In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of belief in receiving from God. He shares a personal experience of preaching to a congregation of highly educated individuals and realizing the power of the Holy Spirit in making the Word of God come alive. The preacher then references Hebrews 11:13, highlighting the faith of those who died without receiving the promises but still believed and confessed them. He uses an illustration of confessing and trusting in Jesus' will to demonstrate the concept of faith as a leap into the light, not a leap into the dark. The sermon concludes with a focus on discovering God's will and trusting Jesus to solve problems and release His power in our lives.

Last night I left you with the truth that whatsoever is not of faith is sin. And I was able to define faith to a degree, describing it as believing in order to receive. Now one of the things that I want to do tonight is just take you into the Word of God and show you that faith is not a leap into the dark, but a leap into the light. Now the tragedy of this hour, and I want to just exhort you for a while before I get into the message, the tragedy of this hour is this, that we are called believers, but we're not trusting Jesus for anything. If I walk back there to where you are and ask you personally, what are you trusting Jesus for now, what would you tell me? What are you trusting Jesus for right now? Well, Brother Manley, I'm trusting Jesus, but that's not the question. I'm asking you, what are you trusting him for now? Well, I'm just trusting him. No, you trust Jesus for something. When you got saved by the grace of God, you put your trust in Jesus for salvation. Right? What are you trusting Jesus for right now? Now, last night, I was able to bring you to the place to just lay this out before you, that faith is, and I'm going to give you a new definition I didn't give you last night, is rendering present that which one hopes for. Faith renders present that which one hopes for. Faith is an act and an affirmation of that act that bids eternal truth to be present fact. In other words, when you are believing God for something, you are believing it's so now in order for it to be so when it's not so because it is so. You're not sure. Well, let me share with you in a very simple way what I said to you last night, and I believe this is the way the Lord wants me to go tonight. Back some years ago, I was in a church in Florida, and at any one night you wanted to check the congregation out, you could find at least two or three rows of PhDs. There's quite a group of people in that church. And so I ditched my lifestyle method of preaching and got to preaching like a preacher, you know, and those fellows, they couldn't understand what I was talking about. So one night I preached the sermon as a preacher would preach, and then the next night I just illustrated what I preached the night before. And all those PhDs came out and said, man, I'll tell you what, now you just keep preaching like you preached tonight. And I found, beloved, it's the Holy Spirit that takes the Word of God and makes it real. And it's our intellect can assist in that, but sometimes it can get in the way. Now, what I want to do tonight is to illustrate what I preached last night in a very simple way, but I believe a very significant way. And if you weren't here last night, I trust that the Lord will somehow minister to your heart out of the truth that was even said last night because it's necessary to put this together. When I announced the message last night, I said I'm preaching two messages, one last night and one tonight, on the same subject. And so here goes. Back to where I was last night, some years ago I learned that you must first believe in order to receive, Mark 11, 24. You must believe in order to receive. And believing was not only knowing God could do something, not only wanting God to do it, but believing was embracing Him and counting Him faithful to meet your need now. Faith was acting on Jesus, acting on His faithfulness, acting on His ability, counting Him to be able, not only able, but wanting to do a thing and counting Him as doing it right now. You remember where we were last night now? Are you back with us through all the crud you went through today? It's hard to get back there, I know. But I was at that predicament. I just learned that you must believe in order to receive. I got on an airplane in Memphis, Tennessee, headed to Greenville, South Carolina. And so I got comfortable before the Lord and I got all buckled up. I had my yellow pad and I had my Bible and I was seated there. I said, Lord, there's no way that I can be a pleasure to You unless I am in the faith position, unless I'm in the position of trusting You that You are doing something now. Boy, I'll tell you, the Lord began to speak to my heart. I said, Lord, I want to be a pleasure to You. Without faith, it's impossible to what? Pleasing. I had come to understand that that faith was more than the intellectual element, more than the emotional element. It was actually embracing the truth, counting God faithful to keep His Word right now. I knew it was that kind of faith that would be a pleasure to God. So I said, Lord, what can I trust You for? I said, here I'm headed off to three weeks of revival meetings. What can I trust You for? Now, I was not aware that Proverbs 16, 3 was in the Bible. But Proverbs 16, 3 says, Commit thy works unto the Lord, and He shall establish thy thoughts. And I was seated in that plane. And I tell you, I could not believe this after it was all over. But I just committed these next three meetings to the Lord. I said, Lord, I would like to see You do these things. And I started writing down on a yellow pad what I'd like to see God do. I'd like to see God, I would like to see God send revival to the church. I wrote that