What is faith? The word "faith" is found in the New Testament 253 times. It must be very important.
Faith is believing that our Bible is the true inspired word of God, without error or contradiction. For me this is easy, for there has been no other book that has change my life like the Bible. It is an instruction book that has all the answers for whatever problems may arise. You can’t pick and choose what you want to believe from the Bible. If there is only one thing in the Bible that you don’t want to believe, then the entire Bible becomes suspect as to its validity for you. This is a case of all or nothing. I know the Bible to be the true Word of God. There are no doubts in my mind or heart.
Let’s read:
Eph 2:8-9
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--
9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
(NIV)
Faith is a personal surrender to God. When we accept Christ as our Savior, we are putting faith that Christ died on the cross for our sins and that God raised Him from the dead. It is through faith that we know that we now have the promise of eternal life in Heaven with God. Faith believes without any doubts.
Let’s read:
Gal 2:20
20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
(NIV)
Faith is a conduct inspired by such surrender to God. When we accept Jesus as the Lord of our lives, then we take on a new way of life. We are no longer our old selves, but we are born again. Our old life of sin has died and we live a new life in Christ. This means that people should be able to see Christ in us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
We are to live by faith in Jesus. This means that we let Him lead us. We trust Him to provide our every need. We are not to worry about tomorrow. Christ will take care of us, if we don’t interfere. I learned the hard way that I can’t solve my own problems, but Christ can, if I let Him do it His way.
So for us to have faith, we must believe in the Word, we must surrender our lives to Christ and we must conduct our lives, so that others can see Christ in us. It is sometimes easy to distinguish a Christian with little faith. They are the ones that seem to worry about anything and everything. As Christians we are to put our trust in God and His promises. God is a holy and righteous God. He cannot and will not break His promises to us. When it seems that our lives are a mess and everything is going wrong, God hasn’t deserted us, we have deserted Him. We have stopped putting our faith in His promises. If you want to live a worry free life, learn to trust God and His Word. Have Faith that God is still in control of everything. What kind of faith must we have? We must have a faith of innocence.
Let’s read:
Matt 18:2-4
2 He called a little child and had him stand among them.
3 And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
(NIV)
I always wondered what it meant to become like little children. One day my granddaughter, Bethany, did something that made me realize what this verse means.
Bethany has such faith in me that it scares me sometimes. She will climb up on the coffee table, stand up, and turn to face me and jump. She doesn’t ask if I am ready to catch her. She doesn’t even check to see if I am watching her. She has the faith that her Grandpa will catch her in his out stretched arms. Bethany demonstrated a faith that all children have in their parents and grandparents. Bethany knows that we will always be there for her, even when she painted our brand new carpet.
Do we trust our Heavenly Father that much? We should! There are times that I may not be around to catch Bethany when she falls, but God is always there to catch us when we fall. Jesus is always there with out stretched arms; ready to lift us up when we are down. When Bethany skins her knee, her mom is there to make it better. When we are hurting because of life’s disappointments, Jesus is standing next to us with out stretched arms, waiting for us to reach out to Him. Do we have the faith of a child knowing that her parents are there for her? We should. God said that He would never leave us nor forsake us. Let’s put our faith back in God and not in ourselves.
Our faith must be as strong as that of a little child. Have you ever tried to convince a child that something didn’t exist like the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, monsters or Santa Claus? Their faith in such things is so great that it is next to impossible to change their beliefs.
One day we took a puppy over to show to Bethany. She hugged it and kissed it and kept saying "puppy, puppy, puppy" over and over again. A couple of days later we were over at her house and she and I was looking at a picture book of animals. We came across a picture of a tiger. Bethany pointed at it and said "puppy". I said no "Tiger". She turned to look at me and emphatically said "no puppy." For several minutes I would say "no tiger" and she would say "no puppy". Finally she screamed "puppy". She got up off of my lap, walked around behind me and started hitting my back repeating the word "puppy". She had learned what a puppy is and she believed the picture of the tiger was a puppy and I was not going to convince her differently. Now Bethany didn’t humble herself like the scripture we just read, but she did show a strong belief in what she thought to be true.
Are we that way when it comes to God’s word? Do we have a faith in the truth of God’s word that no one can convince us differently? We must study the Bible and believe all that it contains to be the true word of God. In the scripture that we read, I think Jesus is telling us that we must have faith that is as strong as that of a child’s faith and that our beliefs should be like that of a child’s where nothing can turn us away from the true Word of God.
When we study the healing miracles that Jesus performed we learn much about faith. Jesus healed according to a person’s faith. There are too many passages on healing and faith to talk about all of them, but here are a few.
1. In Matt 8:5-13 Jesus heals the paralyzed servant of the Centurion because of the Centurion’s faith.
2. In Matt 9:2 some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, He healed the paralytic
3. Remember the woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years? Jesus told her that her faith had healed her.
4. Remember the two blind men calling our to Jesus "have mercy on us Son of David". Jesus said, "According to your faith will you be healed."
