As I begin this lesson on living faith, I want to start out talking about the Incarnation. In former lessons we have talked about the seed of the woman, the virgin birth and the cross which are all part of the message of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the understanding that God took upon himself human flesh. As a man Jesus demonstrated how faith operates, what it looks like in action and lived his life by faith.
Jesus is the pattern son and our goal is to be conformed into his image. Our purpose in this life as a follower of Christ is to learn how to allow Him to live his life through us. Christ himself told us that our main mission is to first love God with all of our hearts and souls. Then out of that love we are to lay down our lives for others walking with them and helping whomever we can along our journey. It’s impossible to do this through our own strength, but with God all things are possible. Faith is about learning to allow the unseen God, who created all things, to work in our hearts so that He can then work through our lives.
The Incarnation is what I call living faith. Faith is learning to lean on the strength of another whom you cannot see, but who is your covenant partner. Faith is simply relying on the grace of Christ to lead you, strengthen you, protect you and provide for you along your journey. The walk of faith is all about fulfilling God’s will for our lives. He has saved us so that he can live his life through us since we are his body.
We are literally his hands and his feet in this earth as we walk along our journey. It is a journey of faith from beginning to end.
Paul wrote to the church in Rome telling them that the message of Christ, transforms us through the cross. It's the power of God at work in this creation, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first then people in all nations who will receive it. It’s the good news of how God brings us into union with Himself through the grace freely given through Christ. It is accomplished from start to finish and beginning to end, by faith. As the Scriptures say, it is through faith that the people of God have always related with Him.
The author of Hebrews goes so far as to say that without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would draw near to Him must believe that he exists number one and that he rewards those who seek him number two. God doesn’t just want fellowship with us, He is a loving Father who wants to care for us, provide for us and give us what we need to fulfill His will. Faith is the beginning and end of our walk with God. Faith is the channel by which we access the spiritual realm. It’s how we please the Father and fulfill His will.
Chapter 11 of Hebrews is called the great hall of faith where the author tells us what faith is and how those who have done great things for God through the centuries have accomplished those acts by faith. The English Standard Version translates Hebrews 11:1 saying: now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The New Living Translation translates this text saying faith shows the reality of what we hope for, it is the evidence of things we cannot see. God’s Word Translation says it this way. Faith assures us of things we expect and convinces us of the existence of things we cannot see. I like how the God’s Word Translations says it. To me it helps me understand that faith is a fully persuaded position that the unseen hand of God is moving in the tangible seen creation on our behalf to lead us, restore us, heal us and provide for us.
Hebrews 11:2–3 goes on to say that God has always accepted, walked with and provided for his people on the basis of faith. Faith convinces us that the unseen God created what we can see, hear, feel, taste and smell in this created space we live in. It was all done through the creative power of His word when He spoke and it was done. The gospel of John chapter 1:1-3 says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. This means what can be seen was made by something that could not be seen. It also means the spiritual reality of the kingdom of God is a more solid, stable and secure reality than the one we experience through our physical bodies.
God’s means of operation from the beginning has always been about faith because faith is the nature of God. It’s how He created all things.
Faith is learning to trust in the unseen God who reaches into this tangible creation to take care of those who walk by faith. It’s an amazing reality that everything that we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste with our five senses was made out of what you can’t see. In the dimension beyond what we can physically see with our natural eyes is where the real action originates. Do you see radio waves or Wi-Fi running through your house? No, you don’t. How about 5g transmissions? No, because it moves by the power of the air beyond what we see with our eyes. Do you see the wind? No. Now you can feel and see the effects of the wind, but you can’t see the wind.
We live in a spiritual world, but trapped in a physical body.
Faith is the channel by which we pull the unseen into the seen and it’s the unseen hand of God that heals, restores, provides and for us. It’s the river of grace flowing from the throne of the lamb and we just become the channel that the word of life flows through. It’s through faith that the unseen realm of the kingdom is breaking in upon this world like a river. You can’t see it with your eyes, but you see its effect in the heart of man. When we live out our faith in this world the kingdom of darkness is exposed, people’s eyes are opened, chains of addiction and darkness are destroyed as we live and speak the word of God.
Faith is the means by which the spiritual man operates.
Faith could be called the mouth, hands and feet of the spiritual man releasing the life of God from the inside out. Grace is about change from the inside out, while faith is about releasing the power of grace from within our hearts, to the physical creation bringing change to the created order. It’s when Jesus turned the water into wine, He blessed 5 loaves of bread and fed 5 thousand people, He healed the sick, He cast out demons, He told the wind to be still and many other signs demonstrating faith. Jesus is our prototype. A prototype is a first or a preliminary model of something from which other forms are developed or copied.
Jesus is the prototype producing children in his image. He is the model, the pattern, the mold that God set forth and He is head of His body – He’s the Firstborn and we are being conformed to His image.
