in Christ: Andrew Fountain's blog

• The Joy of the Lord is our strength. Why will the trees of the field clap their hands? The whole of creation is waiting for the sons of God to come into their joy, and that is when they clap their hands—they are waiting for us to “get it”!
• Joy always brings noise!
• But all of us have had faith failures. We measure ourselves by some unfair standard when we read the history books about the great men of faith.
• Religious traditions are blockages that hinder our faith.
  • He is the one who anoints us to lift the yokes and burdens from our shoulders.
    • Our people must know that we love pastoring them!
  • Every day we need to get into the anointing. To get our first love back every morning.
  • We need to deal with these issues of the heart, cynicism and skepticism, which is a barrier to the anointing.
  • He is the one who has the burden of the nations, not us!
  • One of the great supernatural signs will be ministers who are not under a burden because his burden is light!
  • Let’s take a moment to all stand and spend a moment asking God to free us from all strongholds of cynicism.
• Most of our leadership gifts are passed on by impartation
  • (If anyone has any tumors or lumps this morning, we are going to look to God to break them up.)

The Spirit of Faith

• I want to talk about the Spirit of Faith
  • This is for every believer, not just for one or two
  • For blind eyes, the lame and for freedom
• This is not intellectual faith—I hate intellectual faith
  • I am not saying there is no place for apologetics, but that is not what I am preaching this morning.
  • intellectual, sophisticated faith is a fickle faith, a double-minded monster that is swayed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.
  • The secret of new-covenant life is that like an iceberg we are submerged deep in the currents of God and the winds of the ideas of this age have little effect on us.
  • We are free, in Christ Jesus, and our lives are hid with Christ in God.
  • When he as the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit, breathed into his disciples, he breathed a consciousness of the invisible realm, the glory realm.
    • He breathes into us a consciousness that is not from this realm bur from another realm.
    • Even now we are seated with him in the heavenly places
    • We will always reflect the nature of the realm we are most conscious of!
    • This is also the case with the church—we live under an open heaven
    • Wherever you go, the open heavens go with you.
• The doctrine of faith is different to the Spirit of faith
  • But if you have it, you know you have it, but I don’t think we will ever be able to define what it is.
  • The Spirit of faith is not interested in analyzing and defining, but leaping into action
    • This is not a leap into the dark, but a leap into action
  • The second difference is that the Spirit of faith is characterized by boldness
    • When you see the suffering and the crippled in front of you, you need more than a theology certificate.
• The job of the apostles, prophets etc. is to equip every believer!

Acts 4

13. They didn’t have great learning

22. The man healed was over 40 years old

29. They prayed for boldness, the place was shaken

33. The apostles spoke with great power and great grace was upon them all.

God is creating a longing in the hearts of people all over all the earth. When they see signs and wonders they will respond to the gospel.

My Testimony

• I was totally changed by impartation (from Kenneth Hagin), but there was no-one to disciple me in faith.
• A lady whose dad had advanced cancer called me. I was just 26, I was very very nervous and frightened. No manifestation of faith.
  • The man said he was a Christian because he had kept all the ten commandments
  • After talking to him he received Jesus and at that moment the presence of God came into the room
  • Faith suddenly filled me and with great confidence I commanded the sickness to live—I could feel faith.
  • If you have faith, a long prayer is not needed
  • On the way home all my faith suddenly left and I started despising myself for raising false hope in these people.
  • I went away for a vacation. After I returned I went into the church and the daughter was there.
    • She came running across and squeezed me, telling me how her father had been totally healed of the cancer

Five ways to increase in the Spirit of Faith

1. Spend time in the presence of Christ
2. Develop your relationship with the Holy Spirit
3. Understand grace—God’s love for you does not depend on your performance at the gifts
4. Find your identity in him and get your approval from him, not from others.
   • There were many great healing ministries in the 40’s and 50’s which crashed and burned because the people were using their gifts to get approval and recognition from others—we must get it from God alone!
5. Impartation

There was a time of simple worship, singing out our praises to God, and then Rob called people forward for impartation. There were a lot of manifestations of God’s presence. Eventually so many people had gone forward that it was decided to re-schedule the impartationer another time.