Faith Based on Relationship, Not Results
🌿 Faith Based on Relationship, Not Results
“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” — Luke 22:42
There is a faith that rejoices when prayer brings healing, breakthrough, promotion, deliverance, and visible change.
But there is another faith—deeper, purer, stronger—that remains standing even when the answer does not come the way we expected.
That is the faith of relationship. That is, faith in the finished works of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“It is never proper to base faith on your improvement after prayer.”
— Prophet TB Joshua
🔑 What Does “Improvement After Prayer” Really Mean?
Because you have faith, you pray. You believe that God will answer. That is correct. That is the nature of biblical faith — it reaches toward God with expectation and trust.
But there is a subtle and dangerous shift that many believers make — and it happens quietly, almost without notice.
After you pray, you begin to watch for signs. You wait for the improvement. You look for the open door, the healed body, the restored relationship, the financial breakthrough. And if it comes, you declare: “God is good!” But if it does not come — if the report remains negative, if the situation worsens, if silence fills the space where you expected heaven’s answer — something breaks. Your faith falters. Your image of God darkens.
That, says Prophet TB Joshua, is what happens when your faith is rooted in results rather than relationship.
“Improvement after prayer” is simply the positive results that follow your prayers — the healing that manifests, the miracle that appears, the breakthrough that arrives. These are good things. But they must never become the foundation of your faith.
If your faith depends on whether the result comes, then it is not faith in God. It is faith in God’s performance.
📖 Jesus Prayed — And Did Not Receive What He Asked For
“Father, if it’s your will, take this cup of suffering away from me. However, not my will but your will must be done.”
— Luke 22:42
I, Samuel, have read this passage more times than I can count. And yet every time I return to it, something new arrests me.
Jesus — the Son of God, the One through whom all miracles flow, the One who raised the dead and calmed the sea, prayed a prayer of faith in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knelt before His Father. He asked earnestly. He made His request known.
And He did not get what He asked for.
The cup was not removed. The suffering came. The cross stood waiting. And yet Jesus did not falter, did not collapse in doubt, did not turn away from God in bitterness.
Why?
Because His faith was anchored in relationship, not results.
🌿 “Father” — The One Word That Reveals Everything
Look carefully at how Jesus began His prayer in Luke 22:42:
He said “Father.”
This is not merely a formal address. In that single word, Jesus declared the foundation of His faith — relationship.
He did not approach God as a desperate person approaching a vending machine of miracles. He did not come calculating how He would feel if the result was yes or no. He came as a Son to His Father.
And notice what followed: “If it is your will.”
This is the language of a person who trusts the relationship more than the result.
He was saying: “Father, I have made my request. But I anchor my faith in You — not in whether this cup is removed. Whatever Your will is, that will be my outcome. And because I know You, I can receive any outcome in peace.”
How many of us pray this way? How many of us begin in the place of “Father” — not as a religious formality, but as a genuine declaration of relationship and then end in the place of “not my will, but Yours”?
Or do we pray with our hearts already fixed on the outcome? Do we silently negotiate: “I will believe as long as the result is what I expect”?
💔 When Results Become Your God
This is the spiritual trap that Prophet TB Joshua was warning against and it is more widespread than most believers realize.
When the result becomes your god:
- You praise God loudly when the miracle comes — and grow cold when it does not.
- You testify boldly in seasons of breakthrough — and pull away from God in seasons of silence.
- You judge God’s goodness by your current circumstances rather than by His eternal character.
- You begin to see God in a bad light the moment His answer differs from your prayer.
I, have observed this pattern in many believers over the years. They come to God with fire and faith. The prayer is answered. The testimony is given. But when a later prayer produces silence — when a sickness lingers, when a door remains closed, when the expected breakthrough does not materialize — the faith that was built on results crumbles.
And the terrifying truth is this:
Some people receive healing and miracles from God but they have never truly heard from Him. They love His blessings but have never pursued His voice.
This is spiritual shallowness dressed in the language of faith.
“It is never proper to base faith on your improvement after prayer.”
— Prophet TB Joshua
The moment a believer ties their confidence in God to the visible results that follow prayer, they have created an idol out of outcomes. The relationship — the living, speaking, breathing connection between a child and their Father has been traded for a transaction.
👑 Biblical Heroes: Faith That Never Depended on Results
The Scripture is filled with men and women whose faith was tested precisely because results did not come the way they expected — and whose relationship with God held them steady regardless.
Job — Faith That Could Not Be Bought or Broken
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”
— Job 13:15
Job lost everything — children, wealth, health. By every measure, God appeared to have not answered his prayers. The results were catastrophic. Yet Job did not abandon God. His faith was not in what God would do for him. It was in who God is.
Job understood that God does not owe us results. But He does offer us relationship.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — “Even If He Does Not”
“Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods.”
