If you will not believe, you surely shall not last. Isaiah 7:9.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
I want you to think of faith in a whole new way, I want you to think of it as a relationship. People say they need more faith, or they wish they had more faith, but they don’t need more faith, they need more relationship.
If you notice, Joshua had faith to go into the Promised Land because I had told the Israelites I had already given them the land and they would have victory once they entered. But over two million people traveling with him did not have faith in My Word because of the way the circumstances looked and refused to go in. They shrunk back right on the verge of success.
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive [j]what was promised. For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. Hebrews 10:36-39.
They had no faith in Me and yet they had seen My mighty works in delivering them out of slavery and supplying for all their needs across the wilderness just the same as Joshua had. What was the difference?
Joshua was interested in having a relationship with Me. He sought out and served Moses as his servant and stayed most of the day in the meeting tent close to Me carefully writing down, pondering, and preserving the Words I gave Moses that became the first five books of the Bible. He had already begun what later I would tell him as the direction for having success in conquering the Promised Land. To stay close to Me by mediating upon and speaking My Word day and night and allowing nothing else to sway him or get him off the path of My Word.
When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship, each at the entrance of his tent. Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. Exodus 33:10-11.
Joshua was not like the majority whom I tried to get to know Me, even promised them to be My own treasured possession and a kingdom of priests unto Me, a royal priesthood, but they were not interested. They told Moses to converse with Me and then let them know what I said. And when they left the foot of Mt. Sinai, where I was speaking to them, they went down and made gold calves as idols and were carousing while Joshua remained serving Moses on the mountain so that he would miss nothing of what I was about.
Jesus defined eternal life as a relationship that comes from knowing Me and Him: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3. That defines faith as well. Faith comes from know Me and Him for faith comes by hearing and hearing My Word, especially that of your salvation in Christ.
To those who have received a like precious faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and [e]excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 2 Peter 1:1-4.
And Joshua never left that relationship no matter what came against him. He always looked to Me for direction and I gave it to him. Even to telling him to order the sun to stand still so he could finish the victory I was giving him in a battle before the sun went down. And when it came near to the time for him to depart from this earth, he stated that every one of My good promises to the Israelites had come true, but you know the majority who died in the desert without ever entering the Promised Land would not have agreed. But they could have had the same results he did. It all had to do with the relationship. He trusted and they doubted. They did not know Me and they had no interest in doing so. They preferred to criticize, question, and try Me though they had seen My works. They never knew My ways, which are faithfulness, truth, and love.
If you look, those who were interested in Me would not accept the things of the wicked. Abraham would not even take so much as a shoelace from the king of Sodom though he offered him riches for rescuing the people of Sodom and their goods from the enemy armies that had attacked. Elijah would take nothing from Ahab and neither would Elisha. And yet even in famine or war they were safe and well supplied.
Jeremiah tells you that when My Words were found he devoured them and they became his delight and the joy of his heart. He could no longer sit in the company of the merry makers but under My hand he sat alone. If you seek the life of empty show of the world, that is what you will have. If you seek Me and My Kingdom, that is what you will have.
But there is another aspect to relationship with Me. Until you know how forgiven you are the total giving of your heart to Me is not there. The one who is forgiven much, loves much. The one who is forgiven everything and knows it, has the faith to move mountains.
Until you know how forgiven you are, how loved you are, and how sought after and accepted you are, and who I have made you to be in Christ, you cannot have a good relationship with Me. Even if relationships of the world, if you just think someone is judging you or is angry with you a close relationship is not possible.
Consider the son of Hezekiah, Manasseh when he became king. He rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down; he also erected altars for the Baals and made Asherim, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. He built altars in My house where I had put My Name. For he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of My house. He made his sons pass through the fire in the valley of Ben-hinnom; and he practiced witchcraft, used divination, practiced sorcery and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in My sight. Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom I destroyed before the sons of Israel. 2 Chronicles 33:1-9.
I spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. He had no relationship with Me and he did not seek one either. But I was seeking him and My people. For I knew that if they came to know Me, they would love Me and follow Me, leaving the worthless idols behind.
Well, the king of Assyria came against them, when you let Satan in and worship idols he will destroy you, and they captured Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze chains and took him to Babylon. But it was not over. When he was in distress, he entreated Me as his God and humbled himself greatly before Me, the God of his fathers. When he prayed to Me, I was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that I was God. He knew Me by being forgiven and restored. And that was the key to overcoming all the evil that had happened to him. I gave him back his kingship. He tore down all the altars to idols and reinstated the sacrifices and brought all back to Me.
It was the same with Job and Gideon, until they developed a relationship by talking with Me, they both railed against Me, questioning Me about their plights and why I let them get in the mess they were in. But once they came into a relationship with Me they both became overcomers and came out as conquerors, both ending with riches and honor.
People say they need more faith, or envy someone’s great faith, but actually that is not what they need. They need a relationship with Me and when I raised Jesus from the dead, I raised you with Him and seated you in Him at My right hand. And one of the primary reasons I seated you with Him in the spirit already at My side is that I wanted a relationship. I am Spirit and so are you.
You do not have faith in someone who you don’t know. You would not entrust your wallet, credit card, or bank account, let alone your life, to someone you do not even know. A stranger’s voice you will not follow.
But when you are close with someone who has your best interests in mind, you will entrust things to them that you would not to others. And you will do things when they ask you to do them that you would not do for others. You will go out of your way to serve their needs if you love them and not feel a bit put upon. And yet if someone asked the same thing of you that you do not love or even like, you would not feel like serving a need they had and if you did, you would resent it.
You will never have a close and loving relationship with Me until you experience My forgiveness.
For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. 2 Peter 1:9.
Peter loved Jesus and left everything to follow Him but he denied him three times in fear of the world and his own life being harmed, but when he returned and experienced the great forgiveness that Jesus gave to him, even appearing to him privately before He appeared to the other disciples, Peter’s relationship to Me became so close that his trust knew no limits. He was sound asleep in perfect peace, just as Jesus had been in the storm on the lake because of His relationship with Me, in prison chained to the ground surrounded by guards and sentenced by Herod to be put to death the next day. But I sent an angel and delivered him.
Abraham was like that too. The minute I called his name he was ready to go into action. Even to sacrificing his son, but he knew Me. He told the servants he and his son would be returning after the sacrifice and they did. I Myself provided the sacrifice, and it was My beloved Son. I taught Abraham the gospel ahead of time. Galatians 3:8. My secret plans I share with My friends the prophets. And that is what qualifies prophets, they have a deep and abiding relationship with Me that nothing can shake.
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. John 14:7-9.
People often say they would like to have the faith of someone who is known for his or her strong faith and the many miracles that are wrought for the benefit of all at their hands. But faith is a relationship with Me and you cannot get that any other way but on your own. You have to know Me personally. And that will always give you an advantage.
I call you to fellowship with My Son, and through Him to Me. I link you back to Me through your cleansing in the blood of My Son. Know you are forgiven and reconciled by the work of Jesus. I made Him to be sin for you so that in Him you are righteous with My own righteousness. And that makes us one again.
Remember, faith is a relationship growing ever deeper and stronger until you step across the threshold of time to eternity and know Me fully as I know you.
I love you. Faith is walking with Me all the time in the fellowship of perfect love which casts out all fear. And that is what makes you an overcomer. When you are walking with the Most High there is nothing to fear for when I am for you, who can be against you? Nothing and no one. And that is why the victory that overcomes the world is your faith—the victory that overcomes the world is being in a close relationship with Me.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:31-39.