The Greatness Of Faith
Reading from the book of Galatians chapter three beginning at the first verse.
Galatians 3:1-9: “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.”
In the book of Galatians, we’re told that Paul worked miracles by faith. He tells us in the Scripture, he that ministers miracles to the people does this by the act of faith. So we see that faith is a powerful thing. The way that some of us talk about faith in the day that we’re living in, it’s such a minor thing, and we place it, in our way of thinking, where it really isn’t beneficial for anything. It’s just something we talk about and place it in with all of the routine of life. We go to the house of God, we say, because we believe. Then we confess that we have made a confession concerning Christ.
Folks, we need to realize that it’s one thing to talk about faith, but it’s another thing to understand the power and greatness of faith. People of our day don’t seem to understand the greatness of faith at all. Faith is a great, mighty thing. It is powerful. It heals the sick. It casts out devils. It brings great prosperity to those that believe. It works miracles" not some kind of a make believe miracle, or something that you can explain away scientifically, but I’m speaking of a real, profound miracle. It works miracles when doctors cannot do anything, when scientists do not have the answer, when there is no medical cure and the physicians have backed off and have to admit that, clinically speaking, an individual is dead. God comes in and works a great miracle. This has happened many times to many people.
It’s so wonderful to have faith and to know what faith is. In my own personal life, I’ve experienced faith so many, many times. Having preached around the world, and having taken the gospel to those abroad as well as to the people here in America, I’ve been privileged to see some wonderful healings and wonderful miracles. I’ve had God to work great financial miracles for me when there was no possible way out. I have had God to work physical miracles, not only in my body, but in other people, in numbers of places where we carried the gospel. We are in great expectation even now as we are planning to go into a foreign country. We’re expecting God to miraculously do something. As I have said in the past, many of those people are dependent altogether on God and they don’t have any medical resources.
So then, faith is so mighty. Faith not only saves us, but faith heals us and provides for us during our lifetime. The Bible says, “Cast not away thy faith which hath great recompense of reward.” We should always treasure the Word of God and always hold fast to faith. We should practice faith. We should never lean upon the arm of flesh. There should never be a time in our life when we lean upon the arm of flesh. You might have a good livelihood, and that’s wonderful. You may have the necessities of life, and that’s wonderful. But there should never be a time in our lives when we place our affection in that direction nor lean upon that as our source of security. We should thank God for that in that God has provided it, but we must remember that God, overnight, can take away the health. He can take away the prosperity. He can leave us without anything.
We should set our affection on things above, where thieves don’t break through and steal, where moth doth not corrupt. We should lay up our treasures in heaven, so that our heart will be fastened to the heavenly side of life. Eat, drink and be merry, so far as godly joy, and do the things that are pleasing in the sight of God that all of this might continue. Let us enjoy houses and land and our income and our families and our friends. Let us enjoy our health. There’s nothing better for man to do than that. God wants us to abundantly be blessed in this world. He wants to abundantly pour out the blessings of prosperity upon us, an abundance of health, to be rich and strong in health.
But at the same time, there’s not one time in a our life that God desires that we look in the direction of natural securities or place our affection on anything in this natural world or become dependent upon any natural source to use as a crutch. There’s not one time in the life of a man that God desires this to be, for He tells us not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world, for all that is of the world is the pride of life and the lust of the flesh and the world and the lust thereof passeth away, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.
So then, we know that we are to have these things. They are necessitated to life. The Lord knows this, so He gives us an abundance of it. We know that we are to use these things and to take care of these things, for the Bible says that a wise man’s substance is precious in his sight. But beloved friend, there is never a time in life that we should love these things. I should never love the things of the world. Never. I should never depend on the things of the world. I should never have confidence, not for a moment, in any living creature on the face of the earth, as to his natural lifestyle or his flesh.
The Bible says that we are they that have no confidence in the flesh, not even in our own flesh. Our confidence altogether is in God. Our faith altogether is in God and we’re looking to God, no matter what the source is. We look to God. Even if we have medical aid and we take advantage of it, we’re still not trusting in that. We’re trusting in God. Someone would say, “Why not trust in the medical aid? This is what’s healing him.” Well, I look at it like this. Before there ever was a doctor, there was God and God made the doctor. Before there was medical aid, there was God, and God made the medical aid. God was the one that said the sick need a physician and a merry heart doeth good like a medicine. I’m looking beyond the remedy, and I’m looking to the source, which is God. You might say, “Brother Pike, I think the medicine is sufficient. I think the physician is sufficient.” But if this be true, why is it that the Bible emphatically states that there’ll come a day when there’ll be no healing medicines? What are we going to do then? There’ll be no healing medicine. It did not say that there would not be any medicine, but it said the medicine would not heal. So we know that healing is not of medicine. Healing is of God. The reason that medicine heals is because the blood of Jesus is on the seat of atonement and it is God’s grace to humanity that they may have remedies and they may have aids.
