Faith Builders I: Rhema Word - Supplements for Spiritual Energy

Well, it's great to be back.

Some of you may know that we were out of town.

We had a wedding in Georgia, and we were engulfed in all things University of Georgia for 10 days.

It's it's um interesting to go back to Georgia.

I didn't know, I I don't know if I was ever into Georgia like my brother was into Georgia, but he is definitely into it right now.

And so Georgia won today 66 to nothing over Troy in a real real uh great game.

Um but anyway, we had a great time.

We went to the wedding and then we were at Hilton Head.

Never been there before, except when I was a little little kid.

It was really fun.

Kind of fun to go to the South in September when it's not quite as suffocatingly hot.

Um but it was really good to be with my dad and mom.

You know, they're they're getting older.

Some of you guys know what that's like, and we had some discussions about the future.

Dad's 82, mom's 80, my mom has Alzheimer's, and so it was a big discussion about you know what do we do in some eventualities and circumstances as they come up.

So I hope you have those kind of frank discussions with your with your parents that are older, or maybe their grandparents.

Um, I think it's really good to be frank and open and vulnerable.

And we had some really good discussions like that, so it was really good.

Hey, listen, if you're a part of the road and you're not getting announcements, you may have figured out we haven't gone to the bulletin thing yet, but there's uh ways to do that, and you can sign up with the roadcs at gmail.com.

If you send us an email, then you're you uh start getting all of that stuff from us.

Those are both Facebook.

You can do stuff on Facebook as well as emails.

In two weeks, uh, we're having a big seminar.

It's really our first large seminar called Making Disciples with Pastor Rock Bottomley, used to be the pastor at Pulpit Rock.

He's in from Oklahoma with his wife Bev.

It's gonna start on Friday night.

So Friday night will be over at the chapel, which is the other smaller venue over here where we've been meeting before until recently, and that's on October 3rd.

So not next Friday, but the next Friday, 7 p.m.

So 7 to 9, and then 9 to noon on Saturday morning.

And what it is, you guys, is our passion is the building of wholehearted disciples of Jesus.

And what we mean by that is any age, any person we believe God wants a disciple in a discipleship relationship, and that's gonna be in small groups, which we call D groups.

We just had a training a couple weeks ago on C groups, and we've got about five or six C groups that are getting started, but now we're gonna move toward D groups, and D groups are three to six people, men with men, women with women, that are gonna begin to be formed all across the congregation.

Now, how do we do that?

That's what I've invited Rock to come in and initiate and talk to us about because he's been doing it for the last three years, and I really like the format he uses.

It's really simple.

It's using scripture, it's using listening prayer.

A leader of a D group that we're gonna be forming doesn't even have to prepare.

He has to facilitate and coach in a D group, but you do not have to come prepared to teach, because that's that's the big dilemma.

How many of you realize you're not teachers?

Anyone in here realize you're not having a lot of hands going up?

They say it's the most difficult, reproducible gift of all the gifts in Scripture is the gift of teaching.

People feel the most intimidated by it.

And so, and so I know that some of you have mentioned to me, well, I'm not a teacher.

I don't know that I could lead a discipleship group.

It's not for that.

That's why I like his methodology so much, is because it's basically taking scripture, and listen, I'll give you a little heads up because we're gonna, there's kind of a secret to this.

I I'm I'm kind of uh I'm getting more and more to be secretive in my ways.

I find that I that if if you leak too much information, then it gets diluted along the way.

So I'm gonna give you a little secret that we're not gonna share until that Friday night, and that is this that we are all going to be in the same passages of the Bible.

If you follow the plan, everybody in the road is gonna be in the same passage of reading in the Bible any day of the week throughout the fall.

And so if you have a if you have a D group on Thursday, or you have a D group on Tuesday, or you have a D group on Sunday afternoon, there will be a passage that we've provided for you that everybody in the church is reading.

So that's a little glimpse, a little um tidbit into what we're gonna really unfold and unwrap and introduce on Friday and Saturday, October 3rd and 4th.

Now, young people, I see a lot of young people in here.

This is for you.

This is for you too.

We are expecting everybody in the church to be in a D group.

Now, will everybody be in a D group?

Probably not, because I know how busy many of us are.

But the challenge would be that you would seek God to be in a D group.

And that includes you young people.

We want you guys in D groups.

