The
Missing Ingredient
Do you know that
even though the Word is powerful, you can live your whole life without
getting any benefit from it?
The Word of God is powerful. It is full of
promises. It has answers for us. It is life!
It contains promises of joy, victory and success.
Just read some of God’s Word:
“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake
you.” Hebrews 13:5
“And my God will meet all your needs according to
His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” Phil 4:19
“I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me.” Phil 4:13
These are wonderful, powerful verses, aren’t
they? The Word of God can profoundly affect our lives. We should
benefit from it.
But do you know that even though the Word is
powerful, we can go our whole lives without getting any benefit from
it?
We can live and die as though the promises
of God were never made.
We can be brought up in a house of worship, go to
a church or synagogue, listen to the preacher or rabbi every week, and
still what we hear has little influence on our lives.
At the end of our lives, all that could be really
be said is that we did not benefit from it; that we got no real
advantage from it - even though we heard the Word for so many years.
It didn’t impact our lives or hearts like it
could have. We didn't experience the promises, the power, or the
answers like we could have.
It had the power to give us joy, but we were not
joyful.
It had the power to give us victory, but we were not victorious.
It had the power to give us success, but we were not successful.
Why didn’t we experience all of the joy, victory,
or success that we could have? How can we go through an entire life
of hearing the Word of God and not benefit from it?
Is there a magic formula, a missing
ingredient,
or some special thing that we need to know about?
We can get the answer right from the Word of God
itself – from the Bible. In Hebrews 4:2, (The Apostle Paul) says,
“The message they heard was of no value to them,
because those who heard it did not combine it with faith.”
The Message – the Word of God – was of no value
BECAUSE - those who heard it DID NOT combine it with faith!
Here we find the missing ingredient! It is
FAITH!
These people in Hebrews heard the Word, but did
they not mix it with faith. The same is true for us now. We need to
receive the Word of God into our hearts by faith.
You see, the promises of God were given to us so
that they could benefit our lives. They are to help us be able to
live a better life. But if we do not combine it with faith, we can
hear a message and not benefit from it.
Take a verse we read before, Philippians 4:9 as
an example:
“My God will meet all your needs according to His
glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
What benefit does this verse say that we could
have?
All of our needs can be met, right?
What needs? What kinds of needs to you have now?
We all have basic needs like:
Food
Clothes
Shelter
Love
And then particular, personal needs like:
Transportation
A new washer or dryer
Rent money
Medical supplies
This verse in Philippians says that God will
supply ALL your needs.
Now, what this verse promises can be just words.
Or, on the other hand, what it promises can be activated with faith to
become real in our lives.
Faith releases the power of the Words in this
verse in our lives. We need faith in God and His Word for it to
do what it was designed to do so that we can experience the benefit.
In this case, all of our needs being met.
So, what exactly is Faith? How do we know
if we have it or not?
Noah Webster defines faith as - To trust, to
persuade, to believe, to obey.
Other ways to define it are:
Faith is something like walking over a bridge
you know will hold you up.
Faith is dead to doubt, Dumb to discouragement,
Blind to impossibilities, And knows nothing but success in God.
Faith sees the invisible, Believes the incredible
and Receives the impossible.
To have faith is to BELIEVE. To believe that
something is real and ACT AS IF IT WERE TRUE.
This is an important point. To ACT AS IF IT
WERE TRUE.
Can you believe in something and then act as if
it weren’t true? No. If you really believe in something or someone,
then you act as if it were true, right? You don’t doubt it.
Faith acts this way on all subjects as well as
religion.
If we believe that that there is such a place as
London or Calcutta, it leads us to act AS IF this were so, even though
we may have never physically been there.
If we believe that we will make money in the
stock market, we will ACT AS IF IT WERE SO and invest in it.
If we believe that a medicine will help us, we
will act AS IF IT were so and take it.
If we believe in the honest character of someone,
it leads us to ACT AS IF this were so and we trust them.
As long as the faith continues, whether it is
well founded or not, it gives all the force of reality to that which
is believed. We feel and act JUST AS IF it were so, of AS IF we saw
the object before our eyes.
We need to be careful what we have our faith
in, don’t we?
To have faith in the Word of God is to believe
that it is true and to ACT accordingly. That is to Trust it, Rely on
it, To love it, To cast our care upon it.
