BELIEVE
Part 1- Where is Your Faith?
Pastor Ryan Akers
Introduction to the series this morning.(Values- Evangelism, Fellowship, Worship, Ministry, Discipleship) I will not be taking us verse by verse this morning in one particular passage as I normally do but will be hopping around. I really spend some time to set up what we will be diving into over the next 5 weeks.
I want to talk to you about faith this morning. The most commonly used scripture on Faith is found in the book of Hebrews 11:1. “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” My question this morning is, “Where is your faith?” What do you put your faith in? What do you believe will happen without proof that it will happen?
Everyone here puts their faith in something. Driving safely to work, expect things to work (Pastor Eric- stand collapsing- fall 21ft), water will run and lights will be on. There is a major difference between having faith in these things and having faith as the bible speaks about it. The difference is that we have faith in driving, or tree stands, or buying something we want, or that our water and electricity will be running ONLY BECAUSE we have control of it. We have a confidence because I have control in driving my car, I have control in what I buy, I have control in paying my utility bill, I have control in where and how I put up my tree stand. Because we are in 100% control of the situation we have 100% confidence that things will work, that we will arrive safely, that lights will stay on.
But see that is not faith at all. Believing that something will work because you are in control of it is not faith. True faith requires us to relinquish all control and to jump head first into the unknown. Faith is about believing that something will happen even when you have absolutely no control of the situation. And this is where we fail miserably in our spiritual faith. We say we have faith in God, that God is all powerful, all knowing, never runs out of money, will never leave us or forsake us yet the actions we continue to live our lives by prove that we have no faith in God. Our actions do not back up our talk.
What do I mean by that? Coming out of college fired up for Jesus- Church people saying, “I remember when I was like that. That will pass.” The church sticks with things that they can control. Budget- we know we can reach this amount so let’s stick with that amount. Giving- We give exactly what we know we can afford to give, but to step out in faith and give beyond that we refuse to because that would require faith and relinquishing control over finances. Programs- we know that these programs work so let’s stick with what we can control and know work. People- we stick with who we know and feel uncomfortable about branching out. I know these people are my friends and I am comfortable with them. So for me to introduce myself to someone new or to branch out and make new friends means I have no control and so I don’t risk it. Witnessing- Sharing out faith with others is out of our control so we don’t do it. We are afraid that we won’t know what to say, we don’t know how they will react, we have no control over the outcome. It takes faith that is out of our control to witness to others and so we don’t do it because we don’t have confidence and have control over the situation because we are completely unsure what the outcome of the conversation will be.
Discipleship- We fear discipleship, going to small groups for 1 meeting new people which I just mentioned. 2 we may learn something about ourselves that we don’t want to change. God may reveal truth about us we refuse to confront because we would have to repent and seek forgiveness of our sins and 3 people would quickly learn that you are not perfect and all your hard work of wearing your façade every Sunday would be for not. When we relinquish control to God and let him reveal truth in us and about us we feel threatened, fearful, uncomfortable because it takes faith to let him work. It takes us relinquishing control of our lives by trying to become what we want to become and instead let God turn us into the person He wants us to be. Worship- We like a controlled environment- We don’t like the unknown in our worship services. We don’t like to see electric guitars and contemporary music because its unknown, its uncomfortable, its not what we are used to, its out of our control and comfort. We like what we can control. We like to stick with what we have always done. Ministry- We are afraid to serve because we are scared of the unknown. We don’t know what we are doing, we fear making a commitment, we are afraid we will hate where we are serving and it requires us to take a leap of faith know that it will work out. So we help with things we can control, don’t take time, and doesn’t require us to step out of what makes us feel comfortable.
And again I think to begin relinquishing your time. Not just your money but your time to God is something that we really struggle with. To give God time means less time for what we want to do. But when we became believers our hearts changed, our minds changed. We became a child of God and now our attitude must become, “it’s not about what I want and how I want it because that is the sin in me speaking but it is now about what God wants.” I give him my time and money because it pleases him, I serve because it pleases him, I step out in complete faith because it pleases him and because I WANT TO DO IT. A true Christian never sees the commands of God and the will of God as boring, never mundane, never done with a grumbling heart. Instead it is done with complete joy. Christ has paid the price so you can be saved. You are now a new creation, reborn with a new energy and a new reason for living. We live for God and God alone and we take delight in obeying his commands. They are not burdensome instead they are a joy to follow. I John 5:3 says, Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. That is what faith does. Faith is a gift given by God through the Holy Spirit that gives us the ability to live for Him in this sick and sinful world. Those who are full of sin and who live life for themselves have no faith. Only those who know Christ are given true faith. When we are given true faith, the gift of faith, then we become more than conquerors. We no longer fear the world and what the world can do to us instead we put our complete hope, faith, and trust in God our Father. Faith in God gives us confidence to overcome the struggles of the world. And the world will look at us as weird and peculiar because they don’t understand why we can stand so firm in the midst of such pain and suffering around us.
