Many people particularly those with some spiritual literacy think of faith or believing as the way they can get something from God and they are absolutely right. Jesus taught many things and one of the central themes he continuously spoke about was faith and how it was an absolute necessity to be able to receive from God.

However faith is more than a means to receiving gifts or blessings from God, the very essence of faith is that it is the means whereby natural, ordinary people are transformed and restored to God’s original plan of creating a being just like Himself.   Consider this scripture

And God said ‘let us make man in our own image and after our own likeness and let him have dominion…. Gen. 1:26

God is a spirit and faith is of the spirit. Though there are many words we bandy around today to mean faith, the kind of faith Jesus spoke of was faith in God based on the revealed word of God. Faith is our positive response to what God says and shows of himself. As we respond to God on the basis of faith He becomes real to us, we are where He is or where He can be found.

Man was created to live in and function by faith because he was made in God’s image. The apostle Paul said God calls those things which are not as though they are’ that is faith. However if we think of faith only in terms of how we can receive from God or how we can be reached by God, we miss the whole essence or purpose of faith. Having faith is far more than just receiving God’s goodness in our lives, it is for living.

Man was created to live in and function by faith because he was made in God’s image.

That’s why I called this post be a be-liver, faith is for being, for becoming, true faith in God changes us and makes us more and more of what He is.

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Jesus said

While you have light, believe in the light so that you might become children of light. (John 12:36)

Can you see it? We become what we believe, be- livers become carriers of life because they believe in life, not physical life but the divine life.

God is life , Jesus said I came that you may have life and have it more abundantly. True faith in God or Jesus fills us up with the life of God and when God’s life fills us up, it will destroy the negative effects of death and darkness around in our world that is always trying to get a hold on us.

I hope you understand that death and life in this context is not physical life or death, but are the manifestations of two natures; the nature of God and the nature of the devil. If you want to have an idea of what this divine life is all about then just take a close look at Jesus Christ, He is or was a walking example of the life of God at work.

This life in Jesus manifested itself in power, righteousness, such sweet compassion and love for humanity and a complete hatred for the works pf the devil.

This is the life that comes to us when we truly believe and stay believing. So faith or believing is both an act and a state or attitude that we must rest in,

Faith transforms and changes us from the inside, it delivers us from worry, anxiety, fear and all the negative and debilitating emotions that grip the soul today. The song writer wrote ‘why worry when you can pray.. trust in Jesus…, there are many people who pray without trust, so they carry their worries and anxieties in and out the place of prayer, you can do better. When you pray leave your worry at the feet and He will do the rest.

Casting all your cares (worries, anxieties) upon him (because) he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

God wants us to believe, to be be-livers, people who are full of the life and energy of our God.

John the beloved said ‘ many signs Jesus did but these are written that we may believe on his name and believing we may have eternal life. Wow!

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There are so many people who came to a point where they ‘gave their lives to Jesus’ but they never continued in the place or rest of faith, they never became believers or be-livers. They flitted in and out of ‘faith’ struggling to have faith for specific needs or emergencies, always wondering if God was there or not.

I used to be like that until I came to a realization that faith is a state and a rest, a confidence in the faithfulness of God and Jesus Christ. I also realized that his place of rest is nurtured not only by the word of God but also by an action of the will, a decision to believe.

Wonderful things happen when we choose the rest of faith, I remember some years back a friend of mine brought the son, a little boy, to be prayed with. The boy had had some problem in the stomach and up until then the doctors had not been able to figure out what was wrong. We were in the midst of friends when the young man was brought to me, so I couldn’t pray as I would have done normally, but I lifted up the young man to my chest and prayed the strangest prayer ever, I really don’t know why I prayed like that, I have never done so before then, but I prayed ever so quietly ‘Lord, let your life in me enter this young man’ and I put him down and he went on his way. Friend, that was the end of the problem. God’s life swallowed up the trouble in the young man. To be honest I felt nothing, it was all God but it turned out all good!

That was an eyeopener to me, I saw that the life of God is a spiritual quality, the very presence of the Holy Spirit in us and is available or manifest by faith

Look at this

But If the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He that raised Christ from the dead shall also quicken (make alive) your mortal body by His Spirit that lives in you. Romans 8:11

It is a statement of truth but it must be believed to be experienced.

It is be-living that helps us through all these challenges and in the process makes us better not bitter, wiser and not more cynical, more compassionate and gentle and not more hardened and unfeeling.

Life happens, it is a rough, hard world out there. There is a devil whose business is it to make things as difficult as he can, we make mistakes, people do stuff to us and we don’t know as much as we think we do.

It is be-living that helps us through all these challenges and in the process makes us better not bitter, wiser and not more cynical, more compassionate and gentle and not more hardened and unfeeling.

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Only the life joined in faith to Jesus can produce such positive outcomes from the many negatives that we daily contend with.

I saw that the life of God is a spiritual quality, the very presence of the Holy Spirit in us and is available or manifest by faith

Never forget faith is not just for having things it is for becoming something, that’s where the power is

I remember the day that this light shone ever so more brightly in my heart. For years I had read the last words of Jesus to his disciples from the book of Mark, the 15^th Chapter

Jesus said

And these signs shall follow them that believe, in my name they shall speak cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues.

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. Mark 16:17-18

For years had I believed that I was supposed to believe God for these signs to follow my life and ministry, so I prayed and ‘trusted’ for them until one day the light shone, I saw it. I was not supposed to believe for the signs, I was supposed to live believing and the signs would follow, the fruit of a life lived in union with Jesus. The life of be-living!

Then I remembered that Jesus also said, the persons who believed in him, would do the same things he did (John14:12), he was referring to the life lived in complete dependence on him and his words, the be-living life.

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That was it, it changed my focus from what was in the hands of the Lord to the person of Jesus himself. He was the key to the fruitful life, the life of be-living.

Jesus had so many ways of saying the same thing, in John 15 he said

I am the vine and you are the branches, except you abide in me you shall not produce fruit (John 15:5 par.)

There is a cure  and a solution to life’s difficulties and it is to be a be-liver, to live the life of faith in Jesus. This is man’s highest and most noble purpose, to live life in union with God through Jesus.

It is the only thing that can transform us and make us daily like Jesus, nothing else can, not the keeping of religious rules and the practice of the strictest forms of self-discipline.

I encourage you today to be a be- liver

Tonye Oliver

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