This passage relates one of the miracles of Jesus. But contained in it is much more than just a historical narrative of a miracle. Included within this story is teaching about FAITH, and about the nature and character of God Himself.

Front and center to this story is Jesus’ statement, "Except you SEE signs and wonders, you will NOT BELIEVE." The entire teaching pivots on this one statement. Always take note of the places in the gospels where Jesus commends people for faith, and the places where He laments over their lack of faith. Sometimes Jesus will say things like, "O great is your faith!" Or He will say, "I have not found such faith in Israel!" And then there are the times when He says, "Where is your faith?" Or, He will lament, "O ye of little faith!" Jesus was God. In every case He was putting His finger on something vital. Thus, if we take note of what leads Jesus to make these statements, we will learn much about the faith that pleases God, and the unbelief that hinders us.

Back to the story from the gospel of John. Jesus says to this nobleman, "Unless you SEE, you won’t BELIEVE." This is a rather remarkable rebuke to this nobleman. Why? Because this guy DID at least come to Jesus for help. And he obviously thought Jesus could help, indeed, he must have thought Jesus WOULD help. Why would he come to Jesus otherwise? And yet we DO have this rebuke. But in addition, despite the rebuke, Jesus goes right ahead and grants the plea of the nobleman, and heals his son. Doesn’t all that this seem strange to you? – if the guy didn’t have faith? So we must ask two questions: First, on what grounds does Jesus tell this fellow that, "unless you SEE, you won’t BELIEVE."? And then why, if the guy didn’t have much faith, did Jesus heal his son?

Before we get to some answers, we do have to get one thing firmly established – and work from there. We have to settle on the fact that if Jesus said, "Unless you see, you won’t believe," that the man was really NOT believing. Can you see that? Jesus could not say to him, "Unless you see, you will NOT believe," if he was already believing BEFORE seeing. Absolutely not. Thus, despite coming to Christ and asking for help – all of which was fine – this nobleman did NOT have the kind of faith Jesus could commend. Indeed, Jesus is telling him point blank that he does NOT really believe – in fact, WILL NOT believe – unless he first SEES.

It seems clear that this nobleman was coming to Jesus, not because he believed, but because he was desperate enough to try anything. He had probably heard that Jesus had healed others, and since he needed to get his son healed, he thought he would, "give Jesus a try." I don’t want to be too hard on the guy, but Jesus’ rebuke to him is clearly based on his LACK of faith. Again – "unless you SEE, you will NOT BELIEVE" – well, that statement proves, since the nobleman had not yet seen anything, that, at that point, he really did NOT believe. This, despite coming to Jesus for help.

In this nobleman we can see possibilities in ourselves. There are lots of people, some unbelievers, but many Christians as well, who ask God for help, and say they trust Him, but really DO NOT. We come to God with exactly the same attitude of unbelief found in this nobleman. We say, "I will trust You, God, but only if you FIRST help me. I will believe you, Lord, but only if you FIRST prove to me that my faith will not be in vain."

Now, if God were a human being, this might be the smart thing to do. After all, why would we want to trust a person unless they first proved TRUSTWORTHY? But God is NOT a human being. Indeed, if we first demand that God prove Himself to us, BEFORE we will believe, we are actually betraying something about ourselves – we are betraying the fact that we DO NOT KNOW GOD. We might even be in unbelief.

That may shock you, but it is the Truth. I don’t necessarily mean we are willfully rebellious, or that we really know what we are doing. But think about it. If you won’t believe God until you see He is faithful, then you are actually suggesting the possibility that God might be lying to you, or that God might be unfaithful. In fact, you are telling God that you have no intention of surrendering to Him until He meets your approval and proves Himself to you. Well, you can try this with God if you like, and many people do, but you are going to find out that God has one answer for you: Silence. He won’t prove Himself to you. He is not going to be put into a position where He has to prove to you He is faithful.

Why? Because if God catered to our demands and gave us signs and wonders to prove that He is there, or faithful, many of us still would NOT believe. We think we would believe, but we would not. There are exceptions. Often, God will prove Himself to young Christians, or to those whom He knows are ignorant. Jesus did work a miracle for this nobleman, and John records that he did later believe. But this does nothing to negate the rebuke of Jesus. In fact, Jesus later would say:

Spiritual adultery is when you have forsaken God for another – normally for what you want in this life. One of the symptoms of this condition is that we won’t believe God unless He proves Himself to us – because we want to be sure if we believe Him He won’t cramp our style. Thus, signs and wonders NEVER solve the faith problem. Ever. Indeed, an insistence upon them might be a symptom that you do not believe. You can see this all through both the OT and the NT. For Pete’s sake, even the apostles of Jesus Christ did not believe until the very end, and look at all the miracles they saw! In fact, the resurrected Christ stood before them and the Bible says that some of the disciples still did not believe. And remember Israel? They were barely through the Red Sea and they began to doubt. No. If my approach to God is that I will not believe until I see, then the chances are, even IF I do see, I still won’t believe.

