Introduction to Working Faith 

Genesis 12 

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Loved ones, will you take a Bible and turn to Hebrews 11:1.  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  For by it the man of old received divine approval.  By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.”  And then would you go to Verse 29.  “By faith, the people crossed the Red Sea as if on dry land; but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned.  By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days.  By faith Rehab the harlot did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given friendly welcome to the spies.  And what more shall I say?  For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Sampson, Jepthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets -- who through faith conquered kingdoms, and forced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.  Women received their dead by resurrection.  Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life.  Others suffered mocking and scourging and even chains and imprisonment.  They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with a sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, and ill treated -- of whom the world was not worthy -- wondering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

During every evening of this coming year we'll continue the studies in the Old Testament, which you know are concentrating on faith, so that's one of the reasons I thought it would be good to at least have an introductory study on the life of faith, and particularly, loved ones, working faith.  That's what we're concentrating on in the evenings during the fall and the winter; working faith, so that is what I would like us to think about tonight.  Working faith is different from saving faith, for instance.  Saving faith is that faith that you have when you realize that you have no hope of ever making yourself right with God.  And then you at last realize that Jesus has died for you and that he has made things right with God and you turn from that independent life of God that you have been living and you turn to God and you know that he has accepted you.  That is saving faith, but it’s not sanctifying faith.  Sanctifying faith is that faith which we enter into after we begin to realize our lives are defeated and double and hypocritical and we realize that we need to have our hearts cleansed through the power of the Holy Spirit and then we are willing to be baptized into Jesus' death.  Then we are filled with the Holy Spirit and our hearts are cleansed so that we are able to do the things that we know we should do.  So it's neither of those. 

Its working faith: it's the faith that every saved and sanctified child of God exercises in their everyday life, to enable God to manifest in this time space world all the things that he achieved for us on Calvary.  In other words, it’s the faith whereby you are able to see strife in your family healed -- stopped dead, by a miracle.  It's the faith by which you are able to see a job situation solved.  It's the faith by which you are able to see a wife returning to her husband.  It's the faith by which you are able to see your financial situation come into line through God's miraculous work.  It's the faith by which you are able to see an incurable disease healed.  That's what we mean by working faith.  And because so many of us have misconceptions about that, it might be good to say what working faith is not.  Working faith is not the power of mind over matter -- that's not what we're talking about --   it's not that power that the intellect seems to have.  Now we don't quite understand whether it has it or whether it's a trick of a conman; but it's not the power that the intellect seems to have over solid matter, to bend dinner knives or to heal broken arms -- it's not that.  It's not, in other words, the power of positive thinking.  It is important for us to see that such a power does exist.  It's derived from the same basis as real working faith, and through God's profound wisdom he allows it to exist in the world.  It's a psychic power and it depends on some very real links that exist between human beings and the world of nature that God has built into us -- there are amazing connections between us and the world of nature.  This psychic power uses those links to bring about works that seem like the works of God's power himself, but they are really counterfeit works.  They would be based even on the power of your smile to influence another person's psychological mood. 

You know that that exists -- I mean, you can smile and in fact that's what enables a lot of sales to go through in stores -- the power of a smile.  So there is an amazing connection of just a physical smile with the psychological mood of a person right up to a level where some doctors certainly have been writing recently in the newspapers that happiness can even bring a protection against things like cancer.  So there is a whole series of vaguely understood connections and links between us human beings and the world of nature that enables amazing things to be done.  And that psychic power is used you remember in, not only sects like Christian Science, but in many of the eastern religions. 

It’s an actual fact that many Indian practitioners of this power are able to fight one another without touching each other.  They stand at a great distance from each other and they have a whip that they don't actually touch each other with, but by the power of the mind they inflict lashes on the other person's body.  So there are incredible psychic powers that enable things to be done that can't normally be explained by our ordinary everyday experience.  Now loved ones, that isn't what we're talking about -- that power is used by Satan to bring about works that look like miracles.  They aren't.  How do you distinguish that power from the power of working faith?  It has one very great distinction; it's all located on the earth.  It depends on the manipulation of psychic, emotional and physical powers that exist on the earth here.  It has no touch with heaven -- it brings nothing from heaven to earth.  It is located absolutely on the earth and it is simply the manipulation of powers that already exist and because of that, there are other characteristics that distinguish it from working faith which you recognize. 

