"Faith That Works" - Hebrews 11:1-7

If you've got a Bible, Hebrews 11. If you don't, there's one on the table in front of you.

This chapter is probably a chapter you're somewhat familiar with if you've grown up in church.

Commonly known as like the Hall of Faith or, you know, all these places where

we get all these stories of God's people being faithful to him and what God used them to do.

At camp every year, which I've explained to multiple people, I was not a big camp guy.

One of the reasons I'm not a big camp guy is they always want you to play these silly games.

I don't like silly games. I like doing nothing. And so when they're like,

hey, come do this game with us or hey, come do this thing.

It was always like, or we could go where it's not 110.

And but there was always the trust fall game. Every year they would do the trust fall game.

And there was always some, you know, stand probably about this tall.

And they would have one of the kids stand, you know, with their toes here.

And then they would have everybody line up like this, you know,

and they would do the one, two, three, and you got to fall and trust them.

And without fail every year, the girls did a great job.

The girls group always killed it. It was great. And the boys did really good

for like the first three.

And then, of course, the boys would start figuring out like,

how many of us do you think it would really take?

You know, like, do you think you can catch them by yourself or they're joking?

One of the boys would end up falling and he wouldn't like fall.

The way, but he would fall.

And then we'd have a big discussion about, you know, see, they put your faith

in you guys and you guys failed them.

And then they would, the big crescendo was always when you put your faith in

God, he never fails you and he always catches you and everyone would cry. And it was great.

So now you don't have to go to camp. I just did the whole thing for you.

You're good. I just saved you 350 bucks. No problem.

So I think a lot of times we think of faith that way, where it's just like,

man, my eyes are closed, I'm falling backwards, and I'm just hoping that Jesus is going to be there.

Right. I hope Jesus isn't in Africa handling things because I really need him to catch me here.

And it's interesting how faith gets thrown around and what it is.

A lot of times faith becomes a force, right? I often see faith use like a force

in Star Wars where, you know, you can use your faith to kind of get what you want.

You'll see these guys on TV late at night, usually with a really nice suit and

some weird hair and some sort of handkerchief.

And they'll say, you know, if you would just sow in faith, you would reap usually money.

But whatever that is, it's always interesting. They're asking you to sow money

to them first. They don't really ever give you money back.

But there's verses like Matthew 17, 20. It says, for truly I say to you,

if you have faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,

move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.

And people read that and go, man, I must not have any faith.

I must not have any faith. Because if Jesus says, if I have any faith,

I'd be able to move mountains.

And I have a hard time reading Leviticus.

My faith should move mountains, but if I get to a genealogy,

I just punt. It's like, I can't do this.

I don't care who begat who, I'm over it. And we just go back to John 3,

16 and, you know, get our coffee mugs out.

Maybe you've had this kind of advice or you're going through something really

tough in your life and someone looks at you and goes, you just need to have more faith.

Or maybe something bad happens to you and God forbid, someone looks at you and

says, you know, if you would have had enough faith, that wouldn't have happened to you.

There's all kinds of ways that faith gets thrown around. And I think this passage

this morning, really this whole chapter, when I was tempted to try to do the

whole thing, but I It would have been too long. Someone would have gotten mad, but...

But this is really a whole chapter of two things, what faith is and how someone

with faith works that out.

What faith is and how someone with faith works that out.

And he's going to do this, if you remember, because last week as he finishes Hebrews 10,

excuse me, he says, last verse of Hebrews 10, he says, we are not of those who

shrink back and are destroyed, but we're of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

That's the setup for chapter 11.

Chapter 11 is not meant for you to read and just go, man, look how awesome these people are.

Chapter 11 is written to a people, these Hebrews who are getting ready to experience

quite a bit of persecution.

And the idea is, if you know you're going to experience that.

Let me show you how all the heroes of your faith dealt with their issues.

All these heroes that you can think, we're going to this morning,

it'll be Abel and Enoch and Noah, but he goes through Abraham and all the prophets.

He talks about all these guys. And he says over and over again,

there's a certain way that they handled their issues.

And it wasn't by mustering something up. It wasn't by sowing a seed of faith.

It wasn't by trying to move a mountain. There's a certain way they go about this.

The main point is going to be, I'll go ahead and let you know,

is that all those Hebrew heroes that they have lived by faith.

All those Hebrew heroes they have lived by faith. They lived by trusting in the Lord.

It's not the temple sacrifices or the law or sheer effort.

