The Word Of Faith

Before we begin, I'm just going to pray, and you add your faith.

This helps me.

By myself, I'm not worth the whole lot, but thank God for the Holy Ghost who helps us.

And so, heavenly Father, I thank you for your Word, thank you for the Holy Ghost that's on the inside of us, on the inside of me.

Holy Spirit, have your way here tonight, lord.

I pray that every word that comes out of my mouth be your Word, that I'm able to speak your Word, and that your Word never returns void.

It always accomplishes the thing we're into.

It was sent, and so, no matter what I say tonight, I pray that everybody here hear exactly what it is that they need to hear, in spite of me, and you get all the glory for it, and we thank you for it in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, let me just start off.

The title of tonight's message is the Word of Faith, and I wanted to teach a little bit on this.

This is a big subject and it's way more than I can cover in one sitting here tonight, but what drove me to want to teach on this tonight was because there are lots of voices that are opposed to the Word of Faith, and I'm seeing more and more of those out there, people speaking against the Word of Faith, and why that's some kind of a heresy, and I wanted to debunk some of that.

You know there is no balance to the Word of God or God.

He is God and this is His Word and we don't have to balance His Word with anything else.

His truth is true all by itself.

You know we talk about.

You know we got to be in the middle of the road.

And where is the middle of the road?

Well, god, let's just say God defines the middle of that road and for every mile of road you're going to have two miles of ditch, a mile on each side of ditch, and so people can wander this way and get in the ditch and wander that way and get in the ditch, but if they just stay right down the center of God's Word, if you major on the majors and you minor on the minors, you're going to be right, in line with God's Word.

I liken this to bowling.

I haven't been bowling in a long time but I remember as a kid, you know, I wasn't too good at it.

I got this big, heavy bowling ball.

I'm trying to hurl this thing down the alley and knock some pins down and most of the time my balls, the bowling ball, ended up in the gutter one side or the other.

So then they put these inflatable bumpers in the gutter, which kind of, and then the bowling ball could kind of deflect off of this one and this one and this one and maybe hit some of the target down the way.

And so God's Word will keep you in the middle of the road If you just find out what God's will is in each of these situations.

The answers are right here and the word of faith is not a hard thing.

Those who are opposed to this will tell them that it somehow violates the sovereignty of God, that it elevates man to a God level, to the level of God.

It says that the prosperity gospel is greedy and that so, by deduction, I guess, the poverty gospel is holy, although they don't say that.

And some will say that miracles passed away or that you know the fact that or that the idea that we can will something supernaturally is a violation and it's full of pride and builds up man and makes man higher.

But none of these things are true.

There are ditches on either side and people can get off with the word of faith and they can try to you know the whole, name it and claim it.

They can name what they want, what it is that they've ginned up in their brain, and somehow get that.

But that's not how it works.

We've got to cooperate with what God says and what God says we can have, and we ought.

It's not holy for us to deny what God says we can have.

God says, you can have this, and we say, oh God, I'm not worthy, and in doing so you're violating what Jesus did.

Jesus made us righteous.

The word of God says that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and so when you run around and say I'm righteous and people say no, you're a sinner, well, we all mess up.

We don't get it right all the time.

We are subject to committing sins along the way, but that's not what we identify with.

I am not a sinner, I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

Why can I say that?

Because God called me that, and so we are undermining and doing an injustice to what Jesus did.

It's a slap in the face to deny what he did as a complete work.

He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we were healed.

He became poor so that we might become rich.

What does rich mean?

It means just having an abundant supply, more than what it is you need.

It's not a barely getting by kind of a thing.

He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly here in this life, it says, and that which is to come, so we can have an abundant life here and now and in the next which is to come.

When people get into trouble is when jealousy creeps in.

You see somebody who has something more than you have and you know they've gotten it by ill-gotten gains and you start becoming judgmental on how they got it.

And God blesses people.

I have no shame in telling you that God has blessed us, and he's done it in a supernatural way.

When I looked at something and saw that it was impossible, god said here, hold my beer, watch this.

No, he didn't say that, but he does it a new way just about every time and he'll surprise you with it.

And so and I'll give you the quick version of the testimony I didn't have this to do, but I just want to help you with this.

We put our kids into a private school.

Before then.

We Claire and I, both independently during the summer of 2019 thought we got to get our kids out of public school, and I didn't have a mental reason in that moment, a compelling reason that says we have to unroll our kids right now.

But both of us on the inside knew that we had to do that and so we unenrolled them, not knowing where to put them.

As an engineer, I've got to have a spreadsheet and a drawing and plan everything out.

I didn't do that and when I got to looking at the cost of private schools, I said, oh dear God, how are we going to do that?

And we went from one to the next, to the next, and they seem so far out of reach, beyond anything that we were capable of of doing.

It was just impossible.

It might as well have been impossible.

And we went to one particular school, rose Hill Christian School, and we walked in there.

I never knew it existed, but I walked in there and I felt peace there.

Claire didn't feel it right away, but eventually she did, and we came into agreement and put our kids in and went through the enrollment process.

And then the answer came.

And then the answer came.

So God made a way for us to, for our kids to go into that school.

