Bill Winston - Living the Higher Life
What's the reason why you should learn about faith? One is that faith is needed to release the blessing or the anointing of God for the supernatural. If you recall, the Bible says over in Genesis chapter 1 verse 28, "And God blessed them. And God said unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over all, every living thing that moveth upon the earth".
So this blessing was what God used to create the universe and now he's placing it on a man. God blessed them, Adam and Eve. Number two, faith takes the struggle, the failure, and the toil out of our lives. God planned for you to live a long time. Amen. And he planned for you to live by faith. And you know yourself, people who sit up and worry all night, that's hard on your system. One of the things I saw that Satan is after in terms of trying to control mankind, is he's after your immune system. Because your immune system does a whole lot of work for you. It does a whole lot of work for you.
When you're asleep at night, your system is working, cells are being discharged and renewed. He meant for you to sleep. And when you get up in the morning and rise, it's like Jesus being raised from the dead. It's like you went into a state where you didn't consciously know what was happening, but God took care of you. And while you were asleep, he was cleansing your body. Now when the immune system is not working properly, things don't get cleansed. There is not a system working that would repair things, keep the arteries flowing freely. It's not there.
And so I just have seen how Satan comes after the immune system, both spiritual and natural. The spiritual immune system, I think it's found in Psalm chapter 34 in verse 7. And he says, "In the angel of the Lord and camp around about them that fear him and what'll they do"? They deliver him. So you've got a spiritual wall of protection. Think of Job. Job chapter 1, verse 8. Now, faith keeps this in place. The Lord said unto the Satan, "Have you considered my servant, Job, that there is none like him in all the earth? A perfect and upright man, one that fears God and eschews evil". And Satan answered and said, "Does Job fear God for naught? Have you not made of what around him"?
See, that's that spiritual protection. Now how did that protection get down? Okay, Job's fear and his words, and it tore that thing down. And the next thing you know, he had sores from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. Or they put it the reverse way, but it was all over his body. But what kept that hedge, that blessing hedge up. Faith kept it up, and it'll keep it up in your life. See? And the enemy wants to get through and he'll try to do things, ignorance, unbelief, fear, doubt, shame, whatever, so that that hedge won't protect you. And I call it a Spiritual Immune System. But when you're dealing with the kingdom, he made it so that you have diplomatic immunity. And that immunity that you have like that, that's part of the immune system. It's angels around you.
Psalm 91:5, he says, "Thou shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor the arrow that flies by day". So you've got to get the fear out. "Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday". Now, we told you that Satan does business at night and what he sends out is curses and spells and he sends those out and he said, "Nor of the pestilence that walketh where"? In darkness, see, next verse, "For a thousand shall fall at thy side and 10,000 at thy right hand, but it shall not", What? "Come nigh you. Only with your eyes shall you behold to see the reward of the wicked", Why? "Because you've made the Lord, which is your refuge, even the most high, your habitation. There shall no evil befall you, neither shall any plague come nigh your dwelling".
So every virus and disease and germ that touches your body is supposed to die instantly. Because of your immune system. But that immune system is kept in place by what? By faith. And we've done a lot of things naturally trying to build that and do things and you know, eat right foods and beets, iron and you know, so forth and so on. And that's fine. That's fine. But there is a spiritual immune system that needs to be kept in place. The third thing, faith is the ability of God in us to superimpose the invisible over the visible in this earth. The moment something manifests, I no longer need faith. Let me give you another part of that. Faith sees what hasn't been manifested yet.
Okay, so let's put these two together, now. Faith sees what hasn't been manifested yet. It deals with what exists, but what is not visible. Faith deals with what exists, but what is not visible. Now, I'm still riding off of this third piece that I gave you. So faith deals with what exists but what is not manifest. Let's look at Hebrews chapter 11 and verse one. "Now, faith is the", What? "Substance of things hoped for. It is a", What? "Evidence of things not seen".
Now put it up there in the Amplified, please. "Now faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed of the things we", What? "Hope for. Being the proof of things we do not", What? "See. And the", What? "Conviction of their", What? "Reality". Now you are convinced of something you can't see. That's what that's saying, so far. Faith, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to your senses. And if you develop faith. what is not real will be more real to you than what you can see. And that's why people think people with faith are crazy. They think they're fanatics. They think they're this or think they're that. Why? Because they can see something that the natural senses cannot see or detect. Watch this, "And it is more real than what you can see and detect".
