Faith. Belief. Without it, we will never please the Creator, which should be our foremost thought.
If we are only alive to please our selves, then which god are we serving? For make no mistake about it, to quote Dylan, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
And the only way to serve the Creator is by faith. We are shut up to it. Why? Because God is invisible, and since He is an invisible Spirit, we must believe Him, having never seen Him with our eyes. And that takes faith.
And then someone will say, “Well, I believe in God. I must have faith and am all right, then.” Not exactly. For even the devils believe in one God and tremble (1). The prophets tell us that we must believe on Him “as the scripture has said.” The “rivers of living water,” which is His Spirit, will only flow out of those who believe on Him the way the scripture has actually portrayed God (2).
How to walk with God by faith
Every step we take on our spiritual pilgrimage back to our Father is done through faith. The first step is the renunciation of our old sinful life. God commands that we put it to death on the cross with Christ–not literally, but spiritually. We have to let it die in order to receive a new life and a new heart. “We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (3).
The scenario goes like this. Some will get sick and tired of doing bad things (sinning) and can’t in their own power stop. Their conscience bothers them. They want to stop sinning, which is breaking the ten commandments, but an evil unseen force overtakes them, and the good they want to do, they cannot do. And the evil things they don’t want to do, they can’t stop doing (4). This is the state of an unregenerated human being prior to the cross experience. His old nature is still present. So how does one put the old sinful heart on the cross to die with Christ and then to be “raised to walk in a newness of life”?
The Reckoning
How do we do it? How do we let the old self die and our new life in Christ begin? We reckon it done by faith/belief. We have to “reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Christ” (5). We’ve got to reckon it done! The word “reckon” is #3049 in Strong’s. It means “to account it, to count it as such.”
God wants us to reckon it so, but He does it first! He has already reckoned our change done. When we believe Him, then He counts us righteous in His eyes even in our imperfect state. It is His nature to “call those things that do not exist as though they did” (6). If He is this positive, then He would want His children to be the same.
He wants us to follow in His footsteps! God “accounted” righteousness to Abraham because of his belief—before Abraham was righteous! “Accounted” here is the same word as the one translated “reckon.” We are commanded to RECKON some things done. Now we have to reckon our sinful self gone—by belief—as though it were already done—for that is how God looks at it! By belief! Reckon it done through Him and His faith. He said it. Let it be done. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Rom. 4:3. Yahweh imputed or reckoned to Abraham the ability to live in a upright manner, keeping Yahweh’s laws and not sinning, by just believing that Yahweh had done it! We make it so hard through our hard heart of unbelief. He is looking for childlike faith, the belief of a small child. All we have to do is just believe that Yahweh has provided a way for us to actually put the old life to death and start living a new life in Him.
The Churches Won’t Touch This
But the “Christian” denominations don’t believe it is possible. The pastors won’t touch this, for it will get them fired. The people in the pews don’t believe it, for they have been told all their life by those very pastors that they are sinners and that they will die a sinner. The pulpits present no hope of ever really changing the heart. The “deliverance” they preach is window dressing. Just come to church, pay your tithes and offerings, and don’t rock the boat. But the people in the pews still sit there in their private sins, undelivered. But the future sons and daughters of God will long for more and will come out of her.
They will take this first step by faith, by reckoning it done. Then, by faith, they will take the next step, and the next, and they will begin to walk in the Spirit.
But someone will say, “But we just can’t live without sin.” Of course , we can’t. That’s why we have to die on the cross with Christ and by faith receive a new heart, His heart, His Spirit. We who do this have the victory–victory over sin and sinning. For if we are still sinning, where is the victory? Our faith is our victory (7).
But we have to want this new life. We have to pant after it like a desperately thisty deer. We have to throw ourselves upon His mercy and break–break our hard hearts, and so He will come and comfort and heal us by giving His very Spirit into us, giving us a new heart.
Our part is to believe that “with God [in us] all things are possible.” Even to live a life without sin and sinning. Impossible, you say? Not with Christ, for He said, “And nothing shall be impossible to you…All things are possible to him that believes” (8). And again, “The things that are impossible with men are possible with God” (9).
Somebody is going to pick up the Book, believe its contents, and change the world. By faith. And He wants it to be us. Kenneth Wayne Hancock
- James 2: 19
- John 7: 38
- Romans 6: 6-8
- Romans 7: 15-20
- Romans 6: 11
- Romans 4: 7
- I John 5: 4
- Mark 9: 23
- Luke 18: 27
{You can read more on this in my book, here: http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/yahch30.htm