Faith is a substantiating ability by which we substantiate the things unseen and hoped for; faith is a sixth sense by which we give substance to the things related to God, for we don’t regard the things seen but the things not seen, the eternal things related to God.
Amen, Lord Jesus, we exercise our spirit of faith today! We want to know You, enjoy You, and partake of what You are so that we may know You intimately, even experience You in our daily living! Amen!
Faith is not of us; it originates with Christ, for Jesus is the Author and Perfecter of our faith. He originates faith, and faith comes from Him.
In the Old Testament, Abraham was counted righteous before God because he believed; his faith, however, was not of him but of God, for it was God being infused into him that became his faith. Abraham is like us, and we are like him; he is the father of faith.
We believers in Christ are people of faith; however, we need to realise that faith does not originate from us but from the Lord. Our Christian life began when we saw the Lord.
When we touched the Lord in spirit, seeing something of His preciousness, we immediately believed. One moment, we were complete unbelievers, and the very next moment, when we saw the Lord’s preciousness and responded to Him, we believed into Him.
It is truly the Lord’s mercy and grace that we can be children of God, those who believe into the Lord Jesus as a result of His infusing of Himself into us.
This is what faith is: Christ infusing us with faith, that is, Christ as the life-giving Spirit transfusing us with Himself so that we may believe.
We believe, yet it is not we who initiate the faith, but Christ, who is infused into us and believes for us.
Thank the Lord for the precious faith infused into us and given to us as a gift! God has allotted each one of us equally precious faith, and we have responded positively. Thank the Lord for this.
May we remain under the hearing of faith, placing ourselves under the Lord’s speaking in His word so that we may be infused with Christ and grow in faith.
If we realise that faith is not of ourselves but of Christ who imparts Himself as the believing element into us to believe for us, we will just open to Him.
Oh, may we just be open to Him, even learn to open more and more throughout the day, so that He may infuse us with Himself as our faith!
Faith is the Sense by which we Substantiate the Things Unseen or Hoped for: we Exercise our Spirit of Faith to Believe and Speak the Things we Experience of the Lord
Many unbelievers today wonder why we believe in Jesus and why we are Christians; they think we “throw our mind in the rubbish bin” when we believe in Jesus, for it makes no sense we love or believe into Someone whom we have not seen.
However, as Hebrews 11:1 says, faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith is a sixth sense, the sense by which we substantiate the things unseen or hoped for. By faith, we give substance to things of God and all He has done and is doing for us.
To substantiate is to have the ability to realise a certain substance. For example, we human beings have five senses, by which we can substantiate different aspects of the outside world. The objective items outside of us can become subjective to us by means of our five senses.
The function of our five senses is to substantiate the things outside of us and transfer these objects into us to become our subjective experience.
By means of our eyes, we can see what is around us, and we can realise what is happening around us, for the outside reality is made real and subjective to us.
By means of our mouth, with the sense of tast,e we enjoy the taste of the food and of things outside of us.
By means of our ears we can hear, and the sounds are made real to us by the two ears which substantiate the sound waves to make them subjective to us.
Similarly, by means of our sense of touch, we can feel the texture, heat, etc of things around us. Our five senses make the objective world outside of us become subjective to us.
As the eye is to seeing, the ear is to hearing, and the nose is to smelling, so our spirit of faith is the organ whereby we substantiate everything in the unseen spiritual world to us.
Faith is in our spirit; the sense of faith is not in our mind, emotion, or will, nor is it in our feelings; it is in our spirit. Our human spirit indwelt by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:16) is a spirit of faith.
When we exercise our spirit of faith, we can substantiate what is of God, and everything that is in the unseen realm of God and what He does, becomes real to us. When we exercise our spirit of faith, God becomes real to us.
Unbelievers do not exercise their spirit; they do not have a spirit that is living but rather, their spirit is mortified, deadened.
When our spirit is enlivened by the Lord coming into us as the Spirit to be joined to us, we sense things from the Lord, God becomes real to us, and we can touch God, know God, feel God, and be one with God! Amen!
We must exercise our spirit of faith to believe and speak the things that we have experienced of the Lord (2 Cor. 4:13).
These days, the Lord is training us and shepherding us concerning living in the unseen world.