We can stand firm in faith in this sick and sinful world because we as believers are only temporary residents. This world is not our home. I Peter 2:11-12 says, Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. 12 Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world. Phil 3:20 says, But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. This world is no longer our home. Our home is in heaven, but our mission while we are alive is on this earth. And while we are on this earth we are to live faithfully and obediently to the commands of God. We are not to let ourselves get caught up in the sins of the world. When the sins of the world enter the church then it becomes petty, shallow, faithless, jealous, hard hearted, lazy and unwilling to move. When God’s people truly live for him than their attitude is the complete opposite. They instead delight in Him.
We now delight in stepping out in faith and going where he wants, doing what he wants, changing what he wants, preaching to whomever and wherever he wants, giving him what he wants in order to see His name glorified and the Gospel of Jesus preached and the lost saved and the saved discipled to a complete maturity. The true believer is like the Apostle Peter who, in Matthew 14, without hesitation steps out of the boat to walk on water with Christ. He relinquished control and believed that Jesus would keep him afloat but even Peter faltered. When the wind started blowing and the waves started crashing he took his eyes off Jesus and for a moment he lost faith that Christ would save him. He doubted Jesus and he started to sink. Having faith is about keeping our eyes on Jesus and believing that no matter what happens in this world, no matter how hard the winds blow and hard much damage the waves cause we will survive because Christ Jesus is in complete control. We will make it because God our one and only true Father is protecting us.
All believer’s potentially hurt themselves because they don’t take a chance to step out in faith and do something that is totally out of their control. If a church will only do things that they know will work and that they know will be successful and that they know they can afford then that is a church that will die a slow death. It will be a church that will not see people saved and it will be a church where the Holy Spirit will not dwell. A church, and by church I mean the people within that church, without faith is no church at all. It is just a group of people who meet once a week to halfheartedly worship a God that they kind of believe in.
That is not what God wants from His people. If you read the scriptures for any length of time you will not find men and women who just did the mundane and fell into a routine and stuck with the status quo because they were afraid to rock the boat. The word of God is full of revolutionaries who absolutely turned the religious world upside down and many times did the absolute unthinkable. In Genesis 6 we see a revolutionary named Noah. Noah was a man who God considered the only righteous man on earth at the time. God gives Noah the task to build a boat that would take over 100 years to build and put 2 of every kind of animal on it because the earth was about to be flooded and everything not in the ark would be destroyed. Can you imagine the ridicule Noah would have taken by people who probably thought he was out of mind?
Or how about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who refused to worship the king and were willing to be thrown into the furnace. They had complete faith that God would ensure their survival. They were tossed into the furnace and they did not burn up. Or how about Abraham who because of his faith and obedience and faith in God was willing to kill his own son because God told him too. The prophet Elijah by faith took on the entire priesthood of Baal on Mt. Caramel. John the Baptist wore animal skins and ate locusts and by faith preached a message of repentance because Christ was coming soon.
Hebrews 11:17-40. It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, even though God had told him, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.” Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead. It was by faith that Isaac promised blessings for the future to his sons, Jacob and Esau. It was by faith that Jacob, when he was old and dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons and bowed in worship as he leaned on his staff. It was by faith that Joseph, when he was about to die, said confidently that the people of Israel would leave Egypt. He even commanded them to take his bones with them when they left.
It was by faith that Moses’ parents hid him for three months when he was born. They saw that God had given them an unusual child, and they were not afraid to disobey the king’s command. It was by faith that Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to share the oppression of God’s people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward. It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger. He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible. (He kept his eyes on Christ even when the wind blew and the waves crashed.) 28 It was by faith that Moses commanded the people of Israel to keep the Passover and to sprinkle blood on the doorposts so that the angel of death would not kill their firstborn sons.
It was by faith that the people of Israel went right through the Red Sea as though they were on dry ground. But when the Egyptians tried to follow, they were all drowned. It was by faith that the people of Israel marched around Jericho for seven days, and the walls came crashing down. (What if they gave up after 6 days?)
It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute was not destroyed with the people in her city who refused to obey God. For she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. How much more do I need to say? It would take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and all the prophets. By faith these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received what God had promised them. They shut the mouths of lions, quenched the flames of fire, and escaped death by the edge of the sword. Their weakness was turned to strength. They became strong in battle and put whole armies to flight. Women received their loved ones back again from death. (Does this sound like typical routine, mundane Christianity to you guys? What I am reading here is exactly the kind of faith God’s people are very much missing today.)
But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground. All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.
