel's fleshly survival as the Egyptians poured down behind them screaming for their blood. Many a time I have been told by God, when faced with a seemingly overwhelming difficulty, “
YOU do it.” Moses was told
to do it too. “Cast your staff out into the Sea” (
Exodus 14.16,21). Yes Moses,
YOU do it. But notice something else at this point. God earlier said to His prophet: “
Now is not the time to pray, Moses! Tell the people
to go forward” (
Exodus 14.15).
How many of us have become paralysed by church teachings focused entirely on our
inabilities, our
negativities, our
propensities to
evil and
sin and
death? Yet, do we recall how many occasions we have read in the Gospels about Our Lord Yeshua, our Great Physician and Psychiatrist, CHALLENGING men and women who cried out for healing and His miraculous intervention in their lives, with the words: “According to
YOUR faith” –
your belief,
your trust,
your expectation, and
your confidence – “be it unto you.” Again he often adds a qualifier: “AND
DO NOT DOUBT” (see
Matthew 21.21).
Yes, God sees us in
ways markedly different to the
way we sometimes perceive ourselves. God's GRACE is
so good.
CAN ILLNESS BE HEALED BY AUTO-SUGGESTION?Our Lord Yeshua understands that our BODY experiences what our MIND believes. We are tarrying far away from Messiah when it comes to grasping “the MIND of Christ” (
1 Corinthians 2.16). But once we do, when we achieve a profound and elevated sense of this reality, we discover that we have arrived at the realisation that it is
far more vital and crucial to
live for the truth rather than to
die for it. And with this cognition the JOY of evangelism is sparked within our hearts so that OTHERS may also have a clear vision of the great and awesome purposes and intentions of God that we have at our own fingertips.
What do I mean?
Consider! Our own SPIRIT is capable even of engineered
SELF-INDUCED healing!
Again, this TRUTH is revealed in a remarkable way in a recorded instance where Yeshua
could not heal people in a particular city due to
their total lack of faith –
UNfaith (yes... it IS a genuine word) – a denial of belief in the Saviour and his abilities. Despite the fact that the Lord Yeshua
healed the sick, restored
hearing to the deaf, and
raised the dead to life – a FACT recorded in official dispatches sent back to Caesar in Rome by agents of the occupying power in Judaea (and as a consequence the Emperor Tiberius desired to make Yeshua a god) – there was a hostility and/or indifference toward the Messiah in many quarters by his own people. This was essentially due to the fact that Yeshua did not appear to be the fulfilment of the prophetic Messianic expectation the Jews envisaged.
Indeed, I was impressed by an account I read recently of this issue of undervaluation because of simple mere appearance.
“Off the shores of the Philippines, a fisherman discovered a very large, misshapen pearl. It was not pretty. It looked more like an amoeba, with blobs and folds everywhere. He took the unusual find home and stowed it under his bed.
“When he moved ten years later, he had no use for it, so he gave it to the local tourism office. It turned out to be the world’s largest pearl, with an estimated worth of roughly $100 million.
“It’s easy to miss the value of something when it bears no resemblance to what we were thinking. Scripture tells us that the good news of the kingdom is like a priceless pearl (Matt. 13:45). But what if it doesn’t look like any pearl we’ve ever seen?
“There’s a story in the gospels about a time in Jesus’ ministry when he returned to his boyhood stomping grounds.... The reception was less than stellar, because he didn’t look like the hope anyone expected” (
“Why Jesus Couldn’t Do Miracles in His Hometown” in
Christianity Today magazine, May 22, 2019).
Please notice the Gospel assessment: “Then Yeshua said to them, Only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own household is a prophet without honour.
SO HE COULD NOT PERFORM ANY MIRACLES THERE, except to lay his hands
on a few of the sick and heal them. He was amazed at their UNBELIEF” (
Mark 6.5,6).
Visionary scientist Gregg Braden has noted, “The placebo effect – our response to the belief that we've received a catalyst for healing – has long been studied in medicine as a curious phenomenon... The placebo effect is actually us, proving to ourselves the greatest possibilities of healing, miracles, and longevity! [Indeed] the secret of the placebo is the foundation of everyday life.” [Braden's provocative ideas can be considered in dozens of his books including
Deep Truth (2011), and
The Divine Matrix (2006), and
Human by Design. From Evolution by Chance to Transformation by Choice (2017).]
