Faith: God's Gift To The Heart

By Peter Barfoot

After thirty-three years as a senior pastor and nearly fifty overseas missions, Peter Barfoot is well-qualified to write on the subject of faith. In Faith: God's Gift to the Heart, Peter explores the many and diverse aspects of the Christian faith and shares on how it brought him to and through difficult and even dangerous situations. Peter's years as a newspaper editor, magazine publisher, and author of hundreds of articles combined with his ministry experience to produce a book, which is both inspiring and informative. Accompanied by his wife, Lorraine, Peter continues to teach, write, and minister to the sick worldwide-to the glory of God and his Son Jesus Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781641914826

Book preview

Introduction

Faith: God’s Gift to the Heart is a refreshing look at faith. This book contains insights gained during fifty mission trips in Asia and Europe, and forty years of local church leadership. It will encourage you to do the works that Jesus did during his earthly ministry, and does to this day through Christians who move forward in faith.

An American missionary who founded a Bible college in Central Luzon once took me to a Filipino village (barangay), which had been blacked out by a power failure. Although not far from a main highway, it was a world away. Motorcycles roared through the night and dim shapes flitted through the darkness beyond our vehicle’s headlights. The venue was the grandly named Oasis Club, which turned out to be a rough concrete stage with unfinished rooms out back.

A hastily arranged power fix soon got the meeting started. The response was good, with some deciding for Christ and some healed. I remember climbing into the back of a heavy truck to pray for a man on a stretcher suffering from elephantiasis, a disease that swells the leg to such a size that… you really don’t want to know.

A year or so later, when I was about to teach at the Bible college, a petite Filipina student approached me, her face beaming. She asked, Do you know me?

Sorry, I replied, but I can’t say that I do.

She then asked, Do you remember that night at [she named the village] when the lights were out and two girls played guitars?

Yes, I did and would never forget that night.

Well, she said, "one of the girls who played guitar in the meeting that night was named Jina. I am Jina!" she exclaimed. I was one of the two who played guitars that night! The excited young student then told me that after reading one of my books on faith, she had decided to return to the village with a friend and preach the Gospel. They believed that the Lord would use them to heal the sick, just as He had used me. We played a few choruses and then told the people about Jesus, like you did. Then, as we prayed, the names of different sicknesses and diseases came into our minds. When we called out the names of those diseases, people who were suffering from them came forward. We laid our hands on them, and when we did the Lord healed them! Jina added that after their amazing experience she asked the Lord if He wanted her to go to Bible College. He did, and there she was—bubbling with joy and excitement! Some things boomerang, and when they do they bless you!

That young lady’s testimony of her unforgettable experience is what this book is all about. I am confident that many who read Faith: God’s Gift to the Heart will put what they learn to good use—just as Jina did. I very much hope that you will be one of them.

—Peter Barfoot

Magnificent Faith

It is clear from the Gospels that the purpose of Jesus of Nazareth during his earthly ministry was not at that time to evangelize the world, but to preach the message of the kingdom of God to his own people. Only later, through the preaching of his apostles, did that message include the whosoever. Today, nearly 2,000 years later, the message of the kingdom is preached around the globe.

Jesus was outside his own natural area of interest when he encountered the unexpected faith of a foreigner. That faith forced its way through his objections with an intensity born of desperation and gained a miracle for a little girl. It was faith that made Jesus marvel, faith that refused to be denied. It was, in fact, the greatest faith that Jesus ever encountered. He described that faith as magnificent!

Would you like to be remembered for nearly 2,000 years as the one who had the faith to counter rejection with pleas that were too hard to ignore, faith that refused to take no! for an answer?

The one who had that faith was a woman from the seacoast district of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew calls her a Canaanite). She was an outsider who came to Jesus on behalf of her daughter who was tormented by an evil spirit. She cried out to Jesus for mercy, but he was strangely silent. Even his disciples begged him to send her away. She was not a daughter of Abraham, and at the time, his ministry was to his own people.

Then she came and worshipped him, saying, ‘Lord, help me!’ (Matthew 15:25). But Jesus replied, It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to dogs.

What must the woman have felt when her public pleas for help were ignored and her tormented daughter was likened to a dog? She must surely have felt hurt and rejected. Jesus appears to have been unusually insensitive toward this outsider! But did that stop the woman? No way!

And she said, ‘Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’

What a startling statement! The Canaanite woman based her bold request on the very words that should have offended her! She had not approached Jesus with God’s promise to heal because she was an outsider who had no access to that promise. Instead, she based her argument on a thing she had observed many times. When crumbs of the bread eaten by her children fell from the table, the family dog quickly licked them up.

When Jesus called healing the children’s bread, he meant that it belonged to those inside Israel, as a covenant right. But the woman seized on his illustration and expanded it to include her own desperate need: her daughter’s deliverance.

