What Is Faith?

I want you to ask yourself, what if?

What if I was obedient?

What if when God spoke I was already spiritually ready to receive what he had to say to me?

What if faith is driven by the question, what if?

The possibility of what is not in existence yet.

Turn to your neighbor and say, yet.

Yet.

You may say, I want to serve in this capacity at the church, but I don't really know how to do it.

Every time you doubt yourself, behind that doubt, put the word yet.

And it will change the way you view yourself and your serving opportunities.

I have family members right now that if they died, yes, hell still exists and it is still real, that they would die and go to a devil's hell.

They are not saved yet.

I believe that the church needs to start believing again in the word yet.

Now I want you to understand this.

This hope that we're going to talk about today, and I hope it lights a fire inside of you that you begin to.

This water, my goodness.

I almost talked to it.

I'm the one that put it on there.

I told Brother Rusty before service I've been working out, so it's it shows in all areas of my life.

But the people that you start talking about your hope to, which is where faith gets involved, they don't know God, they won't understand you.

It's not our job to explain it to them.

It is our job to live it out and show them exactly what God can do.

If you'll stand for the reading of God's word today.

And as we read and travel through some passages we're going to look at today, I want to ask you, I want you to ask yourself, and I want you to be serious when you ask yourself this.

Have I been living in faith or have I been allowing fear to control me?

Am I living in faith or am I living in fear?

We're going to start a series.

Today is going to lay the groundwork and the foundation for faith.

Living in faith.

And today we're going to be talking about exactly what faith is.

So I almost, I know tomorrow's Halloween, and I almost called the message and kind of went from there.

I usually God gives me a title first, but I thought of this spiritual zombies.

People walking around the church house claiming to be one thing, walking upright like regular people, acting like they got the thing figured out, then they get home and everything's falling into pieces.

Now let that not be condemnation for you, but let me tell you today that you have the authority and the right because you are grafted in to the family of God.

You are an heir to the throne.

And you need to start walking in such because it doesn't matter what the situation looks like when you step on the scene with the authority of Christ in you and the Spirit of God working through you, you have the authority to say, mountain move, and it will be cast into the sea.

There was absolutely nothing special about David when he showed up on the scene.

Nothing.

Except he had what he already had.

Can I tell somebody today that what God has gifted you in, what God has given you, you need to start finding the faith to fuel your gift.

Because God has given you something inside of you that needs to be awakened.

Some of you, it needs to wake up again.

Some of you, it hasn't even been born yet.

But I hope in this next few weeks in this series that God will bring something alive in you and we see revival take hold of Longview, Texas, because at Connect Church in Longview, Texas, we begin to act like we believe what we said.

We begin to walk out like we know the word of God is true.

I want you to ask yourself are you a spiritual zombie?

Are you walking around being the living dead?

Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you have no more power than a fence post.

And there is no separation in the church house anymore from righteousness and sinful nature.

We have to be on guard, people, because how you live your life is going to be how someone else justifies living theirs.

I want you to ask yourself have you been seeing?

Have you been thinking?

Have you been praying?

And have you been praising?

And have you been living in faith?

Turn with me in Hebrews 11, verse 1.

Hebrews 11:1

Now, this is in New Living Translation.

I'm actually gonna, when I read it, I'm gonna say some of the other versions too because it's all really good.

But this is from New Living Translation.

I really love how this version says it.

It says, faith shows the reality.

Some versions say confidence.

And the Greek word for confidence here actually means substance.

Faith gives your hope substance.

It is the reality, the confidence of what we hope for.

It is the evidence of things we cannot see.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for your presence here today.

None of us in this house deserve for you to come down in the sweet way that you do, but yet you still do it.

I pray for every person under the sound of my voice, here in person or watching online, or years later down the road, someone shares this video with them.

I pray, God, that something today rekindles the faith of the church house here at Connect.

God, speak through your humble servant today.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

You may be seated if you can.

And if you can't, we'll keep on praising.

So if you've been coming here for any amount of time, you understand and you know, because I've been driving it into your head over and over and over.

