"Faith is a Gift" Kathryn Kuhlman 42 Questions Part 9

The Bible is always right. And if I have not answered the question according to the word of God, and you can prove to me that God's word teaches something differently than I have given to you, then I stand to be rebuked. Know that. No matter what you're taught, No matter what you read, if it's contrary to the word of God, God's word is always right. For his word is absolute authority. I am not infallible. But he is. There are two questions. I'm going to combine the 35th, the 36th questions. Because in reading them over, I feel that they both relate to faith. What is the most common ailment that people come to you with? Is there illness or handicap? that you would not have the faith to pray to correct? The 36th question, how much depends upon your faith, your praying for an individual? Can a person be filled with the Spirit yet not have enough faith to be healed? I'm going to combine these two questions and answer them as one. Volumes have been written and volumes more have been spoken regarding this indefinable something that's called faith. And yet in the final analysis, we actually know so little of the subject. Faith is that quality, our power, by which the things desired become the things possessed. This is the nearest to a definition of faith attempted by the inspired word of God. You cannot weigh faith or confine it to a container. It's not something that you can take out and look at and analyze. You cannot definitely put your finger on it and positively say, now, this is it. To explain it precisely is almost like trying to define energy in one comprehensive statement. In the realm of physics, we're told that the atom is a world within itself, that the potential energy contained within this tiny world is such that it bewilders the mind of the average person. Attempt to define it? you run into difficulties. And so it is with faith in the realm of the spirit. But although it is not easy to define exactly what faith is, we know what it is not. One of the most common errors that we make in this regard is to confuse faith with presumption. We must be constantly alert to the danger of mistaking one for the other, for there's a vast difference between the two. There's a pebble on the beach, for example, but the beach is more than the pebble, and when the pebble asserts that it is the beach, then we say to it, you are assuming too much. There are many who mix the ingredients of their own mental attitude with a little confidence, a little pinch of trust, and a generous handful of religious egotism. And they proceed to add some belief along with many other ingredients. And then, mixing it all together, they label the total result faith. Faith is more than belief. It's more than confidence. It's more than trust. And above all, it is never boastful. If it is pure faith, Holy Ghost faith, it will never work contrary to the Word of God, and neither will it work contrary to His wisdom and His will. One of the cheap difficulties is our failure to see that Faith can be received only as it is imparted to the heart by God himself. You ask me a personal question. Catherine Kuhlman, do you have faith for the healing of that physical body, of that one who comes to you wanting the healing for cancer? And right now, I want to give you the answer to the first part of the question. What is the most common ailment that people come to you with? I would say cancer. This may startle you. But when the prayer requests come to the mail, the majority... of the written prayer requests are for the healing of cancer. In any miracle service, these may be startling facts. But I'm telling you the truth. I'm telling you from my own personal experience. The most common ailment that people come to me with whether it's in a miracle service, whether they approach me through the prayer requests that come through the mail, it's cancer. Cancer. If that person who is coming before the throne of God in prayer faith whatsoever, it must be a gift from God. If I stand there praying for someone to be healed of that cancer, if I have any personal faith in praying that prayer, and if there is faith accompanying that prayer, that faith that I have is definitely a gift from God. For the Word of God teaches that faith is a gift. And Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith. One of the chief difficulties is our failure to see that faith can be received only as it is imparted to the heart by God Himself. Either you have faith or you do not. You cannot manufacture it. You cannot work it up. You can believe a promise and at the same time not have the faith to appropriate that promise. But we have formed the habit of trying to appropriate by belief, forgetting the while that belief is a mental quality. And that when we try to believe ourselves into an experience, we are getting into a metaphysical realm. And there is a difference. I repeat that statement. We have formed the habit of trying to appropriate. By belief. Forgetting the whole while that belief is mental. It's a mental quality. Yeah? And when we try to believe ourselves into an experience, we are definitely getting into a metaphor. physical realm. And there's the difference. Faith, as God himself imparts to the heart, is spiritual. It's