Your Faith: Its Miraculous Origin, Work, And Destination
A guest article from Christian ministry veteran, Charles Carrin.
Trust is not something that comes on its own. Where does it come from, how does it work, what does trust in God accomplish?
O for a faith that will not shrink, Tho’ pressed by every foe;
That will not tremble on the brink Of any earthly woe.
That will not murmur nor complain, Beneath the chastening rod;
But in the hour of grief or pain Will lean upon its God.
A faith that shines more bright and clear When tempests rage without,
That when in danger knows no fear, In darkness feels no doubt.
Lord, give us each such faith as this, And then what’er may come,
We’ll taste, e’en here, the hallowed bliss Of our eternal home!
— William H. Bathurst, 1831
Image: Jordan McQueen
Faith is not native to our planet but is projected into our cosmos from the Great-Other-Realm. Therefore, the faith at work in you is not at an attitude or mental effort on your part. Nor is it merely your religious concept or ideology. Faith is a trans-earthly power. As gravity, centrifugal force, thermodynamics, etc., are powers native to our cosmos, so faith is native to the other realm and is only a visitor in our’s. Faith came to you because of your “hearing the word of God”, Romans 10:17, and God then having dealt to you “a measure of faith”, Romans 12:3. Scripture makes it very plain that faith is a gift to you.
The Dictionary definition of faith is vastly insufficient. It identifies faith solely as religious persuasion, moral conviction, conscientious sentiment, credence, etc., but offers no comment about faith being a spiritual force. Wherever this concept has been accepted it has stripped Christianity of its inherent power. For that reason, much of what we call “faith” is nothing more than religious presumption and a poor imitation of the genuine. It is a deceptive counterfeit, rising from man’s soul—not his spirit—and remains powerless because it has no vital connection with the upper-domain of the Kingdom of God.
Nowhere is the distinction between religion and true spirituality more graphically displayed than in the difference between true faith and its artificial counterpart. Unfortunately, it is possible for believers to be seduced by a subtle imitation of faith. That seduction is supposition. Instead of hearing “what the Spirit is saying”, Revelation 3:13, people are directed by the deceptive appearance of circumstances. Supposition caused Paul’s shipwreck, Acts 27:13, Mary and Joseph’s three anxious days searching for the child Jesus in Jerusalem, Luke 23:44,45, and has brought frustration to millions of other conscientious believers. Churches are tragically caught in its trap.
Because of that, I wish to “coin” a Greek word, peiro, into an English application and join it with the word “faith”. Peiro means “to pierce through” and originates from the word peran meaning “other side”, “beyond”, “farther”, “over”, “across”. In Greek, the word for faith is pistis. The combination of the two words allows us to visualize faith’s purpose in penetrating our physical realm. This penetration is absolutely necessary if there is to be miraculous healing, spiritual gifting, deliverances, out-of-body transports, etc.
“Peiros-Faith” is a force that comes to our dimension from the other realm, passes through cooperative believers here, then, like an X-ray, penetrates and effects change in the circumstance it touches. Admittedly, the subject is beyond my explanation-but it is not beyond our exploration. I simply want to explore “faith” in its potential to interact both with our physical dimension of time and space while it maintains a complete, uninterrupted union with the Eternal Dimension where it originates. In other words, faith is a symphonizing of these separate dimensions. It is a force. A power.
Faith is a weapon in the hands of those who are vibrant and alive. Love, like gravity, is the force which grasps, bonds, holds to itself. Faith, working through love, penetrates, illuminates, radiates. Like sunlight restoring life to a plant kept too long in the dark, faith has the radiating power to change the spiritual environment around it and bring life.
Category: Living the Faith
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