Uh, brother Howard actually last Wednesday said the challenge of 15 plus two.

I kind of like that.

The challenge of 17, you got five minutes of prayer, five minutes of worship, and five minutes of reading, reading the word of God, being saturated in his presence before you even leave the house.

Some of you need that before you even see your kids.

Some of you need that before you see your spouse, before you get to that job.

But we have five, five, and five.

Five minutes of reading your word, five minutes of praising the Lord, and five minutes of prayer.

These three things right here, I promise you, when you start in on the five, it will end up being 10, it will end up being 15, it will end up being 30.

Why?

Because the Spirit is in the word, and the Spirit draws people to Him.

And if you're not being drawn to the Word and being drawn deeper into the Word, you are in flesh.

You don't want nothing to do with God.

Now, what was the other two in this?

Y'all remember?

One small act of faith every single day, and invite one person to church every week.

Now, why is it one small act?

Well, Jesus actually challenged the disciples with the very same thing.

He said, If you have faith of a mustard seed, now in this time it was a very small seed, but actually, through facts, it is not, it wasn't the smallest seed, but it was so small and so uh relevant to anyone who heard the word, they knew exactly what size it was.

And so when he said faith like a mustard seed, he was telling them that you can have a very, very, very small amount of faith, but faith will give you hope, and hope will become your victory.

So, the key one we're gonna talk about today is faith.

So, for the next few weeks, we're gonna be talking about living in faith.

But today we're gonna lay the foundation and we're gonna talk about faith.

What is faith?

Now, faith, I want you to think of it like this faith is the doorway in which you must walk through to make it to heaven.

If you don't have faith, you can't make it to heaven.

Where's that in the Bible?

I'm glad you asked.

Turn to your Bible to Ephesians chapter 2, 8 through 9.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

I'll give you a moment to get there.

But faith is so important.

Why did Jesus talk about faith?

Because he knew, he knew that very, very soon he would no longer be here, and they had to have something to hold on to.

He knew very soon that his life would be over.

When he started his ministry to the day that it ended, it was about three years.

That's not a long ministry.

I was telling somebody the other day, actually, it was a man we're coming.

Okay, y'all.

I'm not saying it's happening yet, but we're getting some things going.

We're looking at getting some classrooms built, some things going on.

Y'all be praying.

And this church right over here, I'll say it on camera, I don't care.

This church over here is for sale now, and I'm praying they give it to us for free.

And we won't have to build a thing.

Just say it.

If you leave this place and you drive by that place over there, it's for sale, anyways.

Might as well be ours.

Awful convenient.

Hopefully, you got it now.

Ephesians chapter 2, 8 through 9, and it says this for by grace you have been saved through what faith.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of your works, lest anyone should boast.

So it is by grace that we are saved through faith.

Faith is the doorway.

Think of it as faith being the gasoline, and grace is the car to get you to heaven.

So, what does this mean?

So, what I like to do, and what you should always do if you have a question about the Bible, there are many books, there are many resources, but nothing, nothing interprets scripture like scripture.

You can get outside sources that can be tainted.

Let scripture interpret scripture.

Look over to Galatians chapter 2, verse 16.

Galatians 2:16

So his grace through faith.

And this means this verse 16 in Galatians chapter 2.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

Yet we know that a person is made right with God by what faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law.

What and we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right or righteous with God because our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law.

That's the second time he said this, not because we have obeyed the law, for no one will ever be right by obeying the law.

This is what threw the rock in the links of the Pharisees because they were used to obeying the law to a T and they saw Jesus doing things on the Sabbath.

And they said, Well, you're not supposed to do that.

And he said, Well, guess what?

I didn't come to do away with the law, but I came to fulfill the law.

So, what does this mean?

This is simply laid out in plain text that sinning less does not earn you salvation.

Obeying the law does not earn you more salvation, it will not earn you another minute in heaven because by grace and through faith in Jesus Christ you are saved.

