Lesson 10. Hope—Faith’s Partner. A school from “Faith and Confession” that lays an amazingly deep foundation in the Word of God. Charles Capps teaches how to activate the power of God in your life.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
In the English translation, this verse reads: Now faith is the substance of what
we hope for and the evidence of things not seen.
Hope is a very important partner of faith because it helps establish a goal. Faith is the substance of things hoped for—but what do we hope for? What we hope for. And what do we hope for? We hope for what God has given us.
This is why the Bible says in Hebrews 11:6: But without faith it is impossible to please Him…. We cannot please God if we do not receive the provision He has prepared for us. There are some things we will never be able to possess except through faith. God’s willingness and desire increase in us through knowing God. We must know what God has given us; otherwise, we will not be able to have faith in this promise.
Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue. 2 Peter 1:2–3
Hope – a necessity
Hope is faith’s partner. You are reading this book because you hope to gain an understanding of what faith and hope are. But hope alone is not enough. Yet if you had no hope, you would not have opened this book.
When people stand in line to receive prayer, they hope for healing. If they did not hope, they would never come forward to receive prayer. So, if faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, then there must be something that we hope for, otherwise what will faith give substance to?
This will help you understand why some people died even though they spoke the right words. It may have happened because they lost hope.
The Word of God filled Abraham with hope
Look at what Abraham did when there was no hope:
(As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed, and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him: “So shall your offspring be.”
Romans 4:17–18
When there was no hope left, Abraham believed in hope. Today, there are people who have lost hope in medicine. The doctors have done everything they could. And if doctors tell you that there is no hope left, do as Abraham did: turn to the Word of God and receive supernatural hope. This is exactly what we do when we decide to confess the Word of God. We align ourselves with God’s perspective on the situation by saying what God has declared about it.
Someone may say: “If there is no hope, all that remains is to give up”. But you can always find hope in the Word of God. Even when your situation seems completely hopeless, turn to Scripture. The Word of God is hope for you.
Hope helps you set goals. You must have a goal. If you have no goal or do not know where you are going, then how will you know that you have arrived and achieved what you desire? How long will it take you to reach your goal? Do you not know where to go or how to get there? A goal will help you with this; it provides direction.
Faith is the substance of what is hoped for and the evidence of what we hope for. Faith must have a direction. Some say, “But I’m simply waiting on God. I trust God.”
Some who said this waited on God for years, doing nothing. They are not waiting on God—God is waiting on them. Such people made a decision by doing nothing.
When there was no hope, Abraham decided to believe in hope itself. He made a decision to believe the Word of God. This is where his hope came from—from the Word
of God. Do not try to use hope where faith should be. Hope cannot bring it to pass; faith is the substance of what we hope for.
Therefore, there must be both faith and hope; they are partners who move together. Faith is a divine power that comes from hearing the Word of God. It is also the substance of what is desired.
We need to learn to sow the seed of the Word of God. Words are seeds. We speak the Word of God—the promise of God—into our hearts, and it grows: … first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. In Mark 4:28, Jesus says that the heart is a production center, and Jesus calls it soil.
Revelation comes from the Spirit
We are talking about the heart being a production center, and Paul mentions this in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.
But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man,” “But God has revealed it to us through His Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” 1 Cor. 2:9–10
“Eye has not seen and ear has not heard”. How many times have you heard people quote this passage, saying that we never know what God is going to do? But you can know if you read verse 10: “But God has revealed it to us through His Spirit…”
Paul says that a person cannot know this through their five senses. You cannot receive revelatory knowledge into your spirit through your five physical senses, but God reveals it to us through His Spirit.
Our spirit can receive revelation only through fellowship with the Spirit of God. God will do everything He has said; He will do everything He has promised. God will do everything you believe for, if your faith is based on His Word. But none of this can come into a person’s heart through their natural eyes or ears. They fill the heart through the revelation that God reveals to a person through His Spirit. This cannot be known through the five physical senses.
The Human Spirit Searches
In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the word Spirit in verse 10 is written with a capital letter. The first part of the verse says that God has revealed it to us by His Spirit…. This refers to the Holy Spirit, but where it says: … the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, it refers not to the Holy Spirit, but to the human spirit, your spirit. This is what the Book of Proverbs says about it:
The spirit of a person is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of the heart. Prov. 20:27
The human spirit is the lamp that God uses to enlighten a person. The Spirit of God fills our spirit, and it enlightens us.
For the spirit searches even the deep things of God. I believe that here the Apostle Paul is speaking about the human spirit, because the Spirit of God does not need to search the deep things of God, since the Spirit of God already knows everything about God, whereas the human spirit comprehends the deep things of God.
