“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
Faith is the substance of things, but hope is a very important part of the faith connection. Sometimes people say, “You don’t get anything by hoping.” And that’s true to a certain extent, for there is no substance to hope.
But hope is a very important partner to faith. Hope is the goal-setter. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The substance of “things” – what things? The things you hoped for. What do we hope for? We hope for the things that God has given us.
That’s why the Bible says in Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him...” God is not pleased when we don’t enter into the provisions that He made for us. Some things we will never enter into except through faith. God’s willingness is multiplied to us through the knowledge of God. We must know what God has given, or we can’t have faith in that promise.
“Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness...” (2 Peter 1:2-3)
Hope is Necessary
Hope is a partner to faith. You are reading this pamphlet because you hope to receive some insight into hope and faith. But hope alone will not give you that insight. Yet, if it wasn’t for hope, you wouldn’t have opened this pamphlet.
When the sick come into a prayer line, they hope to be healed. If they didn’t have hope, they wouldn’t come for prayer. Since faith is the substance of things hoped for, then there must be some hope, or there wouldn’t be anything for faith to give substance to. This will explain to you why some failed to receive healing even though they were saying all the right things. It could be that they gave up hope.
God’s Word Gave Abraham Hope
“As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.” (Romans 4:17-18)
When there was no natural hope, Abraham still believed in hope. There are people today who have no hope medically. Doctors have done all they can do. When the doctor says there is no hope medically, go to the Word of God and get you some supernatural hope.
Abraham decided to agree with God. That’s what we are doing when we make a decision to confess the Word of God. We are coming over to God’s point of view by saying what God declared about us.
Some say, “There is no hope, so you might as well give up.” You can always find hope in God’s Word – physical, financial, and spiritual. When your situation seems to be hopeless, God’s Word is your Hope.
Hope is a goal-setter. If you don’t set a goal, you don’t know where you are going – then how will you know when you get there? You don’t know where you are going, and it is obvious that you won’t know when you get there, but when God’s Word is the goal, it gives you direction.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for but there must be some direction to faith. Some have said, “Well, I’m just waiting on God or I’m believing God.” Some of those people have been waiting for years and haven’t done anything. They are not really waiting on God – God has been waiting on them to make a decision.
Abraham decided to believe in hope. He made a decision to believe God’s Word. That is where his hope came from – (the Promise) the Word of God. Don’t try to use faith where hope should be, and don’t try to use hope where faith should be. Hope is the future, but when connected with faith they are united together to make it available now. Faith gives substance of the thing hoped for.
So, there must be faith and hope. They are partners. They go together. Faith is the divine energy of God, and it is resident in His Word. It comes by hearing and confessing God’s Word after Him. It is the substance of things desired.
Words are seeds and we must learn to sow the seed of God’s Word. We speak the promise of God into our hearts, and it springs forth and grows up: “And He said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” In Mark 4:26-28, Jesus reveals that the heart of man is the production center. He referred to it as earth or soil.
The Heart Produces
Now let’s relate this to the heart of man. The heart of the heating-cooling unit is like the heart of man. You must set the goal for the thing you want produced. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and hope is the goal-setter.
What you continue to speak becomes your goal. When there is no hope, there is no goal set for the better – although “no hope” sets negative goals.
Like the thermostat on the wall, your spoken words send an impulse into your spirit. By saying, “In the name of Jesus, by His stripes I am healed. I am redeemed from the curse of the Law, and I forbid sickness and disease in this body,” you set your goal on healing.
What are you doing by that action? Someone may say, “You are lying, because you are sick.” You may be sick all right, but the purpose of speaking God’s Word is to set your goal and plant seed. Some people don’t understand how you can say you’re healed by the stripes of Jesus when you are hurting. But you must decide to establish that goal regardless of present circumstances.
Let’s relate this concept to the thermostat. Let’s say it is 90 degrees in your house, and you come in and turn the thermostat to 70 degrees. Someone might say, “Hey! You can’t do that. That’s a lie. It’s not 70 degrees in here.”
But it’s not a lie. That’s the way to make the heating-cooling unit work the way it was designed. That’s the reason you set it on 70.
You are calling for the temperature that is not manifest. That is the way the system is designed, and that is the only way it will work. If you set the thermostat on 90 degrees when it is 90 degrees in the room, there will be no change. The unit will remain inactive, producing nothing.
This is what many people have done in their life. They have spoken what exists. They have talked about the things that hinder them. They have said, “It will never change, it will always be this way.” And as long as they keep the dial set on that it will be exactly that way. Jesus said, “Say to the mountain, be removed and cast into the sea.” In other words, say to the mountain, “You’ll never hinder me again as long as I live,” because I can have what I say and I say what I believe based on the authority of the scriptures. (Mark 11:23, Luke 17:5-6) So I’m setting the goal of the mountain being removed, the problem being solved, the situation changing for the better.
The apostle Paul in Romans 1:20 tells us that “…the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made…” In other words, things that are made reveal how spiritual things work. The laws that govern the world of the spirit have been extended into the earth and if you can understand how to raise a garden you can operate in the principles of the kingdom. You plant a seed, and you reap a harvest. And the words that we speak are seeds that we are sowing, and they will produce after their kind. Whether we are speaking faith for good things or speaking evil things that we believe are going to happen, it will eventually come to pass.
Your head is the goal-setter. But faith is in the heart not in the head. We can’t believe with our head what we can believe with our heart. But yet, the apostle Paul says, “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Romans 12:2) We must renew our minds to the Word of God to the point that we think like God thinks and then we will call for the blessing instead of the curse.
We’ve set our goals on the promises of God by faith not by fear and doubt that comes from the enemy. When the problems of life are before us, we should not be distracted from what God said in His Word. We shouldn’t talk the problems, but rather talk to the problems calling them removed. We shouldn’t confess the problems because we have hope in God’s Word, the promise of God. That hope is a goal-setter just as your thermostat is a goal-setter for your air conditioner. No one would be foolish enough to set the thermostat on 100 degrees when it was 100 degrees in their house, because it would render the air conditioning unit useless. The temperature would stay the same or even increase.
We turn the goal-setter, the thermostat, to the desired temperature. We do not set it on what exists in the room at the time. God’s Word gives us hope, and faith gives substance to things hoped for. Faith says, set the dial on the goal that you have (God’s promises) rather than calling for what you already have. Just remember, anytime you change the temperature control on the thermostat, you are going to have a change in the temperature in the room to the degree that you changed it. If you don’t change the thermostat setting there will be no change.
I challenge you to make a decision to take control over the goal-setter in your life. Set a watch on your mouth and speak the things that God promised in His word rather than the problems that you face.
Regardless of what happens to you in life, it does not change the Word of God. But if you will keep God’s Word in your mouth and speak the promises of God it will eventually change what happens to you in life. God’s Word gives us hope. Hope is a partner to faith. Faith gives substance to the promise of God and will bring it into reality in your life.
Charles Capps
