Bill Winston - Putting Faith to Work
This idea of faith, one, is faith sees. Faith sees. There's a couple of places you can see for that. You can turn to 2 Kings Chapter 6. In 2 Kings Chapter 6, he says, this is when Elisha and his servant, Gehazi, was surrounded by the enemy. It says here, Verse 15, we'll just start there. "And when the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold, and hosts come past the city both with horses and chariots, and his servant said to him, 'Alas, master. How shall we do?'" In other words, I am scared. He answered, "Fear not for they that be with us are more than they that be with them". Glory to God. "Elisha prayed and said, 'Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes.'"
Now, question. Weren't his eyes open to have him to see the enemy? Yes. Now he's saying, "Open his eyes". It tells me we've got a pair of eyes that most folks don't have open. That's why they can't see anything. I'm saying that, "Open his eyes that he may see, and the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha". It didn't even say anything about round about unbelief. Because the other guy had unbelief. It was round about Elisha. Now, those angels were there. They were there. They were positioned there by God. This man of God saw them.
Now, when you see them true enough, you can see them with your spirit, but it's different from seeing them with your natural eyes. In your spirit, we call it, for the most part, discerning. Discerning. Because it's another level of seeing. That's why, in the Kingdom, you're not really taught by learning. You're taught by discerning. That's why the academic world can't compete with it. As a matter of fact, let's see. I put some things down here. The natural world is trying to compete with the spiritual world, and it can't do it. Because the tendency is to think that your intellect can get over into this, and it can't. It can't.
Now you can see this first when he talked about, I'll just turn to it for a moment, and talked about in 1 Corinthians in Chapter 1. He says in Verse 26, "For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh and not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the" what kind of things? "foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised has God chosen, yeah, and things which are not, to bring to naught the things that are". Why? "So that no flesh can glory in His presence".
Thank God that you can go to a university or a high school or whatever have you, but you don't have to be smart to have faith. You better write that down. Somebody in here better right that down. You don't have to be smart to have faith. Now, this really bothers people who paid a lot of money for some big education. It really bothers them. As a matter of fact, it makes them somewhat jealous of it, because they have just spent all this money trying to be smart. I'm not really talking against academics now. I'm saying, that's fine, but you'll find that you can't be too smart for God, because He's the one that put that brain in your head in the first place. You're going to find that faith usually always puts you in a place of ridicule. It puts you in a position for people, if it doesn't work, to laugh at you.
So smart people don't want to be laughed at. They don't want to take any chances. They all got all kinds of risks formulas out there and so forth and so on, but God will give you a plan, and He doesn't even give you a backup because the first one works. He'll just tell you what to do. I'm just saying, this is faith at work. You and I all have been given the measure of faith. Put it up there, please. That's Romans Chapter 12 Verse 1. Romans Chapter 12 Verse 1. God, He doesn't talk much to smart people. I mean, you can have a PhD, and God will talk to you if you don't think you're that smart. I mean, you're no smarter than God is what I'm talking about. Because it is amazing how many schemes they can come up with.
The enemy wants you to do this. I put something down here. One of his jobs is to keep you in the natural realm. If he can keep you in that natural realm, he'll put a ring in your nose and lead you all over town. The next thing you know, you're either going to run out of money or run out of time, because that's what he specializes in. He keeps you in time, he can dominate you. Take him out of time, and he can't. I'm going out of time. I'm going to talk about out of time in just a minute.
Look what he says. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think" what? "soberly according as God as dealt to" how many men? Every man what? "the measure of faith".
All right. Let's see whose faith it is. Let's go to Mark's Gospel, Chapter 11, please. Over in Mark's Gospel, Chapter 11, we see an account here of Jesus, and He has this issue with this fig tree. Verse 12, "And on the morrow, when they would come from Bethany, He was hungry. And seeing a fig tree far off having leaves, He came if happily He might find anything thereon. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said to it," - say it. Say it again.
Now, it is an inanimate object. So it. You can speak to things that can't talk back. You can speak to problems. You can speak to trees. You can speak to storms. You can speak to disease. You can speak to it. Glory to God. Boy, that was worth something right there. That was worth coming right there. "Jesus said to it, 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever.' And the disciples heard it". It didn't say the tree heard it. It said the disciples heard it. Now, I'm just, I'm reading what it says here. He said in Verse 19, "And when the evening was come, He went out of the city. And in the morning, they passed by and saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. Peter called into remembrance and said to Him, 'Master, behold. The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.' And Jesus answered and said to him, 'Have faith in God.'" Have faith in God.