Now, here's the deal: some of you young people are mature enough that you could be leading a D group with some younger guys.

So some of you guys that are high schoolers could be leading.

Now, you may not be doing it tomorrow, but maybe six months from now, you could be leading a D group with some middle schoolers.

And so we're gonna be unfolding this, and it's really, really important that you come October 3rd and 4th.

Now we need you to RSVP because we're gonna have some food, we're gonna have some refreshments, we're gonna have some coffee, stuff like that.

Gotta have that if we're gonna call you to be here on a Saturday morning.

Wouldn't be fair if we didn't have coffee.

So there's gonna be coffee there, and so RSVP, and I guess you do that through the Facebook.

I'm assuming that's how you do it.

So there it is.

The Road CS at Gmail.

That's that's the answer to every problem.

Also, a bunch of ladies have gotten together, some of our beautiful women, and they've got cookies and lemonade available right after the service.

I came in and saw them setting up.

So it's gonna be awesome.

So, right after the service, go out there, young people, go out there.

You guys are gonna gather and you're gonna go to the board church tonight for your youth discipleship time.

And then next Sunday is an all-church picnic.

So not tomorrow, but next week is an all-church picnic at Black Forest Regional Park.

Bring your own chair, bring your own blanket, bring your own food.

All we're gonna provide is the information to come there, okay?

And so it's at 11 a.m.

till 2 p.m.

We just wanted to hang out.

We don't have many more days until it's gonna get start getting cold, but it's a high of 70 that day and a low of 54, and it's good weather all throughout the week.

So want you guys to come, hang out.

If you've if you've got some yard games and things like that, those are really fun too.

And so we had last time we did a shindig, we had a blast, and then we did, was it 4th of July?

We were all out there uh impromptu, and a ton of you guys came out, and it was just a lot of fun.

So that's Sunday a week at Black Forest Regional Park, which is Mylam and Shoop Roads.

Not Fox Run, okay?

Black Forest Regional Park at Shoop and Mylam.

Is that clear?

All right, turn in your Bibles.

Let's get to work here on Mark chapter 4.

Mark 4 · chapter mention

And we've been talking about harvest faith from Mark 4.20.

We've been talking about this diagram.

So I'm gonna put it up there again.

You're probably getting sick of this, but I want you to look at it.

Information that leads to formation that leads to transformation.

That in Mark 4.20, there's this promise given by Jesus that his disciples who accept the word, receive by faith the word, can bear fruit thirtyfold, sixty-fold, and a hundredfold.

And my thesis is that everybody here wants that, but very few of us are willing to pay the price to get it because there's this little problem down on the bottom of the diagram, and it's called tested faith.

Tested faith.

We like the whole idea of God's blessing, but we chafe at the thought that he would test us.

Because what tends to happen with some of us is we start blaming God.

Some of you are really blamers.

I mean, you you've lived your whole life being blamers.

Every time there's a problem, you blame your parents, or you blame your mom because she didn't serve you the right kind of lemonade when you were growing up, or or you blame your teachers.

Let me give you my thesis on pedagogy or pedagogy.

The fault lies with the teachers, not the students.

I really believe that, by the way.

I believe that the reason God's anointing and power is not over churches is because pastors are not men of faith who go after God.

That in our schools we have teachers that are bored with their subjects.

And I would say to every teacher, if you're a teacher and you're a school teacher, love your subject and love your students.

Love your subject and love your students.

Back when I was in seminary in graduate school, going back and forth to Anaheim, California to Pasadena, I listened, and I'd say this, this would be great for you to listen to.

I don't know if it's still around.

Bruce Wilkinson walked through the Bible, wrote a book called The Prayer of Jabez, got super rich, and then I don't know whatever happened to him.

But before he was rich, he was really good.

And he wrote a book called The Prayer of Jabez, but he also did a video, and um, back then it was a cassette series called The Seven Laws of a Learner.

I would encourage any of you that have any desire to be a teacher or you're in some form of teaching or communication, you should listen to it.

I listened to that.

I probably listened to the whole series, probably 20 talks 20 times.

It's called the Seven Laws of a Learner.

Don't even know if it's still around.

Put it in there.

You know what?

You can probably go and you can get it like on uh on uh one of those cheap, I mean, who's got does anybody even have a cassette tape recorder anymore?