One of the things, for instance, that you find about it is because it's located just within human beings the emphasis is always put on the quality of the faith.  So you find practitioners of this kind of faith, and why I tell you of this is they're found not only in eastern religions or in Christian Science, but they are found in much of the prosperity teaching that is practiced in many of our Christian groups.  And you can tell that it's this psychic power because the emphasis is put on the quality of the faith and therefore the person concentrates on exercising as much faith as he possibly can.  So there's a great tendency to almost tense yourself up, to try to get more faith, “If I can only get enough faith, I could bring this thing about” so there's a great emphasis on that.  You'll notice that in a thing like Christian Science where there tends to be a feeling that if you had enough faith, you would be healed -- you just have to exercise more faith. 

And of course, some of you listening tonight can recognize that some of us get into that in our attempt to practice working faith, we actually get involved in the psychic emphasis where we think if we could emphasize the faith enough or tense ourselves enough or feel strongly enough about it, then we would be healed, and that leads to absolutism in healing.  Absolutism in healing is “Why are you not healed?  Not enough faith.”  Of course, it's a wearing, depressing, killing, discouraging thing, because it bears a person down to the ground as they try valiantly to exercise more faith.  And the reason for that emphasis is that it is simply dependent on the manipulation of the power of a person's mind and psychic being against a certain problem.  So is the basis of most of the selling techniques and most of the power of positive thinking techniques.  Another reason you will be able to distinguish it from working faith is that great emphasis is put on the person exercising the faith, so actually they can be exalted greatly because of their exercising faith.  And on the other hand, as I mentioned, tremendous pressure can come on them if the desired result does not come about.  So great emphasis is put on the human practitioner so that he is either exalted because he's done well, or he almost feels a defeated man because he hasn't pulled it off. 

So you’ll find that glory is not given to Jesus or given to God in this kind of psychic power, but it's given to the practitioner.  And you'll find that whenever a person does manage to bring about a result, the emphasis will always be on the result.  It will always be, “Oh, what a wonderful thing happened to that person through his faith” rather than “What a wonderful God this is that we have”, or “What a wonderful Christ.”  The rationale for this whole practice of psychic power is that everything that is wrong in this world is just due to you believing a lie.  Christian Science will tend to say sickness is not really real it's just a lie you have believed, it's all in your head, it's all in your mind; sickness is only a lie, it isn't really real.  Common sense rebels against that because common sense feels the pain of the sickness and sees the reality of the withered body, so common sense reacts against that.  But more importantly the danger of that half truth is that we will be lead to believe that “There is really no evil and evil is unreal and there is really no devil.  It's just when things are wrong, we are seeing them wrongly.  We're not seeing them as they really are.”  And of course the end of that kind of thinking is the clause in Genesis uttered by the serpent, "You shall not surely die.” In other words death is not really real, sickness is not really real sin is not really real, evil is not really real.  So that, loved ones, is what is termed often as psychic power, soulish power, and power of positive thinking, some of those things that are found in eastern religions and in some of the sects.  That's not what we're talking about; we're talking about working faith.

Working faith is not hope.  Hope is based on the future; it's hoping that things will turn out all right.  Working faith is not hope.  It's not emphasizing the future at all, in a strange way.  Working faith is not wishful thinking.  It's not, “Oh, I wish this will happen.  I just will it, if I think enough about it then it will happen.  I know it will happen because that's what God said.” Now working faith is not that.  In fact, the interesting thing about working faith is its emphasis is not the future at all.  Its emphasis, actually, is on the past.  And I will show you, if you would like to see an instance of working faith, in Joshua chapter 6:1 – 3.  “Now Jericho was shut up from within and without because of the people of Israel; none went out, and none came in.  And the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See I have given into your hand Jericho, with its king and mighty men of valor.   You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once.  Thus shall you do for six days.’”  So working faith is behavior built on what God has already done.  You see that in verse 2.  Verse 1 is clear; Jericho is shut up from within and without so it was a tight city, protected completely and yet verse 2 runs, "And the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See.’"  And if Joshua looked, he said, "Yeah, I see it's tight against me; it's barricaded -- I can't get into it."  But God says, “See, I have given into your hand Jericho, with its kings and mighty men of valor.”  In other words God is saying “I have already done this -- I have already done it.  Now I'm going to tell you what I want you to do in the light of what I’ve already done.  But be assured that I have already done it and what you are about to do is appropriate in view of the fact that I  have already given you the city, but I want you to do it nevertheless.  It won't bring the city to you; I've already given you the city.”  In other words, working faith is an absolute confidence that God has already done the thing.  He has already worked the work.  He has already worked the miracle. 