Now the Bible talks about presumptuous sins, and presumptuous sins I think what they're talking about is person moving on something that they can't see. See, they faking it. And it wasn't ever meant for you to move where you can't see. This is a spiritual truth. Let me deal with something here. John chapter 20 please. John chapter 20. This is a principle I'm about to show you and then we're going to do Romans chapter four. We just read that, but we'll do it again. John chapter 20. Now in John chapter 20, what happened is Jesus showed up and his disciples, and then all of a sudden Jesus said, "Well, put your fingers in my holes in my hands and put your hand in my side". And they said, "Oh my Lord, my God". Why? Because they had felt and touched him.
It says verse 24, "But Thomas, one of the 12 called Didymus, he was not with them when Jesus came. And the other disciples therefore said onto him, we've seen the Lord, but he said unto them, except I shall see in his hand the print of nails and put my finger into the print of nails and thrust my hand into his side, I", what? "Will not believe. And after eight days, again, his disciples were within and Thomas with them and then came Jesus, the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said, peace be unto you. And then said he unto Thomas, reach hither thy finger and behold our hand and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side. And be not faithless, but", what? Believing. "And Thomas answered and said unto him, my Lord and my God. And Jesus said to him, Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed, but blessed are they that have not seen, yet they believe". Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa now. Believing is seeing.
Now keep up with me on this. Now Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen me, you believe". I'm saying to you that that's the way you believe, that you see it, but you believe with your natural mind. But if you're in faith, you can believe with your heart. See? And when you do believe in your heart, something happens. Look at Luke, in Luke chapter one. Amen. Look at Luke chapter one and let's go down here to Mary. "For with God, nothing shall be", what? "Impossible. And Mary said, behold thy handmaiden of the Lord. Be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed".
Come on down to verse 44. He's going down the to Elizabeth's house now. "For lo, as soon as the voice of your salutation sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb". Who's this talking now? This is Elizabeth. The babe leaped. She's six months pregnant. The babe leaped in her womb. Next verse, "And blessed is she that", what? "Believe, for there shall be", what? "A performance of those things", come on, "which were told her from the Lord". So if you believe, you release the virtue of God for performance. See? And this is why the enemy doesn't want you to get to that level because with God, all things are what? Possible. So when you believe, you release God's power, God's virtue to perform whatever promise he has given you.
Say, "Believing is seeing". Now in the natural, it's the same way. I know he's in a courtroom now. I know it happened because I saw him myself. See, he's a witness. I saw myself. But in courtroom you can't prove faith, because you're seeing something other people can't see. Then you're trying to convince them of something existing that they have no way of contacting. But if you believe it, there will be a performance and you will see that promise manifested in your own. So notice we're in a world full of unbelief. So you're going to have to believe something in the middle of all the unbelief.
All right, let's go to Romans chapter four verse 17 again. "As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations before whom he believed, even God, who quickened at the dead and called it those things that", what? "Be not as", what? "As though they were. Who against hope believed in hope that he might become the father of many nations according to that which is spoken, so shall I see be, and being not", what? "Weak in faith, he considered", what? "Not his own body now dead, neither when he was about 100 old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered not at the", what? "Promise of God through", what? "Unbelief, but was", what? "Strong in faith giving glory to God".
Watch this. He was what? Fully persuaded that what God had, what? Promise. What was he? He's able to do. All I got to do is believe it. Whatever he promised me in this book, that wealth and riches shall be in my house, I've got to get myself to a place where I believe that. And when you sit up here and say, "Amen", that is not believing yet. Now you may, but that is a one in a billion probably. I'm saying most people when they first read it, it's not there yet.
So what you have to do is take it and read it again. Take it and what we call meditate it. That means what I'm going to do is I'm going to transform what I believe by declaring it, by saying it, by thinking about it, by pondering it, by reading it over and over, say amen to this, and pretty soon it'll drop from my head down into my heart. Now it becomes more real to me than my present circumstances. Now my present circumstances may be that in my house is a drought, but in my heart I'm rich. I've got to decree a thing and it shall be established. Faith sees what has not been manifested. Say that with me. Faith sees what has not been manifested. It deals with what exists, but what is invisible. It deals with what exists, but with what is invisible.