I don't even know if you can find it, but anyway, it's probably in CD form, seven laws of a learner.

But here's here's the my thesis is this is that we have the responsibility first to be a learner.

And then as we're passionate about learning, we teach it to others.

And it doesn't mean you have the gift of teaching, it means you have the gift of learning.

And it comes from the Hebrew word, I'm way off from what I was gonna talk about, but the Hebrew word is lamod, and Lamod is the word for teaching in Hebrew, it's also the same word for learner, and so the premise is that you're a learner.

So as we learn from God, he's gonna test our faith.

Sorry.

You're gonna be tested in your faith, and you're gonna get hammered.

God allows you to be hammered at times.

And so here he has these these 12 disciples.

We've been looking at this in Mark 4.

And then after he teaches on this idea of harvest faith of 30, 60, and 100fold, he then starts testing their faith.

In his first I called dilemmas, a few weeks ago, I talked about dilemmas and circumstances.

That's the first way God's going to test us is dilemmas and circumstances, and he sends them.

What does he do?

He sent them right into a storm on the lake of Galilee, a windstorm.

They get scared, they freak out, they wake him up, he calms the storm.

Secondly, as soon as you thought they'd gotten out through the storm, they get out of their boat on the other side of the Sea of Galilee at the Gatterings, and a demoniac comes.

Demons.

You are going to be attacked by demons.

Demons are real, demons are out there, demons attack us.

Whether you're a believer or not, and I would say the stronger a believer you are, the more you're going to be attacked.

So, first, we talked about dilemmas and circumstances.

Secondly, we talked about demons.

Thirdly, disease and sickness.

So Jesus then comes across the lake.

And this woman who's had a 12-year hemorrhage fights her way with all her uncleanliness in the crowd, just touches the very fringe of Jesus' garment, and he feels power released, and she's healed.

So God will test our faith through dilemmas, through demons, through disease, and then fourthly through death.

And so in our story tonight, Jarius, who has come, he's the synagogue official, comes begging Jesus to come to pray for his daughter.

Well, she dies.

And that's where we pick it up.

In verse 35, Mark 5, 35.

Again, a test of faith.

A test of faith.

While he was still speaking, some came from the ruler of the synagogue's house who said, Your daughter is dead, why trouble the teacher any further?

As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said to the ruler of the synagogue, and interesting what he says here, do not be afraid, only believe.

As if the opposite of fear is faith.

The opposite of fear, men and women, sometimes faith.

Listen, fear is to Satan what faith is to God.

You empower the enemy with fear.

I do it all the time.

Usually at 3 a.m.

Some of you men and women who pray for me need to stay up later.

Because 3 a.m.

is a really bad time for me a lot of times.

And uh, hello, do you guys know what I'm talking about?

You ever wake up, your subconscious just bombarded with fears?

You weren't even thinking about it.

You didn't thought about it in a week.

Fear is to Satan, it empowers him like faith is to God.

And he permitted no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.

Then he came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue and saw a tumult.

And those who wept and wailed loudly.

When he came in, he said to them, Why make this commotion and weep?

The child is not dead, but sleeping.

Verse 40.

They ridiculed him.

And when he had put them all outside, he took the father and the mother of the child and those who were with him, and he entered where the child was lying.

Then he took the child by the hand and said to her, Talitha kumi, which is translated, Little girl, I say to you, Arise.

Immediately the girl arose.

This is what when you read these things, you're kind of like, oh man, that's that's just like interpreters.

I've been in so many situations, and I'll say, and I'll say, Have faith.

And then the translator, go on for 15 minutes.

So it's good to know it's actually scriptural.

Talatha kumi is little girl, I say to you, arise.

And they were overcome with great amazement, but he commanded them strictly that no one should know it, and said that something should be given to her to eat.

Chapter 6.

Then he went out from there and came to his own country.

And his disciples followed him.

And when the Sabbath had come, he began to teach in the synagogue.

And many hearing him were astonished, saying, Where did this man get these things?

And what wisdom is this which is given to him that such mighty works are performed by his hands?

Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon?

And are not his sisters here with us?

So they were offended at him.

But Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.

Now he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.

And he marveled because of their unbelief.

Then he went about the villages in a circuit of teaching.

Now we're on this journey of this harvest faith.

And what's to me most interesting about our passage is this lack of faith everywhere Jesus turns.

