The Power of Radical Faith

“…Daughter, your faith has made you well…” (Mark 5:34)

I have said on multitudinous occasions that God meets us at the level of our expectations. What this means is that He will perform for us beyond what we believe. On more than one occasion, the healing that Jesus provided was accompanied with a lucid and profound statement – “according to your faith.” He was saying that it is your faith that sets the power of God in motion on your behalf. Radical and audacious faith has the power to incite the forces of the universe to move on your behalf. We can witness this in the book of Joshua, when he commands the sun to stand still.

We can also see the negative side of this in the book of numbers:

“Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you.’” (Num. 14:25, NKJV)

We know that this particular statement was tied to negative consequence, so we can understand that faith is what we believe in our hearts – good or bad. Negative beliefs lead to negative results. This is why it is vital that we do not receive the negative report of the enemy with validity and weight. We must not listen to the sweet nothings of negativity that the enemy attempts to whisper into our ear. We must take the Lord at His word and take a position of radical faith that dares to believe God beyond the visible circumstance.

The woman that Jesus healed with the issues of blood had a faith so audacious that it caused her to risk her life. Simply being in public with her condition could have cost her life, but she believed that healing was near. She believed that the answer to the enigmatic health issues that had plagued her for twelve years was within her grasp. It was on the day that she stepped out in unquestionable faith that God met her at her level of expectancy.

Dr. Rick Wallace 

What are you expecting from God? Are you expecting the supernatural? Are you expecting healing – spiritual, emotional, and physical? Are you expecting him to bless your home and your business? Or maybe, you are simply hoping that he will give you surviving grace. Too many believers are living only to survive. They have been buried under a sea of doubt and despair. Many have been told that hoping for something exceptional and great in their lives is unspiritual. Listen, God wants to show Himself strong on your behalf (2 Chron. 16:9) as he waits to be gracious to you. The Word declares that nothing shall be impossible to the one who believes. The question simply becomes: What are you believing for yourself?

Raise your level of expectancy. I promise you that you are not putting God on the spot. He wants you to expect the impossible. God is glorified by performing the impossible in the lives of those that trust Him. You only need to come to a knowledge of His total capacity to provide all that you need. It is time to engage Him at a higher level. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace 

Check out some additional resources by Dr. Rick Wallace 

1. The Invisible Father: Reversing the Curse of a Fatherless Generation - Dr. Wallace examines the destructive force of absentee fatherhood in America from a biblical Perspective

2. Renewing Your Mind: The Dynamics of Christian Transformation - Dr. Wallace discusses the power of your thought process to completely transform your life

3. Elevation through Revelation - This book was written to encourage and inspire you as you travel through life.

4. When Your House is Not a Home - Dr. Wallace engages the enigmatic issues that face marriage in America -- from a biblical perspective.

5. The Power of Healing Affirmations -- This short book goes straight to the matter of how you word and thought affect healing in your life. (A must read)

Blogs

1. 100 Men of Purpose -- Encouraging and teaching men to rise up in their God ordained design

2. Master Fitness 21 -- This site focuses on believers living healthy lives spiritually and physically

3. Anointed Inspirations -- A little something to get your day going.

4. Christian Impact -- The revelations of God that reveal the call and ability of believers to impact the world around them.

The Audacity of Faith

God... calleth those things which be not as though they were (Romans 4:17).

What does that mean? Why Abraham did this thing: he dared to believe God. It seemed an impossibility at his age that Abraham should become the father of a child; it looked incredible; and yet God called him a "father of many nations" before there was a sign of a child; and so Abraham called himself "father" because God called him so. That is faith; it is to believe and assert what God says. "Faith steps on seeming void, and finds the rock beneath."

