What is faith? Let’s begin with Hebrews 11:1. The writer of Hebrews says that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (ESV). Most Christians who have studied the Bible for any length of time will say that Hebrews 11:1 is the verse that defines faith. But that verse explains what faith does; it doesn’t define what faith means.
The King James version says that “faith is the substance of those things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” This word translated assurance or substance comes from the Greek word hupostasis, which basically means “support.” Faith is the actual support for what a person hopes for. Or we could say that faith supports hope. The Christian’s hope is to spend eternity with God, and so faith manifests by action that supports hope. Our actions show that we believe that God is who He says He is and that He does what He says He’ll do.
The Greek word we translate as faith is pistis, meaning moral conviction. More specifically, pistis refers to a moral conviction of religious truth or truthfulness, especially a reliance upon Christ for salvation. To put it simply, faith it is what you believe. A moral conviction or belief causes an action. James 2:18-20 says:
But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?
Basically, James is saying that faith should look like something. Faith has a work that follows it. It has fruit. James continues in 2:21-26:
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
You can talk about having faith, but if your life shows no action that testifies of your faith, then you’re lying. Faith always produces something.
Here’s where we make faith confusing. We all want to say we’re people of faith, so what do we want to do? We want to “take steps of faith,” or make faith happen. And here we encounter the buzz words we’ve grown so accustomed to in the church: “When are you going to step out in faith?” Those words imply that faith is something you do or an action you perform.
Don’t get me wrong: faith produces action. But that is not to be confused with an action-producing faith. I believe; therefore, I do. I have a moral conviction that the light switch will turn on the light; therefore, I flip on the switch. I have a moral conviction that if I get into the car and turn the key, the car will start; therefore, I get into the car and turn the key. I have a moral conviction that Jesus will speak to me; therefore, I ask and listen to Him. In each situation, faith produces an action.
Actions testify of what we really believe. In the course of daily life, everything we do is caused by what we believe. Does anyone analyze how to turn on a light switch? No. It’s a habit. It’s second nature. Why? Because the light switch has predictably performed what it was designed to do for decades. Faith in the light switch causes us to flip the switch with no doubt that the light will turn on or off. When will Christians start instinctively trusting in God like that? “God, You said You would do what You said You would do. God, You said that all things work for the good of those who love You and are called according to Your purpose. God, You said You would provide for my need according to Your riches in glory.” Then if we really believe that God is that way and that He spoke these things to our hearts, if we have revelation of who He is, then our actions should testify to that belief.
God is the CEO of the business I am involved with. My first question every day is, “God, what do You want to do in the business today?” There are times and seasons when God will give me directives that are counterintuitive to how business is normally run. But I do them anyway. This is because that instruction comes from God, and the beautiful thing about God is that when He speaks, “His word will not return void, but will accomplish what He pleases and prospers on the thing where He sent it” (see Isaiah 55:11).
God’s specific word to me necessarily becomes an important part of how the business is run. I love Psalm 46:10, which says, “Be still and know that I am God” (NKJV). Why? Because, according to James 1:4, when you let patience have its perfect work within you, you become complete and desire nothing. This is because God fulfills the things He said He was going to do. I see people spending a lot of emotional energy chasing their tails for no reason whatsoever. I ask them, “Did that help? Are you worried? Did that change the circumstances? Didn’t God say He would take care of it?” If God is who He really says He is, then He necessarily will do what He promised.
When I first got saved, I did not attend church for a couple of years. I wanted to know if God was real. I did not want to be influenced by what others thought about God. And so I said, “God, You’re either true or You’re a liar.” As I reflect on that now, I can see that was a result of God speaking and imparting faith. I opened the Bible, read and prayed. That’s how I spent my first three years getting to know God—listening to Him and reading His Word. As I read His Word, the Holy Spirit began to reveal who He is and how He acts. The Bible says in First John 2:27 that we have an anointing and that anointing teaches us about all things.