And so then we were over that hump and I had just remodeled our house, our kitchen, our bathroom, and put new flooring in.

And I did a lot of the work and it was, let me just tell you, it was perfect.

It is the best house and we loved it and thought we were going to stay there for, you know, for a really long time.

And then we realized, okay, we're in the school.

It's 13 and a half miles away.

That'll be one trip in the morning, one in the afternoon, but that's not how it worked out.

It was two in the morning and two or three in the afternoon.

And it wasn't long before I realized we're going to have to move.

And I started looking at home prices and we would have had to downsize and downgrade to get a home in the area near the school.

And I just thought again it's impossible, we can't do this.

How are we going to make this work?

And we start.

You know you, it won't work if you don't start looking.

If you don't seek, you won't find.

If you don't knock, it's not going to be open.

If you don't ask, you can't have it, and so you just have to start down the road.

It looks impossible, but we didn't say it was impossible.

So we start looking offer on one house and I found all kinds of reasons why that one wasn't good and we let that one fall through, put an offer on another house and it was more than we should have tried to afford.

God, how are we going to afford this?

This is beyond our reach.

And we put an offer on it and the price of that home had come down.

A lot from it was here, and then it came down to here but I felt like we were here and I had to come up to here to try to afford this thing.

And so we put an offer on the house, get into the option period and then COVID hits and the world falls apart and everything shuts down.

I'm on the hook for the option money on this house and we haven't sold our home.

And then one of our rental properties the tenant gives us 30 days notice on that.

That's three homes, three mortgages we're going to be on the hook for.

I was wondering how we're going to afford one and now we've got three to pay for how does this work?

We put our home on the market and in four hours we had a contract offer that was way beyond our asking price.

I was floored and our realtor wanted me to come in and says, well, list it for this.

I said no, we need to list it for this, it's worth more.

I raised her level of faith up to a higher level and then God just surpassed that.

It went four hours later contract for way over asking price.

So then I had to do about a week or two worth of work to get the rental property up to where we could sell it again, and so it's about two weeks behind schedule with the house that's already under contract.

Houses typically close in about 45 days, so this one's two weeks behind.

And it was a couple of days later that we had a contract, a cash offer and I don't care, cash or loan, it doesn't make me any difference, as long as we get paid.

But it was a cash offer way over asking price again.

And then I can't plan this.

But the two homes, the price of our home, the price of the rental property, add them together, that equaled the price of the home that we couldn't afford and I was like whoa, that's cool.

And then, to top that off, two different realtors I think it was the same title company that we ended up at one closing.

And then the next same day and God paid for that home.

Now the home was 20 years old and it needed some work.

And I'm okay with that.

I like to do that kind of work.

I think I'm kind of good at it, but I'm not a roofer.

And the roof was 20 years old and it had some patches on it and wasn't looking real good, wouldn't you know it?

We had a hail storm a month later and it totaled the roof and our insurance totaled our roof and bought us a new roof.

But then there's this deductible.

How are we going to pay that deductible?

You know, 2% of a home that we couldn't afford is a lot of money.

My friend in the roofing business said James, your insurance company was very generous with you.

He said I'll pay your deductible, no money out of pocket.

And it was a $40,000 roof and God got us that.

And so I pull up into my driveway every day and I just I'm so grateful.

I say, look what the Lord has done.

And it was an impossible thing and it was a miracle and it was a financial blessing.

And so the people that tell me that the prosperity gospel is evil, they're going to have a hard time talking me out of it, because I've been on both sides of it.

I've been poor and I've had a good supply, an abundant supply, and it's better to be rich than it is to be poor.

It doesn't mean that by you having an abundant supply, someone over here is going to not be able to have an abundant supply.

Heaven's bigger than that.

God has the earth, the silver, the gold, a cattle on the thousand hills, the earth, and the is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

So we got to get that idea that by having an abundant supply means that somebody else isn't having it or can't have it Because there is more than enough heaven, more than enough God to go around and he is generous with us.

He gave us his son Jesus, and I am so grateful.

So that's the testimony.

I didn't plan to give that, but there you have it.

Romans, chapter 10,.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

We're going to get into the word tonight.

Romans, chapter 10, verse 8.

Romans 10:8

Actually it's.

I'm going to start in verse four, romans, chapter 10, verse four.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

It says for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

So you had the law, and people who lived by the law had to fully fulfill the law all on their own.

But Christ became the end of the law for everyone who believes in Jesus.

Verse five, for Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law.

The man who does these things shall live by them.

If you're going to live by the law, you're going to.

You better fulfill the law and then you can live.

But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way.

Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven that is, to bring Christ down from above or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead.

But what does it say?

The word is near in you, in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith that we preach, that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes into righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

So if you, how many born again believers do we have in here?

Have you received Jesus?

Have you received salvation.

If you have, then the word of faith is how you got saved.

You believed something and then you confessed with your mouth and it was so.

This earth was created by the word of faith In the beginning was God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Holy Spirit hovered above and God said let there be light.

And there was light.

The word of faith in God's mouth created creation.

You were created because God said let us make man in our image, and he did.

We're a three part being.