This is why I look at the situation the way I do when it comes to an income. A man may have millions, but he doesn’t need to trust in his millions. We’re trusting in God. We’re looking to God. He’s our source. There will come a time in your life when money won’t get you out of your problems. I know Solomon said, “Money answereth to all things.” But, it is like a lady that came to me a few days back. She had plenty of money in her life, plenty of prosperity, and everything was just so. All of a sudden, something happened to one of her children. She tried with all of her money to remedy the situation, but she became aware of the fact that it wouldn’t do the job. So she turned to God and God did the job. The lady says, “From now on, I’m going to serve God, for I’ve learned one thing, that money won’t take care of the situation that you get into.” Sometimes money can be a provision, as to a source, but as she said, there are times when even money won’t do it, but God can do it.
So, we should look to God. We should thank God for our health, our happiness. Many times, I just look up to the Lord. I’ll be sitting somewhere or maybe driving down the road, and I’ll look up to God and maybe tears will come to my eyes and I’ll look up and I’ll say, “I thank You, Lord, because I can breathe the fresh air as it goes in and out my lungs. I feel so refreshed. I feel so good.” Life is flowing through my veins as the oxygen comes in through my nostrils. The Bible speaks of man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils. I say, “I thank You, Lord. I thank You, Lord, for that breath.” I look out across the way and I see the beautiful trees. I can hear the birds. I go down to the ocean side or down to the river and I see the waters and the waves, and see different species, and I find myself almost spellbound. I say, “Life, life, how beautiful life is.” I say, “I thank You, Lord, for the little birds. I thank you for the trees, the shade, the hot sun. I thank You. I thank You.”
Over and over, so many times, I thank God, because in my mind I think, Father, there are people that have asthma. I’ve seen them struggle for breath and it’s such a pitiful, pitiful thing. I’ve seen the cripple confined to a wheelchair and how they would like to get up just to walk around once in a while. I remember having a vision of a person that was confined to a wheelchair, and in the vision it was such a hideous, horrible nightmare, for the Lord showed me it was such a horrible thing. I’d never dreamed of how they were confined to this chair, that this was the place where they eat, this was the place where they lived, this was their entire life. It was so hideous and horrible. I think of the people with missing limbs, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and I think, “Dear God, You smiled on me. You’ve blessed me, Father.”
But then I think of the few, frivolous things that I let annoy me or suppress my mind, and I think, “My God, why would I do a thing like that?” I’m so exuberant with life, having everything that I want, being able to breathe, being able to live and be whole and have the members of my body. I’ve been blessed. I don’t have any children that have ever had any bad thing happened to them, so far as afflictions. They’ve all been blessed. They’re still with me. God has been good to me. The blessings of the Lord maketh rich and addeth no sorrow. I think of all those things and I praise God for it. I praise God for it. He doesn’t have to give me anything for me to praise Him. I praise Him for what I already have. I have so many things. It’s like the songwriter wrote, “The blind man can’t see flowers growing in a garden, and a cripple man can’t walk places he’d like to be, the deaf can’t hear and the dumb can’t speak. Be thankful, be thankful, for what you’ve got, for to some folks, these things would mean a lot.”
I’ve come to the place where I realize that these mean a lot to me. It’s like a lady I knew. She was told that she had cancer and was dying. She worked with her husband and their job was to be out, traveling all the time. We talked to her and she said, “I never realized how beautiful life was. I have been out all of my life, going among the trees and the birds and the brooks. I’ve seen a lot, but I never really laid it to heart. I took it for granted that it was mine. I never really got enthused about the thing. But when I found out that I had cancer and I had but few days to live, from then on, life has been so beautiful. I look at the trees in a different way. When I hear the birds chirp, it’s so different. Life is so full and so wonderful. When you begin to think that you’re getting ready to lose your life, it becomes so dear to you.”
Folks, this is the thing that I’m trying to impress upon you at this point. You’re going to have to realize that every living human being is going to die. One day, life is going to be taken away from you. You don’t realize how fortunate you are. We spend our life complaining about little frivolous things, when many people have problems through life. Rather than sharing the abundance of our blessings, our strength and our monetary values, to make them happy and trying to console them in that they have real problems, we spend our time complaining. We often spend our time as a trouble maker, going about from house to house, gossiping and backbiting, causing problems, and because of this, we eventually bring the wrath of God upon us. The Bible speaks of people who do that. It says that there are mouths that need to be stopped, that go about from household to household, subverting people. These need to be stopped, with their foolishness, with their ignorance, causing someone that has escaped the corruption of the world to be entangled again. They are polluted and corrupt in their mind, and they go and give this to someone else. This really upsets God. It really gets God upset.
What we need to do is clean up our lives. Why should I be someone that goes about in corruption, with the ugliness of the world in my mind and in my heart? Why should I go about in that kind of way? Why should I spend my life drinking and going to places I ought not to? The Bible says to give strong drink to them that are ready to perish. A mother said to Lemuel, a king, that you don’t want to drink wine. You don’t want to go after those things, because that causes the king to error, and that causes him to forget the laws and the way of the laws and do things that are wrong. Eventually, he’s in trouble and he’s wrecked his kingdom and he’s caused others to follow his path of corruption. So give strong drink to them that are ready to perish. But a king doesn’t need to get involved in foolishness and frolic. He needs to be sober. The Bible says to be sober, be vigilant for thine adversary the devil goeth about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, who we resist steadfast in the faith.
