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Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
THE POWER OF FAITH 2
What is going on in your life that you are trusting God for that can
not possibly happen, apart from the direct personal attention of
God.
What impossible situation have you brought before God, in
faith, and even though your circumstances remain the same…. you
have become certain that an answer
from God is on the way.
Hebrews 11:1-2 Now faith is being sure of what we
hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the
ancients were commended for. (NIV)
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (NKJV)
Hebrews 11:1-2 What is faith? It is the confident
assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the
evidence of things we cannot yet see. 2 God gave his approval
to people in days of old because of their faith. (NLT)
Where in your life do you have hold of a line of faith, the
other end of which connects directly to heaven and you know that
what you have hold of, on this end, links you directly into the
throne room of heaven where God himself is giving personal
attention to your specific need and the return answer here on earth
is as good as done, even though you haven’t seen evidence of it
yet?
Last week we looked at:
I. Faith is not a product of personal ability!
If you can solve all of life’s issues on your own…you don’t need
faith!
II. Faith is not a Product of Reason
Reason says that the only things one can place complete trust in are
those things we can hear, and feel, and smell, and see, and taste.
(Prove scientifically……)
Many in the world, (by far the majority in this world), hold that
the highest form of enlightened thinking comes from those who only
trust what their five senses can demonstratively prove to them.
If you can prove something with your five senses.. you don’t
need faith!
If you never stretch out and believe God for what is not
immediately provable, you haven’t even stepped your toe over the
threshold of faith.
The world says: Seeing is believing… God says believing is
seeing!
Every….every example of faith in the entire Bible is about believing
is seeing…not the other way around!
Let’s talk:
How much of Jesus ministry was based on logic and reason?
How many times did Jesus stop his disciples in the midst of
ministry to a village and say, Let’s sort this out guys…. What
would make the most logical sense here? Never???
Jesus entire ministry was focused around showing the world
that what seemed to be logical on the surface in the human
world was illogical in God’s world…and what makes divine
sense in God’s eternal world leaves most human beings
scratching their heads.
If we are truly living in a fallen world and our present minds are
still struggling with the effects of the curse… does it make any sense
at all that our normal human ways of arriving at what is truth would be
the most accurate…or does it make more sense that real truth is
somewhere just beyond our normal understanding and part of getting to
know our Creator is coming to understand reality from his perspective?
The entire Bible is filled up with examples of this but let me give
you a clear example:
Mark 5:24 ……A large crowd followed and pressed around him.
(Jesus) 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding
for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care
of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting
better she grew worse.
Now there is human logic at its best…. If you’ve have been
hemorrhaging for 12 years you really ought to see a doctor/s.
If you have resources (which apparently this woman did)… you
spend whatever you have to… to try to get well. If you don’t
get well…. your resources aren’t going to do you any good
anyway……
26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many
doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of
getting better she grew worse.
Now, watch how this woman goes from careful, logical, thought to
allowing her screen door to start swinging in the wind:
27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the
crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, "If I just
touch his clothes, I will be healed."
The really, smart types on this earth would say…she just lost
it….right there….she was functioning, as well as could be expected
using her logic, and common sense. She had taken all the steps that a
careful, thinking, intelligent human being should take and then, in
desperation she slipped off into this hocus-pocus faith, gibberish.
I want you to clearly notice the difference between how we think,…
and how God thinks…
Mankind would think she was in the groove until she had that
wild thought about touching the hem of Jesus cloak…
From Jesus perspective, she didn’t even step up to the plate and
put the bat on her shoulder until that point in the story. It was
when she gave up her expectations on a human level that her
confidence in what God could/would do came to the forefront in her
mind. Remember…
The world says: Seeing is believing… God says believing is
seeing!
If you never stretch out and believe God for what is not
immediately provable, you haven’t even stepped your toe over the
threshold of faith.
I know I’ve hammered this theme a lot but I want to make sure we all
get it. In our world science is lauded as the pinnacle of human
thought. (systematic knowledge derived from observation, study and
experimentation) Worked into the very fabric of our society is the
underlying belief that the most advanced thinking comes from those who
accept only what can be observed, studied, and experimented on. As soon
as you put into the equation a belief in something that is not
scientifically provable, (like somebody being healed of a disease by
touching the hem of a divine coat) the sneers begin…..
People who need to believe that sort of mumbo-jumbo to get through
life are tolerated but not taken seriously. You know that was the
foundation of Karl Marx Communist Manifesto. Faith is an “opiate of the
people”. Stupid pheasant people who don’t have enough sense to get
along in life without having a crutch to lean on, develop blind faith
in a nonexistent God. Marx was sure if we could eliminate that from
society…. Intelligence, reason, and common sense would take mankind
into a type of utopia.
You that are old enough to remember the reign…and fall of communism
remember the utter failure of a faithless society. Look at North Korea
now and it’s communist leader Kim Jung (mentally) Ill… Have you seen
the satellite view of North and South Korea?
