Faith Cometh by Hearing

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. ROMANS 10:17

Derek Prince spoke about faith so often that it would be easy to mistake him for one more voice in the chorus of twentieth-century teachers who made faith into a technique. He was not quite that, and the difference is worth drawing out. His fullest treatment of the subject is Faith to Live By, and its burden is not how to get things from God but how to live in dependence on Him. Faith, for Prince, was not a force. It was a relationship with a God who has spoken.

Faith and hope are not the same

One of Prince’s most characteristic distinctions was between faith and hope. Both are Christian virtues, both are necessary, and they are easily confused. Hope, he taught, looks to the future; it is an eager expectation of good things to come. Faith lives in the present; it takes hold of what God has said now. The writer to the Hebrews calls faith the substance of things hoped for — the present ground under the future expectation.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. HEBREWS 11:1

Prince thought many believers lived on hope and called it faith. They expected that God would one day do something, and they waited, vaguely and anxiously, for it to happen. What they lacked was the settled confidence, here and now, that what God has said is true and that He is acting on it. That confidence, he insisted, is not produced by trying harder to believe. It is produced by hearing.

Where faith comes from

Here the whole of Prince’s teaching on the Word comes into play. Faith does not rise from within the human heart. It comes from outside, as a response to God speaking. Paul says so plainly: faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Prince made much of the fact that Paul does not say faith comes by having heard, as though a single past encounter were enough. Faith is sustained as it is received, by continuing to listen.

He also taught that there is a difference between the Bible as a closed book and the Bible as God speaking to me. The words are the same, but there are times when a passage that has been read a hundred times becomes, by the Spirit, a living word addressed to the reader in his present situation. That, he said, is where faith is born. The practical consequence was simple: if you want faith, do not look inward for it. Open the Scriptures, and listen until God speaks.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. HEBREWS 11:3

The faith of Abraham

Prince found his model of faith, as Paul did, in Abraham. God gave Abraham a promise that contradicted every fact of his circumstances. He was old; Sarah was barren; the thing was impossible. Abraham did not deny the facts. He considered them, and then he chose to believe God rather than the facts.

He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. ROMANS 4:20–21

Prince taught that this is the pattern for every believer. Faith is not pretending that the problem is not there. It is not a denial of reality. It is a judgement that God’s word is more real than the problem. That distinction guards against one of the more foolish errors of popular faith teaching, which tells the sick they are not sick and the poor that they are not poor. Abraham knew his body was as good as dead. He believed anyway.

Faith that speaks

Prince also taught that faith, when it is real, will speak. Paul quotes the psalmist: I believed, and therefore have I spoken. Prince encouraged believers to say aloud what God has said — to confess the promises, to declare the exchange of the cross, to answer the accuser with Scripture as Jesus did.

We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:13

There is something true and healthy in this. Believers who never say what they believe tend to lose track of it. Speaking God’s Word aloud is an old Christian practice, and the Psalms are full of it.

But this is also where the teaching needs a guard, because in the hands of others it became something quite different. The so-called positive confession movement taught, in effect, that words have creative power in themselves, and that the believer can bring into being whatever he declares with enough conviction. Prince’s own emphasis was on confessing what God has already said, not on manufacturing outcomes by speech. The difference is everything. The first submits to God’s will; the second tries to bend it. Scripture never gives any believer a lever by which to move God.

When faith is not answered as we hoped

Any honest teaching on faith must face the question of unanswered prayer. Prince did not pretend it away. He taught that faith rests on God’s revealed will, and that we are not free to believe for anything we like simply because we want it. And the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the great chapter on faith, ends not with triumphs but with men and women who were tortured, sawn asunder and left destitute, and of whom it is said that they obtained a good report through faith and did not receive the promise.

And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise. HEBREWS 11:39

The three young men in Babylon stated the balance perfectly. Our God is able to deliver us, and He will deliver us. But if not, we will still not bow.

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods. DANIEL 3:17–18

That is faith at its purest: bold in expectation, and unshaken by disappointment, because it rests not on the outcome but on God.

Living by faith

Prince’s book is called Faith to Live By, and the title is well chosen. For him faith was not chiefly the means of obtaining particular blessings. It was the way the whole Christian life is lived.

The just shall live by his faith. HABAKKUK 2:4

The believer lives by faith as he lives by breathing — continuously, quietly, without making a performance of it. He trusts God for the day’s bread, for the next step, for grace in the next trial. He reads the Word and lets it strengthen his confidence. And when he cannot see, he goes on anyway, because the One who has spoken can be trusted.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask yourself whether what you call faith is really hope — a general expectation that things will work out. What would it look like to rest on a specific word of God?

2. Choose one promise of Scripture that speaks to your present situation. Read it aloud each morning this week, and thank God for it.

3. Read Romans 4 and note every fact Abraham faced honestly and every reason he had to believe God anyway.

4. If you have been told, or have told others, that unanswered prayer means a lack of faith, bring that belief to Hebrews 11:36–39 and let Scripture correct it.

5. Where are you waiting to see before you will trust? Take one step of obedience this week before the way is clear.

A PRAYER

Father, I confess that my faith has often rested on my feelings, on my circumstances, or on what I wanted. Teach me to rest it on You.

Speak to me through Your Word. I will listen until I hear, and I will believe what You say even when everything around me says otherwise.

Keep me from treating faith as a lever to move You. Let it be the trust of a child in a Father who knows best.

And if the answer I long for does not come, let me still say, You are able — and if not, I will still not bow. In Jesus’ name, Amen.