Introduction: The Joy of Divine Presence
Being in the presence of the Lord constitutes the highest reason for rejoicing, joy, and satisfaction. This truth finds its most beautiful expression in the words of the psalmist David, who in one of his psalms wrote and sang with deep conviction: “I would rather be one day in the courts of the house of my God than a thousand elsewhere.”
Being before the presence of the Lord is pure delight. The Word establishes this with absolute clarity when it asks: “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place?” And it answers: “The one who has clean hands and a pure heart.” However, this does not come from ourselves, for we have learned through the grace and mercy of the Eternal Almighty God that “it is not by works so that no one can boast, but it is by grace” that the Lord has shown in the life of each one of us.
In Psalm 30 we find another transformative declaration from the psalmist who writes: “You turned my wailing into dancing.” There is here a radical transformation, a profound realization that man cannot obtain apart from God, that woman cannot develop independently of the Almighty. For this reason we stand before the presence of the Lord with cause for joy, rejoicing, and satisfaction, knowing that all this does not proceed from ourselves, but is entirely from the Lord.
The Biblical Foundation: Without Faith It Is Impossible to Please God
As we expose ourselves again to the Word of the Lord on this topic as important and necessary as faith is, we must recognize how many of us are truly walking by faith. In the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 6, we find a categorical declaration: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
This statement not only establishes a divine demand, but marks the precise limits of the life that pleases the Lord. It is not about good works, it is not about repeated good intentions; it is specifically about walking by faith. For this reason the topic to which we are exposing ourselves in this teaching is fundamental.
Contemporary Misinterpretation of Faith
Up to this point, the great majority of men and women who are part of a congregation or who have acknowledged Jesus the Christ as their Lord and Savior, walk under the erroneous concept that faith is, to some extent, like a tool to be able to ensure obtaining what they are asking the Lord for.
The great majority maintains this definition that considers faith only as the resource that helps us ensure we are going to receive something. Many times we ourselves express it this way: “I have faith that I’m going to see this result,” “I have faith that the Lord is going to answer my prayer,” “I have faith that I’m going to obtain what I’m asking the Lord for.”
However, when we enter deeply into the Sacred Scriptures, we discover that faith is not a tool to ensure the result we are expecting. It is a quite utilitarian definition that we have unfortunately developed, and not necessarily founded on the Word of the Lord.
Faith is to help us walk on this earth according to what the Kingdom of Heaven has established for each one of us who have decided to enter under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Biblical Context: Luke 17:3-6
To properly understand what faith is and why it is necessary to walk by it, let us examine the passage from Luke chapter 17, verses 3 through 6:
“Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him. The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ And the Lord said, ‘If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and be planted in the sea”; and it would obey you.’”
This text reveals much about faith, but to understand it completely, we must comprehend the context in which Jesus the Christ was teaching. He was in a series of teachings on different topics about the Kingdom of Heaven, and one of the topics He addressed was precisely forgiveness.
When Jesus the Christ expanded the teaching by telling them: “If seven times this same person, not a different one but the same person, if seven times he offends you and seven times comes to you asking you to forgive him, you forgive him,” it was there that the disciples said to Him: “Increase our faith.”
Why did they ask this? Because up to that moment, the apostles were accustomed to what the Mosaic law had established regarding offenses of one person against another. In the book of Exodus and also in Deuteronomy, the Word established: if someone offends you, if someone strikes you, then “eye for eye and tooth for tooth.” This is what the Mosaic law established and to which they were completely accustomed.
When Jesus the Christ now presented them with a situation apparently completely different from what the Mosaic law had established, they said: “This is too difficult for us to complete. What we need is for you to increase our faith. If you increase our faith, surely then it will be much easier to be able to fulfill and complete this.”
First Fundamental Teaching: Faith Subjects the Material to the Spiritual
From here we already begin to see that in the teaching of Jesus the Christ, faith does not have to do, for the most part, with things we are asking or demanding for ourselves. It has to do with being able to fulfill and complete those things that are part of the Kingdom of Heaven to which we have not been accustomed and which cannot be faced except through faith.
Why? Because the human tendency is to establish other elements, as for example, in this case, the “eye for eye and tooth for tooth.”