And so throughout our journey of the last four or five weeks, we've been looking really at two kinds of people.

Those with faith and those with fear.

And what's most fascinating to me is those who seem to have faith are desperate.

They are desperate for God to show up.

They are desperate for a miracle.

They are desperate for salvation.

They're desperate for healing.

They are not satisfied with where they're at.

And you see, you go to the two-thirds world and you see people who have nothing.

I mean, materially they have nothing.

All they have is Jesus, and there is a desperation about them because they feel so poverty-stricken, even of spirit, without an encounter with God.

And so they come to God and miracles happen.

And we see a woman hemorrhaging for 12 years.

What was the passage we read?

She's gone through all her money.

She's done everything the physicians asked her to do.

She tried the ostrich egg thing with the cloth and all the stuff that's part of the Talmud.

We talked about that.

She's desperate.

She's unclean.

Because of the hemorrhage, because of the blood flowing, she's unclean.

Which means she can't even have a relationship with regular people in the city or even attend church at the synagogue.

She's anathema.

She's desperate for Jesus.

You see a bunch of disciples on that boat, and it looks like that that boat is going to capsize and they're about to lose their lives on that boat, they get really desperate calling out to Jesus who's asleep.

Then he goes over and he meets a guy that for years and years has been demonized, demon-possessed.

Some of you, some of us are demonized.

You're in shackles to some addiction.

And you've tried everything.

And God is saying to you tonight, get desperate for me.

Get desperate for me.

I am in the business of setting the captives free.

That's what he does.

But then there's this other group.

This other group is very satisfied with their life.

They're very satisfied for how things are.

When Jesus goes over to the Gathering region, they really get upset that Jesus cast out all of these 2,000 to 6,000 demons into 2,000 swine that all go rushing down the hill and into the lake and they lose their economic wherewithal and they say, get out of here.

They don't want Jesus there.

They don't want him to mess up their life as they know it.

And then he comes over, and Jarius is crying out, and he let him know, Jarius, she is dead.

Your daughter is dead.

Don't bother the teacher.

It's over, it's hopeless.

She's dead.

And Christ can't work there.

And so here's what I want to talk about tonight: faith busters.

Not ghostbusters.

Faith busters.

I see in our passage here two major faith busters.

And these are those things that bust your faith, that cause you to not walk out what God has for you, to not walk out your destiny.

Men and women, every one of you in here, you young people, listen to my voice here.

There's a destiny on your life.

There is a purpose that you've been placed here, and it is a purpose to make a difference, to make an impact that nobody else can make an impact but you in.

You are carved out with a specific plan and purpose for your life, but you got to go out and you gotta go out and get it.

And the way you get it is by faith.

It will always be by faith.

And that faith is built by a Jesus Christ, a relationship with Him, where we let Him live His life in and through us through the Spirit-filled life.

But I want to talk about, I know it's a kind of a downer tonight, but I want to talk about faith busters.

And then next week I want to talk about faith builders.

Faith busters and faith builders.

Turn in your Bibles to John 15.4.

John 15.4 is a really interesting passage.

The entire passage is about the vine, about abiding in Christ, that he's our vine.

And let me just say this that God has really ministered to me over the last few months from John 15, primarily from the very, the very first verse that talks about the fact that the Father's the vine dresser.

And I don't want to get into John 15 too much, except to say this that if God is the vine dresser, then guess what?

He's in charge of the vine.

He's sovereign.

And what we think is often bad, he's using for good.

He's in control of our lives.

But look at John 15, 4.

He says this, he says, Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

This is an organic cooperative.

The Christian life, church, is an organic cooperative.

It's organic in that if we abide in Him, we are guaranteed to bear fruit.

He promises that if you'll abide in me, you'll bear fruit.

But don't miss why or how.

He says, abide in me and I in you.

So it's not just us abiding in him, it's him abiding in us.

And so it's an organic cooperative of faith.

That as we by faith abide in him, he promises he'll abide in us and we will bear fruit.

And so there is this organic relationship of being connected to him, wherein he's connected to us, and guess what?

No vine can bear fruit without branches.

That means God the Father can't bear fruit without you.

God the Father can't do his work on this earth that you, oh yeah, he could use the rocks, he could use the grass, he could use, I guess, dolphins.

