You are perfectly at liberty to ask for a Cadillac, but I doubt whether you will get it. Because you have to abide in Him, and His words in you; and then whatsoever you shall ask Him, you shall receive—for Jesus’ sake. Did you get that? You must abide in Him.
When I abide in Him, and His words abide in me, there are certain things I cannot ask. As I go on with the Lord, I find what I can ask and what I cannot ask. I always go as far as I can. Why not?
C. T. Studd said, “Why ask God for an egg if you can ask for an elephant?” No, but putting that aside for a moment, the fact is this: as we walk with God, we shall know what we can ask for.
When it is the will of heaven, when it is the will of our Father, when it is the will of our Saviour to give us something, to fulfil something, to bring something to pass, and He puts it within our heart, it bubbles about there, and we have freedom to ask. It is done.
Sometimes whole mountainous ranges lie between us and the fulfilment of that word. Very often, the more important it is to God, the higher the spiritual mountain range that lies between us and its fulfilment.
But if once we have the go-ahead in our hearts, and we know it is for the Lord, for His kingdom’s sake and His righteousness’ sake, then we shall find a mountain will become a plain. Mountains will remove hence to yonder place, and nothing will be impossible to us.
Now, I want to say something about the exercise of this faith. It only emphasises what I have been saying even more. You see, in Matthew 17:20—sorry, not Mark 17, Matthew 17:20—you remember what Jesus said?
“Why could we not cast out that demon?” And He said, “Because of your little faith.” Oh, says someone, there you are. I knew the preacher was off beam tonight. Jesus said, “Because of your little faith,” and he has been saying for the last half hour, “Do not inflate your faith. It is not more faith you need.”
But hang on. Just wait a moment. Jesus explains it. Listen carefully:
Because of your little faith.
For verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
A grain of mustard seed—not a peanut, not a pecan nut. But that is what we all think. “Oh no, the Lord could not have meant that. Fancy Him saying a thing like that—a grain of mustard seed!”
Do you know how small a grain of mustard seed is? If I had a grain of mustard seed in the palm of my hand, not even these people in the front row could see it. I do not think they would see it even with a magnifying glass. Really, it is so small, so minute.
And we say, “Oh no, of course the Lord could not have meant that. He must have meant a peanut of faith. If you have faith as a peanut, or if you have faith as a pecan nut, or you have faith as a walnut, you shall say to this mountain, ‘Be thou removed,’ and it shall be.”
The Lord Jesus did not say that. He said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed.”
“Oh, you say, I only need that amount of faith.” What to remove? A grain-of-mustard-seed problem? No—a mountain. A mountain! You only need faith as a grain of mustard seed to move a mountain.
Now, do not look at me so unbelievingly. The Book says it. I am not saying it; it was the Lord Jesus who said it. You must have your argument with Him.
Now let me try to explain. You may think it rather funny, but I shall put it this way because it may bring it home to you. You see, what we often think is this: if we have a mountain—a problem and difficulty—we must have a mountain of faith.
If we have a mountain of faith, and we have here a mountain of problem and difficulty, then with my mountain of faith I will bulldoze the mountain of problem out of the way.
Now, you laugh, but that is precisely how we face our problems, is it not? We say, “Oh, I have got a Mount Hood problem. I have got a Mount Rainier problem”—I do not know how you pronounce it in these parts—“Oh, problem! I must have a Mount Hood of faith, preferably a few feet more. This will help my confidence.”
Then, with my mountain of faith, I will bulldoze the mountain of problem out of the way. So this is why we are always saying, “It is no good. I have not got enough faith. If only I had more faith, we could move this thing.”
If you have a mountain problem, you must have a mountain of faith. If you have an Everest problem, you must have an Everest of faith. That is it. So the devil rubs his hands: “I have got them. I have got them all sitting still, all paralysed.”
All the companies of God’s people represented in this room, all the works of the Lord represented—it is as if enemy headquarters says, “We have got them all paralysed. They have got to have a mountain of faith. Well, we know it will not work. They will never get a mountain of faith.”
God does not work by faith like that. Well then, how do you get a mountain removed?
Now I want to tell you something else that may shock you. Never, from the beginning of time, has faith ever removed a mountain. Never.
“Oh,” you say, “what about George Müller?” Never. “What about Amy Carmichael?” Never. Faith has never removed a single mountain—not even a molehill.
“But,” you say, “you are quite wrong.” No, I am not. God has removed mountains. It is God who is the mountain remover.
I have often told folks the story of Gladys Aylward. She did not stand higher than this, but she was known everywhere for her great faith. Oh, Gladys had many, many failings, but oh, how the Lord shone through her warmth, her compassion, and her love for the Lord.
The one thing she had was the gift of faith, and she was known everywhere as a small woman with a great faith.
I had a friend in a certain city, and another friend was staying with this friend. In the course of conversation, this other friend found that Gladys Aylward was in the same town. “Oh,” she said, “I would love to meet her.” “Well, maybe you will sometime during the course of the next week.”
When they went out shopping—because in Britain they go out shopping every day, not once a week, and they walk—as they were walking along, this friend said to the other friend, “Oh, there is Gladys, over the other side of the road.” “Oh, you have got to take me over. You must introduce me to her.”
So rather unwillingly, this mutual friend took the other across the road, stopped Gladys, and said, “Gladys, I want to introduce a friend.”
Well, this poor lady could not contain herself, and she gushed all over Gladys. “Oh,” she said, “this is the greatest moment of my life. Fancy meeting the small woman with the great faith.”