Now what great act has God already done?  Well, the New Testament is full of statements of that great fact.  The Old Testament is full of instances that result from that fact, instances like this, or if you like to look at Genesis 17:5, it's another obvious one.  The Old Testament really doesn't tell us what the great act is that God did, but it gives us many instances like this that shows that he's speaking of something that he has already done.  Genesis 17:5, “No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.”  God says that to a man who didn't even have a son of his own yet.  God said, "I have made you the father of a multitude of nations."  So God was speaking about whole generations of people, children of faith like us, who would be born and he was saying, "I have already given you these. I have already made you the father of these people, even though these people hadn't been born on the earth yet.”

Now what is the mighty act that God is talking about when he keeps on saying to these people, "I have already done this”  so that they exercise working faith and they go around this city, that you “have given into our hands.”  Well the mighty act, loved ones, is Galatians 6:14.  It's stated in different places in the New Testament, but this is one of them.  “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  That's the act that, you remember, took place before the foundation of the world -- the world has been crucified.  When Jesus died, that was the death of the world.  What world -- because it's obvious that it's around about us so it's not the visible, natural world.  What world is it?  It’s the great world system that has been set up by men and women to run their lives independent of God; the world system of pensions, stocks and shares, money in the bank, all right in themselves, nothing wrong with those things in themselves, except that men and women have used them to reassure themselves that they're secure, even though they don't trust or believe in God the Creator.  And so that whole world system possesses a great power on every little child that is born into this world.  In subtle ways, the elemental spirits of the universe bind that little child to all those things as its security.  Those things themselves aren't wrong, but in so many of our lives they become the only source of our security and the only reassurance we have of security.  They bind our wills and our minds so that when the pension fund collapses we are collapsed inside ourselves; we don't depend on anyone outside the pension fund.  We have no dependence on the one who looks after the lilies of the field because our whole being has over the years become bound to the pension fund, bound to the stocks and shares, bound to the money in the bank so that we are often captives and prisoners.  Not only our fathers and our mothers, but we ourselves are. 

The world system includes not only the whole system by which men and women assure themselves that they are secure, even though they don't trust or believe in God the Father, but involves the whole system of rewards and punishments by which we try to make the world into our image and we try to make it do what we want it to do.  The whole system of promotions, the whole system of commissions, to get people to sell goods, the whole system of firing people, of making them lose their jobs, that whole world system that motivates people.  In a way, its necessary; the things themselves, except that most human beings in the earth become utterly imprisoned by them and utterly dominated by them.  They are motivated not by love of God and not by desire to do what he wants them to, but by desire to please the boss or by fear of offending the boss or by fear of losing their jobs.  And so that whole world system of pleasing people and of getting forward and of getting promoted and getting accepted is binding many human beings. 

And then, of course, there is the more complex public system of the world, because that's a kind of a personal world system that binds us, ourselves, here, but there's a public world system that connects up with the whole world of the media and the whole world of Wall Street panic.  You know how that goes; interest rates up, interest rates down and they all seem to fall together.  The whole public system of governments, the whole public system of fear which brings the Russians into a place where they are spending the bulk of their money on weapons and the Americans are spending the bulk of their money in weapons and I'm not a pacifist, but it is pretty mad the way we're all ganging up against each other and we haven't money to feed our starving people because we are warring against each other in our minds -- having a fair idea inside that none of us are really going to risk pushing the button.  But it's amazing that its the world system of such deception and power in it, that it binds us into this wild world that actually governs so many of us.  The newspapers that we read, the television that we watch moves us out of peace and into dis-peace constantly, almost daily. 