Now, another way to say that is, have the what? God's kind of faith. Let me embellish that just a little bit more. Have God's faith. Have God's faith. Now, what He's going to do is give you His faith. Human faith is insufficient. You need God's faith. Now, when you have God's faith, you can do things, come on now. I've got to finish this sentence. You can do things just like your Father, when you have His faith. Because His faith is what made all of this. His faith is what made all of this. I'm coming back to that place. Just look, if you will, at Hebrews Chapter, pardon me, yeah. Hebrews Chapter 11 Verse 3. Just look at that. He said this: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made out of things which do appear".
Now, what is he saying? That which was seen didn't come out of something visible. It came out of something invisible. God's faith was involved in manifesting this earth. His faith. Now, He gave you His faith to manage it. Say amen to this. So what we have to do is we have to develop this faith. We have to learn how to use this faith, how to make faith work for us, because if God is depending on us to steward this earth and to be fruitful, replenish and multiply and so forth, He wants us to develop our faith. We have to develop this kind of faith. The same kind of faith God has, we have, so now let's make this faith work for us the same way God made it work for Him and Jesus is demonstrating. He released His words filled with faith.
"No man eat fruit of you hereafter forever," and the disciples, not overheard; they heard it. Because He wasn't trying to make it so they didn't hear it. When He went in the House of Jairus, here's what He said when He showed up in Mark Chapter 5. He said this: "Your daughter's not dead. She's just asleep". Now, if that, in the natural, didn't qualify for a lie, I don't know what did. She was graveyard dead, but He was operating on a higher level of truth, and the truth of God is the highest level of reality. Say amen to that. I'm saying, as He spoke that word, something happened. Now, why did it happen? Because He believed that what He said was going to come to pass. Stay with me now. He spoke it because He believed what He was going to say was going to come to pass.
Now, what was the reaction of the people once He said it? What was the reaction? They what? They laughed at Him. What is the reaction of people with you when you say stuff like that? They're going to laugh at you, but should that stop you from saying it? I'm saying, they don't know what they're doing. You know what you're doing.
Now, what are you doing? When you do that, you're not looking linear. You're not looking in time waiting on some time for something to happen. Because in the spirit, it has already happened. The only thing you're doing is going vertical. You're going up in the spirit and superimposing the invisible over the visible. I better come over here. You are going up in the spirit to something that has already been done before the foundation of the world and superimposing that over the, the visible. That's why faith is always when? If you ever go in the future, you've just looked linear. If you just looked linear, you have just put faith in time. If you put faith in time, then you're not vertical anymore; you are linear. If you're linear, you're out of faith. You don't have faith, but when you know that it's already done, you know that, come on, you already done. There is an assurance inside of you that this deal is already done. The only thing left for me to do is say it.
Now, I got to say it because if I can't say it, God can't do it. So I got to call things "as though they were because they already are". Now, stop talking about, "I'm going to get my debts paid". Stop talking about, "I'm going to get my healing". Once the devil puts you in time, he can keep you in time. What you need to do is let go of time and understand faith is always now. This is one of the biggest reasons why the Christian community is not benefiting from their own relationship with God and their sons as sons and daughters of Christ, of God, and having the benefits of that relationship. One of the biggest reasons. The biggest reason is the tense. They're still putting it in the future. It's already done.
Now, not only do you have to say it's already done, you've got to believe it's already done. Say amen to that. Don't be trying to minimize it so that you, if it doesn't work, you don't look that bad or trying to not work God too hard. Put it back up there. Because what God's got for you is the best. What He laid up for you is the best. Say amen to this. This is very important now. I'm just saying, He doesn't have a lot of hand-me-downs up there. There's nothing wrong with that, but He does have some new stuff. When the prodigal son came back home, he said, "Bring me the" what kind of robe? The best. He didn't say, "Bring me the one on sale". That's all right.
You can go down to the sale and get one on sale, but see, when I start talking like this, what happens with faith, faith converts your humanity to divinity. What you've got to do is understand that God is bringing you into a whole new dimension of seeing, speaking and believing. So what you've got to do is come on in. who is that Bishop Oyedepo He said, "Nobody on my staff will ever tell me I don't have no money". He said, "If they do, it's the last time they'll tell me that". He won't even tell them. How would he know? He got to figure out some other way to tell him, because he won't. Why? Because he wouldn't let that come out of their mouth.