O woman, Jesus responded, great is your faith: as you will, so be it.

It is clear that her faith was a product of desperation rather than promise. What was the result? The woman’s daughter was set free that very hour! The girl was not even present with her mother—she was delivered from a distance. Jesus never laid his hands on her. His personal presence in her home was not required, since he had issued a command in response to her mother’s great faith!

The Greek word translated great should really be translated magnificent. It is a different word from that used in the well-known account of the Roman centurion, who is also said to have had great faith (Matthew 8:10). The Greek word is megas—commonly known today as mega. Mega is used as a prefix in words such as megaton and megawatt.

In fact, anything that is so big that the word great just isn’t great enough begins with mega. An explosion equal to that of one million tons of TNT is a megaton blast. Think of one million watts of electricity, that’s a megawatt. Now imagine one million units of faith, that’s mega faith—magnificent faith!

Magnificent faith is the greatest faith displayed in the New Testament. It was the faith that made Jesus marvel. Because of it, he delivered the woman’s daughter from demons. Her magnificent faith—her mega faith—was released to the Lord in one short, supercharged sentence. Her desperate words were packed with faith that Jesus found irresistible!

Magnificent faith is not a different kind of faith; there is only one kind of faith in the Bible, and that’s the faith of God, the faith that has its origin in God (Mark 11:22). It is not a quality of faith but a quantity of faith, so great that Jesus described it as magnificent!

My definition of magnificent faith is: The maximum amount of faith that can be released in one short burst—against all odds. It is not a quality of faith possessed but a quantity of faith released. By now, you may be asking, How can I receive magnificent faith?

The answer is that magnificent faith is seen in the release of every bit of faith you possess, in an act of absolute desperation. The Canaanite woman demonstrated it in saying what she did. You must be as desperate as she was. You must believe that you can get what you need by pushing through the objections that would prevent it. In the developing world, many people do exactly that. Pagans rip off and fling away their magic charms so that Jesus will restore their sight. Sorcerers renounce their enchantments—knowing that in so doing they will lose their power over people,—to be saved from sin and its terrible consequences.

These outsiders receive astonishing miracles! They may not know much about Jesus Christ, but they release whatever faith they possess in one, desperate, magnificent-faith moment!

The farther I travel from civilization, the more I find magnificent faith. Not in those who seem the most spiritual or in those who claim to know the Bible backwards. Quite often I find that the more traditional the believer, the greater the unbelief. In contrast, the more foreign the culture and the more ignorant the people, the more I find faith that is nothing short of superlative!

Many Christians wonder why most of today’s miracles take place in developing nations. Geography has little to do with it. But the enormous needs that are common to the people of those nations—and their desperate release of what faith they have—have everything to do with it.

Are you a Christian, an insider? Then put yourself in the place of the Canaanite woman for a moment. She cried out to Jesus. Are you desperate enough to do the same? Or are you more likely to quit because your prayers to the Lord seem to fall on deaf ears?

The Canaanite woman would not take no for an answer. Are you that determined? If a foreigner could find a way through refusal in a day when the ministry of Jesus was limited to his own people, how much easier can you today when Jesus is God’s amen! to every prayer you pray! The woman seized words that she might have seen as offensive and used the truth they contained for her daughter’s benefit. Would you have done that? Or would you have backed away, thinking that God appears to favor some more than others?

People in the developing world ignore obstructions to healing, such as theological explanations from some as to why they should not expect a miracle. Instead they reach out to Jesus in moments of absolute desperation. Their first and only desire is to be healed.

Meanwhile, here at home, longtime Christians major on minor issues.

Let me prove my point by drawing your attention to what took place just before Jesus encountered the Canaanite woman. Matthew states that certain scribes and Pharisees came from Jerusalem to remonstrate with Jesus about something they considered serious.

Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders, not washing their hands before eating bread?

Consider that the last verse in the previous chapter indicates that the faith of the people who lived around the Sea of Galilee was so beautifully simple that they were healed just by touching the hem of the Lord’s garment. And as many as touched were made perfectly whole.

It seems incredible that the religious leaders of the day were so preoccupied with religious ritual that they ignored the miraculous cleansing of the diseased and took issue with Jesus over the unwashed hands of his disciples.

Incredible, but true!

Jesus answered their question with one of his own: Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? Then he pointed to the hypocrisy shown by those who dedicated their money to God so that they could say to their parents, I would like to help you financially, but it’s God’s money, not mine.

You hypocrites, Jesus said scathingly, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, ‘This people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.’

The Lord then spoke loudly over the heads of the religious hypocrites to the large crowd of onlookers.

Hear, and understand; it is not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man but that which comes out of the mouth: this is what defiles a man.

Off went the indignant scribes and Pharisees, for whom the maintenance of external cleanliness was the true indicator of internal purity!