WOW! These people had FAITH. They didn’t just half heatedly believe in God they gave their lives for Him. They completely relinquished control of everything they could have controlled and were willing to be called crazy and stupid. They were willing to be killed for what they believed. They didn’t just hope God would move. They EXPECTED GOD to move. They expected God to fulfill His promises. They EXPECTED God to do miracles. We know they didn’t do it perfectly. We know these incredible men and women of faith also sinned. Noah got drunk, David had an affair, Moses murdered and disobeyed, Abraham slept with a servant, and all the apostles denied Jesus. They were not perfect but they had faith in Jesus Christ the Messiah. They believed with everything in them that God would do the supernatural and save them from their sins by providing a perfect lamb to die for them. And today because of Christ death we can be saved through grace alone, through faith alone, and through Christ alone. Our sins are completely forgiven. That miracle on the cross and the miracle of the resurrection and the promise of Christ returning is what gives us the faith and the drive to never allow ourselves to settle for mediocrity. Our faith in the Father drives us to believe in the impossible. To believe that God still moves today, believe that Jesus is still coming, believe that if we have faith we can still move mountains, believe that all things are possible through Christ who gives us strength.
Many of you in this church who have been here for years and years you have seen some tremendous times and you have seen some very dark years. For the last 10 years you have seen pastor’s come and go. You have seen ugly disputes among people who were supposed to be Christians. You have seen this church hammered in the local media over the school closing. You have lost sleep over how the bills would be paid because the money just wasn’t there. Yet, during all of that this church still saw the lost saved and baptized. We still saw God literally heal the sick. We still went when God called to help the hurting on the mission field overseas and on the destroyed shores of Mississippi and Louisiana. During some of our most difficult year’s even before I arrived there have been men and women of faith within this church who stood above the petty issues, the arguing, the worrying and who said to God, “Here I am Lord, send me.”
They, like the men and women of Hebrews 11 had incredible faith. Faith to believe that the power of Christ is greater than any man made problem. Faith to believe that even today 2000 years after the last words of Revelation were written God still moves, He still saves, He still performs miracles, He still provides, He still disciplines, He still calls up men and women to GO. To preach the gospel to all nations baptizing them in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. His command is still clear as crystal that we are to love the lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to still today BELIEVE that God moves. He moves in our 5 values that we hold to as a church. Our worship, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship and in our ministries. He still moves.
We should not be a people who have the attitude that we hope God moves but we should EXPECT God to move. We should not be a people who look at an opportunity to step out in faith and give God nothing but What If’s. What if God, What if God? We need to be a people who look the seemingly impossible and crazy and maybe a little stupid in the eye and say, “alright God, how?” God is looking for men and women of faith who will quit focusing on why something can’t be done and actually believe that nothing is impossible with God.
I BELIEVE God still wants to move in this church. Do you BELIEVE? Just in our town there are literally thousands who do not know Christ. They do not know what it is like to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We need to change that and we need to do it at any cost. We minister to literally hundreds of children on this campus who do not know Jesus Christ. We need to reach them no matter the cost. There are many hungry, hurting, and homeless in our community we need to reach out to them no matter the cost. In 2009 we need to refocus on why the church exist. It exist to reach the lost and to disciple the saved into mature followers of Jesus Christ. It exists to help the hurting and the hopeless. The church does not exist to entertain. It does not exist to please us. It is not about us. Its not about hymns vs. contemporary, its not about what the pastor wears on Sunday’s, its not about worrying about money and budgets, its not about keeping up with the big church’s and latest fads. It is about seeing the lost saved and the saved discipled. For almost 4 years now as your lead pastor we have done some good things. People have been saved, baptized, healed. The campus has been improved, mission trips have been taken and this church has come out of an extremely difficult time in 2005 when the school closed only to be unified and stronger than ever. We have seen some amazing new families make this their home church. But I really believe we have hardly done anything yet. I believe we are right where God wants us to be to see Him really move.
And I believe in 2009 God will move in this church like never before. This church has been through hell and back and now I believe our best years are absolutely ahead of us, but we must do it together, we must dream together, we must step out in faith together. We must relinquish control we must have faith that God can still do what our limited and feeble minds see as impossible. This is what I want you to take home: Life without walls. This is our motto this year. Our faith in God is about living life without walls. It’s about stepping out of our comfort zones and what we have always known and grown up with and letting God take us wherever he wants us to go. It’s about being a part of something bigger than yourselves. It’s about committing to the church, serving somewhere, joining a small group, going on a mission trip, and witnessing to the lost at work, at home, wherever. It’s about giving God time, it’s about being on our knees in prayer, it’s about not just saying we expect God to move but our actions prove that we expect God to move, even in little old Warrenton, MO. God is not done with this church, he is not done with this town. On the contrary He is only just beginning. Where is your faith today? Is it in you and what you can control or is it in Christ? Altar Call
