Faith Supplements

Let's lift up our Bibles, like it is our custom, and we'll just say heavenly Father, we honor your word.

Your word, the entrance of your word brings light or gives light.

It gives revelation, revelation, knowledge that can change our trajectory, change our entire trajectory.

Where we're headed, lord, and we just thank you for your word.

Tonight.

We're willing and obedient to learn and to change, because changing is growing and growing is changing, and we're together changing in you, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, I just wanted to preach a message entitled faith supplements.

And hey, that doesn't sound very fun.

Nobody really enjoys taking their vitamins, but it sure does make you feel better, doesn't it?

And so tonight is still going to be fun because we're out of the Word of God.

But I am not a doctor, but, like, some of those vitamins are kind of horse pills, right, you kind of choke on them when you're trying to take them.

We have these really humongous vitamin C's at the house that my wife's always making sure that I'm taking, but anyways, and so we're going to start reading right out of 2nd Peter.

I'm going to read it out of the Passion Translation tonight, but Lee is going to have that at the bottom of your screen, so you should be able to follow right along.

And so, 2nd Peter, chapter 1 verse.

Let's just go ahead and start in verse 1.

We'll back up a little bit.

It says this letter is from Peter, a loving servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ.

I am writing to those who have been given a faith as equally precious as ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior, jesus Christ.

And so he honored right away.

You know, you just read.

It would have been real easy just to skip the first two verses here, because he's just opening up the letter.

But this is his last letter.

After this he's martyred and killed for his faith and evidently he was hung on a cross like Jesus, but upside down.

And so this is his last writing and he's stressing so many things that he's stressing here about our faith.

But he's honoring his faith right away.

And hey, it's precious and you've been given it, just like he's been given it.

We have amen, and so we're honoring it tonight, right.

And it says in verse 2, may grace and perfect peace cascade over you as you live in the rich knowledge of our God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so there's a rich knowledge here of revelation, knowledge being poured out and it's cascading over us grace and peace.

Grace is God's ability to do anything.

Amen.

God has given us his grace, his ability.

When we latch on to his grace, I'm telling you, we can accomplish anything and we have perfect peace cascading over us like a warm blanket.

You know it's not quite as cold tonight as it has been the last few nights, at least year, in Houston.

Not sure where you're watching from, but we've had some really cold temperatures the last little while and I think it got down to 16, 17 degrees last night.

So that's pretty cold.

But you know we're warm because of our heater and in our fireplace, right.

But man, we can enjoy the warm presence of the Lord and the His perfect peace cascading over us because we're living inside revelation, knowledge day by day and growing from faith to faith and glory to glory by His word, amen.

So aren't you glad that we didn't just skip right over that and that we know we're growing in the knowledge of God?

You know, that kind of reminds me of of of the Ephesians, one prayer which maybe we'll go over and look at here in a second.

In verse three it says everything we could ever need for life and godliness has already been deposited in us by His divine power, for all this was lavished upon us through the rich experience of knowing Him, who has called us by name and invited us to come to Him through a glorious manifestation of His goodness.

So let's just unpack that for a second.

So everything we could ever need, everything you need right now to live the life that you're living, has already been deposited in us.

That word, godliness, is everything we need to reflect God's true nature, has already been given into us.

It's already been deposited.

He has deposited His nature on the inside of us.

His character has been deposited on the inside of us.

How many of you, how many of people walking through life right now, just ignore that?

They just glance over that and they, they attack their problem or their situation or whatever, with their emotions or maybe with their IQ that has come from God, but they don't.

They don't approach it through the character of God and everything, all of the wonderful things that have been deposited on the inside of us.

That gives us divine power.

It's been given to us by divine power, but therefore we have authority, because of the blood and because of the word, to walk in His divine power, all through our rich experience of knowing Him.

It's all about who you know.

We know God.

It's not about the people that we know, it's about knowing God and we know Him through spending time with Him.

And we know Him by reading His Word, because His will is His Word.

And so if you are ever confused or you don't realize what, what direction to walk in, or what, how to make a certain decision that's maybe in your lap right now that you need to make, you can know that you can know His will by spending time with Him and and gleaning out of the revelation knowledge that's inside the Word of God, amen.

And so that kind of points us back to the Ephesians prayer.

Why don't we just flip?

