When I arrived, I had a desire to attend Rhema, fifty dollars in my pocket, a suitcase full of clothing, and little or no connection to anyone other than the people with whom I had driven to Tulsa, who were returning to Illinois after the conference. My first hope, after the conference, was that I would meet someone at the school orientation who was looking for a roommate, and that we could share living expenses. Then, my parents called me and said I had received a letter from the school saying that I was not accepted as a student. Apparently, the Dean thought I was too young in age and in the Lord to attend.

Immediately, I made an appointment with the Dean and told him I felt in my heart that the Lord was directing me to attend Rhema. At first he said I should wait until the next year, but then he stopped, looked at me, and said, “OK, you can attend this year.” Then, during the school orientation, I met a family who had brought their daughter, and we connected instantly. To this day, she remains my best friend and is in full-time ministry with her husband, bringing the gospel to the nations. Thankfully, my new friend and I were able to get into one of the apartments across the street from the school, which meant we could walk to school.

However, I still had one more pressing need—a car. This, to my knowledge, was the first time I ever prayed the prayer of faith using the steps described in this book. I said, “God, You said in Your word, in Philippians 4:19, that You would supply all my needs according to Your riches in glory. Lord, I need a car. I want it to be blue, and I want it to be little.” I let my request be known. Then I said, “I believe I receive it, and I thank You for it.” From then on, every time a thought of doubt would come to my mind about this prayer request, I would simply thank my heavenly Father for meeting my need and answering this prayer request.

About a week later, while I was attending a local church, the pastor’s wife came to me and asked me if I needed a car. I, of course, said yes. Then she told me that a family in the church wanted to donate a car to an incoming Rhema student, and she wondered whether I would like to see it. I certainly did want to see it, so after church we went to this family’s house. Parked right out front was an older little blue car. I was happy and excited! The only challenge for me was that the car was a stick shift, and I had never driven a stick shift. I was a little afraid, but I decided that since God had given me that car, He knew I could learn. And that’s exactly what I did. This experience boosted my faith to new levels. God had answered my prayer of faith, even down to the details of the color and size of the car. He also confirmed to me that He had guided me to Rhema and He would provide along the way.

This was the beginning of my journey in learning how to walk in faith. I had received Jesus into my heart by faith, and now I was discovering the dynamic power available to us as we put our faith in God. See, the gospel is, from first to last, a story of faith. Everything we receive, we receive by faith in God, the Giver of good gifts. These gifts come to us not because we have done something to earn them, but simply because our Father loves us. All we need to do is believe. This is the great appeal of the gospel. The false religions of the world require holiness before blessing, telling their followers they must earn their salvation through good works. But in God’s kingdom, “everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt. 7:8). To those who follow Him, Jesus says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matt. 21:22).

This promise from Jesus speaks to a deep cry of the human heart. As children of God, we are made to receive. We long for His good gifts. We all experience needs that we cannot meet, problems too big for us to solve, dreams beyond our ability. And we are like kids, looking to our Daddy for His provision, help, and blessing. The good news is that when we receive Christ into our hearts in faith, we step into “every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). God, our loving Father, wants to give us all we need even more than we want to receive it. If that were not true, He would not have sent Jesus to die on the cross and free us from the curse. This is the blessing of the gospel. We are invited into the family of God; we are invited to receive the inheritance of God’s kingdom.

This is incredible. Yet for many of us, it is not how we have experienced life. We have had needs go unmet, prayers go unanswered, desires go unfulfilled. And in our hearts we wonder, Why didn’t it work for me? What went wrong? Often, the answer to this question eludes us. We do not always know why certain things do or do not happen. In the face of these unknowns, we get to choose how we will respond. Will we trust in what the Bible says about God’s goodness and His promises? Or will we allow our experiences to shape our beliefs about God? In other words, we get to choose between faith and doubt.

I believe our ability to experience God’s blessings in our lives is directly related to our faith in Him, regardless of what we see in the natural. The Bible tells us that God’s kingdom is experienced by faith, and it is impossible to please God apart from faith (see Heb. 11:6). It is just as Jesus says. When we pray in faith, the hopes of our hearts will be answered, and we will receive (see Matt. 21:22). This is the key so many of us are looking for, the key to experiencing the inheritance that God has already given us.