And little Gladys Aylward drew herself up to her full height and said, “Little woman? Small woman with great faith? I am a very small woman, with a very little faith, in a very great God.”
And that explained Gladys Aylward. I have never known anyone who has the so-called gift of faith—not that I do not believe there is a gift of faith, but there are a number of things called gifts of faith that I seriously question.
But I have never met anyone with a real gift of faith who was not very conscious that they had very little faith, but that they had seen a very great God. There is nothing in their circumstances, nothing in their work, nothing in their ministry that can overcome God, that can stand against their God, that the Son of God cannot change.
Little faith. Again, I have told some of you this story before, but let me tell it again. I shall never, to the end of my days—and I imagine throughout eternity—thank God enough for some of the people I met when I was first saved.
All of them, in their own way, had a formative influence upon my life. And none greater than a little lady whom the church I was in thought was a little touched.
She was, in her heyday, an opera singer. She used to speak so fast that the pastor of the church used to say, “I am glad God can unravel it.” But she knew the Lord.
She taught my sister to sing, and I was always sent up to take my sister home when the lesson was ended. So I got to know Auntie Ella.
I have never forgotten Auntie Ella, the way she used to talk, for she made the Bible live. She used to talk about Isaac, Jacob, Joseph—not in some theatrical way, but from the heart—so that somehow you suddenly saw what it meant.
I remember her saying, “When I see the Lord one day, I am going to make a beeline for Isaiah. I have some questions I want to ask him about his prophecies.”
Then I remember another time when she said suddenly to me, “Zephaniah! Oh, that young man. Now, how many of you knew that Zephaniah was a young man? That young man—oh, what a wonderful young man. How I thank God for him. He meant so much to me.”
One day I went up to see my sister at the end of the class, but she had already gone with another friend. Auntie Ella said, “Come in, dear boy. I am doing some sewing. Sit down.”
I sat down, and as was her wont, she began to talk about the Lord, the work of God, and the world, for she lived all over the world in prayer. What she knew at that time about Nepal, which had not yet opened, or Afghanistan, was nobody’s business. The battles she waged in prayer with other sisters were amazing to me as a boy.
But I remember, as we were talking about the Lord, all of a sudden the sewing machine packed up. She was not a very practical lady. She put the things in, and it all went wrong.
She said, “Oh dear,” and began to look at the handle. Then she looked at the needle. Then she opened things and shut things, and tried again—and nothing.
Then she turned and said, “Lance, my dear boy, can you do anything for the sewing machine?” I said, “No, I do not know the first thing about sewing.” So I tried it, but the whole thing was jammed.
Then she said, “Dear boy, there is nothing for it. We have to ask our heavenly Father.”
Now, you laugh, but this was one of the changing experiences of my life. Up to that day, in the church in which I was—a very fine church with a very fine pastor—I had understood from the way they all behaved that you preached great things, but nobody believed them.
Indeed, to take the Word literally and put it to the test would be considered almost arrogant, presumptuous.
So down she went on her knees, and I went down on my knees here, and the sewing machine was there. I have never forgotten the prayer. Up went her hand, and she said:
“Heavenly Father, Lance and I have been having a wonderful time of fellowship about Your Son, Jesus. So sweet. Bless him, Lord.
“And Lord, You know I am not a practical lady. I have spent all my days in the art world, and here I am trying to do this sewing. Lord, something has gone wrong with this sewing machine. I asked Lancelot to help—dear boy, Lord—but he tried and he could not do anything.
“Now, heavenly Father, we come to You because You have said in Your Word:
For how many soever be the promises of God, in Him is the yea; wherefore also through Him is the amen, unto the glory of God through us.
“There is a promise in Hebrews 1:14. It says that the angels are sent forth to minister to those who are heirs of salvation. Father, on the basis of this promise, send an angel to put this sewing machine right.”
Then she was silent. Now, I had my eyes open like saucers. I touched her. I said, “Auntie, try it.”
“Give the angel time.”
Now, you laugh. I was only thirteen years of age, if that, and had only been saved from a totally pagan background. But all I remember was that she suddenly said, “Heavenly Father, thank You so much for hearing us. You never fail.”
With that, she got up, drew the stool under, and went straight on with the sewing. Now my eyes became even larger. They were now the size of soup plates, because I thought to myself, “Has an angel come from heaven into this room and tampered with this sewing machine while Auntie and I were on our knees?”
Could it possibly be that all that preaching in the church, which amounted to very little in the end, and this old lady whom some of them thought was mad—she takes a portion of Your Word and stands on it, and it works?
Amen. You do not realise what it led me into: a sewing machine, an angel from heaven, and an old lady. But it led me into much bigger things.
Faith needs to be concretely expressed. “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain”—say to this mountain, not think.
Faith is never faith while you keep a fire escape open. Many of us would never burn our boats in many ways.
Now, I know that many foolish things are done in the name of God. I know people who buy enormous properties and then go bankrupt. I know people who have done all kinds of weird things in the name of God. I know this whole matter is sometimes terribly abused.
But just because it is abused does not mean that there is not glorious truth here. We need to know what the Lord wants for us. Sometimes we need to test it in fellowship to make sure that we are right.
But once we are really clear—and only as we grow up in the Lord, and as there is a division between soul and spirit, will we ever be able to be sure that it is the Lord—we sometimes have to burn our boats behind us.
You know, the Lord said to Moses, “Go up and lift up the rod over the sea.” Can you imagine what it meant to go up over the sea and lift up that rod?