Just put your finger there and flip with me to Ephesians 1, real fast.

Actually, I know what I want to grab it out of the New King James in this Bible.

I think I had it and it says that the eyes of our understanding in verse 18, the eyes of our understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

You know he's got an rich inheritance inside each one of us, amen, because the eyes of our understanding are enlightened and that we may know the hope of his calling.

So it's beyond what you could do alone.

It's beyond what you, your ability, you're stepping into God's grace, or his ability, and I'm telling you, it's all about knowing him on a different level, amen.

And so let's pick it up back in verse four in 2 Peter, back in the Passion translation.

It says as a result of this, he has given you magnificent promises.

He's given us magnificent promises that are beyond all price, so that, through the power there's that word power again, the power of these tremendous promises we can experience partnership with the divine nature by which you have escaped the corruption or the corrupt desires that are of this world.

And so we can experience partnership, coinonia with the Lord.

We have coinonia or partnership with him, amen, and his DNA, his spiritual DNA, has been imparted into us.

We've talked about that earlier, about his character, and that means that it means to grow up.

It means to give birth, to produce or bring forth and to grow up.

This partnership causes us to grow up into him.

And so we're not growing up, we're maturing into him.

We're not maturing into the fleshly desires of the world.

In fact, we've been able to escape that because of our partnership with his divine nature.

Amen.

That word escape means that we've been acquitted, and so we plead the blood.

And so, god, it doesn't matter what mistakes you've made, it doesn't matter how many times you've slipped and you've fallen down.

I just wanted to encourage you that you've been acquitted.

You've been.

You've pled the blood of Jesus.

How do you?

You know, if you were to go to court for all the bad things that you've done, how do you plead?

Well, I plead the blood of Jesus, and so we don't have to plead guilty or innocent.

We plead the blood and it acquits us, it lets us off, we get to leave that courtroom scot-free inside of the freedom provided to us by the blood of Jesus.

You know we've been granted access.

I was just listening to Pastor Mark and Sister Trina last week preach on faith.

It was the breaking barriers conference last week that we got to attend.

We went with Allison she ran all of their children's church there during the meetings and so we had you know.

But Pastor Mark was preaching on that and he was talking about that.

We've been granted full access, and it reminded me that I carry around a huge wad of keys around here, but but none of these keys matter compared to this key, and it's the grand master.

And I was going to tell a quick story.

But years ago I worked at Lakewood, grew up volunteering and then, when I became old enough, it became my job.

So I'm putting my keys back and it became my job.

And so I needed a key, like basically before I was ever hired, really I needed a key.

As I went to you know, pastor Joel, and I said, pastor Joel, I really, in order to do what you've asked me to do, it really would make it easier if I had a key.

I'm always knocking on the door or having to go get the security guard to let me in, and he's in a you know, especially that back door.

And he said you know, jay, I think there's an extra key in my desk.

It's in my top desk drawer.

If you go get it and make sure it fits that door, you can have it.

And so I went in and I got it and and I put it on my key ring and from that day on I had a key.

But it didn't take me very long to realize that it wasn't just any key that was a copy of the grandmaster that there literally wasn't any door in the whole facility that I couldn't open because I had the grandmaster.

I had a better key than any of the other staff members, and so I don't know.

Some time went by six months or a year, however long and I was working by myself on a Saturday and Pastor John Osteen calls up to the television department and he gets me on the phone and he said hey, rumor has it, you've got a key that fits all the locks.

Can your key fit my office?

I said yes, sir, and he was.

He wouldn't.

How do you know that?

But anyways, long story short, I was able to get into his office and get a book that he needed and and and drive that over to him.

But so, because I had access to a grandmaster, you've been granted access.

You have full access to the Holy of Holies through the blood of Jesus, and so you have no reason to turn back or to shy away from the presence of the Lord.

When we enter into the presence of the Lord, he sees us.

God sees us through the blood provided to us by the sacrifice that Jesus made, and that sacrifice brings us into full fellowship, and everything that we have is God's, and everything that God has is ours.

We're in full covenant, both ways, with the Lord, and so I just wanted to encourage you and to remind you that when we pray, we have an advocate, jesus Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father, ready to vouch for us.