A day would be different if I ever woke up and didn’t have a cup of coffee with God. I read His Word and talk to Him about how He thinks the day should go. You see, when you know God is who He says He is and does what He says He’ll do, then your prayers become a reminder that He is in control. I have no doubt where I’m thinking I must change His mind; there’s no manipulating or having to draw something from Him.
Relax and Let God Be God
The Bible says in Hebrews 4:11 to “labor to enter into His rest.” When we know God for who God is, then guess where we go in times of stress and worry? We go to God. We rest because we can’t help it. It’s time to enjoy the journey. Faith should not be confused with presumption. Presumption is an idea taken to be true and then used as a basis for other ideas, even though the original idea is not a certainty. The problem with presumption is that it supposes on itself but doesn’t come true every time.
Presumption often works like this: God speaks that He’s going to do something regarding a specific time or situation, then we want to paint the whole world with that paintbrush. We think that God should act the same way in similar situations. But Jesus knew better than to try to make God play with that sort of rulebook. Jesus said, “I only do what I see the Father do; I only speak what I hear the Father speak” (see John 5:19).
The Son’s example for us was to do everything that He heard from the Father. He had no concern about being the Son of God. He had no concern that all creation was subject to Him. What did He do? He said He only wanted to do what He saw the Father do; He only wanted to speak what He heard from the Father. That’s how I challenge Christians all the time: “Don’t tell me what He showed you about Himself a year ago or what you think He wants to do; tell me what He told you about who He was last week and what He plans today.” If you ask me for advice, the first thing I want to ask you is, “What did God tell you?” And when you tell me you don’t know what He said, then it’s time for us to sit down and listen.
You see, God is real. He’s alive and He affects my life; He’s a part of every aspect of my life. That’s how real He is to me. When is the church going to start walking like that’s a reality of who they are? I don’t need to manipulate God. I know what’s coming. I know what He is. I know that He makes promises. I know that He talks to me. I can’t wait to see the next adventure. I can’t wait till He tells me the next thing about Him that I didn’t know. God is so big that we will spend eternity discovering who He is. So why don’t we start living it now? Don’t wait till you die. God’s alive and well.
People often say, “I think God is going to do something,” and just I laugh. Has anybody ever had a prayer not answered? Let’s just examine this issue for a moment. It’s easy to criticize and say we didn’t have enough faith to see our prayer answered, but the fact is that God did not speak specifically about that situation. Rather, we presumed that God would act on our behalf.
When I first got saved, God was teaching me He was the healer. I could pray for anybody and they’d get healed. Then suddenly, I would pray for people and no one was healed. It seemed that the faucet dried up. Did the character of God change? No, but God said, “I want you to understand something, David. You see, that’s a part of who I am. I heal in My time, and you will always know that. Let’s go and discover who else I am.” Does that mean I don’t pray for someone’s healing, believing and trusting and asking God for mercy? Do I think He can’t heal them? Not at all! I know that He will do what He needs to do because His vision is much bigger than any human’s, including mine. God delivers, God heals, God provides, and He is our protector; He’s the one who watches over us; He’s the one we trust; He’s the Rock on which we stand. That reality is who He is.
I don’t want to be the spoiled little child who says, “My daddy is the King.” You know what I want? I want to be the child who says, “Daddy, what would You like me to do now? What do You want me to do with what I’ve got? How do You want me to deal with this situation?” I want to be the obedient son who says, “God, love that person through me. God, You’ve got to forgive through me. I know I can’t do it. God, love my wife through me because I fail so often in loving my wife. God, love my children through me. Let Your will be done, God. What do you want me to do?”
Presumption will always expose itself by not coming true. Understand this: We must be comfortable enough in our relationship with God to say, “God, I missed it.” Once I was sitting in a business meeting, and the guy was telling me what his big, audacious God-given goals were. He wrote them in 2013 and this meeting took place in 2015. He said, “This is what God promised to give.”
I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! You said this was going to happen in 2013. Has it happened yet?”
“No,” he said.
“Does that mean it was from God or not?” I asked him. He just looked at me. I said, “It could be from God, but I don’t think He gave you the calendar on it.”
