Rev. Sam started by reiterating what Pastor Poju said, “God is moving us from defining faith to applying faith”, and that God is closing up the large gap that exists between the spiritual reality and our physical reality in Nigeria. The title of his inaugural sermon on the WAFBEC stage was The Creative Power of Faith.
Heb. 11:3
Rev. Sam explained that God did the basic job in creation and left the rest for us to do. “God could have created everything that man needed on earth, but the creative power he gave man would have been useless”, he said.
Faith is the only way that we can explain the translation of spiritual realities into physical realities. The raw materials with which God created the physical realm were intangible raw materials. From his teaching, we understand that though God has commanded us to have dominion, but in reality our dominion is tied to our creativity. He further explained the creative power God gave man as the revelation of His word, saying, “the WORD became everything because the Word is convertible” John 1:12.
“To create” means to bring into existence something that has never existed before. This was what God sought to do in Genesis 1:26.
Faith is believing in unseen realities to the point where you build your life on them. These unseen realities drive your decisions, words and actions. The ability to see unseen realities is what we refer to as revelation. For the believer to have genuine faith, he/she must have the capacity to see.
2 Corinthians 4:18. The invisible “raw material” used by God to create the seen universe is revelation. Romans 10:17 makes it clear that revelation is the foundation for faith and though it is intangible, but it is the most powerful resource in the world. “It is
also the means by which God transfers value into the world,” he said.
He mentioned that one of the challenges of the practice of faith in Nigeria is our culture, which does not value intangible resources such as time, knowledge e.t.c, ” ours is a culture that defines wealth by the amount of money and material things one possesses” he said. He encouraged us to get our mind off the tangible things and pursue revelation knowledge.
He showed us from the scriptures that Jesus Christ was not money conscious when he walked the earth. John 5:6.
God sees things not just the way they are but the way they could be. He sees the end as clearly as He sees the beginning.
Revelation is powerful. It is what you see in the spirit realm that you are able to receive into the physical realm. A believer runs the risk of missing out on answer to prayer if he/she lacks an understanding of how to receive these spiritual realities. He explained that if we are revelation carriers, we will walk in the creative frequency of God and when we give value, value will come back to us in form of money and other things.
Based on Genesis 1 & 2, God did not require money/capital to create the entire universe. Therefore, the believer who possesses what God possessed in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 has the capacity to create anything in this seen universe.
Hebrews 11: 3 gives the answer to the key by which the entire universe was created. So when a demand is placed on heaven by a believer, heaven answers in its own currency – revelation.
The human imagination is a mechanism by which God by His spirit is able to translate his ideas into images in the minds of His children. When God wanted to convince Abraham of the innumerability of his children/generations He asked him to look at the stars. God used the image of the stars in the night sky to convey the revelation of His promise into the mind of His servant.
Eph 3:20 What you think is at par with what you have. Sometimes the reason prayers go unanswered is that our thoughts/imagination contradict the words we offer up in prayer, and God is a God who hears our thoughts as loudly as He hears our words. So the psalmist prayed “let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable…” Let your mind see what your lips are saying in prayer.
To have genuine faith, you must be seeing and hearing from the realm of the spirit. But how does one get revelation?
Prayer
Jeremiah 33:3, John 5:19
Prayer should be full of “seeing”. The inner eye should be fully enlightened and “seeing” during prayer. Prayer is a dialogue, it is not a monologue. Sometimes, silence is an important part of prayer. You will hear something and see something you have never heard or seen before.
Allow the Holy Spirit paint pictures in your heart through His Word.
John 6:28 God will per time send His servants to you, the revelation of God’s Word upon the lips of His servants is not meant for analysis, simply obey. Hosea 12:13 receive genuine servants of God as true messengers of God. Proverbs 13:13.
Giving
Malachi 3:10-12
When the windows of heaven are opened God pours out His Spirit with manifestations of wisdom and power following, Isaiah 11: 2.
In Genesis 22 Abraham gives a gift to God that provokes God to pronounce a blessing, guaranteeing its eternal irrevocability by swearing by Himself. Giving provokes the outpouring.
John 8:56 it was Abraham’s giving that caused him to see Jesus’ day that was to come thousands of years later. When you give God opens your eyes.
Matthew 13:15, 1 Corinthians 2:9, Proverbs 4:20-22
The opening of the eyes and ears and the understanding of the heart all precede the physical manifestation of these unseen realities.
When the spiritual process of revelation and insight is complete, then God causes the physical manifestation to break forth.