Joe Bedy
Central Christian Church
St. Petersburg, Fl 33711
April 2002
Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Gal 5:23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Faithfulness- from the Greek pistis-which is faith. It means a firm persuasion, a conviction based upon hearing, connected closely to the word persuade. In the NT faith is always used in connection to God, Christ or things spiritual. It is trust, faithfulness to what is believed.
You see the atheist is not faithful to his belief. The difference is this:
Wednesday night when the car pulled out in front of me and I presumed I would be killed, my beliefs and trust in God did not change. I said “ I am dead, I thought about how much I loved my wife and I went to the God I knew and I said, “O.K. Father, I am the one who preaches, I would have walked out of the fire at the WTC with Jesus, but right now, tell me how much injury will I feel, before we make the transition from this world to the next.”
The atheist would have made a paradigm shift, to the God He denies, disobeys and actually hates he would have cried out, “Oh, God, help me save me.”
The main element in our faith is our moment-by-moment relationship to a living, sovereign, almighty, but invisible God.
Someone said to me after the car crash, “have you come closer to God?” The truth is no, and I am not boasting, unless I boast in the Lord, but I have faith in God and if I live or if I die, by faith I live and die for Christ.
I did not question at that moment if God lived and was sovereign in my situation, I knew He was. My question was, “How does this work out from here?”
I had faith in God live or die!
The word pisteuo the Greek verb dealing with the act of faith deals with these three characteristics of faith in the true believer:
1. Being firmly convicted or producing a full acknowledgement of God’s revelation or truth. This conviction is unshakeable, it does not cave into deception, it is not blown by every new idea like a ship without a rudder. When one is fully convicted by what he believes from the revelation of God’s truth he is steady, stable and constant, unfaltering in the pursuit of God’s ways. Faithful people have a deep and sincere love for the truth of God. Paul is contrasting the faithful to the unfaithful in: 2 Th. 2:9-2:12 When he speaks about all of those who will be fooled by lawlessness. 2 Th 2:10 and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.
2 Th 2:11 And for this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false,
2 Th 2:12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
Faithfulness is a love for the truth, faithful people hate the lis and constantly seek the truth. You may get a spanking in my house if you disobey, but it will not be anything close to what you get if you lie to me.
2. The 2nd characteristic of the true believer is a life fully surrendered to God. Once our concentration is on God, all the limits of our life are free and under the control and mastery of God alone. There is no longer any responsibility on you for the work. The only responsibility you have is to stay in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your cooperation with Him. The freedom that comes after sanctification is the freedom of a child, and the things that used to hold your life down are gone. But be careful to remember that you have been freed for only one thing—to be absolutely devoted to God.
We have no right to decide where we should be placed, or to have preconceived ideas as to what God is preparing us to do. God engineers everything; and wherever He places us, our one supreme goal should be to pour out our lives in wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might …”
3. The Christian’s conduct must be inspired by his faith. You see if we are being tossed to and fro because of the circumstances in our life, we may have a faith problem. I f we say we trust God and then live like we do not. We have a problem with our faith. James puts it this way: James 1:5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
James 1:6 But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
James 1:7 For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,
James 1:8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
I did not doubt Wednesday night, I asked how? I had no fear of death, I had sorrow to leave, not for my pain, but for those who I love. If we live a life of doubt in what God has said, we do not have a minor glitch in our faith we have a major problem, with a significant consequence and that consequence permeates every aspect of our lives, through our instability in all our ways.
I hope our faith is a living faith that we are not doubters, like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
May I ask you a question? Please just answer it to yourselves, but as you answer it, if this passage does not describe you, will you ask God to increase your faith? Will you make a choice to trust yourself, and man’s systems less and God more?
Listen as I read, close your eyes and in the truth ask yourself am I being tossed to and fro or does this passage describe me and bring me comfort? 2 Cor 5:5 Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.
2 Cor 5:6 Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord--
2 Cor 5:7 for we walk by faith, not by sight--
2 Cor 5:8 we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
2 Cor 5:9 Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.
I ask you tonight are you blown and tossed like a wave on the sea?
Are you double minded-hearing what God says, but than living as if you do not believe it?
When we pray for rain, in the drought do we carry our umbrella? Or do we pray like those when Peter was in prison for him to be set free, and when the knock comes at the door, doubt that it is really Peter?
If you are like that, the passage says, “do not expect anything from the Lord.”
Isaac said, I do not see the sacrifice, I see the altar, I see the wood, I certainly see your knife, I see I am tied up, I see you ready to kill me. Abraham’s faith, to the servants stay here we will go and worship and come back to you. Even if I kill my son, I believe in the promise of God. God will raise him from the dead, even if I kill my son.
