The Lord is actively searching for men and women of faith, and He takes great delight in those of faith. People of faith also serve as examples to other believers as conduits of the Lord's power. Obviously, every believer should greatly desire to be such a person of faith, not only for his/her own personal benefit, but also for the benefit of other observers, the Church, and the Lord, as He works to accomplish His will on the earth. So why aren't more Christians living in powerful faith? The answer is unbelief:

Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. (Matt 13:58, NKJV)

... a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him."

Then Jesus answered and said, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me." And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?"

So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting." (Matt 17:14-21, NKJV)

Unbelief is a powerful weapon of the Enemy, and is an unclean spirit that the Church has allowed to reign free within the Church. Not only have we allowed this spirit to cripple the work of the Lord through the Church, we have actually aided, abetted, and embraced this demon!

Now how can I make such a statement? Hasn't the Church continually desired to walk in power? NO! Not at all! The Church has continually promoted unbelief at virtually every point! We have redefined power words like "faith" (the Spirit of God Who empowers the work of the Lord) as "fainthearted desire," "prophecy" (the Spirit of God Who proclaims the Lord's desires and intentions) to mean "inspired preaching," "hope" (the confident expectation of the completion of God's promises) as "positive hopeless contemplation," "miracles" (the supernatural working of the Lord in our world) as "serendipity," "apostle" (the Lord's specially anointed spokesman with power) as "missionary," etc.

We have robbed the Church of our very birthright in Christ! By manipulating our thoughts and altering the definitions of the words we use, we have stolen faith from ourselves, the Church, and the Lord Himself, and have enabled our Enemy:

Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief (Hebrews 3:12a, NKJV)

Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. (Romans 11:20ab, NKJV)

To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled. (Titus 1:15, NKJV)

If we are ever going to grasp the spiritual power that is our birthright, we need to stop redefining the powerful words the Lord has given us, return to the original definitions, and contemplate our wealth.

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. (Prov 23:7a, NKJV)

Copyright (c) 2007 Jon Straumfjord