Can you see the invisible?

God’s answers are spiritual before they are tangible. You must receive them in the invisible before they can be made visible. (Eph. 1:3, 2 Cor. 4:18)

“And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body . . . He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what God had promised, He was able to perform.” (Rom. 4:19-20)

I have found in my own life that I sometimes fall back into evaluating my prayers by what my senses tell me. This should be a warning sign that I am most definitely not in faith. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1)

Faith is evidence of the unseen. It is not based upon what we see or feel with our natural senses. When people ask for prayer for their bodies, usually there is no rejoicing until there is a feeling. That is sense related faith. The masses in Israel in Jesus’ day walked in sense related faith. Jesus was demonstrating the Kingdom, but the people were only moved by what they saw or felt. Such miracles still happen today, especially as a witness to the gospel message. However, believers are no longer sense related beings. We are a new creation with the capacity to see the unseen and receive it.

There are two examples of New Covenant faith that we can find in the gospels. The first is the story of the Centurion. He understood the power of authority and told Jesus to just say the word and his servant would be healed. Jesus marveled at his faith. The Centurion believed without seeing and his servant was healed. (Mt. 8:5-13)

The second example is that of the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus on behalf of her tormented daughter. Her faith transcended her status as a gentile woman (unworthy in that culture), and Jesus commended her “mega” faith (Greek word). She returned home to find her daughter healed. (Mt. 15:21-28)

The secret of faith for believers is to see the unseen and to rejoice at the answer. Some try rejoicing before they have truly seen the answer in the Spirit, and others refuse to rejoice until they’ve seen the answer in the natural. But if we would spend time before the Lord and bring our spirits to a place of “seeing” and “hearing” what God has done, true faith would be activated. Like Abraham we would be “fully persuaded.” We know that the answer is coming from the invisible into the visible and our faith is the means by which it manifests.