There's not more saved, and there's not less saved, but there is a process that we call sanctification.

We're not gonna go into that today, that maybe next week.

I don't know.

But you can't sin less and earn more heaven, you can't sin less and earn more salvation.

Living a good life doesn't save your soul.

Being kind, being gentle, being patient, being loving, having self-control.

Now, wait a minute, they'll sound an awful lot like the fruit of the spirit.

They will not get you a minute more in heaven, but they are echoes of coming to Christ.

They are things that grow in you after you give yourself fully to God.

Having these fruits does not earn your salvation.

Only through grace and faith can we be made righteous before God.

Through believing in his son Jesus Christ, there is no other route to heaven.

Now, for those of you who don't know that, you have an amazing opportunity today at the end of the service.

We are going to ask if you want to be welcome into the family of God.

It is a joyous thing.

Nobody should ever look at you sideways because you say yes to Jesus and admit that you are a sinner.

Because that is the only way to be saved.

You must admit that you are a sinner and repent and turn the other way.

That is the only way.

But I'm saying this to some of you here who have been in the way for a while, been in church for a while, because we get so self-righteous and look down at people who don't have it all together yet.

And we look down at people and we copy and paste our experience and say, you should be doing it like this, because that's what God done in me.

And you can't name two experiences in the Bible.

Everybody had to learn their own way because God does it right.

And if every person is different, doesn't that mean that he should do it the way it'll stick?

Some of you, like my wonderful wife, you didn't have to go through the drug addiction and all the things I had to go through and the struggles I deal with every single day.

She didn't have to go through that.

Thank God she didn't have to go through that.

But I'm so stubborn, God had to do something in my life that it would stick.

And I came to church and I pretended and I left again and did my stuff again.

I came to church and I pretended, I left, and did my thing again.

Why?

Because I wouldn't cut myself off from the world.

We must have faith.

John 3 16 says this, and I want to break it down.

And most of you can quote it, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

And whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

This is the core of the heart of God that every person come to salvation.

It is his desire that every person that you don't like find him.

For God so loved, it is his grace that he gave that to us.

Whoever believes, faith.

We have to have faith in him, Jesus, will not perish.

We will not die a spiritual death.

You can live twice here on earth, and then again in heaven on the other side, or you can die twice here on earth, and in eternal damnation on the other side.

There's no other options.

Some of you know this, but some of you are not living like you know it is going to happen to other people.

Hell is still real.

Just because you're saved does not mean you stop there.

You need to get on your knees.

We need to get on our face before God again and say, God, I may not like them, but I know that you love them.

I may not want them to be around me, but Lord, surround them.

We have become selfish Christians with what God has given us with mercy and grace that we did not deserve because nobody, nobody deserves salvation.

Nobody deserves his love, nobody deserves his grace.

And if someone tells you different, they are a liar, and they are full of self-righteousness because only faith in Christ, admitting that you are a sinner and turning, is the only way to make it to heaven.

Jesus is the only bridge to God, but we will have everlasting life in heaven with our Savior and our Master.

What a beautiful thing.

So I want you to look over.

We read Hebrews 11 a minute ago, but we're gonna go a little bit further down.

And in the rest of this chapter, it's known as the hall, it's a highlight reel.

And so it's a hall of faith, is what it is.

And so if you've ever grown up in church, anybody have flannel board story time memories growing up in church?

Come on, somebody.

Man, it wasn't, I guess, technology, but it blew my mind as a kid.

I was like, how is this staying up there?

Those are little people, and then my mom would take, she would do kids' crusades, and she'd have this big, huge flannel board, and you know, she would it would be a sky and then it would be water underneath, but she would put land in spots and show the baptism with a little water, and the land on the side would be like this, so it would look like the Jordan River now, and there's I was like, wow, this is amazing! And now we have computers in our pockets, and I'm not impressed.

Come on now.

But this is a highlight reel of every prophet and warrior who made it into a Sunday school flannel board.

You'll recognize these names, and even if you missed all that as a kid, not everybody grew up in church, y'all.