They didn't do those things and gain approval from God. They lived by faith.

And what they did, they did in faith, of course.

Every time they sacrificed and every time they tried to follow the law and every

effort they put forth was done, but it was done in faith.

And the question becomes, what does that even mean?

What does it mean to live in faith? What does it mean to have faith? Again, what is faith?

If I say that and in your mind you go like, I know what faith is.

I've been in church my whole life. Let me just nicely but sternly tell can you

just give me 30 minutes, 30 minutes to tell you what I truly believe faith is.

And if you think I'm an idiot, you don't have to take it. But I think there's

a huge misunderstanding that when someone says,

I have faith or have faith, what they're really asking, what they're really

saying is. I think the Bible is really clear on what that is.

So with that in mind, let me just read Hebrews 11, one through three.

We're going to try and get through seven verses, but we may just get through

three. So let me read this.

It says, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

For by it, the people of old received their commendation.

By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God so

that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

So before we get into what is faith, let's just roll through these three verses.

It says, now faith is the assurance, or if you have an NIV, it'll say confidence.

If you have a King James Version, if you memorize this verse in the King James, it says substance.

All right, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things

not seen. Again, in the King James, they use the word evidence.

It's a really tough Greek word, that word that's translated conviction or evidence.

It's only in one place in the whole New Testament. That's one of the reasons

it's really hard to translate.

Usually when you have a Greek word, you go see how it's used everywhere else

and you can get a good idea of how it's used. Well, we don't have that.

And so if you have those different translations, that's why.

But he says that faith is a guarantee, right?

It's a confidence of things to come. To have faith, whatever that is at this

point, is to have a conviction about something.

It doesn't waffle or waver. It's not flippant. There's a confidence, a conviction.

Again, the King James says evidence. In other words, if you have faith,

again, at this point, whatever that is, you are confident and you have proof that something is real.

Now, that's a weird way to think about that because usually faith is not proof of anything.

Usually you have faith because you don't have proof of anything,

right? If I have faith in something, it's because I can't prove it.

That's how we think about faith.

We think about faith as this thing that we have a deposit of and that we put

in different things. Like we go to the casino and we have this deposit of chips.

And we'll just imagine each chip has the word faith on it. And we get to put

that faith wherever we want.

Red, black, money, cars, Jesus. You just kind of put that where you want it.

And that what the Bible is asking us to do is to keep taking chips away from

other things and to keep putting them on Jesus.

And I think that's where the misconception is.

That faith is this inherent thing. Again, the first verse of Hebrews is trying

to tell us, no, whatever this faith is, if you have it, it's actually a proof.

It's a conviction. It's something that shows that something's happened to you.

Faith is the evidence of things you haven't seen.

It's not what you put faith in. It's what you've been given.

So again, what do you have a confident conviction about? You have confident

conviction about the things not seen.

You have the ability to say, I don't see it, but it will happen.

I know it'll happen. My faith is proof that those things are going to happen.

Not, I have faith that the things I can't prove will happen,

but the fact that I have faith is proof that they will happen.

That's kind of how that verse is laid out.

Namely, what the author has in mind here is God's promises, right?

You can't put your eyes on a promise.

When I was younger, we didn't have cell phones. My dad, before he had a pager, right?

My dad would give us a pager and that's how we knew to go out to the car.

But before that my dad would drop me off somewhere and he would say hey bud

I'll come pick you up at seven Now when he left I didn't have anything but his

word that he was going to be back at seven I have any way to call him any way to contact him.

I didn't know where he was going I know what he was doing But I had to trust

the promise that my dad is faithful and he's going to come pick me up He's going

to come back because that's who my dad is,

Well, in the same way, if we have faith in the promises of God,

that's an evidence. That's a proof of things we can't see.

What does that mean? He says in verse two, for by it, the people of old received their commendation.

I like the way the NASB says this, receive their approval, receive their approval from God.

So to have faith, whatever that is, is to be approved before God.

Again, he's just spent the last 10 chapters this author has making this case,

the sacrifices and the law and right living and Moses and Abraham and the angels, the high priest.

None of those things made the Old Testament saints approved before God.

None of those things that they did made God look down and say,

man, because you did that, you're approved.

Whatever this faith is, is what gained them approval before God.

Now, again, he's about to give us a ton of examples here, but for now,

this is the point. Faith gains God's approval, not works.

Okay, so to this point, faith is a conviction, right? Faith is a conviction.

It's a proof of things we can't see, right? Faith is also the means for gaining

approval from God, not works.