Unbelief is never resolved by seeing. It is resolved by turning to God. Unbelief, at its root, is the result of distancing myself from God. It is the result of a refusing to turn to Him with an unconditional surrender. Just as faith is a relationship word, so is unbelief. Unbelief is my choice to close myself off from God.

I don’t want to leave the impression that it is wrong to want to be certain about God’s will. We will get to that a bit later. But there is a difference between wanting to be sure about God’s will, and doubting that God Himself is faithful.

Jesus said that this nobleman would NOT believe unless he first could SEE. Well, ask: See WHAT? Obviously, see the miracle. Get the help. This fellow would NOT believe unless Jesus FIRST granted his request – and THEN he would believe. And you and I have probably repeated that error over and over.

But WHY is this wrong? Why is it wrong to want to be SURE about what we believe? Why is it a lack of faith to want to make sure that we are on the right track with God? Surely God doesn’t want us to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, or to presume that whatever we want from Him is automatically going to happen? Where did this nobleman get off the track? Where do WE get off the track on this matter of faith and seeing? If we answer these questions, we learn some important fundamentals about FAITH.

Unless you SEE, you will NOT believe. That’s what Jesus said to this guy. He also said something very similar to Thomas:

Put all of these passages together, and you cannot escape it: God wants us to BELIEVE before we SEE, indeed, many times He wants us to BELIEVE if we NEVER see! But how does that work?

Well, first of all, we need to understand that our faith must have an object, and be based upon the Truth. Thus, despite the need to believe without seeing, we must have Truth TO believe. Otherwise, we could just dream up any old thing and launch out on it blindly, claiming that we have great faith. No. We are to believe before seeing. But the whole point is that we have Truth TO believe, even though we may not yet SEE it worked out.

We read this fact in Hebrews:

We are being told here that FAITH IS substance and evidence – that faith IN US is the substance and evidence of that which is not yet seen. We must be clear about what this means, and does not mean. This verse does NOT say, "Faith believes for what is hoped for, and faith believes for what is not yet seen." Nope – although certainly, in a real sense, faith does believe in those ways. But this verse is not talking about faith as believing. Rather, it speaks of faith itself as the very substance and evidence IN US – of the things for which we hope. BELIEVING emerges as almost a natural byproduct.

What this means is that if what I hope for IS the will of God, then IN ME will be substance and evidence of what I hope for. My faith will BE that substance and evidence. Or, to use other language, if I have the faith of Jesus Christ, then that faith itself will be the proof and evidence and very spiritual substance that is the forerunner of the actual fulfillment.

But it is right here, on this point, that we begin to see what faith IS, and what faith is NOT. And we begin to see how we come to possess real faith. The Bible actually tells us, point blank, how faith COMES:

You have to read this verse backwards to truly get the point. It states that faith begins by the initiative of God. In other words, YOU cannot initiate faith – you cannot simply decide to believe. Nope. Faith does not come from yourself as the source at all.

Why? Because unless God takes the initiative, you have nothing TO believe. Romans 10 also asks, "How can they believe unless they have heard?" The answer is that they cannot. Sure. You must have some revelation – some LIGHT – in order to believe. Otherwise, there is no object OF faith, and no Truth to believe.

But you will see that once God takes the initiative to reveal or speak His word to our hearts, that faith cannot come unless we HEAR. In scripture, hearing is never limited to receiving audible sounds. Rather, hearing always includes submission. In other words, I HEAR by opening myself to, and embracing, what God is revealing.

Thus, what we have is this: God’s word gives us Truth TO HEAR, and IF we hear, faith comes. So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

If there is one thing we need to see from this, it is that you and I cannot decide WHAT to believe, or even WHETHER to believe this or that out of the blue. You and I cannot muster up faith. You and I are not the source of faith, and certainly not the source of the Truth we are to believe. No. Faith is simply the outcome of you and I submitting to God’s Word – i.e., of submitting to God Himself.

If you put all of this together, what you will see is that it is NOT POSSIBLE for you and I to have true faith – the faith that IS substance and evidence – it is NOT POSSIBLE for you and I to have true faith for ANYTHING except the will of God. This is an absolute fact. For it is the will of God that GENDERS faith to begin with. It is God speaking or revealing His Word to us that gives us something to hear, and which eventuates in FAITH. You and I could not possibly have the substance and evidence of things not seen in us unless that substance and evidence were birthed of the will of God to start with. The will of God – if we HEAR – genders FAITH. You cannot have faith except it be for the will of God!

