According to Your Faith

Without Faith it is impossible to please God. And when Christ was walking on this earth, He healed many according to their faith. Repeatedly He would say, “According to your faith may it be done to you.” It’s like my recent post about the absolute will of God, where I asked, “What would the painting of your life look like if you only lived by the Will of God?” Here’s another question: Does my faith match God’s desire for healing in my life? Or is it this: Because of my lack of faith, I live beneath His desire to heal me. It would be a travesty to live with an illness or struggle that Christ desired to heal and paid to manifest.

According to Your Faith – The Will of God

Is living according to your faith living in His Will? I know I don’t get to dictate to God what His Will is. I can’t broadly sweep my wants and apply them as if they were His Will for my life. It’s not like: “Hey, if this is true about Joey Down-the-Street, it must apply to me as well!” This would mean that I wouldn’t need God, only belief. Faith is not a beeline to independence from God. Imagine if I could just believe my way through life ­– no God, just belief. Foolish thought, huh? But many live in just this fashion. “If I can believe, I can receive!” This would be making things happen, in God’s name, without having to involve myself with Him. Nope, I can name it and claim it all day long, but it isn’t God who is giving me what I’m believing for.

I asked Martha about this. “Is living according to your faith living according to His Will?” She answered, “Everything from God is received by faith. Yet you have to respond to God, who IS the Word, to access the faith that comes from Him.” Then she quoted Romans 10:17—“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Wow! So then Faith is impossible apart from God. I can believe but I cannot have true Faith without God.

The Will of God – According to Your Faith

So, is living according to your faith living according to His Will? I would say yes. If faith comes by hearing God, it isn’t like God is speaking to me about things that are not His Will. Sure, I can believe and get something that is not His Will. But if it is true Faith, which comes by hearing Him, then I believe what He has said because it is true.

We did a podcast about this. Here is a quote from it. “Faith is knowing what you have before you have it.” Faith is having the conviction that what God says is true, even though we don’t see it. And the only way you come to this conviction is to live listening. Faith isn’t simply believing in what we want until it becomes a reality; it’s trusting that God’s reality is true even when we don’t see it. When you hear God then it is like Josiah Cullen said, “Faith is ‘picture it done.’” If He says it to you, it is reality whether you see it or not.