Now he's going to give us his first example in verse three.

He says, by faith, we, right? So his first example in this whole chapter is

not some great Old Testament saint. It's the church.

He says, by faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of

God. so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

I know a lot of us in here remember things like CDs and VHSs,

and maybe you remember black and white TVs and vinyl records.

I always tell my kids there was this magical place called Blockbuster where

you could just go and get things. You could make a whole night out of it.

My dad and me, when my sisters were out of town for dance and stuff,

we would go to Blockbuster, and then we would go from Blockbuster to Ponchos,

just seeing who the cool people are in the room.

And then you would leave ponchos and you would go to Brahms and then you'd go

home and watch Die Hard as a nine-year-old because that's what we did.

I don't know, that was not a good idea, but that's what we did.

We remember those kinds of things, but I don't think any of us are old enough

to have seen the world created.

The author says that if you know that, you know it by faith.

Now, again, this is weird wording.

This is weird wording. This is not, if you believe that, if you think that that's

true, you think it's true because of faith. He says, no, you understand it.

You know that because of faith.

Again, the way that he talks about faith is not this thing that's intrinsic

in every person that they get to decide where they put it.

The way he talks about faith is, well, if you have it, it's a proof of these things.

It's a way to understand these things, that you having that faith is something

that's an unexplainable way that these things start to make sense.

That's what faith is. It's confidence that what you can't see will happen.

What does it do? It makes men and women approve before God. That's pretty simple.

Well, let me ask you a more important question then. If faith is not something,

according to this author, that we have intrinsically, right?

That's not the way he talks about faith.

He doesn't say, now put your faith in God so that you have assurance.

Now put your faith in the fact that God created the world. Now put your faith in these things.

He says, faith is. It says faith is an object. It's a thing.

It's something that exists in and of itself.

Where does faith come from? Where does faith come from?

Again, I'm just going to reiterate, he's not talking about faith as this thing

that's intrinsic in everyone.

If faith that he's talking about was in everyone, then every single person would

be approved before God, and every single person would believe that God created

the universe by the word of his mouth.

But not everyone does think that way.

So as he talks to this church and he says, this is what faith is,

I think they have an understanding of what faith is that we don't have.

We have a very Western way of thinking about faith because that's how we think

about everything. That's not our fault. That's just how we think.

We think of faith like we think of everything else. Well, it's up to me to decide

how I'm going to distribute what I have. That's how we think about everything.

I've got my money. I've got my time. I've got my stuff.

I've got my faith and I get to choose how much of it I give and to what I give it to.

And that's not at all how the Hebrew mind would have thought when they heard the word faith.

Again, the temptation is to say, I just need more faith. I just need to have

more. Just need to give more.

But the problem is, and you've probably tried this, you can't just say to yourself,

self, it's time to have more faith.

Have you tried that? Maybe you're trying it now, right? I remember,

self, it's time to have more faith.

It's time to get up and go to church every time the doors are open.

It's time to read my Bible every morning. It's time to pray every night.

I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna set myself. I am gonna make sure this happens.

I'm gonna make this happen. I need to trust God more. I need to wake up and

get some faith. I'm just going to put my faith more and more into the Lord.

And I don't know if you've ever tried that, but man, it's a steep hill.

In fact, I think many of the people that we see fall away.

In fact, I can tell you from experience in student ministry,

I mean, I've probably been around thousands and thousands of students.

The ones that I've seen fall away the most are the ones that think that way,

that it's all up to them to try and figure out how to do this.

Life comes at them fast and they get tired of being single. They get tired of being lonely.

They get tired of not having any fun while all their friends are having fun.

They get tired of all of these things and they get tired of people telling them, just have faith.

Just have more. Just do more. Just try harder.

Or they get tired of people telling them to just have faith in something they can't see.

And they look at you and they go, listen, you're telling me there's a God I

can't see, a savior I can't set my eyes on, a spirit I can't touch or smell.

Well, this is just weird. This is blind faith.

That's how you get the arguments of how is our faith any different than a Muslim or a Hindu?

And if you think of faith that way, it's not any different.

They've got a deposit of faith. They're putting it in Muhammad.

Someone's got a deposit of faith. They're putting it in Krishna.

Somebody else has a deposit of faith. They're putting it in Jesus.

And we spend all our time trying to convince people to, again,

take the chips away from here and put them over here. It's exhausting.

And the way he talks about faith is that, man, if you have this faith,

you should be free to live your life and take on anything that comes your way.

