Grace Emmanuel Church

Pastor Sam Chess

THE POWER OF FAITH

(The Path To Faith)

We’re talking about faith… what it means to walk in faith, what it means to believe God for the impossible situations of your life. How is your faith doing. Is it current and active. I’m not asking how your faith was back in 1992 when you faced that difficult year. How is your faith walk… this week.

One thing that needs constant replenishing in our lives…is faith.

Did you ever notice that you seem to have great faith one day.. And a month later you face a new situation and you begin to worry and doubt……..

We cannot tackle today’s challenges with yesterday’s faith.

I’m trying to challenge each of us, (including me), to live a life of faith beyond what we have experienced before… maybe beyond what we even thought was possible.

I. The Path of Faith, Illustrated:

Let me give you another Biblical character who found himself in an impossible situation, where the only path open to him …was the path of faith.

Genesis 6:9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God….11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it:

Watch this, this will be helpful..

18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them."

We love this story and we teach it to our kids.. But imagine yourself in this situation. Noah had no frame of reference to even know what a flood was. It had never, ever rained. The earth was covered with a canopy of water, which was great if you wanted to live to be as old as Methusaleh,… bad.. if God told you he was going to let the water canopy loose and drown every living thing on earth.

God was asking Noah to do something so radical, so far outside the realm of “every one else is doing it :… that if he followed what he thought to be God’s plan and failed he would be humiliated beyond belief.

The day Mike Leach attached that little sign to the bigger sign up at the new church that said… “Financed by Almighty God“…. how many of us looked at that sign, and looked at the empty dirt behind the sign and thought: “If that sign sits there with the empty dirt behind it for very long, God is going to look mighty silly”.

If we felt that way, imagine what thoughts flitted through Noah’s mind. I don’t believe, for a moment, that God gave Noah, this seemingly absurd assignment to accomplish and Noah immediately said… Sure God…. Why not!

He may have wrestled with the idea for a time…maybe a long time…. Like we do!

But I can tell you, with absolute certainty, what finally happened. At some point, in Noah’s mind, the mental picture of a rainless earth was replaced by a flooded earth. God broke through with the reality of what was coming with such force that, in Noah’s mind, it became a sure thing.

Every person, in Scripture, who had faith, were people who were able to catch a glimpse over the hill of what was… and grasp a picture in their spiritual mind of what God wanted to be! Into their minds came the assurance of what was not as if it already were!

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.

(NLT)

II. The Path to Faith, Illuminated ( lighted up…made clear)

Walking in faith seems to always take place in the context of prayer, asking of God…hearing from God.. So you may want to think of these steps as “Steps to the prayer of faith.”

I often quote this:

James 5:14-15 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Wow, that simple… If your sick, call the elders, they will pray for and anoint you, you get well!

That’s not quite what it says…. It says the prayer of faith will make the sick well.

Prayer alone is not enough… it has to be a prayer of faith!

How do you go about making a “prayer” into a “prayer of faith”

How do you do that in your own life? What’s the difference between you simply offering a prayer to God and you offering a life changing, circumstance adjusting, prayer of faith?

A) Steps to Faith

1) Step One: Desire

All my life I have heard prayer described as us bringing God our needs and wants. God answers us in one of three ways. God may answer with a yes and we can put a notch in our belt for squeezing one through. Often God answers No. and we walk away sorry that we even bothered to ask. Sometimes…perhaps, most often God answers with a maybe, perhaps some other time, not now, not in the way you ask it.

If you call on God, in faith, he will definitely answer your prayer with a perhaps, probably, possibly, maybe someday definitive answer!

That kind of thinking is so foreign to the Bibles description of prayer. The Bible presents prayer as something that you expect to be answered…. positively. There are conditions to having you prayers answered…we studied them on Wednesday Evening..

1) Un-confessed sin will block God’s response

1 John 3:21-22 Dear friends, if our conscience is clear, we can come to God with bold confidence (faith). 22And we will receive whatever we request because we obey him and do the things that please him. NIV)..

2) Rejection of, or disinterest in, God’s Word

Proverbs 28:9 One who turns away his ear from hearing the law,
Even his prayer is an abomination. (NKJV)

3) Idolatry; Putting other things in God’s place

4) Pride

5) Un-resolved issues with other people

and 6) Selfishness

Here’s where I want to focus on for the next few minutes as we define this first step.

One of the things I struggle with when I’m asking God to for something, particularly when it involves my personal life, is with whether or not I’m being selfish. We hear so many people on TV telling us that if you ask God for riches, and you believe in faith, God will give you vast riches, and if you ask God for a well body he will always give you a totally well body, and on the list goes.

This should creates question marks in our minds.. If you go to a third world country where many Godly people spend their whole day just searching for enough to eat for that day… it should cause you to question whether God really wants all Americans to be rich.

If you see a Christian person living with a disease and you then discover that their sickness has actually become their open door to minister to the world in a way they never could… had God healed them, it should raise questions in your mind about whether God wants everybody well all the time.

So how do you know what things in your life you can legitimately ask and believe God for and which things are self serving?

God is very clear:

James 4:3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (NIV)

There is unquestionably a problem when we ask things from God that are purely selfish.

But is just as big a problem when we don’t ask at all… The verse just before James 4: 3 is…

James 4:2 You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous for what others have, and you can't possess it, so you fight and quarrel to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don't have what you want is that you don't ask God for it.

Kind of sounds like: “durned if you don’t.. durned if you do! If you don’t ask you sure aren’t going to receive anything from God… but if you do ask, and your motives are purely selfish… you’re not going to get anything either..

Many Christians hover in this “never-land of faith” …….. We know that if we ask “amiss” we will not receive and we are so afraid of “asking amiss” that we don’t ask. Now mind you, we also know, that if we don’t ask we won’t receive anything either… but not receiving because we didn’t ask seems a bit more spiritual than not receiving because we were selfish! Either way… we are seriously missing out on what God has in store for us! Jim McKeegan said Wednesday Evening:

Were so concerned about stepping over the line that we don’t step up to the line!

Here me when I say this:

God responds to faith….. rather then need without faith!

The fact that you have a need.. Or even the fact that you desire something to be done about the need, is not enough to move the hand of God. There are many examples, in Scripture, of people who had needs, spent time in the vicinity of Jesus…no change… until they expressed their need… in faith.

Mark 10:47 (Blind Bartmaeus) When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 48 Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 49 Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." So they called to the blind man, "Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you." 50 Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. 51"What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him. The blind man said, Rabbi, I want to see." 52"Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. (NIV)

What you don’t find is Old Bart wringing his hands wondering whether or not his request was going to be favorably received by the Savior. He just blurted out his heart-felt desire.

I wanna see-- Bart, Bart, you’re being self centered, lots of people here have needs….Jesus, on the other hand, obviously liked Bart’s approach.

I think Jesus would have said Bart was childlike: When it comes to faith being like a child is a good thing… essential.

Matthew 18:2-4 For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, 3and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. 4Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom (MSG)

When you child or grandchild comes to you with a request what is his attitude?________

_______________________________________________________________________

When we have a need, it is supposed to drive us to and faith.

When we have a desire it is, also, supposed to drive us to and faith.

2) Step Two: Ask!

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Mark 11:22-24 "Have faith in God," Jesus answered. 23"I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Matthew 18:19-20 "I also tell you this: If two of you agree down here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. 20 For where two or three gather together because they are mine, I am there among them."

John 14:13-14 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. (NIV)

Hebrews 11:1 Faith makes us sure of what we hope for and gives us proof of what we cannot see. (CEV)