This is why I refer to faith the way I do. It’s a shield. The Bible says to take the shield of faith that you might be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Cast not away your faith which hath great recompense of reward. Remember that faith cometh by the hearing of the Word of God. I say to you again, just believing, mere believing, is not faith. Mere believing is not faith. Remember what the Scriptures says: “If you believe, you do well. The devils believe and they tremble.” But the Bible says that faith cometh by the hearing of the Word of God. When the Word of God says something and you believe it, then that’s right.
Let me tell you something here. We’re running into a real problem in the day we’re living in, and that problem is that we’ve got all kinds of books that are called “The Bible”. Let me tell you again: I said books that are called “The Bible”. I understand the word ‘bible’ refers to a collection of books. I understand that. I also understand that this Bible is a book of the canons that have been put together of those books that were chosen to be God’s Word or the historical record of the church or God’s inspiration as to the utterance of the Spirit. But on the other hand, there is such a thing as proving a thing. The Bible says, “Prove a thing, then hold fast to that which is good.” I’ve proven the Bible, and many thousands of other people have proven the Bible. They’ve proven it to be the very Word of God. They’ve proven it to be authentic. They have placed faith in it and it has proven to be God’s inspired Words, even to the days of the prophets, yesterday, today and forever. Christ Jesus the same to every generation.
The Bible that has been proven is the Kings James Version. I want you to think on that. The King James Version. Someone would say, “There are errors in it.” Whether there would be error or not, it is the most authentic book that we have as a reference to God’s Word. It is proven to be right. Being one that’s been in revelation for many years, I know for sure it’s right. There isn’t anything that you could do with all of your Bible scholars and all of your books to sway my mind one tiny bit, because I have positively proven it, and that by revelation. Not only by faith, as to what it has provided in my lifetime, to be the very truth, but as to the revelation of the invisible things of God, and we’ve been in hundreds and thousands of those things. Paul said, “There was given unto me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me because of my much revelation.” When I received the revelation of Jesus Christ and went into the great mysteries of God, then I learned that the Bible absolutely is authentic, that it is right, and it is the King James Version.
There are other books. You can go back to the Greek, which I’ve done for a proof, back to the Hebrew, which I have done for a proof. You can do that, and that’s wonderful, because we know that this book was translated from different scrolls. But on the other hand, the present day books that are called the Bible are some of the most trashy bits of garbage that I have ever seen or read from. They have changed the Word of God, as the Bible says, into a lie, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and bringing upon themselves swift damnation. With their intellectual definings and translations, they have become repulsive to God and an abomination in His sight. They have changed those things that were holy and godly into a ritualistic act, a religious thing of today for their own desire. They have intellectually made it say the things they want it to say, so it would conform to their evil deeds of corruption. So beware and stay away from those things.
Stay with the Word of God. Don’t get carried away with all of these new translations and these new versions of what’s called “The Bible”. They are absolutely corrupt. The Word of God is sufficient. To believe the Word of God is not a game. You need to really genuinely have faith, with a pure heart, in the Word of God. So stay away from those things unless you want to get in trouble with God.
Now, what is faith? Faith is the substance of things hoped for. It is the evidence of things not seen. The Bible says, “By faith the elders obtained a good report.” By faith Abraham sojourned in a strange country, not knowing where he was going, but by faith he accepted the Word of God when the Word said to him, “Abraham, get thee out of the land of thy kindred and I’ll make a great nation out of you.” By faith these great miraculous things took place. By faith, when Jacob was leaving this world, he blessed his children. He blessed them by faith and it came to pass in their life, according to history, exactly according to the blessing. Faith is the substance. I want to really impress this upon your mind so that you’ll never forget it. Faith is the substance of the thing that you’re desiring, whether it be health, whether it be some financial blessing, whether it be your loved ones being saved, whatever it might be of the many thousands of things in life that you would desire or that’s necessitated to your living. Faith is the substance.
Once you believe, you ask God, you believe, then it’s the same as though you have it. I might say, “Lord, I want an automobile.” If I didn’t have an automobile and I prayed and asked God for an automobile, then if I really believed that God heard me and God had granted that to me, then I wouldn’t have to worry about the automobile. I have the automobile. Faith is that substance, the automobile substance. Because of faith, I have it. It’s got to come. There’s not anything that can stop it. So it is the substance of the thing that you’re hoping for. When you get faith in your heart, then you have what you want. You can rest assured it will be there. And the Bible says that it is the evidence of things not seen. When you have faith, that’s the proof that whatever you’re hoping for is yours. It belongs to you and it will come. So when you pray, believe that you receive whatever you desire and ye shall have it.
By Rev. George Leon Pike Sr.
Founder and first President of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Kingdom of Abundant Life, Inc.
Holiness Unto The Lord