When a child grows up without a strong, loving and godly father in his life, it profoundly impacts him or her for the rest of their life unless they have an encounter with the Lord to change what is in motion. Most children who grew up not seeing their fathers read their Bible consistently, model Christ-like behavior or hear them pray strong prayers in the same authority Christ teaches have struggles in their teenage and young adult years. It is very hard to be a powerful man or woman of God when your parents never showed you the way by their everyday life because you will simply become a product of your environment.
So what happens to a child when they become a teenager and young adult coming from a typical family that just attended church and went through the motions without a real personal relationship with the Lord? Typically you will see a son or daughter who develops into a nice young adult but does not hear from the Lord nor see any miracles or life changing experiences with the Lord, so they do not have a close personal relationship that feels real. It is a bland, basic life of going to church, comparing stories with friends about challenges in their lives, hoping that you do not get sick and praying very general prayers that have little to no effectiveness in manifesting results. I know this because it was my personal life and everyone’s around me as well.
I grew up with the expectation that I needed to go to church and surround myself with Christians to encourage me and try to do the right things. I was taught to minimize my sinning, but I never heard from the Lord and was meandering through life with no clear direction other than a moral compass. It was frustrating for me because I felt deep inside of my spirit like there was more to being a Christian than just attending church and trying to limit my sins as much as possible. It felt like when I would read my Bible and try to be good that there was some kind of external force on me causing me to get bored and wanting me not to believe that there was ever anything more out there to experience spiritually. All of my friends that attended the church that I went to that were in their early 20’s were all trying to make as much money as they could to provide a nice lifestyle for themselves.
Unfortunately none of them were truly on fire for God or for more matters of the Spirit. I attended a large church in Carmel that was growing, but no one saw any miracles consistently from their prayers and no one seemed to hear clearly from God even though I took classes to help me hear from the Lord such as Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. It was like a nice group of people that meant well but had no clue about the deeper things in the spirit world and how those spirits affected people’s lives everyday nor how to stand strong against the enemy and walk in the power of Christ that was available to them. Therefore if everyone did not believe that demonic spirits could affect Christians then how could they battle against them and command them to be gone from their lives?
Many people attend small group Bible studies and other studies from other Christian authors (Beth Moore, John Eldredge, etc), but I could never get excited about hanging around 10-14 other people who continued to talk about how worried they were in their lives about the future, health related concerns, issues with their children, or who complained about their relatives, etc. In my spirit I wanted to be around people who were victorious in their lives and walked in the same powerful authority as Jesus Christ and what Paul said we could and should in the New Testament.
Unfortunately, the faith that I saw exhibited was significantly lacking something and I did not want everyone else’s limited faith that never moved mountains and barely moved peanuts. They talked about how we should be powerful in the Lord, yet no one really walked in that authority and so ended up being just all words with no resilience and conviction behind them. They did good things to love on other people such as bringing food to those who just had a baby or were sick, but no one prayed the way Christ told them to pray and thus they saw minimal positive results and were not any better off than anyone else that was not a Christian.
Therefore my perspective of someone who was strong in their faith was a person who attended church and maybe believed for something in their life that would happen in the future such as God providing them a better job or perhaps working things out for their spouse who separated from them to come back and have a good marriage. It was foreign to understand that a person could have any more faith than the basics; and again, I had never been around anyone who believed more than the typical man that I was friends with. Many that were sick with diseases or dying with cancer were hoping that they would be healed and I counted this as faith, but none truly knew their authority in Christ to be able to command the disease to leave their bodies. They were like 95% of other Christians in their faith who did not really have the faith that Christ talked about in the Bible, and if you do not know any better than how can you expect anything more? It was like we lived hoping and praying for the best but preparing for the worst. So when we live in fear that an affliction or disease could come upon our bodies, we are unaware that this is how the enemy can actually put sickness on us that will kill us early.
At that time in my life, if someone would have told me that I did not really have faith I would have taken an offense and reacted angrily towards them because I thought I had lots of faith. Looking back now I can honestly say that I was clueless when it came to faith and so was everyone else who I was friends with that thought they all had faith. The definition of ignorance is incomprehension of, unawareness of, unconsciousness of, unfamiliarity with, inexperience with, lack of knowledge about, informal cluelessness about, lack of knowledge, lack of education. So, yes, my friends and I were totally ignorant of what true bold faith in spiritual things of the Lord meant. We did not know what we did not know. We knew nothing about how the enemy was affecting us, our spouse, children, work, lives, etc. Our spiritual eyes were not opened to seeing things in the spirit as to how the enemy whispered to us in order to tempt us to sin, or cause us to argue and strive with our spouses and make poor decisions spiritually and manipulate us like a puppet on strings.
We were completely blind to the things of the spirit in our lives. We could only see things that were in the physical and look upon behaviors and not realize what was behind the behavior causing it. We had pains in our bodies so the only way we all knew to get healed was to go to our family doctor or specialist to try to get cured. If there was something that we could not get healed from by our doctor then we would ask other people to help pray for healings hoping that if enough people cried out to God on our behalf that maybe we would get lucky and get a miracle. Unfortunately their prayers hardly ever worked because they were not praying with the authority of Christ that we were given because they were never taught it by their pastors because they never knew about it.
We did not know that all we had to do was command our healing the way Christ said in the Bible and then it would manifest according to our awareness of our authority; because no one taught us about walking in the full authority in Christ. We never developed the complete understanding in our spirits of what it meant to walk powerfully in the Lord in all of His power and authority. We had all grown up with fathers who did not understand this and never taught us. We were blind for all intents and purposes; just wandering around life being dictated to by the enemy while hoping and “praying” that nothing bad would happen to us.
So what does faith mean to you? The definition in the Bible is in Hebrews 11:1-12 NKJV,
“1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. 4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. 5 By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found, because God had taken him; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
6But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. 7 By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. 8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; 10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude – innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.”
So this is the faith that God is talking about us possessing. Not looking upon circumstances such as – your son or daughter was diagnosed by your family doctor as having ADHD or whatever disease dujour that is the latest – and then getting into fear and doubt and listening to everything the doctor says to do to try to get cured; hoping for the best and praying that God will “please” heal them. Rather, learning what your authority in Christ is and then commanding the infirmity to be gone just like Jesus did. Faith to move mountains out of your way so that you can walk in power and authority all of your days on earth is such an amazing feeling of boldness and confidence. We are called to be more than a conqueror and not to cower in fear and worry to the enemy or in our families.
Therefore when a person comes into alignment with the Lord at a stronger spiritual level and learns how to speak to their mountains from a position of heaven with power and authority instead of a position of fear and worry pleading with God to do something – there is a powerful difference. There is a transformation that must take place in your mind which your spirit desperately wants to move you into, but the enemy is going to try to come against you from moving into this stronger level of faith. You have to break free from a lifetime of the old dead ways of doing things and come into the new way of the Holy Spirit’s power. There is life and death in the power of your tongue and God wants you to speak life. Think about how this earth was formed. God spoke things into existence. Think about how Jesus healed people – He usually spoke to them and said “be healed” because He knew He carried authority and whatever He said had to manifest. We as Christians have access to that same power and authority but only if we know it, utilize it and expect it.
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this is wonderful blog. A great read. I will definitely be back.