I want to talk to you a little bit about my ministry, education and understanding of the Bible. What you are listening to today is a lesson within a school of discipleship. It is my specific calling which is being gifted as a foundational teacher. All of us have gifts and in section 3 of this school I will help you to begin to discover, understand and operate in the gifting that God has given you. Paul the apostle said in Romans 12:3 that: by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. He then goes on to list 7 different gifts.
It says that it is by faith that we operate in our gifts and the maturing of our gifts can take time. I have been developing my gifts for over 30 years. As I said the primary gift, I operate in is foundational teacher and my secondary gift is prophet. As an foundational teacher my primary function is not planting churches, but establishing believers in Christ the foundation of the church. The goal I have, or my mission is that Christ is established in your hearts and that you are being changed from the inside out so that you can do the will of God. I want to help you develop your calling, your vocation, your gifting and encourage you to fulfill the will of God for your life.
I want to help you live out your faith. The focus of my ministry is to present every person complete in Christ.
In my view the Western church's greatest strength is education and its greatest weakness is education. Education is good, but when the development of the mind becomes our primary focus, it can tend to develop intellectualism over spiritual growth. What do I mean by this statement? We have many times placed too great an emphasis on education, learning and the development of the mind over the development of spiritual gifts that operate by faith. I believe in education and I believe it can be very useful. I have 4 degrees and spent 2 years in a discipleship school. I have an associate degree in Liberal Arts, a Bachelor Degree in Theology, A Master’s Degree in Theology and a Bachelor Degree in Business Management. I’m not saying this because I want you to be impressed by my education because I will be quite honest with you. I am not that impressed by my education or anyone else’s pedigree of education.
As I said before Jesus is our prototype and he was educated. As a Jew he would have been educated in the local synagogue. It was not like a basic American education today where a child is in school from 4 years old until 18, but he would have had a basic Jewish education. We know that he knew how to read, he could write, that he understood rabbinical styles of teaching and knew the Hebrew Bible well enough to quote it from memory. The Pharisees and scribes marveled when they heard him teach because they knew Jesus was not technically trained as a Rabbi in their theology schools. He was in their eyes unlearned just like the religious leaders considered the apostles unlearned in Acts 4:13 since none of them were officially trained by the religious elite.
In John 5:39–40 Jesus looking at the religious leaders of his day said you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. To me, it's amazing that the very word of life, the Incarnation who created all things, was standing in their midst, yet they were blind to the truth.
Religious intellectualism can be one of the greatest hindrances to the kingdom of God.
Paul the apostle whom we look to after Jesus as an example to follow had these same religious blinders on and was a great opposer to the expansion of the early church: until the risen Christ changed his heart from the inside out. Paul was one of the Pharisee leaders who laid his cloak down as an approver to the stoning death of Stephen, the first martyr of the church in Acts 8:1. It was soon after this incident while on the road to Damascus that Paul was transformed. He had letters in his hand to show the Synagogue leaders in Damascus that he was sent by the religious leaders of Israel to arrest believers in the risen Christ, who had fled Jerusalem due to persecution and bring them back for trial and punishment in Jerusalem. Paul however was arrested by the risen Christ and given a ministry. He was commissioned with a measure of faith to reach the nations with the gospel.
The conversion of Paul put the trajectory of the church on a completely different path.
Paul was a very educated man, he was a Jew and a Roman citizen by birth who was born in Tarsus, a city which is located in what is today southern Turkey. He was born into a family that had Roman citizenship so that would have meant his family-owned land and were prominent members of the community. His family would have been orthodox in their Jewish faith because in Philippians 3:5, Paul describes himself as a Hebrew born of Hebrews. Paul on occasions appealed to his Roman citizenship if you look at Acts 16:37 and Acts 22:26. The rights and privileges of being a Roman citizen included a fair public trial for him if he was accused of any crime and gave him protection against instant execution.
Paul was of the Pharisee sect and belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. Paul was raised to be an observant Jew. He was sent as a young man to Jerusalem educated at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the main recognized scholars who taught Paul according to the strict manner of the law. In Galatians 1:4 Paul describes himself before his conversion. He said I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of our fathers. Paul was extremely religious and well educated in the Old Covenant Law. He would be considered a linguist, which is someone who studies languages because he knew Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek well enough to speak and write them. In addition, he understood the different cultures of his day. As an observant Jew he grew up in Greek culture. He was a Roman citizen and educated as a strict keeper of Torah law. Paul wrote over half of what we call the New Testament Bible that we read today.
A lot of people get hung up on how the Bible was written. To some this is a stumbling stone and people will use this as an excuse not to believe in God because they feel we can’t have confidence in the veracity of the Bible. A vast majority of people in the West have grown up with at least a basic familiarity with the bible.
To some the Bible is held up as an idol that people worship. Treating the Bible as God and others look at the Bible as a book that is full of fairy tales for weak minded people.