Now, what this does is clear up a lot of error and confusion. It means that we have NO RIGHT at all to decide what we want, and then try to get God to do it! No. Rather, the question is whether GOD wants it, and whether we are submitting to HIS WILL. Furthermore, teachings such as, "positive confession," and the, "Word of Faith," heresy, are exposed as error. Faith does NOT come by speaking or confessing! Faith comes by hearing! Faith does not come by repeating and declaring over and over even the TRUE word of God. No. Faith comes by personally submitting myself to God, for HIS will and HIS desires. Submit to God. Faith for HIS WILL shall be there in you!

This Truth is exactly the one Jesus was teaching in John 15:

Notice the big IF in this promise. IF the words of Jesus abide in me – in other words, if the will of God is at home with me – THEN I will be asking in accordance with those words and His will. And God will answer. Sure. "If my words abide in you, THEN you shall ask (using MY words) and it shall be done. In short, our asking is supposed to be nothing more than an extension of the WORDS OF JESUS – and this will always be the WILL OF GOD. God will always answer.

Link up Romans 10:17 and John 15:7. Add to that Heb. 11:1. Faith begins with God taking the initiative to speak His word to us. And if we HEAR, then HIS WORDS will abide in us. And then faith will be there – and that faith will be substance and evidence OF the will of God. And then we will ask for the will of God, and God is always going to want to do HIS will.

You and I can believe NOTHING except that God has revealed it to us. Now, we can refuse to believe it as well, but refusal is always possible once God gives light. And it is likewise possible to invent your own Truth and light out of your own heart. But the fact remains that unless God reveals Truth to us, we have nothing to believe. If you doubt that, you are saying that you can believe what is NOT revealed, or that you can force out of God revelation that He has not chosen to give. Nonsense. Faith must be in the Truth, and Truth comes by revelation. Yet this is all good news, because Jesus has promised that the Holy Spirit would always be in the process of guiding us into all Truth.

So again -- faith is the substance and evidence of God’s will having been birthed and then revealed IN US. It begins IN US – even if we don’t yet fully understand where it is all going. Our submission to God is the fertile soil. Note that faith is therefore not US deciding what we want, and then trying to generate the faith necessary to get it! No. Faith is for the will of God only because it is the will of God that births faith to begin with!

Faith is not a force. Faith is not a gimmick. Faith is not a religious position. Faith is not a condition of mind that I create by thinking. Faith is not an emotional condition. Faith is not me telling God what I think He wants to hear. Faith is not me saying words – not even Bible verses – over and over. Faith is not a pasted on approach to God. NO to all of these. Rather, faith is a RELATIONSHIP word – it is a relationship of trust and reliance upon God. It is a relationship of surrender TO God. Once I surrender TO God, what I get IS God – and the faith necessary to believe and trust Him is then possible. Indeed, it really isn’t possible any other way.

Anyone who tries to turn faith into a system that is supposed, "to work," is in error. Faith cannot be divorced from your personal relationship with God. Faith isn’t from me -- as the source -- up to God! Neither is faith a matter of ME generating a force up to God -- by using His own words to act upon Him – so that I can get Him moving! No. You cannot twist God’s arm with His own promises and call that faith! Rather, faith is from God down to me, creating in my RELATIONSHIP with Him a substance and evidence of His will – and then I choose to surrender to God and believe Him according to that will. Any other concept of faith is at best of the flesh, and at worst, of the devil.

Why do we continue to think that it is up to us to get God to do His will by generating faith? What can’t we see that God already is moving in His will, and that He is seeking to create the relationship of faith in us so that we can move WITH HIM? We cannot even force God’s hand in His OWN WILL by faith! How much less can we force Him into ours! God wants us to move with Him in His will. Why is that such a revolutionary concept for God’s people? It ought to be business as usual.

Of course, the problem here is that we think that the will of God is a THING, or a lot in life. We think that the revelation of the Truth is merely the doctrinal aspect, or that the revelation of the Truth is about a THING. No. The will of God is Christ, and the revelation of the Truth is Christ. And both must FIRST be accomplished in us – in our relationship with God. God must first establish the substance and evidence of a relationship of faith between us and Him in Christ. Then He is free to do many things. Failure to see this is why we sometimes get frustrated when God seems to do so little, when He promises to do so much. God wants to do His will FIRST IN US, and then THROUGH us. We get this backwards.

God wants a relationship of faith with us. You cannot bypass that and, "have faith." You cannot. You cannot have a THING called, "faith," or get God to do many THINGS, to the disregard of your relationship with Him. Indeed, we need to stop trying to HAVE A THING CALLED FAITH and focus on God Himself. If we do, the faith of Jesus will be there in us.

You cannot generate faith like it is force up to God – regardless of what Kenneth Copeland teaches. You cannot. You cannot draw upon anything in yourself to create faith. Faith is the product of hearing and submitting to what God wills, and surrendering to Him.

