Objection: This Teaching Encourages People to Have Faith in Their Faith Instead of Faith in God, and Is Therefore Cultish
Who exactly encourages you to have faith in your faith instead of faith in God? Oh, I know, it must be this teacher:
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JUST HAVE FAITH IN YOUR FAITH
by Fibian Duhh
You don’t need God! All you need is faith. Just have faith and then have faith in your faith. That’s right, brother, just live any old way and use God to get what you want out of life. Rather than serving God, make God serve you by using faith. Now you run the show and you call the shots because you are sovereign and God reports to you. Use faith the way that the metaphysical cults do and get what’s coming to you! Be your own god and forget about the will of God.
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I have never heard any faith teacher say these things. I have never heard any faith teacher even remotely imply anything like this. I would agree that if someone is teaching you that your faith should be in yourself or in your faith, that is cultish teaching. This is another example of building and then knocking down a straw man instead of addressing a real issue. It is all too common for opponents of healing to set up an argument like the one above and then shoot holes in it. If you want to shoot holes in an argument like that, I’ll join you! The trouble is that statements like the ones above misrepresent real faith teaching. Those statements would repulse anyone who loves God.
The faith teachers I listen to all stress consecration to the will of God and do not teach that you can live any old way and use faith to get what you want. They do not teach, nor do I, that your faith should rest in your ability to have faith! If I were you, I would not get the doctrines of famous faith teachers by reading the slander books that keep getting written against them. Go read for yourself from their own books what they are saying – you will find that they teach nothing like the words in the article above.
Faith always rests on the Bible. It is not a free-floating attempt to convince yourself of something mentally. The metaphysical cults stress mind techniques, but Christianity does not. You renew your mind with God’s Word and you believe in your heart, not your mind. You can believe and receive in your heart even if there is doubt in your mind as long as you act and speak based on your faith and not your doubts.
Like Abraham, you believe that God is faithful to perform what He promised. You are trusting God, not your faith, to make it happen. Your faith is the vehicle, but God is the one making it happen. Just because your car gets you to a service where God is moving does not mean that you worship the car. But the fact remains that without that car, you would not get to the service and experience the move of God. Your faith would be worthless if God did not honor his promises. God, not your faith, gets the glory for the results. However, without faith, you would get no results.
If you had no faith for salvation, you would not be saved. We don’t glorify you for having faith or make a big deal out of your faith in this matter. Why should it be different with healing? If you are healed by faith, we won't make a big deal out of you and your faith. Just as with forgiveness, if God weren’t offering something, you would have no basis for faith and no ability of your own to bring it to pass.
When you believe for healing, you do not believe in your own ability to have faith. You believe that God has paid the price to heal your body and that He offers healing to you now. You then receive what He offers by faith when you pray before you feel any differently. You are not receiving from your faith; you are receiving from God through faith in His Word.
There is a limited sense in which we could talk about having “faith in your faith,” but it really boils down to having confidence that Jesus’ instructions for receiving from God work. In other words, you have confidence that faith works. Your faith itself, however, is in God and in His Word. (Really, God and His Word are inseparable, so faith in God is by necessity faith in His Word and vice versa.) I’ve never met anyone who teaches that you should have faith in your faith instead of having faith in God, so this objection is an objection to nothing.