By Joy Haney
Done faith knows it is done before it is done. When I was about ten years old, several warts came on my hand. There was an older deacon, Brother Hall, that was known to pray for warts and they would go away. One night my mother took me to him and said, “Brother Hall, Joy wants these warts to go off her hands.” He looked at me and said, “Do you believe they will go away?” Innocently as a child, I nodded my head yes and felt inside of me that they had already started going away. He said, “Then they will go away after I pray.” Sure enough! After he prayed and I believed, they disappeared.
Done faith speaks “it is done” when there is no sign. The Bible tells an interesting story about Elijah, a man who operated in the realm of done faith. When King Ahab made a grove for the promotion of idol worship, it provoked the Lord more than anything that all the other kings before Ahab had done.
Elijah sensed the Lord’s anger and told Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word (I Kings 17:1). Notice, he did not say according to word of the Lord; he said according to my word. I do not find where God told him to go tell Ahab this dire news either. He just spoke it, because he walked close to the invisible God and had an understanding of His power.
After he spoke the news, then the Lord spoke to him and told him to go hide by the brook Cherith. There the Lord fed Elijah by sending meat and bread held in the mouth of the ravens, which they deposited in Elijah’s lap. Finally after several miracles and three years later, the word of the Lord came to Elijah, “…saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth” (I Kings 18:1). God had not forgotten what his prophet. Elijah, had spoken three years before.
Elijah challenged Ahab with a contest between the prophets of Baal and the one true God. Then all of Israel met at Mount Carmel. When they all arrived at the scene of the contest, Elijah asked them a pertinent question, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word” (I Kings 18:21).
There was not one ounce of doubt in Elijah’s mind who was God, but there was in the minds of the people. So the big contest began. When Baal could not perform, Elijah took charge again, and there was a mighty manifestation of the power of God as the fire rained from heaven and licked up stones, water, and the altar–so much that the people fell on their faces and cried, “The Lord He is God!”
Notice what Elijah did after the victory. He slew the propagators of doubt and announced to Ahab, “Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain” (I Kings 18:41). He said it before it was done. All he had to go on was the word of the Lord. There was not a drop of rain to encourage him. The dust swirled up in his nostrils, and the earth lay parched around him as if to mock his faith.
What did he do then? He went up to pray. He did not pray a lofty prayer, but a humble one. Ahab went up to eat and drink, but Elijah, who walked in a different realm than Ahab, cast himself on the ground prostrate before the invisible God. He prayed not once, but as many times as it took to get a sign from God. He did not need the rain, only a sign. His servant kept telling him there was nothing every time he would send him to look, so Elijah just kept praying.
Finally on the seventh time the servant came to him and said,
Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass in the meanwhile, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain (I Kings 18:44-45).
The whole point is this: Elijah called it done before it was done. He spoke it first, and then prayed it into existence. He did not worry that it would not come to pass. He knew that it would come to pass, but he also knew that he needed to pray until it did. We can speak until we are blue in the face, but if we do not pray, it will not happen. Prayer is the power line between God and man.
This kind of authority was not just relegated to Elijah Jesus talked about the authority of the church in the book ¬of Matthew when Peter answered Jesus and said,
…Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona for flesh and blood bath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:16-19).
The church can call it as done, and heaven will back them up. What is the church? It is not a building, it is flesh and blood. It is anyone that bears the name of Jesus and accepts and embraces His doctrine. Men, women, boys, and girls have the distinct privilege to enter into this realm of faith, if they stay close to Jesus, for that is where the power is.
When the fate of our nation was hanging precariously in the balances, and General Lee and his army had surged forward to the city of Gettysburg where the fateful, decisive battle of the Civil War was in the making, the question was asked President Lincoln how he could be so calm and self-assured. His serenity was reassuring to his generals, but puzzling.
When they inquired, “How can you be so self-possessed in this hour of the nation’s mortal peril and darkness?” Lincoln said, “I spent last night in prayer before the Lord. He has given to me the assurance that our cause will triumph and that the nation will be preserved!”