When you sleep, the seeds you have sown are in the process of growing, and you do not know how it happens. All you need to do is sow them and go rest.
Your spirit knows—the Spirit of God knows
For what person knows the things of a person except the human spirit that is in him? So also no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 1 Cor. 2:11
The Spirit of God knows everything about God, while your spirit knows everything about you. If you come into contact with the Spirit of God, you will gain access to the source of knowledge.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. 1 Cor. 2:12
Now let us connect all this with what Paul says in verse 9. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man through the five physical senses.
You could not see this with physical eyes or hear it with physical ears, but God revealed it. Revelation from the Spirit of God came into your spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. So, after you have sown the seed into your heart, while you sleep at night, your spirit is searching for wisdom and
Revelations from God to find ways and means for your seed to bear fruit.
And one morning you will wake up, and an idea that came from the Spirit of God into your heart will dawn on you, and you will not know how it happened.
Verse 12 states that God gave us the human spirit so that we could receive His revelations.
Which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Holy Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, because they seem foolish to him; and he cannot understand them, because they must be spiritually discerned. 1 Cor. 2:13–14
Comparing spiritual things with spiritual
We must compare spiritual things with spiritual. The human spirit connects with the Spirit of God to receive revelatory knowledge concerning your everyday life. We cannot receive this revelation through our carnal mind; it comes into our spirit.
Our natural physical body cannot receive anything from the Spirit of God, but our spirit can.
But the spiritual person judges all things, while he himself is judged by no one. 1 Cor. 2:15
Who, then, is this spiritual person?
Let us remember what Paul said about comparing spiritual things with spiritual. The spiritual person judges all things. The part of you that is spiritual is your inner person—your spirit. Your spirit can judge all things.
Your spirit can pick up something in another person, something you cannot understand with your mind. This happens because it was revealed to you not through your physical eyes or ears or by means of your other senses. At times, you feel something and do not know how it comes to you, but you know that you know.
Sanctified by your spirit
You may meet someone one day, and it may seem that your spirit tells you: “Stay away from these people. You would be better off having nothing to do with them,” and you do not know why this is happening. Your spirit is examining things at that moment. And when it finds something, it warns you.
But the spiritual person judges all things, yet no one can judge him. Your spirit was able to sense something in that person’s spirit, but you yourself would not have been able to detect it. You can only see that person’s actions.
For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Cor. 2:16
We receive the mind of Christ through our spirit by the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, the spirit of a person is the lamp of the Lord. Let us bring these two thoughts together. In Mark 4:26, the human heart is described as the soil in which you sow the seed of the Word of God, and it can bear fruit.
The Spirit of God reveals knowledge to you. God gave us His Spirit so that we could receive everything that is in the Spirit of God, and the heart is the receiving center.
When you speak words, you sow seeds. When you speak the Word of God, you sow eternal, imperishable seed.
This seed will never fail you, but there is a possibility that your actions or inaction may result in your having no harvest. The seed itself cannot produce fruit. But what we do with the seed can lead to failure.
The Lazy Man Prophesies His Destruction
In the Book of Proverbs, we find the following statement:
The lazy man says, 'There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the midst of the streets!' Prov. 22:13
A lazy person is someone who is not going to do anything; he simply sits and says, “I will be satisfied,” but he does not want to make any effort to go outside. Instead, he prophesies his own destruction.
Those who do not act according to the Word of God do this constantly. They say, “Well, you know, we’re going to fail anyway,” or “I never
can accomplish anything.” “The world is going to blow up soon anyway, and we will all perish.” A lazy person prophesies his own destruction.
Natural things reflect spiritual realities
We are all able to hide the Word of God in our spirit and bear the fruit of what God has said in His Word. Remember that hope sets goals.
Sometimes, when we see something in the Bible, we want to separate it from the natural, physical world. When Jesus spoke about sowing seed, He did not take it out of context and say, “This is about spiritual things.”
We make a serious mistake when we completely separate the natural from the spiritual. The Word of God is spiritual, but it works like a natural seed. The human heart is a spiritual reality, but it functions like soil (physical earth in which seeds are sown).
Let me illustrate how the heart is meant to work according to God’s design. Let’s turn to the physical world, where everything will be clear to everyone. Perhaps you have a device in your apartment called an air conditioner. It can be called the center (heart) of a heating and cooling system.
The air conditioner was designed by an engineer to control the temperature in your home. That is all it can do. It was created to reproduce the temperature you set on the thermostat dial hanging on your wall, which we will call the goal-setting device. Thus, the heart of this device was created to produce the temperature you set.