That faith shouldn't be this bird that you carry around.

That faith should be something altogether different. So let me ask this question

with our Bibles open. If you want to try and flip around with me, you're welcome to.

I'll read it for sure. If you just want to kind of write these down,

maybe something you can go back and revisit.

But I just want to ask this question, where does faith come from?

Where does faith come from? Really simple question.

I'm not going to try and convince you of anything. I just want to read from

the scriptures what it says, okay?

Let's start in the own book we're in. We'll get to this at some point in the

near future. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2.

Hebrews 12:2

He says to them, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Here, Christ is not looking for someone with faith.

The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus is the founder and perfecter of your faith.

The Greek word here for founder is translated in other places.

I really like this as author.

He's the author of it. He writes it. He owns it, right? Tolkien has Lord of the Rings.

J.K. Rowling has Harry Potter. Jesus has faith. He writes it.

He's it. He also says it's perfecter, it's finisher.

He writes it, he finishes it, it belongs to him. That's Hebrews 12.2.

Another verse you might know, Ephesians 2.8, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

So again, if you stop there, it's easy to say, okay, we've received grace,

but I've received grace because of the faith that I've put in God.

But he goes on to say, and this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God.

So Christ is the founder and perfecter of faith and God is the giver of faith.

If faith is a gift of God, let me just ask you this question.

If faith is a gift of God, is that something you conjure up yourself?

If Christ is its author and God is its giver, is faith something that you create in and of yourself?

I don't think that's how the Bible reads at all.

We don't put our faith, we receive our faith. Faith is a gift.

Jesus is the author of this gift. God is the giver of this gift.

Well, what does that look like?

What does that practically look like in someone who thinks that way?

Paul writing to his protege, Timothy, 1 Timothy 1, verses 13 through 14.

1 Timothy 1:13–14

He says, Timothy, I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor,

an insolent opponent. Paul thought really highly of himself, solid resume.

That's what he formerly was. So what do you think Paul did? Do you think Paul's

going to say, I put my faith in God? I said a prayer, I walked an aisle.

I started listening to Caleb.

I even gave to one of their 50 pledge drives. Like I really changed my life around.

What does Paul say happened? Paul says, but I received mercy because I had acted

ignorantly in unbelief.

And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Paul says, I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and an insolent or violent opponent of the gospel.

And he says, I received a gift.

I received a gift. This is Paul's commentary on his walk to Damascus when the

risen Jesus blinds him on the road to Damascus.

And he tells Paul exactly what he's going to do.

He tells Paul, he doesn't say, hey, if you'll put enough faith in me,

I'll use you. He tells Paul word for word, I'm going to show you how you are

going to suffer for my namesake. It's not an option.

Paul's not given a hand to raise. Who wants to suffer for Christ's sake?

And Paul says, I'll go. Not what happens.

Jesus says, Paul, why do you persecute me?

And then he tells him, I'm going to show you how you're going to suffer for

my namesake. Paul received something. Paul.

Again, right into the church in Philippi, Philippians 1, verse 29.

Philippians 1:29

He says, it has been granted to you, that's the church, that for the sake of

Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

So he doesn't say, right, because you have faith, you will suffer for his sake.

He says, word for word, look it up.

It has been granted to you for the sake of Christ, that you should believe in him.

Again, I didn't say it, Paul said it. I didn't say it, Jesus said it.

I didn't say it, God said it.

But what I hope you're starting to see is that you should be free from this

idea that it's completely up to you to figure out what to do with your faith.

That if you have faith at all, if you have even the smallest bit,

that Christ is who he says he is, that God is who he says he is,

that he'll do what he says he's going to do.

Listen, that is an incredible gift that you've been given.

Look at how this plays out in the Gospels.

Luke chapter 17, the disciples, after hearing a hard teaching from Jesus,

Luke 17 · chapter mention

he's really kind of getting towards the end of his time on earth.

And he's starting to lay down some of the harder teaching on his apostles.

And the apostles say to the Lord in verse five, increase our faith.

They don't look at themselves and say, man, we got to do more.

They understand at this point in Jesus's ministry, if we're gonna have more

faith, it needs to come from the author of it.

Famously in Mark 9, there's a father of a demon-possessed boy.

I mean, Jesus are going back and forth. In Mark 9, 24, it says,

immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe,

help my unbelief. That's a great prayer.

Again, Jesus doesn't look at the father and say, if you had more faith,

your son would be healed.