Based on the apostles’ request, Jesus the Christ entered into the teaching of faith and said in verse 6: “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
There are two fundamental teachings here regarding faith:
First: Faith helps us to be able to subject, to be able to submit the material to the spiritual. I want to repeat this because it is extremely important and here we begin with the precise definitions of faith:
What is faith? Faith is the spiritual virtue that helps us, that gives us the capacity, that gives us the authority, that gives us the power to be able to subject the material to the spiritual.
That is exactly what Jesus the Christ is telling them in verse 6: If you said to this mulberry tree “be uprooted and be planted in the sea,” it would obey and it would be done just as you are determining it, as you are declaring it.
Faith is the spiritual capacity that helps us subject the material to the spiritual, and this is the part that many of us need to be able to understand and walk by it. We have to subject the material to the spiritual.
Our Spiritual Identity
We are men, we are spiritual women, we are spiritual beings. We do not belong to this world, although we live in this world. Jesus the Christ said it clearly in the Gospel of John: “Father, I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.”
We are beings who walk on this earth. The years we live on this earth we have to understand that we are not citizens of this earth; we are spiritual beings, we belong to the Kingdom of Heaven.
The first lesson that the Word of the Lord presents and teaches each one of us is that as men of the Kingdom, as women of the Kingdom of Heaven, we have to learn to subject the material to the spiritual. This is the most important part we must understand: it is not accommodating ourselves to the conditions of this world, but subjecting the material to the spiritual in such a way that the spiritual is always done in the environments where we are living.
At another time, Jesus the Christ taught this same thing to His disciples when they came before Him and said: “Teach us to pray.” Jesus the Christ clearly established this same principle and told them in the prayer: “Father, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Faith, then, is the capacity that man and woman can develop to subject the material to the spiritual.
Why Without Faith It Is Impossible to Please God
From here we see the reason why “without faith it is impossible to please God.” The man and woman who subject themselves to the conditions of this world, who subject themselves to what the world establishes—understand this in the social, in the political, in the economic, in health matters—is a person who is not walking by faith, but is walking according to what the world has developed within society and what the world establishes as the way to be able to live, coexist, and develop.
Why is it important to walk by faith? Because when we walk by faith we are establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on the face of the earth.
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Established by Faith
Here there is an element that we need to be able to establish clearly: The Kingdom of Heaven is not established only with words. The Kingdom of Heaven is not established only with preaching. The Kingdom of Heaven is not established only with evangelization, which up to this point is the way most men and women who confess Christ Jesus have believed is the only way it is established.
Many think: “I’m going to evangelize, I’m going to establish the message of the Gospel so that the Kingdom of Heaven is established.” But it is not the only way. In reality, the Kingdom of Heaven is established when we walk according to what the Word of the Lord has established. This is how the Kingdom of Heaven is established.
Therefore, “without faith it is impossible to please God.” This means that the man who confesses Christ Jesus, the woman who confesses Christ Jesus, we have to learn that it is necessary to subject the material to the spiritual, not the reverse, not the other way. It is not subjecting ourselves to the systems, it is not subjecting ourselves to what the world has established.
The Two Voices: God vs. The World
What has God said? What does the world say? There are two voices that are constantly being presented. But the man of God, the man who walks by faith, the woman who walks by faith, listens to the voice of God even though it goes contrary to what the voice of the world has established.
In the Old Testament we find that when the people entered the promised land, the first thing they did was establish a prophetic act. God, through Moses, told them: “You are going to go to two mountains: to Mount Ebal and to Mount Gerizim. On one of them half the people will proclaim the curses of the law, and on the other half the people will proclaim the blessings.”
On Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim this act was established where six tribes proclaimed the curses contained in the Mosaic law, while the other six tribes proclaimed the blessings, leaving the valley in between.
What is this teaching us? That the man who confesses Christ Jesus, the woman who confesses Christ Jesus, always, all of life, is going to have two voices, is going to be faced with two voices:
- The voice of the world that presents curses
- The voice of the Kingdom of Heaven that presents blessings
“These blessings will overtake you,” thus begins Deuteronomy chapter 28: “Blessed are you in the city and blessed are you in the country. Blessed is the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land and the young of your livestock. Blessed is your basket and your kneading trough. Blessed are you when you come in and blessed are you when you go out.”
And in the same chapter 28 of Deuteronomy, from verse 15 to the end, we find the curses for not having heeded the voice of God.