Thus, I say again: It is absolutely impossible to have the faith of Jesus Christ – which is the only real faith – for anything except what Jesus has faith for, which is ONLY the will of God. But the great news is that if we submit to God and settle for nothing less than His will, that it is likewise impossible for anything less to happen for us but the will of God.

The very faith that is in your heart is nothing more than what grows from your submission to, or hearing of, the will of God. If you submit, God’s will becomes IN YOU the substance and evidence of His will, and eventually it will be seen, if not in circumstances, then at least IN YOU.

The key here is to submit in our hearts to God. We may not yet know His will, but we can still submit to Him FOR His will – which, well, IS His will. Never try to ask God for His will unless you intend to submit to God Himself. You will be wasting your time.

Now, certainly this nobleman in our story was not a Christian. Thus, it would be unfair to take these Truths about faith and expect this man to know them, or live in them. But I think that the story is given, and Jesus’ rebuke to him is recorded, to teach us much about faith. Jesus said to him, "Unless you SEE, you won’t BELIEVE." This certainly ought to tell us that God’s highest will is for us to BELIEVE even if we don’t see.

We are beginning to see how this is possible. We can BELIEVE before we SEE. It is possible because we are not believing a THING, or even believing that God will do a thing. No. That never comes first. Rather, we are to BELIEVE GOD HIMSELF – and trust Him to do HIS will. Even if we don’t know what His will might be.

This gets back to something I said earlier. You and I may not know the will of God in a situation. But we can believe that GOD knows His will, and that He wants to do it. And we can also know, based on scripture, that God wants us to know His will. Thus, even if we don’t know or understand what God is presently doing, we can still believe GOD HIMSELF – we can still trust and rely upon HIM.

But you see, this is all nothing but words unless one thing is true: We are absolutely sold out for the will of God. We must be of the mind that we will settle for nothing less than God’s will. That is really what it means to HEAR – to submit to God. Note that this isn’t simply a matter of being willing to accept a THING called, "God’s will," in the sense of a set of circumstances, or outcome of a matter. No. Resignation to circumstances isn’t what God is after. To be committed to God’s will really means that I am committed to God Himself – and that I am certain that God knows best.

The key to knowing the will of God is to surrender to God Himself. Again – faith comes by hearing. You must submit to God. And then you will KNOW. And faith will be the outcome. You cannot faith to believe and trust God if you surrender to Him.

Now, someone is bound to ask, "Well, if I must surrender in order to know and believe, doesn’t it take faith TO surrender? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Faith or surrender?" Let me put it this way -- if God has put you in a situation which requires from you a surrender, the fact that you are IN that situation proves that you already have the faith necessary to surrender. God would not have you in it otherwise. Thus, in one sense, faith comes first – God gives each of us a measure of faith. If you are saved, you have SOME faith upon which God can build. But in another sense, unless you surrender to God in the situation at hand, your faith will never grow. In fact, you may step back into unbelief – the choice before you is one from which you cannot retreat. You cannot go back. You have to choose.

So this necessity of believing BEFORE we see is not unreasonable. Jesus would not have rebuked this nobleman for his lack of faith if it were not possible for him to believe – that would be useless. If we are in a situation where we must believe BEFORE we see, then we can be sure that it is possible for us to do so, and that if we do so, we will enter into a new freedom with Christ.

You will notice in the story that the nobleman’s unbelief popped out in that he insisted that Jesus COME DOWN and heal his son. He insisted twice. This might seem like a small detail, but you will also notice that Jesus refused to do it that way. I think there is a lesson in this, that we might take and spiritualize. When we ask God for help, it is much easier for us to believe God cares if He gives us indications that His, "help is on the way." We like indications and confirmations that He has heard us – represented by the request that Jesus come right down to where the son was ill. But can we believe God cares even if He gives us NO indication that He has heard us? Will we believe if God simply says, "I will handle this. Trust Me."? That requires much more of us, doesn’t it? It really requires that we BELIEVE without yet SEEING.

If Jesus had gotten up and went with the man down to his son, I’m sure that this would have provided a certainty to the man that Jesus was going to heal his son. There would have been, if you will, "visual evidence," that Jesus was going to grant his request. But for Jesus to simply say, "Your son is healed," well, this required believing without seeing, didn’t it? That is much more difficult for some of us. Why?

Because we don’t know God. If we knew God, and really believed Him, we would realize that even if He gives no indication that we can grasp with our senses that He has heard us, it is nevertheless a fact that HE HAS. This is not based on whether we have said the right prayer, and it is not based on whether we are worthy. No. It is based upon the character and faithfulness of God Himself. In other words, if God is faithful to you and I, it doesn’t matter whether we can figure out, sense, or feel that He is. He is regardless – because all of the promises of God find their yes and amen IN HIM.

It is here that the nobleman failed. He came to Jesus for help. But when Jesus would not come down and be physically present to heal his son, he apparently doubted. Is this not an affront to the character and honesty of Jesus – even if it was in ignorance?