warm. It's vital. It lives. It throbs. And its power is absolutely irresistible when it's imparted to the heart by the Lord. It is with the heart. that man believes unto righteousness. But heart belief is faith, or at any rate, opens the door of communication between us and the Lord, whereby a divinely imported faith becomes possible. Is it not a fact that with most of us, faith has been a struggle or an attempt to believe. It may be that with all of our struggling we come at last to the place where we do believe and then we have been bewildered by the fact that we do not receive the thing for which we pray. We must discern that such belief is not necessarily what the inspiration word calls faith. The 17th chapter of Matthew is a chapter of contrast. It climbs to the heights and then goes down to the depths. It talks about mustard seed and mountains of despair and transfiguration. But what a lesson the Holy Ghost would bring to you and to me on this great subject of faith through its priceless words. Down from the mountaintop came our blessed Lord. Down from the gates of heaven itself where the glory breezes kissed his cheek and the angels wrapped around his shoulders the robes that had been woven on the looms of light. Down from the place of holy communion and encouragement to the place of human defeat, perhaps despair. For at the foot of the glory mountain was a valley, and through it a trail of human bewilderment. There was sickness there. A crushed and bleeding heart was there. A father who had met an obstacle that had crushed him in spirit and in heart was there. Sure. Preachers were there, too. They'd gone through the formula. They had rebuked the devil. They had shouted and groaned, just like many of us have done a hundred times, and yet the things for which they had prayed had never happened, even as you and I. Then Jesus spoke. Oh, matchless words of authority. With him there was no struggle. There was no groaning. No battle that was fierce and long to bring about the answer to a broken father's prayer. Jesus spoke. The devil fled. A happy boy cuddled in his father's arms and sobbed his gratitude to God. A happy father embraced his boy. and looked with tear -stained eyes of love and adoration at the face of the man before whom devils fled. And then Jesus spoke. He said an answer to their question regarding their defeat. And I quote from the Bible. It was because of your unbelief. For verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed ye shall say to this mountain remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossible unto you what a statement what a statement from the lips of Jesus himself. And nothing shall be impossible unto you. All we need is faith as big as a grain of mustard seed and mountains will tremble in fear as we approach. Do you realize what Jesus was saying? He declared that the least amount of faith that he could give was greater and mightier than the largest amount of the power of the devil. Here were the David and Goliath in the realm of the soul. A mustard seed went to battle against a mountain. and slew it. But it required the faith that he alone could give and impart. Did those disciples believe? Yes, they did. They believed in Jesus. They believed in his promises. They believed in divine healing. Or never would they have held that healing meeting that day. And believing just exactly like you and I have believed in healing services. And in our church meetings, they prayed, but nothing happened. What they needed, according to Jesus, was faith. Not a carload of it, but just a little bit. As big as a grain of mustard seed. That would be enough. That would be all that was necessary if it was really faith. Mm -hmm. Let us face the issue squarely. Let us with open, surrendered hearts ask the Holy Spirit to send forth His light and His truth and lead us to that holy hill. Is it not evident that when we pray, what we thought was the prayer of faith and nothing happens? It must be that what we thought was faith was not faith at all. You understand what I'm trying to say? It's so simple. It's so simple. When we see the truth, we shall no longer be standing around hour after hour, rebuking, commanding, demanding, struggling. With faith, there is no struggle. There will be a place for intercession. Know that. But when God's... Faith is imparted. The storm dies down and there's a great calm and a deep, settled peace in the soul. And the only noise will be the voice of thanksgiving and praise. For then the full realization will steal like a morning daybreak over the soul that it was not our abyss to believe that made to stick this goal, but rather that the faith which is of God was imparted to us through His mercy. We can believe in healing. We can believe... in our blessed Redeemer and His power to heal. But only Jesus can work the work that will lift us to the mountain peaks of victory. Always remember, faith is a gift. And He, is the giver of that glorious something that we call faith. If I have any faith whatsoever, it is not of myself. It is something that has been divinely imparted. And when we come right down to trying to analyze faith, we know very little about it. But I do know much about His mercy and His love. the greatest possession that a human being can experience.