Faith consists in the capacity that the man, in the capacity that the woman of God develops to be able to subject the material to the spiritual.
Second Fundamental Teaching: Faith Must Grow
The second teaching that this text from Luke 17:6 presents us is fundamental: “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Many have understood this passage as allegorical, thinking that Jesus the Christ was speaking in symbolic terms, not of a real mulberry tree. A mulberry tree is a medium-sized tree, it is not even a shrub, it is a medium-sized tree.
Many say: “That’s impossible, it can’t be done, it won’t obey us. In reality, what Jesus the Christ was presenting symbolically is that this mulberry tree or that mountain represents our problems, our obstacles, our inconveniences, everything that opposes us on the path.”
But the Lord was not speaking in allegorical terms. The Lord was not speaking in symbolic terms; He was really speaking of a mulberry tree, that is, of a medium-sized tree. He was speaking of a mountain, of a physical mountain.
The point consists precisely in that we have to learn to subject the material to the spiritual, and this is the reality that does not happen in the ecclesiastical environment today. Because many times the opposite happens: it is man subjecting himself to the social environment, to the political environment, to the economic environment, to the health environment.
How many times men of God say: “I am under this situation” speaking of health matters and in prayer. Why? Because we have not been able to understand that faith is to subject the material to the spiritual.
The Growth Process: The Parable of the Mustard Seed
When Jesus the Christ said: “If you had faith like a mustard seed,” He was not speaking about size. To understand this completely, we must go to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 4, verses 30-32:
“How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches, so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade.”
Jesus the Christ was not speaking about size when He said: “If you had faith like a mustard seed.” Many of us tend to think: “Jesus was telling them that the size of your faith doesn’t matter; if you have faith, that’s what’s important and you could do so many things.” No, He was not speaking about size.
What was He speaking about then? He was speaking about the process that the mustard seed follows. The mustard seed when it is sown is the smallest of all seeds. It is really quite small, a seed to the point that if you’re not careful it can be lost, it can go astray.
But when it is sown, it grows, rises, and becomes the largest of all vegetables, in such a way that it can even sustain nests and birds in its midst.
Faith has to grow. This is what Jesus the Christ is presenting: “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mountain or to this mulberry tree: be uprooted and move to the sea.”
If our faith had the capacity to grow, the capacity to develop, the capacity to multiply, then we would say to this mulberry tree: “be uprooted and go to the sea.”
Personal Responsibility for Faith’s Growth
This is the part that many of us have neglected because precisely we have believed that faith only serves when I need something. We have believed that faith is a tool: “I just need something, I have to take faith.” If we review it, this is practically what the disciples were telling Him: “Give me another package of faith, give me another quantity of faith so I can resolve or face this situation.”
Faith is not a package. Romans chapter 12, verse 3, clearly says that “God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” But from that measure of faith, it is your and my responsibility to make grow that quantity of faith that the Lord has given us.
Many times we find in Christian and ecclesiastical circles men and women who, despite five, ten and more years, preserve that same measure of faith they had when they came to Christ Jesus. They have not made faith grow, they have not developed faith.
That’s why in many cases all we find are testimonies from the past, from many years ago, but from there on it’s as if experiences stagnated or did not transcend. Because many of us have not understood that faith needs to develop, that faith needs to multiply, and that is your and my responsibility.
The Parable of the Talents: Illustration of Growth
Why is faith necessary to please God? When we go to Matthew chapter 25, the parable of the servants who received talents, we find the explanation.
Three servants received amounts of money: five talents, two talents, one talent. On another occasion I have explained this: none was greater than the other. We almost always see the one with five as greater than the one with two, and even much greater than the one with one. No, all three were equal.
How are all equal regarding the work of the Kingdom of Heaven? Because the one who had five produced five more. How much in percentage terms did this man make? 100%. The one who had two produced two more. What percentage did this man make? Also 100%. It was expected that the one who had received one talent would also produce 100%.
It’s not the quantity, it’s the percentage that each one of them made. All three were in the same position, on the same level, because otherwise He would not have given a talent to the one who received one.
What happened? The one who had received one talent said: “I was afraid, I hid the talent, and at least I didn’t lose it.”