I guess I saw some dolphins when we were in Hilton Ed.

They're really pretty and all that stuff, but I've never heard a dolphin preach the gospel.

I've never seen a dolphin lay his fin on someone and they got healed.

Okay.

Whales swallow people, and there's a good story about that once in the Bible.

Reality, men and women, we're the branches.

He uses us.

We abide in him, he abides in us, and God wants to use you.

He has a destiny on your life.

So, the enemy knows that.

And he wants to destroy our holy desperation.

The enemy wants to destroy our holy desperation for him.

And I want to give you two things that I see in this passage, two areas, and I think they're huge in all of our lives.

If we if we let them grow, they'll destroy your life.

Some of you are being destroyed right now by this.

Number one.

Number one.

Mark 5.35.

Let me read it again.

While he was still speaking, some came from the ruler of the synagogue's house who said, Your daughter is dead.

Why trouble the teacher any further?

As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said to the ruler of the synagogue, Do not be afraid, only believe.

Number one.

Number one, faith buster.

Fear.

Fear.

Fear kills your faith.

Many of us are living lives of fear because of shame.

Shameful things have happened to you in your life.

You're covering that up.

You're walking in fear, and part of the fear is that somebody's going to find out about your shame.

Some of us are walking in fear because we failed so often that we're afraid now to risk again, right?

We lost that job.

We lose.

We've lost.

People have called us losers.

And so the fear of failure rules our lives.

Shame.

Fear of failure.

We compare ourselves with others.

Fear kills faith.

Here's what fear does.

Here's what fear does in my life.

Fear energizes me.

Fear gives me negative momentum.

Fear gives me negative adrenaline.

I can feel it.

I felt it in several situations.

I felt it scuba diving, where I've been down really deep.

One time I was like 60 feet, which isn't super deep, but it was deep for me.

And I went into a dark cave off the coast of Okinawa, and I had a partner, and we had flashlights, and we went really deep into this cave.

I mean, it was like it was a cavern, probably about a third the size of this room, but that felt huge to me.

And I lost, I couldn't see my partner's flashlight, and I didn't have one.

So he had the flashlight, I didn't, and it's just utter darkness.

That's freaky, man.

That's really, really freaky.

And I can and I can feel what I'm just gonna call it, I don't know if it's the right term, but I'm gonna call it like negative adrenaline was just being released into my bloodstream, and I could feel myself sucking air like really fast, way like three times faster than I needed to with uh the amount of air that I had.

It's not not good.

So we've had times in our lives, haven't we?

Some of you have had panic attacks.

Some of you, when you feel fear, you go to drugs.

Some of you go to sex, some of you go to porn.

I don't know, everybody's different, but I'm telling you, fear will destroy your faith, it'll ruin your life.

And so faith is busted by fear, and here's what it does: it overwhelms our best intentions.

Fear overwhelms our best intentions, and we're not good.

Listen, guys, we we are not good in fear.

If you've ever coached in athletics, you know this is true.

You can't have a kid who's full of fear.

You've got to have a kid who's got some confidence, and that takes time.

But we don't do well under fear.

We don't perform well, we don't speak well, we don't communicate well, we we're not articulate anymore.

We are we're blubbering fools, some of us, with when we get fear because it releases this negative adrenaline, and the enemy loves it.

The enemy just loves us when we're in fear.

Jesus earlier in Mark 40, he says, Why are you so fearful?

He's speaking to the disciples in the boat.

How is it that you have no faith?

Fear cripples faith.

Fear is to Satan and demons what faith is to God.

Verse 17.

Back in Mark chapter 4, no, Mark chapter 5, 15 through 17, it says, they were afraid, verse 17, they began to plead with him to depart from their re region.

Mark 4 · chapter mention Mark 5 · chapter mention

What are we fearful of?

What are we fearful of?

I'm gonna give you my theory.

I, and I'm speaking from personal experience, I think we're fearful, listen up, of the presence of God.

Isn't that weird?

I mean, you say, nah, it's like the opposite, not that.

I'm, you know, we can name all these other things.

I'm telling you, that's what we're fearful of.

We're fearful of the presence of God.

We're fearful that actually God's going to show up, and there's something of a safety valve.

It's like we have this safety valve that doesn't want to release faith.

Because if we release faith, we actually have to do something.

We actually have to do something.

