KEYWORDS: lord, vacuum, faith, god, mouth, baby

Faith

David Berg

—MOMay 20, 1971GP No.73

1. WHEN I GO, YOU FOLKS HAVE GOT TO REMEMBER—Right now you're dependent on me and my channel—you must remember it's just as easy for you to get things from the Lord. You just have to have faith. When you ask the Lord for an answer‚ expect an answer, and take the first thing that comes. If you really believe and ask the Lord, and you want to hear or see, you won't be disappointed! And that thing you see or hear with the eyes or ears of your spirit, that's the Lord—and it will be such a comfort to you. Expect God to answer! Just open up your heart and let the sunshine in! This is the problem! What are we going to do about it? IF YOU'RE REALLY DESPERATE AND CRYING WITH YOUR WHOLE HEART AND ARE ASKING HIM, HE'LL ANSWER! A baby is such an illustration! When he's crying for his mother, you wouldn't think of refusing him. Hearing from the Lord is our spiritual nourishment—and you've got to be able to hear from the Lord! That little baby has more faith than you do sometimes, 'cause the baby when he cries, he expects someone to hear him. Because he knows—God put it in him to know—that if he calls, you'll answer. He expects the answer and he gets it! If he asks for milk, you're sure not going to give him a serpent or something else! You're going to give him what he needs. So you must expect that what you get is from the Lord.

2. SHUTTING YOUR EYES HELPS YOU TO SEE IN THE SPIRIT and to become unconscious of the things and people around you, and get your mind on the Lord, and in a relaxed position where nothing distracts you, and expect then‚ that whatever you hear or see is something from the Lord.

3. NOW, HERE IS THE WAY GOD TESTS YOU ABOUT IT‚ WHEN YOU ARE ASKING HIM FOR SOMETHING. You're crying just like a baby for the spiritual food you need to live on—to survive on. When you cry, you must expect the Lord to answer. When you pick up the child‚ what do you do? You have to pick him up, reveal yourself to him‚ and, when he's a tiny baby, you have to bring the nourishment to him, you have to show him where it is—you have to shove the nipple in his mouth. As he gets older, he automatically knows where to find the milk—he can reach out himself. The longer you practice receiving nourishment from God, the more you know where to grab it, and you just open your eyes and see it and reach for it. After the nipple is in the baby's mouth, he automatically starts nursing. When you cry out to God for something, He pushes it in your mouth, but if you don't start sucking, you'll never get it. You have to have the faith to begin to pull. You absolutely have to draw God's nourishment. God can show it to you, stick it in your mouth even, but if you don't suck, you won't get anything. The child sucks because God has put that automatic reaction in him to do it. A lot of times he has to suck for a couple of minutes before he gets something. The sucking is the action of the faith! You have to put your faith into action!

4. WHEN I GOT THE GAP VISION THAT DAY, AND I WAS PRAYING‚ "LORD WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? What should I do?" And all of a sudden there it was! Just like the mother presents her breast to the child, all of a sudden I saw the picture‚ but that's all I saw, until I began to suck! The Lord said, start describing it by faith and you'll get more. I had to exercise my faith that that picture I was getting was of God, and I had to exercise my faith by opening my mouth and starting to suck. In other words, I began to absorb what the Lord was giving—to drink it in and absorb it. I was showing I was believing what I was seeing—so I started pulling!

5. FAITH IS A KIND OF DRAWING POWER! IT IS YOUR DRAWING POWER FROM GOD. It's kind of like a bank account: the money is there, and the Father has put it there in your name—in the Bank of Heaven, but you'll never get it—not one red cent—unless you're willing to go to the Bank and sign the check by faith, and draw on it! You've got to draw—or you won't get it! But you see, the faith draws it!

6. WHAT IS IT THAT BRINGS THAT MILK OUT OF THE BREAST? What is the actual physical—in physics—the principle of that suction? It's vacuum! You create a vacuum—a space—an emptiness. The baby deliberately, when he sucks, creates a vacuum inside his mouth. He creates a vacuum inside his mouth which pulls the milk out. You have to create a vacuum inside your heart: "Lord, here is this empty space—You fill it!" You reduced the pressure in a certain area—and in physics they call that a vacuum! And do you know what really fills that vacuum? It's not actually the child—all the child does is create the vacuum, thus reducing the pressure inside his mouth, which then becomes lower than the pressure inside the breast—and so the milk flows out from the mother's breast into the child's mouth.