This teaches us that faith has to grow, it has to multiply. We cannot see faith as a tool: “I resolved my situation, I no longer need faith, I’m going to save the faith I have for when I need it again.” No, that is not the concept that the Word of the Lord is presenting to us.
Faith has to multiply, you have to make it grow. Who makes it grow? Each one of us has to make faith grow.
The Danger of Stagnant Faith
Otherwise, if we don’t work to make faith grow, faith remains the same size and—listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you—it is exposed to being extinguished. To being extinguished, just as you are hearing it: it can be extinguished.
Where does this show us? Right here in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18, when Jesus the Christ, establishing teaching with His disciples, said to them: “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
What this is saying is that faith can be extinguished, faith can be lost.
The Illustration of the Manna
So that we have an idea of what I am saying, in the Old Testament we are presented with the manna, the bread from heaven that fell for six days. The seventh day, the Sabbath day, it did not fall at all and it would reintegrate on the first day of the following week.
Moses told them the following: “Take, when the sixth day arrives, take for that day and take for the seventh day, double portion for the seventh day. More than what you need do not take for the next day. If you are on the first, second, or third day, do not take excessively.”
What happened? There were those who did not heed Moses’ instruction and took excessively to save for an additional day. And the manna would vanish, the manna would decompose, because the manna was for the very day they were living. The only exception was the sixth day because they took for that day and for the seventh day, since on the seventh day no manna fell.
This is teaching us that faith, if we don’t make it grow, if we don’t put it to exercise, can vanish.
Can we understand why there are faith crises, particularly in men and women who have already spent time being within a congregation or who have already spent time having confessed Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior? Because there are faith crises precisely because we have not made the faith that the Lord has given us grow.
Two Teachings Summarized
Up to verse 6, two teachings this text is presenting us:
- Faith has to be made to grow, and it is your responsibility and my responsibility. It is not anyone else’s responsibility, it is not a matter of asking someone to pray so that I can grow in faith. It is my responsibility before the Lord. It is my responsibility to make it grow. I cannot delegate to another, to someone, to a minister to pray so that my faith grows. It is our responsibility, it is a responsibility, a personal and non-transferable commitment before the presence of the Lord.
- Faith is to subject the material to the spiritual so that then the Kingdom of God can be established in our environments, in our surroundings.
There are people who even calling themselves Christians or believers are not living in the Kingdom of Heaven, because living in the Kingdom of Heaven is not just being affiliated with a congregation. Living in the Kingdom of Heaven is establishing the teaching or direct instruction that the Word of the Lord is delivering to us.
The Biblical Definition of Faith: Hebrews 11:1
To be able to understand what faith properly is according to what is being presented to us, let us go to the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
I am reading from an old version of 1909. The words that appear here are “substance” and “evidence.” In the 1960 version “assurance” and “conviction” appear.
This verse, which up to this point the great majority of us have assumed as the only definition of faith, is not the only one. We have been establishing definitions of what faith is through other texts.
This verse is giving us two definitions in one. Why? Because it says: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for” (first definition), “the evidence of things not seen” (second definition).
But here we have to understand that they are not two independent definitions, but rather it is a single definition that is being presented to us in two parts so that we understand that faith is spiritual, but it is applied in the material realm.
I am going to repeat this again: Faith is spiritual, but it is applied in the material realm.
- “Now faith is the substance” (spiritual realm)
- “The evidence of things not seen” (material realm)
The Erroneous Concept: God Does Not Create from Nothing
Faith establishes that what we receive from God, that what we receive that comes from God, is already done, is already in the spiritual, but the material has not yet materialized.
There is a concept that has infiltrated within the Christian environment, within the ecclesiastical environment, that it is necessary that each one of us can remove it, that we can eradicate it. What concept am I referring to? The concept that says that God builds from nothing or that God manufactures from nothing, that God makes from nothing.
That is not the biblical concept. God does not produce from nothing to this material environment what is already done in the spiritual environment.
See what it says in the same chapter, in verse 3, the last part: “so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”
Here is the confusion precisely that has developed that concept that God builds from nothing. “So that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” Why does it say that they were not visible? Because they belong to the spiritual realm.
The Example of Creation
Let us go for a few moments to the book of Genesis, chapter 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void.” And we begin to see the creation of this material environment in which we are living. And God said: “Let there be light.”