— Daniel 3:17–18
These three Hebrew men stood before a furnace with one of the most extraordinary declarations of relationship-based faith in all of Scripture. They did not say: “God will deliver us, so we trust Him.” They said: “Even if He does not — we will still not bow.”
The result was uncertain. The relationship was not.
Abraham — Trusted God Beyond the Promise Itself
“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”
— Hebrews 11:8
Abraham trusted God without a map. He obeyed without knowing the outcome. When God asked him to offer up Isaac — the very promise Abraham had waited decades to receive, he obeyed without demanding a guarantee. He did not demand a result first. He walked in the relationship.
Hannah — Faithful When the Womb Was Closed
“She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.”
— 1 Samuel 1:10
Year after year, Hannah prayed for a son. Year after year, the result did not come. Yet she did not turn away from God. She kept returning to the temple. She kept pouring out her heart before Him. Her faith was measured not by the result but by the relationship she maintained in the absence of the result.
When God finally opened her womb, she did not say: “Now I believe.” Her relationship had been real long before the result arrived.
Jesus — The Ultimate Model of Relationship Over Results
“Father, if it is Your will, take this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”
— Luke 22:42
The cup was not removed. The cross came. And His faith did not waver because His faith was in His Father, not in the answer to His prayer.
🔊 The Greater Miracle: Learning to Hear from Above
Here is a statement that most believers are not ready to receive:
“To learn how to hear from above after prayer is a much greater blessing than what you are looking for.”
— Prophet TB Joshua
Read that again.
Learning to hear from God after prayer is a greater blessing than the miracle you came to receive.
This is a radical repositioning of what we consider valuable in the place of prayer. We come for healing but God wants to give us His voice. We come for breakthrough but God wants to establish intimacy. We come for results but God wants to give us revelation.
What does it mean to hear from above after prayer?
It means that after you have poured out your heart before God, you remain still long enough to receive His response. Not just the result but His thoughts about it. His perspective. His will behind your request. To know what God says about your situation even when what He says is not what you hoped to hear.
And when you receive His voice, even when that voice says “not yet” or “trust Me in this” or “I have a better plan” — that is a greater miracle than the healing you came for.
Because healing can be lost. Miracles can be forgotten. Results will change. But a word from God remains in your spirit forever.
I, Samuel, have come to understand this truth personally. There are prayers I prayed for years without seeing the result I sought. But in those years of waiting, I heard things from God that shaped me more profoundly than any miracle could have. The relationship grew in the silence. The intimacy deepened in the waiting.
The greatest miracle was not the healing. The greatest miracle was the hearing.
📊 Two Kinds of Faith
Faith Based on Results (Faith in Faith) |
Faith Based on Relationship (Faith in the finished works of our Lord Jesus Christ) |
|---|---|
| Believes when the miracle comes | Believes regardless of the outcome |
| Praises God in breakthrough but silent in struggle | Worships God in silence and in storm |
| Sees God as a miracle machine | Knows God as a Father |
| Faith crumbles when prayers go unanswered | Faith deepens in seasons of waiting |
| Pursues God’s hand only | Pursues God’s face above all |
| Breaks when results differ from expectation | Rests in God’s sovereign will |
| Measures God’s goodness by current circumstances | Measures God’s goodness by His eternal character |
🌱 How to Build Faith on Relationship
Begin every prayer with “Father” and mean it. Before you make your request, establish your standing. You are a child coming to a Father who loves you, not a client presenting a demand.
Add “if it is Your will” and surrender to it. This is spiritual maturity. Jesus used this language and He was the Son of God. “If it is Your will” is not a lack of faith; it is the highest expression of trust.
Stay after the prayer. Most believers pray and leave. But the deep intimacy the hearing from above comes to those who remain in God’s presence after the words are spoken. Learn to be still. Learn to listen.
Evaluate God by His character, not your current circumstances. When the result has not come, do not look at your situation and draw conclusions about God. Look at who God has always been — faithful, good, sovereign, loving — and let that anchor your faith.
Pursue His voice more than His hand. Make hearing God your primary ambition in prayer. If you came only for results, you will leave empty when they do not come. But if you came for His presence and His voice, you will always leave full.
Accept that silence is not absence. Some of God’s deepest work in our lives happens in the seasons when He appears silent. He is not ignoring you. He is building something in you that results alone could never produce.
🙏 Prayer
Father, forgive me for the times I have measured Your goodness by the results of my prayers. Forgive me for the times I have praised You when the miracle came and grown distant when it did not. Teach me to call You “Father” — not as a word, but as a truth that governs every prayer I bring before You. Anchor my trust in who You are, not merely in what You do. In every season of silence, every unanswered prayer, every outcome I did not expect — let me hear Your voice. For the greatest miracle is not the healing. The greatest miracle is hearing You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Good Morning 🌄 and PROSPER ✨ today!
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