And so when God looks at you, god looks at you through the sacrifice of Jesus, through that blood, and so there's not any reason that we need to be shy or need to wonder or bite our fingernails or wonder if God really can answer the prayers or if you can really move the mountain that's in front of you.

It's by faith, and so tonight, coming up here we're in the next verse.

It starts the supplements of faith.

But I just wanted to encourage you.

You've been granted full access, amen.

And so there's again there's just no reason to hold back when you're with the Lord, and so everything you've ever done has been forgiven.

There's not one mistake that you've made where God says to Jesus, turns to Jesus and says hey, I'm sorry, you gotta go back.

My son Eric, he's really blown it and he's you gotta go back, you gotta do it again.

No, what Jesus did is more than enough for any mistake you've ever made.

And so you can run to the Father, who takes care of us in grand style.

And there's no reason to not run to the Father, amen, because he cares for us.

Amen, and he really does take care of us in grand style.

And so let's pick it up.

In verse five it says again I'm reading out of the Passion Translation If you're just joining us, I am in second Peter one, I know Lee's got that on the bottom of the screen, but I'm reading out of the Passion Translation tonight.

It says so devote yourself to lavishly supplementing your faith with all of these next ingredients, right?

So again, that's my title faith supplement.

So we're gonna get into it.

But we need to lavishly supplement.

That means don't hold back.

That means, again, if you're lavish, you're gonna lay it on thick with everything that you have.

You're not gonna hold back.

If a little bit's good, a whole lot's better.

That's my mom's favorite saying.

And so if I'm using butter at the house, I'll say that.

Or if I'm using, maybe I'm putting syrup on some pancakes.

You know, if a little bit's good, a whole lot's better.

Or maybe if it's jalapenos or some hot sauce, I might hold back just a little bit, right, but we were celebrating my dad's birthday here at the office.

One of our vendors dropped off a bunch of Papacitos fajitas, so we had a really good lunch provided by that vendor and you know, all of our staff got to celebrate his birthday today, so it was a really special day.

My dad is our senior pastor here at Glorious Way and just but before that we had a staff meeting.

I just I don't know, I'm kind of getting off here, but he kind of shared some things that are on his heart coming up for 2024.

And he told a story about being awakened in the middle of the night at 1230.

He had gone to bed and at 1230, he woke up 30 minutes into his birthday and it was the Holy Spirit waking him up and God began to share with him some specific things about this year.

And he's going to share those things coming up this Sunday morning in his last message on 2024, the year of momentum.

And if I were you and I was able to make it, if I was in the Houston area, I would be here this coming Sunday to hear those things, and that's all I'll say about that.

But just, I'm just encouraging you.

We have a pastor who moves in the prophetic flow and it's such an honor.

I say, jay, that's your dad.

It's real easy to brag on your dad.

No, he's also my pastor, he's also my boss, but he's all.

He's my pastor first, and so I'm listening with both ears, with my spiritual ears, when he has something to say to the church.

Amen, and so that's coming up, hallelujah.

We'll go back to reading and starting our supplementation.

But let's see if to lavishly, that means by having added your intense effort.

But the word lavish in here, to devote yourself, it means that you've got some things to do on your side.

Amen, some intense effort needs to happen on your side.

And so if you're never prioritizing your time in the word and you're just letting it slide by and slip by here and there and you might crack your Bible open once a month or once every other month, well then you're not really receiving from the Lord, you're not prioritizing that time and I'm guaranteeing you're letting some things slip by you, some revelation that you need to know.

That changes again, like we prayed earlier, it changes, it can change your whole trajectory.

You know, last week I was in those Mark Hankins meetings and he was receiving the offering and the guy next to me made a joke about it, and so I said, hey, I know you're messing with me.

It was another pastor and we were just he was kidding around with me.

But I said, I know you're messing with me, but that revelation right there has changed my whole trajectory of my life and my family's life and this church's life.

And so you know, that's what revelation knowledge can do.

It can change your entire direction, amen.

And so we're lavishly supplementing our faith with goodness.

That word goodness let me find where I'm at in my notes here.

It means virtue, right, it says it in the New King James Bible and it says to have, and it has intrinsic value.

But it's referring it to the miraculous, it's referring to the manifestations of God, of God's miracle power.

It says in my New King James Bible I love this New King James Bible, by the way and so it breaks out that word virtue in, and it does mean goodness, which is what it is in the Passion Translation, but it just in the Greek it's.

