March 4, 2001

Monica,

I have been thinking about faith and receiving. Believing what God said is the most important thing, of course. Then we must confess what he said instead of what we see. I’ve mentioned that before. I’ve been thinking about the teaching of some that you should visualize that which you asked for also, and I think it is true. In fact, I am wondering which came first in Genesis. Did God look and see his word accomplished in the manifest physical world first and then say it was good? Or did he look in his mind--visualize--that which he was believing for and say it was good, expressing his faith that it would be good when it became manifest? It was faith in operation that created the world. God had faith in his own spoken word.

Jesus believed that he was going to receive a bride. What did he say he would be doing when he went back to heaven after his resurrection? He said he was going to prepare a place for us. That is faith in action. Believing there would be a bride to receive, he went to heaven and began to prepare a place for her.

Believing that God really would send some unheard of thing called "rain," Noah prepared for the flood. The whole time he was building the ark, he was visualizing the coming flood and preparing for it. I know that confessing God’s word instead of what we see is vital. I also see now that there is even more we can do. There are ways we can prepare to receive what we have asked for. I have never heard Ken Copeland teach on this subject, but I heard him one time talking about teaching his kids to receive by faith. He said that when his son asked for a bicycle, he told him to ask God for it and then go clean out a place in the garage, expecting to receive. That sounds like what I am talking about here.

Expecting seems to be very important. The Biblical meaning of hoping is "waiting expectantly." Reading through the epistles, I have noticed that Peter, Paul, James, and John all fully expected the Translation to the Wedding Feast to take place during that first 100 years. God must have wanted them to constantly expect Jesus to come back. I think this is for more than just keeping us on our toes. I think there is power in the expectation to help produce the results.

I know that people who expect to be led by the present-tense guidance of the Holy Spirit are the ones who are receiving it. People who are expecting to be healed are the ones who are being healed. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. That is the King James wording of Hebrews 11:1. I like it--the substance of things for which we are expecting. Waiting to receive from God is just about the same thing as waiting for a child to be born or waiting for the tulips planted in the fall to come up in the spring.

God’s timing is puzzling sometimes, but he is never late. He just has a whole different perspective on time than we do. You know the word says that with God a day is as a thousand years. I don’t know if we are supposed to take that literally, but if it is literally so, when your heavenly Father says, "Wait a minute," it is nine months. If he delayed one year by our reckoning of time, it would be 86.4 seconds to him. With that perspective I guess you can see why he might not get in too much of a hurry when we think we need something right now. One day delay to us would be one-fourth of a second to him. I’d say his timing must be pretty precise!

Believe Almighty God. Confess his word. He said he watches over his word to perform it.

Then said Jehovah unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I watch over my word to perform it.

Love,

Dad