Faith and Ministry # 1
What Is Faith?
The outcome of faith as spoken in the scriptures, is not our faith, but it is the faith of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ as He lives His life in us.
q Success in Christianity is gauged by how inwardly discerning we are to observe all that Christ Jesus does in us, and then to outwardly execute His wishes. This will in turn manifest the Lord to the world in the realm of glory and power. This is ministry!
q So is with faith. True supernatural, “mountain moving” faith must be our learning to operate by the faith that dwells in the Lord Jesus and not ours. Our faith is weak and flimsy.
q Let
us look at two scriptures that talk about the faith of God.
Mark 11:22
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in (Have the “God kind” of faith, or the faith OF GOD!) God.
q
(God is in the genitive Greek case signifying
possession; therefore it is “God possessing something”; in this case,
“God’s possession of faith”)
Gal 2:20 I
am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith, of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave
himself for me.
(Greek: The life which I now live in the flesh, I live
in faith, this being the faith which dwells in the Son of God. (Genitive
Greek case signifying possession)
The Rhema
Word is The Faith of God
q
Now
that we comprehend that we are commanded to have the faith of the Son of God,
or that we must live in dependency to the faith, which the Lord owns, we need
to define what is the faith OF CHRIST?
q
The faith OF CHRIST is His rhema word. This is a crucial point!
q
God’s
rhema word is a specific word, which the Holy
Spirit speaks into our hearts when He wants to minister His purposes into a
specific circumstance.
Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Rhema word of God.
(Greek: So then faith gets its life from hearing,
but the type of hearing, which describes faith, must be exclusively one which
comes through the rhema word of God.
Romans
10:8 But what saith it? The rhema
word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the rhema word of faith,
which we preach;
q
Every
rhema word represents an itemized description
of God’s measure of faith, as He has tailored it for every situation in which
He speaks the rhema word into. It is therefore an account of what the Lord can accomplish within
a particular circumstance.
Luke 1:37 For with God nothing( Rhema word) shall be impossible.
q (The English is a poor translation:
Greek: For with God every rhema word has the (indwelling) dunamis power to come to pass.
q Secondly, the rhema word not
only carries with it God’s measure of faith, but also God’s measure of dunamis
power adapted for, and greater than the circumstance into which God
speaks it into, assuring God a complete victory.
q Thirdly, every rhema word reveals the Person of Christ. As Christ is revealed, the faith and power that He possesses, is manifested alongside with Him.
Romans
10:6 But the righteousness which is of
faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into
heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:)
7 Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that
is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)
8
But
what saith it? The rhema
Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the
rhema word of
faith, which we preach;
q Verse six and seven of Romans ten tells us
that we are not forced to take extraordinary measures to bring the Lord down
from heaven or to bring up from the dead.
In other words, we do not have to travel far and wide to find the
Lord. As we go on to verse eight we
suddenly find that the apostle Paul has switched gears from the Lord Jesus and
is now talking about the rhema word. He
says that Christ is not far from us, because the rhema word is near to us; even
in our mouth and in our heart.
Therefore the rhema word is the revelation of the Person
of the Lord Jesus Christ, or is what brings the Lord Jesus to us as we walk in
the Spirit.
q In verse eight of John chapter seventeen,
likewise, we observe that the rhema word reveals the Person of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
John
17:8 For I have given unto them the rhema words which thou
gavest me; and they have
received them, and have known surely that I came
out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
How then, do we learn to walk in the Spirit and live
our lives by God’s measure of faith?
q
The
first step is to learn how to hear and discern the rhema word,
which are the voice and the faith of God.
q
We
must realize that the Lord Jesus in a non-stop fashion lives His life in us, as
He dwells within us. Every work, which
the Lord executes, is translated to us in our spirit as a rhema word. It is the rhema word, which
shows us, what the Lord does within us.
John 14:10
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the
rhema words that I
speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
q
We can go on
to say that the more effective and discerning we are to live by the rhema
word, the more that we will be in tune with that the Lord in us and
what he desires to do. This futuristic
aspect of the Lord’s rhema word is prophecy.
John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
q In John five nineteen and twenty Jesus teaches us the secret of Christian life and ministry!