In this book, we will examine the prayer of faith and the steps involved in receiving what we ask for. But first, before we can pray the prayer of faith, we need to understand what exactly faith is.

The book of Hebrews’ famous definition of faith tells us two aspects of faith—confidence and assurance. It says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). Here, confidence¹ refers to a proof or conviction that something is true. Some translations use the word evidence instead. Faith is the inward proof that the promises of God are real. Faith tells us that what we hope for isn’t just a joke or a long shot. Instead, it gives us something solid to put our hopes on. It fills us with the knowledge that we will receive what we have hoped for.

Similarly, the word assurance² means “that which has foundation, that which has actual existence.” It can also indicate steadfastness of mind, courage, and firm trust. In other words, assurance speaks of a concrete reality. Even though we cannot yet see that reality, faith tells us it is absolutely real. It is what we feel when we consider the question, Will the sun rise tomorrow morning? We have absolute faith that the sun will rise just as it always has. In the same way, faith assures us that God is faithful to His word, and all of His promises will bear fruit in our lives.

After defining faith as confidence in hope and assurance of the promises, Hebrews 11 expands on this idea by saying, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Heb. 11:2). In other words, faith proves in our hearts that God does in fact exist, that He created the universe, and that He makes tangible things from invisible realities. The testimony of God’s power in creation—to make spiritual realities tangible in our physical world—gives us a pattern of hope for the future. This is how He began His work on earth, and it is how He continues working in our lives.

The very first picture we see of God in the Scripture is of someone who can make something from nothing. Or more accurately, He can make invisible realities visible. In other words, He materializes the answers to His promises (which already exist in the invisible supernatural world) into the physical word. Our belief in God’s ability to do this is the foundation of the faith. Over and over, the Bible insists that relationship with God must be rooted in faith in Him that transcends what our five senses can comprehend. Paul describes it perfectly when he says, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17–18). Faith means believing that the unseen eternal realities are more real than the temporary physical realities that we observe with our senses.

This is how we fellowship with God, and this is how we step into the inheritance He has given us.

The Bible is full of promises to those who believe in Jesus. These promises tell us about the spiritual realities that already exist in the unseen realm. The first and greatest promise is that of eternal salvation. Though none of us has yet experienced eternity, when we invite Jesus to live in our hearts, we do so in faith that He has redeemed us and destined us for eternity with Him (see Eph 3:17). As the apostle Paul says, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:25). This salvation is absolutely real at the moment we receive it by faith. We have already received and now possess eternal life (see John 3:16; Eph. 2:8). Jesus said this in many ways throughout His earthly ministry. “The one who believes has eternal life” (John 6:47). Faith in Him results in eternal life. We possess that eternal life now, by faith. However, we do not experience it until our spirits leave our bodies and we go to heaven.

When Paul describes this reality in Ephesians, he says the Spirit who lives in our hearts is a proof of our faith, a guarantee that our faith in God’s promise of eternal life will manifest in our lives:

When a person takes out a loan to purchase a house, most often that person must make a down payment as a guarantee that the full amount will be paid in the future. In a similar way, Paul says the indwelling Spirit is like a deposit, or a down payment, that guarantees the fulfillment of God’s promise of eternal life. It is like God is saying to us, “See, I have given you My Spirit as tangible proof that I have also given you eternal life. Though you do not yet experience this part of your inheritance, it is guaranteed. It is just as real as My Spirit living in you.” God has given us His Spirit so that, by faith “we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Cor. 2:12).

This belief in our eternal salvation is the foundation of Christianity, which is why Christianity is often referred to as the faith. At its very core, the belief system of Christianity is established on faith. One cannot receive Jesus as Savior and Lord without faith. This is our starting place. When we step into the faith by faith, we then get to learn how to exercise our faith in God in greater and greater measures. We get to learn how to live by faith in every detail of our lives. We begin in faith, and we continue on in faith.