What are you waiting for? What prayers have you prayed that seem to be unanswered? You may have been waiting so long for answers, you are more than ready to discover how you can receive what you're believing for. What I'm sharing with you is not some new revelation. It's not some secret God has let only a few privileged people in on.

The key to your answers is the same today as the day Jesus preached it: "Have faith in God. I say to you, whatever things you ask [whatever you want, whatever you desire, whatever you need] when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them" (Mark 11:22, 24, NKJV). Today is your day to receive what you're believing for— it's your day to lay hold of the invisible!

Receiving Is Foundational
Jesus clearly taught that receiving answers to prayer is basic to our Christian thinking. Receiving the results of our faith is fundamental to who God has designed us to be as His children. And if we're not receiving, we're missing the most elementary step.

Every one of us who has been born again had to firstbelieve when we heard that salvation had been provided by God through His only begotten Son, Jesus. When we believed, we received our salvation. Then we began to see things from a different perspective. We began to see what we believed we would receive. We began to look at things from the unseen realm of God as they began to come into the seen realm of our very own lives.

So, believing before seeing the manifestation is the very starting point of receiving. It's how we received our salvation and it's how we are to receive everything else God desires for us to have. We get off to a good start and somewhere along the way we begin to put the cart before the horse. We start off walking by faith and for some reason we get off the path and begin to think we've got to see something before we can believe and receive.

Right now we have to get back to the basic fundamental of our faith. Read this out loud: "I look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. I walk by faith, and not by sight. I believe I receive!"

What's the Holdup?
Here we are—believers who walk by faith, looking at things that are not seen, asking and believing. So, what's the holdup? I've found that for most people of faith, the holdup is in the receiving part of our walk. For most of us, receiving seems to be easy in some areas. But there are other areas where it seems to be a struggle.

How do we pray? Jesus taught His disciples about effective prayer in Luke 11. Right after teaching them what we know as the Lord's Prayer, the very next example He gave is about the importunate friend. Starting in verse 5, Jesus says that because of the man's importunity his friend got up and gave him the bread he needed for unexpected visitors. Importunity means "shamelessness, immodesty, without bashfulness, boldness, impudence."

That's the way we should approach our Father when we pray. Why? Because we go to Him based on what He has promised. We must believe every promise from our heavenly Father is ours, that His sole motivation for everything He is and does, is His mercy and goodness. And we must know beyond any doubt that He loves us unconditionally. We can believe it because we see it is true in Jesus' life. These basics are what Jesus believed about our heavenly Father—what He taught and what He lived.

Everything Comes From the Invisible
Remember, we're not sight-walking people but faith-walking people. We don't have to see or feel or taste or touch or hear before we believe and receive. Faith receives when it prays. We either rest in our faith, knowing we have received until it becomes visible, or we become frustrated and begin to struggle with our faith.

One day when I was driving my car, I was aggravated because something I'd been believing for hadn't happened. I was thinking, What's the holdup on this? What is it?And the Lord spoke to my heart, Faith is not frustrated. I thought, Well, faith is not frustrated, but I'm frustrated.

There I was, wondering and wavering and waiting. Why? Because I had slipped back into I'm going to believe it's happened when I hear about it, or when I see it. It's a slippery bank because we've depended on our senses for so long. Walking by faith and not by sight requires the renewal of our minds, transformation of our thinking, and retraining of our whole way of believing and receiving. And that is not our job. God has given us the Holy Spirit to do that work for us.

Take It!
Every promise of God, every provision for your life, every answer to every problem is in the invisible realm. You and I are not waiting for things to come to us—things are waiting to be taken hold of! Faith brings everything into the visible realm—believing whatever you desire is already yours and taking it.

Do what Jesus said to do in Mark 11:24: Whatever things you desire or want or need, when you pray, believe you take and possess them and you shall have them. Take hold of what God has promised—lay hold of the invisible. Take it today!

First published in the Believer's Voice Of Victory Magazine
by Kenneth Copeland Ministries
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.