TLDR
How to grow in your faith happens through three daily keys: (1) cultivating deep intimacy with the Father through the Word and prayer, (2) annihilating unbelief by keeping your eyes on Jesus, not the problem, and (3) living from a place of righteousness, fully convinced that you are holy, blameless, and empowered to represent Jesus on Earth. Faith grows when we know the Father and He knows us, walk in belief, and step out in authority — demolishing every mountain in the way.
INTIMACY WITH THE FATHER | FAITH GROWS THROUGH RELATIONSHIP
For me, I don’t need confusion when I’m praying for the sick. Studying 70 things about how it could happen isn’t how we grow in faith. Seeing people healed, delivered, and set free is not about the method; it’s about faith. And it’s so important that we understand how to grow in faith so that we mature in our walk with Jesus. Romans 10:9 (NKJV) says “… faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” As we hear the Word of God, faith comes. As we hear the Word of God, we establish intimacy with the Father. Intimacy is built on the Word of God — knowing the Word of God, and knowing the God of the Word. Growing in faith happens when we fear the Lord and remain in His Word.
ANNIHILATE UNBELIEF | FAITH IS THE OPPOSITE OF UNBELIEF
This is not complicated. We need Jesus. This is why I teach righteousness, because we want to live and want to minister from the place of purity. We don’t want to heal from the place of yucky. The pure in heart shall see God. (Matthew 5:8) That means that the people who aren’t pure in heart, won’t. In Matthew 10:7, 8 (NKJV), Jesus says, “And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.’” When Jesus commissioned the disciples to heal the sick, He commissioned them with exousia — authority — because dunamis power wasn’t coming until the Book of Acts in chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit would come upon the disciples in power.
When a father brings his epileptic son to the disciples in Matthew 17:14-21, Jesus has given exousia at this point — delegated authority. Now, the disciples come to this boy, and this boy is not getting healed. They’re praying, and what happens? The seizures don’t stop.
The key here is not to look introspectively. The more options you have, the more the tendency to look introspectively for an answer. So if I have ten options for why a person is not healed, I have now brought in unbelief. And unbelief will trump the mustard seed of faith and will not allow the mountain to move. Unbelief quenches growing faith. So what I can’t afford to have are options that bring in unbelief to encroach on that mustard seed of faith. I have to have something that’s so simple.
So, how do you grow your faith? First of all, it’s all about intimacy. If you don’t have intimacy, you don’t know exactly what God is saying when He’s saying it. I need to have intimacy because I don’t want to just do the miracle and not really know God. He alone is the One who’s worthy of glory. But I do want to get devils out because they are not allowed to be in people — not when Jesus and I walk into the room. But I can’t afford to have my head get big, and the only way my head stays small is through intimacy, which is also grown through fasting because it annihilates unbelief.
So these disciples prayed for this boy, and it didn’t happen. Question: Did the disciples have authority to heal the boy? Yes, they did. Jesus gave them authority. This is the authority He gave them: He deputized them and said, Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and cast out devils. (Matthew 10:8) These are not four types of ministry. It’s one ministry: preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, and these things all go along with it.
So I need to understand the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus is the one who heals and delivers, but He commands US to do it. We have no ability to do it in and of ourselves, but He commands us to heal the sick. Why? We’re representing Him. It’s on our part that we make sure we have intimacy so that our relationship is so secure in Him that we don’t need a miracle to validate who we are. Knowing Him means we walk just like Him — “just like Him” is found in John 20:21 (NKJV): “… As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” But I have to have intimacy, or else I’m going to gain my identity through a person who God healed, and that’s the sin of pride.
You can walk in power without character, but you can’t afford to walk without character. You can walk in character without power, but you can’t afford to walk without power. We need both. Character can’t come from just obedience to the Law. Character has to come from the reality of what God did with the Law. But character has to come from intimacy, as we imitate the Author of perfect character. Power has to come from intimacy, too. Power doesn’t need to, but it has to in order for you not to gain who you are through the power that has been given to you.
KNOW THAT YOU ARE RIGHTEOUS | RIGHTEOUSNESS IS ACCESSED THROUGH FAITH
Your relationship, prayer life, reading, and fellowship with the Lord create intimacy and help you grow in faith. The fear of the Lord and the reality of an awestruck reverence of the King come from intimacy. But without power, you are not properly representing Him to a lost and dying world. Intimacy is for you. Power is for them. Intimacy is for you. Authority is for them. The Holy Spirit is in you for your sake, but He’s upon you for everybody else’s. We owe the world a power-encounter with God so that they can encounter the real, authentic Jesus Christ — the One Who the world thinks is dead but is alive indeed.