Listen. Listen. I'm talking about something now. I'm talking about, one of the reasons why the enemy does not want you to clean up your speech is because his job is to keep you not believing what you say is going to come to pass. His job is to keep you into, "My feet are killing me". "Oh girl, I'm just dying to go". He's to keep you, that's where he's to keep you. Because he knows that if you check your speech and you believe what you say, then when you speak to that mountain, it's going to move. The problem comes in when you've had all this corrupt communication all day and all of a sudden, here comes boom. Something happened in the house, and you're trying to speak to it. Well, your spirit is not trained now. It's hard for it to bring it forth. What you've got to do is go back to that Bible, and he talks about no corrupt communic..., talks about, so forth and so on, and you've got to clean that thing up.
That's why, one of the reasons why you saw the centurion. Remember, the centurion came to Jesus - it's Matthew Chapter 8 - and he came to Jesus about his servant was lying at home, wherever it was sick with the palsey. Jesus said, "Well, I'll come and heal him". He said, "You don't need to come to the house". Just what? "Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed". Watch this. "Because I'm a man under authority, and I've got soldiers under me, and I say to those, 'Go,' and he goes; 'Come' and he comes; and they obey me". What is he saying here? He's saying, "Wait a minute. I respect words. I respect words". I'm going to tell you something. You've got to watch being around loose lips. Let me just tell you what I mean. You think about this. Joshua and Caleb came back and said something. They said, let me get my notes, they said, "Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it". Didn't they?
Now, look what happened, Chapter 13 Verse 31: "But the men who went up with him said, 'We may not be able to go up against these people, for they're stronger than we'". What difference does that make? See? What difference did that make if you're operating by faith? Faith commits God. He's looking for faith. The Bible says, when did they opened up that roof and let that man down? When Jesus saw their faith. Say amen to this. Those 10 lepers, they were with Jesus and next thing you know, they cried out, I mean, they were outside the gate, they said, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us". Jesus said, "Go show yourself to the priest". They start going and start getting healed. Why? Because they had to show some faith. You can believe and sit there, and nothing will happen, but when you get up and start talking and walking, then something's about to happen.
PART 2
Jesus begins to teach on this principle, first he said, "Have faith in God". What am I saying, have God's faith, how does God's faith work? It works vertically, it didn't work linear. You got to say, hey it already has done, and got his call things that what, be not as though they were. Now, how do I build this in my system, at first when I say something that I need by faith and I first say it, my faith is not built. When i first say it it's almost like I'm just saying things but I'm really building something. I'm building in the unseen realm in my spirit and once this gets built up enough and I say it again, then now it's changing something on the outside.
Mark 11 verse 23, he says, "For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say it," so you got to say something that a lot of times people won't say because they don't see how it's going to be done. You don't need to see how it's going to be done faith is going to do the work. Whatever God will deliver into your hand must first be declared with your mouth. Yeah let's say something: that the redeemed of the Lord, then say something. I'm giving you, putting faith to work because you've had it, but he is not working.
I told you that story of me being in that time where I was in California in a meeting and I left earlier, I was in IBM at that time and I left earlier and the man picked me up with a limo and I got to the airport, where he just little small talk and so forth and I got to the airport. I was running little bit behind, as he parked, pull up at the curb. I just jumped out of the car and he came around and I thought he was going to absolutely cry. He said, "Sir I was going to get that door for you," I said, "Well, I had to get out". He said, "Sir I was going to get it for you".
Noticed what I did, I took away his work. I wouldn't let him work and faith is asking you to let him work. Faith can turn your problem around in 24 hours. What happens is we somehow don't see the value in developing faith, we're still trying it lean on people or a system to support us that keeps you in Egypt. God won't have that, and I'm saying now this confer, this little refresher is to get you stirred up in your faith again. We got to put faith to work. This man came and we got on board he closed the door to the jet and this is what he said, "Boy you caugth me just in time because I'm almost out of crew time". It was his last run to Chicago, I'm just saying my faith did the work. You're not to toil or lose one ounce of sleep for anything. Matter of fact you're not even to think hard about it, and just let faith do the work.
Now, two kinds of faith, dominating faith and creative faith and I just do the dominating faith. Let's go to Mark's gospel chapter 4, are you all sit with me so far? Mark's gospel chapter 4 look at verse 35, "And that same day, when evening was come, he said unto them, 'Let us pass over to the other side' And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full, And he was in the hinder part of the ship, he was asleep on a pillow; and they awoke him and said unto him, Master don't you care that we are about to die"? I'm putting in my words though. "And as he arose, rebuked the wind and said to the sea," what, "Peace, be still. And the wind ceased" and what happened? "There was a great calm". Bible says he said to them, "Why are you so fearful, How is it that ye have no faith"?