Let's look at it. Second Kings chapter six, verse 14. All right, so here the king sent a group of people to get Elijah, the prophet, because he was a seer. He could see which way the enemy was going to come. "Therefore said he, there the horses and chariots and a great host and they came by night and compassed the city about. And when the servants of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold a host compassed the city about with horses and chariots, and his servant said unto him, alas, master, how shall we do"? In other words, we can give up. We just might as well just give up. This is it. We're sunk. And he answered and said, "Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them".
Fear will not let you see the invisible. Its job is to keep you down in human condition. Its job is to blind the spirit. It's job is to not let you... Faith can penetrate and let you see. Fear keeps you down. So if I got a fear-based world, then people are down, and when I come in with faith they wonder what I'm talking about. All right. Let's look at this again. And Elijah prayed and said, Lord, I pray thee. What? Open his eyes that he may what? 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 Elijah. And when they came down unto him, Elijah prayed unto the Lord and said smite this people with what? People, I pray the, with what? Blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elijah. When did the angels get there? There, there. I heard it over there.
See, everything he's done for you is in the Book. And when did he do it? When were you chosen? See, he made everything before he made you. Everything was made. The world was made before he put Adam in it. Everything was made that you'll ever come in contact with, that you'll ever need, that you'll ever want from God, that you will ever desire. Everything was made and put into spirit.
Who is the lamb? When was he slain? When were you chosen? When were your goods put away? Now, everything is already done. So if everything is already done, I can't say God's going to do it, because if I do I'm out of line with the truth. I am not lined up with God, and how can two walk together except they be agreed? So if I'm saying he's going to heal me, I'm not in line with God's word. 1 Peter 2:24. "Who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness". By his stripes we are going to be healed? What does it say? We were, because God... It's done. Faith sees it done.
That's why you get so excited, because faith people can see it. It's already done. You don't shout when it manifests. You're shouting when you can see it. You can see that thing already done. You can see that credit already paid off. You can see that new car. You can see that healing. You can see that tuition, and anything you would need in life or desire is already in that book. And if in that book, it means it's in inventory and you have to requisition it.
Now, here's the thing about that. It's poor stewardship not to requisition it. What I'm saying is this. The reason why it's put there is for you to manage the Earth. Its wisdom for every problem is put away. God saw it a problem before you got to it. Watch this, and put away a solution. Now, who can access that wisdom? Who? Who is we? The church. The church, because he's going to take it and put the church on top with it. Let me finish going through this now. Are you with me so far? So now, the moment something manifests, I no longer require faith.
Now it sounds like a very simple statement. Faith is sure of what you do not see. Faith requires us to function by believing first instead of feeling or seeing. Faith requires that you put your body under your spirit. Faith begins where the will of God is known. That's where it begins. Look at Mark 1:40. "And there came a leper to him beseeching him, and kneeled down to him and saying to him, if thou will", what? "If thou wilt, thou can make me", what? "Clean. And Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand and touched him and said", what? "Said unto him, I", what? "Will. Be thou clean". And look at the next verse. "And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed". Faith begins where the will of God is known.
See, if somebody says God is teaching me something, there is no faith to get rid of it. There ain't no faith to get rid of that. You got to know that you and God are on the same side. Then like I tell people, they say, "Well, you know... Oh, he's using the devil". I said, "The devil is self-employed". God and the devil do not use each other. Now, the enemy will do something and try to make you think it is God, and the reason for it is because he's after your faith. He knows your faith will get rid of it. Isn't that good?
I was looking at Kevin Durant the other night. He's a basketball player. Some of you all, you know. But he plays for Golden State. But in the middle of the game, he hurt himself. Was it his tendon? Did they figure out what it was? His tendon, right? All right. Achilles. All right, so I've been there. I remember I was on a tennis court, and I was playing way out west, and I was going to hit a ball, and all of the sudden my back of my heel popped just like that. I mean, it's like I could feel it, I could hear it, and instantly this excruciating pain. I grabbed my leg. I mean, I couldn't walk. I mean I was... Man. But I said this the moment it happened, "I believe I'm healed in Jesus name. I believe I'm healed in the name"... I really did. Came off there, couldn't even put that right foot on the accelerator. I had to cross the left foot.