Right? That's demonic to think like that.

The demons would love for you to think that God sits in heaven waiting on you

to do something to earn his favor. They would love to have you think that.

You know, the father says, I have faith that you have given me and I need you

to help me with the faith that I don't have.

Last example, again, we could go on. Last example, Luke 22, 32,

a passage we've talked about in here quite a bit.

Jesus sitting around the table with his disciples, they've had the last supper,

and he looks at Peter and he says, Peter, Satan would have you and sift you like wheat.

Again, what's his advice going to be?

Satan would have you and sift you like wheat. So Peter, you better up your faith count, buddy.

Peter, you better look out. You better sow a seed, man.

You better believe harder. You better work harder. You better get to work.

He doesn't say any of that.

He says, Peter, Satan would have you and sift you like wheat,

but I have prayed for you.

The author of faith has prayed for you that what? That your faith may not fail.

Man, Satan's going to get to you. He's going to want to sift you,

but he can't take from you the gift that I've given you.

He's not the author of your faith. I am. He's not the perfecter of your faith.

I am. And I have prayed for you so that your faith that I gave you,

that I authored, that I will perfect will not fail.

That's what faith is. Faith is a gift that God gives to his children.

Again, I think I've made the point, at least to this point, unless you want

to go to noon, which I will gladly do.

I do want to say just real quickly, I know for some, this idea is,

if it's the first time you've ever heard something like that, it's a pretty new thing.

I would love to chat about it. I truly believe that understanding something

like that will change the way you read your Bible, it'll change the way you

think about the Lord, it'll change the way you think about God,

it'll change the way you think about your life.

Ultimately, I think it'll actually provide for you the freedom that Christ promises you.

The freedom and the grace and the peace that Christ promises you is found in

understanding that your faith is a gift, not a work that you have to do.

Again, faith is not simply leaping out of an airplane or falling off a platform

or hoping that God will catch you.

Faith is a gift given to you so that when you have it, you know God will catch

you. It's not a leap of faith.

A leap that someone takes who has the faith that God's given them, they have zero doubts.

There's no doubt as they fall, God's gonna catch me.

That's why you see stories like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

They look at the most powerful emperor of the day and they say to him,

listen, our God can deliver us up.

And even if he doesn't, we're still gonna worship him. Why?

Because he's given us something that you can't take from us.

It's why David looks at Goliath and says what he says. That's why Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal.

They've been given a gift.

Ultimately, this hall of faith, what it's going to turn into is not a list of

people that we should look at and go, man, how awesome are these people?

It's a list of people we should look at and go, oh, God gave these people a gift.

And they were able to do incredible things. They were able to live the lives

that God called them to. They were able to endure incredible suffering.

So real quick before we go through these examples, we'll move swift here.

What should you do if you lack faith then? Well, the first thing I would tell

you is ask the one who gives it as a free gift.

If you lack faith, the last thing I want you to hear from this pulpit this morning

is work harder, do more. How could you?

The Lord is not looking for qualified applicants to see who he could give faith to.

The Lord is looking for humble sinners who are looking for a savior to give

faith to. That's what he's looking for.

He's looking for prostitutes like Rahab, who's in this book.

For cowards like Moses who lies about who his wife is.

He's looking for people like Abraham who, again, yeah, they do great things, but they run.

Listen to what Romans 10, 17 says, right? If you're gonna ask the one as a free

gift, the first thing I would say is do that. The second thing,

listen to the author of faith.

Romans says, so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

Listen, get a Bible, read it, listen to it, study it, meditate on it,

ask someone to help you read it.

If you lack faith, you ask the one who gives it and you listen to its author.

Now, what should you do if you have faith? If you're in here this morning and

everything I've said is like, amen, I think that's true. I think that's right.

Well, if you have faith, then you should work that faith out.

A gift received is only appreciated truly when it is used.

My mom didn't like buying action figures and she did not like a lot of the boy

toys that came out when I was younger.

And so every year my Christmases would get themed in weird ways.

Now I would always get like a new basketball, football, baseball,

racquetball. I mean, I didn't play racquetball, but why not?

One year she decided she was just going to buy me every yo-yo she could find.

And I literally got like 15 yo-yos. And I was like, man, mom,

you really want me to be the coolest kid in school.

Like I could just walk around the hallways and everyone's going to be like,

this guy is walking the dog crazy.

The truth is I didn't really appreciate that gift because guess what?

14 of those 15 stayed in the package.