We are being trained and shepherded by the Lord to live not just in the seen realm, in the realm of the things we can see, smell, touch, hear, or feel, but in the realm of faith, in the realm of the mingled spirit, where we can substantiate God! Amen! Faith is in our spirit, but doubts are in our mind.
Because our spirit is mingled with the Holy Spirit, we have faith in our spirit; when we are in our mind, however, we have doubts. Oh Lord!
This doesn’t mean that we do not use our mind; rather, we set our mind on our spirit (Rom. 8:6)! We set our mind on the things which are above (Col. 3:1), where Christ is.
Our mind is a wandering mind, full of thoughts, doubts, and stuff; a lot of the things in our mind is not ours, but rather, they are influenced by things around us or even by the enemy. So we need to set our mind on our spirit.
When we contact the Lord in our spirit, when we set our mind on the mingled spirit, we touch the Lord, and our spirit of faith is living, active, and vital.
May we be those who remain in spirit and exercise our spirit to substantiate what is of God and enjoy God.
May we exercise our spirit of faith to believe and speak the things we have experienced of the Lord. If we do this, the Lord will become real to us.
If we exercise our spirit of faith, the Lord will infuse us with what He is, and we will speak to others also concerning Him!
Others may shake their heads, not consenting to our speaking, but deep within they are touched and convicted by the Lord.
Some of those we talk to may think that it’s so silly to believe in Jesus, but as we present to them the wonderful person of Christ, they will at one point have an appreciation of Christ, and they will believe into the Lord.
If we exercise our spirit of faith to believe and speak the things we experienced of the Lord, we will live in the realm of faith, and we will also infuse others with Christ, for we will dispense this wonderful One into them to be their faith.
Our ministry depends upon our utterance, and our utterance depends on our being charged with Christ as our faith.
We need to be charged with the divine element, and then we will radiate this divine element into others in a charming way to infuse God into them!
Amen, God as the heavenly electricity will flow through us and be transmitted into them, and faith will rise up in the listeners!
Lord Jesus, thank You for giving us a spirit of faith by means of which we can contact God! Hallelujah, we believers in Christ have a sixth sense, the sense by which we substantiate the things unseen or hoped for! Amen, Lord, we want to touch You in our spirit. May we see that doubts are in our mind but faith is in our spirit. May we refuse to dwell in our wandering mind and rather turn to our spirit! Amen, Lord, we choose to set our mind on our spirit today! We choose to contact You and be one with You! Hallelujah for our mingled spirit! Praise the Lord, we are joined to the Lord as one spirit, for Christ has come into us as the Spirit to be intimately joined to us! Amen, Lord, may we see that our spirit of faith is the organ whereby we substantiate God and everything in the unseen spiritual realm! We exercise our spirit of faith to contact You! Amen, Lord, we exercise our mingled spirit to believe and to speak what we have experienced of the Lord! Praise the Lord for our spirit of faith!
We Regard the Things Unseen and Eternal and Substantiate them by our Spirit of Faith
Christianity today has become something big and ugly in the eyes of God and in the eyes of all men; there are many evil things and evil persons in the realm of Christianity, and the Lord’s name is taken in vain and blasphemed because of these evil things and persons.
The root cause of the degradation of the church is, on one hand, not loving the Lord, and on the other hand, not paying attention to the things unseen but rather, paying attention to things seen.
Whenever we turn from the things unseen of God and His economy and focus on the things which are seen, we are in degradation. As believers in Christ, we need to exercise our spirit of faith to regard the things which are unseen.
We do nto regard or look at the things which are seen and temporary but the things which are not seen and eternal (2 Cor. 4:18).
Our Christian life is a life of things unseen (Rom. 8:24-25; Heb. 11:27; 1 Pet. 1:8; Gal. 6:10).
Recently the whole world experienced something quite unprecedented: the lockdowns as a result of the pandemic throughout the world.
The popular streets with bustling crowds of people shopping, having fun, going out for a walk, or having a coffee, everything was closed down and deserted for a period of time.
If we were to really be open to the Lord in those days, we realised more than ever that we believers in Christ should not regard the things which are seen but rather, regard the things unseen of God and His economy by means of our spirit of faith.
Nowadays, when everything seems to be “back to normal” and people go here and there and do this and that, we need to continue to regard things which are not seen, the eternal things, by exercising our spirit of faith.
Our Christian life is truly a life of things not seen, the things of God and of His eternal economy.
We were saved in hope; but a hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly await it through endurance.