7. WHEN YOU KISS, YOU ARE ACTUALLY LOWERING THE AIR PRESSURE INSIDE YOUR MOUTH. With a little explosion the air enters your mouth. That's what makes the noise when you kiss, causing a kind of vibration. In prayer, you create a vacuum—there's a space that needs filling—you seek the Lord's help. You create the vacuum and it is the Lord's pressure that fills it. The power really comes from outside, not from inside—all you did was create the vacuum—but that vacuum drew the power. It draws‚ and therefore the pressure from the Lord seeks the place where there is less pressure.

8. EVERY NIGHT YOU CAN SEE ON TV THE WEATHER. THEY'RE SHOWING THAT VERY PRINCIPLE—the high-pressure areas and the low-pressure areas. The high pressure areas rush into the low pressure areas from all directions, and when it meets—boom!—you've got a storm! There's an old saying‚ Nature abhors a vacuum—but God really likes a vacuum: He likes to fill every vacuum! He likes to fill every place that's made for Him—every place where you open up your heart, your spirit, a low-pressure area, His Spirit will flow in, in all His Power!

9. THE LORD WANTS YOU TO DRAW ON THE WORD—NOT ONLY THE RECORDED WORD, BUT THE LIVING WORD. But it is you drawing, and you must believe it, and start right from there. What if the baby took one big suck and got discouraged! Well‚ I didn't get anything, so I'll just quit. But sooner or later he gets so hungry, he has to start sucking again. When you start sucking for dear life, and really desire it with all your heart, you'll finally get it. You have to believe when you create that vacuum in your heart—you draw on the Lord—that sucking action of your faith—and that the first thing that comes into your mouth is the Lord—the first thing you see, you must believe that that is from the Lord, and you must go straight on from there! You must begin to speak those words He puts in your mouth, and speak that Scripture or phrase He gives you. He gives you a little, but then you've got to expect more!

10. IF THE BABY DIDN'T SWALLOW WHAT HE GOT, HE COULDN'T GET ANY MORE. Your mouth can only hold so much at once. So you get a mouthful and you swallow it! Then He gives you another mouthful. In this case‚ by giving it out, you're absorbing it—you're swallowing it! And incidentally, the word "believe" in the New Testament is that Greek word, "drinking in." "I believe" means "I drink in"—"I swallow." It's the word "pisteuo"—the word that's used throughout the New Testament for "I believe"; "I drink in."

11. AND THAT'S HOW YOU GET REVELATIONS FROM THE LORD. If it's a message in tongues and prophecy‚ you drink it into your own mouth, and then you show your belief, by giving it. But you only get one mouthful at a time. But if you don't give that mouthful, you won't get another! when you ask the Lord for a picture and you get it‚ start describing it. Describe what you see, and then the Lord will keep giving you more. What do you do when you see a movie? You go in there and have to keep drinking in scene by scene by scene by scene. You couldn't possibly get it all in one shot! You have to keep swallowing. So you have to exercise your faith. You have to create a vacuum in your spirit and then the Lord will fill it!

12. THE RADIO IS LIKE A VACUUM. IN THE AIR RIGHT NOW ALL AROUND US, JUST LIKE THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD—there are everywhere around us radio waves. But until you turn on this little switch on the radio, and in a sense create a vacuum in this little receiver, you're not going to get anything. You have to open a channel, an electric circuit. You have to make contact by making a vacuum. (At this point he switches on the radio, and we hear "Oh for a Thousand Tongues to Sing My Great Redeemer's Praise!" We praise the Lord for His fitting illustration:) You see, it doesn't matter if you do have a thousand tongues—if you didn't flip the switch, you'd never get the song!

13. THE FAITHFUL PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE FULL OF FAITH—full of a vacuum—and the Lord's high pressure fills the vacuum! But you've got to keep swallowing! In this case, the giving out is a swallowing. That's why the Lord is able to use me so when I'm with certain people, because the Lord knows it's going to be swallowed and digested and used to strengthen the Body. The Lord knows He can trust them, that when I give what He shows me, they will faithfully record it and it won't be wasted. The Lord's not going to squirt milk out into the thin air where it will be lost or into some baby who won't swallow it. He's got to swallow it and digest it and assimilate it, or he won't get it. You create that little spiritual vacuum, and that's faith which draws on the Lord, and His high pressure fills it.

