So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17, NKJV)
How does faith grow?
Somebody once asked me, “How can I grow my faith?” How do you grow anything? By feeding it and practising it. I’m hopeless at cooking, but how do you become a good cook, a chef? It’s by putting into practice what you have learnt. No, not everybody will make a good cook, but we can all learn the basics! I know how to turn an oven on and use the microwave, but if you want to be a good cook, you’ve got to work at it! If you want to grow faith, you do it by putting it into practice, by experience, by using it, by working with it. I like driving, I’m a reasonably good driver, but learner drivers, who are just starting out, learn by practice! In order to pass the test, you practice. It’s the same with faith. Faith will only work if you put it to work! In my life, my faith has grown. This is why, aged nearly 90, my testimony is so important! I’ve had more than 70 years of ministry. When I look back on the early days, my evangelism was basic. But I put it to work!
When I was only a few months into Bible College, I was asked to pastor a church. I was putting what I was learning into practice! We used to go to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, London, every Friday – to put into practice what we’d been learning. You can learn and learn and learn, but unless you put that learning into practice, it’s worthless, valueless.
Our young people in Britain today are being pressurised into going to university. But so many of them are taking degrees in subjects that are irrelevant in the marketplace. Others, unless they follow their degree up and put it into practice, that knowledge becomes worthless. There are people with quite high degrees serving in shops or pubs or driving taxis. Unless you can put it into action, a high level of education is of no use. It’s the same with spiritual issues. You must put them into practice and make them work…
It shocked me when, as a pastor many years ago, and the Lord said to me, “Shut up, I’m tired of listening to you. I want you to leave the church and go out and put into practice all the things that you are telling other people to do!” And the hard point was, He said, “Don’t come back until you have done it!” As a result, I have spent almost 50 years out there, in the wilderness, in the Soviet Union…
It’s only in recent years that I’ve become known in the West, because I’ve now come back and am sharing the testimony of what God has done. It’s not because I’m trying to make something of myself, but I’m trying to obey what God said in the beginning, “Go out and do it. Don’t come back until you’ve done it” – I had to become the witness and the evidence that it works!
When I had the lung cancer 20 years ago in 2002/2003. They offered me an operation and chemotherapy. I said, NO! Because I said to the Lord, “I cannot go back into Russia after having preached all these years there, saying ‘You are a God who works miracles’, and continue to pray for people to be healed – if I myself am not healed!” Don’t talk to God like I do! Because I said, “Lord, I only live to evangelise, if You don’t need me anymore, take me Home. But if You still need me and want me to go back into the former Soviet Union, then I need a miracle so that I can go back as the living evidence of Your Power.” As you know, the Lord healed me, the cancer came out of my mouth. When He healed me of throat cancer in 1964, He literally cut it out and left a scar and to this day, I carry the mark of God in my body.
For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13, NKJV)
How can I grow my faith?
If you want your faith to grow, you’ve got to nurture it, practice it, act on it – and it will grow! That’s what has happened in my life. How did I have the boldness in the prison to pray, “Lord, 2000 years ago when Paul and Silas were in prison, You worked a miracle, broke down the prison walls and set them free. If You could do it for them, You can do it for me, get me out!”?!! I prayed like this, not just because I knew the Scripture, but because, in the back of my mind, it was only 8 years after my throat cancer had been miraculously healed! Because of this I could say, “Lord, You delivered Paul and Silas, You healed my throat cancer – and You can get me out of prison!” You see, my faith grew – experimentally!
But it comes back to this concept of sacrifice. When we get back to this sacrificial worship, your life on the altar, I believe the Glory of God will come back to the Church, just as in 2 Chronicles 5:14, when the Glory of God came down, or in Chapter 7:1, when the Fire came down. If we want the Glory of God, if we want the Fire, we have to be in that position where we can call upon God and make it happen! We’ve got to put our faith to work in our lives. In my life God has filled me with His Fire and His Power – because I have put my faith into practice. What’s the point of the Fire if you don’t put it to work? I want to challenge you. We are going through very difficult times. We need to get back to a new, fresh, Bible-based relationship with God.