We have to step out and we share our faith with someone.

Or we step out and we pray for someone, or we step out and we give that check.

Or we or we step out and we say, I love you.

The hardest three words in the English language, I love you.

Especially for men.

Isn't that hard, guys, to say I love you, to say it to our sons, to say it to our daughters, to say it to our nieces and our nephews, to say it to our dad.

I mean, I I feel like I've got a pretty healthy home.

I grew up in a pretty healthy home.

And it's still hard for me to say I love you to my dad.

So so fear, so fear is busted, it busts our faith because I believe we have a fear of the presence of God.

Because when we start to say, I love you, when we start to reach out with compassion to others, the presence of God shows up.

And it and it's uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable.

And so these guys in a boat, these disciples, they feel the presence of God, they fear it.

These people in the gatherings, they see Jesus cast out these demons, they see the presence of God, they fear it.

Nobody wants Jesus to come to Jarius' house because he embodies the presence of God.

They fear it.

And here's what happens, gang, and this is why it's so vital that we be in a local church.

You've got to be in the right church.

You can't be just in any church.

You've got to be in a church of faith because of group think.

Group think.

I mean, Jesus said that I'm gonna get into this way more next week, by the way.

Because there's a positive group think and there's a negative group think.

And I think it's interesting in our passage that Jesus says, hey, look, she's only asleep, and everybody ridicules him.

They make fun of him because of group think.

But guess how Jesus counters that?

He takes, what does it say here?

He says, and he permitted no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.

You know what Jesus is doing?

Jesus needs group think.

Jesus needs some people around him.

We've got some faith around here.

That's why I said, if you want to come and be a watchman on the wall and pray hot prayers, come at 515 before the road from 515 to 545.

But if you if you're not into that, then don't come.

We don't need your negative energy.

But if you want to come because you know that you've got a little bit of negative energy, but you want to get some of that positive on you, then we love you to come.

But Jesus, the Son of God, doesn't want these people around.

Get them out of here.

He makes everybody leave except for the mom and the dad and his buddies.

And I believe it's because there's a faith dynamic here that he's countering the negative momentum of the group think of that crowd.

That's why we need the body of Christ.

Men and women, you need people around you who have faith for you, who have faith for God to use you, have faith that God can bring a healing, faith that God can mightily work, faith that you can raise those finances, faith that you're gonna get that job.

You need some people, man, don't get around the other crowd.

I mean, they're nice people.

I mean, you could eat with them, everything, but I mean, don't tell them your prayer requests because they're just gonna say, well, you know, my Larry, he was out of work for 14 years.

And I tell you, it's really hard to find a job out there.

Ever since Obama became president.

I mean, ever since Bush was president, whatever it is.

I don't want to hear that.

I don't want that kind of stuff, right?

So we need, so I'm telling you, group think kills faith sometimes.

And it can be a board, it can be a, it can be a bunch of pastors together, it can be a church, it can be a small group.

Fear can invade a family and ruin a family.

You gotta fight that.

And again, next week.

Faith builders.

But a family can be the most powerful unit on the face of the earth for God's powerful miracles.

A church, uh doesn't matter what size church, but a church of people who've got faith to trust God, they can move mountains.

But the opposite can be true too.

And we can just we can just dash our faith with fear.

Say no to fear.

Say no to fear.

Jesus is Jesus is actually dumbfounded sometimes, I think, by my lack of faith.

I know he is.

I mean, he's looking at the disciples who've seen all these healings, and you know, you think he'd be a little bit more compassionate.

The boat is about to capsize.

Sea of Galilee?

I mean, you can barely see the other side.

That's a scary place to be, in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, and if and if the fishermen guys are scared, you might, these are professional fishermen.

They're scared.

I might have a little bit of fear, you know, and then Jesus says, Where's your faith?

It's not very compassionate, it's not very nice of Jesus.

I mean, that's not the Sunday school Jesus.

That's not the wavy blonde hair dude.

That's not one of the, you know, you almost feel like Jesus is sort of a drummer for the beach boys.

Okay, kind of guy.

No, he's for everybody.

Oh.

You know, he's he's a doobie brother.

Jesus is just alright with me.

You know, he's just he's just this guy that's just got so much compassion.

I mean, he's fiercely angry at times here.

He gets angry at you.

He gets angry at Steve.