Come on now.

I'm trying to shed some light on some things today.

Not everybody knows who Jesus is.

Not everybody understands what love is.

Real love.

Not the false synthetic they're trying to put out on social media and all on the commercials and trying to shove it in our face.

That is a false love of twisted manipulation of love.

Real love only comes from the Father.

And what they had here was something in common.

Every single person in this hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 is they were men and women of faith.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

It wasn't just their courage, it wasn't just their compassion, it wasn't just their integrity.

All of those are beautiful and they are necessary to walk in the light.

But this one thing, this one key thing, changes everything.

Faith.

Faith transforms all of our virtues because it gives them direction and purpose.

It points everything back to God.

Is that not our goal and our purpose?

That everything that we do, we should do it according to as if it is for God that includes those you don't like.

Hebrews chapter 11, we're gonna start in verse 3.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

It's gonna be a little bit of reading.

So buckle in.

You're gonna get your five, ten, and fifteen probably on this one.

Now, verse 3 says this in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

By faith, we understand that the entire universe was formed by God's command.

That we now, what we now see, did not come from anything that can be seen.

It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did.

Abel's offering gave evidence that he was a righteous man, and God showed his approval of his gifts.

Although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us by his example of faith.

Verse 5 says this it was by faith that Enoch was taken up into heaven without dying.

He disappeared because God took him.

For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God.

And it is impossible to please God without three, y'all get it.

It is impossible to please God without if you want to please God, you can do all the right things like the law and obey the law and the things we can't do and the things we're supposed to do.

We stand, we sit, we stand for a little more, we sit again, we turn our Bibles to a certain chapter, we leave, we go out.

We're nice to people.

We invite them to church.

Whatever you want to do.

But if you don't have faith, you are not pleasing God.

If you are not living in faith, you literally cannot please God.

I'm done yelling at you now.

It is impossible to please God without a faith.

Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists.

You have to have faith that he even exists to want to come to him.

And that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

Verse 7: it was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood.

He obeyed God, he warned him, things that had never happened before.

Can you imagine if God came to you and said, Hey, something you've never seen or heard of is going to happen?

And you need to start preparing for it.

Now I will instruct you on how to do it.

Well, can you explain it to me a little better?

Like, what do you mean it's never happened before?

Like, it hadn't happened in a couple years.

Oh, it's gonna flood.

What is that?

Don't worry about it.

Build the boat.

Verse 8 it was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.

He went without knowing.

Come on.

He went without knowing where he was going.

Does anybody like to take steps of faith?

But right before you take that step, you're like, well, God, what is what's gonna happen?

It reminds me of Indiana Jones.

I don't know if you've seen any of the movies.

I don't remember which one it's in, but there's a certain part where they're in a cave, and across the way is another opening where they're supposed to cross over.

Now, I don't know if you've seen on the ground where the people do those chalk paintings or whatever, and it looks like it looks real.

I don't know how they do it, they're crazy alien people.

I don't know, whatever it is.

And Indiana Jones walks up to this and he's like, whoa, whoa, because it looked like it was just going down to his death.

Now, what did he do?

He didn't step in faith, he took some dirt and threw it.

He wanted to make sure that when he stepped, it was not gonna be his death.

Some of us today, God's telling us to step and we're trying to find some dirt to throw on it.

We want God to show us what the step looks like before we take it.

God don't operate like that because the reason I say one small act of faith every single day is because before you do working out in a gym, we're flabby and weak.

God wants warrior Christians in this house.

He wants people who have been exercising that faith that when something big arises, David did not go to Goliath first.

He first got out after he was anointed as king.

He went out into the fields, a place that he knew, a place that was hard work.

The sheep that were there weren't even his.

He had to go watch somebody else's stuff, and he knows in the back of his mind, because the prophet anointed him, that somewhere down the line he's supposed to be king, and I'm out here with these stupid sheep.

And God said, Wait a minute, you're just getting started.

You thought that you were out here tending the sheep, but you were learning how to protect the flock.