I could sit here and bore you with 3 lessons on the validity of the Bible, how it was written, how it was formally put together, the linguistics and different translations of the Bible we use today for faith. I believe that those studies are important and I appreciate those who dedicate their lives to provide us with those resources. I access many resources that scholarly men have spent their lifetimes putting together. I appreciate their sacrifice and it helps me to build my faith, but it’s not my focus. I’m talking about this because faith comes from hearing the word of God.
I take Paul’s position when he said in II Timothy 3:16-17 that scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. If you have listened to any of this school, then you know that I quote the Bible both Old and New Testament quite often and use it as a guide in all that I teach. I’ll let you know some of the resources that I use in my daily study.
I like to study and read the English Standard Version translation. I do most of my reading and study with a software called the Logos Bible Software. You can get the free version of the app or get a paid version that gives you tons of resources. The original language of the Old Covenant Bible is Hebrew and the original language of the New Covenant Bible is Koinonia Greek. All Bibles that you read are translations unless you know Hebrew and Greek which I do not. All translations are interpretations to some degree, but as with any translation some give you more interpretation than others. Logos Bible Software will give you multiple translations to a text and it will help you get more meaning from the text along with cross references because understanding God’s word is what you are looking for so you can actually apply it to your lives.
You will find those people that will tell you that the King James Version is the only Bible to use and if you are using any other translation then it’s leading you to hell. Ridiculous, invalid and actually a dumb argument to say the least. I don’t have time to argue with what I consider legalistic lunacy. To take that position is just a divisive spirit and I recommend avoiding such people who live in the lower nature.
I also use a Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words that gives me Hebrew and Greek understanding. I do still use a physical Bible called the Key Word Study Bible. It’s one I have had for 25 years and I’ve learned a lot through it. It was written by a Hebrew Greek Scholar Spiros Zodhiates and has been invaluable to me over the years and I still pull it out because it will help me to understand the original language which can help you with the original intent of the scripture. A small book that has been a tremendous help to me over the years and is easily understood by most people is How To Read the Bible For All It’s Worth written by Gordon D. Fee. It’s an excellent small book on how to study, read, contextualize and interpret the sacred text we call the Bible. The resources available to us today are enormous so ignorance is no longer an excuse. If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email at darren@foundationpub.org.
I view education and all learning as important, but I consider it manure. What do I mean? Paul in Philippians chapter 3 goes through a list of his credentials. He lists his Jewish ancestry, educational pedigree and the things that would have made him important in the eyes of those who seemed to be important. He then said in Philippians 3:7-8 that whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing wealth of knowing Christ Jesus my lord. The word loss here can be translated as rubbish, garbage, what is thrown out to the dogs, refuse and dung. Dung is the excrement of animals or commonly known as manure.
If you’ve ever grown a garden, then it’s important to have a mulch pile or container where you create mulch. When you have rotted food, grass clippings, leaves or any organic material then you put it in a pile, or a bin and it creates a good fertilizer to help you grow plants. Education should be viewed as good manure that can be used to help us grow in Christ, but it cannot become our identity.
In the Western church we have relied on education and the development of the mind over developing the spiritual man within us and it has produced a very ineffective faith many times. Why is it when you go to South America, Africa or Asia that you see the power of the Spirit moving? You see people healed and delivered by the power of God? Is it because they are somehow special? Look at Paul’s ministry when he went to the city of Athens in chapter 17:16-34. The city was the center of Greek learning which emphasized the development of the mind and body because they were the equivalent to our modern way of life today.
Americans are the offspring of the Greek and Roman ways. The Greek philosophers sat around and debated one another about whose ideas were the most noble while the city was full of idolatry, debauchery and the works of the lower nature. Paul preached the gospel to them, but unlike other areas of the Roman world he had very small results and there were no miracles or moving of the Spirt like we see in his other missionary endeavors. Why? It was because the intellectualism of the Athenians kept them from a heart of faith. Intellectual pride kept them from the moving of the Spirit and it’s the same thing that has happened to the Western Church.
Intellectualism can produce skepticism and doubt concerning the Spirit’s ability at work. Faith bypasses the mind because it’s trusting what you can’t see, touch and taste with your natural senses. Faith is not blind, but it’s having the eyes of our hearts opened to the unseen hand of God. It’s why Jesus said to the Pharisees that you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
Christianity did not begin as a belief system, a theology, or a set of ritual practices. It began as a way of living based on faith in the living risen Christ.
Our faith is not based on a book per se, but on the person of Christ. Faith bypasses the intellect since faith is the nature of God. By faith we acknowledge that everything we see with our natural eyes: the unseen hand of God created. This is what Paul told the Athenians in Acts 17:23-31. He said: I was walking along and I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it:
To an Unknown God. This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about. He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples and human hands can’t serve his needs - for he has no need. He himself gives life and breath to everything and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall and he determined their boundaries. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps find their way toward him - though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold and silver or stone. God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead. It says that for the most part that the intellectual Greek’s laughed and ridiculed Paul. As always, the skeptics said an interesting theory, but we’ll come back to this topic and debate you at a later time. Let’s hear something else that tickles our ears.
