Faith is a law . . . established by God for us.
It is the gift of power given to humanity
to possess and to produce.
What you believe is what comes forth. It appears.

Every person operates in a set of beliefs.
Whether truth or lie, we all believe some things
with a solid certainty.

The heart has a secret doctrine, so ingrained
as to be automatic
and unrecognized.

Faith is a law. The things we deem certain are
certain to materialize.

The great puzzle is to discover what it is I believe in.
For I am so familiar and comfortable with
my beliefs that I've never heard them spoken
into words within my thoughts.
They are opinions that have become principles.
Vain ideas that I have turned into dogma.

And I must find them and
word them.
In order to refute them.

My beliefs are like a great oceanic undertow that
pulls me into itself by
a power greater than my flailing,
a catalyst that takes me over.
Yet I am myself the creator of that force.
I have fed it and given it its power by
the investment of my hidden meditations.

The great struggle begins when I decide to
change my cemented dogmas.
They don't transform easily.
They are leaden weights.
I break them only with great blows
I level at my lies.

Faith is a law. What you believe is what you experience.
Then your experience proves what you believed, but
it is because you believed it that it appeared.
And not because it was real.

What you believe has power - the actual power - to create.

Should you have faith in evil, evil will rise
to the full level of your concept.
Evil will prove your faith in it.

Should you have faith in disaster, disaster will hound you.
But the disaster will not exist as an outward force.
It will be the havoc that lives inside your
heart by its faith in the dreaded.

There is a religion of rejection, believing fervently
that rejection will be the backlash of all
encounters with others. And it is so.
It becomes so . . . where it was not. 

In all our absurd streams of faith perhaps this
one is the sepulcher
from which all other deadly faiths arise . . .
the one that turns us blind.
Makes us into twisted monsters,
self-crowned fiends of tyranny.

It is faith in our own 'self.' Confidence in our own
ability to do . . . and know.
No thirst for God to speak, for the "I" has spoken.
Listening in secret to this portentous 'self'
and believing the nonsense.

Foolish, yes . . . but dangerous fools we are,
naming God without needing Him.
Taking His place while claiming to know Him.

Do you receive what you desire in this life? Always.
Your desire lies in the grip of your faith.

Noble desires die in the hands of unbelief.
Unbelief is a faith in the negative. A confidence
that blessing won't happen.
A secret assurance that God won't . . . can't . . . .

I am indicted and exposed by what my life produces . . .
and doesn't produce.
For it only produces what I believe.
It cannot produce what I don't believe.

Do you understand yet that faith is a law?

"Be it done unto you according to your faith."

A statement that the manifestation of God is based
not on His willingness,
His power, His plan but

on my faith.

Faith is somehow a living thing, pulsating with the power
of self-fulfillment. Whether faith in a no-God
or faith in a yes-God, faith births its
image of Him into real life.
 
Real Faith is living because it is issuing from
a Living Word "from the mouth of God."
Scripture enveloped by the presence of the Father
is where faith - by love - is conceived.

Communion with the Father, to hear His personal Word
is to receive a vibrant seed,

Absorbing scripture, plants the true truth in
the abyss of my intricate mind and
dissolves the silly conclusions of my
life long impressions.

It is imperative that I build my faith by deliberate actions,
by the bombardment of my own soul
with God's Eternal truth
against the arrogance of my assessments.
 
To be around those with faith feeds faith.
Walk with a skeptic and you will
starve your faith into unbelief.

Yet . . . it is obedience and death that truly
form and release faith.

Submitting to God to do His will and the deeper
submission to die to independence . . .
these surrenders
cause His Own Confidence to enter and take over
the human heart of suspicion.

If you would serve God but not die for Him,
your faith will always be dwarfed.

          I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, 
          but Christ liveth in me and the life I now live 
          I live by the faith (of) the Son of God.  
       Gal. 2:22

Death ushers in the faith of the Very Son of God,
a supernatural faith issuing from
the One whose faith conquered ALL.

The death of me is the demise of my basic Adamic nature
that slides toward unbelief . . . and lives by cynicism
about its own Great Creator,
despising my Very Origin.
 
Unbelief is only killed when "i" die!
And faith is only birthed in "His" life.

So . . . I feed my faith with the Word of God as the Father
reads it to me personally and
I kill my unbelief by the personal cross of my
daily experience.

However . . . in the midst of this Great Solution
to my native doubt . . .
a key lies in my hand - not God's.
A pivot that either locks or opens
the Dynamic of Faith.
 
This electric key that holds both
Faith and Doubt
in the balance
is my simple choice.

I can decide what I will believe.
I can choose against the evidence,
I can refute the argument.
I can reject the logic and
I can silence the accuser.

It is my choice. My choice.
I pick the one I will trust. I choose the truth.
Or I choose to reject the truth. 

The option always rests . . . with me. 

I can desire to believe but
unless I choose to believe
my desire will perish in my lap.
Without faith my desire
will never come to life.
And I will blame God for it.

Faith comes by hearing, and I must choose to listen.
Faith comes by dying and I must decide to die.

And faith comes by looking.
             Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Looking TO Him, is focus ON Him, in blank dependence.
He is the Only Real in a abyss of illusion.
I must look away in order to look at . . .

I must leave the solid that appears
and go to the Real that Is.

For faith is not faith if it rests on dogma.
Faith is dynamic only as it resides upon a Person -
the One for whom the universe was made
and without Whom the universe has no meaning.

Copyright © 1999 Martha Kilpatrick