He lived to see that prophecy come to pass. He spoke it before it was done. He could only have that kind of faith and assurance because he had spent all night in the presence of the great invisible God. Doubt will rule your life if you do not pray every day and stay in contact with power, which is God.
In another story, Elisha spoke a word before it was done, and it fell on an unbeliever’s ear. Did the unbeliever’s doubt affect the validity of what was spoken by the prophet? No! It came to pass anyway, but the doubter did not participate in the blessing associated with it. Elisha said,
Thus saith the Lord, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? (II Kings 7:1-2).
It was as good as done even when Elisha spoke it the man close to the king did not believe in “done faith”.
He sarcastically tried to throw water on the word of Elisha, but Elisha said to him, “…Behold, thou shalt – with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof” (II Kings 7- ¬Be careful of what you say. The word of the Lord ¬come to pass, but if you want to partake of it, you be believe it as done.
What happened to the unbelieving man?
And it came to pass as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, Two measures of barley for a shekel, and a measure of fine flour for a shekel, shall be tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria: And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. And so it fell out unto him: for the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died (II Kings 7:18-20).
Be careful of those “ifs.” Adam and Eve listened to the doubting ifs and died. This man injected if into his thinking and he died. Do not question God’s word. If he said it, there are no ifs! The devil always puts question marks where God puts a period. He used this tactic when tempting Jesus. “If thou be the Son of God” was the way he approached Him. Jesus did not argue; He just said, “It is written,” for that was the only thing that worked on the devil.
While speaking and ministering in a church in Tennessee in April 1992, the pastor’s wife shared with me the need of one of the women in their congregation. At the end of my message, I asked the woman to come up front for prayer. The need sounded impossible, but with God all things are possible to him that believeth. The need was this: the husband, wife and family were going to lose their house by May 1 if they did not come up with $30,000 by that time.
I looked her straight in the eye and asked her if there was any way possible for them to get the money. She said, “We have tried everything, and in three weeks we are going to lose it because the state is going to put it up for auction. There is no way possible for us to get $30,000.”
I asked her, “Have you tried working with the banks? Surely they would help you.”
She answered, “We have gone to all the banks, and no one can help us under the circumstances.”
I then talked to her and the congregation and asked them to raise their hands if they believed that God would help this family to not lose their house. About ninety percent of them raised their hands. We prayed together ple prayer, but one with authority. We bound every spirit of doubt that would exalt itself above the knowledge God, and asked God to rebuke the devourer. We then prayed the scripture in Ephesians 3:20, “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.”
When we finished praying we quoted Philippians 4:19, “But my God shall supply all your need according riches in glory by Jesus Christ.”
I then told the lady, “You leave no stone unturned do everything that you can do and God will do the rest. The miracle is done if you will believe.”
The first week of May, I received a card from pastor’s wife postmarked April 30. These were her words:
Just wanted to tell you of another miracle. The girl we prayed for that was losing her home–it has taken care of through His miracle- working power, plus $3,000 extra for them! Praise the Lord! It was up to be auctioned off May 1; God answered April 29th.
It was done when we prayed. Not only done, but God did exceeding abundantly above what we prayed for. He gave them an extra $3000.00 we did not pray for. He always does all things well. If we will just believe, it is done. We cannot excuse our failure to believe, only humbly repent and ask God to increase our faith. We must not reason, debate or question God’s word. The Word is the Word–final and direct–meaning exactly what it says. It says, “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). It also says, “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matthew 21:22).
Many times when we quote the above scripture found in Ephesians 3:20, we just flip it off not registering the true meaning into our subconscious mind. We read, but we do not comprehend. The scripture is actually saying this: God is able to do exceeding or extraordinary, more than sufficient, abundantly, amply, profuse, plenty, above, surpassing, beyond, more than, beyond all doubt–He can do so much farther above what even our subconscious mind or conscious mind can conceive. The magnificent mind that He put within us is puny compared with His power. He is God and nothing is impossible for Him, if we can just believe!
The above article, “Done Faith,” is written by Joy Haney. The article was excerpted from the eight chapter of Haney’s book, Great Faith.
The material is most likely copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for research purposes.
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