FAITH TO ENTER IN

5/23/23 FAITH TO ENTER IN

Today I thought about making a pretty keepsake journal page about faith. What did I want to pass down to my family? I pondered, where did my faith come from? How does it grow? When Jesus comes for me, will He find faith? Faith is a substance we take through us to eternity. Scripture tells us that faith, hope and love will remain with us even after prophesying and tongues cease. Our faith is very important to the Lord. (1 Cor 13:13; Heb 11:6)

Jesus gave me my first portion of faith as a gift that I did not earn. Even so He equips me to be able to increase my faith for greater and greater measures.

Romans 12:3 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 has dealt to every man the measure of faith.

Luke 17:5 And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.

How? He said that faith comes by hearing His spoken Word to us.

Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

I have asked for and earnestly desired to hear His voice to me since I was 17 years old when I drove 15 hours to attend a conference on how to hear the voice of God. I had already received the Holy Spirit and while driving I spoke in tongues for so long, I lost my voice. When I finally arrived in the town, I was still in worship in my mind and not my voice. It was then that I heard the voice of the Lord for the first time. He gave me specific driving instructions on where to find the church. I was shocked. Was that me? Was that Him? I stopped at a gas station and the man told me the same thing!

Wow I had heard the voice of the Lord and I was very weary. I felt like I had “worked” for 15 hours of driving while singing to Him and praying in tongues to be able to hear Him like that. I now know that the worship and tongues helped me to enter in through His gates and I had briefly touched on how to walk in the Spirit: FOCUS. I was definitely in His Spirit when I heard Him speak.

Psalm 100:4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

Since that day I have lived to cultivate His voice and be able to enter into His resting place where I don’t have to “work” so hard to enter in. Scripture says we labor to enter into His rest. What type of labor is this? Our labor is to overcome unbelief and to be able to connect with Him when He speaks by BELIEVING it was Him speaking and what He said was true.

Hebrews 4:1,2,11 Let us therefore fear, lest, although a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. 2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. …11 Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. 12 For the word of God is living, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Once again, how do we connect with what He says to the point that we believe? Throughout the years I feel as though I have run the gamut of different ways to hear God speak, and different ways how NOT to hear God speak. I have had both the right motives and the wrong motives. I have learned to decipher the many types of voices that speak both from heaven and hell. I have learned how to listen and I have learned what keeps me from hearing Him. I have known both fluency and stuttering seasons of His voice. But the most important lesson to date is that I have discovered I can go through the motions, do all the right things and actually hear Him. But unless I make a CONNECTION with my faith, then what I hear doesn’t touch me in the way I need. I crave that connection and that connection is my faith being activated.

That connection is like a tiny spark that ignites a fire of life giving Words to my spirit, my soul and/or my body. Without that spark of faith, they are just words on paper. They may be truth but they don’t impact me with life. Scripture tells us that He honors His Word even above His name. And yet I need to know the One Who spoke that Word. It is there – that exact point that ignites me. I need to suddenly recognize it was God Who just spoke to me… not me speaking, not the enemy, but the God of the universe talking to me. What has mattered the most is that He speaks, not what He says. I crave intimacy with Him and no matter what He says I am content as long as I know it is Him. When I know it is Him, I ignite inside!

Psalm 138:2 I will worship toward your holy temple, and praise your name for your lovingkindness and for your truth: for you have magnified your word above all your name.

How does this knowing happen? The Bible says He confirms and establishes His Word through confirmations of 2 or 3 witnesses. Those witnesses can come in 1,000’s of ways where He uses them as signs saying, yes I just said that, it was ME! The Word must first be spoken, and then it is confirmed with signs after that. Even the tiniest blade of grass can be a miracle, a sign, a token, a wonder when God breathes His quickened power upon it. I am impacted with life that heaven just spoke, I know it and I believe it.

Mark 16:20 And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

My faith that He spoke is so vital of a connection, that without that connection life is empty. The cultivation of faith is the secret to intimacy in knowing the Lord. It is like when the sperm connects with the egg. Upon impact, His life begins and secretly grows up inside. Our faith grows and grows in His secret place until one day it breaks through the barrier manifesting to the world around. That faith now proves there is an unseen world that directly impacts the visible world. And when that happens, life changes.

Heb 11:1,3,6 AMP Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]… 3 By faith we understand that the worlds [during the successive ages] were framed (fashioned, put in order, and equipped for their intended purpose) by the word of God, so that what we see was not made out of things which are visible…. 6 But without faith it is impossible to please and be satisfactory to Him. For whoever would come near to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out].