I tell you Christians if we cannot go that far in our faith and our trust, do not expect anything from the Lord.
I think right now I can tell you that firsthand.
If you have His Spirit as a pledge, if you hate this world, if the things of this world are growing faint and dim, if you know while you are here, you have a purpose to walk by faith and that you are of good courage, stable in your ways, you have faith. If you know while you live her you are trapped in a body of death and you long to be set free from the tent you indwell and be present with the Lord, you have faith. But most of all if you are here or there your ambition is to please Him, you have faith. If that is how you are living, expect to receive from the Lord, if you are not what is stopping you?
A Christian who walks by faith accepts all circumstances from God. He thanks God when everything goes good, when everything goes bad, and for the “blues” somewhere in-between. He thanks God whether he feels like it or not.
A faith that hasn’t been tested can’t be trusted.
A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool.
G. K. CHESTERTON (1874–1936)
Beware of worshiping Jesus as the Son of God and professing your faith in him as the Savior of the world, while you blaspheme him by the complete evidence in your daily life that he is powerless to do anything in and through you.
OSWALD CHAMBERS (1874–1917)
3647 Can a faith that does nothing be called sincere?
JEAN RACINE (1639–1699)
Every man lives by faith, the nonbeliever as well as the saint; the one by faith in natural laws and the other by faith in God.
A. W. TOZER (1897–1963)
I LIKED THIS QUOTE BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803–1882)
: Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hand on the doorlatch they die outside.
I DO NOT WISH TO OFFEND ANYBODY, BUT I SEE MANY PEOPLE WHO GET TO THE BRINK OF TRUE FAITH, BUT THEY NEVER REALLY FULLY EXPERIENCE IT BECAUSE THEY REFUSE TO BE BLINDED TO THE NATURAL LAWS THAT EXISTS IN THE UNIVERSE. I AGREE THAT NATURAL LAWS EXISTS, CAUSE AND EFFECT RELATIONSHIPS ARE REAL. WOMEN AT 90 YEARS OLD LIKE SARAH WOULD LAUGH AT THE THOUGHT OF A PREGANANCY, BUT I BELIEVE MORE IN THE SUPERNATURAL LAWS OF GOD, WHICH CAN OVERRIDE ANY NATURAL LAW KNOWN TO MAN, SIMPLY BY GOD SPEAKING OR BRATHING HIS WILL TO BE DONE. AMEN.
MANY PEOPLE COME TO THE BRINK OR THE EDGE OF FAITH, IN OTHER WORDS THEY WILL WALK RIGHT UP TO THE EDGE OF THE 4000 FOOT CLIFF TO FIND GOD, BUT WHEN THEY SEE GOD IN THE VALLEY BELOW AND HE SAYS JUMP, WELL THEY WILL NOT DO IT AND THEY NEVER REALLY FIND GOD.
What some say about Faith is:
A faith that hasn’t been tested can’t be trusted.
A perfect faith would lift us absolutely above fear.
Beware of worshiping Jesus as the Son of God and professing your faith in him as the Savior of the world, while you blaspheme him by the complete evidence in your daily life that he is powerless to do anything in and through you.
OSWALD CHAMBERS (1874–1917)
Every man lives by faith, the nonbeliever as well as the saint; the one by faith in natural laws and the other by faith in God.
A. W. TOZER (1897–1963)
3654 Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hand on the doorlatch they die outside.
Some people get very close to the edge of faith, I mean they take a peak at it. I see faith at the top of a 4000’ cliff, standing on the edge and many say well by faith I made it to the edge and we did, but God is in the valley 4000’ below He says Jump I promise I will catch you, but we won’t. We get close to Faith, but we don’t really have it.
Faith has no merit where human reason supplies the proof.
POPE GREGORY THE GREAT (C. 540–604)
I think of the story of the man who was going to cross Niagara Falls on a tight wire pushing a wheelbarrow. He asked the crowd, “do you believe I can make it?” One big mucho guy like Stan said, “sure I do!” “Good, the man said, get in the wheelbarrow and come with me.”
How far does your faith go? Do you have wheelbarrow faith that rides along with God? Or bystander faith that looks at God from the edge, but will not plunge all the way in?
I don’t know what kind of faith you have? But I know if you want more read and know His Word.
I prayed for faith and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” I had up to this time closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.
DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY (1837–1899)
For each of us the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God. Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all be swept away, and we shall have only God. To the man of pseudo faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain.
A. W. TOZER (1897–1963)
