FAITH IS A FACT
FAITH IS A FACT
Sunday, April 19, 2026, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
We as a church, as a nation, and individually are facing many faith challenges. Faith is supernatural and we receive it by Grace from the Holy Spirit as a “gift,” but also as “fruit.” Weymouth describes the Gift of Faith as the God given ability to perform the impossible.
Rom. 10:17: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
God gave Abraham the promise early but fulfilled it late. As Abraham waited, he learned the ways of the Lord and became the father of the faithful for all generations to come.
God gave David the promise early but fulfilled it late. But the trials that he went through worked in him a heart after the heart of God and the shepherd boy from Bethlehem became a shepherd king over all Israel.
God gave the whole human race the promise early and fulfilled it late. God promised that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head. Men almost despaired of the promise, but in the fullness of time He came forth. Jesus, the author, and finisher of our Faith is better than all of the Old Testament faithful’s.
Whenever we go through a trial of our faith, we as Christians cry out to the LORD JESUS – “Give me more faith. Give me great faith (Mat. 8:10). Give me the faith to see that even in trials and tribulations, all things work together for good for those who love the LORD and are called according to His purpose (Ro. 8:28). When the trial is so great that we can’t hold up under it, then LORD JESUS, raise up a perfect Christian laborer to pray when we can’t pray for ourselves. Begin praising God in the midst of the fiery trial that through this we will rise to quench the fiery darts of the wicked one. As an overcomer, we become stronger in grace and power.
In 1995, I had a dream in which I saw a book title:
FAITH IS A FACT
HOPE IS A CERTAINITY
LOVE IS A REALITY
I waited five years before I put the first sentence to pen. I first taught this on September 10, 2000. It has now been over twenty-five years and I still have not published the book except to walk it out in the Spirit. I have written seven chapters, and when the LORD directs, and makes the time, I will put it in a book.
In 1990, I had a dream in which the Lord spoke to me. He said, Your faith has been purified in the fire seven times, go, and teach it.
The scripture confirms this word in Psalm 12:6: The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of the earth, purified seven times.
The LORD speaks to us and commissions us with assignments. Like Ezekiel, we are re-commissioned along life’s journey with other assignments. (1) Start a church; (2) Start a Wednesday night prayer service for the nation and nations. (3) Start a Sunday Evening Prayer Service for those who need prayer. (4) Release divine healing through divine love. (5) Take my people up the mountain.
The list is longer, but each commission requires a Faith obedience and action. We have to act on God’s Faith, not our own.
As we watch world events unfolding as written in the Holy Scriptures,
It will require more than the wisdom and strength of man to uproot the wickedness in the world system and build it again on the government of the Kingdom of God. It will require the faith and faithfulness of God. World leaders will have to know the heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, His Son. They will have to know the Word of God and believe what is written. We as Christians by Faith believe our God is sovereign over all the rulers of the kingdoms of men and He will perform His Word as it is written.
The failures of men cannot negate His omnipotence. He has unlimited power and ability to do all things. God has ultimate control over all creation and is the source of all power. God is limitless in strength, wisdom, love, and holiness. No force can hinder His will. God is omnipotent and works all things after the counsel of his own will.
If he doesn’t move in my situation immediately, or in the world situation, then He has a bigger and has an abundant outcome planned above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.
Old Testament Faith is found in Hebrews 11 and New Testament faith (the faith of Jesus) is revealed in Hebrews 12. Hebrews 11 faith is in part and brings a good report. We can die with it and not obtain the promise. Hebrews 12 faith is faith in fullness and makes itself of no reputation. We can conquer death with it and obtain the promise.
The writer of Hebrews begins his exhortation on Faith in chapter 10:26 with a sermon from Habakkuk, The Just Shall Live By Faith.
He reminds them of the great reward they had earned in the early days of their salvation. The writer says This is no time to throw away your confidence. In verses 32-36, he reminds them of the former days, which you were illuminated. You endured a great struggle with sufferings….Therefore do not cast away your
confidence which has a great reward.
He is referring to the prophet’s reward. Jesus mentioned it to His disciples, Blessed are you when men hate you, ostracize you and heap insults on you…for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad and leap for joy, for great is your reward in Heaven, for in the same way their fathers use to treat the prophets. (Luke 6:22- 23)
There are many rewards for the Christian on earth and in Heaven. The Apostle John warns, Hold fast what you have that no one take your crown (Rev. 3:11).
Hebrews 10: 35-36: Do not cast away your confidence which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the Will of God, you may receive the promise.
How does the promise come?
Several ways:
1. Believe God as Abraham did. We believe God as we read the Word. (Ro.1:16-17)
2. We believe God because He manifest himself through His creation (Ro.1:16-20
3. The LORD speaks to us and deposits faith in us.
What is faith? It is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1).