We always want to put things into in our time frame, don’t we? The fact of the matter is that this guy shouldn’t have put a time frame on what God said He would do, even if God promised to double the size of his business. When he put that time frame on it, it only reflected when he wanted it done. It had nothing do with God. When I questioned him about it, he said, “You know what? I shouldn’t have put that there. That wasn’t God.”
But we do stuff like that all the time. We can hope and we can beg for His mercy, but when God gives us a revelation of who He is, there’s nothing that will stop Him. Nothing. That’s the difference between faith and presumption—hearing the voice of God.
In Hebrews 11:3, faith means “moral conviction” or belief, so every time we read that word, let’s soak in that meaning. The verse says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen is not made out of things which are visible.” The Greek term used here for word is RHEMA. This is important because biblical Greek uses two different terms, LOGOS and RHEMA, both translated as “word” in our English Bibles.
As I study the Bible, I use reference books called Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. These books catalog their entries using a numerical system. I’ve studied this subject so much that my Bible is marked up with these numbers, and I recognize them when I come across them. As I’m reading, I know which word is being translated as word in any verse.
You will be amazed at what you start to understand when you recognize the difference between these two words. Remember, RHEMA means “an utterance from God”; it implies something current regarding a particular situation. It is something that He gives to you individually. On the other hand, LOGOS implies something written that was spoken in the past. For instance, Jesus is called the LOGOS, that is, the historical, written Word, in John 1:14.
Hebrews 11:3 tells us that we understand by faith that the worlds “were prepared by the word of God,” or an utterance from God. Think of RHEMA as present tense. I think if you’re like most readers of this book, you believe that God speaks. You probably praise God and ask Him for things depending on the severity of your situation: “God, I need something.” Hopefully, this is your daily practice—“God, I just want to hang out and talk.” It is by faith that we understand that the word of God prepared the world. We could retranslate this verse to say, “By faith (or moral conviction and belief ), we understand that the worlds were prepared by a word (or an utterance from God) so that what we see was not made from things that are visible.”
Romans 10:17 says that faith comes by hearing a RHEMA from Christ. To have faith, one must hear God’s voice. When a person hears God’s voice, he or she may not necessarily recognize it at first. Here’s a case in point: Hebrews 11:4 says, “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.” Abel’s sacrifice was better than Cain’s because Abel’s sacrifice was by faith. What had to happen for him to sacrifice by faith? He had to hear from God. Faith comes by hearing. By faith Abel offered a better sacrifice to the King. The fact is that God told Abel what to sacrifice. That was a RHEMA.
A lot of people say when they first got saved, “Man, I just knew then that I needed God.” This implies you did something. Truth be told the reason you realized you needed God is because the Father spoke to you regarding your need. He uttered something to you though you didn’t recognize His voice at the time. When He spoke to you, RHEMA, He imparted faith which caused you to ask Him to be a part of your journey. The impartation of faith by hearing an utterance from God is a process that begins at salvation and continues our entire lives. God designed faith to operate like that. He created you to have fellowship with Him and the fruit of that fellowship is an impartation of faith from Him. When we’re witnessing, we often tell people, “God wants to hang out with you. He wants to talk to you. Ask Him. Let’s see what He wants to do.” That is why the Bible says that faith comes by hearing the RHEMA of God.
We can go on to a theological debate and ask if God spoke to Cain too. I would contend that yes, God did speak to Cain, but Cain was a type and shadow of the flesh. And does the flesh ever chase God? No, it doesn’t. We know that God can speak and people don’t get it. We speak to people about God just like God spoke to Cain, and they just don’t get it. Like Cain, they hear with their ears but never get RHEMA. They never decide for Christ. In my flesh dwells no good thing; apart from God, I can do nothing. The New Testament tells us this all the time.
Let’s tie these two concepts together: Faith and an utterance from God are inseparable. It is by faith that we understand that RHEMA prepared the worlds. We understand that these godly men had a moral conviction because they heard a word from God. In fact, Abel had faith (or moral conviction) because he heard God and thus he offered God a better sacrifice than Cain because God gave him a RHEMA, A FAITH INFUSED WORD FROM GOD, of what would be pleasing to Him.