Only say you have what God says you have, and He will make good to you all you believe. Only it must be real faith, all there is in you must go over in that act of faith to God.
--Crumbs

Be willing to live by believing and neither think nor desire to live in any other way. Be willing to see every outward light extinguished, to see the eclipse of every star in the blue heavens, leaving nothing but darkness and perils around, if God will only leave in thy soul the inner radiance, the pure bright lamp which faith has kindled.
--Thomas C. Upham

The moment has come when you must get off the perch of distrust, out of the nest of seeming safety, and onto the wings of faith; just such a time as comes to the bird when it must begin to try the air. It may seem as though you must drop to the earth; so it may seem to the fledgling. It, too, may feel very like falling; but it does not fall -- it's pinions give it support, or, if they fail, the parent birds sweeps under and bears it upon its wings.

Even so will God bear you. Only trust Him; "thou shalt be holden up." "Well, but," you say, "am I to cast myself upon nothing?" That is what the bird seems to have to do; but we know the air is there, and the air is not so unsubstantial as it seems. And you know the promises of God are there, and they are not unsubstantial at all. "But it seems an unlikely thing to come about that my poor weak soul should be girded with such strength." Has God said it shall? "That my tempted, yielding nature shall be victor in the strife." Has God said it shall? "That my timorous, trembling heart shall find peace?" Has God said it shall?

For, if He has, you surely do not mean to give Him the lie! Hath he spoken, and shall He not do it? If you have gotten a word -- "a sure word" of promise -- take it implicitly, trust it absolutely. And this sure word you have; nay, you have more -- you have Him who speaks the word confidently.

"Yea, I say unto you," trust Him.
--J. B. Figgis, M. A. 

For some time now, it has become the practice of believers to search for empirical and pragmatic evidence that what God has promised will take place. Believers have become driven by circumstance and blocked in by uncertainty. God has made precious and powerful promises to the believer and His impeccable character and integrity ensures that His word will never fail (Isa. 55:11).

When God promised Abram that He would be the father of many nations, He changed his name to Abraham (Father of a Multitude). Names had power in those times. Every time someone called Abraham by name, he was reminded of the promise. Every time Abraham introduced himself, he was reminded of the promise. God has given you a name as well. He has named you conqueror (Romans 8:37), royal priest, a chosen generation, a peculiar (uniquely special and gifted for purpose) people, and a Holy nation (1 Peter 2:9), beloved (Daniel 10:11; Songs of Sol. 2:16), sons & daughters (2 Corinthians 10:18), friend, (John: 15:15), masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10), and Treasure (Deuteronomy 7:6).

The Bible says that Abraham did not “stagger” (waver in unbelief) at the promises of God, but grew stronger in faith, giving glory to God. One of the greatest ways you glorify God is by properly engaging your struggles. When people are looking at you and asserting that you should be moaning and crying, but you a smiling and praising, you glorify God. When people think that all of the pressure that you are under should have caused you to lose your mind, but you remain at peace, you glorify God. When everything says give up there is no hope, but you stand anyway, you glorify God.

God has given a testimony of your faithfulness to the enemy (Job 1:1-12) and now He wants to know: Can He trust you with TROUBLE? You see, He knows that you will give Him praise when the new car is in the garage. He knows that you will smile when the marriage is rolling along smoothly He knows you will speak highly of His name, but what will happen when the vicissitudes of life roll into your paradise? What will you do when delay seems perpetual? How will you respond to the incessant attacks of the enemy? This is what will determine the magnitude at which you glorify our God.

One the greatest testimonies about Abraham, if not the greatest, was His faith. He believed God for the impossible and God accounted (credited him with Divine righteousness) is as righteousness (Gen. 15:6). Understand this; some of your greatest and most powerful testimonies will not be where you stood victoriously on the mountaintop. No, it will be the recollection of how you endured delay, withstood the pernicious attacks of the enemy, coped with abandonment and loneliness, and persevered through heartache and disappointment.

Dr. Rick Wallace 

It is when you understand that God is your Shield and exceedingly great Reward (Gen. 15:1) that you will realize that there is no struggle or obstacle that God will not bring you through. As they say, “If He brought you to it; He will bring you through it.”