down. Brokenness and openness, I specifically wrote that down. I said, Lord, I'd like to see You save sinners. And, Lord, I'd like to see You meet my needs. You said, well, Brother Manly, why would you pray that God would meet my needs for the same reason you go out and work eight hours a day? Amen. You said, God will do it. Yes, He'll do it just like you do it. He'll work through people as you labor and so on. I said, Lord, I want to see You do these things. I'll tell you, God just takes immature children and just leads them in where angels fear to tread. I wrote down what I would like to see God do. But being very immature, it was hard for me to accept that the desires of my heart for those next three weeks could be the will of God. Well, let me just lay something on you. If there's no controversy between you and God, the desires of your heart should be the will of God. So that's what I had written down there, what I desired to see God do. Well, that still wasn't faith. That's what I just wanted to see God do. But to be in a position of faith, I had to come to trust Jesus that He was doing them right now. Well, I knew nothing about the size church in Carolina. I knew nothing about their financial potential. I knew nothing about their attendance. I knew nothing about their prospect list. But here I was, I'd written down on this sheet of paper that I was trusting Jesus to save twenty souls. And I was going to trust Jesus to send revival, openness, and brokenness to that church. And I forgot now, this was about twenty years ago, and I was trusting Jesus for several hundred dollars. And everything that I had down there, it would take a miracle to have. But, you see, that was just what I wanted to see happen. I had to come to the place of trusting Jesus that it was happening. I said, well, Lord, I want to trust You. I know You can do these things. And I want You to do them so bad I can't stand it, because I want to be a pleasure to You. That's my interest here in this occasion, is to be a pleasure to You. So, to be a pleasure to the Lord, I had to come to that place where I was trusting Him now to do His work. Trusting Him now to do His work. See, we relegate the blessings of today to a tomorrow that never comes. We're procrastinators. We're not trusting Jesus to save Bill now, Mary now, Joe now, send revival now, do a mighty work now, meet a need now. We're not trusting Jesus to do that now. And I wasn't trusting Jesus to do that work now in that airplane. So I said, well, Lord, then the thing for me to do is act as if it's happening. Just act in faith that it's happening right now. And the only way I know I can do that is write my wife a letter and tell her that before I see her in three weeks, you will have done all these things. And if you hadn't, I'm a false prophet. And right there in that seat, the Lord and I got together, friend. And we made a transaction. And I started trusting Jesus right that very moment. I knew He could do it. I wanted Him to do it. But I chose. And if you were here last night, you know all of this is just going back over some of what I said. I chose to take Jesus at His word. I made the choice. And I confirmed that choice by writing my wife a letter and said, before I see you, God will have done these things. Now, I felt real good about my confession until I got to Atlanta, Georgia and dropped that letter in the mail drop. I mean, I just felt great. And when I turned that letter loose, brother, I would have gotten it back if I could have. I was committed and there was no turning back. And friend, I'll tell you, for the next three days, I went through the most terrible battle I've ever gone through in my life. I call it the fight of faith, where I had to choose to trust. My faith got so weak that I just told the devil I refused to doubt. The devil would come to me and lie to me. He'd say, God is not going to do what you're trusting Him for. God is not going to bless with revival. God is not going to save those souls. God is not going to send that finances in. God is not going to do that. The devil would come and tell me that. Even the devil got a deacon to come to me and said, preacher. He said, our last revival was the greatest revival we've ever had in this church. He said, we had seven people saved. I know the devil sent that fellow. Amen. And I, they had that little board, you know, those little boards you have in the church. Signs and what you've been doing or haven't done. And that church, you know what size that church was? They ran 40 in Sunday school. And I was trusting Jesus for 20 souls. The devil said to me, he said, you're a liar, you're a fool. And you know how much money they took up each Sunday? About $60. And I was trusting Jesus for hundreds. Oh, brother, I couldn't believe it. And my faith got so weak, I just said, I refuse to doubt. Whether you believe it or not, that's faith. I just refused to doubt. And on Wednesday, I got the sweetest peace in my heart that the battle was over. The glory of God had come. But it was still dead. That was one of the deadest meetings I've ever been in. And of all people to be there to watch it was Miss Bertha Smith. I mean, there she sat every night right on the front pew. I mean, she did, yeah, she really did. And on Saturday night, the glory of God swept through that church and 19 people got saved. In one service, 19 people got saved. Boy, I'll tell you, I want you to know after 19 people got saved, praise God, I could believe God for one more. I could believe Him for one more. And on Sunday morning, several more came. And the Lord completed that report about the souls. But the finances was a different story. When you trust in Jesus for finances, you never tell God that a person or a church is the source. God is the source. And so, see, that church did not have to meet that amount that week. God had