If you’re saved, then you have heard from God, which is why you responded to Him in the first place. So now when you read Hebrews 11 and all the stories of the people of faith, you can go back and think of faith as being imparted and manifests as a moral conviction that comes from RHEMA, an utterance from God. Abel had to have a divine interaction with God to execute what he knew was pleasing to Him.
The clearest illustration of an utterance from God imparting faith to do the impossible happened in my marriage. My wife and I have been married for thirty-two years. About sixteen years ago, I had an affair. I was involved in the church, pastoring, involved in missions, and home fellowship groups. I was also working and coaching sports. I fell into an affair and was stuck for three years. I did every lick of spiritual warfare I could possibly do; I went to counselors and talked to friends. I repented of absolutely everything I was aware of, but I remained stuck where I was. I continued to make bad decisions that hurt my wife and my family. I could not get free.
My wife and I went back and forth several times, trying to make our marriage work. I would move back in and then would have to leave again due to me picking up the affair again. For years, we struggled to get things resolved. We were two wounded people trying to make something broken better. Anyone who does any counseling knows that those situations usually don’t work out very well. Finally, My wife got to the point where she said to me, “I need a divorce.”
I got it; I kept making wrong choices. My wife is a woman who loves God and believes in the power of prayer. She prayed and asked God what any woman of faith would pray: “God, please heal this marriage! God, set him free.” At least seven times I broke it off with the other woman, but then I would fall back into sin once again. And every time my wife asked, “Are you seeing this lady?” I’d tell her no because at that minute I wasn’t seeing her. Then I’d find myself back in the same mess within days.
My wife is a woman of faith! She’s an angel or at least should be nominated for sainthood in my eyes. One day, long after she had filed for divorce, my wife was in church listening to the message. We were about a week and a half from arbitration—this is the time when it all comes to an end. The pastor’s message was about God’s ability to do anything. God spoke to her heart, deeper than words heard by her ears, and said, “Nothing is impossible with Christ.” My wife knew this truth from reading her Bible—she trusted God—but all of a sudden, this word took on a life of its own. God gave her a RHEMA.
This experience occurred three days after she told me she needed the divorce. There she was, weeping in church. She went home, sought God, and spent time journaling again, and she wrote down what God spoke. “Now is the time!” She began to weep again as the thoughts and fears of trying again consumed her. The next day my wife called me, and I was at my sister’s house—with my girlfriend. My wife said to me, “We need to try this again.”
At that point, I felt like I couldn’t go on. I had no power to reconcile my life with my beliefs. All I could do was try to make peace with God and say, “God, I have screwed up my life. I have screwed up ministry. There is nothing I can do to make it better.” I had failed so many times, and I had no hope of making it better. And now my wife was telling me we needed to try again. I told my wife, “You do what you think God wants you to do.” Then I hung up the phone.
Three days later, I got a phone call from my lawyer. He said, “David, your divorce is over.”
“What?” I asked.
“It is off,” he said. I was stunned. I knew that the ball was back in my court. For the first time in three years, I had an enabling grace to look at that other woman and tell her, “I am going back to my family,” and not have one emotional tie to her. What happened? God gave my wife a RHEMA. He spoke to her and imparted faith to do what she could not do before—try again. And God gave me a RHEMA too. He spoke to me that the time was now for healing and imparted faith to walk away from the affair. When God gives you RHEMA, there is no possibility of it not happening.
My wife and I had a personal experience of God speaking to us about our marriage, which gave us the faith to accomplish what we could not accomplish before—to walk through healing and the restoration of our marriage. Our lives changed 180 degrees. By the end of that week, I was shopping with my children for my wife’s Mother’s Day present. I hadn’t done that in three years. By the end of that month, I had moved back home with no more problems to deal with regarding the other woman.