I want to emphasize this point, because it really gets at the heart and core of unbelief. This man had at least enough faith to come to Jesus for help, and ask Him for help. But he insisted that Jesus come down and heal his son. To that request, Jesus said, "Except you SEE signs and wonders, you will not BELIEVE." Jesus was putting His finger on something. And yet the man insisted again that Jesus come down to his son, "lest my son die." Can we see that this man is really, at this point, doubting that Jesus cared? Or that Jesus was willing? He may even have doubted the possibility of Jesus healing from a distance, if he even considered the possibility of that. But in the end, this is about the man doubting the character of Jesus.

If we did not have the rebuke of Jesus – "unless you see, you won’t believe" – we might must give the guy a free pass and not expect too much from him. But Jesus knew that this man, as desperate as he was for his son, did not believe Jesus could, or would, heal his son, unless He physically came down and performed a healing. He probably didn’t recognize that Jesus was God. He probably didn’t have a clue. The man thought he needed to SEE before he could believe.

Well, the outcome of this story is amazing. As mentioned, Jesus did not indulge the man and do the miracle the way the man wanted him to do it. In other words, Jesus did NOT allow this man to see BEFORE he believed. At no time during the story does Jesus give in and let the man SEE before he BELIEVED. No. Instead, Jesus says, "Your son is healed." And guess what? THEN the man believed. But shortly therefore -- the man did SEE. In short, Jesus worked this thing around so that the man DID believe first, and then later see – exactly the way God always desires.

What do we learn from this? Well, we learn that God is merciful, and even if we lack a certain amount of faith, God will not reject us. He will try to bring us on into the Truth. But He won’t often do that by giving into us and letting us SEE before we BELIEVE. No. Rather, He will bring us to where we first BELIEVE, and then we will SEE.

This is clearly laid out in the story. The man wanted to see before he believed. So Jesus rebukes him and says, "Unless you see, you won’t believe." But then on the other hand, we have Jesus promising him miracle is done -- WITHOUT the man FIRST seeing. Then what happens? The man believes – he believes BEFORE he sees. And then he does SEE. He finds out his son is healed. This is an encouragement to us, for it tells us that God won’t often let us SEE before we believe. He won’t indulge this in us. But if we will believe Him, we will SEE – even if at first we were wrong in our hearts.

There is another story of a healing in the gospels that closely resembles this story from John. But the initial faith involved is much different.

Notice how this story resembles the other, and how it differs. In both cases, there was an individual laying sick, far away from Jesus. In both cases, another person who loved them comes to ask Jesus for healing. The differences then emerge between the stories. In the prior story, the nobleman insisted that Jesus come down to heal his son. In this story, no such request is made, indeed, Jesus volunteers to come down and heal the servant. And the centurion tells him that it is NOT necessary. In fact, the centurion is so certain of Jesus, that he asks him to do exactly what Jesus ended up doing in the first story – he asks him to simply say the word. And Jesus does, and the servant is healed.

The teaching God wants us to see is, of course, about faith. In the first story, we saw that Jesus said, "Unless you SEE, you won’t BELIEVE." In this story, Jesus said, "I have not found such great faith even in Israel." The point is, this centurion DID believe – even without seeing.

Why was he able to do this? Well, because he believed in the mercy and willingness and faithfulness of God – he based his faith on God’s character. As soon as Jesus said he would heal his servant, the centurion knew that it was a done deal. He didn’t need Jesus to prove to Him that He wasn’t lying. He didn’t need signs and wonders in order to believe. He needed only faith in the character of God.

As stated earlier, faith must have an object. That object is a Person – God in Christ. But in order for that to mean anything to us, we must know that this Person is FAITHFUL. You cannot put your faith in God unless you believe He is faithful. And that gets back to His character.

God is simply telling us that we can trust Him – that we can trust His word. We should not be continually nagging God for proof that He is telling the Truth, or that He is really there. It is amazing how easily we believe we are saved, and yet how hard it is for us to believe that God is with us. Well, what else would be the case if we are saved? Does God save us and then desert us? Isn’t Christianity Christ in us? Yep.

It is here that we need to see a difference between certainty about GOD’S WILL, and certainty about GOD HIMSELF. It is, is it not, possible to be wrong about the will of God? Sure. But it is not possible, if we trust God, to be wrong about HIS faithfulness. Thus, it is never wrong to be certain about God.

And yet the two actually come together. It is a fact that I can be wrong about the will of God, simply because I am mistaken, or don’t know God. All of us have done that. But if I trust God, and am certain about HIS faithfulness, then I need to see that this means that God also wants us to be certain about His will – and that He will be in the process of showing us the Truth about it.