I can tend to be an intellectual because I enjoy studying, contemplating, debating ideas and there is a place for that because for a teacher it sharpens your understanding. Paul was not anti-intellectual if you read his writings. Paul was well educated intellectually and culturally, but he had a spiritual depth that few have ever touched. If you read Paul, you will see that he even quoted Greek philosophers of his day, so he was not opposed to intellectualism.
Debate has a valid place within and without the Christian community because if your ideas are not being challenged then you never know if they are good ideas. However, if your ideas are not being forged out through experience then you can become an arrogant idealist. Intellectualism can lead to arrogance as Paul said in I Corinthians 8:1 that knowledge puffs up or can make you arrogant, but love builds up.
Arrogance will blind you from the simplicity of the truth. I see this as a common problem in the Western church today.
It is people who feed from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but have no change of heart because they have not been touched by the Spirit of God. All they have is a good dose of religion and enough religion to be inoculated from the truth. Today we have those whom Paul called forever learning, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth. In II Timothy 3:7 Paul talked about these people who have been inoculated by religion. You know those running from church to church or video to video accumulating spiritual knowledge, yet their lives are never changed.
I know people who are highly educated and always learning, but can’t get themselves out of a wet paper bag. We have them sitting in the church, training in seminaries and preaching from pulpits across America, but very little evidence that Christ is changing them from the inside out. I’m not trying to be critical, but I am trying to wake you up. Let’s take a look at this statement Paul made in II Timothy 3:7 ‘the knowledge of the truth’ because it’s a key to understanding living faith. In I Timothy 2:14 he uses similar terminology saying that God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
The Greek word knowledge used in these texts has the idea of more than just knowing facts, but it has the idea of a thorough participation with the truth. It’s more than just information, but a living reality that changes the heart. James the apostle talked about this same concept in his epistle. James 2:17-18 says, faith without action is dead. He says that even demons believe and shudder at the name of Jesus, but it doesn’t change them. Facts don’t change the heart.
If we don’t have a thorough participation with the truth where the word is living in us, then we can have knowledge that’s in our heads, but never moves to our hearts changing our lives.
James 1:22-25 says, we must be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves. Religion is deceiving because as I said, it inoculates you against the truth. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he looks like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres he will be blessed in his doing.
Paul in this same letter to Timothy talked about those who have a form of godliness, but have denied its power. It’s called religion: where you say you’re a believer, but your actions demonstrate that you live in the lower nature, producing not the fruit of the Spirit, but the works of the flesh. In II Timothy 3:1-5 Paul talks about the last day's difficulties and he lists pretty much all the works of the lower nature in Galatians 5:19-21 that we looked at in the last lesson. He then sums it up by saying, religious people will have a form of godliness, but they have denied the power of God. It’s their rejection and denial of the power of the Holy Spirit that makes them susceptible to the corruption of the lower nature.
It’s only by participation with the power of the Spirit that we can be brought into a thorough participation with Christ. Faith is of the heart not the mind. You can get a parrot to recite, memorize and confess facts, but it’s just facts. Religious people are just like parrots. Saying the right things, but a parrot can’t do anything, but talk. Religious people are talkers with no action and no fruit.
Jesus said, you will know those who are his not by what they say, but by the fruit in their lives.
I want to talk about my personal life once again, as I told you these lessons are part of a school of discipleship. I am not antichurch, but what I am attempting to do is expand your understanding of what the church is actually supposed to be. I spent 25 years of my life in what I would call the church system. Now the church system is large and varied, made up of multiple thought patterns concerning the gospel and multiple ideas of church operations and functionality. I spent my time in the church as a theological student, missionary, pastor and traveling teacher. Due to a lot of life’s circumstances, I completely left what we would call traditional church 10 years ago. I didn’t leave God, nor did He leave me, but I left what most people would define as church life.
I’ve spent the last 10 years working in corporate America for several Fortune 500 companies. I currently work for the largest transportation company in North America using my teaching gift to train employees to do work. Working in the corporate world I’ve learned to use my gifts in whatever circumstances that I am in and I’ve learned to live out my faith in the real world. I came to truly understand over the last 10 years that faith is not standing behind a pulpit, but it’s living the incarnation which is Christ in us no matter where we are at. It’s what each one of us needs to do because we are the body of Christ that he uses to touch this world.
I am going to be getting into how you can identify, develop and put into practice your gifts in section 3 of this school of discipleship. I will also be getting into different systems of church structure because we are one body which is a corporate structure and we must cooperate together like a team to accomplish mission. In this school of discipleship, you get to take advantage of my 30 years of learning condensed down into 52 Lessons.
It’s what a teacher does which is take thirty years of knowledge and condense it down so others can take advantage of what they’ve learned over a long period of time and gain that same knowledge in a short period of time.