We can’t be so focused on character that we neglect power, and we can’t be so focused on power that we don’t talk about character. That’s why righteousness is your only answer. You need to know that you’re right with God. You need to know that your sins and your lawless deeds, God remembers no more. (Hebrews 10:17) You need to wake up every morning with this realization. How can you truly be an ambassador of reconciliation unless you know you’ve been reconciled? How can you not impute the trespasses against the people that hurt you if you don’t know that the trespasses that you have committed have been washed away? You can’t.
So the father of the demonized boy said that the disciples couldn’t cure the boy. Jesus answered and said, Oh, faithless and perverse generation. How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to me. So if the disciples actually couldn’t heal him, Jesus would have said, Guys, move on because we can’t touch this one. But He didn’t. He said, Bring him to Me. So if it wasn’t God’s will to heal everyone, this would have been the one case that could have gone that way because Jesus gave His disciples authority, and they didn’t do it, but we see that that just isn’t the case.
So the boy is brought to Jesus. When Jesus says this generation is “perverse,” perverse means “twisted thinking, carnally minded.” So He’s saying that people had their eye on the problem and forgot what He told them. Their minds got fixed on stuff they could internalize, and so they tried to figure out what was going wrong instead of what needed to be right. This is why righteousness is so key in how to grow in your faith because it demolishes carnal, worldly thinking that comes against the nature of God and the truth of what Jesus did for you on the Cross.
Here’s what I do every time I’m in front of somebody. I ask myself, “If Jesus were here, would they be healed?” The answer is yes. Every time. What is the difference between me and Jesus? That right there is hard for the Body of Christ because if you don’t see what Jesus did — what He did as a man and not as God — you will say, “Well, He was Jesus, and I am not.” But we are here in His stead, representing Him to a lost and dying world, so the difference between me and Jesus is that Jesus was holy and without sin. The Bible says that through Jesus’ righteousness, I am holy and blameless and without sin if I receive Jesus.
This is why we hit righteousness so hard at Lifestyle Christianity. It says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NKJV), “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Jesus became sin — why? So that I might become something — righteous— and if I don’t see what I’ve become, I’ll still be living less than what God says I am. I have to live in a place where I can look in the mirror and know that God calls me holy, blameless, and without fault. You have to connect with this because it’s the only thing that will keep you steadfast.
So the boy is brought to Jesus, and Jesus rebukes the demon. It came out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and asked Him why they couldn’t cast it out. Jesus replied to them that it was because of their unbelief. So I want to address belief and unbelief because no matter what mountain is in front of you, there’s the difference between it moving and it not moving. It doesn’t say prayer heals the sick. It says faith does. Faith speaks to the mountain.
So Jesus is saying, You guys got your mind so fixed on the problem, it got scrambled when you were praying, and you forgot the reality of the promise. You forgot what I told you. Don’t think so deeply on what you’re learning, but listen to the promise and pray from there. He says, I’m not going to be with you for long; you’ve got to get this so you can represent me. It wasn’t the demon. It was their unbelief. So no matter what you’re up against, it’s not the wheelchair. It’s not the demon. It’s not the asthma. It’s not the cancer. It’s the unbelief. If you feel the quickening of the Holy Spirit, GO FOR IT. If you don’t have the quickening, understand this is not of God. How do I settle it? How did I pray for the sick when I first started? I knew it was God’s will to be on Earth the same as it is in Heaven. There is no sickness, devil, deafness, hatred, anger, or wheelchair in Heaven. What is God’s will? For God’s will to be done on Earth, the same as it is in Heaven. I want Earth to look like Heaven, and I’m the enforcer of the victory of Calvary.
Whatever Jesus did was exactly what God the Father was doing and saying. God wants us all to walk in power. If you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, your character will be solidified because it’s impossible to seek righteousness and not have your character be affected. That’s why I only teach from this place because if we can get this right as believers, it sets the trajectory for the entire Christian lifestyle.
Jesus says to the disciples that if they have faith as a mustard seed, they will say to a mountain to move, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible. This is the unhinged, unlimited promise from Jesus. I believe that the devil is a mountain. I believe that a wheelchair is a mountain. I believe that a blind eye is a mountain. I believe that cancer is a mountain, and that a sprained ankle, stomach bug, and blood disorder are all mountains. They are mountains that are standing in the way of what God wants to do in that person’s life. So I have to have this understanding in me — that I am dealing with a mountain, and because I have intimacy with God, then God is going to share with me how the mountain gets removed. And this in turn is how I grow in faith — a history built on the faithfulness of God, confirming His truth and promises over and over, as I access my inheritance of righteousness through Jesus.
This is Christ in you — the hope of glory — reaching out through you. And anywhere you see the thief stealing, killing, and destroying, you have the right to chop off his fingers. You have the authority in the name of Jesus because He said in Matthew 28:18-20 (NKJV), “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” So all the things He taught and commanded the disciples are now for us, which means the same authority and power that Jesus has, we now have, and we need to walk in that, but the only way we walk in it and increase that is if we practice, in faith, every day of our lives! Amen!
-Todd White