Do you not think Moses might have said, “Lord, do You mind if I do not use the rod? It would be so much easier just to go up there, bow my head, and say, ‘Now, Lord, part this Red Sea.’ I will open one eye, and if there is nothing happening and anyone says, ‘Aaron, what are you doing up there, Moses?’ I will say, ‘I am having my quiet time.’ No one will ever know.”
But Moses had to go up, lift the rod over the sea, and command it to divide.
Faith is never true faith until it is concretely expressed. The evidence that Abraham had true faith was that he went out of a beautiful home, a good profession, and a comfortable living into the unknown, not knowing where he went. He obeyed to go out by faith.
And so it is always with living faith.
Now, people will say to me, “Tell me about this question of doubt.” Well, I want to go back again for one moment to Mark 11. It may deliver some of you from problems in this matter.
Mark 11:22-23. You remember Jesus said, “Have faith in God.” Then He said:
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith cometh to pass; he shall have it.
Do you know that this verse, for quite a few years, was a terror—a horror—to me? I will tell you why. I think I have seen quite a number of miraculous things in my short life. I have known God move in a whole series of ways in physical and material matters, as well as spiritual matters, in faith.
I have seen the most amazing things happen. But the reason this verse was a horror to me was that I was always filled with doubt.
Then I used to think, “Could it all be demonic? Because the Bible says, ‘If he shall not doubt, he shall have it.’ But I am filled with doubt. God only knows how I am filled when He says, ‘Go forward on this thing,’ and we go forward and burn our boats behind us.”
Then I am filled with doubts. “Is it really the Lord? Was it the Lord? Have we been misled? Are we corporately under demonic influence? What is happening?”
I remember the day God revealed it to me. It came suddenly and, for me, very wonderfully. I did not like to read this verse because I found it a kind of conscience verse, if you know what I mean. It always troubled me.
But I did read it, and suddenly one little phrase lit up in light:
Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart.
Oh, what a deliverance it was! I suddenly realised: in his heart, not in his head.
Faith is a matter to do with the heart, with the spirit, not with the soul. The soul may be filled with doubts, but the spirit firm in conviction.
Now this has led me to two things. First of all, I have come to the conclusion that whenever people are one hundred per cent sure about a matter, it is counterfeit.
I have found in my little ministry that all these tragedies involving great properties and other things, which have brought people to bankruptcy and dishonour to the Lord’s name, are because there was one hundred per cent certainty.
Satan never bothers to attack something that is misleading people. He will leave you to have one hundred per cent conviction. But if you happen to be within the will of God, and there is a chance of a breakthrough in the work of God, then he will bring every weapon in the armoury into play and shoot every single doubt from every single angle.
I wish I could illustrate this as I could from my own experience in many ways. I will give you just one example.
Quite a few years before it happened, we felt that there was a need to take a portion of ground that originally belonged to Halford House, at the back of Halford House in Richmond, where the work was centred and where the church met.
One day we brought it up in our time of prayer, and we all took it for God. Two or three times over the years we took it for the Lord, and nothing ever happened. It was very strange.
We used to have a marvellous time of light. We took it and stood on it and said, “Lord, if that has something to do with Your purpose for us, we take it in the name of the Lord Jesus.” We were really one in the matter, and then it would all die. Nothing would happen.
Perhaps a year or so afterwards it would all come up again, and we would take it again. We would remind the Lord that we had taken it in His name.
Then one day—it must have been six or seven years after our prayer had started in this matter—the old gentleman in charge came rumbling down. He was the basis of the longest-running BBC series, The Archers. His name was Dan Archer. I mean, he was an extraordinary character.
He rumbled down and wanted to see me. When I appeared, he said, “Your boys have burnt one of my lilac bushes.” I did not think that was a very auspicious beginning.
So I said, “Do you want a cup of tea?” We always had tea at every available opportunity in Britain. He said, “Yes, I will have a cup.”
We sat down, and he said, “There is something else I have come down about.” I thought, “Oh, what else have the boys been doing?” Then he said, “You know, I am getting old, and I have had trouble with the kidneys. I am going to give up the market garden, and I have come down to offer it to you.”
He said, “You will have to make up your mind pretty swiftly, because two others have got wind of it already. They have offered me £27,000 sterling and £25,000 sterling.”
“Well,” I said, “how much would you need then?” He said, “£12,000.” And I said, “Only £12,000?” Now, that was a lot to us, but I thought it was a bit funny. Twenty-seven thousand, twenty-five thousand—he only wanted enough for a cottage.
Then I said, “Well, all right then. We always pray about these things. Can you give us a date?” “I will give you a week,” he said. “I know you have got to go to the bank and arrange a mortgage.”
“Oh no,” I said, hardly thinking what I was saying. “We never raise mortgages. We could not raise a mortgage for the Lord—as if He could not pay.”
“Oh,” he said, looking at me straight in the eye, “how are you going to pay?” Without thinking, I said, “Cash.”
“Cash?” he said. And I said weakly, “Yes.” I was not thinking. It was all such a shock. After praying on and off over years, suddenly the man comes down and says, “Do you want it?”
So I went into the study on my own. I never told a soul. I got on my knees and said, “Oh Lord, will You please deliver me from this thing? They want to build a multi-storey car park there. Well, all right, Lord, we do not mind a multi-storey car park. Deliver me from this. Either it is You or it is not You.”
Then—not an audible voice, but it was the voice of the Lord, and it was so ridiculous that I burst out laughing—the voice of the Lord said to me, “You shall have it.”