Now that whole world system God destroyed in Christ.  He destroyed it.  That's what it means; the world was crucified in Christ -- that's what Paul says; “I glory in the cross of Jesus Christ by which the world was crucified to me.”  God has severed the links that bind you to that world.  He has severed the channels that connect that world up to your poor mind, that bind your emotions to that world so that you are yanked up and down like a puppet by what the television happens to bring out today or what the newspapers happen to bring out or what the boss happens to say to you or what the firing happens to result in your life or what the unemployment happens to bring about.  He has severed that.  He has destroyed the power of that world to bring about anything in your life that he does not want brought about.  That's it.  He has enclosed you in Christ so that you cannot be affected in the way the world wants to affect you through those things, and you do not need to fear those things and you do not need to be anxious about them.  So that even when you don't have a job, even when the money is not working out, he expects you to look up to him and praise him and say, "Father, I thank you that you have crucified the world and its power to destroy me and there is nothing that will happen to me through this world that you are not allowing or permitting or sending, but it's certainly not the world that is bringing it about."  And so when men and women say to us all, "What do you do if you don't have a job or what do you do when you don't have this money or if you don't have this bank account or you don't have this retirement plan, we answer, "The world has been crucified to us in Jesus and that whole world system has no power to affect us.  The normal way we are meant to live in this world is by faith in our loving Father, by doing the jobs that he has given us to do and by trusting that he will enable us to continue to live in this world and have enough food as long as our years last." 

Now loved ones, that's the world system that has been crucified in Christ, now also in Christ, you can see the second part “by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.”  So the binding that takes place in so many of us has been destroyed also; we have been crucified to the world, so no longer do we ourselves need to fear the world, because we have already died.  You can't do anything more to a dead person except maybe throw them in a hole, but you can't do anything to destroy their lives -- you can't harm them any further.  Moreover the little subtle desires and yearnings that you and I have towards this world system, those have been severed in Christ.  Because you may have been listening to me and saying, "Well, brother, I see that, but you know there's a little thing inside me that has been trained for years -- I've been told by my parents for years about good jobs and pensions and retirement funds and” do you understand I'm not saying those things are wrong, but it's so hard for most of us to engage in them in a way that still leaves us really trusting the Father and not them. 

But many of you say, "Well I've been trained to depend on these things for years.” But that's what God did in Christ; he destroyed you too.  He crucified you to the world; he has destroyed those links that bind you to those things so that it is possible for you to walk free.  It is.  It is possible because of Jesus' death and because of the involuntary grace of the Holy Spirit.  It is possible for you to walk free from those things and to walk above them and walk a charmed life.  It is possible to walk free of that pressure of the world system.  It even affects, you know, those of us in the whole marriage market game because that's part of the world system too, as sure as anything is.  It just tells us, “You know you won't be happy unless you are married” or “You won't be happy unless you're married to this person or that person.”  That's part of the world system, and God destroyed that on Calvary; it has no power in any way to affect or destroy your life.

Now this is said in various places, loved ones.  It said in Galatians 6:14, it said in Colossians 2:20, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe” those are the spirits that bind us to these things, that make us feel we're dependent on the boss' favor or dependent on our money that we get from our job, or we're dependent on this pension fund, or we're dependent on what Wall Street does, or we're dependent on the government or what public opinion is.  The elemental spirits of the universe are what bind you to that.  “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belong to the world? 

Paul is saying, "Just stop."  He's implying, “No big deal, you can just stop now.  In faith you can believe that that has been destroyed and just stop.  Just do the right thing.”  And then in Colossians 2:15, “He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.”  Jesus has disarmed those principalities and powers, those things that bring you under fear or under desire for favor; God has destroyed those powers and you can walk free from them, you can walk free this very moment, loved ones and that's what working faith is.  It's acting in the light of what God has already done; it's simply doing it.  The trick of Satan is, of course, to persuade you that you can't walk away; to persuade you you're bound, you've been bound for years; you felt the binding for years.  The amazing thing is the moment you exercise working faith in what God has done, and you act in accordance with that, the whole thing drops away.  It's like a house of cards that collapses; all those little strings that bind you, they fall away.  I don't know if you know it, but I happen to know through a friend of mine that the tooth is held in the gum by all kinds of little strands.  You think is was the gum that held your tooth in it;  but it's all kinds of little strands and if you extract a tooth, you don't actually pull it, you push it in and you twist to break the strands and then it just lifts out.  So it's all the little strands that hold your tooth -- it's that easy. 