Some of y'all have been in the field of waiting for so long, and God's trying to teach you how to protect the flock, and you don't want to pick up the sling.

It was by faith that what he had available to him was exactly what God was going to use later to save his people.

He didn't give him a staff like he did Moses, he gave him a sling for David.

You may never grab a microphone and sing in front of a bunch of people, but don't you think for a second that God does not have a plan for you.

You may never be in a pulpit preaching the word of God, but every day of your life you're preaching the word of God.

God has a plan for every single person in here.

It is time for the people of God to start rising up in faith and believing what God has given you.

It is all that you need.

It was by faith that Abraham left.

Even when he reached the land that God had promised him, he lived there by faith.

He was like a foreigner, he didn't belong.

Some of you are in situations right now where you feel like you don't belong.

You feel around every single corner that the devil is coming against you on every side, and you're yelling to the sky, God, where is the standard?

You promised that you would rise up.

Sometimes the standard is you.

Sometimes God's trying to sharpen your tools while you're looking for them.

It's you.

The personality God has given you, yeah, probably runs people the wrong way.

But when everybody else won't say anything, you say truth.

You might be reserved and quiet, and you're not the outgoing personality.

But God has called you to pray for people you may never meet.

Y'all know my wife's more quiet and reserved than I am, obviously.

But when we were dating and after we were married, man, I've told her this before, but it it shocks me.

The giant that I see in her when she prays.

You are always, always on point when you pray.

There is nothing else that will change your situation.

Excuse me, let me back up.

There's nothing else that will change you until you begin to pray and cry out to God.

There are things in your life that you're wanting to change, and it is not there for it to change, it is there for God to change you.

You've got to stop doubting who God has called you to be.

Because he knows that if we get confused, if we forget our identity in him, we won't want anything to do with him anymore.

Self-righteousness, verse 11.

It was by faith that even Sarah was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old.

You know, I'm not gonna pray a physical birth on some of y'all because y'all y'all would kill me.

But I do know that one thing.

God has said something to you or placed you in a place now in the season of your life, and you have laughed at him because you think you're too old.

There's things inside of you right now, at your age, that you can give birth to that would change the trajectory of the history of this church.

Sarah laughed, and the baby that she birthed changed their family tree.

It was the very promise of God that Abraham had been waiting for.

Some of you, because you're age, you have been laughing and saying, Well, I can't do anything anymore.

And you have been holding in your womb things that God has put inside of you.

Imagine if we were submissive to God.

It was by faith.

She was to have a child.

And so a whole nation.

A whole nation.

A whole nation came from this one man who was as good as dead.

A nation with so many people, they're like the stars in the sky and the sand in the seashore.

There is no way to count them.

Imagine the things God's put in your spirit, in your heart, in your mind, ideas, different stuff that you've been holding on to and haven't done it.

You could be stunting the growth of this church.

God may have placed it there, placed you here to be one of the pillars of this church, and you won't birth what He's given to you.

Verse 12.

So a whole nation came from this one person who was as good as dead, a nation so many like the sands of the sea.

There's no way to count them.

Verse 13.

All these people died.

Listen to this.

All these people died, still believing what God had promised them.

They did not receive what was promised.

They agree.

If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back.

Verse 16 says, but they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.

That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him.

Abraham, who had received God's promise, was ready to sacrifice the very promise God gave him on the altar.

And his only son, the thing he had been waiting for in his ripe old age, he got, and God asked for it back, and he said, Yes, sir.

Look at verse 18.

Even though God had told him Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.

I want to present that to you.

He got the promise that God gave him, even though he tried to fix it on his own, tried to make it happen before God's timing.

His wife was laughing about it.

And then God asked for it back.

You see, God promised him something.

That descendants would come from this child.

And now he's saying, Give that child to me.

Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again.

Let me ask you this: do you trust God that much?

That no matter what it looks like around you, no matter what he requires of you, you will put it in his hands and say, even if you take it all away from me, even if everything around me crumbles, I know that you can restore and rebuild.