And into my heart came peace. But then my head began to buzz. From that moment I thought, “Oh, £12,000. Where would we ever get £12,000?”
Then I thought, “Our principle is not to tell anybody, not to phone anybody. Now what are we going to do?” The prayer meeting was that night, and everybody came to the prayer meeting. I knew we had other needs, so I thought, “If I share it with everybody, they are bound to say I am idealistic. Of course not; we have other needs. We must consider the other needs first.”
However, I brought it up, and to my amazement, when we asked at the end what we should do, everyone was unanimous: “We must go ahead.” “But,” I said, “we have not got the money.” “Well, all right,” they said, “we must go ahead.”
So I phoned up a solicitor who was a believer, but did not have experience of faith in the way we had. When I told him, he said, “How much does he want?” “£12,000.” He said, “That is a gift.” “Ah,” I said, “but we have not got the money.” “Never mind,” he said. “Strange things happen amongst you, do they not?”
We swore everyone in that prayer meeting to secrecy. We said, “You understand how important it is that no one speaks about this matter. If you speak to anybody about it, once big business gets to hear, enormous sums of money will be mentioned. We must not write to anybody, phone anybody, or speak to anybody—not even those in the family who are not here tonight.” Everyone covenanted, “We will not speak.”
The next morning, I had a phone call from a lady quite a few miles away. She said, “Lance, I want to come and talk with you about the market garden.”
I said, “How did you know?” I immediately thought, “There is only one person who could have told her.” I said, “So-and-so has told you. She had no business to tell you. We covenanted last night not to say anything to anybody about this. I will not come and speak to you about this matter.”
She said, “Now, quieten down. Will you please let me tell you my side of the story?” “Yes,” I said, “but it is wrong. You must understand, it is wrong.”
She said, “I woke up at five this morning, and God said to me, ‘Do not buy that house. Buy the garden.’ And three times He said it to me. I have been phoning people all over the south of England to ask them if they know of a garden for sale. When I phoned so-and-so, she said, ‘Oh, Lance has told you.’”
She said, “No, Lance has not told me.” “Oh,” the other lady said, “then I should never have said anything. You had better get straight on to him. He will be so angry.”
By three o’clock that afternoon, we had £12,000 in cash.
Now, the doubts were up here, but the peace was down here. So it is.
Now we must finish. We have talked about exercising faith. You are all caught on this matter; you might as well face it. If you have been saved by the grace of God, if you have been born of the Spirit of God, you must have faith as a grain of mustard seed.
Because you are saved by grace through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. So everyone here who is born of God must have faith as a grain of mustard seed. The problem is that we are not using it.
We are waiting for it to grow to a mountain before we even use it. So the enemy has caught us; he has paralysed us. Instead of exercising that little grain of faith that God has given, so that it gets muscle and sinew, and in the end God can lead you, like David, out into great battles.
How do we obtain such a thing? The Bible says:
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
Do you need initial faith? You will only get it by looking unto Jesus. Do you need perfecting faith? You will only get it by looking unto Jesus.
Sadly, many of us start works that are really of God, but they are not completed. Somewhere along the line the problems become so great that we cannot go on.
Now, it is a principle with God that if something is of Himself, He will make it impossible to begin with. Then, lest we take the glory to ourselves, He will again and again make it even more impossible.
Every stage of that ministry, that work, or that church life will be made impossible unless there is an exercise of faith. We cannot finish what God has begun unless we have perfecting faith.
We got faith to begin by looking unto Jesus. We must have faith to go on by looking unto Jesus. If we are going to finish our course, it will be only as we get faith by looking again unto Jesus.
You all know the story of Peter and the storm, do you not? I have often said—although I know some consider it to be a rather strange conviction or theory of mine—you will notice in the Gospels that there are two stories about feeding multitudes, because the disciples did not get the message the first time.
The second time, do you remember how Jesus said, “Do you still not understand?” Now, in the same way, there are two stories of storms on the Lake of Galilee.
I have often thought that somehow or other the Lord Jesus was trying to teach those disciples a tremendous lesson. Not merely that He was Master of the elements, but that even if they had lost the ship, He would have taught them all to walk on the sea. Think of that.
The ship would have gone down, and He would have said, “Follow Me.” And they would have walked. What a lesson they would have learned.
Some people say Jesus was so tired that He went to sleep. I just cannot believe that. You mean He slept through a wild storm? I cannot believe it.
No, the Lord Jesus quite deliberately went back to that boat, put His head on a pillow, and shut His eyes. He let them all think that He was fast asleep. I have no doubt He was tired, but He knew exactly what was happening.
As the wind whistled, and somehow the boat began to go, and there was a pause, and the sails went, and the rudder again—oh, can you imagine it? I bet He heard them bailing out furiously and saying, “What is wrong with Him? Is He still asleep?”
I think He was waiting for them to lose their boat. Oh, many of us, we cannot lose our boats. Our boats are our security, you know. We will fight furiously to keep the old boat.
We do not want to learn to walk on water. We want boats. We feel much more secure with boats. We made them. We feel more secure with our boats. We know how to handle them, even when a terrible storm comes.
“Do not let us lose the boat.” I remember Miss Fischbacher once said to me, “Lance, if you are in great enough panic, in a great enough spiritual hysteria, God will give you anything.” I think it is true.
When they finally panicked, He could not say, “Now then, I am going to teach you to walk.” Can you imagine it? They were so hysterical, so panic-stricken, He could only say, “Oh, ye of little faith,” and the whole storm stopped.
Now the second time, He did not get in the boat. He went up on the mountainside and prayed. He watched them, and He saw them rowing against the wind.