That's what God does: pushes and breaks them and you just walk away.  That's what God has done in Jesus on Calvary.  He has destroyed the elemental spirits of the universe that bind you to it so you can, by exercising faith in that and thanking him for it and simply living appropriately, and then you can walk free, just like that.  And, of course, Satan knows that and his attempt is constantly to bring up to you people who are  bound by these things or people who seem to be happy because of these things and anything to get you from actually acting.  If he can paralyze you by his deception, he will because he knows the moment you act in working faith, he's finished.  Because it is true; God has done these things and reality, absolutely reality is this, loved ones, Ephesians 2:6, 7.  “and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  And you see again that it's something that God has done.  You see it's not “and will raise us up.”  He's not talking about the resurrection; he's talking about what has already happened, “and raised us up.”  And lest you’re in any doubt, Paul is writing this and he's still alive and he's saying, "and raised us up with him and made us sit” -- this is what God has done – “and has made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."  Why?  “That in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”  In other words, that is where we dwell.

Working faith is a settled and steady confidence that we have been raised up and we are this very moment at the right hand of God, in Jesus, far above the power of the world.  And we are there, where all health and all wholeness is ours.  That's why when it comes to a thing like sickness; we know that already in Christ our sicknesses were born and they were taken away.  Already the power of them to destroy us has been taken away.  The power of discouraging circumstances to overwhelm us has been taken away.  The discouraging circumstances even may remain; the sickness actually may even seem to remain.  A lot of people may say, "Look, you're not healed, you're still sick."  But the power of that sickness to hinder us has been destroyed.  God has actually destroyed in Christ the power of the ordinary things of the world to hinder us from doing his will.  So working faith is an absolute confidence that of course I have been healed insofar as the power of this sickness to hinder God's plan for my life has been destroyed. 

So actually whether the sickness appears to disappear or appears still to be here, it doesn't make much difference to us because we know we will die when God wants us to join him in heaven.  That might mean that we live shot through with cancer that the Doctor would tell us would kill us -- but we will not die until God has need for us in heaven.  It's the same with overwhelming circumstances; overwhelming circumstances would normally send you neurotic which normally would put you in the psyche word, would normally put you at the end of yourself, but because God has taken the sting out of the world, has destroyed the power of the world and the power of the overwhelming circumstances to have their usual affect on you, you know that “No, I am at the right hand of God in Christ.” And of course when you exercise that kind of faith, then the Holy Spirit is free, do you see that?  The Holy Spirit is free to begin to make real in your life the benefits of Christ's death and resurrection that God wants to make real.  That's it.

But without faith, the Holy Spirit is as powerless as Jesus was in that village of unbelief, where he could do no great work because of their unbelief.  But in a person who is exercising working faith, thanking God that “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  Lord I have been raised up with you and sit now in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  Lord, I thank you for it here in heaven with this sun shining and all help about me and the riches and power of your life around me.”  In that kind of faith the Holy Spirit is then free in a quiet moment to whisper, "And God has done this for you."  And that's how healing comes.  That's how money comes.  That's how miracles happen -- the wife returns to her alienated husband, the child's sickness is healed, and the blind eyes are made to see because the Holy Spirit is able to whisper to a person who is exercising working faith – “God has done that” and immediately that's it.

Now up to that moment, all those things are real anyway, whether the Holy Spirit has whispered that to you or not.  All those things are yours; it’s simply that at certain times, he makes that visible to other people.  Do you see that?  You only think that so much money is needed to sustain your life -- you only think that.  It's very difficult to analyze fully all of your past life, but if you were ever to analyze it, you'd see that there were a thousand timings, coincidences we call them, chance, luck, when a bill came in at the right time  exactly after you had received a check.  Thousands of other little things that had happened -- cars that kept going that shouldn't have kept going, other cars that go brilliantly collapsed, house openings that wouldn't normally have come suddenly came.  Job openings came that you didn't think would come, other job openings didn't come. 

In other words, our lives are a whole network of events that allow for all kinds of variations and we get our little minds set on a certain amount of money.  The amazing thing is that when you dwell in working faith and dwell in the midst of working faith at God's right hand in Jesus with the world crucified to you, the colorless, odorless life of the water of Jesus' Spirit becomes to you whatever you need.  Money is the way God normally, in this fallen world, enables people to get things, but God has a thousand other ways than money to give you things.  Freedom from a debilitating cancerous disease is in this world normally God's way of enabling a person to live a full and complete life.  God has all kinds of other ways to enable you to live a full and complete life even with that disease apparently taking your body apart. 