Over the next three months, God gave my wife and me the ability to purchase our first house. By the end of the year, He sent us on the honeymoon we never had when we first married. Why? Because God spoke and imparted faith to us. As I continue to grow in my understanding of what happens when God speaks, I look forward to those moments when He gives me a RHEMA. When He speaks a word, there is no possibility of it not happening.
There was another time when God was teaching me about healing. I was working construction and sitting in a fast-food restaurant with two other guys. An older woman, who was helped by her husband, came into the restaurant. I looked at this woman, and suddenly the Holy Spirit said to me, “I want you to go pray for her.” I was in a public place, filthy and sweaty from working, and I thought there was no way that was from God. The Holy Spirit came on me so strongly that I began to shake. I sat at the table trying to ignore the feeling coming over me and the loss of bodily control I was experiencing. My buddy sitting across from me was a Christian too—he looked at me and said, “David, either God is talking to you or you got a devil.”
I told him, “Hey, God wants us to go pray for this lady.” I said that “God wants us to” because it is a lot easier dragging somebody else down with you when you’re going to sink. Trying to eat my salad, I sat there and ignored all those feelings, shaking like a leaf. Then I got up with all the boldness of nothing and walked past her into the bathroom and washed my hands five times. When I came back, I finally prayed, “God, You are going to have to give me the strength to do this.”
We got up and walked over to the woman. I looked at the husband and said, “Sir, I think God wants to heal your wife. Can we pray for her?”
“Yeah,” he said.
She looked at me, and then I said to her, “Ma’am, may I pray for you?”
“If you think it is going to work,” she said.
I was still shaking; I couldn’t control myself. I had my bottle of anointing oil on me, so I anointed her with oil and prayed one of those deep spiritual prayers. It went something like this: “Oh God, heal her in the name of Jesus.” The prayer lasted a good five seconds and then we headed for the door! We were gone without looking back. We were embarrassed and scared. When I got into the truck, I was trembling. My two friends sat there silent. As I began to back the truck out, I started to prophesy: “You did not stay around to see that I healed her, but I healed her.” The peace of God hit me and I stopped shaking on the spot.
I tell this story because it was a RHEMA, an utterance from God, where He spoke to me and imparted faith to do what I had no power on my own to do. It was a specific word for a specific circumstance at a specific time. The fact is that I’ve prayed for a lot of people all over the world. I’ve been involved with missionary work since 1993; I’ve counseled and done all kinds of ministry. But do you know what? When God speaks a RHEMA, it is beyond the knowledge obtained by reading the Bible; it’s an impartation of faith to change what He wants to change in that moment.
That doesn’t mean I don’t tell people to make right choices, and it doesn’t mean I don’t tell people to trust God. But here is what I know: If God doesn’t speak, there is no faith for your life to change. There is a difference between RHEMA and LOGOS. In Isaiah 55:8-11, God says:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow come down from the heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth: it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
That is the beauty of God’s Word going forth from His mouth. When God gives you a RHEMA about a situation, then you know it will not return void and do what it was supposed to do. In fact, that is God’s character. That is the importance of hearing His voice.
This is why you can’t just be a “study” person and not be a “hearing” person. The Pharisees and Sadducees were study people; they probably had more biblical knowledge than the disciples, but the difference was that they didn’t have RHEMA. The disciples asked Jesus “Why do You speak to them in parables?” And He told His disciples, “For it has been given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to them it has not been given” (see Mark 4:10-11).
The fact is that knowing God’s mysteries has everything to do with receiving a RHEMA that comes by hearing the voice of God. Maybe you know what I am talking about: you have read a certain scripture many times, and then suddenly that scripture takes on new life. You never looked at it that way before. It’s an aha moment; it’s the RHEMA. And suddenly, you can do something or believe like you never could before.
In my wife’s situation, for example, our marriage was over, but God said, “I can do anything!” He imparted into her a supernatural faith to try to reconcile one more time regardless of her fears and the desire to move on with her life. God also imparted something to me and set me free to do what I was unable to do for three years before that—turn from my sin to be a godly husband and dad. That is faith imparted by a RHEMA from God.
Note
1. Vance Havner, Pepper ‘n’ Salt (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1966).