We do not see God, or heaven, or the angels, or
the redeemed in glory, or the crowns of victory, or the harps of
praise; but we have faith in them, and this leads us to act AS IF we
see them.
And this is the fact in all who live by faith and
who live under its influence. They believe God’s Word simply because
it is God Who said it!
You see faith is the activator, the catalyst that
makes the promises of God real in our lives. The power of God’s Word
is released in our lives through faith.
We have learned about
God’s Word and the power it can have, and about faith that activates
this Word, so now how do we combine it? How do we make it real in our
lives?
In Hebrews 4:2, (The Apostle Paul) says, “The
message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard it
did not combine it with faith.”
What does it mean to combine the Word of God with
faith?
The word “combine” here refers eating! The
process by which food is made nutritive, by being properly mixed with
the saliva and the gastric juices, and then going into the digestive
system and being changed into blood.
This is what the apostle meant when he said to
combine the word with faith.
If the Word is mixed, combined, and united with
our faith, it becomes the means of spiritual life and support to us.
It becomes the way for us to experience the joy, victory, and success
that the Word promises.
It's as if we were eating a fruit cup. We take a
bite of fruit and chew it up. The saliva mixes with it and it starts
breaking down. We swallow it and it goes into our digestive system
where it gets broken down. It is absorbed into the blood stream and
becomes nourishment to our body.
Just like this food becomes a part of the body
and supports it, the Word of God, when it is activated by faith
becomes a part of our internal and spiritual man and gives it support
and life.
Now, if you just let that fruit sit in the bowl
and didn’t chew it up and get it into your system, it would be of no
value to your body, would it?
It has to be mixed, mingled. Like water and
wine. Faith has to be combined with the Word so that we can use it.
When we apply this principle to the Word of God,
we read the verse, or we hear it. Let’s take the one we went over
before:
“And my God will meet all your needs according to
His glorious riches in Christ Jesus,” Phil 4:19
Then we add our faith to it by meditating on it;
thinking about what it means; thinking about the power of God.
Remembering that He is good and honest and true.
We say to ourselves, “God said this. I believe
that God tells me the truth. I believe this Word applies to me and my
situation. Because of this I know that God will meet my need. I
don’t have to worry or fear because God will meet my need.”
This is how we add our faith. The Word becomes
activated in our lives. Faith is the activator that makes it real to
us; that applies it to our lives. We believe it because God said it.
So then in your daily life, when trials or
difficulties come, your faith rises and instead of worrying, and
talking about the problem, you start saying, “My God IS MEETING All of
My Needs.”
You already built your faith in this promise of
God up before and now it is ready to be powerful in your life when you
need it.
You may not see the answer to your problem right
away, but you stand on that belief, on the Word that says that He WILL
MEET ALL OF MY NEEDS.
Soon you will realize that this is actually
happening in your life. Your realize your needs are being met. That
they are being taken care of.
Each time God meets your needs, you will be
thankful for what God has done in your life. You see that He did what
he said He would and it increases your faith even more.
The next time you have a need, you will remember
that God has met your need before, and you have confidence that He
will meet it again. You will realize how faithful God is to YOU!
When you ACT faith, God will bring results!
This is how it is with ALL of God’s promises.
The more your faith grows, the more you will see God’s Word working in
your life. Doing what it says it will do.
If He says that He will never leave us or forsake
us, you will have faith in this promise, and know that He is always
with you.
If God’s Word says, “I can do all things through
Christ Who strengthens me,” you add faith your faith and believe that
Christ gives you the strength to do all things and act accordingly.
If God says, “And my God will meet all your needs
according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus,” you combine it with
faith and believe it, and then you act AS IF it were real and know
that God is meeting every need we have right now.
You see, God’s Word is meant to be powerful in
your life. But it requires something on your part. It requires you
to add faith and believe it. It needs your Faith to be activated.
You need to - HEAR IT! BELIEVE IT! ACT IT!
Experience the power of God’s Word in YOUR life!
Start combining your faith, your belief, in
the Word of God and activate it in your life today.
This week, start realizing that the Word of God
is real and that it can work in YOUR life! When a difficulty comes
along, say to yourself,
“I believe that My God meets all of my needs.”
“I believe that God will never leave me nor forsake me.”
“I believe that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens
me.”
Start experiencing Joy,
Victory, and Success right now!
Activate the Word of God in your life with faith today!
© 2003 Rose Martin |
