THE GIFT OF FAITH by Mary Dorian 10-25-26
Is the supernatural ability given by the Holy Spirit to specific believers providing an extraordinary, unshakable confidence in Gods power, promises, and purposes, even in the face of impossible or dangerous circumstances
1 Corinthians 12:4 God's various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit.
5 God's various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit.
6 God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all.
7 Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people!
8 The variety is wonderful: wise counsel clear understanding
9 simple trust healing the sick
10 miraculous acts proclamation distinguishing between spirits tongues interpretation of tongues.
11 All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.
Quality over quantity. Like a tiny mustard seed it does not depend on human effort or emotional hype, but on the divine impartation from God. The gift of faith is one of nine supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit. The gift of faith is active and daring, it moves people to take a bold stand, trusting Gods word without wavering and inspires hope and encouragement to other believers.
Biblical examples
Noah believing in God and building an ark it took him 120 years before he found out how rain existed
Genesis 6:14 "Build yourself a ship from teakwood. Make rooms in it. Coat it with pitch inside and out.
15 Make it 450 feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high.
16 Build a roof for it and put in a window eighteen inches from the top; put in a door on the side of the ship; and make three decks, lower, middle, and upper. Message
Genesis 7:6 Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters covered the Earth.
7 Noah and his wife and sons and their wives boarded the ship to escape the flood.
8 Clean and unclean animals, birds, and all the crawling creatures
9 came in pairs to Noah and to the ship, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah.
10 In seven days the floodwaters came.
11 It was the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month that it happened: all the underground springs erupted and all the windows of Heaven were thrown open.
12 Rain poured for forty days and forty nights.
13 That's the day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, accompanied by his wife and his sons' wives, boarded the ship.
14 And with them every kind of wild and domestic animal, right down to all the kinds of creatures that crawl and all kinds of birds and anything that flies.
15 They came to Noah and to the ship in pairs - everything and anything that had the breath of life in it,
16 male and female of every creature came just as God had commanded Noah. Then God shut the door behind him. Message
Genesis 9:8 Then God spoke to Noah and his sons:
9 "I'm setting up my covenant with you including your children who will come after you,
10 along with everything alive around you - birds, farm animals, wild animals - that came out of the ship with you.
11 I'm setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by floodwaters; no, never again will a flood destroy the Earth."
12 God continued, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you.
13 I'm putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth.
14 From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud,
15 I'll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life.
16 When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I'll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth." Mess
Mark 11:22 Jesus was matter-of-fact: "Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it,
23 and nothing will be too much for you. This mountain, for instance: Just say, 'Go jump in the lake' - no shuffling or shilly-shallying - and it's as good as done.
24 That's why I urge you to pray for absolutely everything, ranging from small to large. Include everything as you embrace this God-life, and you'll get God's everything.
25 And when you assume the posture of prayer, remember that it's not all asking. If you have anything against someone, forgive - only then will your heavenly Father be inclined to also wipe your slate clean of sins." Mess
Hebrews 11:1 The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see.
2 The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
3 By faith, we see the world called into existence by God's word, what we see created by what we don't see.
4 By an act of faith, Abel brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain. It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference. That's what God noticed and approved as righteous. After all these centuries, that belief continues to catch our notice.
5 By an act of faith, Enoch skipped death completely. "They looked all over and couldn't find him because God had taken him." We know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken "he pleased God."
6 It's impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.
7 By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn't see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
8 By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God's call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going.
9 By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise.
10 Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations - the City designed and built by God.
11 By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said.
12 That's how it happened that from one man's dead and shriveled loins there are now people numbering into the millions. Mess
Luke 2:25 And significantly so, there happened to be a man Simeon, in Jerusalem; he was a righteous man who embraced the goodness of God.
26 Simeon had a Holy Spirit encounter and knew that he would not die before he sees the Lords Anointed.
27 Prompted in the spirit, he arrived at the temple as the parents of the child Jesus, brought him in, as prescribed in their tradition and law.
28 And Simeon, holding the little child in his arms began to speak eloquent praises to God and said,
29 My Master, I am fully satisfied; you can now release your bond-servant in peace. I am holding your incarnate word in my arms!
30 And my eyes have seen your salvation!
31 The very salvation which 1prophetically and perfectly 2mirrors your face in 3every individual human life! Mirror
Luke 2:36 There was also a prophetess Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, from the tribe of Asher. She was already far advanced in her days and a widow for eighty four years. Her husband died when she was only twenty one and married for seven years.
37 For all these years, since her husbands death, she ministered to the Lord continually in the temple with prayers and frequent fastings.
38 As Simeon concluded his prophetic song over the family, Anna mirror-echoed his words in a song of thanksgiving to God for the child. And from that day on, she told everyone in Jerusalem that their Darling, the anticipated Messiah-redeemer has come! mirror
Hebrews 11:13 These heroes of faith all died believing. Although they did not witness the promise in their lifetime, they saw its fulfillment in the future and embraced the promise by their persuasion. Convinced of its reality; they declared by their way of living that they were mere sojourners and pilgrims in a shadow land whose geography could neither confine nor define their true inheritance.
14 They clearly declared by faith a hinterland beyond their immediate horizon. mirror
Hebrews 11:16 Their faith saw a greater reality in the spiritual realm than that which they experienced in their present situation; they reached for their true native city designed by God where he himself is proud to be their permanent address. Mirror
Hebrews 11:1Persuasion confirms confident expectation and proves the unseen world to be more real than the seen. Faith celebrates as certain what hope visualizes as future.
2 People of previous generations received the testimony of their hope in faith. It was faith that made their hope tangible.