Some people say that God does things so that you could get in a situation to strengthen your faith and he uses bad situations to strengthen your faith. This bad situation what going to strengthen in faith this is going to kill them, am I right about this? How did he stop the storm, he spoke to it, "God have mercy," and when he spoke to it and said, "Peace be still," the storm obeyed him. Wait a minute, let's get a better reading, and obeyed what? His faith, he released faith, that airplane situation obeyed my what? My faith, Lord God and it will obey yours. It's the same faith that God used when he created everything. God giving you faith to dominate situations. No longer are situations going to get a best of you, you're going to get the best of situations now. From now on you're going to tell situations what to do.
Created faith, let's look at Mathew's gospel. Mathew's gospel chapter 15, over in Mathews gospel chapter 15 say created faith. It says in verse 29, "And Jesus departed from there, and thence he came near into the sea of Galilee; he went up into a mountain, then sat down there. And great multitudes came to him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and they cast them down at Jesus' feet; and he healed them. In so much that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be made whole, the lame to walk, the blind to see," and what did they do? They glorified the God of Israel. New parts for our body, I said new parts.
In Revelation 21 and verse 5 look what Jesus says, "And he that sat up on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new," I'm saying new houses, new cars, come on now new wardrobes, come on now, come on new jobs. Listen how many of you get a new car and like the way it smells, glory to God. There's nothing like the way it smells isn't it, it just smells though you go into showroom floor you can smell new just smells new. God gives you new stuff. What am I doing, I'm building up your faith why? Because faith is the substance of things what? Hoped for and the evidence of things what? Not seen there is a lot of stuff that you can't see in the natural eye that you can perceive with your spirit and once you can see it with your spirit as far as you can see he's going to give you. He just wants you to perceive it, if you can perceive it you can have it.
Look what he says in 2nd Kings chapter 5, this is when a man named Naaman went to the prophet and tried to get healed of leprosy. Look what the prophet said to him verse 10, the prophet did this, "And Elijah send a messenger down to him saying, go wash in Jordan 7 times and thy flesh shall come again to the and thou shall be clean". Did that make sense? Did it make faith? Did it make sense? Did it make faith? When you talk in faith it doesn't make sense, when you talk in sense it doesn't make faith so he's talking faith here. Go wash in a pool, what does that have to do with me getting rid of leprosy? Just do what the man says.
Look what he did in verse 14, come on down there please it says, "And he went down and dipped himself," how many times? 7 times, supposed he had dipped 6 times? Nothing would have happened because the Holy Ghost is not going to move on words that haven't been spoken. I said the Holy Ghost is not going to move on words that haven't been spoken see you got authority in the earth. You remember Jesse Duplantis, how many you remember him? He said, "God's in Jesse I am God". He said, "Okay I go along with that". He said, "Then I have the power to take your life," then Jesse aid, "That's correct". He said, "But I do not have the authority"? Justin said, "What"? He said, "I have the power to take your life but I do not have the authority".
God turned the authority of the earth over to who? Over to mankind and he didn't leave it with himself he turned it over to mankind that's why he can't get back in here and let you pray, he can't get back in here and let you give him permission. Say amen to that. That's why God had to come in the earth as a man. Jesus was a man, he was fully God and fully man and he put his God had ability aside because if he operated as God he'd be illegal here and he couldn't do anything. He said, "Jesse there is a lot of people that are up here in heaven said that I brought him up here but Jesse I had nothing to do with it, their mouth brought them up here". They said words that gave Satan permission to take their life and put them up there.
I'm telling you, I won't even repeat what a doctor says about me, you will never get that to come out of my mouth. You will never get that, I'll find some other way to say something if he said something wrong but I'm telling you right now I will not repeat it. The devil will never get me to cast myself, he will never get me, say amen to that. Understand this is not for everybody, this is for people who are planning on using faith to move mountains in this earth. I'm here to tell you right now that there is a group of people that God is raising up in these last days that it will not take down, will not accept the devil's report will not bow down to some political, will not be used by bribes and money, but it will be a people that will decree a thing and it shall be established.
God is raising up a people that are not ashamed of the gospel. What are we doing, putting faith to work, go deep 7 times, didn't make no sense because it made faith and what you need is faith and you need somebody that's not afraid to preach faith. They will always put you out in a place where you could be laughed at but wait till the end, you got the last laugh. I'm just saying that an enemy, one of the first things he uses is symptoms, he's got a symptoms spirit and that spirit will put symptoms and have you to accept it. It's like somebody knocking at the door, you answer the door and you got a big box of snakes and the question is, are you going to receive it? You got to say, "Ah ha that is not truth, the truth is I'm healed".