In that howling wind, which can come so suddenly upon the Sea of Galilee, suddenly they saw someone walking on the water. “It is a ghost,” they said.
Then Peter, peering through the wind and spray, said, “I do not think it is. I think it is Jesus.” Then he said, “Jesus, is it You?”
Back through the wind, the spray, and the waves came the reply, “Yes. It is Me.”
“Well, if it is You, tell me to come to You.” Then came the words of Jesus: “Come.”
And you know what happened. This is the amazing thing. Peter clambered over the side of that boat and walked on the water.
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith cometh to pass; he shall have it.
Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast it out?
And He said unto them, Because of your little faith: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
For how many soever be the promises of God, in Him is the yea; wherefore also through Him is the amen, unto the glory of God through us.
Now He that establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God;
Who also sealed us, and gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer?
Heavenly Father, as we come to Thy Word once again, we want to confess before Thee our absolute dependence upon Thyself. We know, Lord, that neither in speaking nor in hearing will our natural ability or energy help.
But, Lord, we praise Thee that Thou hast made a provision for us all, for speaker and for hearer. We would take by faith that provision, that anointing which is ours in the Lord Jesus, made available to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
O Father, wilt Thou fulfil through this time Thy plan for us this evening? Wilt Thou grant that Thy Word shall come to dwell in us richly? We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, I have as a burden on my heart for these evening times this whole matter of living faith. I do not think there is any day in which we have needed to be possessors of a living, practical, working faith as today.
If this day we need to have such a living and dynamic faith, we shall need it even more in the days that lie ahead. This matter, though it is simple and elementary, is nevertheless fundamental to every single aspect of the work of God.
Whether it is our salvation, the fullness of our salvation, being changed into the image of our Lord Jesus, knowing holiness, knowing anointing for the service of God, being found obedient to the Lord and doing the will of God, or whether it is a matter of the church—its birth, development, functioning, building up, and completion to the coming of the Lord—every single aspect of the work of God is related to this matter of living faith.
Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
We may have all the zeal, all the knowledge, loyalty, and many other attributes, but if we are not possessors of a living, working, practical faith, it is impossible to please God.
Now I want this evening to take up a further aspect of this matter and really look at it. I want to ask: what is faith?
There is a growing idea about faith which has nothing whatsoever to do with the faith which is the gift of God. It is, in fact, cultic. It belongs to the realm of man-made religion.
This is what I want to look at this evening, then talk a little about exercising true faith, and finally talk for a little while about how we may become possessors of a living faith.
First of all, this matter of true faith. There is a very common idea that I would call Christian Science faith. It is a cultic form of faith, but it has done its deadly work so powerfully and so influentially that it has gone right through Christian circles, right through evangelical circles.
Most believers’ idea of faith is not the biblical concept of faith at all. That is what I would call a cultic faith.
How does the reasoning go? Well, it is this: everyone has faith. It is just a question of how you use it. To live, you have to have faith.
You are always doing things you do not understand. Even if you are an atheist, you do things you do not understand. Some of us do not necessarily understand how an aeroplane gets us into the air, stays up, and comes down, but we get on an aeroplane. Evidently, we exercise faith.
Now, all we have to do is channel this kind of natural faith within us toward God. Then the idea goes like this: if you can pump up this faith enough, if you can inflate this faith enough, something will happen to you spiritually.
You have got to get to work on your faith. You have got to enlarge your faith, inflate your faith, blow it up. Once you do it, it will happen.
The idea is this: if you have a sore on your hand and you say, “I have not got a sore. I have not got a sore,” and you say it long enough, loud enough, and forcefully enough, the sore will disappear.
If you say, “I am going to have an experience of the Holy Spirit,” and you say it long enough and long enough and long enough, you will have your experience. In other words, your faith will create the thing.
Do you see what I am trying to say?
I remember a story told about Sir Winston Churchill in the war years. He came into a Cabinet meeting, sat down heavily in a chair, and said, “Is there anyone here who is a Christian Scientist?” He knew full well there was.
One of the gentlemen, an admiral of the fleet, said, “Yes, sir. Me.” Churchill said, “Then change places with me. I am sitting in a draught.”
The idea being that if you say there is no glass, there will be no glass; if you say there is no sin, there is no sin; if you say there is no evil, there is no evil. In other words, this kind of faith is mind over matter.
You may laugh at it, but this is the thing that has gone right through Christian circles. Most of us are subject to this idea, this concept of faith: “If only I had more faith.”
Everyone says, “I am not getting anywhere because I have not got enough faith. If only I had more faith, I would be healed. If I had more faith, I would have a new experience of the Spirit of God. If I had more faith, I would know what it is to be in union with Christ. If I had more faith, something would happen in my circumstances. The problem there would be solved. I would overcome it.”
More faith, more faith. The idea is: inflate it, blow it up, push it out, so that in the end there is enough of it to do something with. Then what you long to happen will, in fact, happen.
This is cultic faith. It is not the faith that is in the Book. It is not the faith which is the gift of God.
You did not get saved that way, working and working on faith until in the end you said, “Now I can believe.” I would like to meet someone who has been saved that way, because I imagine their salvation has not lasted too long.
The way I got saved, and the way you really got saved, was this: you tried to believe and could not believe. But somehow or other, you could hardly explain it in those days—you were so young in the Lord—you saw, however dimly, the Lamb of God.
Suddenly, into your heart, what you may have known for years became a reality. Very dimly, you responded. In that moment you responded, you were saved.