3 Faith alone explains what is not apparent to the natural eye; how the ages were perfectly framed by the Word of God. Now we understand that everything visible has its origin in the invisible.
4 It was faith that made the difference between the sacrifices of Abel and Cain, and confirmed Abels righteousness. God bore witness to righteousness as a gift rather than a reward! Even though he was murdered, his faith continued to be a most relevant prophetic voice.
5 Enoch enjoyed Gods favor by faith, in spite of Adams fall; he proved that faith defeats death.
6 There is no substitute 1reward for faith. Faiths return exceeds any other sense of achievement. Faith knows that God is; those who desire to respond to his invitation to draw near, realize by faith that he is lifes most perfect gift.
7 Noah received Divine instruction to save his household from judgment; faith prompted him to construct the Ark immediately, long before the rains were evident. His faith demonstrated the difference between judgment and justification.
8 By faith Abraham acknowledged the 1call of God which gave him his identity and destiny, as evidence of his inheritance as he journeyed into the unknown.
9 Nothing but his faith seemed permanent while Abraham camped in tents like a stranger in the land of promise. His sons Isaac and Jacob joined him as sojourners; equally persuaded that they were heirs of the same promise.
10 His faith saw a city with permanent foundations, designed and constructed by God.
11 Sarahs testimony of faith is just as amazing: she conceived and bore a child when it was humanly impossible. She believed that God would be faithful to his promise, and 1gave that belief authority over her life.
12 Faith brought into reality an offspring beyond calculation; from one as good as dead children would be born more numerous than the stars and as impossible to count as the grains of sand on every distant sea shore.
13 These heroes of faith all died believing. Although they did not witness the promise in their lifetime, they saw its fulfillment in the future and embraced the promise by their persuasion. Convinced of its reality; they declared by their way of living that they were mere sojourners and pilgrims in a shadow land whose geography could neither confine nor define their true inheritance.
14 They clearly declared by faith a hinterland beyond their immediate horizon.
15 They did not regret the country they had left behind. Their faith took them beyond the point of no return.
16 Their faith saw a greater reality in the spiritual realm than that which they experienced in their present situation; they reached for their true native city designed by God where he himself is proud to be their permanent address.
17 Faith became a more tangible evidence of the promise than even Isaac could ever be to Abraham. Isaac neither fulfilled nor replaced the promise. Inspired by what faith saw, Abraham was ready to do the ridiculous; to sacrifice his only son, convinced that not even Isaacs death could nullify the promise that God had made to him.
18 Yet Abraham knew that God had said that his lineage of faith would be traced through Isaac!
19 He made a prophetic 1calculation by faith to which there could only be one logical conclusion based on the word he had received: that God would raise the promise from the dead.
20 By the same faith Isaac extended the future of the promise in the blessing he pronounced over his sons, Esau and Jacob.
21 In his dying moments, Jacob, in worship to the God of Abraham, as the father of the nations, included in the promise 1the sons of Joseph who were born in Egypt.
22 At the end of his life, Joseph prophetically reminded his sons of the exodus. He had such a firm belief that they would possess the land of promise that he exacted an oath from them: they were not to leave his bones in Egypt.
23 By faith the parents of Moses did not fear the kings decree, but hid him from Pharaoh for three months, because they saw a future in the child.
24 It was faith that made Moses realize that he was not the son of Pharaohs daughter.
25 By faith he preferred to be associated with the affliction of Gods people rather than with the fleeting privileges of Pharaohs house, which did not constitute the true 1portion of his inheritance.
26 He was not embarrassed to be associated with the Messianic promise at the expense of the treasures of Egypt. He deliberately looked away from those towards the greater riches of his reward in Christ.
27 The rage of the King did not scare him when he abandoned Egypt; faith, giving substance to the invisible, made him brave.
28 His faith saw the Paschal Lamb and the sprinkled blood on the door posts as the salvation of the people.
29 By faith they crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, but the Egyptians drowned when they followed them.
30 By faith the walls of the city of Jericho collapsed when Israel marched around the city for seven days. MIRROR
Hebrews 12:1 Do you see what this means - all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running - and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins.
2 Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed - that exhilarating finish in and with God - he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God.
3 When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!
Mess
While all Christians possess saving faith, not all Christians are given the specific spiritual gift of faith. Daniel was given the gift of faith.
DAN 6-10 When Daniel learned that the decree had been signed and posted, he continued to pray just as he had always done. His house had windows in the upstairs that opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he knelt there in prayer, thanking and praising his God.
11 The conspirators came and found him praying, asking God for help.
12 They went straight to the king and reminded him of the royal decree that he had signed. "Did you not," they said, "sign a decree forbidding anyone to pray to any god or man except you for the next thirty days? And anyone caught doing it would be thrown into the lions' den?" "Absolutely," said the king. "Written in stone, like all the laws of the Medes and Persians." Mess
Daniel 6:19 At daybreak the king got up and hurried to the lions' den.
20 As he approached the den, he called out anxiously, "Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve so loyally, saved you from the lions?"
21 "O king, live forever!" said Daniel.
22 "My God sent his angel, who closed the mouths of the lions so that they would not hurt me. I've been found innocent before God and also before you, O king. I've done nothing to harm you."
23 When the king heard these words, he was happy. He ordered Daniel taken up out of the den. When he was hauled up, there wasn't a scratch on him. He had trusted his God. mess
Hebrews 11:32 I could go on and on, but I've run out of time. There are so many more - Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. . . .
33 Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves. They were protected from lions,
34 fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies.
35 Women received their loved ones back from the dead. There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection.
36 Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons.
37 We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless
38 the world didn't deserve them! - making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.
39 Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised.
40 God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours. mess
Hebrews 12:28 Do you see what we've got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. Mess