Ephesians 4 calls it equipping and it’s why we need to listen to others. I’ve had many men and women equip me along my journey and I am better off today because of their input. We are a body and we need one another. I learn from others all the time. I actually learn many times from people I am training because if there is one thing I’ve learned is that I don’t know everything.
In my daily work I have the privilege of training and teaching people every day. The people I get to train are not people who have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Every now and then I will have someone who has a higher degree, but I’m normally training people who have a high school education, GED or can read at an 8th grade level efficiency. However, I use the same method of teaching I do with you because it’s my teaching style to make things simple, attainable and applicable. If it’s not simple you are not going to understand the content. If it’s simple you understand and when you understand you can take hold of it, participate with it and put it into practice. Knowledge is to be used or it's useless for the individual getting the knowledge and it's useless to help anyone else.
Faith is not passive, but faith is active and if our faith is not active it’s not faith.
Belief is like ‘I believe in the tooth fairy’ or ‘I believe in Santa Klaus’. Belief is not faith. We don’t believe in Jesus like a child believes in the tooth fairy because that’s what demons do, they just believe. Faith changes things and if you are not being changed then you are just a parrot that is reciting what someone taught you to recite. A lot of people go to the front of a church or are sitting in front of a television screen and parrot some prayer that someone told them to repeat thinking they are now saved. Maybe it was the gospel getting planted in their hearts or maybe they just parroted words. The proof is in the pudding.
I can know if you have faith by the fruit you produce. Faith will produce fruit and if your life is not producing the fruit of God’s Spirit, then you just parroted a belief system that someone told you to repeat. True faith is working out our salvation in humility of heart. It’s change from the inside out, but it will have an out working of that living reality within us or its not faith. It's what James talked about, which is having a demonstration of our faith because faith has action.
Faith is not a passive posture, but it is actively living out the life of Christ within our hearts.
The apostle James never said we are saved by works in the sense that works alone produce anything other than dead works. What James was saying is that if we have faith then the fruit of our faith will produce action. Read James 2:14-26 and in the context of those verses he starts out his discourse on the subject of works saying if someone has a need and we simply say bless them with our mouths while it's within our power to help meet a physical need then our faith is not active, but dead. It’s dead or inactive to be able to help anyone else. We might be like the parrot who has been taught to say bless you, bless you, but we just sit on our perch, self-absorbed, eating our food and watching Netflix.
Living faith is simply an expression of the life of Christ within us. It is living out in practical ways the life of faith that affects our day-to-day life and helps others. It’s a practical expression of an inward life.
It’s by grace through faith that we are to live. It’s not striving to be something or get something, but it’s an active participation of living with our covenant partner. Jesus told us to take his yoke. The yoke had to do with working, producing and actively doing something. Faith without action is just wishing. It’s rubbing the genie bottle and hoping we get what we want. True faith is active, but its activity produces a firm expectation that God is working through us. Faith is first about knowing God and it’s out of this thorough participation with Him that we act or bear fruit that others can taste.
Let me say this in a way that people don’t get offended or misunderstand what I am saying. I quote the Bible a lot in this school, but the Bible is a book: it’s not God. The disciples during the book of Acts did not walk around with a Bible in their hands because they didn’t have one. Today we have access to so much information it's mind blowing, but it hasn’t always been this way. The printing press was not invented until 1439 which spurred the Protestant Reformation, but until then books and letters were written by hand on whatever they had. It was tedious, hard work and there weren’t many books written.
The Jewish people throughout the centuries were one of the few groups of people who were meticulous and tedious about preserving the Torah law given through Moses. The Jews have always been a people of the book or Old Covenant Law. As believers in the risen Christ our faith comes from the covenant made with Abraham. In Christ it has been fully revealed and fulfilled.
Unlike today the believers during the time of Christ did not walk around with a Bible in their hands or have access to the information we have. It was estimated that only about 10% of the population could read during the time of Christ and it's why the public reading of scripture was important. It’s why Timothy was told by Paul to give attention to the public reading of scripture in I Timothy 4:1 because it was the main way information was passed along. The vast majority of information was passed along orally. It was called oral tradition and the way ancient societies passed along information from one generation to the next.
One reason I have put these videos together is because not as many people read today as there used to be. The Jews did place a high value on their sacred text and believed that Moses met God face to face and he was given instructions that were written down on how to live out the life of faith. Prophets inspired by the Spirit of God spoke and many times scribes, scholars of the priestly line of Levi produced what we call the Bible today. The New Testament was written by the apostles, so the divisions of the Bible are the Old Covenant Law written mainly by prophets and New Covenant in Christ written by the apostles.
In II Timothy 3:16-17 Paul in his second letter to Timothy said all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. However, when Paul wrote that we did not have what we call the New Covenant Bible. All they had was the old covenant law that was mainly kept in the synagogues. You did have letters that were being written by the apostles which were distributed among the churches, but as I said they did not have access to the amounts of information that we have today. However, they impacted the world around them in a dramatic way. It was said of the 12 apostles that they turned the known world upside down impacting their culture as an effective witness to the risen Christ.