The key here is the same key that we have been seeing is the key to everything: Surrender to God no matter what. Now, we certainly need to surrender to God for His will no matter what. But more than this, we need to surrender ourselves to God so that He can do whatever it takes IN US to reveal His will.

You see, God could do His will in a minute for us if He wanted to. In fact, you will hear much false teaching to the effect that it is just that simple – and all you need to do is either send in money, or positively confess into existence God’s will. But God has revealed in His Word the fact that He is not generally going to do His will unless He can find one of us to do it THROUGH. In other words, God wants to so relate people to Himself that they BECOME His will, and can be used by Him as expressions of His will. Then He can DO His will in our lives, and GIVE us His will in many ways.

The suggestion that I can receive and possess the will of God for my life when I am not rightly related to God by faith is crazy. But you hear this all the time. People teach, for example, that we can reign and rule with Christ and take authority right now – and yet they never address the necessity of Christ reigning and ruling over US personally. I’m not talking about whether we do good works and the like. I’m talking about whether we have LOST OUR LIVES to Christ and have relinquished everything about ourselves into His hands. When is the last time you heard THAT message preached on Christian television? No. Instead we are given gimmicks as to how to bring to pass God’s will in our lives – without mention of whether we have BECOME expressions of His will through faith.

There are times when God, out of sheer mercy, or to encourage us, or out of necessity, will do His will, or give us His will in a matter, even though we are not very far along in our relationship with Him. We are all in a process of growth and God brings His will in accordance with His purposes within that growth. But in the ultimate sense, our relationship to God, and His will for our lives is supposed to be as ONE thing. God’s will for our lives is supposed to be an extension of, or a working out of, our relationship with Him. You cannot separate God’s will from our relationship with God Himself.

For example, I have known people who read God’s promises in the Bible and claim them for themselves -- but God doesn’t answer. What God says WILL BE does not come to pass for them. And they don’t know why. And so they either live in anger against God, or unbelief, or despair. They perhaps resign themselves to a Christianity that is theory only – one which they feel cannot truly come to pass. I don’t think such situations are rare. In fact, I submit that they are the NORM – most Christians do not see the promises of God happening in their lives. Those promises are either regulated to, "someday," or spiritualized into something impractical and unlivable. What is wrong here?

Well, I think the most common error here is that we don’t read ALL of scripture. We read the promises, but we don’t read the MEANS by which they are to come, nor do we pay attention when those promises are based on an, "IF."

I will give three quick examples:

Do you want to experience the inheritance you are given in Christ? Do you want to reign and rule with Him? Then you must SUFFER WITH HIM. This is not simply a matter of God demanding suffering in exchange for a reward. No. To suffer with Christ will require that God do IN YOU whatever is necessary to get you OFF the throne of your own life, and put Jesus on that throne as your personal Lord. This will be both inward and outward. This will make you safe for authority. You can reign and rule NO OTHER WAY. It is utter nonsense to think that you can reign and rule with Christ if you are not submitted to Him personally, or if He has done no work in you to build you into one He can trust. No. You reign and rule with Christ only to the extent that He reigns and rules over you. Any other teaching is heresy, and if we really understood it, the very gospel of Satan himself.

But how often is this taught? Nope. The big IF is ignored. And so we plunge forward expecting to have authority, and claiming the promises, and we CRASH. And we don’t understand why. But it all goes back to our personal relationship with God. Nothing God has for us can be divorced from being rightly related to Him. Nothing.

It is entirely possible to spend years seeking and asking and even pleading with God to give you YOUR LIFE. We usually do this sincerely, and in ignorance. And we usually don’t ask God for bad things, but good things. In His mercy and concern for us, God will even bless us with many things. But you cannot escape the Truth in this passage. God doesn’t want to give us OUR LIFE. He wants us to LOSE IT. Of course, He always has something better. But most often have no concept of what Jesus is talking about in this passage. We usually think that our life is the life Jesus wants to give us.

Jesus is talking here about ownership over our lives. We are to have none. He is to have all. And much of what God is doing with us is intended, if we are willing, to bring us to this place where we will LOSE our lives in order to FIND HIS. But if we don’t understand that, we might spend much time trying to SAVE what God wants us to LOSE. We will be confused over why God isn’t keeping His promises to us. The answer is that we are asking Him to bless the WRONG LIFE. If we would get to where we do LOSE our lives for Christ’s sake, God would be able to bless us plenty. But again – we don’t read the Bible.

Today much Christian teaching is geared to promising us, "Your Best Life Now." This is total error and very harmful. There is a day of reckoning out there on these matters. Bank on it. When it comes apart it will be terrifying.

Jesus gives the priority for our living in this passage, and it certainly agrees with the other passages. IF we seek first the kingdom, God will provide all else. But if we don’t seek first the kingdom, God won’t be able to provide, because we won’t be rightly related to Him. There is no other conclusion possible.

