You know how some sermons are just easy to listen to? Maybe they hit on a subject you were just wondering about, or they address a need you felt but hadn’t put a name to, or they re-affirm something you believed but didn’t have the words for. Some sermons just seem to hit us right where we are at just the right time with just the right words. I love it when that happens.
That probably isn’t going to happen today.
Today is our third sermon on faith in our 3 on 3 series. For the last two weeks we have talked about what Faith is and What happens to our faith when the worst happens. Both of those sermons were nice and neat little packages. You could hear them and go away thinking about How great God is and how much He loves you.
But sermons are not always like that. I guess what I’m saying is that you’ll have to work a little harder than you usually would to connect with the message today. But you know how sometimes when you really dread getting into something, like a project at work or a homework assignment or a chore at home, how right in the middle of it you think to yourself, "You know, this isn’t so bad." I love it when that happens, too. And I pray that will happen today.
Today I want to spend our time together looking at what the Bible has to say about what we need to do to have victorious faith.
Paul writes in Romans 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH."
Now all of us know something of the value of faith, and we know what the Bible says about it. As a life time member of the church we have had these verses burned into our consciences.
Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God
Mark 11:22: “Have faith in God.”
Mark 9:23: “All things are possible to him that believes.”
Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen..”
The problem in our brotherhood has never been the value of faith. It is the acquisition of faith that we struggle with. Every Christian that I have ever known has longed to have more faith but didn’t know how to get it? And thus the struggle.
Have you ever wanted to live by faith, like those we read about in Hebrews 11? Have you ever said to yourself, “I wish I had more faith because I know that I would be a better person. Or if my faith was only stronger then I would struggle so much.”
I want to start today by telling you that you are not alone. Every Christian wants to have more, or stronger faith and I believe in our Text today Paul tells us how to open the door to a greater faith.
the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith
The first faith speaks of that which is primary. The faith that caused you to act. To call out to God and allow Him to take control of your life when you submitted to Him in the watery grave of baptism.
The second faith is that power-giving faith. The faith that causes us to action. The faith that causes us to read about the giants of faith in Hebrews 11 and live that type of life and have that type of relationship with God.
The first faith saves us; the second one identifies us.
The first faith is all about assurance; the second tells us what we can become.
The first faith deals with redemption; the second deals with risk.
The first faith is a gift; the second is all about growth.
I told you that this sermon will be a little harder. And the reason I say that is because today I want to look at 5 things that we have got to do to get from faith to faith. You know it’s one thing to sit on the couch with a bag of cheetos and think man I have got to start exercising. It is a lot harder to close that bag and get up and do something about it.
This week I was trying to help Trafton spell his name and I would get a piece of paper and make a dot to dot puzzle out of his letters and was struck how much faith in me he had to have to do this.
First he had to believe that all of these dots really meant something.
Second he had to believe that it would be revealed – even though he had no idea what it was, He had to believe that these dots would make his name even though he could not see it, but he had to believe that it was there.
Then he had to trust that I designed a picture that would be revealed if he would just continue to follow the order of the dots.
It’s like that with our faith. We don’t always see where God is leading us, sometimes we only have part of the picture. But faith is when we continue to trust God’s heart even when we cannot see the whole picture.
So today I am asking you get up off the couch, put the cheetos away and get ready to follow the dots that God has laid out for us to trace. And I know that if we will follow the dots we will be able to see how God wants us to get from Faith to Faith.
1. Believe that your faith can grow!
You know every dream, every invention, every great discovery, and every great accomplishment all begins with the belief that it cam be done.
And not only great accomplishments but learning to swim, learning how to ride a bike, learning how to skate. They all started with the belief that we could do it.
The same is true with our faith. There are so many of us in the church that feel stuck. We struggle and fight with our faith. We have given over to the same temptations over and over. We see no growth in our lives so we get frustrated and throw our hands up. Why even try.
I believe that everyone in this room that has ever felt this way, all felt this way for the same reason. We don’t believe that we will ever get better.
In Matthew 14:25-33 we see the wonderful story of Peter walking on the water with Christ. All to often we tend to look at this story and talk about Peter’s failure, and forget that there were two men walking on that water. Jesus and Peter. Sure Peter didn’t walk for long but he did walk. Maybe 4 steps maybe 40 steps but the fact is that he did walk.
It was his belief that got him out of the boat to begin with and only our belief will move us from faith to faith.
A second way to have a powerful faith is to…
2. Associate with others who have great faith.
Last Sunday night we talked about the goat principal in 1 Corinthians 15:33, Do not be deceived: "Bad company corrupts good morals." You remember I said if you run with the goats you will smell like the goats?
But it works both ways.
Rom. 1:12: “That I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine.”
I Thessalonians 3:2: “…and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s fellow worker in the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith.”
Too often good circumstances and bad friends equal problems. In the same way, bad circumstances and good friends equal victory! It has taken me quite a while to figure this out. A wise Bible professor at Faulkner once told me, “People we associate with are like elevator buttons—they can take you up or down!”
