Deborah_ said:
But that isn't what Hebrews 4:2 is about.
"We also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them because those who heard did not combine it with faith."
The 'word' is God's promise of salvation, first spoken to the Exodus generation and now being spoken to us.
It will do us no good unless we believe it and act upon it (just as the Exodus generation died in the wilderness because they refused to believe that God would enable them to defeat the Canaanites in battle). Read the whole of Hebrews chapters 3 & 4 to see it in context.
God's word promises us salvation, if we believe it. It does NOT promise us healing, money, a new car, or petrol in the middle of nowhere. (God MAY give us these things, but He doesn't guarantee them)
And it isn't speaking God's word, but acting upon it, that generates power.
I'm sure you would love for me to agree with you, but sorry i gotta disagree, God has done too much in my lifetime in our family and a lot of people that I and my parents know personally for me to agree with you hahahha. The "good news" is not singled out to salvation and praise God for that, so you are mistaken there, God's word promises heaps, for those who follow and i could list a whole lot of them if you wanted. Anything is possible by faith. But that's where a lot of us Christians miss out on God's promises, as simple as Jesus talks about moving mountains, asking and receiving, it can be a very difficult task for many Christians, and i will admit i still struggle with it, a lot of Christians do, instead of using faith to remove problems, they use doubt, and we just gotta eliminate that doubt.
Any Christian could do anything some healing evangelist could do, if we were to use faith, we could even raise the dead with faith, and to put it shortly of what I believe is the difference between many of us and a great healing evangelist, is they simply have got a bigger and stronger faith muscle then we do, they got the same faith muscle as everyone who has received salvation, but the difference is they have exercised it more, therefore if they are to continue in the path they are just gonna be more and more successful everytime through Christ. Then there are some with a flying head start, who may do many wonderful miracles through Christ in the 1st day or maybe the 1st few weeks of being saved, and surely those kinda of new Christians definitely have an immediate healing ministry calling on their lives,
but wow, guess what? Those kinda new Christians haven't even been educated yet to think like a Bible scholar, haha amazing isn't it? Believe it or not doctrine & theology can water down the gospel and what all God's word has to promise, an educated man's thinking can water it down, just because he has been trained at Bible school to be a pastor, or to become a so-called expert in theology, does not mean he understands the Bible correctly, and i must be outraging some people on this post by now.
So what is faith? It's
expecting, acting, believing, proclaiming, it's not limited to just Salvation.
Expectation & Believing
My apologies for this verse, i know how many times people have heard it, yet so many of us fail at it.
Mark 11:23 - Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.
If we wanna get rid of a mountain, if we want to get rid of a problem, we gotta believe in the "
now" that it will happen before it comes to pass, and it will, it may be instant or it may be a while, but we are to keep believing, and pumping our faith up, we are to expect that this miracle is gonna happen, this financial struggle is going to go away, God's promise here is clear as a bright blue sky, he or she who speaks to the mountain move and expects it to happen, believes for it to happen, will definitely come to past. And that is a promise from above! Receive it, do whatever you gotta do to keep your mind from wandering into a doubtful state! Whether if it's reading, listening, watching stories of miracles, testimonies, meditating on the miracles in God's word or going through the Bible and finding all of God's promises or spending quiet time with God. It will come to pass if you keep on truly believing.
We can look at an example of the lame beggar in Acts 3, now you may say he was expecting "money", but he was expecting something,
expecting is the key word here, he would have been expecting anything whether if it's money, a friend, food, clothes, clean water or something else, but the main thing is he did not go doubting did he? He was expecting something, Peter then said "I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you." At this point the beggar probably had his eyes wide opened in suspense, and the thoughts of I am gonna receive something, but what is it running through his head, then Peter commanded "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, RISE UP AND WALK!" Peter grabbed his hand and raised him up and what did the beggar do? He was walking, he was leaping, he was praising God. Now all this was a result of God's power combined with faith, both the transmitters and receivers of Peter and the beggar were working, Peter expected, spoke and acted in faith and the beggar
expected in faith. And there we see an example of
the Gospel mixed with faith, we see Peter mixing what Jesus has taught him with faith.
Acts 3:5 And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them.
Acting
Now acting is an action word, it's a doing word, there are countless examples of actions of faith, both in the Bible and in real life, example Smith Wigglesworth walked up to a man with a large tumor on the back, he slapped his hand on his back grabbed the tumor, and shouted in the name of Jesus, tumor be gone!!! and the tumor fell off in Wigglesworth's hand and he placed it on a plate. We see another example of an action of faith, Howard Willard, walks up to a person with deafness in one ear, he places his hands on the deaf ear, and says ear OPEN UP! Immediately the man receives hearing in that ear that was once deaf. Another example is dad acting in faith, by driving on an empty petrol tank for a hundred miles across the outback here in Australia, with mum praying in tongues beside him haha, he has not done that once but a number of times, he has done it when we were traveling to somewhere in Queensland of a great distance, and he has done it right here in Victoria too hahah, he said look my fuel gauge, I'm driving on empty, fueled by the Holy Spirit. Then there are other examples where dad has gone in faith to the airport without a ticket, without much money or any money at all, and God provided him with what he needed at the 11th hour at the airport. They are just a few modern day examples of acting in faith and there's many many more, and many more to come. Then we got the examples in the Bible, like the paralyzed man being lowered from a hole in the ceiling into the temple by faith that he will be healed, the woman who touched the hem of Jesus's garment and was healed of her bleeding issues, even the example where Jesus spits in the mud and rubs it into the blind man's eyes, they're all actions of faith. And with all of those actions we can link it to expectation. Again this is faith mixed with the good news.
Proclaiming & speaking out the word of God
Now we already see many examples of this in the examples I gave before, and it can be as simple as, "Lazarus come forth!", "Get up and walk!", we can say to the blind, deaf and mute "Open Up!" We can say to the Leper "Be Clean!" and again this is linked with expectation and it is also linked with acts of faith, all will come to pass, by speaking to the mountain to move, by speaking healing, by speaking prosperity, by speaking abundance, by speaking words of healing, blessing and life, believing and expecting it to happen, and we can go back to
Mark 11:23 - Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.
And we can look at other biblical verses
Proverbs 18:21 - Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat it's fruits
Proverbs 15:4 - The Soothing tongue is a tree of life, but the perverse tongue crushes the spirit.
Romans 10:8 - But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)
Luke 6:45 - The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
Isaiah 55:10-11 - For as the rain cometh down, and the snow, from heaven, and returneth not thither, but wateret the earth, and maketh it bring froth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth, it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
So what is life when we speak it from the tongue? It is words of blessing, healing, success, victory, that have the power to bless, heal, succeed, prosper and win win win, we are winners through Christ and not losers, we are victors and not the defeated! And we can thank the Lord that we are healed by his stripes according to Isaiah 53:5, we can proclaim in faith "I have asked and i have received!" according to Matthew 21:22!
God's word when mixed with faith is a powerful thing, and it brings a lot of great and wonderful stuff, now when i speak of God's word, i don't mean just the Bible, there's a few Christians out there who get a word of knowledge direct from heaven, and that can bring healing, that can get rid of financial struggles, that can bring them a new house, a new car. God's word is not just the Bible, but it is also the spoken word, that God speaks to us, which maybe through visions, dreams, actually hearing God's voice and many other ways.
That's it for now, there's a ton of good promises for us written in the Bible and not just only from within the Bible, but also from the Holy Spirit within us! Go and find out for yourself.
:jumping_smiley22:
