I have been doing some prayerful study on the manifestations of the Spirit. This is what I have written concerning the manifestation of faith:
Faith is listed among the manifestations of the Spirit along with the word of knowledge and tongues and the rest. We don’t usually think of faith as a manifestation of the Spirit, but its appearance on this list suggests that there are bursts of faith that are more supernatural and immediate than the constant faith that we are all supposed to demonstrate.
The Greek word for faith is pistis – persuasion, credence, consistency, conviction, reliance, faith, fidelity, belief (Strongs). The root word is a verb, peitho – to convince, to assent, to rely, agree, assure, believe, to be confident, to make a friend, to obey, persuade, trust, or yield. An interesting assortment of definitions. Hebrews 11:1 is often used as a definition of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
When I asked the Lord, “What does this manifestation of faith look like?” this is the answer I received in my spirit:
It looks like a person believing for the impossible and acting on it. Jesus said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you” (Matt. 17:20). According to Habakkuk 2:4, “the righteous will live by his faith”. What an interesting statement. This means that our lifestyle (if we are “the righteous”
depends upon believing for the impossible and acting on it. And yet, “if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (I Cr. 13:2).
So faith must be tempered by love if it is to be worth anything.
With faith, the question is not so much the source but the object. What are we putting faith in? True faith is in the faithfulness of God; false faith is really in anything else - our own abilities, other people, leaders, our dreams, and even our experience. In the end, true “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 1:17). In other words, truth is the perspective of God, and when that is revealed, it produces faith in the hearer. The Bible does not even acknowledge any other faith than faith in God. I think that means that faith in anything else is no faith at all, because nothing else is completely dependable like He is. The Hebrew word for faith is emuwn, which literally means “established” or “supported”. It’s almost always used in the adjective form to describe God, his word, or his people.
Faith as a manifestation of the spirit can feel like an inner energy directed toward the action that God is leading the believer to do. James wrote that “faith without works is useless” (2:20); it is “dead” (2:26). We cannot see faith; we see the works that faith prompts people to do.
Some examples of faith manifested by action in the Bible:
• Noah building an ark
• Joseph giving orders that his bones be taken to the promised land (Gen. 50:24)
• Moses striking the rock as God instructed him to do, bringing forth water for the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai
• Elijah pouring water on his sacrifice on Mount Carmel
• Elisha striking the waters (I Kings 2:19)
• Jesus noted the faith of several people, including:
• the centurion whose servant needed healing (Mt. 8:10, Lk. 7:9)
• the people who brought him a paralytic (Mt. 9:2)
• the woman who touched his garment (Mt. 9:22, Mk. 5:34, Luke 8:48)
• the woman who anointed his feet (Lk. 8:52)
• Peter walking on the water
• Stephen and Barnabas were noted for being “full of faith” (Acts 6:5 and 11:24)
In some of these examples we see people who had a direction from the Lord (Noah, Moses, Peter), and their obedience was an act of faith. This, I would say, is a demonstration that faith comes by hearing the word of the Lord. All of these acts of faith were followed by some kind of miracle, so it is clear that there is a strong link between faith and miracles. I think we need to remind ourselves of this - that what we are believing for is a miracle - something that we cannot produce out of our own abilities - our reliance is upon God and God alone.
Recently I saw my husband Nathan manifest faith. He was approached by an insurance representative because of an auto accident he’d had a few years ago; the insurance company wanted $2,000. We did not have $2,000, and the accident in question was not in fact my husband’s fault. The other driver falsified evidence and convinced the court that he was not at fault, and then to “take care of it”, he failed to provide the insurance company with Nathan’s contact information. When this came back up after more than two years, I was angry, and I told my husband to contact our lawyer. He did, but he told me that God had told him He would take care of it. The lawyer told him he had a case, but Nathan said God would take care of it. I wrote a letter to our supporters (even though inside I did not want to ask them for money for something that was unjust), but then Nathan told me to retract the letter, that God was going to take care of it. We received enough money in just a few days to take care of it, even after I sent the retraction. Nathan believed what God had told him, no matter what. By faith, he waited, and God took care of it. He also believed that God would move us to the house where we now live, even though it seemed impossible financially for that to happen. By faith he started making preparations for us to move. By faith we sent out a letter requesting donations for the move, and again I didn’t believe, but Nathan did. We received almost three times the money that we asked for, and now my husband is believing that we will own this property. That is faith.Faith is one of the great virtues that will remain until the end – faith, hope, and love – but “the greatest of these is love”. All things must be tempered by love.