There must be definiteness in our transactions with God. He has been definite with us, giving us very definite promises, stating them in very definite terms, so simple that a child can understand them. You must be definite with Him. We are definite in our business dealings with others, especially in any matter of importance that involves a money transaction. How careful we are to have a perfect understanding. We say we are “making a deal” or “closing a deal” with a person.

There comes a time, a moment when we write our name on the dotted line and in a very definite, careful manner; we close the deal. Just so, there must be a definiteness in closing a deal with God. There must be a definite moment in which we (so to speak) write our name on the dotted line under His promises, take Him at His Word, and close the deal. At that moment it is done; we drive the stake down, and forevermore count it a closed matter. Praying is now turned to praising. Asking is turned to receiving. Pleading is changed to praising. The future tense changed to the present. We are no longer petitioning, we are appropriating. Our whole attitude is changed; hope has changed to faith. Faith-belief in the things not seen. Oh, what a pity that we can take man’s word so easily, and be so definite in our transactions with each other, and be so indefinite in our transactions with God, so wishy-washy, as though prayer were an ethereal, uncertain sort of thing that did not really mean anything anyhow.

We get into the habit of asking, asking, asking, and not receiving, then making excuses for the Lord as though we had forced Him into a tight place of some kind and had to make explanations for Him, by saying, “Oh, I guess I wasn’t worthy,” or “I didn’t pray long enough,” or “I didn’t get enough people to pray,” or “The Lord had some unknown reason why He didn’t give it to me:, when oftener than anything else the truth of the matter is, we did not have appropriating faith. We were not definite with Him.

The very essential principle of faith we are ignorant of, i.e., that we must believe that we receive. This is the principle of faith around which so-called “science,” “philosophical societies,” and “modern philosophers” have wrapped unscriptural teachings and presented them to the world as new things. They are bloodless religions that take a part of the wonderful whole and distort it beyond recognition. Thousands upon thousands of people have left our churches seeking mental and physical relief in these modern cults, just because this little grain of truth, i.e., the principle of faith, has been enlarged upon and explained to them for the first time by these cult leaders and like dying men grasping at a straw they see hope where there has been despair, but they do not see that with this grain of truth there is mixed so much that is false that by accepting them they are denying some of the foundation truths of the Gospel.

This many have done in order to gain physical deliverance. Poor deluded hearts, they do not realize that the enemy often uses truth from the Word of God, and mingles it with the false, thus striving to make the counterfeit religious substitute for the genuine. And thousands accept the counterfeit because it has scripture in it. But we of the churches have neglected this mighty principle of faith and as a result, not one out of a thousand knows anything about appropriating faith, that is, how to get things from God.