John
5:19 Then answered Jesus and said unto
them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but
what he seeth the Father do:
for what things soever he
doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
20
For
the Father loveth the Son, and
sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may
marvel.
q Jesus only does what He sees the Father
do. The seeing obviously is not
physical, but spiritual. In fact Jesus greatest responsibility at all times is
to continuously discern what the Father does in Him as His works become
manifested to the Lord Jesus by the rhema word.
q Herein lies ministry in the power
of signs and wonders. It is our
constant discernment of the works of Jesus within us, and our faithful
execution of His rhema words without to the world at large, that brings forth
the power of God into this world,
Luke 1:37 For with God nothing( Rhema word) shall be impossible.
(The English is a poor
translation: Greek: For with God every rhema word
has the (indwelling) dunamis power to come to pass.
q When we accurately hear and
minister a rhema word to a certain individual, it will have both the dunamis
power and the faith of God to accomplish what the Lord has intended for that
person. If the Lord working within us
by a rhema word tells us to rebuke a cold and we do so, His word, full of His
faith and power will heal the Person.
This is how we operate by the faith of God.
q However, if we were supposed to rebuke the enemy who was causing
the cold, and we rebuked the cold instead, because we have ministered to the
individual out of our feelings and rational understanding, and not by the rhema
word, the person will not get healed.
This is one reason why the church sees far less healings and
deliverances than what it is ought to.
q The rhema word is ALWAYS extremely specific. Success
in ministry therefore lies in our ministering as narrowly as possible in
accordance to the specifics of a particular rhema word.
q If a rhema word shows us darkness and deception; darkness and
deception must be rebuked. The more
accurately that we minister in accordance to the specifics of the rhema word,
the greater will be the release of the anointing of the Lord.
q Likewise, one of the keys to
our maturing in prophecy is to discern the rhema word of God and speak it out
as it is seen within, adding and subtracting nothing from it.
The Cross and The Rhema Word
q Our ability or inability to
hear and discern the rhema word of God has a great deal to do with how deeply
we allow the cross of the Lord Jesus to work in our lives. As I have taught before, the work of the
cross of Christ daily kills off our diseased self-life.
q Our self-life is plagued by
the emotional tumults and noises of sins, hurts, fears and bondages. The tumults of our fettered soul drown out
the small still voice of the rhema word of God. As the cross of Christ kills off what is not of the Lord, we
become free and healed, and our souls become stilled in subjection to the voice
of the rhema word of God. The deeper
the cross of Christ works in us, the more stilled our inner life will become,
and the ‘louder” will become the rhema word of God in our hearts
q The work of the cross is
only completely effective in a life of uncompromising obedience to the
Lord. There are no shortcuts! An attitude of continual yieldedness to
God’s will is absolutely essential for us to function be the rhema word of God.
Practice Makes Perfect
q The first time that we
encounter God speaking within us it might come as a fluttering in our hearts,
sweaty hands, and an unstoppable desire “to give a word”. Other times the word of the Lord comes to us
as something that we know, that we know.
These are examples of rhema words.
q If we regard ourselves as
obedient believers who embrace the cross, and are indeed learning to hear God’s
rhema word, then our next step must be to put into play that old adage, “practice
makes perfect.”
q Whenever the Lord speaks to
us a rhema word, we must learn to“step out in faith” to obey it. There is not two ways about it! We know that the rhema word is God’s measure
of faith brought into a specific circumstance.
Since the rhema is word that made up of faith, it will take our faith to
discern it within, and execute it without.
This is why the apostle James says the following.
James 2:20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
(Greek: ..that faith apart from works is a corpse)
q
In Hebrews
five and fourteen we are taught the necessity of stepping out in faith again,
and again, so that our discernment will mature sufficiently, and we will be
able to distinguish between the rhema word of God in our spirits, and the desires
of the flesh in our souls.
Hebrews 5:14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised ( Greek word; naked (gymnos) and also gymnastics) to discern both good and evil.
(Greek: But
only for the mature and spiritually fully-grown man or woman that is attaining
to Christ’s character belongs solid food.
Even to him, or her, who has a developed the habit of spiritual
perception and discernment that can distinguish the good from the evil. Their mature perception and discernment
blossoming as the result of spiritual training performed as they have
voluntarily discarded and became naked from all worldly things, so that their
spiritual training may be vigorous and unhindered.
God
Bless You,
Jose
Alvarez
The Complete
Greek New Testament Library
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