The numbers you see on the thermostat represent degrees of temperature. Let’s imagine that it is about 40 degrees Celsius outside, and you want your home to be 21 degrees. Your task will be to set the goal-setting device to 21 degrees. And the air conditioner will have to work day and night to achieve the goal of maintaining that temperature.
To lower the temperature in your home, you do not need to fast and pray; the air conditioner knows how to handle it and will do its job perfectly because it was created for this purpose. You simply need to set the desired temperature on the goal-setting device, which in turn will send impulses to the heart of the air conditioner, saying, “Give us cold air; it is too hot here.” By setting the temperature to 21 degrees when it is nearly 40 outside, you have created a problem for the air conditioner, but it will handle it because this is what it was designed to do, and it does it very well.
The air conditioner cannot wash your clothes, cook your dinner, or clean your home because these functions were not built into it. It was created for one purpose: to accomplish what you set on the thermostat.
The Heart—The Producer
Now let us relate this to the human heart. The heart of an air conditioner is like the human heart. First, you need to set the goal of what you want to accomplish. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, while hope sets goals.
Hope works in the mind, and what you speak becomes your goal. Goals are born in your mind. If there is no hope, there is no goal either, although the absence of hope implies negative goals.
Like the thermostat on your wall, your spoken words send an impulse into your spirit. By saying: “In the name of Jesus, by His wounds I am healed. I am free from the curse of the Law, and I forbid sickness to be in my body,” you set the healing temperature.
What happens when you do this? Someone may say that you are lying because you are actually sick, but the very purpose of speaking the Word of God is to set a goal and sow a seed. There may be people who cannot understand how you are healed by Jesus’ wounds if you are still suffering pain. But you must decide to establish the goal, regardless of the circumstances around you.
Let us return again to how a thermostat works. Imagine that it is 33 degrees outside and, when you arrive home, you set the thermostat to 21 degrees. Someone might say to you: “Hey! You can’t do that. It’s a lie! It can’t be 21 degrees here!”
But it was not a lie. You simply used a device designed to cool or heat the air. That is why you set the temperature to 21 degrees. In a sense, you demanded that temperature, although it had not yet reached the required level. This is how the system works; this is how it was designed, and it will not work any other way. If you set it to 33 degrees while your house is already 33 degrees, nothing will change: the air conditioner will not operate or produce cold air.
The heart responds appropriately to the demands placed upon it
Surely, no one would be foolish enough to argue with you about something natural if you set the air conditioner to 21 degrees. But people will certainly do so if you set a goal of attaining God’s promises.
Some will say that you are lying. It takes time and thought to fully understand the design of the human heart.
It is easy to understand how a thermostat works. But by looking at this example, it will be easier to understand that faith and confessions work the same way in your heart. You may not believe that this is so. You may not like how it happens, but that is how it works.
No one will argue with you if you turn on the air conditioner to cool the air, and no one will call you a liar. People know perfectly well that a few minutes after you turn it on, the room will reach the desired temperature.
And the human heart (spirit) is like the heart of this device. God created the heart so that it could produce everything you planned. And by speaking, you sow a seed and set a goal.
When you first heard your voice on a recording, you did not believe it was you; it seemed to you that it was someone else. It is difficult for you to imagine that it is you because you are accustomed to hearing yourself with your inner ear. Your voice is always heard by your inner ear, and it directs what you say into your spirit.
Therefore, when you first heard yourself with your outer ear, you did not believe it was you.
God created you this way. Your voice will serve as an impulse for what you desire and direct what you desire straight into your heart, which is the soil (Luke 13:18–19). And what you have said will be accomplished in your heart. Confessing the Word of God also renews your spirit.
Suppose someone set the thermostat to 21 degrees, then suddenly switched it to 35 degrees, and then back to 21. The air conditioner would not last long; it would surely break down. It was not designed to switch abruptly from one setting to another.
Someone might say, “Who would be foolish enough to do that to an air conditioner?” Christians sometimes act this way. They begin confessing their faith: “Thank God, all my needs are met according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” They continue speaking this way for several days, but then, looking at their circumstances, they begin to say, “Dear God, this will never happen. We will never be able to pay off our debts. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Right now, they have changed the thermostat settings. You need to set the desired temperature and leave it alone. The device itself will work day and night to produce what you have set, and it will never argue with you.
The device cannot make decisions.
Have you ever heard an air conditioner say, “No, I’m not going to cool the air. You need hot air, so I’ll build a fire to heat the air”?
If an air conditioner acted that way, we would say that you never know what it will do because it has a mind of its own.
But that does not happen, because an air conditioner will do only what you require of it. The human heart was created in the same way.