The question we should be asking is how did they do this? Is it because they did not put as much an emphasis on knowledge or a belief system as we do today? Again, don’t misinterpret what I am saying because I believe, as you know by listening to any of my lessons, that I am big on sound doctrine because sound doctrine produces sound living. Sound doctrine is like railroad tracks, but if we don’t have a participation of the Spirit the train is going to just sit on the tracks and move nowhere. It’s what I see many times with the church today. This beautiful train with no power to change anything. Christ is both the wisdom or soundness of truth and the power of God which is the working of the Spirit. The Bible is not an end of itself. Jesus said the scriptures are to lead us into a living relationship with the Spirit of truth and if our participation with the scriptures are not leading to transformation from the inside out then it has been reduced to a religious exercise.
The Bible or sound doctrine does lay parameters or guidelines to filter our knowledge of God. It’s what I’m attempting to do in this school of discipleship which is lay down sound doctrine to keep you out of the ditches of error while at the same time give you enough liberty to walk in the Spirit because it’s our cooperation with the Spirit of God that is going to help us live our faith out in daily life. Intellectualism can be an enemy of faith. Christianity did not begin as a belief system, a theology, or a set of ritual practices. It began as a way of living.
The ultimate goal of all Biblical learning is a faith that is leading us into the image of Christ produced by the Spirit.
Paul told us in Galatians 5:6 that the most important concept that we need to embrace is faith working through love. It’s then in this same chapter that he explains the struggle we will face in this age between yielding to the lower nature or yielding our lives to the Spirit of God. He explains what he calls the works of the lower nature which is the enemy within the gates of our soul. Again, if you have not listened to Lesson 10 Part 2: A Lifestyle Of Repentance, then I encourage you to do that so you can understand more fully what I am explaining.
Paul then starts talking about the fruit that is produced in our hearts through the Spirit’s influence within us. The fruit of the spirit is the evidence of Christ living in our hearts. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control is produced by Christ within us. Paul goes on to say against such things there is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the lower nature with its passions and desires.
You will find those that will try to teach you that Jesus wants you to keep the Torah law just like the false teachers that Paul had to confront. Jesus taught us that we were subject to something greater than the law of Moses. He taught that the kingdom He initiated would be an inward kingdom of the heart during this age. It would change everything from the inside out. He taught that by walking in a covenant relationship with Him we would no longer live by moral codes imposed upon us, but that we would live out of a changed heart from the inside out. Jesus told us that we must be born from above to enter the kingdom of God and Paul further clarified Jesus’s teaching by calling us to live by the new man or the new creation.
We have been called to freedom in Christ, but Paul taught us in Galatians 5:13–15 to not use our freedom as an opportunity for the lower nature to rule us, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is a higher law than the Pharisees taught because it’s the law of the Spirit based on an endless life of power flowing from the throne of the lamb.
We are bound to the law of love found in I Corinthians 13 which is impossible to live except by the power of the Spirit. The morality of the crucified believer surpasses that of the legalistic moralist because you can’t fulfill the law of the Spirit in your own strength.
Living faith is living the cruciform life where you daily acknowledge your death to this world and the Spirit of God breathes new life into you so that you can live the life of faith. The new covenant is a covenant of the Spirit written upon the tablets of our hearts. Paul was a master craftsman in building the church. Paul boiled down our faith to the simplicity of faith working through love. It’s the very essence, substance, vapor or spirit of our faith working through the cross. I’ve learned to become a very simple man because I believe simplicity is the power of living an impactful life.
I’ve spent years studying the Bible and I know it can be overwhelming and intimidating to most people. I understand that, because let’s be honest the Bible is very complex with a lot of different moving parts and has sometimes seemingly contradictory positions within it. I don’t like putting complicated things together, it makes my head hurt and honestly at times the Bible has made my head hurt. I’ve read a lot of commentaries. I’ve read more books than I can count. Back in the day I listened to cassette tapes and CD’s over and over. I’ve always had an insatiable desire for information because it has to do with my gifting.
It wasn’t until I started studying Paul the apostle that I really began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Paul helped me to understand the correlation between the Old Covenant Law and New covenant of the Spirit. Paul helped me to see that the key to understanding the new covenant is understanding that Christ is the all in all. It’s all about Him from the Old Testament Law, Psalms and Prophets to the book of Revelation. It all points to Christ and our joining to Him through covenant.
Christ is the prototype of all creation. He is the New Man and the church both Jew and Gentile are brought under that one New Man.
God chose Paul to unveil this understanding to us. Peter, James, John all wrote great letters. Luke was the great historian, but Paul had a special gift of revelation and it’s mainly through Paul’s writing that we understand the mission of Christ and his body, the church.
