Tag Archives: walk by faith

Prophesy and the prophetic, The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

The desert and the camel

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A couple of months ago the Lord gave me the following word, but I think now is the time to release it:

“I am the God of the universe. I put the stars in the sky. I put every vein on every leaf on every tree. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without my knowing. When those kairos moments, those “god- incidences,” happen in your life where you see my hand at work, arranging and organising your situations, it is because I have knitted the universe together to meet you in that moment and to open up my path for you.

You look ahead and you see an expense of barren desert. A rocky plane, stretching into the distance, with no path turning to the right or to the left. You say “I do not know which way to go. In every direction it looks the same, and the distance seems so great wherever I look.”

But I say I am calling you to walk by faith and not by sight. You cannot see a path because if I were to reveal it, you would be walking by sight and not by Faith. But I will guide you with my eye, even though your eye cannot see where to go. And you will hear a voice behind you, saying: “this is the way, walk in it,“ and you will step forward, one step at a time on my word. Because my word in you is living and active, and as you step on my word I will create that path for your feet and I will build structures that you can’t see through the active power of my word, even the structures of my kingdom. Will you trust me to knit the universe together anew at every step of obedience that you take? Will you trust my word, by which the worlds were made? Will you walk with me? Will you trust the power of my Spirit in your life?”

At around the same time the Lord also showed me a camel. It was, again, in the desert. Someone was trying to lead it with a rope, but it was resisting. I think the Lord was – is – saying that the camel knows that it’s got everything it needs to cross the desert: water stored in its hump; big flat feet to help it to walk across the soft sand without its feet sinking in, but we can be like camels who don’t know what they are carrying in their humps, and are resisting the person who is trying to lead them out across the desert. He says: “You have everything you need. You have my Spirit, and you have my word. I am holding the rope and I know the way you should go. You won’t wander off and get lost, so trust me and come with me across the desert. You may think it’s forbidding and barren, but it is also beautiful, and I will show you things, hidden things, that you have never seen before, because you have never been this way until now. Come, because now is the time.”

Living by Faith, The word of God

From Faith to Faith

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“So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.” The nobleman said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies!” Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your son lives.” So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, “Your son lives!” Then he inquired of them the hour when he got better. And they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, “Your son lives.” And he himself believed, and his whole household. This again is the second sign Jesus did when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.”

Signs and wonders: we all want to see them. Why was Jesus so disparaging about the miraculous here, particularly since he says later that “the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.” (John 5:36)? The importance of this second sign is that Jesus is looking for faith – “the evidence of things hoped for” (Heb 11:1) – that will draw people to the Father who sent Him, not just followers seeking the supernatural for their own benefits. To believe on the basis of a miracle that is seen is evidence-based, not faith-based, and does not generate the Hebrews 11:1 faith that reaches into the unseen. But faith that “believed the word that Jesus spoke” will continue to believe the words that Jesus speaks, and opens the door to eternal life: “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” (John 5:24)

When Jesus withstood the first temptation, he said, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4) A few verses on in the discourse to the Pharisees quoted above, Jesus states: “I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.” Although the word translated here as “judge” – krino –  is most commonly used in English with reference to judicial processes, the meaning of the Greek is much broader and relates primarily to mental judgement: having an opinion or making choices and decisions in any context, not just that of human behaviour. Jesus is basically saying, ”Whatever the situation, I do what the Father tells me; I don’t just do what I like. What the Father says is what I do. I live by every word that comes from His mouth.”

Paul writes: “For in it (“it” refers to the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17) Jesus says explicitly here that the righteousness of His decisions comes from the fact that He always does what the Father says, and by implication His human flesh has no say in anything. When we believe in Jesus and are born again His righteousness becomes ours, but to reveal His righteousness on a daily basis we have to live by His words, “from faith to faith.”  If we want to witness to Christ, His righteousness must be revealed in us. There is only one way to achieve this: just as Jesus said to his disciples after the meeting with the Samaritan woman, (John 4) our food must be to do the will of the one who sent Him.