"Then came his disciples, and said unto him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended by what you said?’

But he answered and said, ‘Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted. Leave them alone: they are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.’

Then Jesus scolded his disciples for their lack of understanding of what uncleanness really was. Did they not know of the filth that fills the heart of man? Did they not realize that what is in the heart is expressed through the mouth?

But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.’ Then Jesus went from there, and departed into the borders of Tyre and Sidon.

Jesus must have been disgusted with the scribes and Pharisees to have walked to the border of his own land. He left those legalistic leaders and their religious obsessions and walked as far away from them as he could without leaving the country!

It is not uncommon for Christians who have travelled to developing world countries to find adjusting to life difficult on their return. Triviality is offensive to those who have just alighted from a packed jumbo jet after spending harrowing weeks amid poverty, sickness, and squalor.

With the cries of the lost still ringing in their ears, the tired travelers are welcomed home, invited to share their experiences in church, and are asked to participate in the coming church picnic.

No, there’s nothing wrong with church picnics, but those who have spread their blankets on the ground in Asia or Africa, feel strange doing so at the local beauty spot. Swimming in your town’s chlorinated pool seems weird after washing your body for weeks in a waterhole. So does buttering bread rolls while your mind is still on lost souls. The short drive to the supermarket is unnaturally smooth after hours of travelling in a crowded bus through polluted streets, in search of food that’s safe to eat.

Almost every returned mission member wrestles with the unspoken question: If I am to see miracles again, will I have to go to where the need is so much greater? The answer is no. Not if the church is so inspired by what God did though its members overseas that it says: Let’s believe for the same miracles to happen here at home!

But, you may ask, can God do here what He did there? Jesus did wonders in Israel when the sick and the diseased reached out and touched the hem of his garment. But when he got tired of religious trivia, he went to Phoenicia.

No wonder he marveled when he found magnificent faith in a foreigner! The Phoenician woman was an unclean outsider—a dog in those days to an observant Jew. But she manifested such desperate faith in Jesus that he simply could not deny her what she needed.

Magnificent faith remains foreign to many of God’s people because its origin is not in religious rules but in the open attitudes of those with very real needs who are determined to receive from God. Faith that is ritualized and formalized cannot respond as the Canaanite woman’s faith did. But magnificent faith—mega-faith—can reach out and grab a miracle in one desperate moment! Such miracles seem almost to happen spontaneously!

I have seen this faith in action many times. More than twenty visits to Asia have shown me that whatever people there may lack, it’s not faith. I remember one tribal lady in Borneo seeking me for a miracle from God. She had travelled many hours to shop at the village market. When she heard of the miracles that were taking place, she came to me between meetings, seeking healing for her heart condition. When I rebuked the condition, she was instantly healed and left glorifying God!

When I led teams into the more remote mountain villages, people came great distances to be healed. It was clear to me that the more remote the village, the greater the faith of its people. For some of them, we may have been the opportunity of a lifetime!

Were they Christians? you might ask. Yes, many were, but they had been exposed to the gospel of grace, rather than to religious rules. When you see cripples jump and run and small children hearing and speaking for the first time in their lives, it changes you! When you compare the simplicity of villagers with the sophistication of city dwellers and contrast the real faith of the first with the religiosity of the second, it opens your eyes.

No, I’m not suggesting that we all jet to Asia and head for the hills, but I am saying that the creeds and confessions that enclose beliefs can be the biggest barriers to being able to act spontaneously when the need arises.

The result is that many Christians tend to think about God, Jesus, and the Bible in a restricted way. They think safely inside the square formed by their doctrinal beliefs. Instead of crying out, Lord, help me! like the Canaanite woman, they pray: O Lord, you know that I have lived a Christian life… Or Dear God, if you heal my mother, I promise to attend church/give more/pray more…

They don’t so much believe as bargain!

The Canaanite woman had nothing to bargain with. It’s possible that the thing she had going for her was that the children’s bread referred to by Jesus was rarely requested by those who were entitled to it. Was that what made her faith stand out? Bread is to the appetite of a hungry person, what healing is to the body of a sick believer, a matter of life.

If you think that you don’t deserve to be healed or that you aren’t holy enough for a miracle from God, let me assure you that you’re in good company. The Canaanite woman felt exactly the same. But look what the Lord did for her! Many insiders—those who had a right to be healed—missed out. But magnificent faith made a way for an outsider to get God’s supply for her daughter!

Magnificent faith is faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God. If you want to see it work, you’ll have to relax your religious rigidity, you’ll need to be bolder in your believing, and you’ll have to determine in your heart that no one or nothing will stop you from getting your healing miracle!

The question is, are you this determined?

Great Faith

After the magnificent faith of the Canaanite woman, the great faith of a Roman centurion is next on the descending New Testament faith scale. The Centurion was a battle-hardened, authority-conscious soldier.