Faith does not require empirical evidence, it is not daunted by delay, it is not exhausted by external pressure, it does not become confused by false testimony, and it does not become frustrated in the face of resistance. Faith says simply, “If God has said it is so, then it is so!” Faith stands alone, believing. Pastor Steven Furtick says that faith is audacious. Faith dares to believe God for the impossible. In fact, I believe that those believers that truly ascend are those that search for the impossibilities in their lives so that the power of God can be revealed through them. Yes, faith requires that you step out on what seems to be nothing, but God is the master of the universe, which He created from nothing. He will take your faith and your nothing and perform the supernatural. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace

Expand Your Expectations

But, on the contrary, as the Scripture says, What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him [[e]who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed]. (1 Cor. 2:9, AMP)

The aforementioned scriptural passage centers in an extremely significant truth; our imaginations and expectations cannot ever exceed the power of God to perform the exceptional in our lives. In this passage the Apostle Paul vividly paints a portrait of a God that can do and has done far beyond our wildest imaginations on our behalf.  God has prepared great blessings on our behalf and He holds them in escrow for us to claim through the process of faith.

One of the problems that many believers are facing is the fact that they cannot seem to get out of survival mode. It seems that all so many of you want is to just get the bills paid, to just make it through another day, to just be able to cope with a person at the office that is trying your patience. Yes, we need to trust God to carry us through these moments, but we must also know that God desires to so much more in our lives. God is glorified in blessing and elevating His people. Contrary to popular belief, there is so much more to living the Christian life than simply surviving it to make to heaven.

The Christian life is one of victory and power. It is a life built on the foundation of faith that believes that God has created a plan specifically for your life and that He has empowered this plan through the anointing that has been placed on your life. We have to keep in mind that the life we live as believers we live because Christ paid the ultimate price on Calvary in order to provide it (Gal. 2:20), and He did not provide this life for us to live on the edge of defeat, simply happy to survive. Christ died to provide the ultimate victory (reconciliation with God) and all that accompanies it.

The scriptural passage says that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered to the heart of man, all that God has done and prepared for those that love Him. This doesn’t mean just your eye, ears or heart; it means that no one in the history of humanity has been witness to the extent of all that God has done on behalf of those whose hearts are turned toward Him. In essence, the greatest dreamer cannot fathom a fraction of what God has done for us.

Well, if God has done so much, why is it that so many believers live on the edge of defeat or worse? It is because they are in survival mode. They have bought into the lies of the enemy that say that lack is their lot in life.  They have boxed God in with their limited perspicacity instead of trusting Him to do exceedingly, abundantly and above all that they could ever imagine (Eph. 3:20). They have become captivated by life’s circumstances instead of apprehending the truth of divine omnipotence resident within them. It has become easy for them to believe the negative report of the enemy than it is to trust God to accomplish the supernatural.

When Joshua prayed that the sun stand still, he did not give consideration to the fact that nothing like that had ever been done before. He wasn’t concerned with putting God on the spot. He wasn’t fearful of the possibility of failure. God had promised him that he would be with him every step of the way and He would fight for him. Based on this promise, Joshua dared to ask for the impossible and expect nothing less than what he requested.

If you are to move from survival mode to live a life of a conqueror, you will have to expand your expectations of God and subsequently yourself. God wants to accomplish great things through you, but He will only meet you at your level of expectation. As long as all you expect is the bare minimum that is all you will get. There are some that don’t even expect the bare minimum; they have chosen to believe that a life of defeat is their lot. Victory is accomplished at the feet of God as you petition Him to perform the supernatural in your life. It is achieved as you dare to ignore the circumstances and take hold of the promises of God.

Trust me, there is nothing that you can ask God that will baffle Him or put Him on the spot. You are not going to put God in a position to be embarrassed because you’ve asked Him for something He can’t provide. God responds to radical faith; faith that has the audacity to expect the impossible. So, I encourage you to expand your expectations as far as God is concerned, He is capable of so much more that simply helping you to survive the moment. If you trust Him He will empower you to dominate the moment.

God Bless,

Dr. Rick Wallace

Audacious Faith

Expecting the Supernatural