So you're tapping into the miraculous, the miracle working power of the Lord.

So, in other words, you're getting out of yourself again and you're tapping into the supernatural and you're pulling that into the natural by faith.

That's what's happening when you're supplementing your faith with these things and, spoiler alert when we get to the end, it means that you'll never.

If you do these things, you'll never stumble, you'll never slip and fall.

You'll never, you know, wake up hung over from a night of partying because you realize your value of your faith inside.

You know, from faith to faith and glory to glory, you know the just shall live by faith.

I covered that a little bit.

I got to preach this last Sunday night.

I'm not sure if that podcast is up yet, but I had a lot of fun preaching, you know, on Sunday night as well, on staying in the fight.

We were just talking about how faith is a fight, and now we're talking about supplementing our faith with all these things.

But the first thing to supplement it with is goodness.

So you're you know you can also look at it like faith plus goodness equals understanding.

You know you can look at it like an equation.

So faith plus goodness and goodness again, you're tapping into the miraculous power of God and you're pulling that supernatural into the natural and then you're adding to goodness, you're adding understanding, and the word understanding is revelation knowledge, right, so?

Or knowledge, I think it's, yeah, it's knowledge in the New King James, and that knowledge comes from, again, what we discussed earlier knowing God, experiencing God, and so, and that's revelation knowledge.

So that kind of again goes back to that Ephesians one, prayer of your eyes, of your understanding being enlightened and that you may know with certainty the calling that he has for you and that rich inheritance that he has inside of you and make in your.

You made it personal.

Yeah, it says, and you know, we just read it in Ephesians one, that that rich inheritance is in all of the saints.

But you've made that personal on your level and you know what's on the inside of you, that you, that the value that you bring to him, and when you know how valuable you are, I'm telling you that can inoculate you against sin, against knocking you off of the will of God and the path that God has for you, amen.

When you understand your value, when you can comprehend his love, amen, and his purpose and his will for your life, right.

And so we've supplemented goodness, we've supplemented understanding, and to understanding we're adding the strength of self-control.

Self-control is strength in the inner man, which kind of leads us to Ephesians three.

Why don't we just read the Ephesians three prayer, part of it, out of Ephesians three, and it says 314,.

I'm gonna read it out of the new King James Bible, ephesians 314,.

For this reason, I bow my knees to the Father of the Lord, jesus Christ.

This is Paul writing, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth are named that he would grant you again you can pray this over yourself, you can pray this over your spouse, you can pray this over your kids, your grandkids that he would grant me, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with all might through his spirit in my inner man.

My inner man is strengthened.

Therefore, it says that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

We're talking about faith tonight.

We're talking about supplementing it so he abides in our hearts by faith and through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with everyone else, with all the other saints, what is the width and length and depth and height.

To know the love of Christ which passes, knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

God wants to fill you with all of his fullness and, spoiler alert, he's already done that.

Everything that you need, like we said back in verse three, to live your life that you're living now, is already been granted unto us, amen.

And so here we are we're adding goodness to our faith, we're adding understanding to our faith, we're adding the strength of self-control to our faith, and to that we're adding patient endurance.

So patient endurance means that you have patience to endure anything, and so and it's through that that there's another area in that Peter talks about that is able to grow through.

You know trials and tribulate well, through you know the testing of our faith, amen.

So God doesn't sin trials, he doesn't sinned harm.

He does allow us to be tested sometimes to strengthen our ability to endure hardship, whatever it is, but he doesn't sin that hardship right.

And so once you get a revelation of that, then it's so much easier to face storms and to know, like I said on Sunday night, that you have the authority to speak to a storm and that wind has to subside, it has to stop, and then those waves stop.

The pastor's been preaching about that during the year of momentum, because that was part of what happened when he went to Galveston to pray was that he had never seen the Gulf with absolutely zero waves.

There was a northwest wind or whatever blowing hard, so it was blowing against the Gulf and maybe the tide was going out as well, and it caused all those waves to just completely lay down.

That's the power, the same power and authority we have.

We can speak to those waves and they have to lay down amen.

And so, hey, pastor Joey, I didn't know that you're watching.

Praise the Lord, it's good to spend time with you last week.

Hallelujah he pastors in post-Texas.