In other words, listen to me carefully:
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
True faith is related to eternal fact. You may only dimly see the eternal fact, but in the moment you see that eternal fact, whatever it is, faith is the response in your heart.
It is not blowing it up. It is not inflating it. It is understanding what is fact. Now you begin to see what I am trying to say. It is an entirely different thing.
Jesus did not say, “Have faith, and you shall say to this mountain, ‘Remove to yonder place,’ and it shall remove.” He never said it. He said, “Have faith in God.”
Have faith in God. It is not faith in itself that does it. It is God who removes a mountain. But if you see the Lord with the eye of your heart, and exercise faith, then if God wants to remove that mountain, that mountain will be removed.
You will be able to say the word of faith over it, and it will happen.
Paul said, “I did not come amongst you preaching with persuasive words of man’s wisdom, lest your faith be in those persuasive words of man’s wisdom. But I preached in demonstration of the Spirit and power, that your faith might stand in the power of God.”
Faith standing in the power of God. You have got it?
Your faith makes no difference to the existence of God, as if by suddenly pumping it up God becomes more effective, more real, more living, more powerful. It is nonsense. God is whether you believe or not.
But the moment you see God with the eye of your heart, He is the fact in the universe. Is that not true?
I wish I could put this whole matter much more clearly than I am able to. But if I can take another little attack at the whole thing, let me say this: this Book, whatever people may tell you about it, is the revelation of eternal fact.
There is not a fairy tale in this Book. There is not a myth in this Book. I will tell you where you find all the fairy tales: in your newspaper. That is where most of the myths come from.
This Book has lasted thousands of years. Whatever men may say, however much they deride it or pour scorn upon it, the fact is this: you will never find a man saved from drunkenness through a word of Shakespeare.
You will never find a marriage healed by The Taming of the Shrew. You will never find Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, or any of these other great writers somehow delivering people from drugs.
But take this Book that people laugh at and scorn. One little phrase from this Book leaps into a person’s consciousness, into their life, and suddenly addiction, drug addiction, alcoholism, a broken marriage, unhappiness, or a tendency to suicide can be dealt with. You can be delivered from it.
Why? From this Book.
It amazes me that something which came from Moses three thousand or more years ago can live to me today, comfort me, and become the basis upon which I experience God in a deeper way.
Something David wrote three thousand years ago can become alive to me by the same Spirit who inspired him, and I find that I enter into a new experience of the Lord through a word spoken by a man three thousand years ago. Where else do you find such a Book?
This Book is the revelation of eternal fact. It is not just carrots dangled in a divine way in front of spiritual donkeys, as if God is trying to edge us up into His heavenly wagon and transport us to new pastures, eternal and full of glory. That is not what God does.
This Book is eternal fact.
God, in His mercy, because He knows how stupid we all are, has reduced these eternal facts to what I call vitamin form. That is my lovely English—you say vitamins. God can bring a whole huge bottleful of oranges, as it were, into one little pill.
The promises are eternal facts in vitamin form.
For how many soever be the promises of God, in Christ is the yea; wherefore also through Him is the amen.
Did you get that? He did not say, “How many soever be the promises of God, in Christ is the yes, and also the amen.” He said, “How many soever be the promises of God, in Christ is the yea; wherefore also through Him is the amen.”
The yes is there. There is a process in the outworking until it comes to be amen. It is finished. It is done. Is that not marvellous?
God has given us these promises—eight thousand actual, specific promises in this Book. Eternal facts reduced to a form that even a child can take in.
The Spirit of God can take these wonderful promises and, in our problems and difficulties, give them to us. He makes that promise ours. In that moment, we see the Lord.
Is this not the experience of every true child of God? I have read portions of the Word a thousand times, but here I am in some great problem, in some great difficulty, and I read the same portion I have read so many times. A phrase, a sentence, leaps out at me and becomes mine in a way it never had before.
I remember years ago when I read the little words, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you.” I was in the midst of a colossal conflict.
How many times I had read that wonderful statement of the Lord! When I was saved, I did not have a Bible. I had a little old paper Gospel of John some dear believer had shoved into my hand on the night I became a Christian.
My sister and I read through that little Gospel of John I do not know how many times, until it fell to pieces. The Gospel of John has always been almost a foundational Gospel to me, the one part of the Book that I got to know better than anything else.
I had read I do not know how many times, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you.” But on the day the Lord made it mine, it opened a spiritual universe. It brought me into a new dimension.
I suddenly saw: “Peace I leave with you”—that is the peace of sins forgiven, which He could leave. He never needed peace for sins forgiven. But “My peace I give unto you”—that was the peace He had on the cross when, after saying, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He later said, “It is finished,” and commended Himself into the hands of God.
I could have His peace. That changed the whole conflict I was in. The conflict raged on, but I was a new person because, for the first time, I had His peace within my own heart.
I shall never go through what He went through on the cross. I shall never go to the depths He went to in Gethsemane. But His peace is my peace, garrisoning my heart and mind in Him.
Peace which passes all understanding.
Do you see what I am trying to say? When my eyes saw the Lord, I saw there was a peace which He gives me—the peace of sins forgiven—which is something He has left to me. It was not His peace, because He never sinned.
But His own peace became mine. I saw the Lord. My circumstances remained the same for a while, but I was changed. I had entered into a new dimension with the Lord. I had got hold of an eternal fact:
My peace I give unto you.
In that moment, what I had read a thousand times and never needed up to that point became mine—mine, my own. The Word of Christ came to dwell in me richly.
