FAITH...a little word of only five letters, just one syllable, and the power to move "mountains." One of the most wonderful words in our language. Grasping its meaning can radically change our lives, but it is never grasped by most believers. God, in His grace, used your faith in His Saviorhood (assuming that you are a believer), to change your eternal destiny--that’s how powerful faith is! But because man is always looking for a rabbit’s foot--a lucky charm, we have invested this little stick of dynamite with a totally false meaning, robbing it of its power. Today faith, to most people, means wishful thinking, perhaps with a Bible verse attached. Most Christians believe that they can pick out something they want and if they wish hard enough move God to grant it...and that "that" is "faith."

Mary and I were lunching in a restaurant with a friend, a Federal agent. As we talked about God’s grace, our conversation was overheard by a young couple at a nearby table. On their way out of the restaurant, they stopped long enough to tell us that they too were Christians--new believers, and to share with us their excitement over the prospect of a new car. God, they said, was going to give them a new 4x4 in response to prayer. The three of us rejoiced with them over their new life in Christ, gave them a brief word of encouragement, and exchanged goodbyes. We said nothing about the prayer request, nor of the expected answer. Since there wasn’t time for helpful discussion we would only be raining on their parade. We couldn’t help but think of the many people we have known whose lives and ministries were wrecked by this completely erroneous concept of faith. There was the sweet, young girl blinded and confined to a wheel-chair as a result of diabetes. She had two pre-schoolers who were the very center of her life. She did an amazingly good job as a wife and mother, in spite of her difficulties. One day, a friend invited her to attend a healing meeting in a large Chicago Auditorium. The well-meaning friend pointed out promises made by Christ to Israelites anticipating the immediate setting up of the Millennial Kingdom with its freedom from Satan, demons, war, slavery, poverty, ignorance, sickness and death. Christ’s Kingdom message was confirmed by Kingdom signs performed by the King in the Kingdom Nation. But the friend, who knew nothing about rightly dividing the Word of truth, arbitrarily selected these earthly Kingdom-related promises and applied them to the Body of Christ in the present day. Well, they went to the healing meeting. One friend assuring the other that if Sister So-and-so prayed for her she would see again and also be able to discard her wheel-chair; her diabetes would be history. The healer was the most famous lady faith-healer of recent times. She prayed, but nothing happened. Our friend was crushed. She concluded, as millions have, that either she did not qualify to receive a miracle (sin too great or faith too small), or that God just doesn’t keep His promises. She quit going to church, closed her Bible forever and never prayed again. Her disappointment became discouragement, then despair. She withdrew from her loving husband and children...pulled way back inside herself and in two years, aged 26, was dead.

The Bible teaches that "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Romans 10:17). Faith, then, is not wishful thinking but a positive response to what God has said to us in His Word. It is not acting upon what we are feeling at the moment, nor upon what we think should be true. It is acting upon what is clearly stated in God’s Word, rightly divided. I say "rightly divided" because we Christians have a tendency to appropriate to ourselves promises that were never made to the Body of Christ, but were made to other people.

If God were to tell you that He is going to give you a new Ford Bronco, you would believe it because you trust His Word, but God won’t tell you that because He hasn’t promised material blessings to us in His Word. Nor has He spoken to man outside of Scripture since the canon of Scripture was completed. We have lived under a "silent Heaven" for nineteen hundred years, and be glad that we have! Everything that you and I need for a successful life and ministry is right there on the pages of God’s Word. The next time that God speaks to man it will be in judgment. Until then we have all that He wants us to know in the Bible, which is a complete revelation and sufficient for our guidance in the present dispensation. The promised provision for the Body of Christ is strictly spiritual. God today is demonstrating that He can effect His glory and our good by spiritual means only, in spite of the pros and cons in our physical environment. This is one of the most blessed truths in His Word concerning us, but Christians would rather fight it tooth and nail in order to preserve unfounded traditions than study to know the revealed will of God for them.

