To help other people, we must believe in them. People will rise to the level of faith you have for them. This is a secret of supernatural friendship and\or leadership. You see a person with all of their failures, faults, and frustrating qualities — but can you also see the divine potential in them?
Your faith should focus on that potential, as you nurture and encourage God’s image within them. During the process, you have to put up with their negativities—a kind of cross that you must bear in order to build them up. It is painful, but in the spirit of Yeshua, you “bear with them,” taking up their psychological and personality disorders (Isaiah 53:4).
Words are important. We rebuke people for their errors; and we must also “speak by faith” to the potential within them. That is how a good coach encourages his young trainees. The divine destiny within another person may be just a tiny seed, but we see it as a mighty tree (Matthew 13:32). We speak to them that way, and believe our words will come to pass (Mark 11:23). We receive them by faith now as they could be in the future (Mark 11:24). We call them by what they are not, as if they already were (Romans 4:17).
It is easier to have faith for a mountain to move (Mark 11:23) or a sea to be quieted (Mark 4:41) than for a person to change. Why? Because a mountain does not have a free will to oppose you. With a human being, you have to apply faith for him even while he opposes the process that is for his own good. Sin is always deceptive and self-destructive.
Most people are stubbornly attached to their own faults. Therefore we have to apply faith for them repeatedly over a long period of time. This process demands faith together with an extraordinary amount of patience (Hebrews 6:12). You feel like it may kill you to keep going. But we must be faithful unto death (Revelation 2:10).
To build someone up, we must believe in him more than he is able to believe for himself. That is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). If you “move mountains” but do not use faith to develop people, then you have “faith without love” (I Corinthians 13:2). If you love people but do not have reality-changing faith, then you are acting out of human sympathy alone, which will not transform them to achieve their destiny.
If we put faith (Mark 11) together with love (Galatians 5), sacrifice (Isaiah 53), and patience (Hebrews 6), then we can help people break through into God’s calling for their lives. They will be “activated” and put into action, bearing fruit for the kingdom of God – 30, 60, and 100 fold.
Asher serves as president of Tikkun Global family of ministries and congregations, dedicated to the dual restoration of Israel and the Church. He is founder of the Revive Israel five-fold ministry team, and oversees both Ahavat Yeshua and Tiferet Yeshua congregations in Israel.
He and his wife Betty share a passion for personal prayer and devotion, local evangelism and discipleship in Hebrew, and unity of the Body of believers worldwide.
Asher was raised in a conservative Jewish home and holds degrees from Harvard University, Baltimore Hebrew College and Messiah Biblical Institute. He has authored numerous books, tracts and articles.