Hi all,
A young evangelist got a life-threatening diagnosis. If dealt with medically he would live a long and healthy life, but if left untreated it would take his life. He was married with young children and chose to ‘stand on the Word’ rather than seek medical treatment. He ‘spoke the Word over’ his body, and declared healing, but passed some months later.
His death left many confused because everyone ‘believed’. Everyone who knew him decreed and declared and prayed. Doesn’t faith mean that though medical science was ready to cure the disease, a person can choose ‘faith’ instead?
Money
A woman of modest means had a wealthy friend, and when they got together they went shopping. Trying to keep up with her wealthy friend, the woman soon charged her cards to the maximum, and very quickly found she didn’t have money to pay the credit card bills – which she knew at the time she was maxing them out with her weekly shopping trips with her friend.
She asked me to pray God would move the card companies to forgive her debt, but He didn’t. He did work with her to become closer to her friend by acknowledging what she had been doing. And she learned to pay down her debt over the years and live within her means.
Dreams
A wife had dreams her husband and father of their children was unfaithful. She became angry with him though he denied everything. Her dreams were because of her own insecurities, fears, and poor self image. But her dreams told her he was seeing other women, confirmed by ‘dream interpreters’ online.
Rather than deal with the real issues of her self image and depression, she was explosively angry to her husband when he told that her dreams were not real or true. Based on her dreams of his unfaithfulness she divorced, and further moved into depression and despondency, losing a very good husband and alienating her children. He had never been unfaithful and was heartbroken to see his wife descend into mental and emotional illness rather than face the hard issues within herself God was actually wanting her to do.
So called ‘prophecy’
An Associate Pastor and his wife became pregnant, and ‘prophetic words’ from friends all agreed it would be a girl. They were so excited at all the ‘words’ they declined the doctor’s offer to tell them the gender of their baby. They decorated her room in pinks and pastels waiting for her birth. When their son was born they were devastated and felt foolish to have believed all the ‘words’ from trusted friends. They resigned their position and fell away from the Lord for a time, and never again returned to ministry.
Business
A woman who did large ‘garage sales’ or ‘yard sales’ once a month and did well, thought she would make it into a store. (In the US a ‘garage sale’ means selling household items from your garage or yard, usually held on a Friday and Saturday). Because her monthly yard sales had been so blessed, she was convinced it was God that she turn it into a full-time store front business. She chose a very poor location on the back side of a little line of stores, invisible from the street, but reasoned that God was in it so He would bring people to her store. He didn’t make up for her poor choice of location, and she closed down angry at God and wondering why He didn’t make up for her poor choice of location.
These are just a few instances in which people laid common sense and logic aside in favor of ‘faith’. Health, money, dreams/spiritual, and ‘words from God’ cover several categories of what we see all around us.
You may know someone like the people above, who refuse to acknowledge difficult circumstances, choosing to decree and declare, ‘cast out demons’ from the situation, or are in complete denial. You may know someone who went into business thinking God was their silent wealthy partner who would make up the difference for their unwise decisions.
Or you may know someone who can’t live within their budget though they earn enough money, but rather than discipline themselves they choose to believe God wants them richer than they are, so they spend away, getting further and deeper into debt with each passing month.
All these people couldn’t bring themselves to believe that God would be asking them to deal with character issues deep within them. They were taught faith is all about wealth, health, making life easy and prospering in all things. No one had told them being a disciple of Jesus, a learner, was actually about learning His ways and applying them to our character, our thoughts, emotions, and lifestyle.
Hebrews 11: 3: Through faith we understand…
Through faith we understand the ages (universe) was formed by the Word of God, so that things visible were created by things invisible.”
Through faith we understand. The examples above are of people who thought they were in faith and understood. But they weren’t in faith and neither did they understand properly. The reason is they thought faith could be used to cover up their mistakes or that faith meant they didn’t have to make the hard decisions for their health or business, that God would make up all the differences – they thought faith was a tool detached from God, independent of Him and the revelation of His will, but it isn’t. Faith is our response to a revelation of His grace.
More often than not, the God decision is the tough decision. Peter wrote in II Peter 1: 3-4: “Accordingly, His divine power has (already) given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, which comes through knowing Him to called us to glory and virtue. Through this are given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that by these we might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the decay that came into the world by lust.”
Modern church culture tells people the promises are for our health, wealth, prosperity in all things. But here we are told the promises are given ‘that we might become partakers of the divine nature.’ The promises are first and foremost about forming Christ in us until we come into maturity. That’s why I say more often than not, the God decision will be the difficult one – go through the medical treatment, control your spending and get out of debt, make the tough and wise business decision, and find your answers with your spouse and the Lord.
If we look at charismatic recent history, we see many ‘streams’ of faith whose core traditions (of men, not God) are based on telling God what to do, or changing their circumstances through their efforts. Things like ‘name it claim it’ or the modern version, ‘decree and declare’, binding the devil and commanding angels, and even ‘pleading the blood’ can be included in the category of people not wanting the situation before them. To avoid the tough decisions or avoid confrontation, they’ve been taught to ‘use faith’ to change it by commanding, declaring, binding or loosing. They blame the devil instead of their own poor decisions and would rather escape their situation than grow in Christ. They’ve lost their first love of wanting to be like Him, to give all for Him.
We will pick it up there next week, putting faith, common sense, and logic in proper perspective.
Until then, blessings,
John Fenn