Moses did this; he left Egypt not only because he was forced to but by faith, for he persevered as one seeing the unseen One.
Today we are the same: we have not seen the Lord, we have not physically touched Him or sensed Him, but we love Him; though we don’t see Him at present, yet we believe into Him, and we rejoice with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. Praise the Lord!
We are a household of the faith, and we believe in things not seen.
We are involved, because of necessity, into things that are outward, for we need to have a job, take care of our family, and be involved with different things related to the family life, the church life, and society.
However, we live inwardly before the Lord, living in the unseen realm, appreciating the things unseen.
We realise that the degradation of the church is the degradation from unseen things to seen things. May the Lord recover us from things seen to things unseen.
When we touch the Lord, when we exercise our spirit of faith to contact Him, we are infused with the divine element, and we simply believe.
Faith is generated in us when we see Christ and appreciate Him. This faith can never be removed from us.
Even if we try to deny the Lord, even if we deny Him for a while, we cannot deny what He has infused into us.
He generated faith in us, and each one of us has a believing ability. Peter denied the Lord three times in His presence (Luke 22:47-61), but Christ as the believing ability and element, was still in Peter.
The Lord came to him and restored his faith, and Peter did not ultimately fail (v. 32). We live in faith today.
We live by faith, having Christ as our faith. We believe into the Lord and have Him as our faith. We don’t live by our own faith but by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself up for us.
Lord Jesus, we love You! Though we have not seen You, we love You and we believe into You. We rejoice with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, for we regard the things which are not seen. Amen, Lord, we exercise our spirit of faith to enjoy all that You are. Infuse us with faith. Infuse us more with Yourself as our believing ability. Hallelujah, once Christ as faith is infused into us, this faith can never be removed from us! Amen, Lord, may there be an increased ability in us to substantiate God and all the things related to God! Praise the Lord, we now live by faith, the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself up for us! Amen, Lord, we want to live a life by faith today. We open to You. We exercise our spirit to have a life of things unseen, the things of God and of Christ, the things of God’s economy, and the eternal things! Praise the Lord for the precious faith! Amen, Lord, we want to live by faith today. We exercise our spirit of faith to enjoy, experience, and speak the things concerning our wonderful Lord Jesus!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brother Ray Mulligan on this topic, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3829-3831, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (part 3 – 2025 Summer Training), week 32, Looking Away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of Our Faith – day 4.
- Hymns on this topic:
– We have found the Christ who’s all in all; / He is everything to us; / O how blest upon His name to call, / How divine, how glorious! / It is joy unspeakable and full of glory, / Full of glory, full of glory; / It is joy unspeakable and full of glory, / And the half has never yet been told! (Hymns #1153 stanza 1 and chorus)
– Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face; / Here faith can touch and handle things unseen; / Here would I grasp with firmer hand Thy grace, / And all my weariness upon Thee lean. (Hymns #225 stanza 1)
– I love to tell the story / Of unseen things above, / Of Jesus and His glory, / Of Jesus and His love. / I love to tell the story, / Because I know ’tis true; / It satisfies my longings / As nothing else can do. / I love to tell the story, / ’Twill be my theme in glory / To tell the old, old story / of Jesus and His love. (Hymns #1064 stanza 1 and chorus)
About aGodMan
The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 3829, by Witness Lee
Wow, we believers in Christ can know God in a personal way, even substantiate the unseen and eternal things of God not in our mind but in our spirit, by means of our spirit.
Faith is the sense by which we substantiate the things unseen or hoped for; when we exercise our spirit of faith, we believe and then speak the things we enjoy and experience of Christ! Amen, we regard not the things that are seen but the things that are unseen, for Christ is the most wonderful and precious One!
The Lord wants to train and shepherd us concerning living in the unseen world. His recovery is about recovering the church from the degradation of things seen to unseen things. This is our Christian life and journey!
As the eye is to seeing, the ear is to hearing, and the nose is to smelling, so faith, our spirit of faith, is the organ whereby we substantiate everything in the unseen spiritual world to us (2 Cor. 4:13, 18).
We do not regard the things which are seen and temporary but the things which are not seen and eternal.
So, the source of all that we do has to be in the spirit, which relates to the unseen things.
May we live henceforth by the faith of the Son of God who has faith and who Himself is faith to us! We turn from ourselves to You, Lord!