Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. —Romans 10:17
Do you know where faith originates? The Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. True, divine faith isn’t something that we can conjure up in our minds. It isn’t something that we think up during a soulish time of imagination. Faith is conceived and developed through hearing the Word of God.
It’s important to realize that in the above verse, the verb “hearing” is in the present tense. The word God chose isn’t equivalent to our English word “heard” or “have heard.” The phrase that would most accurately translate from the scripture’s original language is “to be continually hearing.” It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain your faith in an area that you have only heard or read about once. To have your faith operating at its highest level, you must be continually hearing the Word regarding the subject.
Now that we’ve established that your active faith isn’t based in “having heard” but rather in “hearing,” let’s take it a step farther. Hearing alone won’t be of any value to you. By itself, hearing won’t produce faith. Expecting faith to come from just hearing is like expecting muscles to develop on your body just by eating. To increase the size of your muscles you have to not only eat, but you have to exercise as well. The exercise of faith is to believe. Think of it like this: hearing produces the atmosphere for faith, but accepting the Word as truth and making the decision to stand on it literally creates the kind of faith that God demands.
Lastly, we must make proclamations about what we’ve heard and accepted as truth in order for faith to be birthed. We can be pregnant with faith and never release it into the physical and spiritual world. For example, an expecting mother in Bible days was referred to as being “with child.” The truth of the matter is that when a woman is pregnant, she is just as much a mother then as she will be when the baby is delivered. The difference is that when the baby enters the world through birth, it takes on a life of its own. Babies enter the world through the birth canal just as faith enters the world through our mouths.
Like our unspoken faith, while the baby is still in the womb it is totally dependent on its mother for everything. Once he is birthed and begins to grow, he will be able to do things on his own. One of the first things a child does and will always do is bring gifts to his mother. Children seem to almost be obsessed with collecting things for mom. As young children, they will bring toys, leaves and flowers to her, while later in life they will bring greater things. That’s a picture of our faith. Just like a child, faith immediately goes about bringing things back to the one who brought it into the world. As it matures, it brings greater and more valuable gifts. Before this can even begin, however, we must birth it through our confession.
Always remember that faith doesn’t come from having heard. It is derived from hearing and hearing and hearing. This creates an atmosphere of fertility, but it is conceived when we take the Word as truth and believe it. Once we are pregnant with faith, we must deliver by confessing the thing out of our mouth. Faith that is based on the Word of God will never be stillborn. Although it will be active from birth, it will still need to be tended for a season. Soon it will go about seeking the treasures of God’s kingdom and bring them home to you.
Scriptural Context Romans 10:14-21
Concept Reinforcement That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. —Romans 10:9-10
…the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel… —Colossians 1:5
For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. —Hebrews 4:2
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