Faith comes by hearing...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

One of the items in my DIVE goodie bag was a set of CD's on breaking free of personal bondages, Foundations of Freedom.  I'm listening to them kinda slowly as I've been doing a bit of sewing and, let me tell you, it is powerful stuff.

One of the CD's I listened to today had to do with hearing God...and what we perceive as hearing God.

And you know, when I'm listening to a message of any kind and God stirs stuff in my spirit...I really can't tell what I heard in the message and what it sparked in my spirit.  Dots connect.  Paradigms shift.  So...I'm not sure how much of this was on my CD and how much of it came from dots connecting.

But...the Bible says that 'Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God' (Romans 10:17).

So we have all applied the Bible to that verse...which is, of course, the Word of God.  But the Greek word translated as  'Word' there is rhema....(Strong's 4487), which Mr. Strong defines as 'Utterance' (I did a post on 'rhema' vs. 'logos' 5 years ago, in which I found that both words carried a connotation of something spoken).

It would not be out of line to read that  as 'Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by God speaking.'

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to speak to a group of girls in a nearby town.  I didn't know them, they didn't know me, but I talked about lies and how to turn them around.  I had them do a little exercise in which they wrote down a lie that they have heard a lot from the Enemy, then I had them write down the opposite of that lie and tear up the piece of paper that they wrote the lie on.

One young lady emailed the leadership of the ministry and gave a short testimony of how a word from another person tied in with what she had written in such a way that she knew it had to be God speaking...her reaction was, 'That really happened!'

I remember my own 'That really happened' moment...it was when we first started attending our church; we had a ladies study that I was attending, but I had to leave early each session because I was also teaching James at a local Christian Women's Job Corps site.  One particular day, I was preparing for the class I was to teach in the morning before I left to go to the Bible study, and as I was preparing I had a sudden, random mental picture of sitting in a chair being prayed over.

Now, there is prayer ministry that happens at church, but this was not a 'prayer ministry' kind of study...that just wasn't part of what we did.  So I shrugged off the mental picture and went back to my preparation.

When I got to church, the study began as usual, but there were a couple of ladies who asked for prayer for specific situations and they came up and sat in two chairs at the front and we gathered around them and prayed.  But there were a couple more who also had prayer needs, so they sat in the chairs next and we prayed.  Well, one thing lead to another and at some point it became apparent that we were going to skip the lesson that day and everyone was going to get prayed for.  In the chair.  But it wasn't until I realized that I was going to have to leave soon that I remembered I'd gotten a picture of that very thing happening that very morning.  Only it looked like they weren't going to get to me before I had to leave.  I waited to see what would happen...and I got called into the chair just before I had to go.

There was no way I could've had any inkling at all that would happen.  That was God.  And I left carrying the fragrance of the nard from the anointing oil and an awe in my spirit...thinking, 'That really happened!'

When God speaks to us, individually and uniquely, our faith is settled.  Strengthened. Confirmed.  And no one can argue that experience away.

Now, I have had similar experiences from reading the Scripture...from a random verse I read or someone posted on Facebook or whatever speaking exactly and precisely to an urgent need in my spirit.

But as I listened to the CD tonight, I was struck -- again-- by the necessity to pay attention and listen.  Because my faith is built as I hear Him speak.