At the ripe old age of 18 I thought that was funny but not realistic. Now I realize that my faith has been enlarged to a great extent by the example of others—observing how they handled adversity and the challenges that life brings. Faith rubs off.
Last year when my mom was undergoing surgery for breast cancer Trista, the boys and I left the house early. I wanted to see mom before she went in, let her know that I was there and reassure her that I had been in prayer. But more than anything else I wanted to see her because I was scared.
Scared of what they would find, scared that she would not make it. Scared that she wouldn’t see my boys grow up and get married. Just scared.
We met at the cancer center, and they did prep work, and my brother showed up and then my grandmothers and my aunts and uncles and we all just sat there trying to act brave for my dad but every one of us scared.
About 30 minutes before they took mom back for surgery people from Mayfair began to show up. One at first then two then 10 then 35. The waiting room was full of cancer survivors, men and women who had walked this road and loved my family. People who just wanted to come and pray with us and let us know that they were praying in faith that everything was going to come out OK.
An amazing thing happened in that waiting room. All of the fear dissipated. It was gone. We had the witness that others had walked this road before us and lived. That God had been gracious before and we knew that He would be gracious once again. We knew that we were not in this struggle alone, but we were surrounded by Men and women who loved God and his children.
The faith that sustained us that day was not our faith but the faith of those we associated with.
3. Read and embrace God’s Word.
Some years ago a young man looking for work approached a foreman of a logging crew and asked him for a job. "It depends," replied the foreman. "Let’s see you take this one down."
The young man stepped forward and skillfully felled a great tree. The foreman was impressed and exclaimed, "You can start on Monday!"
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday rolled by. Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, "You can pick up your paycheck on the way out today."
Startled, the young man asked, "I thought you paid on Fridays."
"Normally we do," answered the foreman, "but we’re letting you go today because you’ve fallen behind. Our daily charts show that you’ve dropped from first place on Monday to last place on Wednesday."
"But I’m a hard worker," the young man objected. "I arrive first, leave last, and I’ve even worked through my coffee breaks!"
The foreman, sensing the boy’s integrity, thought for a minute and then asked, "Have you been sharpening your ax?"
The young man replied, "Well, no, sir. I’ve been working too hard to take the time."
Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 10:10 If the axe is dull and he does not sharpen its edge, then he must exert more strength. Wisdom has the advantage of giving success.
It is told that the great preacher D.L. Moody said, “I prayed for faith and thought that some day it would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith didn’t seem to come. One day I read in Romans that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” I had up to this time, closed my Bible and prayed for faith. Now I opened my Bible and began to study and faith has been growing ever since.”
4. Practice prayer and fasting
What? Did he just say what I think he just said?
Now I am pretty sure that this is the first time that you have ever heard that we should fast from this pulpit. It’s kind of like the Holy Spirit we don’t know an awful lot about it so we just move on to other areas of Christianity. But I believe that this is just as important.
Remember the man in Matthew 17 who came to the disciples and asked them for help for his demon possessed boy? He asked the disciples to pray for him. They prayed and nothing happened. Then Jesus prayed and something did happen—a miracle! The disciples got discouraged and said, “Lord, why is it when we prayed for him that nothing happened?” And the Lord answered, “It was because of you little faith.”
Then He talked to them about faith being the size of a mustard seed and how much growth potential it had.
Referring to the boy who was possessed, Jesus said, “This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” In other words, there are some problems, which are so immense that we must be totally immersed in prayer and fasting—believing God to give that for which we pray. Great problems demand great faith!
I believe that fasting is a lost art. But it must be important since Jesus teaches about it on 5 different occasions and even participated in it.
Fasting is a time where I put my wants and needs to the side so that I can put God first. You can spend as much time in prayer and fasting as you need, but it must be a time where you are putting your wants and needs behind God.
When you fast for one meal, or a day, or even a month you dedicate that time that you would use to nourish your body by spending time with God in prayer, study of the scripture, and meditation.
5. Finally we must Remember past victories.
So often we get consumed with what is going on in the now that we forget about how faithful God has been in the past. And I don’t mean the Biblical past but your past.
Trista and I have started a victory box. It is just a small box that we will use to teach Trafton and Rylan how faith God has been in our lives. It is an idea that we got from:
Joshua 4: 2-7 "Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from each tribe, and command them, saying, ’Take up for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests’ feet are standing firm, and carry them over with you, and lay them down in the lodging place where you will lodge tonight.’" So Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the sons of Israel, one man from each tribe; and Joshua said to them, "Cross again to the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel. "Let this be a sign among you, so that when your children ask later, saying, ’What do these stones mean to you?’ then you shall say to them, ’Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.’ So these stones shall become a memorial to the sons of Israel forever."
God encouraged the Children of Israel to build a reminder of how Faithful He had been to them.
In 1 Samuel 17 David found that remembering his past successes with God increased his faith for greater challenge. He told King Saul that the giant Goliath was no problem based on his victories over a lion and a bear.
I challenge you to take some time to write down all the answers to prayer you have experienced personally—all the victories over sin, temptation, trials, sickness—whatever and then say to yourself, “God and I did it before; we can do it again!”
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