Let’s finish up this lesson on living faith with some keys on how to cooperate with the word of God so that faith can grow, mature and produce fruit in our lives. The fruit of faith is a 'living faith', which will change us and as a result our lives will impact the lives of others. As the word of God grows in our hearts, we will be more and more conformed into the image of Christ and we will effortlessly do the 'good works' God has created us to perform. I call it the fruit of faith or a living faith.
The book of Genesis gives us insight into the power of the seed. God put within creation the power of every seed to reproduce after its kind, but it only grows in fertile soil. In Mark 4 Jesus tells the parable of the Sower and then explains this parable. The seed is the word of God and the soil is different types of hearts. Mark 4:20 says that the good fertile soil is a person who hears the word and allows it to be planted in their heart. It’s what James was talking about when he said to receive with humility the ingrafted word which is able to restore your soul. If you will develop a close intimate relationship with the word of God it will reproduce God’s likeness in you.
If you go back and listen to Lesson 2: What is Man? You will see that man is made in the image of God. It doesn’t mean that we look like God because God is Spirit, but it means that we are created to function and operate like God displaying his nature. God is love and when we produce the fruit of God’s Spirit through our souls, we are displaying the image of God. It’s the incarnation of Christ in you. Jesus said that you would know those who are his by the fruit of their lives. You might be the only Bible anyone reads and if they taste the fruit of God’s image through your life then they can be changed.
The word of God will produce faith in those who allow it to be planted in their hearts. Hebrews 4:12 says that "the word of God is full of living power". However, there are principles of growth that we must cooperate with so the word of God can grow in our hearts. We must learn how to cultivate our hearts like a farmer does the soil of his field, so the word will grow.
The first principle is preparation: you have to plow the field so that the seed can get down into the soil. Plowing has to do with repentance and humility. James 1:21 tells us that we must receive the word of God with humility. Our hearts must be humble to accept the simplicity of what God says. The Pharisees searched the scriptures, but their hard hearts kept them from truly understanding. It’s with the heart that man believes not the intellect.
The second principle is planting: It is not enough to just accept what God says, it must be planted in our hearts. James 1:21 uses the word implanted. If someone receives a heart transplant, that heart is planted in them. The word challenges and replaces old thought patterns. It’s more than mind over matter or just positive thinking, but letting the word become your thought patterns which develops new ways of thinking based on God’s view instead of your view. Paul called it the renewing of the mind.
The third principle is watering: Psalms 1:3 says that those who meditate on the word of God become like a tree firmly planted by streams of water. Meditation is an active participation with the word. It’s where we participate with the word and it becomes more than a fact in our head, but a part of our hearts. Meditation is not a parrot just repeating, but more like a cow ruminating.
Cows take time digesting their food. In a nutshell when cows eat they go through a process of digesting their food so they can get the most nutrients out of it. Cows have 4 stomach areas. Cows eat it and the food goes into stomach one. Then they regurgitate the food back into their mouths to chew again and repeat this process 3 more times. It’s called chewing the cud and it is a good example of what we are doing with the word of God. It’s what Paul called setting our minds on things above. It’s not staring off into space, but internalizing the word of God through memorization, contemplation and confession. It’s like when you watered your yard and you use a soaker hose. The best method of watering is soaking and that’s what meditation is soaking in the word.
The fourth principle is the ingredient of light: Psalms 119:130 says "the unfolding of thy words gives light it gives understanding to the simple." As we meditate on the word of God, we will receive understanding and wisdom as to how to live life from the inside out. It’s called revelation or how the spirit unveils truths to our subconscious into our inner man.
The fifth principle is that of time: Psalms 1:3 says that the tree will yield its fruit in its season. It is through faith and patience that we will see fruit grow. Abraham believed what God had said, but it took a season for him to receive the promise. Actually, Abraham never saw the promise come to pass nor his immediate children, but it took over 400 years till the actual fulfillment started to happen. We have 5 ingredients of growth, but we also have some hindrances.
Jesus in Mark 4:15-19 told us about the hindrances that we will face in this age to keep living faith from growing in our hearts. We see four main hindrances which are Satan, the pressures of life, persecution and the works of the lower nature. Jesus explained these four types of hearts as four types of soil.
The first type of soil is hard and crusted soil that has not been plowed. Satan, like a black crackle bird comes down and immediately steals the word from those who have no regard for it. It’s what Jesus called hard hearted ground. It’s the arrogant who don’t see that they have a need for the word of God and are self-sufficient.
The second type of soil is rocky soil. The rocky soil are those who have no depth of heart, but just have an emotional response to the word of God. The rocky soil has two hindrances which are the pressures of life and persecution. When the pressures of life come and everyone will face pressure, then the emotion-based person just throws in the towel and gives up. They’ll say I gave it a try, but this God thing just doesn’t work for me. Persecution will come to. When your friends, family and others reject you, ridicule you or have outright hostility towards you because of your faith then the emotion-based person will fall away. It’s because the person just had an emotional response to the word and it wasn’t planted in their hearts.