Light does not belong to the material realm. It is not that light was constructed at that moment. Note that He has not yet made the luminaries, that is, light is not the result of a star called sun or a star called moon or other stars that produce their own light. No, He has not yet constructed them.
Does this mean then that He did not manufacture light at that moment? He brought it from the spiritual environment. There was a transfer from the spiritual environment that introduced light. Light belongs to the spiritual and He introduced it within the material environment. This is how God operates, and this is how He produces all things.
“What is seen comes from what was not visible.” When in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, it says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for,” it is telling us that all those things already are, already are. Where are they? In the spiritual.
That the only thing missing is for them to materialize. And in the second part: “the evidence of things not seen,” everything that God has introduced to this world was not manufactured from nothing, was not made at that precise moment. God brought everything from the spiritual environment and planted it within the material environment.
This is the way God operates. When God produces a miracle, He brings it from the spiritual environment and introduces it into the material environment. Everything is already done, it just needs to be materialized.
The Key: Subjecting the Material to the Spiritual
This is where faith enters. Remember the text we were reading in Luke chapter 17: what did we say faith is? The capacity to subject the material to the spiritual.
Everything is already done, but it needs to be manifested in the material. When is it going to be manifested in the material? When the man of faith subjects the material to the spiritual. Not in any other way.
- When will your provision come? When you learn not to depend on the resources of this world. Subject the material to the spiritual.
- When will your healing come? When you decide not to depend on the material, on what this world has established as the way to be healthy. When you subject this to the spiritual, then it is manifested.
- When will your prosperity come? When will those things that the Lord declared would come, that He told you would come, or those demands that the Lord imposed on you to walk by them come? When will they come? When will they materialize? When each one of us subjects the material to the spiritual.
The Great Problem: Dependence on the World
This is the great problem that many men and many women have: because we have not wanted to subject the material to the spiritual. On the contrary, we have subjected ourselves, we have subjected ourselves to this world.
Look at what First John says, chapter 3, verse 9: “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
And in chapter 2, verse 3: “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.”
In another text, always from First John, the apostle writes and says: “What is it that overcomes the world? What is the victory that overcomes the world? Our faith.”
When we, men and women who confess ourselves as men of God, as women of God, learn to subject the material and subject it to the spiritual, then there is when what the Lord spoke to us materializes, what the Lord demanded of us, what the Lord gave us. It is not in any other way.
The Testimony of Daniel
How long does it take for what we are expecting to materialize? The time it takes us to subject the material to the spiritual.
Let me go to the book of Daniel, chapter 10. I encourage you to read the complete chapter. I am going to read verses 12 and 13 to show this same thing I have just explained:
“Then he said to me, ‘Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days; then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia.’”
What is this text telling us? Daniel, when your words went out, at the same moment I was sent to you. “Your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words,” this angelic being is telling him. “I left the presence of the Almighty, I left at the same moment your words were heard.”
But how long did it take to arrive? Twenty-one days. It says: “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days.” And surely it would have taken longer if it had not been because Michael, an archangel, came to open space so he could pass through the demonic environment in which he found himself.
Remember Daniel’s twenty-one days, how they coincide with the twenty-one days that this angelic being was detained in the heavens.
Faith Is Not Just for Receiving
Faith is not only to receive what we are asking God for. It is a concept that is too poor and utilitarian to some extent. It is not only that we are going to use faith when I need something and when I need it because I have already exhausted all my resources.
Faith is the means that serves us to be able to establish the Kingdom of Heaven wherever we find ourselves, wherever the Lord has placed us.
But when is it established or when does it begin? When the man of God, when the woman of God understands that what God told us, that what God gave us, that the demand the Lord asked of us, already is. It already is, it is not that it is going to be made one day or at the same moment when they are going to give it to you. It already is.
Where is it? In the spiritual, in the spiritual environment, in the Kingdom of Heaven. Everything is already there, it already is.
Why hasn’t it arrived then? Because it’s up to me to subject the material to the spiritual. When I learn, when I learn to get out of the world’s environments where I subjected myself, where I myself decided to subject myself and walk by them, when I get out of there and now manage to subject the material to the spiritual, then it is going to be realized.
Otherwise, days will pass, months will pass, years will pass, which is the reality in which many of us have lived.
The Testimony of the Past
When we say “the Lord told me,” we are suggesting that it was several years ago that the Lord told me, but at the same time we are saying “and it still has not been fulfilled.” “The Lord told me, but it still has not been fulfilled.”