14. THE POWER'S ALWAYS ON. THE MESSAGE IS ALWAYS THERE. GOD'S SPIRIT IS LIKE A BROADCASTING STATION BROADCASTING ALL THE TIME. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS THROW THE SWITCH AND TUNE IN. You have to have the vacuum and sincerely open your mouth, and He'll fill it. And that drawing draws the power of God. But you have to tell the vision‚ tell the dream, give the message‚ interpret the tongues. You've got to keep moving. If that baby stops sucking, he's not going to get anymore. But as long as you keep sucking you'll get more. I believe I could have gone on endlessly sometimes as long as our physical bodies were able to stand it. But see, the baby's capacity limits how much he can absorb.

UNLIKE THE MOTHER, GOD HAS UNLIMITED CAPACITY TO GIVE, AND WHAT YOU GET IS ONLY LIMITED BY YOUR OWN CAPACITY TO RECEIVE. Pretty soon you get so full, you can't stand it. And your vacuum is full, your tummy satisfied, and your spirit is content. That little saying: Mi estomigo es Ileno; mi corazon es contenta!—My stomach's full—my heart's content! In other words, the Lord will keep on feeding you until you're satisfied, until your spiritual vacuum is filled, and when you're satisfied, He might not even mind if you go to sleep for a while. It takes a little effort to nurse—to suck! It's a real spiritual effort of faith. Faith is like the Hand of the soul or the spirit.

FAITH IS THE HAND OF THE SPIRIT WHICH REACHES OUT AND RECEIVES. It is the part that you do—your spiritual effort. That sucking on the part of the baby is his effort‚ and the mother does all the rest. Faith is the spiritual hand of the spirit which reaches out and receives. You know, sometimes the prophets were actually sick afterwards—it was so hard on their flesh. It left them absolutely exhausted. Sometimes they fell down as one dead. It actually took some physical strength. There is that link between the spiritual and the physical that we don't quite understand. I told you that in "Breakdown" (ML #66). They are inseparable except by death, unless the Lord separates them sometimes in the spirit and takes you on a spiritual trip. The physical affects the spiritual and the spiritual affects the physical.

15. IT'S SO SIMPLE: YOU JUST HAVE TO HAVE THE FAITH OF THAT LITTLE BABY. You just have to show him where it is‚ and after you've shown him, he knows where it is. And pretty soon you'll recognise it when the Lord begins to speak. Some people get things from the Lord, and don't even know it is from the Lord. I did that for years. I've been getting things like this all my life, and for a long time I thought it was just me—and all the time the Lord was speaking to me. And I used to go out by myself and walk in the woods and the fields. I was scared of people and liked to be alone—but God must have made me that way so I would stay by myself and commune with Him. The Lord showed me things about the birds and the bees, the sky and the clouds‚ the flowers and the trees, and the Lord showed me so many spiritual truths about them. "I learned alone. I learned to love. I listened to the still small voice of God." It just came like it was natural—I didn't realise what a supernatural thing it was—what a miracle. Just like the baby nursing—it seems so natural. Yet it's such a miracle. Everything is a miracle! Everything is supernatural because God made it all.

16. I STARTED READING BIBLE PROPHECY AND IT WAS SO CLEAR, and I got the idea I must be pretty smart.—May God forgive me! And all the time it was the Lord—I didn't know anything!—Just what God showed me! For the Lord later prophesied‚ "I have given unto this thy Daniel the wisdom and the knowledge to know the meaning‚ even the number of years." It was just the Lord! If you've got an open channel and tune in, the Lord will fill you—your mind, your heart‚ your ears, your eyes!

17. WHAT THE LORD IS TRYING TO SHOW YOU IS THAT YOU CAN GET IT YOURSELF!

18. WE WERE ALWAYS TRYING TO TURN GRANDMOTHER ON: We kept saying, "Let's have prayer—let's have a prayer meeting!" Grandmother would get so mad. She'd say, "You're just trying to have me get something from the Lord for you, when you could get it yourself."

19. THE ANSWER'S ALWAYS THERE IF YOU'RE WILLING TO RECEIVE IT, BUT IF YOU RESIST THE ANSWER HE GIVES, HE SHUTS UP BECAUSE YOU WON'T LISTEN. You can stick the tit in the baby's mouth, and if he takes one swig and doesn't like it and quits swallowing, he's not going to get any more. And mother will just give up and put him back to bed. So you have to be willing to take what He gives, and give it!