Sunday February 24th, 2008
Series: the Fight part eight
Scripture: Romans 10:17
Sermon: Faith For Today
Speaker: Pastor Michael West
When you pray, do you pray in faith? Or are you talking to God, getting a bit of temporary relief? When you pray, you have to pray with confidence. No confidence, no faith. Faith is not activated to the point that when you rise up from your prayer you really do expect a change.
How does faith come? By the Word, by hearing the Word—Romans 10:17
Faith doesn’t come by reading in your head, but by hearing what you read. All things are possible to him who believes—Mark 9:23.
I believe God’s plan of salvation for man is still His plan and everything that is going on is working to fulfill a worldwide outreach—Matthew 24:14
This means that the war in Iraq isn’t about oil or expanding democracy, that globalization of the nations isn’t about commerce only, it’s not about your circumstance, it isn’t just about those things, it is about opening the nations up and tearing down barriers so people can hear the Gospel. Internet and satellite aren’t just about expediting world trade, but to enhance the outreach of Christians to the world for Jesus.
Yes there is a lot of evil traveling those highways and byways as well, but like Daniel 12:4 says: In the last days mans knowledge would increase. God’s heart is still and will always be about reaching the nations.
We need to be more sensitive to His compassion and pray for laborers for the harvest, it is ripe.
One of the great errors of the Church is to base faith and standards by yesterday’s achievements. There are still many promises to be fulfilled before Jesus returns. In fact the Bible says that the church will experience not only perilous times—II Timothy 3:1
But times of renewal and restoration—Acts 3:21
We need to plan on seeing some things that our fathers didn’t—
Acts 2:19-21
We can’t measure ourselves by the success or failures of our predecessors.
We learn two lessons in II Samuel 5:6—
This is about the time when David captured Jerusalem. If he had measured himself by his predecessors, he would never have completed the task. You see, Israel greatest heroes from Joshua to Judges had tried to conquer the Jebusites and lost miserably every time. They were a fierce mountain people, contemptuous toward David and Israel when they heard David was coming to take back the land—to the point they mocked David.
The first lesson is this: Those who desire to see the awesome promises of God fulfilled, HE says to us, Don’t be conditioned by the past...my mother did, her mother did, I will and so will my children...just because you haven’t seen the power manifested, know this, things can change overnight with God in the equation.
Second lesson: it probably won’t be the devil himself who comes out to defeat us, most likely it will be the doubters and you must guard against the misguided advice of an unbelieving Christian.
Remember the taught of the Jebusites? The blind and lame will turn you away. We may stand firm in faith against the spiritual hosts of wickedness only to be defeated by the spiritually blind and lame sitting next to us in the church.
Who are the blind? Simply, the ones who do not see the vision you see. They are blind to the faith future God has put in you r heart. Do not allow those who would be unequally yoked become your counselors. Many a Christian go astray because of this type of bad counsel. Beware of becoming sympathetic toward the spiritually blind...a little leaven of their unbelief can undermine your faith in the time of battle.
And then along come the emotionally lame. These are the stumbler’s, stumbling over something or someone in the past. They no longer walk stride for stride with Jesus. Beware of sharing your dreams with cynics.
If you heed the warnings of the lame, it is only a matter of time before their woundedness and lack of grace depletes your strength and then you will become overly cautious and suspicious too.
Counsel from other Christians, we need that. Remaining forgiving, we need to do that, even when they remain in opposition, but we cannot allow the words of the spiritually blind and emotionally lame to guide us.
Remember the Word IS God and these people remember are not our real enemies. The real enemy is the spiritual forces at work all around us. And remember, if we are suffering from being lame or blind, Jesus can heal us.
History is on the adversary’s side when you think about it. Not one of our predecessors was able to overthrow this spiritual enemy and you can feel the devil’s scorn when pastors and people of God begin to pray for revival.
His assignments and taunts are not without substance, they can weaken the strongest Christian as history has shown us in our day. This is not a game. It is real and to when this fight we must be strong and united and remember Habakkuk 2:2-3
To live by faith is to believe until the vision He gave comes to pass. David believed God, and in spite of history being on the side of the Jebusites—II Samuel 5:7 tells us: David captured the stronghold of Zion.
Something in David from his early years urged him on toward the goal, for the victory—I Samuel 17:54 tells us: that after killing goliath, David took the head of his enemy and brought it to Jerusalem and remember, at that time it was called Jebus and was occupied by the Jebusites.
It’s like David was saying: I’ll be back. I’m young, I conquered this Philistine and I’ll be back!
In less than 20 years it was so. David had conquered the stronghold of the Jebusites and the city was renamed “the city of David” and then would soon be called Jerusalem, which means the City of Peace.
All of this is not about the fulfillment of our lives, but the fulfillment of God’s Word. God’s Word will not return to Him void without fulfilling the purposes which He spoke.
When David heard the taunts of the Jebusites, he didn’t turn back.
You see, David interpreted the battle in light of the promises of God. At stake was not David’s integrity, but God’s: Genesis 22:17
The enemy may have had history on it’s side, David had the unalterable Word of God. It was David’s heritage to take back the city, but if you recall, it is also the heritage of Abraham’s spiritual offspring to be the prevailing force and influence of God in their communities and through Christ, possess cities.
That is not my word or yours, it is God’s Word, the God of the angel armies of heaven. He said it and He will fulfill it. God said nations will come to light—Isaiah 60:3—
Let’s take God at His Word. Remember Mark 9:23? All things are possible—Do you believe or are you just a nice unbeliever who goes to church?
I would rather die in faith without receiving the promise—Hebrews 11:13 than to live life doubting.
Let me ask you, is it not true to have tried and failed be better than to not have tried at all? What if we succeed? What if, through perseverance, prayer and living a Christian, born again, Spirit-filled, God fearing, God believing, Bible walking life, letting Jesus impart to us His perseverance and His character, we do it?
What if we find God is actually helping us to see our cities healed and our nation turn back? What if we listen more and worship more and pray more and live more and act more, like God wants and we let Him work through us more than we have ever let Him work through us in our entire Christian life and we started today? What will happen? Not what would or could, but what will happen?
God’s Word come alive and manifest—that’s what would happen!
Lord, it is You Who promised nations would come to our light, forgive us our unbelief and wavering from the conditioning of our yesterdays failures or in light of what we think we have attained. I believe that You have prepared our nation for great things. We will follow Your promise to dislodge our enemies, even as David conquered that great city, called Jerusalem—IN Jesus Name. Amen.
