We are continuing in our theme of Moving Forward in Faith.
As usual I am going to start with a question:
What are you expecting God to do in your life?
The fact is, we tend to get what we expect out of life.
We tend to see what we expect to see.
We tend to hear what we expect to hear.
We tend to feel the way we expect to feel.
We usually accomplish what we expect we can accomplish.
But Jesus says in Matthew 9:29 “Because of your faith, it will happen.” (NLT)
or as the New King James translates it
“According to your faith let it be to you.” (NKJV)
So perhaps instead of asking What are you expecting God to do in your life?
maybe the question I should ask you this morning is What do you have faith that God will do in your life?
------------------------------------------
It is important for all of to learn how to really live by faith.
Would you like to have more faith?
Have you ever asked God for more faith?
Your not alone, even the apostles asked Jesus to show them how to increase their faith.
The truth is it is God builds our faith by testing it.
Faith is like a muscle and when it’s stretched and pulled it will develop.
James 1:3 reminds us “For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”
You can’t develop your faith just by sitting in church, singing a few songs and listening to someone preach for a few minutes on a Sunday.
Your faith develops as it is tested by the circumstances, situations, issues and problems of everyday life.
James 1:12 reminds us that “God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation.”
Do you feel like your faith is being tested?
If we are honest, we know it was tested last week and we know it will be tested this week too.
Any and every moment of the day our faith can be tested.
Our reactions to the circumstances, the situations, the issues - the problems of everyday life - that all of us face highlight where we really place our faith and our trust.
We can try to rely on our own strength and wisdom or by faith we can trust Father God.
Every day we have opportunities to build our faith. To walk by faith and not by sight.
To trust God in the detail.
The thing is, we want more faith, we want to grow, we want to move forward in faith
- but we want the easy route to it...
we want the faith - but we don’t want the trials, we don’t want the testing.
--------------------------------------------------------
There are many ways that God can test our faith but I want us to consider only three of them this morning - all starting with the letter P.
The first is this: Our faith is tested by life’s problems.
Problems, pressures, difficulties, tough circumstances. The stresses of everyday life in a broken world.
In Psalm 25:16-18,21 King David prayed
“Turn to me and have mercy,
for I am alone and in deep distress.
17My problems go from bad to worse.
Oh, save me from them all!
18Feel my pain and see my trouble.
Forgive all my sins.
21May integrity and honesty protect me,
for I put my faith in you.”
Do you ever feel like that?
Your problems seem to go from bad to worse.
Let me remind you of the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 5:3-5
“We can rejoice, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
Problems and trials help our endurance. Nothing ever happens by accident in the life of a follower of Jesus.
Some problems we bring on ourselves.
Some problems are the result of other peoples actions or decisions,
we can be both the perpetrator and the innocent victim.
Your past may have shaped you, but it does not define you. In Christ, by faith you have the victory.
If you’re a child of God this morning, nothing can come into your life without Father God’s permission.
Things don’t creep up on God.
God will never say, “Well, I didn’t expect that to happen”
There are no mistakes in God’s plan for the life of a believer.
Problems help us to have a deep rooted faith in a God who is bigger than we are.
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the seed and warns that those who do not have deep roots, won’t last long.
In Matthew 13:21 He says “They will fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word.”
The problems we face in life are not easy.
If life was easy then we wouldn’t require any faith.
It’s in the problems, in the difficulties that we learn to trust God - to dig deep - to reach out in prayer.
The Bible often compares our problems and difficulties to a furnace.
The furnace of a refiner’s fire who heats it up so high that the gold and silver melt and all the impurities are burned away.
God speaking to the prophet Daniel in Daniel 12:9 says of His people “Many will be purified, cleansed, and refined by trials.”
What impurities are there in your life that still need to be burned away?
Again God speaking of His people through the prophet Zechariah in Zechariah 13:8-9 said
I will bring that group through the fire
and make them pure.
I will refine them like silver
and purify them like gold.
They will call on my name,
and I will answer them.
I will say, ‘These are my people,’
and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’
In your problem do you know the Lord is your God?
Do you know that Father God is with you?
Do you know that God has a plan for you?
Do you know that Father God has a purpose for your life and He’s going to help you through it?
God’s purpose for you is far greater than the issue, situation, circumstance, problem, pain or difficulty you are going through right now.
God uses the problems. He tests our faith and He builds our faith in the easy times of life and in the problems.
===============================
Second point
Our faith is tested through God’s precepts
His precepts - his commandments that we are meant to follow.
Yes I know we live under grace and not under law.
Yes I know Jesus died to set us free - but that does not give us the freedom to live and behave however we want.
Take the book of James as an example - in just 108 verses there are 54 commands that we as born again believers are meant to follow.
If you get your bible and look through the New Testament you will find over 1,000 precepts, commandments, that we as believers are supposed to follow.