Look what I've done.

How many things I gotta do to show you how faithful I am to you?

Get off your duffer, open the word of God, and start to walk with me.

Would you start to trust me?

And men and women, some of you need a kick in the faith pants.

You do.

You're sitting on your hiney, full of fear, and we pray for you at ministry time and all that, and we want to do that.

We think that's great.

But there's a point where you got enough information.

Now you've got to walk with tested faith toward transformation.

And we're here to help.

We're here to walk with you.

But sometimes it's gonna be hard talks, right?

Right?

Yeah, it is, because I need it.

Some of you guys in this room, you sat around the fire with me in my deepest, darkest, depressive hours in the last few months, and you spoke life into me.

And you listened and you were caring, you're loving, but you also spoke life into me.

And started, I started picking myself up again and saying, I can do this in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, fear, negative fear.

Secondly, and this is probably just as prevalent as fear in its offense.

Taking offense kills faith.

Taking people's offenses kills faith.

Taking a church's offenses, taking a denomination's offenses, taking your dad's offenses, taking your mom's offenses, taking your nephew's offenses, taking your best friend's offenses, don't do that.

Because what happens is that turns into gossip, it turns into um um jealousy and envy and strife.

So they were offended at Jesus.

Why are they offended at Jesus?

Well, here's what it says.

Then he went out from there and he came to his own country.

That's really important.

Probably he's in Nazareth then.

And his disciples followed him, and when the Sabbath had come, he began to teach in the synagogue.

And many hearing him were astonished, saying, Where did this man get these things?

And what wisdom is this which is given?

He's only a carpenter.

Don't you remember he built the table over there in Aunt Belinda's room?

He's just a carpenter.

Where did he get this stuff?

He's never even been trained.

And what wisdom is this which is given to him that such mighty works are performed by his hands?

Those are calloused carpenter hands.

That's all they are.

He's not even a priest.

And look, he's the son of Mary.

And he's got what?

One, two, three, four brothers, and he's even got some sisters to boot.

He's just a regular guy.

I want all the young people, if you are, if you are 21 or under to stand up.

21 or under to stand up.

Wow.

There's hope for our nation.

All right, I want you parents and and adults to look at these kids right now.

Just look around.

Look at look at them.

Some of these kids are gonna be mightily and powerfully used.

Of the Lord for signs and wonders.

Some of these kids are smarter than any of us in this room.

I actually know some of them, and that's absolutely true.

Which, by the way, doesn't take a lot with me.

I'm just speaking of some of you that are smarter than me in this room.

But some of these kids are going to be used to do tremendous things for the Lord, and you're going to be offended by them.

You're going to be offended by them because, ah, you know, that's that snotty kid who used to always steal gum in Sunday school class.

Or that's that kid he always struck out in baseball.

Or whatever it might be.

And you've got to get over it.

Because God wants you to renew your minds and believe in these young people and believe that God can use them.

And you and you're called, some of you are called to disciple them and to minister to them and to lay hands on them and to break the power of offense because there's faith in the hearts of these kids.

They want to do stuff, right?

Some of you guys have big plans and big vision.

I want to applaud that.

I want you to go for it with all your heart.

But we as adults, we're called to be catalytic for them, not offended by them.

And so they've seen Jesus, you know, be a carpenter.

They've seen him with brothers, they've seen him maybe, maybe he did a whoopee cushion, you know, whoopee cushion 2,000 years ago type thing.

I don't know.

Maybe Jesus, you know, was caught with his hands in the cookie jar.

I don't know.

I don't know if that's a sin or not.

If God forgive me if that I'm not saying he was sinful.

I'm just saying he was a kid, okay?

By the way, you guys are really sinful.

So, but he wasn't, okay?

But here's the deal, you guys.

We see that and we forget that God's growing them up to be men and women of God.

And so don't be offended, be catalytic in their lives.

So bless you guys.

Bless you guys.

I love who you are.

So here's the question.

Is it possible to actually be a man or a woman of faith in your own family?

Is it?

Is it possible that God could raise up a prophet in this church that's 14 or 15 years old?

Is it possible that God could raise up a worship leader in this church who's 12?

Is it possible that God could raise up someone who could heal the sick and be used mightily by God to heal and they're nine years old?

I don't know.

I know we're all saying, yes, yes.

But can we really?