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, even commanded them to take his bones with him when they left.

Verse 23, it was by faith that Moses' parents hid him for three months when he was born.

They saw that God had given him given them an unusual child, and they were not afraid to disobey the king's command.

The son of Pharaoh's daughter.

He chose to share the oppression of God's people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasure 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 ongoing because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible.

It was by faith that Moses commanded the people of Israel keep the Passover and sprinkle the blood on the doorpost so that the angel of death would not kill their firstborn.

It was by faith that the people of Israel went through the Red Sea as though they were on dry ground.

But when the Egyptians tried to follow, they all drowned.

It was by faith, verse 30, that the people of Israel marched around Jericho for seven days and the walls came crashing down.

Some of y'all are marching and marching and marching around the walls, and you're saying, God, why haven't they fallen yet?

It's not your responsibility to make the wall crumble.

It is your responsibility to act in faith and step when God says, Step and do what you are supposed to be doing.

And then when the walls fell, some scholars even say that the very walls that kept him out were the very bridges to lead them in.

Keep on marching in faith.

Because soon and very soon, it may be in your life, it may be in your child's life, it may be in your grandchild's life.

But I promise you, our God is faithful.

You may not see it, but still have faith.

Because one day, one day, the generational curse in your family will be broken.

One day the captive will be set free.

One day the chains will become off of those that are bound.

One day addictions will be gone.

One day our family members will find God and salvation by grace through faith.

And he ends it with this.

How much more do I need to say?

It would take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Japheth, David, Samuel, and all the prophets by faith, these people overthrew kingdoms.

Church, if you think our government's too strong and they're full of the devil, our God has the power to overthrow kingdoms.

It don't matter who sits up in that White House, it don't matter who in political whatever, whatever they believe, we know that our God is strong enough to overturn any kingdom.

He can overturn and rule with justice and receive, God has promises for 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, 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 prison.

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.

And the last verse: 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.

All of these beautiful things that God had done throughout history.

And we read at the end.

Sometimes we give up on God because He's not bringing everything the way we want.

I was telling somebody the other day, we live in a day, my dad preached it.

I'll probably preach it till I die, and whoever's after me probably will too.

We live in a day of microwave Christianity.

But it takes all of the ingredients to be prepared, to be put in the dish, and to be oven-baked.

God don't work on microwave time.

Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure every oven time is stressed out by times a hundred.

Some of us we get it quick.

We were talking Wednesday night, we've seen people come to God and immediately be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak it in other tongues.

And then we see other people who come to God, they get baptized and nothing.

And they're like, why does everybody else get to jump the line and I'm waiting?

I don't have that answer.

But do not lack faith because you're not getting what you want.

That is a child's game.

And my my purpose and vision here is to have a church full of mature Christians.

And the way we do that is understand that it is not your time, it is not my time, it's not my call.

I don't heal the sick, I don't restore broken marriages, I don't bring people to salvation, but God can.

You gotta still believe for that addiction who was still clung to your loved one, and those that are lost around you.

Because we read that it did not happen, and I want to end where I started, it did not happen yet.

There's things in your life that you're believing for, and it may have been years.

Imagine how Abraham and Sarah felt.

They were not young whippersnappers, they were not knee high to a grasshopper, whatever other country saying y'all got for young people.

They were up in age, past the Bible says, past the years of what is ripe for the picking.

But God told them something, and God said, In spite of what you see, have faith.

And you know, it's a characteristic of God, and it was greatly shown in Jesus, is that in the story of Abraham and Sarah, God gave them a promise.

He fulfilled that promise after Abraham tried to fix it, and it was a whole situation.

They had some baby mama drama, and it was a bunch of stuff going on.

And but it wasn't what God was trying to do, it wasn't his timing, it wasn't his plan, and so it caused issues when you try to rush God's timing and God's plan, it will cause you issues, and then you'll be sitting on the floor like a kid.

Well, I don't know why this is happening to me.

Because you wouldn't shut up and just do what God told you, and I say this with all fingers pointing back to me.