Some of God’s precepts and commands we are comfortable with, others can inconvenience us,
some we struggle and others we think are impossible for us to follow.
Precepts like Matthew 6:34 “don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Anybody struggle with that one?
Or 1 Thessalonians 5:8 “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”
Do you follow that command?
What about Ephesians 4:32 “be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you”
Is that a command you skip over?
Forgive. You don’t know what they did.
How can I forgive that?
forgive just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
How about the command in James 5:16 “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
Maybe we are ok with the pray for each other part, but the Confess your sins to each other bit...
It’s about trust isn’t it.
I’m not suggesting you stand up now and tell everyone what your struggling with right now - but is there someone you trust that you could ask to pray for you?
Gods precepts test our faith.
Are you going to trust what God says is right to do,
or are you going to believe what you think is right to do?
All of the precepts all of the commands are there to test our faith.
When God gives us a command in the Bible it is a demand that is placed on our life and it’s a test of our faith.
The test is are you going to trust what God says to do, what He says is right.
Or will you rely on your own opinion, what you think is right in your own eyes?
--------
In Hebrews 11 - The chapter of faith we read about so many trusted God and acted by faith, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and all the prophets.
They had faith,
The people followed God’s precepts, they follwed His commands and they grew in faith.
Faith can requires risk.
It’s not about being comfortable and understanding everything in advance.
It’s about allowing God to test and grow our faith.
Is God asking you to take a step of faith?
Will you do it?
You may not understand it
but by faith will you do it?
==============================
Our faith is tested through Life’s Problems.
Our faith is tested through God’s Precepts
God tests our faith through difficulties, through demands.
Third point
Our faith is tested through Our Patience.
If every prayer had an instant answer,
if your every need was met before you knew there was a need,
if problems never happened,
then we wouldn’t need faith
our faith would never grow stronger.
But it is not that way - we have to be have patience.
2 Corinthians 6:6 reminds us that “We prove ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, by the Holy Spirit within us, and by our sincere love.”
Do you enjoy waiting for things to happen?
In the supermarket do you search for the shortest queue?
On a journey, do you look for the quickest route?
In both our daily lives and our spiritual lives we want to avoid delay.
The truth is our faith often grows most when we have to wait patiently for God to act.
What we see as delay, is God’s perfect timing.
Think about the people of Israel on their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.
A journey could have taken weeks, took them forty years.
The Bible tells us that God led them on their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.
So why was there such a long delay?
Perhaps because God was more interested in developing their faith than in getting them from one place to another by the quickest route.
Deuteronomy 8:2 says “God led you all the way in the desert these forty years to test you in order to know what was in your heart.”
In my own life, it’s probably in the area of patience that God has worked most on to develop my faith in Him .
He’s tested me my patience & developed my faith.
Three times in my secular career, my position was made redundant.
Tough times when I had to learn to wait patiently on God.
Tough times that developed my faith.
Tough times that caused me to trust God’s plan for my life.
And because of those times I was willing to follow the path God had planned for me.
Because of those times in my life - you have the joy of listening to me this morning.
It’s incredible to see what God can do when by faith we wait for His purposes and plan to happen.
---------------------------------------------------------
Maybe you are waiting for something right now. Maybe you’ve been waiting a long time.
While you’re waiting remember God is with you.
He will never leave you alone.
Isaiah 64:4 reminds us that “God acts for those who wait for Him.”
Friends wait for Him.
You maybe waiting BUT God IS working.
Wait in faith - God is working.
God is at work in ways you cannot see.
God is not going to snap His fingers and give instant answers to your every prayer because He wants you to grow in faith.
If we are really going to grow in faith we have to learn to wait patiently.
===============================
In closing, let me go back to where we began...
I started by asking
What are you expecting God to do in your life? and
What do you have faith that God will do in your life?
Do you want God to increase your faith?
Are you willing to pray “God, increase my faith.” ?
Do you need to pray, “God, I need You to increase my faith even through the problems of life.”
Do you need to ask God to help you know that you are not alone?
To know you have a purpose,
to know He will give you the strength to make it through.
What is it in your life that you know God has told you to do but you haven’t done it yet?
Maybe you need to pray more.
Maybe you need to read your Bible more.
Maybe you need to forgive someone.
Maybe it’s something I haven’t mentioned but you know what it is. It’s in your heart right now.
Maybe you need patience while you are waiting for God to do something?
Maybe you’re thinking, When God?
How long God? Why hasn’t it happened yet?
God’s encouragement to you over and over again in the Bible is, don’t give up.
God is with you.
Wait as He increases your faith, wait as He works out His plan.
Maybe you need to pray, Lord, help me to wait.
Maybe you need to pray Lord, increase my faith.
Be encouraged this morning: “Because of your faith, it will happen.”
Amen? Amen
