By Him, all things were created.  Things that are in Heaven and in the Earth, both visible and invisible.  Whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16).

The Builder Himself came down to the built, the maker to the made, and lived with them in skin.

Through Him, all things were made that have been made, yet it, they, we did not recognize Him.

The most stunning puzzle of all Eternity, God Himself, the only self-existent God, lived a life of a creature, indwelt the flesh, and became man.

The one deserving to be served, served, and humbled Himself to His Father’s will.

Untold angels peered on into this delivery, as messengers came by.  Prophets of old had desired to understand this, and the multitude of the heavens looked on to comprehend.  What was this bold, blazoned, bizarre, and blessed plan of God?

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For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Philippians 1:21

Who cares what this life will bring?  Why do we involve ourselves with what will come in this life?

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

1 John 2:16

For surely, whether I live, I live for the Lord, and whether I die, I die for the Lord.

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This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

1 John 1:5-7

The verdict God brought was that men loved darkness rather than the light.  They preferred to remain hidden, covered, and in the shadows.  From the fall, man has chosen to hide from God at His approach, and to fashion inadequate coverings to hide his nakedness.

In God, there is no darkness at all.  There is no shadow of turning in Him. From the beginning, Light shone forth, the radiance of God, and called forth light, and light was.  And, from this light, all creation exists.  But, it is the continual union with the Lord that all life is.

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So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

Ephesians 4:17

The mind is of the flesh, and is no more capable of producing the righteousness of God than anything else.  All of the Gospel is supernatural, from it’s birth, to it’s resurrection.  What man could not do, either through the law or otherwise, in his weakened state of the flesh, God has done.  Any notion of Gospel thoughts that does not entirely depend upon the Lord, from inspiration and revelation, to the walking out of it in the streets and the paths of men has no more possibility of producing an Eternal result than would planting a seed from one type of tree with the expectation of producing another.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit (John 3:6).  It is only the anointing that breaks the yoke (Isaiah 10:27).  The end sum of the matter, when we are desiring to see the change in the Earth for the sake of His Kingdom, is if the miracle does not come the way we wanted, it is simply because of our own faith (Mark 11:23).  While God, who is rich in mercy, knows all along when something truly is too much for us, and sends us by another way (Exodus 13:17).  He will often take us a longer way, simply to teach us how to walk by faith, so that once we reach our Jordan, and our promised land, that we are fully prepared in faith and His Spirit to take the land before us.

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Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.

Mark 11:23

Faith preaching gets a bad name these days.  Somewhere along the line, in the culture of today, in a large degree the church in the West, the church has taken up the concept of a supernatural faith as almost a negative thing.  It is not a surprise, really, for the carnal mind will always be at war against true spirituality.  And hence faith, because faith does not align with the carnal intellect but with the spirit of a man, seems peculiar.

Jesus’ words are clear, however.  The disciples were rebuked time and again for their unbelief, their lack of faith.  This word, unbelief, is simply anti-faith.  It is the same word, unbelief, doubt, lack of faith, that is simply the Greek word for faith (some form of the word “pistis”) with the prefix “a-”  attached.  Where all the variants of the words translated “faith”, “believe”, or “trust” all come from the same Greek word.  The Greek word for unbelief, transliterated into English, is “apistis”.

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Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

Faith is the substance, the spiritual substructure or foundation of a thing, that if you have it, you have it, you have the actual thing in spiritual form.  While hope is relative to the future, faith is always a “Now” thing.  Because to have the substance of the thing is to have it in actuality, while the manifestation of the material or appearance of a thing may be yet forthcoming, the presence of faith, the presence of the thing in the Spirit, is the same as having it in the natural.  True faith, when it is real faith, and it is not ever wrong.  If the thing does not appear, either keep waiting, you got off faith, or it was not faith in the first place.

However, faith is not only the substance of a thing hoped for, it is also the proof of a thing.  This is important also to know.  While the faith is the presence of a thing, simply to have faith is proof that it is so.  You cannot have God’s kind of faith in a lie, and because “faith” and “wrong”  cannot happen in the same place at the same time, you will never have faith in a non-thing.  Faith cannot be attached to a fantasy.  Faith, goes beyond substance to the evidence and proof that something is.