Notice South Korea (where Christianity is flourishing) and North
Korea where Karl Marx utopia has fully materialized.
I’m getting far afield……
My point is, When God looks down on this earth from a much better
vantage point than a satellite, he sees those in this world who base
all of their beliefs on what can be learned through observation and
study, and experimentation as the least learned and most naïve of all
mankind.
When God put us on this earth he gave us the ability to experiment
until we discovered what was inside an atom but far, far, far, more
important than that; was that God gave us the ability to discover
what was inside the mind of God.
God is not unhappy when we discover a combination of elements that
will create a medicine that will cure disease….but he is infinitely
more pleased when we make a faith connection with Hin;the Creator of
those elements and the human bodies in which we live.
In God’s divine perspective; when we begin to move beyond what we
can control and step over into the world of what we cannot humanly
control we have then, and only then, advanced out of “human life 101”
and started learning the real reason for which we were put on this
earth.
By it’s very definition; faith is something you need when you can’t
control what is getting ready to happen.
Faith perceives as reality what is not revealed to the five senses..
People who learn to walk in faith in the Creator of the universe are
miles ahead of those who’s dependence is in themselves. People who are
self dependent aren’t even on the playing field. When we get to heaven
there will be no brownie points passed out for those who achieved great
levels of observation, study and experimentation…
All of the focus will be on those who learned to step outside of
their own little world and grab hold of the end of a line of faith that
reaches right to the very heart of God.
Faith is the currency of heaven!
A simple woman of average intelligence, and little earthly
influence, in this life, can learn to believe God, in faith, for things
bigger than her life warrants and can from a place of prayer in a tiny
bedroom, in a tiny house, in “podunckville” extend that currency of
faith into the very throne room of God….
And that simple woman can have more effect on what actually
happens on this earth than all the scientists, and philosophers,
and politicians put together.
Faith is the currency of heaven!
God is totally unimpressed by human intelligence. We refer to God as
“omniscient”.
Omni- All; Science- knowledge
The most intelligent person on the earth is like a dribble in the
back corner of God’s intelligence. There is no level of intelligence we
can bring before God that will make him say: Wow; I didn’t know that…I
hadn’t thought of it that way before. God is intensely bored at our
puny attempts to display our knowledge.
On the other hand; the most simple exertion of faith will have God’s
immediate and undivided attention. Faith is the currency of
heaven!...and anyone, anyone who discovers how to use that currency can
receive from God more than all the brainiacs put together.
Like the woman with the hemmorage:
27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the
crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, "If I just
touch his clothes, I will be healed."
29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body
that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized
that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and
asked, "Who touched my clothes?" 31 "You see the people crowding
against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who
touched me?' "
Jesus, wasn’t trying to figure out who had touched Him… he already
knew that before he got out of bed that morning. He was drawing
everyone else’s attention to the situation so he could show them what
faith really was and how it works.
32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then
the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his
feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said
to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be
freed from your suffering."
As long as we are living our lives… operating purely from the
framework that it’s our intelligence and common sense that we will use
to guide our path we will never walk the pathway of faith. God did say
to Isaiah:
Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
(NIV)
Thing is…when God invites us to reason with him…He not suggesting we
get into a debate to convince him of our great logic. When God says
“Come let’s reason together”; He means:
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not
depend on your own understanding. (NLT)
That’s reasonable behavior….. from the created to their Creator.
III, Faith is a conductive force!
Faith is not a product of the mind…it is a product of the heart.
Faith is not a metaphysical idea. It’s is just as real as the
fingers on your hand or the
Skin on your arm.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (NKJV)
Your faith really can change the world around you. Faith can change
your circumstances.. faith can change your body, faith can change your
mind, faith can change your spirit.
You can become a person of faith and have enormous impact on
God’s movement in your life and the life of those around you. You
can grab hold of heaven and bring divine change into your world….
…or you can sit on the sidelines and live purely on whatever
momentum you can create with your own abilities.
Faith is a conductive force available to us all….It is the
conductive force God has chosen to use to achieve what he wants to get
done on this earth.
Please turn down house lights.
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Illustration: In this line is all the power necessary to light
up this room….in this light bulb is everything necessary to bring
massive and sudden change into our environment. The light is not
on…obviously we have a conduction problem.
There has to be some mechanism that will allow the power in this
cord to find it’s way into this bulb so that your world can be
changed. Here it is. This switch will allow the current waiting in
this line to run into the bulb where it can make a difference.
(Flip switch)
That’s what faith is…. All the power of the universe is waiting
to be unleashed in this world by those who have the gumption to
find and turn on the switch. Our faith is that conductive switch.
When we leave it off, all the power of heaven is left
untapped, unused…and so many things that could have been so, so
different; remain unchanged.
When we, sitting in this room, learn to walk in faith, we
unleash a Divine power big enough to change our whole
community…even our world.
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