REALITY OF “HYPNOSIS”Certainly, we have all (to one degree or another) been witnesses to the art and skill of modern showmen (
shaman) hypnotists as they parade their ability to control the minds of selected audience members by nothing more than suggestion and suggestibility. I still have chills when I recall watching targeted people under hypnosis deliciously chewing into an onion fully convinced that they were devouring a ripe, red, juicy apple! It's astonishing how deceived we can become
with the exercise of faith and confidence in a person we've never met but who possesses credentials relative to “mind-control” and in whom we have placed our surrendered will.
I often hear protests of defiance when I bring up this subject. “Nobody can control my mind. I have total control over my own thoughts, my own will, and my own ability to refuse to come under anyone else's influence.”
Yeah, right! All humanity is
influenced dramatically by others – whether by hook or by crook, by media outlets, or by religious authorities, or by medical “professionals,” or our best friends, or worldly government stooges in the pay of the Dark Lord himself. Some of us are even heavily influenced by God –
Baruch HaShem! Still, I have often heard the refrain that nobody can control the mind of another by overriding that individual's own actual free will.
Let me tell you a story. It's a true account. It is written by author Dr Joe Dispenza and included in his remarkable little volume
You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter (2014). [I have not included it here in these lecture notes due to its size, but our readers can access this passage on the audio attached to this lecture.]
WITH OUR THOUGHTS...Without any doubt, modern scientific research has established that ANYONE can change their own brain activity, their THOUGHTS, and hence their body, their emotional state and their genetic expression. THOUGHT is the foundational premise of all our troubles, and THOUGHT is equally the foundation of all our successful ventures. The biblical revelation suggests the same thing (if you know where to look). Trouble has been that Christians (and others) have read the Bible from a
pseudo-religious framework of reference rather than to be appropriately educated BY GOD'S SPIRIT into Her workable truth – the SPIRIT of right knowledge (
John 16.13) – of God's pattern of correct thought-processes and related proper behavioural psychology. In the event of such
unbelievable ignorance the vast overwhelming majority of humankind is anchored to a personal view of disabled status. Of course, such
yetzer hara negativity pervades our ordinary consciousness daily and is constantly attempting to drive out our optimistic sense of affirmatory God-releasing spiritual awareness and reality.
REMEMBER THIS FACT which I have been attempting to convey for decades in all my lectures. It is an extremely difficult “path” to walk, and I am the first to admit that I find it almost impossible to achieve. But if I am learning this procedure which God demands from me, you also can walk this narrow path and this (ad)venture of “entering in through the strait-gate.”
Our Lord Yeshua warned his disciples about the “strait-gate” while he was no doubt pondering his impending crucifixion. Christ told them, “Enter by the narrow [or strait] gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because
narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (
Matthew 7.13,14).
A “strait” or narrow gate is more difficult to pass through than one that is obviously wide, and only a few people can go through a narrow gate at once. Our Lord Yeshua was describing the pathway to everlasting life as something requiring both
FOCUS and
EFFORT to enter. Only a relatively small number of folk ever even set foot on that path to begin with. Those who achieve this aim of
walking that strenuous path and
entering in through the narrow “Gate” – which other Scriptures testify as being Christ himself (
John 10.9) – are spoken of by Paul and others as “Firstfruits” chosen by God by ALLOTMENT in GRACE (
Romans 12.3) from eternity. (I might just mention in passing that an “allotment” is the casting of a “lot.” Take some time out to think about
how God
elected – selected – YOU to a salvation rather than someone else, with a
lottery in mind. Just a thought!)
BECOMING MORE LIKE GODOur God Yehovah is entirely
PROACTIVE IN His Nature and His character. The Lord Yehovah, as witnessed by the life of Christ, is never
REACTIVE. But we are not like God in this matter of nature and character. No, not at all. We have two powerful drives within our natures. One is the inclination toward evil (called the
yetzer ha'ra) and we also possess an inclination to achieve good and to be good (called the
yetzer ha'tov). As believers exercising FAITH daily in our God and Messiah, we are called to become PROACTIVE
as God
is PROACTIVE.
This is
the purpose of life and it is
our purpose in life. It is the
reason for our existence. The
meaning of our lives. This is the
way back home. The
path to endless fulfilment. It is the true definition of the term
spiritual transformation.As controversial Rav Yehuda Berg has rightly assessed, “When we
react to any external situations and events in our lives, we are merely an effect and not a cause; we are reactive, not proactive.