Now don't try this, but I had to cross the left foot. Are you with me with what I'm saying here? And I remember that I got home and I could not have walked into the house. My wife said, "Baby. Just agree with me right now". You know? And I did it, and that third day I could walk on it, and then that fourth day, and then that, you know, fifth... I'm just saying, if I had gone to the doctor, I know what he would've said. He'd have said, "First of all, we're going to put this in a cast because that thing is, you have ruptured that..." And so forth and so on, see? And that's fine. But when I got faith working for me... Faith, glory to God, connects with God's potential and God's power. Say amen to that.
Now, just hear me now. When I give these stories, don't come under condemnation, just say, "Hey. If he'll do it for him, he'll do it for me. Praise God". Some people, you can't hardly say nothing. All right, now I want you to see something here. Because what Jesus did is he got... Pardon me. What Peter did is he let Jesus use his boat. Jesus is preaching on the blessing, and you got to activate the blessing by faith. So when he got done preaching he said to Peter, "Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draught".
Now, Peter said something. He said, "Master, we have toiled all night". Time does not determine your faith. Faith determines your time. Faith takes us above the law of time. Are you with me? Because faith connects us with God's potential, then you can do in one hour what it takes a person one year to do. All of your circumstances are time related. All of them. Are time-related, all right? Now, just, can I keep going, here?
All right, II Kings, chapter four, verse one. Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, "Thy servant my husband is dead, and you know my servant did fear the Lord, for the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen". Elisha said to her, "What shall I do for you, and what is in your house"? She said, "Thine handmaids not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil". He said, "Now, go borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels, borrow not a few, and when thou art come in, thou shall shut the door upon you and your sons, and shall pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full".
She went from him, and she shut the door upon her and her sons, who brought the vessels to her, and she poured out, and it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, "Bring me yet a vessel", and he said unto her, "There's not a vessel more". And, the oil what, stayed or stop? She came, she told a man of God, and he said, "Now, go, sell your oil, pay your debt, live you and your children on the rest". It fell on a day that Elisha passed to Shunem. There was a great woman, and she constrained him to eat bread, and it was that often as he passed by as he turned in thither to eat bread.
And she said unto her husband, "Behold, now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God which passes by us continually". Watch this. "Let us make a little chamber for him on the wall, and let us set in him there a bed, and a table, and stool, and a candlestick, and it shall be that when he comes by us, that he shall turn in thither. It followed a day that he came in thither, and he turned in to that chamber and lay there, and he said unto Gehazi, his servant, 'Call the Shunammite', and when he had called her, she stood before him. He said unto her, 'Say unto her, behold, thou has been careful for us with all this care. Now, what shall be done for you? Would thou be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the host?' She answered and said, 'I dwell among my own people.' He said, 'What, then, shall be done for her?' Gehazi answered, 'Verily, she has no son or no child, and her husband is old'. He said, 'Call to her.' When he had called her, she stood in the door, and he said, 'About this season, according to the time of life, thou shall embrace a son'. She said, 'Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thy handmaid'".
The woman conceived and bear a son that season that Elisha had said unto her according to the time of life. Each one of those cases, the circumstances were time-related. If she didn't get that money right away, what were they going to do with her kids? Come on, help me. They're going to take them. Here's this next case. It describes her husband as being old. I don't know what all of that means. I didn't ask the Holy Ghost any more about it, but I have a feeling that he was beyond his soldiers marching. He was beyond making this thing happen.
Somebody here, can we talk? Now, what I'm saying, it's each one of these circumstances, it's time-driven, but when faith comes in it is no respecter of time. Time bows. It but when faith comes in it is no respecter of time. Time bows. It has nothing to do with faith. That's why, when I prayed about how long it's going to take for the Joseph Business School, I ask Dolores and Ray, here, they, two degrees from top universities, and so forth, and MBAs. They went out, researched, they came back and told me one to two years. They gave it to me. I went, prayer. Came out of prayer. God said, "Tell them it's two months".