to meet it. And so God did it. My sister called me from down in Texas. And she said, you know, said, you've had a strange thing to happen here in your ministry this week. It has never happened before in your ministry. And I said, what's that? She said, you have received an $85 check. And she said, let me tell you the story behind this check. That this couple brought over this check today. And they told this story that the man received this money because of a death in his family. And he and his wife were praying about where to give this money away. And said his wife came up with this idea to give $85 to Arliss Bingaman out in Texas and give $85 to Manly Beasley that they had not seen in nine years. And she said, well, Lord, that's not my money. That's my husband's money. He's at work. You tell him where to give it. And he came in that evening from work and said, honey, the Lord told me what to do with that money. She said, what did he tell you? He said, he told me to give $85 to Arliss Bingaman and $85 to Manly Beasley. You'd say that was God, wouldn't you? I mean, God was running that part of it. And when that revival meeting closed there in North Carolina, the pastor got up that night and he said, folk, someone has missed God about the offering. And a deacon jumped up from over here and said, I have. He said, God told me to put in so much and I didn't. And said, I want to obey. When all that money was in, the preacher did not know what was on my list that I'd sent to my wife. But when it was all in, you know what? It was exactly what was written on that sheet of paper. Now, here's what I'm trying to tell you tonight in an illustration. Faith is not a leap into the dark. Faith is a leap into the light. And what God wants us to do is first discover the will of God about a given situation in our life and then start trusting Jesus that it is being solved right now. Amen. And until we come to that place where we are trusting Jesus right now to solve that problem, to settle that issue, to literally release God on that situation, we are not a pleasure to the Lord. We're not a pleasure to the Lord. Now, in Hebrews 11, this is so beautifully illustrated. It's illustrated out of the life of Abraham. Let me just give you one verse of Scripture that stands as the foundation for what I'm saying and then give you two verses of Scripture or one more verse of Scripture that illustrates what I'm saying. The thirteenth verse of the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews says, These all died in faith. Watch this now. Not having received the promises. But watch this. But having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them. What? Of the promises. And were embraced them. What? The promises. And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. You see, this is what I did in this illustration I've just given you. I confessed. What did I confess? What I trusted Jesus for. What did I trust Jesus for? What He put on my heart was His will. And it was settled that it was His will. I became persuaded of it. Then I trusted Him to move His will out of heaven into earth. And beloved, what I believed in my heart, I confessed with that letter to my wife. And what I confessed, God did. Now, I want to turn a little different direction than I started to lead you into. I believe God wants me to turn in this direction. Galatians 2.20, where I was last night for a moment, and I said we'd come back to this at a later time. Paul said, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. Now, are you listening to me carefully? Here is Paul declaring that I am inhabited by the person of Christ. Now, Paul says throughout his volumes of truth that I have discovered Jesus as my salvation. Wouldn't you agree to that? He also declares, I have discovered Jesus as my life, physically. Wouldn't you agree to that? He also says, I have discovered Jesus as my peace. Wouldn't you agree to that? Ephesians says that. He just constantly lets us see that as a man, he has discovered Jesus that inhabits him as his salvation, his life, his peace, his joy. And now in this verse, he is saying, I have discovered him as my faith. Now, listen to me carefully, because this may be a little heavy for us, but the Holy Spirit will make it fit us. He is saying, I live this life by the faith of the Son of God. He said, I am inhabited by faith. I am inhabited by faith. And when I know a thing is of God, I just go ahead and act as if I have faith because I do have faith. You say, what are you talking about? Mark 11, 22, in some Bibles will say, where it says, have faith in God, you know what it's saying? It says, have God faith. And you know, that's coming out of the scene where Jesus is telling Peter and the rest of the disciples that when they face something like the fig tree without figs, that they can just act in faith and announce a curse, and the curse is on. And he is saying here, have God faith. That means you are inhabited by faith. Act in faith. Act in faith. Because you have faith in you. Whether you realize this or not, what I'm saying to you, it's so. Now, let me give you two illustrations of what I just said. Back in 1972, I was in the Methodist hospital. I'd been in, in 71, I'd been in for four months at one time. And then in 1972, January, I was in for another month. And one day, Jack Taylor and about four of his men from the First Baptist Church, Castle Hills, walked in. They had flown over and got them a car and come down to spend the day with me. And you know, that was quite a blessing, to have those old boys just bring that revival spirit they had going in that church right into my room. And that was such a beautiful experience. And while we were just having a ball that day, fellowshiping one with another, in walked Corrie Ten Boom. And of course, you know, she was welcome. And she spent the day