So that's what I mean when I say if you dwell in working faith, you're going to be living off the Rock of Ages  anyway, and not  off these intermediate little gifts.  But as you dwell in working faith, the Holy Spirit is then free to manifest some of those things so that the rest of the people will see them.  But actually you don't need to have a Cadillac to prove that you're dwelling in working faith.  Dwelling in working faith will ensure that you have enough money anyway, that somehow or other, the whole thing works together for good in your life, in other words, that you cannot be defeated.  We were going through Piccadilly Circus; that's one of the central famous squares in London -- it just came to me, and I said to my wife, "You know, this whole square here is filled with all kinds of currents; spiritual currents, intellectual currents, mental currents, emotional currents, financial currents, there are all kinds of currents, masses of currents like radio waves, of all different kinds running through this whole square here with all these people.” 

And do you see that there are infinite permutations of combinations of those currents?  There are massive numbers: the guy stepping off the curb, he's influenced by 3 or 4 billion different currents.  And God, in his great wisdom,  in response to your working faith that the world has been crucified to you and you to the world, is able to combine those for your benefit without any trouble -- no trouble at all -- none.  To our crude eyes, it may appear there's nothing different, but he has already moved and squeezed together and combined two or three billion of those currents that utterly change the way things turn out in your mind and in your life.

Loved ones, that's it; we're in the hands of our Father, we're not in the hands of this world system.  We're not -- that world system was destroyed in Jesus and it has no power to bring about its will in us or in our children.  And God expects us to live confidentially and joyously in that faith and to build that faith up in each other and then to act in accordance with that faith.  Then it is that you begin to be used by God to heal other people's sicknesses, to solve other people's problems and to make to changes in your own life and the life of nations.  But working faith is something that is all our right, right at this very moment. 

So I would encourage you “Rejoice in the Lord always and I again will say rejoice.  Let your forbearance” -- people will wonder why you’re not worried – “let your forbearance be known to all men, the Lord is at hand” right here.  The Lord is at hand.  “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God.  And the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Loved ones, that’s it; that's for us.

Let us pray. 

Dear Father, we thank you for peace and for safety.  Thank you for a strong rock around us that the power of the world system cannot pierce.  And thank you, Lord for a place to dwell here when you, dear Holy Spirit, as we  spend time waiting before our God in faith, can begin to whisper the things that he wants to manifest in order to glorify himself in this world or to enable us to be a blessing to others.  But Lord thank you that we have all these blessings, whether they are manifested or not; they're all ours in Christ Jesus.  Lord God, we thank you that our lives are in your hands and in no one else's.  Lord, we would commit ourselves to praying for each other now and to exercising this faith continually.  As we exercise it, Lord, we know that our brothers and sisters beside us will have an easier time as we, as a body, begin to exercise it, so this dear world that is so battered will begin to sense that there is a way of freedom in which we can walk.

Oh, Lord, we thank you for that.  Thank you that we can take arms against a sea of troubles and simply by opposing, end them.  Not by our power, but by what you have already done in Christ.  And, oh Lord, we ask forgiveness for the fact that so many Red Seas have not been crossed, in spite of the fact that in Christ, the water was split.  Lord, we apologize that so many Jericho's still stand, in spite of the fact that in Christ the Lamb of God was slain before the foundation of the world and the walls of Jericho were brought down as the protons and neutrons that made up those walls were rearranged by your miraculous power. 

Lord, we thank you and we would now commit ourselves to no more holding back as those who fall back through fear; but we would move forward in faith into all these situations and we would  have no more time for despair or worry or anxiety or pessimism.  Lord, we thank you that the world has been crucified to us and us to the world and we have been raised up with Jesus and made to sit with him in the heavenly places.  And Lord, we thank you that you Lord Jesus overcame the world.  That's what you said: “I have overcome the world.”   And then we thank you for your words in John, “What overcomes the world; faith is the victory that overcomes the world.” 

Lord, we thank you for our faith tonight; we thank you that there's no reason why we can't walk in that solid faith in what you have done throughout the rest of our lives and then that we will be permitted to see this manifested as needed by others.  Thank you, Father.  We thank you. 

Now may the grace of our Lord, Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us, now and throughout this coming week.  Amen.