Oyedepo said a man told me he had high blood pressure he said, "No I don't". The man said, "I got the machine right here," he said, "I don't care what the machine says". He said, "I take communion in whatever running Jesus runs in me". Said his blood pressure came down that night, you can't stay there. I'm telling you right now God has planned for you to live long and strong but you got to do it how? You got to do it by faith, you let go your faith and God has to move out of the way, because he can't do anything for you apart from faith. I'm just saying look what kind of happened to this man verse 14 when he dipped seven times, he went down, dipped seven times according to the saying of the man of God and his flesh came again like the flesh of a what? Can I say newborn? God makes all things new.
Now you say, what happened Lord if I've gone to the doctor, doesn't make any difference. I just read something the other day I don't whether I read it here, I read it at another meeting. A lady said, "Hey your meeting in Detroit when you pray for people. She said I had a stent in my leg" she said, "When you pray something happened, I felt heat," and so forth and so on. She said, "I got home," she had some rods or something in her leg, got home the rods was gone and the leg was healed.
God, Smith Wigglesworth did it like this, he came trying to witness to this guy the guy didn't want to hear it. Smith just kind of let him alone, the guy died. What happened, Smith came home that day and his wife wasn't there and said where is she? She's down to such and such a house, he passed away. He said, "Oh did he maybe now I can witness to him". He went on down there and the man whose body was still upstairs and he walked into main play and he said, "Where is he"? Smith's wife says, "Smith don't," she knew what was going to happen, say amen.
That's what they ought to be saying to you, when you come in the room, "Oh don't, don't, don't". Because they know you're fixing to do something, what happened? Smith said wait, he's talking kind of rough, "he wouldn't listen to me when he was alive now he may be able to listen to me now". He went up there, took that man's body, pulled him off that bed, off that thing he was in and stood him up on the wall. His body has started to form, rigor mortis is starting, he stood him up on a wall and stood back and pointed at him and said, "In the name of Jesus walk," and that man's body jerked and he came right off that wall and said, go with it and receive the Lord right now.
Let me tell you something, I'm going to say this, I think the biggest obstacle in the church walking like this, is somebody preaching like this, I think if the preaching went forth enough of how supernatural you are then pretty soon it will get into your heart, in everywhere you go miracles will follow you. I'm talking to somebody over here right now everywhere you go miracles will follow you. Let us look at Luke chapter 17 please, you can see we're not going to back off. We're going to get his word, we're going to talk about it, we're going to build your faith up because you know faith talks. I won't say the rest but faith talks and I'm just saying to you that when your faith is where it's supposed to be, watch this, you have a different language. You have a different language, it's almost like people can't understand you, you're talking English but it doesn't make sense.
My wife is leaving for that job and she started, we agreed on it and she started confessing it. God said, we'll go ahead and tell her to put down the exact, tight things that she wants for this job, wants it in computers 10 minutes from the house, and so forth and an automobile with it. She got that and she started confessing that. One day Brother Backus friend of mine who is in seminary with me, he came over to the house looking for me and she was on the front lawn. He says to Veronica, "Is Bill in"? "Yeah he is in the house," "You got your job yet" "Yeah I got it" "where is it"? "I don't know where it is but I got it". I'm saying this you can't be that bold if you don't see anything. You can't manufacture this. Faith is the substance of things not seen, hoped for in things not seen meaning that it's there, you know it's there. It's a confidence that it is there say amen to that.
Look at verse 5, Luke 17 verse 5, "And the apostles said to the Lord what"? Increase our faith. "And the Lord said, if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say unto this sycamine tree, Be though plucked up by the root, and be planted in the sea," and what would it do? It would obey you, it would obey your faith, "But which of you, having a servant plowing"... and that's just where a lot of people don't go right here, "And feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come in from the field, Go and sit down to meet". Check it out, "And will not rather say unto him, Make ready where with I may sup... gird thysyelf, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken and afterward you shall eat and drink".
What am saying to you, faith is your servant now put him to work. When Jesus spoke to that tree check it out, did he stand there and look at the tree? No, when you put your faith on one project you can go put your faith on another. And he can take care of them all at the same time. How about the manifestation of your faith, the more faith you develop the faster the manifestation. I'll say it again, the more faith you develop the faster the manifestation.
Notice, he didn't have to stay by the tree, all he had to say was words, he's gone, now he is down in Jerusalem turning over some cash registers, but meanwhile faith was what? Working. Came back the next morning faith had finished the job and faith didn't come back to the house till the job's done. Faith is loyal servant why? He's used to working for God. God has given you a servant for the believer. Are you believer? Work your faith.