Now the thorny ground is seed that does take root, but it gets choked out because of the lower nature. It’s what we talked about in Lesson 10: A Lifestyle Of Repentance Part 1 and Part 2, where our attention becomes on this world. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and pride of life. Walking consistently in the lower nature will choke out the word in our lives where we don’t bear fruit. If you let the works of the lower nature dominate your life, then you will not bear fruit because you are fighting against yourself.
I want to end this lesson talking about meditation and I am going to begin the next lesson talking about meditation. The art of meditation has been lost on the modern world where we live by instant sound bites and then 30 minutes later it’s the next instant sound bite. People’s attention span has been greatly reduced and it’s not a good thing because people don’t think things through anymore.
The modern world has trained us to become creatures of passion and instinct living in the moment with no thought to what we are doing.
Even reading has become a lost art form. It's why I put these videos together. I’m not talking about reading a few sentences in an article, but I’m talking about sitting down and reading a book or even to the end of a long article. We have lost our ability to focus because our attention spans have been reduced. Meditation is about spending time and thought on one concept to where you can imagine yourself doing it. Meditation has the ability to unlock the power of God’s potential within you if you will develop the habit. Forming good habits is important.
In the next section of this school, Created Unto Good Works, we are going to dig deep into the spiritual disciplines of the new man to help us form habits that will help us to be a habitation where the Spirit dwells. Right now, I just want to hit the high points of meditation because it’s all about renewing our minds, adjusting our thinking and allowing faith to be lived out in our hearts.
Just like our natural body grows, develops and is healthy due to what we put into it and how active we are with our bodies so in the same way the spiritual man has to be developed.
We have to feed our spiritual man good food and develop spiritual disciplines. We have to understand the power of meditation. It’s one of the main keys to walking in the Spirit. It’s learning the ancient rhythms of the spiritual realm. Whether for good or bad, we are molded in our personality and conduct by what we continually think upon. This is the very reason meditation is so important.
It takes 21 days to develop a new habit where that habit becomes a change in our lifestyle.
I am asking you to commit to 21 days of meditating upon the word of God to see the power it can produce in your life.
Meditation helps us to become doers of the word and not hearers only. Meditation is a form of prayer where we are looking into the law of liberty. James tells us we must persevere or remain consistent with the word so that we don’t just hear and forget, but that we put action to our faith.
The first step in meditation is memorization. Some Eastern religions teach that meditation is allowing your mind to become completely blank and empty, but that is far from true Biblical meditation. To meditate is to fill your thoughts with the thoughts of God, to be consumed with the things God has said. When you become consumed with what He has said, it becomes effortless to do the things He said to do.
The second step to meditation is confession. In addition to memorization of the word, meditate means to confess. We must learn to discipline ourselves to think the way God thinks and say what God’s word says. The Greek word for confession is homologea and it means to say the same as. It is coming into agreement with the High Priest of our confession Jesus Hebrews 3:10. This is not to be a mechanical recitation like a parrot that is just repeating. It is a growing relationship with the living word of God. Our faith will grow as we learn to see from God’s perspective and say what His word says about us and our circumstances.
This brings us to the last step of meditation, which is application. Memorizing the word and confessing the word God feeds the inner man, so that we can have a living faith and where the word is incarnated in us. Our lives become a living example of faith and all we have to do is apply the four principles of preparation, planting, light and time allowing God’s word to do the rest within us.
Jesus said that a disciple is one who bears fruit John 15:8. Fruit is something that others will be able to taste. Our lives are not about what we know, but about what we do. The word must take such deep root in our hearts that we literally become a reflection of that which we are beholding. Our lives may be the only Bible anyone ever reads. I want to end this lesson by just demonstrating one way that we can meditate on the thoughts of God.
If you look on page 45 of my book Building Your Spiritual House. I am going to take you through a series of statements that we can meditate upon helping us to view ourselves from God’s perspective.
Let’s say what God’s word says about us:
John 1:12 I am God’s child. Spend time thinking about this thought. As God’s child he loves me, he cares for me. He provides for me.
John 15:15 I am Christ’s friend. He wants to spend time with me. He calls me by name.
Romans 5:1 I have been justified. I am accepted, forgiven and acquitted by his blood.
Ephesians 1:1 I am a saint. He has made me holy by his blood. He sees me as his own.
I Corinthians 6:17 I am united with the Lord and one spirit with him. He lives in me. He is yoked to me and works through my life.
I Corinthians 12:27 I am a member of Christ’s body. I am completely identified with him. I am completely committed to him.
Ephesians 1:5 I have been adopted into the family. I am one with Christ and the Father sees me as his own.
I Corinthians 6:20 I belong to God. I am his and he is a part of my life.
I encourage you to take some time every day over the next 21 days to think about these thoughts. Let them become your thoughts. Memorize them, confess them and you will find yourself changed to where you actually begin to live life from the inside out.
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Next Lesson: Lesson 12 - The Victory of Faith
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