The spirit of a person is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of the heart. Prov. 20:27
You will also decree a thing, and it will be established for you; so light will shine on your ways. Job 22:28
Mark 4:26 will tell you how the heart works. It is like a man who went out to sow seed in the soil, and sowing the seed was his goal. For a farmer, the seed is the goal. If you want to know what goal you have set for your garden, simply look at the seed you have sown. You sow the seed, and it begins to work while you go about your business. You do not need to place your hope in God for it to sprout. It will bear fruit simply because it was created for this; fulfillment is built into the seed itself.
There is no fulfillment in a thermostat
Imagine someone who had never seen a thermostat or air conditioner before you turned it on to cool the air from 33 to 21 degrees. When the room temperature began to drop, the person would surely ask why it had become so cool and would definitely want to know what you had done to make it happen.
“What is that little box on your wall?” You would answer, “It’s a thermostat.”
“A thermostat? Where can I buy one?”
Now you know what is on this person’s mind. They will go to a store to buy a thermostat, then bring it home and mount it on the wall. After that, they will set the thermostat to 21 degrees and wait for the desired cooling.
They will have to wait a long time because a device that can set a goal does not have the ability to cool. A thermostat does not contain anything that can cool the room, but it can set a goal.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Let us put it another way: Faith is the fulfillment of everything we need to achieve our goal. Once the thermostat is connected to a source of electricity, it can perform its function at any time.
A thermostat cannot produce anything by itself. There must be a device to which you can set a goal. Hope is such a device for you. Always speak aloud what you hope for.
The goals for your heart are the words you speak in faith. And whether the device likes it or not, once you have programmed it, it sends an impulse and immediately begins producing the temperature you specified.
Your hope makes its demands when you speak them aloud
This is how the human heart works as well. You take the Word of God and declare it, setting a goal. The divine power filling the Word of God causes your heart to produce results. The same energy that can cool the air in summer can heat it in winter.
The device that sets the goal (your hope) is what determines whether the air will be cold or warm. If you are dissatisfied with your harvest, check the goals you set and the seed you sowed.
An air conditioner will not argue with you because it was not created for that. It cannot decide what is right and what is wrong. An air conditioner was created to do what you require of it.
Jesus said that the human heart works in exactly the same way. By speaking the Word aloud, you set goals. We have separated the natural from the spiritual so much that most people believe there is no connection between them. But Jesus says the opposite:… if you had faith like a mustard seed and said… (Luke 17:6).
Also, in Genesis chapter 8, God says:
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Gen. 8:22
The Bible speaks about sowing all the time. You sow a seed and receive a harvest. Whatever a person sows, that person will also reap. This is a law.
The soil in your garden does not decide whether what you planted is right or wrong. It will produce what you sowed. Some people believe that a person’s spirit, or heart, if they are born again, simply cannot produce anything bad. But ask yourself: “Why do some people fall away from the faith and sin again?”
This is how Jesus put it:
A good person out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good, and an evil person out of the evil treasure brings forth evil. Matt. 12:35
I am convinced from what Jesus taught that even a born-again person can again allow evil into their heart. Everything that is contrary to the Word of God, God considers evil (Num. 12:32). James says:
If anyone among you thinks they are religious and does not bridle their tongue but deceives their heart, this person’s religion is worthless. James 1:26
In other words, your tongue can deceive your heart.
The soil never argues
I was a farmer for more than 30 years before I began my ministry. In all the years I planted beans, I never heard my soil say, “I’m not going to grow beans; let them be cucumbers and bananas instead,” because soil has no choice—it produces what I sowed. Hope prompts you to declare your faith.
But some people think it doesn’t matter what we sow or what we say. Such people say, “God knows what I really meant.”
Would you ever say, “I planted radishes here, but the soil knows that I really meant tomatoes”?
Of course not. No one would be so foolish when it comes to the physical world. You know perfectly well that the ground will not give you tomatoes because it does not produce what you meant.
The soil of your heart does not decide whether what you sow is good or bad; its job is to produce the information required to fulfill what you said (sowed). It does not matter whether it is right or wrong.
Mark 11:23 is not a one-way street, but here Jesus shared with us how to act in a positive way; He did not want us to use this principle negatively.
Have faith in God, for truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, will have whatever he says. Mark 11:23
Another way to say this
Believe that what you sow will come to pass, because you sow what you say.
Set a goal of moving the mountains or circumstances you have encountered. Your hope will help you declare your faith. But on the other hand, negative statements will work even faster. Someone says, “Every day this mountain gets bigger. I will never overcome it.”
They are right, because their confession of faith works, only in a negative way. It will operate just like a positive confession, or perhaps even faster.