Why? Because we have to understand that everything God has wanted to give us, that everything God spoke about us, that even the life demand the Lord proposed to us, already are. They already are. Where are they? In the spiritual realm. They need to be materialized.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for.” The substance already is. The substance is what gives life to everything, it is the foundation of everything. The substance of things hoped for already is, everything already is, it already is.
“The evidence of things not seen.” They need to be materialized, they need to be materialized.
It is a single definition, but it is being presented in two ways, in two paragraphs to some extent as if different, to indicate to us that already in the spiritual it already is, but it needs to be materialized. That is where faith enters.
Why It Doesn’t Materialize
Why doesn’t it materialize? Because we are still walking under the formats of this world. We have wanted to continue walking under the formats of this world. We have not wanted to get out of the formats of this world.
Many of us decided to depend on a salary. Yes, just as you hear it, we decided to depend on a salary: “It is my salary that is going to sustain me, it is my salary that is going to give me all things.” We decided to walk and depend on a salary.
Many of us decided to walk and depend on a health system. Many of us wanted to walk and depend on a political system. Many of us wanted to walk and depend on a social system.
Things do not materialize while we continue walking under those formats, which are the formats of this world. God is not going to go over His own Word. Until we get out of those formats and subject them to the spiritual.
The Reality of Worldly Dependence
“I do not depend on a salary, I do not depend on a health system, I do not depend on a political system.” That is why there are many people who do not see prosperity in their life, because they say: “The minimum wage in this country is so much, and with that money you can’t do anything.”
“If I lived in another country or were in these conditions, then I could…” How many times men of God, how many times women of God have said this. We have not understood what the Kingdom of God is, we have not understood what the Kingdom of Heaven is.
The Keys of the Kingdom: Matthew 16:19
I want to take you to Matthew, chapter 16, and now we are going to understand this text that many times we have not understood completely. Matthew chapter 16, verse 19:
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
Are we understanding it? This verse 19 of Matthew chapter 16 is connected to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1. It is talking about the same thing.
We can bind on earth the formats, the systems, the models, the life platforms to which we ourselves decided to subject ourselves, to which we ourselves decided to walk by them. Until we subject them to the spiritual, then the Kingdom of Heaven is going to be seen manifested.
Submission to Authorities vs. Dependence
How many of us have decided to walk by the laws of man? More than one can say: “But if it is that the same Word tells us: ‘Submit yourselves to the governing authorities.’ The same Word is telling us.”
What the Word is telling us is: “Do not walk in sedition, do not walk establishing rebellion.” In that sense you submit yourself, but you do not depend on them. But when we decided to walk by them, then we subject ourselves to the material, then the laws apply to our life.
Have we not read in First Corinthians that the apostle says that we are to judge this world? Have we read that the apostle, by the Spirit of God, says how is it possible that we have not been able all things when God has given us the authority to be able to do it?
The Call to Come Out of the World
It is important that we understand why it is necessary to walk by faith. We have answered this question, because otherwise we are not going to see everything that God arranged to give us as heirs of this world. We are not going to see it because there is no other way.
What is faith? The capacity that God gives us to be able to subject the material to the spiritual. But for this, each one of us has to get out of each one of the platforms to which we ourselves have subjected ourselves.
That is why the apostle in his epistle to the Romans says: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
The word “conform” means to take the form of the world. Many have taken the form of this world and we are walking by the form that the world has established, without understanding that God has called us to come out from among them: “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”
Conclusion: Faith as Spiritual Virtue
That is why in this teaching the Word that the Lord is proposing to us is: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
And it is not about—I repeat again—it is not only about a resource to receive what we are asking the Lord for. Faith is the spiritual virtue to subject material things and subject them to the spiritual.
That is why it is very important that we understand this topic. Today that the Lord exposes us to this, each one of us can make decisions. It is not about saying “how good, how impressive, how good to know this,” because it is not about how much knowledge each one of us can acquire.
It is about how much we can do with what the Lord gives us. How much can we build with what the Lord gives us?
At this hour the teaching has been presented, and now it corresponds to each one of us to make decisions. Things can change with the decisions that each one of us makes from this moment on.
I bless you. The peace of the Lord be with you. Amen.