So if you ever have anybody in the post-Texas, west Texas area, I encourage you to stop by Pastor Joey Hamlin's church.

Amen, joey and Kathy, they're wonderful ministers of the word amen.

So we'll get back to it.

Adding to our patient endurance, we're gonna add godliness, amen, and so, and to add godliness after that, we're gonna add mercy toward our brothers and our sisters, and then we're gonna add from mercy we're gonna add unending love.

And so that's kind of what we were just talking about, right With the Ephesians 3 prayer, that we would be able to comprehend with all saints just how big the love of Jesus is for us.

And the love of God is.

You know, his love is never ending, and so we have unending love.

We know that that love has been shed abroad in our hearts.

Therefore, that same love is unending for other people, amen.

We can allow that love to pour out on others, and so that's our whole purpose in life is to love on others, not using human love, but the agape, unconditional love of God that's been shed abroad in our hearts.

We're able to share that love, to put that love into words, to put that love into care.

Basically put that word into action, right?

Or, excuse me, put that love into action rather, and touch people's hearts that way through actions.

You know, everywhere we go, we are a light for him.

Amen.

And it says let's pick it up in verse eight, since these virtues are already planted deep within us.

Amen, it's already been planted deep.

Well, jay, you don't understand what I'm going through.

You know I've never faced a challenge like this.

No, you have all of these promises, that and these virtues are already planted deep within you.

All of these things that we're talking about tonight, that we're supplementing our faith with, they've already been planted deep within us and you possess them in abundant supply.

It's not just a little bit of goodness, not just a little bit of understanding, not just a little bit of self-control or strength, not just a little bit of strength You've been given.

All of the power of God is on your side.

All of the power of heaven is on your side.

All you have to do is access it.

All you have to do is step out in faith and act like it.

Faith is an action and we act on the word of God by faith and through faith.

And I'm telling you when we do that, god cannot lie, he cannot go back on his word.

And so if we'll be the believer, he is the performer.

You're not the performer, he is the one doing these things.

We're the ones believing, and when we stay in position and we allow God to do things and not try to do it out of our own flesh or out of our own knowledge, but we step into the supernatural, god can do great things and shine through us and shine for us.

Amen.

So these things have been given to us with an abundant supply that will keep you from being inactive or fruitless and your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately.

So I'm telling you I refuse to be fruitless, I refuse to be inactive.

Like we were saying just a second ago, faith is an act.

I'm gonna operate in faith, I'm gonna step out in faith and I'm gonna be who God wants me to be.

I'm going to speak what God needs me to speak, the truth that he needs to me, to speak in a timely fashion in which he needs me to say it right.

Amen.

And we'll never be fruitless in our pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately.

And so I'm telling you, it is not a time to sit back in the rocking chair and put our feet up.

God has things for us to do, and it takes knowing who he is, knowing his will, spending time with him, and so we can bear fruit for him.

Amen, it says in verse nine.

But if anyone lacks these things, he is blind, constantly closing his eyes to the mysteries of our faith and forgetting his innocence, for his past sins have been washed away.

I'm telling you, anyone who lacks these things that we've been talking about, right, you're blind.

You've closed your eyes to the fact that you're forgiven.

You're innocent of all of the wrong that you've ever done, for every, all of your past sins have already been washed away.

Amen.

All we have to do is step into that revelation.

All we have to do is step into more knowing Jesus Christ through his word, through the word of God, right, and it says in verse 10, for this reason, beloved ones, be eager to confirm and validate that God has invited you to salvation and claimed you as his own.

And if you'll do these things, you will never stumble.

So we don't have to keep tripping up, we don't have to keep missing the exit and going down a long 10 mile road to a dead end or the bridge is out.

We keep passing the sign three miles to the bridge is out and some people keep accelerating and keep accelerating.

You know that's the end of.

We need to walk by the spirit.

The end of our flesh is.

There's a dead end there.

And so when we walk by the spirit, we have everything that pertains to life and godliness.

It's already been provided for us.

So let's walk in it, let's look like it, let's talk like it, let's act like it, amen.

So I hope this blessed you tonight, that we have faith, that we are supplementing our faith with goodness, with understanding, with self-control, with patient endurance, with godliness, with mercy for our brothers and sisters and mercy towards other, with unending love, amen.

So hope this blessed you tonight.