Great picture and post on Facebook today from Reinhard Bonkke. It’s a subject I feel passionately about, as I do believe that so many people have got the wrong concept of faith: probably because historically, it has only had one facet to it in churchiantity….

That facet is ‘saving faith’ (I believe in that totally, of course!), which sort of ‘rolls over’ into growing faith (‘Faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word of God’) which in turn becomes living faith, which, let’s be honest, hasn’t changed the world – which it SHOULD have done – in the past 2,000 years. What got missed by church for generations, even hundreds of years, was something I blogged the other day: the GIFT OF FAITH, in 1 Corinthians 12. That faith is the faith that Jesus walked in, where he knew that he knew that he knew what His Faither would do. A few have demonstrated it since – again, the Wigglesworths/Kuhlmanns/Lakes/Eliotts/Livingstones of history.

Risky faith is what the disciples exhibited in Acts 4: 29-31. Peter & John, demonstrating risky faith at the gate of the temple, in Acts 3 (a huge risk) saw the crippled man dancing and leaping around the temple courtyard. Then, of course, thousands found faith in Jesus, terminating in Peter & John being arrested. Then, when they went back to their brothers, and they prayed, this is what they said to the Lord (my paraphrase!): ‘Father, give us MORE of what got us into trouble!’ The place was shaken, they all got a whole new dose of the Holy Spirit’s power, and went back out to preach again…

Reinhard hard this to say with the picture I’ve nicked, with his post! –

• Jacob had a breakthrough-experience with God. It not only established a new relationship with God but it changed his very name to Isra-el. Gideon, a frustrated farmer, and another doubter stepped out in boldness relying on God, with benefits to the nation. Long afterwards, on the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus met seven downhearted disciples, re-charged their faith batteries and set them going to change the whole world. In Ephesians 1, Paul prays for the believers to experience a breakthrough to see what is the ‘exceeding greatness’ open to them. These people took a chance on God. They were not always believers, but they said “I will trust God”. They took a small step which proved to be a giant stride into a new way of life for them and even for generations to come. I say “took a chance”, but it was only in the way a man takes a chance on his wife at some special time. He knows her and is sure of her. He exhibits a trust in her that could give her real pleasure. And “without faith it is impossible to please God”. That is the kind of “chance” faith takes. Millions live like that today. “The just shall live by faith”. Faith involves taking a chance, or it wouldn’t be faith. It is confident anticipation based on the knowledge of what God is. Peter knew what Jesus was like and obeyed Him to walk on the water. Faith is to act on the strength what we know, expecting God to be to us what we know He is. When we “risk” everything on God, He proves to be faithful. Today. God bless you. REINHARD BONNKE

My travels, over the last 30 or so years, have really found relatively few people who are massive risk-takers. That’s why I love the Jim Eliotts and Nate Saints and their friends, of this world. They didn’t care what happened to them: faith was far more important to them than security, even their lives. That’s where I want to be: where I hope – that I am, at least on the way there.

I remember going into one jail in Cali, Colombia, a few years back. The ‘red tape’ to get in was enormous: you almost had to strip down to your boxer shorts! (well, not quite, but no watches, rings, money, phones – you name it). We were going into a courtyard with 350 men (14 courtyards in this jail, then, 4,500 in the jail): surrounded, through the corridors (where of course the inmates couldn’t get a t you anyway!) by 4 or 5 guards armed with primed pump-action shotguns. My ‘security’ that day was that at least they’d be in the courtyard with us! Duuuhhh!!! Wrong!

They opened the cage door, ushered us in, and closed it: them outside, us inside, with 350 mass murderers, mafia bosses, drug cartel leaders….. It was the first time that I wished I was wearing a nappy (diaper) since I was about 2! The open-air courtyard has 4 men placed around the bit with the roof, with machine-guns… that day, in my fear, God turned up and did his stuff. I spoke Spanish I didn’t know, preached a short word on how the Bible tells us that God has a soft spot for prisons, and then made an appeal for salvation and healing. 225 openly declared a faith in God, and countless numbers were healed, many flat on the backs on the floor in tears…

30 years ago, I’d NEVER have done that: though, of course, I was saved by faith, and had growing faith….. it was asking persecuted tortured Chinese pastors in 1987 to pray FOR me to receive the GIFT of Faith, as in the gifts of the Holy Spirit – men who live in that very real, humanly scary world, but powerfully seeing miracles and salvation as a matter of course. My belief is that the gift of faith holds the other 8 in its grasp – so God, please, please, please…. keep me topped up with that gift of faith every day that I live, and give me more of what – might? – get me into trouble…