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Matthew 13:44

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

1. This verse is the picture of True Gospel Faith. Biblically, you don’t spell Faith R-I-S-K, you spell it S-I-G-H-T. When you see something in the Spirit, whether the carnal agrees, that alone gets you to do what seems out of place to the world, to obtain the desired end. The only time DOUBT, hence risk,comes in is when the carnal mind converses with the spiritual mind.
2. All spiritual pursuit and “gifts” work through the principle of Seeing, Selling, and Buying to receive, even Salvation. When you see Jesus, you must forsake everything else. Consider the parable of the the mustard seed: there are not multiple types of seeds sown to produce the entirety of the Kingdom, one seed produces everything. Not only would you find many gifted people with a testimony of “selling” to obtain what they saw, similar to this, you will not find any other. Whether it’s salvation, prophecy, healing, or anything else, it is the knowledge of the treasure that propels.
3. The person in faith is a “prisoner” to joy, to happiness. Here, it is depicted in the Joy. Considering Matthew 5, true Faith, rooted in God and Christ, results in happiness at expected deliverance, comfort, or other promise. The man poor in Spirit, knowing he is all right with God, is happiest then, in that place, because the Kingdom is his. Those in mourning are happy then, because heavenly comfort will come. The man in the “dire straights” of sell all is joyful because he sees the treasure. There is no fear. Emotional warfare breaks off. You sit at the door awaiting salvation. You accelerate into your deliverance instead of limping into the ambulance when it arrives. Hugely Happy are those… Because. It is the treasure that results in happiness.
4. The work of the gospel is truth, not performance or striving or guessing. The thing that keeps you going is the treasure itself. If the man in the field wavered half-way through, he would not have to work harder, he would simply go sneak another peek at the treasure. Denial is the Devil. Truth keeps you going. Obstruction is an opportunity for more faith.
5. Unless you see, you cannot receive. Even if you happened to buy the field, without the revelation, it continues to be empty to you, despite the treasure within. John the Baptist said a man cannot receive anything unless it is given to him by heaven.
6. A Focused life is essential to walking by the Spirit. It is only by the selling that we can receive. When the eye is single (incorrectly translated “good”), the whole body is full of light. The fires of the passions of the heart are not inexhaustible, and we will simply run out of enthusiasm. Unless we let go of what we have invested in bitterness, unforgiveness, and pain, we cannot fully receive the Kingdom. When the fullness of the treasures of our hearts are fully invested in the right place, the purchase is not hard. It follows that we generally do have the resources on hand to do do what needs to be done to see the treasure become ours, it is just a matter of being willing to part with the familiar and mundane to procure the sure divine.
7. The presence and purity of faith, not its quantity, is the only thing required. It didn’t take a big mind to make this transaction. The only thing that could stop the man was only doubt that it was there or worth it. It was there. Simply the vision of the true, and a recognition of that was ll that was ever required for the simplest to the most complex to become the richest. Faith becomes the “extension cord” from God’s supply to you, not the power itself, according to Jesus (Mark 11:23).
8. You can only have faith for what you’ve seen. No one else agrees with your wisdom, because no one else sees the treasure. While every criticism has a grain of truth they say, for the man in the field, everyone points out the worthless field, to which he agrees, and the value of the possessions, to which he agrees, but continues on straight ahead based on perfect logic, confidence, and truth of that which is “hidden”. The proof of faith is treasure in hand, not procurement of the field. You can keep all the fleshly manifestations, the thing that matters is the gold, silver, and precious gems. But, you might not get the goods without them.
9. The Gospel is always Good News. No one is “losing” anything, at least permanently, only gaining. The only reason for apparent asceticism is the greatness of something better, God Himself. Religion uses mental agreement and “imagination”. Kingdom uses revelation and true sight. It’s a matter of discovery and correct appraisal.
10. The gospel is as simple as a good business deal. The point of sale looks like to death to the blind, but life to the one who sees. It cost Kathryn Kuhlman everything every time she came out to the platform, but I’d take a hundred of what she had and lose everything else if I could. It’d be worth it a billion times over. The world cannot see nor enter this. We cannot all expect to be Kathryn, but we can all receive a “word” (or vision) from heaven and step out into it. We can’t all be “that”, but we can all be “all that God has called us to be” and nothing else. The only thing truly “deadly” is selling some and not buying the field in the end, or going and “fleshing out”, buying something else so you no longer have the resources to buy what you originally intended to buy.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.

Matthew 13:33

Thoughts and beliefs are powerful things.  Jesus said that to look with lust at a woman was to commit adultery, and to be angry at someone without a cause is to murder him.  Ultimately, it is what you think and what you believe that will either deliver you or condemn you to an eternal judgement of hell.

We can tend to look at our actions primarily, in the Christian life, but the unsurrendered self is perhaps the most dangerous weapon against the Kingdom, even as a believer.  Yet one sinner can destroy much good (Ecclesiastes 9:18).

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The people of Israel called the bread manna.

Exodus 16:31

“Manna”, the name given by the Israelites to the bread which came out of heaven, means “What is it?”  Though the bread fell on the ground every morning, and the Israelites ate it for 40 years in the wilderness, the name they gave it is the name that stuck.  When they saw it, they wondered what this thing was, as Moses commanded them to gather it to eat it.

They didn’t know what it was, but it was their bread.  Scripture calls it in other places the “bread of angels”.  Jesus later said that He was the true bread that came down from heaven (John 6:41), that whoever ate this bread, His flesh, and this wine, His blood, that they would live forever.

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And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.

Matthew 21:22

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1 KJV).  It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (NAS).  Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (NIV).

Faith is God’s standard to reject the status quo, to step Beyond what society tells you is right and wrong and to listen to God’s standard.  Faith in God and in Christ is what causes division.

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