Or will we be offended by them because of their age, or because we've seen them in trouble before, or we've seen them messed up, or we might have seen them addicted to something.

I'm telling you, that erodes faith.

That ruins faith.

And I don't want to be like that.

How about you?

Let's let God be God.

And in so doing, God wants to build up faith in a church and in a ministry and in people and in families.

Gossip and taking on offense kills faith.

It just kills it.

Give them a chance.

Give them a chance.

We're gonna have men and women, even older folks that have been addicted to stuff, that are gonna come up here and get set free, and they're really gonna get set free.

They're gonna break the power of that addiction, and then the tendency, listen, the tendency with us is to frame them in this frame of who they once were instead of who they've become.

That's called an offense, and it's gonna hurt their faith.

Don't do that.

Let's believe that we're a new creation in Christ and the old has passed away.

And with that newness of life is anointing and power.

That builds up faith.

And so next week I want to talk about faith builders, seven things that I believe build up faith in our lives.

Why don't we stand?

We're gonna go into worship.

Okay, I knew I was gonna do this.

Everybody sit down again.

I blew it.

The worship team can come up.

Michelle, you can come up.

Any questions?

And by the way, we now have a phone number.

And Melanie, I just got back today.

Liz and the family just got back today, so we haven't a chance to do this, but we're gonna use that phone number where you can text questions, and I'll take two or three questions if there are any about the message tonight.

And in the future, we'll actually be able to text them and we'll have them.

You don't have to be embarrassed to raise your hand.

But are there any questions on the uh the message tonight?

Yes.

Okay, so the question is, how do we know the difference between someone who's demonized and someone who just has an idol of the flesh, an idol in their life?

I don't think that it's easy to tell.

And I actually don't know that it really matters because I think that because at the row, we believe so strongly in more of a truth encounter than just a power encounter, that it takes time.

So we can disciple, we can cast out a demon in a moment of time.

There's probably a number of people that have demons in this room right now that if you came forward and wanted to be set free, we could cast your demons out.

But if you haven't been discipled in truth, they're gonna all come back.

So what I'd rather see, and I'm not saying we shouldn't cast out demons, not at all.

I think there's a place for casting out demons, since we're led to cast out demons, and we and we will do that from time to time.

But the reality is that demons have a real hard time hanging around people who are walking in truth.

So I would rather take a person for a year and we disciple them in God's word with truth encounter than necessarily casting out their demons.

So I think an idol always leads to demonization.

So whether, Jan, it's they're halfway between the two, doesn't really matter.

If they'll start going after truth, if they'll get in a C group, if they'll get in a D group, they'll start getting set free.

They really will.

Anyone else?

Yes.

Okay.

What I mean by that, Tina, is that catalytic means that we can be used of the Lord to be a bridge to helping someone grow, uh, inspiring them, encouraging them.

Um I don't know if you guys know that Tim Tebow right now is now um working with Good Morning America and he has a Monday show.

I think this Monday was the, this past Monday was his first one.

It's called Motivational Monday.

And what it is is that Tim goes and he finds these really uh kind of miraculous situations.

And the one he did first with this past Monday was a young man who had had um um had had a sickness when he was growing up and he lost both legs.

It was actually meningitis, spinal meningitis, but he wants to play football.

So he's playing football now with those blades, like that guy Pedrous does in South Africa, the runner guy.

Um who's in a lot of trouble, but um not because of his legs, because of his brain.

Um but but anyway, he's he's be people in that young man's life were catalytic.

They motivated him, they encouraged him, they told him not to give up.

They said, you can do it.

And now he's playing football because of that.

Versus taking on an offense, which means that we kind of we typeset someone a certain way and they can't get out of it because we knew them when they were eight, and now they're 18.

They're different now.

And so our job as disciplers is that we be catalytic and encouraging those around us, and not just young people, but our neighbors uh right next to us that are our age also.

All right, let's stand and let's worship the Lord.

Thank you so much, Michelle, for being with us here tonight and everything.

It's really great to have you here.

Awesome to have you.

So, Father, come in our worship.

We give you our worship time, Lord.

We invite you here.

God, as we focus in on who you are.

God, do your work.

Build up our faith.

Build up our faith.

God, we cast before you our fears, we cast before you our offenses.

And God come and cleanse us and refresh us tonight.

Amen.