See, it's almost like if you submit to time. You have just submitted to a system that is designed to control you. Because that's the only system Satan has to control man. He has the control in the system of circumstances that are naturally driven. He cannot do anything if you jump up to a higher level and when you come up to a higher level, you can only operate by faith and when you operate by faith, Satan no longer can hinder it, he no longer can hold it back, he no longer can delay it, he can't touch it because it's being orchestrated by God.
So that's why I'm saying one of the things you got to do is when the situation arises, make sure that you don't come down to your old thinking of how long this is going to take. Because when you do, you've just left the higher life and you've come down to the low life and that's where Satan is a god of this world. You want to put it in the impossible because that's where God operates. He operates in the supernatural. Are y'all with me? So look at Luke chapter five. How long did it take Elisha to conquer that enemy? When he called those angels down on him, how long did it take that to happen? No time, no time. No time. Should take business deals no time. We have not renewed our minds to God's way of doing things. And that's what happened.
I'm declaring now that you have, in Jesus' name. But I'm saying that's what happens when you talk in time. And we're used to talking in time. We're used to thinking in times. If somebody said something that seemed to be out of time, then we got a problem with that. Wait a minute, it's going to take longer than that. It's going to take longer than that if you're not born again, if you don't have faith, come on. If you've not been taught the principle of how you're going to operate, but faith partners you with God. All right, let's look at this. Let's read it in terms of this whole dominating operation of God. I'll just start at verse two "And he saw two ships standing by the lake and the fish were going out of them, they were watching their nets and he entered to one of the ships, which was Simon's, and he prayed him that he had thrush out a little from the land and he sat down and taught the people out of the ship".
Watch this. Now, when they left speaking, he said to Simon, "Now launch out to the deep and let down your net for a draw". And Simon answered and said to him, "Master, we have what? Toiled when? And caught what"? Okay, so when was he fishing? In the day or at night? So it wasn't time because Jesus is preaching in the day and you throw the net out, the other fish will see it and they'll run. So it wasn't time, so I'm saying that your faith has given you dominion over time. So you don't need to consider what season it is. You don't need to consider the weather conditions. Isaac sowed in a time of famine and received a hundred fold in the same year. None of that is considered anymore cause you're living a higher life. Say I'm living the high life, you're living a higher life. You need to talk different. You're living a higher life. You need to think different.
Now I'm telling you, if I put enough of this in you, you're going to start acting funny. And when I say that, I mean you going to start acting like God. You're going to start talking, you're going to start seeing things that other people can't see, and then you just got to brace yourself because they might. You know, they told Jesus, "Well come on, we're going to commit him because he", and so forth. That's over in Mark chapter three but my point to you is he came in there, the woman, the girl was graveyard dead. Jesus said, "She's not dead, she's just sleeping". They stop crying and start laughing at him. But he went in there and got rid of all that unbelief, threw them out, and then raised the girl from the dead.
Look at Luke chapter five. So he pulled in a boat sinking, net breaking load of fish. All right. When he pulled the fish in, how many fish did he pull in? Enough to do what? To break the net and sink the boat. Then he called for his partners. And then how many did they pull in? Enough to almost make their boats sink. Am I right? How long do you think it took them? No time. How big a catch do you think that was? A day? A week? A month? Six months? A year? I can guarantee you it was at least a year. Once she paid the debt from her husband's death and so forth, he said, "Now live on the rest".
How much do you think the rest was? When he said wealth and riches shall be in your house. I'm just saying, you've got to stop vacillating between God and the world. You got to make up your mind: I going to live for God. I'm going to live the high life. I'm going to talk positive. I know in every situation I can fix it, so I don't need to argue with nobody. I'm not going to be a victim for these people trying to get elected, telling me that I'm broke, I'm black, I'm poor, I can't read, I can't do nothing but go to jail and sell the... I'm going to stop that. I will go on that level, that I will show them that I can live above them. I can show them that I can dominate in business, living the higher life.
There's time for you to do that. All you have to do is just make a decision. Say no longer. I'm not doing this no more. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not going to settle for where I am. The enemy don't care if you come up and you've got some demons, you cast them out or you agree with somebody and they get healed, that's fine. That's wonderful, but let's go to a higher level now. Let's get the whole neighborhood saved. Come on now let's get all these kids in this particular school, let's make all of them go to college. Let's use our faith on a higher level.