1. Faith is a spiritual force. God is a Spirit. He is a Faith God who is only pleased by Faith (Heb. 11:6).
2. Faith is the absence of doubt, the opposite of fear. (2Timothy 1:7)
3. Faith is the present tense. “Now Faith is… (Hebrews 11:1).
4. Faith is a gift. It is an impartation of the Lord. (Romans 12:3).
5. Faith is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It grows. (Gal. 5:22-23; Rom. 1:17).
6. Faith comes by hearing of the Word of God. (Romans 10:17).
7. Faith speaks (Romans 10: 6-10).
8. We live by Faith (Gal. 2:20, Acts 17:28).
9. Prayer of Faith – Prayer that touches God and brings the answer. (James 5:15, 1 Jn. 5:4).
10. Faith acts. (Ja. 2:17;20).
Hebrews 1:1-3: God, who at sundry times in divers manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds(aion/ages); who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high;
When the Faith movement was birthed in the 1960’s, one of the excesses was to teach that if we have Faith, we can have whatever we speak in Faith and claim. This was termed the “Name it and claim it doctrine.”
At the time, the Faith movement was countering a spirit of humanism, poverty, and pragmatism which had created apathy and apostasy in the global church. The Lord did many supernatural signs and wonders through the Fathers of the Faith movement. The power of words spoken in Faith were so strong that many creative miracles were done through the spoken word.
But as with all movements, the Faith movement was like a pendulum that swung too far out. We then began to see the Lord purify the Word of Faith and prove it in us. This then became the trial of our Faith.
1 Pe. 1:7: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 11:3: The first example of faith our writer chooses is the Faith in God as creator: by faith we understand the worlds(aion/ages) were formed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Peter also confirms this Creator-Preserver power of the Word of God in 2 Peter 3:5-7: By the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water by which the World (kosmos) that then existed flooded with water. The heavens and earth are now preserved by the same Word.
Psalm 19:1: The heavens declare the Glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.
Nature reveals the Supernatural. God has made His witness so plain; man is without excuse.
Faith is based as it is on the firm Word of God. It is then not “a leap in the dark.” It assures one of the realities of the invisible world and its superiority to the visible. Faith is fundamental to perseverance. Perseverance is Faith in the evidence of things not seen. Circumstances can be a stumbling block to receiving our promises without the dynamic of Faith.
The dynamic of Faith is described in Hebrews 10:38: the righteous shall live by Faith. In its primary meaning that despite circumstances, man who believes God and is walking in the revealed will of God will be preserved and prosper. In the church era, we are lifted to a higher plane than the ancients. The promised life (the promise) is in the very life of the risen Christ.
The gospel, and gospel church knows no frontier except the frontier of Faith. This faith will break forth a church with the splendor of the noon-day sun. For those of us who are frontier women and men of God, we have the assurance that we will spend eternity riding the crest of the waves of Faith.
The trial of our Faith can be one of the hardest things to overcome. Why do the Godly suffer? the prophets who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again. And others were tortured, not accepting deliverances; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trail of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts, in mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.
Habakkuk commended in Hebrews 10:38 gave us the revelation, The righteous will live by Faith. Habakkuk is exceptional for his honesty; and his moral and spiritual integrity with which he faces the circumstances around him. He grapples with this in a way, which can only be described as courageous. The conflict which erupts in his heart and mind is due to his inability to reconcile and understand the tragic reality he is witnessing with his bedrock conviction that all history and life is under the direct control of a sovereign, omnipotent and Holy God.
The inescapable reality appears to contradict this. Habakkuk cannot ignore the problem. Indeed, the need to resolve it becomes for him imperative and urgent. He goes into travail and is pregnant with a gospel revelation and truth, The just shall live by Faith. In his travail, he births this great truth which is released to mankind.
Habakkuk knew how to lay hold of God. In the intimacy of their relationship, he poured out his heart to God, unburdened his soul, and confided to God.
David: I poured out my complaint before Him; I showed before Him my trouble.
If we know how to get in the presence of Jesus, we can come out to face the trial of our faith and overcome with a deep rooted peace that will render us steadfast and immovable. It is a bedrock, Faith.
Habakkuk’s ministry is the reverse of the prophet’s traditional role. Habakkuk deals with God for the people rather than dealing with the people for God.
The promise of eternal life for the Faith-righteous man/woman is a living, creative, active, mighty force of Faith. So, it is impossible for this great power to fail to produce good works.
Ro. 3:27: The Law of Faith excludes all human pride. Justification is by Grace alone. If it could be earned, it would be a reward. It is a gift from the Hand of God which can only be accepted by Faith. One of the great doctrines of the Book of Romans is Faith is a means, a tool.
After we accept our Justification by Faith, we will no longer condemn our own flesh or our brother in Christ. We condemn others because condemnation is in our own eye. To condemn the just is to condemn anyone who is justified by Faith. Acts 13:39: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses.
Romans 5:1: Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are Jesus’ guest all the way. “Empty hands outstretched in faith are all that man has to show God.”
We must keep maturing in our faith until we reach the sum end of our Faith. (II Peter 1:11; Heb. 8:1). This sum is an overcomer who sits with Jesus on his throne. Revelation 2:21: To him that overcomes I will grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne.
A ministry energized by a nature of love, the nature of God.
(Romans 5: 1-5)
Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, be we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulations work patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope makes us not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church, 10115 West Hidden Lakes Lane, Richmond, TX
Scripture from K.J.V. and N.K.J.V. This is a teaching formed from over thirty years of teaching on Faith. If I have quoted from another author, I no longer know from whom or where I read the quote. I did not make notations of my sources unless mentioned in the sermon.