“Should we live our lives without any personal growth or change of nature, we are not
creating new spiritual levels of existence for ourselves.
“When we allow outside forces to influence our feelings, positive or negative, we have surrendered
control.
“When we exhibit egocentric or self-centred behaviour, we are not
sharing but instead receiving gratification for the ego.”
BUDDHA, SOLOMON AND CHRIST AGREEThe Buddha – a disciple of Jeremiah – proclaimed “All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make our world.” He went on to explain: “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
Solomon wrote, three thousand years ago, “As a man THINKS in his heart, so is he” (
Proverbs 23.7). Yes, what we think we become. It's a scientific law of nature. “Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness” (Again, Buddha).
While neuroscientists are now in general agreement that “our thoughts do not define us” I would argue that they certainly define our spirit – the “us” within. Those neuroscientists that disagree are living in a fantasy realm of unreality. As one scientist has written, “Your life is a mirror image of your mind, your consciousness, and who you really are.” Christ himself knew very well what was IN human beings (
Mark 7.21; Matthew 15.19) and that therefore our actions are founded squarely on WHAT we THINK about all day long. Paul knew as well when he urged believers to be careful about what they allowed their minds to dwell upon. “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – THINK AND MEDITATE on these things” (
Philippians 4.8).
Buddha, Solomon, Paul the apostle, and Yeshua the Messiah are in agreement about our thoughts. So too are some modern psychiatrists such as Karl Menninger (
Man Against Himself and
Whatever Became of Sin?), Thomas Szasz (
The Myth of Mental Illness and
The Manufacture of Madness), and Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool Dr Peter Kinderman (
The New Laws of Psychology. Why Nature and Nurture Alone Can't Explain Human Behaviour) among a growing number of other medical authorities in the field of mind exploration.
THE UNEXPLORED OCEAN OF CONSCIOUSNESSIt is estimated that more than eighty percent of our planet's oceans remain unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. Likewise, but closer to home, the human mind is also largely unexplored uncharted territory.
It never ceases to astonish me how some people will visit a medical doctor and be given a very negative prognosis: “You have six months left to live” and they will return home sobbing and die precisely six moths later. Others – especially amongst Australian aboriginals – will most assuredly die if “the bone” is pointed at them. There are people on record who are known to have perished solely on account of accepting a voodoo curse. On the other hand there are some of us who vanquish heart issues, crippling arthritis, even Parkinson's disease – simply by having FAITH in a placebo. BELIEF can be so strong that pharmaceutical companies have to resort to using double and triple-blind randomised studies attempting to exclude the ability of the mind over the body when evaluating new drugs.
Over the period of this
IMCF ministry we have known personally a number of unbelieving believers who have played the victim, played the “blame game” on others rather than to take personal responsibility for their own decisions in life.
Others did this or that,
circumstances did this or that. As to the excuses of circumstances, George Bernard Shaw once said, “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, they make them.”
Powerful observation indeed. In recent years Dr Joe Dispenza has spent his time researching the placebo effect, and the power of BELIEF or FAITH in human ventures. His scientific findings are notable in that they corroborate as truthful the biblical record concerning the gift of FAITH, and the
natural ability of non-religious individuals to
utilise their own natural faith in the concerned issues of life.
The circular
Letter to the Hebrews has a great deal to say about the issues concentrated in and circulating about FAITH. We of all people, living in these distressing times, NEED to develop more faith, more belief, more trust not only in our loving Father God Yehovah – but in ourselves.
Certain religious denominations, even those claiming to be “Christian” in their orientation and worship, usually decry ANY amount of human confidence and they lay enormous stress on “having faith in God alone.” Well and good, but is this what God Himself requires? Personally, I don't think it is.
In our next lecture we will begin a new lecture series on the subject of
“FAITH” IN HEBREWS. Hopefully it will be a THOUGHT-provoking provocative series of lectures, timely indeed, encouraging us all to embrace uplifting THOUGHTS connected to UNLIMITED POSSIBILITY.
Stay tuned. And anticipate an expectant knock on the door from the mysterious realm of the living
Divine Ocean of Consciousness in whose IMAGE we have been created.
THIS CONCLUDES THE CURRENT LECTURE
![Welcome to the Forum and Educational Boards of the International Messianic Community of Faith [IMCF]](https://biblicalresearchinstitute.com/imcforum/Themes/default/images/BRI.png)