I played with a yo-yo for about three minutes. The string got tangled and I

was like, eh, I'm just going to go play Mario. Like this seems like a waste of time.

But if faith is a gift and it is, then what you should do is work it out.

And that's what he's going to continue to do here in these rest of this chapter.

He gives us three examples of.

He says, by faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain,

through which he was commended as righteous.

God commending him by accepting his gifts and through his faith,

though he died, he still speaks. Let me ask you a question.

Where could Abel's faith come from? And what could Abel have faith in?

What promise was Abel believing?

The promise that Abel had was Genesis 3, that God would crush the head of the

serpent, that from the seed of the woman, he would provide a savior.

Now, why was Abel's sacrifice accepted and not Cain's? Listen,

it had nothing to do with what was offered. The scripture is pretty clear.

It says that he had a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain through which he was

commended as righteous. That's what we said earlier.

It says, and through faith, though he died, he still speaks.

He talks about Enoch. We don't know much about Enoch other than he's the great,

great, great, great grandson of Adam.

If you believe in the genealogies, it says he was taken up by faith.

And let's just close here with Noah.

It says, by faith, this is verse seven, by faith, Noah being warned by God concerning

events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

Now again, did Noah become righteous, receive righteousness?

Did he become acceptable for God because he built an ark?

Genesis 6, verses 7 and 8. So the Lord said, I will blot out man who I have

Genesis 6:7

created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds

of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

The word favor there is translated as grace in about 50 other places.

I always encourage people, I think that's a better translation.

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That's the first verse we hear about Noah.

Not that Noah did something It's that Noah was given something He was given

grace and faith And in Noah's life, what does that faith produce?

An ark Noah doesn't have faith and find favor and build an ark Noah's given

a gift through grace And because of the gift given him, he builds an ark,

Now, what does this look like in your life and in my life?

Listen, I doubt any of us are called to build an ark I I don't know if that's

your thing. Let me know God bless you.

I don't know God's already promised he wouldn't flood the earth again.

So I think we're all right, but.

Faith, if you've been given that gift, there's going to be a lot of things that

he mentions in here that are massive things, building arcs and being taken up

to heaven and things like that.

The advice I would give you is if you've been given faith, if you can honestly

say that this morning, if you've

been given that gift, simply do what you know God has called you to do.

Love the people around you. Be in the word. Be part of a church. Love the people there.

Just do what God's called you to do.

Now, there will be moments in your life where there's bigger decisions to be made.

There'll be moments in your life where the obedience that God calls you to is

a harder thing to do than others.

Again, for these Hebrews right here, he's already told them,

listen, you've already been persecuted and you're gonna get persecuted worse than that. It's coming.

And to prepare them for that, he wants them to be reminded, you've been given

a gift and the gift that you have received is able to get you through any and

everything that might come your way.

Whether that's a hard Monday morning, whether that's losing a loved one,

whether that's experiencing a betrayal.

Losing some money, losing some property, somebody having a bad opinion of you

because of the things that you believe, whatever that thing might be,

if you've been given a gift, the author of Hebrews wants you to know you're

gonna make it because God doesn't revoke his gifts.

In fact, he sends his son, Jesus, to author them and perfect them.

And he sends his spirit to help you live the life that you've been called to

live because of the gift you've been given. Let's pray.

Thank you for this morning. Thank you for your word. God, I know that some things

in your word are really hard to comprehend at times.

So God, I don't ask for more knowledge. I don't ask for even a simple, better understanding.

God, I just ask that you would open our eyes and our hearts to what it is your

word says, that you would humble us before it and allow us to accept it for what it is.

God, this morning that if anyone in here lacks faith, that you would give it

to them as a father gives to his kids freely and graciously and in abundance.

That we would be a people free from thinking that it's our job to just conjure

up enough faith to make you happy or to accomplish enough things.

But God, it's our humble opportunity to come to you as your children and to ask you for things.

God, this morning we ask for faith. We ask for more of it.

We ask for faith to take on the rest of the day. We ask for faith to take on Monday.

We ask for faith to take on whatever it is that you have in front of us.

God, we trust that you will supply it for us when we need it,

that when the opportunity comes to take a step, to take a leap,

to fall backwards into your arms, that we would not take a blind leap of faith

like so many have talked about, but God, that we would step confidently out

knowing that you will catch us because of the gift that you've given us,

faith to see, a conviction to see, and that it would be evidence for us that you're working in us.

We thank you for that. Amen. Amen.