with us. I'll tell you one thing, folk, that was some experience. Corrie Ten Boom would be standing up at the end of my bed talking to me. And she would say, Brother Manley, you know, that's right, Lord. And never change the tone of her voice. And she would be here and there at the same time. And she'd talk to the Lord and she'd come back and say, Brother Manley, don't you know this is so? I mean, just move in and out of heaven just like that. Amen. I mean, it seemed like she and the Lord were one. That sort of reminded me of Jesus and the Father. Amen. He didn't have to change gears to meet with the Father. Or meet with his disciples. He was moving in and out. Well, Corrie Ten Boom was called by one of the Billy Graham team members. Now, listen to me carefully. And that team member said to Miss Corrie Ten Boom something like this, Miss Corrie, we're out of money and we're not going to be able to finish the film. She said, oh, that's no problem. Never hesitated. Never hesitated. She said, oh, that's no problem. My father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He'll sell some cattle. God prayed. She acted. She, it was already settled as if this was the will of God. It was already settled about the will of God, wasn't it? That was already a settled issue. You don't get halfway through something and change plans. God doesn't change plans. He started it. He'll finish it. She acted in faith. Any of you know the real story? You know what really happened? A rancher sold a ranch and his cattle and gave the money to make that film. Exactly what she said would happen. Amen. Exactly. Some of you will remember R.G. Letourneau. A great Christian that just literally shook us all by giving ninety-something percent of his income to the Lord. God just really blessed him. Quite a genius. Engineer, mechanic, so on. Someone asked him one day, he said, Sir, when you know a thing is the will of God, when you know a thing is the will of God, and you do not feel like you have the faith, what do you do? He said, I go ahead and act like I have the faith. Because I do. Amen. Amen. Now what I'm asking you tonight is simply this. When will you trust the Lord Jesus? You tell a lost person here tonight, I'm telling a lost person here tonight, if you're lost without Jesus Christ, you've never been saved by the grace of God, you've never been washed in the blood of the Lamb, you trust Jesus, he'll say. Amen. You trust Jesus, he'll save you. You know that's true. And tonight, as a child of God, now listen to me carefully. As a child of God, you're a child of God, if you have a legitimate need in your life tonight, it's God's will to meet it. It's God's will to meet it. I know it is. If you have a desire that's in harmony with the heart of God, there's no controversy between you and God, you can step out and start trusting Jesus tonight for that desire. And if you have a word from God, you can trust Jesus to keep his word. And I challenge you as a child of God tonight to get in what is called the faith position. What do you mean the faith position? Get in the position tonight where you are trusting Jesus now to make himself real to you at your point of need. Right now. The best way to do that as a child of God, now this is going to separate the babies from the mature people. The best way to start trusting Jesus now as a saint is write down on a sheet of paper, what am I trusting Jesus for now? And write it down. Amen. Now the mature Christians will do this, the rest of you just listen to me. Amen. Would you bow your heads with me please? Brother Marion, I want the instrumentalist to play softly the invitation. The invitation is twofold tonight. If you'll come and trust Jesus, that's the general invitation. If you'll come and trust Jesus tonight, you'll come and trust Jesus. You'll come and trust Jesus. Would you come? Would you come to Jesus tonight and trust him? Would you as a child of God come to Jesus tonight, come and get on this altar and make a covenant with Jesus, and Jesus I'm trusting you for this and this and this and this. Would you do it? Just trust him for what you can trust him for tonight. Get up off of your knees confessing that you're trusting him. Now I'm going to deal with this further in the meeting, probably not at night, but what I'm saying to you, why don't you come and trust Jesus for that son that's lost, for that daughter, for that grandson, granddaughter. Why don't you come tonight and start trusting Jesus for that need? Why don't you do that? Would you do it? Would you come and trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Would you stand with me please? Lord Jesus, enable us to trust you tonight. Enable me, O Lord, to trust you. Lord, I'm going through a battle myself. Satan has just really attacked me. Lord, you know it. Just before I got in the pulpit this afternoon, and I want to trust you so completely with this issue. I want to trust you so completely. Enable me just to step out of my own position and trust you. O Lord Jesus, the only thing I know I can do tonight is choose to trust you. He said, bring you all the tithes into the storehouse and prove me now. Herewith saith the Lord. And you'll pour me out a blessing that I cannot contain. So Lord, I want to prove you now. Lord, I want to prove you now. In Jesus' name. As the choir begins to sing the invitation, would you come? Dear child of God, would you come? Make in covenants with the Lord that you're going to trust him now. Start trusting him now to meet you at that point of need. Until the supernatural work of God is being seen in your life, there's no testimony that you're saved. You may be saved, but there's no testimony that you're saved. And beloved, I'm asking you to come and trust Jesus now that you might release God in your life and there might be a supernatural work of God in you. Would you come?