Faith for Spiritual Maturity

Faith

What’s the first thing Jesus wants from us? Faith, right?

1. He taught it, exemplified it, pointed it out in others, and was disappointed when the lesson wasn’t learned.

2. He taught that God wanted us to pray for all things, large and small.
3. In His parables, He spoke of children asking their fathers for bread or fish to eat.
4. In His sample prayer, He said, “Give us this day our daily bread....”
5. In Hebrews 11:20,21 we bless others by faith.
6. In Mark 11:23, we command things to be by faith.
7. Faith is not a quantity; it is present as God’s confirming guidance

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for [when we pray], the conviction of things not seen [when we pray].”

1. Prayer is an act we do in hope that God will respond.
2. As you ask God for things, when the assurance, the supernatural peace comes over you, you can start thanking, because you will get it.
3. If you stand on your faith, you will see it come to pass.
4. If you suddenly doubt and start trying to answer your own prayer, don’t expect God to stop you from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because whoever comes to Him must believe He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”

1. Seeking Him He rewards with answered prayer
2. if the peace of faith and answers don’t come when you pray, start seeking God more.
   1. giving thanks to God for all things
   2. praising God for His love, justice, wisdom, power, etc.
   3. a sacrifice of fasting can help

What can we pray for that God will give us?

2 Peter 1:3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” All we have to do is ask for these things.

1 John 5:14-15  “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him.” God’s general will has been shown in the Bible. Some of it is relevant to our situation; some of it is not. But it is worth the try to pray Bible concepts.

Faith is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. A good prayer would be, “Jesus, teach me how to pray and give me Your faith for Your answers. As a step of faith, I receive Your faith, in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

I don’t have to have faith to be healed by God. Someone else can pray for me with faith and I can be healed. In the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, people were healed by Jesus’ faith alone. Later, He tried to get His followers to pray with faith like He did. Thus we can pray for dogs, cats, babies and people in a coma and see them healed – by our faith. Half the people I’ve prayed for were healed by my faith.

We can pray for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus and James. Jesus said, “If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” James writes, “If any of you lack (the gift of) wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt,....”

I have prayed by faith and received Word of Knowledge, Word of Wisdom, gifts of Healings, Tongues and Prophecy. I asked for each and then by faith stepped out in it – and God met me halfway with the gift.  Note:  We don't need to pray for exorcism.  All Christians can do that the moment they become Christians!

We can pray to neutralize poisons. Jesus promised in Mark 16:18 that we could. Cancer is caused by carcinogens – poisons. Autoimmune diseases are caused by rogue antibodies from excess vaccinations – poisons. Numerous ailments come from poisonous metals held in our bodies. Mercury, aluminum, lead and copper ions are all poisonous and accumulate in our bodies.

I pray that God would neutralize the poisons and safely escort them out of the body. Often kidneys, the liver and the rectum end up diseased as they process poisons out of us naturally. I then pray that God would heal any damage done in our bodies all the way down to the nucleus level.

When a teenager is falling away from the faith, it is due to social and spiritual pressure.  We need to pray for the teenager and their friends.  We need to command the demons to leave them, their properties and their environments.  We need to pray for anyone who comes in social contact with them.

Prayer is only one way of accessing the grace of God for healing.  Jesus would get guidance from the Holy Spirit that someone should be healed and then He would say, "Be healed"!  When someone needs inner healing of traumas, we simply ask Jesus to speak Truth to the person.  He does the rest.  Some times the person has to renounce occult involvement or ancestral occult involvement to receive healing.  Sometimes the person has to forgive someone to open the way to healing.  

Often, the grace of God is limited by our lack of imagination of what we can pray for. We can pray for lots more than aunt Susie’s broken toe. How about cancer? How about congress? How about the Sikhs around the world? How about the property and environments of the churches in your city? How about joining Jesus in praying for the body of Christ? How about asking for things to pray for?

What can we do to facilitate getting answers to our prayers?

1. We can do good to others and not bad things

2. We can phrase our requests according to God's will and ways