Eternal fact. What are these facts? Here is one straight away: God is.
I find that the most exciting thing. I know people say, “Oh dear, is he going to start on theology now? God is. We are going to have theology—so dry, so boring. He is going to tell us in a moment that God has no beginning and no end, that God is infinite.”
Yes, I am, because that is exactly what it means.
God did not say to Moses, “I was that I was. That is My name.” Nor, “I have been that I have been.” To see many Christian meetings and activities, you would think the God they worship was “I have been that I have been.”
Evidently, He has ceased to do a whole area of things. In the old days He split the Red Sea, brought water out of the rock, and caused the sun and moon to stand still. “He cannot do that today. We live in the twentieth century. In the twentieth century we have got a man onto the moon. We have photographed the other side of Venus.”
God just cannot do the kind of things He used to do. Of course, it is nonsense, is it not?
God is not “I have been that I have been.” He may not choose to do certain things just now, but if I read my Bible rightly, the very end of the age will see God again breaking into the planets, into the universe, in a way that all kinds of things will happen—signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth.
God is. Even the unsaved live and move and have their being in Him.
How then can you possibly get afraid of Mr. Brezhnev, or Chairman Mao, or whoever else is in power? How can we possibly be afraid?
Of course, if you are thinking in an egocentric way, you say, “Oh, but I might lose my life. These great ideologies cause a bloodbath.” Yes, of course they do. They come and they go.
Maybe you will go before they go, but they will go, and you will remain. For not a hair of your head will perish. Those things will disappear so completely that, like Babylon, people will say they were a myth, a legend, a fairy tale. They never existed.
The fact is that God is. Therefore, in God, what is impossible? Is there anyone He cannot heal? Is there any mental disorder He cannot put right? Is there any situation He cannot touch, any knot He cannot untie, any problem He cannot solve, any advance He cannot make? Is there anything God cannot do?
When God revealed Himself to Moses in that tremendous meeting in the desert—a dried-out old thorn bush ablaze with fire—Moses heard God say, “I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. I have heard the sighing of My people, and I am come down that I might redeem them. Go to Pharaoh and say, ‘Let My people go.’”
Moses said, “Just wait, Lord. If You will excuse me for being so bold, who shall I say sent me?”
And the Lord said to him, “My name is I AM. Tell them, ‘I AM hath sent me.’”
This is not just theology. On the practical level, what God was saying to Moses was this: “Moses, as long as you exercise the faith which I give you, you can go through any situation with Me, because I AM is with you.”
“What do you need, Moses? Do you need love? I AM love. I AM your love. Do you need power? I AM your power.”
“Moses, it is a blank cheque—My name—and anything you need, I will be it to you. Do you need strength? I AM your strength. Do you need wisdom? I AM your wisdom. Do you need humility? I AM your humility. What do you need, Moses? I AM is with you.”
Now do you begin to understand what I mean about living faith related to eternal facts? It was not Moses quivering there in the desert and saying, “Oh, I have not got enough faith. I must pump it up. If I can only inflate my faith large enough, I will be able to stand before Pharaoh and say, ‘Let my people go.’”
Of course you laugh, because it is nonsense. But this is our idea. “Have I got enough faith? I must have another little time of prayer and fasting and pump it up.”
That would never have done anything. The only fact that got Moses through was this: I AM is in charge of all of this. I AM is bigger than Pharaoh, and Pharaoh lives and moves and has his being in I AM. He does not even know it.
He worships idols, other gods, sun or moon. But in eternal fact, it is I AM who gives him breath to breathe. That is why the Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart; in another place it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
But do you see? God is so big. Cannot we take a new look at this old world? Cannot we take a new look at our problems?
Here is an eternal fact: you will never get faith until you see God. But when, with the eye of your heart, you see the Lord, however dimly, the response in your heart will be faith.
For the first time, you will see God is bigger.
When Isaiah began his ministry, at the beginning of a colossal change in things, he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.
He did not see the Lord trapped inside the sanctuary in the Holy of Holies, some small god somehow trapped. He saw the very train of His garment filling the whole temple.
Out of that vision of the I AM, greater than everything, with whom nothing is impossible, Isaiah’s ministry was born.
Ezekiel saw the Lord in just the same way. When he was exiled, he could have given in to the circumstances. He had seen so many of his fellow citizens butchered, murdered, their eyes put out, their noses cut off, their tongues slit. He could have been damaged for life.
But far away in the land of exile, on the river Chebar, he lifted up his eyes, and God revealed Himself in a tremendous vision of glory—wheels within wheels, and then upon it all, One like unto a son of man. It was the glory of God. Out of that vision, something was born: living faith.
You begin to see how God can take us, in His own inimitable, tender, powerful way, and lead us into situations which are satanic, evil, antagonistic, and seemingly all-powerful. We can stand in the midst of it all and know that it will all crumble and pass away.
The kingdom of God is the only thing that will endure.
Oh, if we could only get this idea, because it is so tremendous. It is so tremendous.
May God deliver us from this cultic idea of faith—that somehow I have got to work on my faith, blow it up, inflate it, get more and more and more, and once I have enough of it, I will be able to do something. It is nonsense.
People also have the idea that as long as, before you were saved, you were superstitious, you have a flying start on the rest. Once you get saved, it is good to have been naïve, stupid, dim, and particularly superstitious.
You know the kind of people who do not walk under ladders and do not set sail on Friday the thirteenth. I come from the old countries, where people do not walk under ladders. My God, a paint pot might drop on them, but they cannot believe it is unlucky.