Christian people are quite capable of providing for themselves, and quite capable of serving mammon, and being rich, successful, and comfortable – and it is possible for any of us to do this without ever giving consideration to seeking first the kingdom. Christians do this all the time, and even give God the credit for what they possess. But underneath it all it might not be of faith. God wants things – He wants our lives on an entirely other basis. It isn’t the money and it isn’t the possessions. It comes down to who is on the throne. And it comes down to what I am seeking FIRST – and as a result, who I serve.

Each of these passages clearly makes the promises of God, and His blessings, and so much else, dependent upon our personal relationship with Him. God wants a total relinquishment to Him – not so that He can take away from us, but so that He can GIVE to us. Our relinquishment provides God the ground wherein He can form in us FAITH, and whereby He can relate us to Himself in Spirit and Truth. Then we will BE in a relationship with God that IS His will – making it more safe for God to do THINGS in our lives that are His will.

All of this gets back to our point about being CERTAIN about God – even if we aren’t certain about His will. We become certain about God only if we surrender to Him. Our surrender creates the ground in us of FAITH – of certainty about God. Then His will can come to pass because we are rightly related to Him.

Therefore, if you are uncertain about what God is doing, and uncertain about what you ought to be doing, the key is to turn your uncertainty to God. Tell Him to do IN YOU whatever is necessary to make you to know. But God won’t necessarily speak to you instructions or information – although if it is necessary He might. Rather, God will do a work to rightly relate you to Himself. And then out of that you will come to know.

It is one thing to ask God to speak to us His mind. That is fine. But it is another to HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST. It is also one thing to know the will of God. But it is another to know God Himself. If you know God, and have HIS mind, you will know His will – because you are already walking in concert with Him by faith.

Understanding these things will help us avoid much confusion. For example, are Christians supposed to walk by faith, or are we supposed to walk under the continual fear that we might be deceived? There are some Christians who never consider the possibility that they might be blind or deceived, and as a result, they are arrogant and without access from the Holy Spirit. But then there are others who, no matter what God says to them, and no matter what He reveals to them, are always under a fear that they might be wrong. Both of these extremes are off the track. There must be a Truth here that is found in the Word of God.

I believe that the Truth is that we must not only trust God for His will, but that we must trust God to show it to us. Or to put it another way, while we must walk with God IN faith, we must also trust God FOR faith. This will keep us from thinking we know it all, but it will spare us the continual fear of thinking that we know NOTHING. It puts us into God’s hands so that He can bring us into the Truth.

We must trust that God will bring us into the Truth. We must realize that unless God does so, we are lost. The source of Truth is not found in US. Jesus Christ is the Truth. In other words, since Jesus has already promised that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all Truth, we are right to assume that right now HE IS DOING SO. Thus, it is my job to keep open to the Truth. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to bring the Truth.

The key here is submission to God. I must not put my trust in MYSELF – I must not put my faith in my faith. I must not put my trust in my supposed ability to believe. This leads to arrogance. I will think I believe because I’m righteous, or smart. No. But I must also not continually doubt what God has shown me. This too is actually putting my trust in myself. It’s just that my trust, at that point, is shaky. That is why I live in a fear of being deceived.

It is important to note that when Jesus said, "Unless you see, you won’t believe," that this was a rebuke UNTO the Truth. In other words, Jesus wasn’t disgusted. He simply has to point out error if we are going to see the Truth. Some of us have the idea that when God says we must believe that He is demanding faith from us under the threat of punishment. No. God isn’t saying, "Believe or else!" Rather, He is exhorting us to believe so that WE might benefit.

As I stated earlier, you CANNOT believe unless God brings revelation TO believe. But once God does bring some light, then you CAN believe. Thus, when God exhorts us to believe, He isn’t making a demand of us that is impossible – He isn’t expecting us to believe when we can’t believe. Rather, His exhortation is based upon the fact that it is possible for us to believe. God would be unreasonable otherwise.

But we do get confused on this matter. Some of us do think that God demands that we believe when we cannot believe. So we TRY. This is futile. The solution here is simple, and it gets back to something discussed earlier. I may not be able to believe this or that in my walk with God, but I can always believe God Himself. In other words, I need to stop TRYING TO BELIEVE, and begin to trust the ONE who is faithful. Practically, when I feel like I am at a dead end in faith, I can take my dead end to God. I can come to God and tell Him that I have my doubts. I can ask God to do what is necessary to set me free into faith.

Where did we ever get the idea that God is sitting in heaven waiting for us to figure out how to have faith? Or that God is waiting for us to generate the faith necessary to act upon Him? Or that God will do nothing for us until WE muster up the faith, take the initiative, and get Him happy with us? This is all nonsense. You and I have NOTHING IN US of faith, Truth, or light. Thus, if we lack anything we need, we need to come to God for it. If WE are supposed to move God with OUR faith, then why does the Bible continually emphasize, "the faith OF Jesus Christ?"