5. Jesus healed the Canaanite mother’s daughter, because of the faith of the mother.
6. Jesus raised the ruler’s daughter from the dead because of the ruler’s faith.
We see that even in healing, faith plays an important part. When we pray for healing, do we have the faith to believe that it will be done? Without faith there are no miracles. When we pray for healing for someone, not only does the sick person must have faith, we must have faith that it will be done also.
Last week I visited one of our children that were in the hospital. He was riding a dirt bike trying to make a jump and fell. He cracked the bone in his arm in two places and cracked his spleen. The doctors were very concern about the spleen. Talking with Matthew concerning his injuries, he told me that he wasn’t worried. Matthew said that he knew that God would heal him. There were no doubts. He was more concern about how he could make that jump on his dirt bike. The faith of a child is awesome. He is out of the hospital and back in school. He wants back on the bike, but his mother won’t let him. Do we have the faith of a child?
Let’s read about Peter’s faith.
Matt 14:25-31
25 During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.
26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It’s a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid."
28 "Lord, if it’s you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
29 "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"
(NIV)
What was Peter feeling when Jesus said, "Come"? I think I might have an idea. Jesus is calling me to step out of the security of the boat. God is calling me to full time ministry. This means that I am retiring from a job that pays very good money and will start receiving a small retirement check that is a third of what I was making. It is very scary. Without faith it is impossible to do. I had asked God for a sign, if He really wanted me to give up the security of my job and start serving Him full time. The next day Pastor Sid called me to supply pastor for him for three Sundays. God is faithful and He does answer prayers. God used you, to give me the sign that I had asked for. So now I am completely at peace with my decision to retire and I know God will open up opportunities for me in His ministry and at the same time provide for the needs of my family.
Was Peter scared when he climbed over the edge of the boat? We can only guess, because the scripture doesn’t say. Peter climbed out of the boat and was walking on water until he took his eyes off Christ and began to sink. Peter had the faith to get out of the boat. This meant that he had to leave the safety and comfort of the boat and do something he had never done before. He had faith to do this much. Then Peter stood on the water and took his first step into a new uncertainty. He had enough faith to get this far. Peter was actually walking on water. As long as Peter kept his eyes straight ahead on Jesus, he was fine. But has always when we are doing God’s will, Satan will interfere and try to distract us just for that split second. This was the case with Peter too. When Peter saw the wind, he became afraid and lost faith just for an instant, but long enough for him to begin to sink into the water. Jesus was still in control, because Peter didn’t collapse into the water. The scripture says that he began sinking into the water. This implies that Peter was sinking slowly enough that he had time to call upon the name of the Lord and Jesus reached out and pulled him up. In that short instant that the wind came up, Peter’s attention was diverted from Christ to the reality that he was walking on water, which in his mind was impossible to do. How often does Satan pull the same trick on us today when we are doing God’s will?
It is the same way in our lives too. We carry our cross keeping our eyes on Jesus until Satan does something to distract us. We turn our eyes away from Jesus and we begin to sink. Satan can use many different tactics to get our attention away from Christ. He can use money, sickness, other people, and even family members to distract us from Christ. Even today many people are being distracted away from God by the war in Iraq and the fear of another terrorist attack. Satan will even use people to place doubts in our minds about our beliefs. But there is always hope. All we have to do is call upon the name of the Lord and He will lift us up out of our problems. If you have that sinking feeling, call out to the Lord. He is waiting for you to put your faith back in Him.
There is a prayer in Proverbs that I want us to look at now.
Prov 30:7-9
7 "Two things I ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ’Who is the LORD?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.
(NIV)
God has promised us that He will always provide for our needs. I think we need to pray asking God to just provide for our needs. I have seen Christians begin to sink when God has given them much more than their needs. In today’s world it seems that the more that we have, the more that we want. The more that we get, the more important it becomes to us. Even to the point that it becomes more important than God. Last week I told you that God must be first in our lives. God must come before family, work, processions and pleasures. God’s will for our lives must be our primary goal. We must live a life where others see the light of Christ in us for the glory of God.
The Bible has so much to say about faith that it is impossible to cover everything in one sermon, but we must read about how we can get faith.
Rom 10:17
17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
(NIV)
To make our faith stronger, we must get into the Word of God. You can go to church all of your life and still not hear all the words that God has laid out for you in His Bible. Get into the habit of reading your Bible everyday. Don’t just read it. Study it. God will speak to you through His Word. I can read the same passage and each time God will show me something else He wanted me to know. That is why the Bible is called the Living Word of God. It will speak to you according to your need at the time. Be all that you can be. Be a soldier of Christ. Read the Bible!
If you are here today and you don’t know Jesus as your Savior, He is waiting for you to call out to Him. Come down to the front during the invitation and learn how to accept Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
If you are a Christian, but you have that sinking feeling inside, during the invitation call upon the name of the Lord. He is waiting to pull you back up.
If you need prayer, come now and I will pray with you.
Please come now as the invitation is being sung.
To God be the Glory!