If you are so superstitious as not to wear green on a Friday and not to set sail on a Friday, then once you get saved, faith will come to you naturally. You were dumb enough before, but now, being saved, you can believe anything.
But that is not true. If you are superstitious, it can be a real drawback, a real bondage when it comes to real faith. Faith is not superstition gloriously dressed up by God.
It is not some kind of naïve, simple-mindedness that cannot add two and two, and therefore, once you get saved, you will believe anything and go places with God.
Faith is faith, whether you have the greatest academic brain in the world or whether you are the simplest person in the world.
People sometimes tell me that Peter was a very simple man. I am not so sure. Why do they always think fishermen are simple men? I know some fishermen. I have not found them simple.
I am not talking about those of you who go out with a rod and a line, catch fish, and come back. I am talking about people who fish for a living. That is their business. I have not found fishermen so simple-minded and dumb as people always say.
In those days, people did not have universities in the same way. There was not schooling for everybody, although in Jewish society everybody was taught to read and write.
If I read Peter’s letters, I do not think he was quite so stupid. He did not have the academic training of the apostle Paul, but he was not stupid. Yet both of these men had faith—living faith, practical faith, faith that saw God breaking into the impossible and doing it.
They saw their known world turned upside down by the power of God.
Faith standing in the power of God. Have faith in God.
Oh, I wish we could spend the whole evening just on the eternal facts. “God is” is one. I will tell you another:
Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
What a simple formula. Who overcomes the world? He that believes that Jesus is the Son of God—God the Son, the very manifestation of God, the Word who dwelt among us.
Is there anything the Lord Jesus cannot do? Is He today different from what He was yesterday? He who was touched by the infirmities of people—is He today different? No.
The Bible says:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever.
How wonderful it is that at the right hand of God the Father there is One who is a Man, touched with the feeling of our infirmities, interceding for us. How marvellous.
Let me tell you something else. The finished work of the Lord Jesus is sufficient to undo every single work, device, and weapon of Satan.
There is not a single thing in the armoury of hell which cannot be undone, paralysed, rendered inoperative, and rendered ineffective through the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
Oh, if we could only see the eternal facts. If we could only see that by death He has brought to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; that He has stripped principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, triumphing over them through His cross.
And back through the wind, the spray, and the waves came the reply, “Yes. It is Me.”
“Well, if it is You, tell me to come to You.” Then came the words of Jesus: “Come.”
And you know what happened? This is the amazing thing. Peter clambered over the side of that boat and walked on the water.
No, you think I am being funny. I am not being funny, but it is a very funny story. He had never had a degree in water-walking. Jesus had not given a special course on how to walk on water. He had never done it in his life.
He did the impossible without thinking.
“Oh,” you say, “no, no, no, no.” Yes. I am quite sure that if Peter had thought, “Water? Me? How much do I weigh?” he would never have started.
What was the secret? He saw the Lord. He heard the Lord. He obeyed the Lord. And he did the impossible.
It is a wonderful story. I do not know what happened, but suddenly, at some point, some great wave or swell came between him and the Lord Jesus. Suddenly he lost sight of Jesus.
All he could see were the waves and the wind. He saw the waves. He heard the wind.
Now, I am not being funny, really I am not. Were the waves there before? Was the wind there before? What changed?
I will tell you what changed. Peter had lost sight of the Lord Jesus. He did not hear Him anymore, and he did not see Him anymore. He only saw the waves and heard the wind, and immediately he began to sink.
I suppose he thought, “You know what I am doing? I am walking on water. How is that possible?” And then he began to sink.
Here, people of God, you see where we have come? We have come back to something that the world cannot do: seeing Jesus. Amen.
Nobody can ever exercise a living faith effectively, powerfully, and influentially without seeing Jesus. It is when you see the Lord that you do the impossible, and do it almost without thinking.
I do not know about your life tonight. I know about mine. I know it is no good for me to go back and say, “Now I am going to investigate the state of my faith.” I know just what the state of my faith is: hopeless.
I have never bothered a moment investigating the state of one’s faith. What I know I need is a fresh vision of Jesus.
It is not faith-consciousness we need, or faith-orientation we need. What we need is to be centred in the Lord Jesus, our eyes filled with Him, our ears hearing His voice.
That is what you need. That is what I need.
Now, in front of us, I must tell you, is a very stormy period—as storm-tossed as anything that hit those disciples on that lake.
God help us if all we see are waves and all we hear is wind. Not all the Bible training in the world will save you from sinking.
There is only one way that you and I will be able to do the impossible, to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil in the days that lie ahead. That is by seeing the Lord Jesus.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
If God could put within all of our hearts a cry—perhaps some desperate cry, a real cry, a heart cry—“Oh Lord, that we might see You.” Nothing—not truths, not personalities—but You.
Then we shall be found doing the impossible. I tell you something: the history of the true church is the history of the impossible being done.
May God help us. Shall we just have a word of prayer?
Dear Lord, we pray that Thou wilt give to every one of us a clear vision of Thyself. We need it all.
Oh Lord, we know that we are not going to be able to stand unless we see Thee. Lord, many of us have big problems, big difficulties. Many of us bear certain responsibilities in the things of Thyself.
Lord, we have mountainous problems in front of us and the fulfilment of Thy will. But Lord, we pray that we may not just—
Give us a different view of the Lord Jesus. Somehow come to us all. If nothing else comes out of this time, may there be born in the heart of each of us a cry for Thee, a new sight of Thee, a new vision of Thee.
Oh Lord, do it, we pray. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.