Some people prophesy, “Everything is only getting worse. We will never overcome this. We will never be able to pay off our debts.” Such people have no hope, so there is nothing for their faith to accomplish.
They speak negatively, sowing into their soil (heart). And everything they say will come to pass, because their spirit will seek ways through God’s wisdom for it to happen.
Remember that a device cannot decide on its own whether you need cool or warm air. All it can do is respond to the impulse sent to it. Hope is the thermostat for your faith. If you have no hope, no impulses are sent to your heart, and you will receive no positive result.
Even if your heart is filled with faith, without hope you cannot have a positive goal. Hope prompts you to declare the promise. Fear, however, prompts you to speak about the worst that could happen.
Remember that simply saying a promise once is not enough for it to come to pass. But declaring it is one of God’s principles.
Several years ago, when I learned this truth, I began making this confession: “I am free from the curse. In the name of Jesus, I forbid sickness to operate in my body.” At that time, I had an ulcer and could not get out of bed or do anything two or three days a week. I drank medicine by the bottleful.
Then I began confessing the Word of God concerning my healing. About three months later, the Word of God took root in my spirit, and the ulcer left my body. It tried to return a couple of times, but I said: “No, in the name of Jesus, I have received my healing”. I am healed. I am healthy. I am free from the curse of sickness. I continued to resist sickness just as I resist the devil.
Understanding must come before fulfillment
I learned to live by these principles through trial and error. I made mistakes, but I continued confessing that I was free from the curse.
I confessed: “I am free from an allergic reaction to poison ivy.” But every time my body came into contact with that plant, I had an allergic reaction. Every time I went deer hunting, I inevitably encountered poison ivy. Someone might have said: “What, isn’t your confession working?”
I would have answered: “Of course it is working. Faith is coming; it is coming.”
I set a goal for myself. I continued confessing freedom. And what happened? I had a reaction again and again!
What did I do? I used an ointment and continued my confession of the Word. Before the complete fulfillment of what I had confessed came, I had a rash several more times. It took time for my heart to receive the Word and for faith to come.
Only faith in the heart can give a person the ability to receive God’s promise. And once it has been received, you will surely see the promise fulfilled.
I continued using the ointment and confessing healing for about a year when I noticed that I no longer reacted to poison ivy. In this situation, the action confirming my faith was that I continued confessing healing despite the outward symptoms of the disease. I continued saying that I was set free; I continued saying what Scripture says: “I am set free from the curse, according to Galatians 3:13 and Deuteronomy 28:61.”
The Word of God Above All
Some people say, “Everything is determined by willpower!” But that is not so. Only faith in God and His Word can overcome everything.
When I received this in my spirit, the promise was fulfilled in my physical body. If I had said, “Let my faith be accompanied by works; I will tear off poison ivy branches with my bare hands,” I would surely have had serious problems. I was only at the beginning of my journey; I had only planted the Word in my heart.
Before the promise was fulfilled, I could not have had a perfect work of faith. Only a year later did my body stop reacting to this plant. Now I can show the perfect work of my faith regarding poison ivy. A year had passed since I received the Word of God, Galatians 3:13, in my heart, and it was fulfilled.
All this cannot happen in an instant, but the promises will surely be fulfilled if we persistently agree with God and confess what He has said about us.
Confession Is a Process
Confessing the Word of God is a process of renewing the mind. Confession helps faith come, and it expresses the hope you have. The heart receives the promise you declare and brings it to fulfillment. This is how it works in your physical body, in your finances, or in any other situation in life.
But this takes time because it is a process, a way of life. It is not something you can simply try. If you merely wanted to test confession, it would not work for you. If I had simply tested whether it worked, I would have given up at the first reaction to poison ivy and said that nothing worked. But that did not happen to me. I knew everything would work because Jesus said it would.
Practice Increases Productivity
If you have learned about these principles of God, study them and begin practicing them. Do not turn back if it seems that everything has only gotten worse; hold on to your confession until it grows within you.
This does not mean that you should not take medication if you need it. Yes, for example, I used an ointment and took Maalox; I used everything that helped me keep the symptoms under control until the promise was fulfilled.
Do not condemn yourself because you take medication. Do not let anyone force you to act at their level of faith if that level is not yours. Medication will not heal you, but it can keep the symptoms under control.
Let us put it this way: Medication will not bring you healing, but neither will it keep you from receiving it. Remember also that faith and hope are partners, and you need both.
Start where you are. Do not abandon common sense and generally accepted principles. Act at your level of faith and confess the Word of God every day. Your faith will grow, and your productivity will increase.
End of lesson.
Author: Charles Capps
Source: The book “Faith and Confession.”