I'm guilty of saying I have faith, but what I really struggle with is insecurity, or I struggle with timing, or I pray for people and.

I don't see them healed.

God, what does it take for me to see what you can do?

The answer is whenever he feels like it, he can stand up and point his finger at whoever's healed is healed.

It's my job, it is your job to lay hands on the sick and to pray prayers of faith in spite of what it looks like, in spite of what it's been like, because we know that our God is faithful.

If nothing else, the Old Testament is showing time and time again that you may not see it then, but it will come to pass.

And God gave Abraham that son that he promised.

And he promised that many nations were going to come from him.

And God's one of those, one of those gods that won ups.

So now that I've given it to you, are you willing to give it back?

Some of you are sitting on gifts that God's given you, and you're not giving it back to God.

There's things that we have in our lives that God gives us with, and we hold on to it, or we seek man's adoration.

And Jesus did the same thing.

He said, Yes, if you act in sin, it is sin.

But I tell you something else.

If you even think it, well, how am I supposed to beat that one?

Because if you set your mind on things above, on godly things, it gives you the strength to when even the thought or even the person walks around, you can raise up a standard.

You have the power and the authority to do that.

Because you are representing God through faith.

You have the power when an attack of depression hits you, or an attack of loneliness hits you, or an attack of anxiety hits you, to say out loud, I don't care if you're in the middle of a Walmart line and you feel it coming on you, devil, I rebuke you.

But we live mundane, watered down, faithless Christianity and wonder why God doesn't move in our services.

Because you're not giving him everything when you're not in the church.

Imagine if the God or the people of God begin to act in faith, just a small little thing of faith every single day.

Well, if I say that, I'll look stupid.

Yeah, probably so.

Faith isn't about making you look good, but faith changes things.

So what is faith?

Faith is the only way to God, and it is the only way to please God.

So if you're bless you, so if you're walking around a faithless life and saying that you are a Christian, you are a Christian who is not pleasing to God.

You know what would be awesome?

If we have some people in this church get a wild hair in them and go to some hospitals, and be so filled with the Spirit of God that simply walking down the hall, people begin to be healed.

People that were pronounced dead begin to rise up and sit up in their beds.

You say that's weird.

You're right, but a little weird is what this world needs.

Some people with some weird faith who will believe that a building next to us that we don't have to pay for will be ours.

That believe that every person that drives by this church, the spirit of God be so strong here that they don't know what it is, but they gotta come in and see on a Sunday what's going on.

That the Spirit of God is so strong in your life that people don't know you, but they got to know you because they just want to be close to the Father.

I'm looking for some people of God who want to start living life in faith.

Don't belittle yourself because you have doubts.

Those two go hand in hand.

I don't believe, but help my unbelief.

God, I don't know.

I don't know what's gonna happen.

I have no clue, I cannot see, but I know my God is faithful.

I have my doubts, my marriage is in shambles, my family member, they've been lost and running from you.

But God, I know that you are still faithful.

I know in times of darkness and trouble, I may feel alone.

I feel like I'm covered up, I have been buried alive, but I know that you have planted me because where I am, I'm gonna grow.

I don't know what I'm gonna do for tomorrow or the next day, but I know today you are still God, that in every area of my life I want it to be yours, that faith must rise up.

Let the people of God who have some faith stand on their feet and say, God, I believe.

Something I've noticed about faith is that when you get together with other people who have some faith, the Bible doesn't say lay a hand, it says lay hands.

Because when we start believing together, we become a church, the enemy trembles.

He's scared of us, he's gonna start trying to disrupt your life in ways you've never seen before.

God's gonna tell you to do things, God's gonna tell you to step out, and you'll be like, Well, I don't know if that's his voice.

Shut up and do it.

Step out.

Faith is not gonna make you look cool, it'll make you look crazy.

Read the Bible.

Faith looks weird, it don't add up because it's faith, it is hope in something you cannot see.

But you know, you know that the God that you serve is faithful and just and is true to his word.