But some will say, "Aren’t there promises in the Bible that we can claim?" Certainly there are, but we must be very careful that we claim only those promises that belong to us. God speaks to many individuals and groups in His Word. We wouldn’t apply what He says to the elect angels to demons, His promises to the Arab nations to Israel, His instructions to Noah to Solomon. Why apply what He says to Israel to the "Church," (the Body of Christ)? Christ promised twelve men that they would occupy twelve thrones as governors of the restored State of Israel in the future Millennial Kingdom. No one else can claim this promise! Neither Jew nor Gentile nor Grace-era Believer can claim it. How many of the promises that you and I make are made to everyone? Parents will frequently make a promise to one child that is inapplicable to others. A baby cries and the Mother says, "Oh, Honey, just be patient for one minute and Mommy will get you a nice clean diaper." This is a promise to one baby, to be filled in the very near future. The mother didn’t make the promise to her six-year-old, her nine-year-old, and certainly not to her husband, her mother-in- law, or her neighbor. She may have other promises for them, most of which the baby could not claim, but the promise of a dry diaper is for the baby alone.

Christ made many promises during the 3 1/2 years of His earthly ministry. He made them to national Israel, to spiritual Israel (saved Jews), to demons, to the Gentile nations, to the Seventy, to the Twelve...etc. He promised good things and bad. Some promises were to be fulfilled during His life on Earth, some shortly afterward, and some far into the future. Some are yet to be realized, but all will be fulfilled. But they will only be fulfilled to the ones to whom they were made. Not everyone can claim them--nor, I think, would everyone want to.

If you were to explain to the average Christian that God hasn’t spoken to man since He completed the canon of Scripture in the first century, and that not every promise that He made in Scripture can be claimed today, he would be disappointed, angry or both. Most believers would feel that you were trying to rob them of something precious that God willed for them to have. Many would think you a heretic, and some would begin to treat you as an enemy. But think about it. Scripture notes that a legal contract between two parties can neither be amended nor ignored while it stands. Take a mortgage agreement for example. It is between two parties--the party of the first part and the party of the second part. The party of the first part cannot escape the responsibilities laid upon him, nor can he claim the privileges granted to the party of the second part. One pays money and the other receives. If you agree to pay the bank $800.00 a month for 29 years, that is what you must do. You cannot call the bank and ask them why they haven’t sent you eight hundred dollars. You weren’t promised the money...they were! A promise made to one party is not necessarily a promise made to another.

The Bible contains legal agreements that God has made with a number of individuals and groups. Man cannot add to these agreements nor can he set them aside. The promises made to the Body of Christ (the "Church"), are so wonderful and so complete that we need not borrow promises made to any others in Scripture. Grace is a perfect system by which God governs the believers of the present Dispensation of Grace, the program in which we find ourselves today. We must learn from His other systems like the Dispensation of Law which preceded Grace and the Dispensation of Kingdom which follows, but we need not borrow from them. "My grace suffices for you." The Law system included all that was necessary to the success of the Jewish believer under its rule. The Kingdom system will be perfectly tailored to meet the needs of Jew and Gentile in the future Millennial Age. The Body of Christ is neither Jewish nor Gentile. It is a new creation--the "new man," or person, of Ephesians 2:15. We have a new and different system designed specifically to meet our peculiar needs. We will only be robbed, confused, and defeated if we fail to distinguish our program and its provision from other programs and provisions in the Word.

Faith does indeed claim promises, but true faith claims only those promises that have been made to it...no others. Most believers insist on an unnatural approach to Scripture. While recognizing that they themselves have different messages for different people in their daily conversation, they require that all of God’s messages apply equally to all of God’s people at all times.

Perhaps Israel will serve as a good example of the point that we are making. God and Paul tell us that Israel under Law was treated as a minor child, placed under tutors and governors until the appointed time. Though lord of all, the child was, in many respects, treated as a slave in the Greco-Roman world. When son-placing time came, there was a public acknowledgment that childhood was over and adulthood had begun. You and I do not give the same messages to children in their minority that we give to them when they have become responsible adults. Hebrews was written to show the great difference between God’s message to Israel as children under the old agreement and as adults under the new. Israel took a bite of the new covenant in early Acts, didn’t like the taste, and spat it out. This rejection of God’s new program for Israel resulted in God’s setting aside Israel and her covenants and intercalating the Dispensation of Grace into the now vacant space between Israel’s promises and their fulfillment. True faith must recognize this and not claim promises made to people in other dispensations.

There are many things to pray for in the current Dispensation of Grace...more than there were in the prior dispensation, and even more than there will be in the next. A trip through the Pauline Epistles with a highlighter will reveal to the student the many things that God has asked us to be and to do.

God’s Word is infinitely powerful, but it only accomplishes what He sent it to do. Learn now what He wants for you from those Scriptures that are to you and about you...the Pauline Epistles, and that infinite power will begin dramatically to change YOUR world!