So instead of being afraid that we don’t have enough faith, or instead of being afraid that we might be deceived, we need to realize that God is way ahead of us. Even if we don’t have enough faith, or even if we ARE deceived, God wants to deliver us more than we want Him to deliver us. Thus, turn to God. Surrender and obey in the thing which is at hand. Ask God to do in you whatever it takes to please Him. God won’t necessarily be able to do that in ten minutes. But He already wants to do it. We need only open to Him.

You and I will never have faith unless we turn unconditionally to God. We DO have enough faith to do that – once we know to do it. Turn to God and you GET GOD – you will see Him. And in time, faith will be the fruit.

God is not demanding faith under threat of punishment. He is trying to get us to believe Him so that He can bless us, and so that He can bring us into His purposes. It is impossible to please God without faith because faith is a relationship word. Without faith there is no real relationship with God, and consequently, God can’t do much in our lives. Again – nothing God does can be divorced from a relationship

When we speak of seeing the Truth, we are really talking about seeing Jesus Christ. Of course, everything we see of Jesus is going to be written in the Bible, one way or another. But it is one thing to know what the Bible says. It is quite another to know what it MEANS. In the end, freedom in the Truth requires a revelation from God to us of Christ – affirmed and verified in scripture – but nevertheless something quite beyond just a written word.

Today many are suggesting that there is revelation outside of the Bible – in the sense that the Holy Spirit can reveal things not found in scripture. This is error. God will never do anything that departs from scripture. The same Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible isn’t going to contradict Himself when He brings revelation. All that God reveals by His Spirit will correspond with His written revelation.

There are others who demand that God never speaks to anyone today, in any way, other than through the Bible He has given us. This claim is, in fact, refuted by the Bible itself. Hebrews 1:1 states that God speaks today to us BY HIS SON. Well, Jesus isn’t the Bible, is He? No. The point is, God speaks to us through the on-going revelation of Jesus Christ, by revealing Christ to us personally, but backed up by the Bible.

Read John, chapter 14 through 16, and you will find what Jesus Himself said would be the work of the Holy Spirit for the church age. All of it has to do with Jesus Christ. But you will not find one mention of the Bible. Why? Because as I said, it takes the Holy Spirit to show us what the Bible means. So despite the fact that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and to be honored as such, without the Holy Spirit, and without the revelation to us of Christ, it won’t be much more to us than a bunch of stories, and a list of doctrines.

The reason why so many Christian people disagree on the meaning of almost everything in the Bible is found right here. You cannot really know what the Bible means unless you know Jesus Christ. Thus, you can gather all the experts in the world in one place and try to hash out the meanings of Bible verses, but it will avail nothing. But center in upon Jesus Christ the Person – and our individual knowledge of Him – and not only will everyone begin to see what the Bible means, but they will begin to see who the Bible is talking about.

Now, I say all of this to point out that when we speak of BELIEVING before we SEE, we are not creating some kind of religious formula to follow. No. But if we operate in our lives from a knowledge of Jesus Christ we are going to believe BEFORE we see – because even if we are unsure of what is going to happen, we will be sure of Christ.

In both of the cases of healing that we have read, the individuals who came to Jesus ask Him for help. But the nobleman initially did not KNOW HIM – and so he would not believe without a sign and wonder as an assurance. But the centurion, without hesitation, believed without seeing. He knew Jesus had authority. I’m not suggesting either of these men were Christians, or could know Jesus as we can know today. But the principle is there – if you have a knowledge of Jesus Christ, you will trust and believe Him – BEFORE you see. If you don’t yet know Christ, you will seek signs and wonders – you will continue to be uncertain of Him.

God wants us to KNOW CHRIST. This is His goal. Upon that hangs all freedom, and ultimately all faith. And how do we come to KNOW JESUS? By giving ourselves to Him. You will know when you are being drawn to that – God will put you in that place. He will put a CROSS in your life. Every time we lose our lives – every time we lose our right to ourselves into the hands of God BY FAITH – every time we do that, there emerges a greater revelation of God in Christ.

Thus, if we want to BELIEVE before we SEE, the goal is not to, "grunt real hard," and try to believe what we cannot believe. Neither is the goal to allow ourselves to be condemned for not believing. And it certainly isn’t the goal to be so arrogant that we think we believe when we don’t. Rather, the goal is to turn ourselves over to God – to turn to Him our unbelief, our fears, and our faith. Instead of allowing our LACK to separate us from God, we ought to take our LACK TO GOD.

God is always working to set us free to believe Him. The nobleman initially would not believe, "unless He saw signs and wonders." But in His mercy, Jesus healed his son anyways, and brought him to faith. We don’t know what ever become of this guy, or his son. But it seems certain that the next time around, he was much more willing to BELIEVE before SEEING.

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