We are a spirit, we live in this body and we have a brain, a mind, a soul, a will and intellect that people like to define themselves by.

But we need to define ourselves as a newborn creature, a spirit that's been reborn into God's kingdom.

So this is the word of faith that we preach that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, it can be so.

And so I want you to know that.

Paul takes that verse that comes out of Deuteronomy, chapter 30.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

If you want to look that up, it's Deuteronomy 30 about verse 11.

You can begin in there, but that's an Old Testament thing.

Paul has taken an Old Testament thing and applied a new revelation to it in the New Testament, and really the New Testament is based on that scripture.

Right there, the word of faith.

Believe in your mouth, confess with your heart that's salvation begins right there, and salvation includes more than a ticket to heaven.

In one moment, jesus fulfilled the law.

Now the law is done and we don't have to have anything to do with the law anymore.

And he took on himself the sins of the entire world and paid for them.

In one act of love, he paid for the sins of the entire world.

You know, people don't go to hell because they sinned.

They go to hell because they don't receive what Jesus did.

The sins are paid for.

The price has been paid already.

The gift is right here.

Just receive it.

How do you receive it?

Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth and you'll be saved.

And so, in one moment, he took on the whole weight of the sins of the entire world throughout all of history and paid the price for that.

And he was also by his stripes.

We were healed.

He took all of our sickness on the cross so that we don't have to put up with sickness and he gave us his authority.

Adam lost it.

Jesus paid for it, got it back, turned right around and the great commission said all authority, heaven and earth, has been given to me.

Go, therefore, here's my authority.

You are going to do these things in my name.

Believers shall and there's a list of things, and at the end of that list of things, believers shall lay hands on the sick, and the sick shall recover.

And so we're to do what Jesus did.

That does not somehow make us an equal with God the Father, but God the Father made us an equal with Jesus when he said that we're joint heirs with Christ.

He brought us into his kingdom and made us joint heirs with his son, jesus.

That is not blasphemous.

It has not put us on a higher level than we ought to be.

People think it's holy to say I am not that.

No, I'm the weak worm of the dust.

You know there are all kinds of songs that people sing.

We're fond of changing the words to songs when they violate what Jesus did, when it's not holy to say I am weak, I am lowly, I'm not worthy.

You are worthy because he made you worthy.

And let's sing about what God did.

Let's sing about what Jesus paid for.

Let's not sing about who we used to be.

And so we like to change the words of songs to match up with God's word along these lines.

Three different verses here Romans 117, galatians 311 and Hebrews 1038.

All of them quote the just shall live by faith, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

As it is written, the just shall live by faith.

But that no one is justified by the law on the side of God is evident for this.

The just shall live by faith.

Hebrews 10.38, now, the just shall live by faith.

If it was important, you know, god put it in here three times, made sure that it was in the New Testament three times the just shall live by faith.

So let's analyze that.

That comes from Old Testament, habakkuk 2.4, where it says behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him, but the just.

So it's comparing the proud with the just.

The proud, the soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by faith.

Now, when I read scriptures I like to kind of dig in a little bit and do a little bit of a word study, because you can have words that are used in the English all throughout Old Testament, new Testament but these words come from Hebrew and the Old and Greek and the New Testament and they don't always mean the same thing, they don't always come from the same word, and so it's good to study your Bible with the concordance Pastor was talking about the Greek linguistic key to the New Testament and have the understanding of what was going on in that time.

What was the culture?

What does that word mean?

Because in our English language we're limited.

The Hebrew language was very thorough and the Greek was also very thorough and very precise.

So when I read here, his soul was not upright in him.

The soul right there that Hebrew word for soul, is any.

It's any breathing creature, it's a mind, a mortal, it's someone with a natural instinct or a desire, the natural way of thinking.

So that soul is literally your instinctive way, your natural way of thinking, how your brain, your instinctive way of thinking and doing things.

That's the soul.

That soul of the proud is not upright.

Your natural way of doing things is not upright.

But the just shall live by faith.

What does it mean?

To live Means to barely get by, to survive.

Well, no.

So I looked it up in the Hebrew it means to revive, to keep, to make alive, to live, to nourish, to preserve, quicken, recover, repair, restore, revive, to save and be made whole.

That's what it means to live.

That doesn't sound like a little bit, it doesn't sound like barely getting by or surviving.

What kind of glory does God get if His kids are just barely surviving?

Why would anyone want to be a Christian?

I'd like to be like one of those barely survivors.

I don't think so.

So it matters what these words mean, and as you study your Bible, I encourage you to look things up and find cross references of where things are used and how they're used.

The word of faith is not a New Testament thing.

It's not a New Covenant thing.

It's Old Testament, it's New Testament, it's a principle.

Things that transcend the Old and the New Testament are really godly principles or spiritual laws about how the kingdom of God works.

The law of faith is found throughout the Bible.

It says in Ephesians 2,8, for by grace you are saved through faith.

So grace means that it was the unmerited favor in this particular case.

You didn't deserve it, but God wanted you to have it and he says I'm going to give it to you anyway, even though you're a horrible thing, I'm going to give you something.

You're incapable of love, but I'm going to love you first, and then you'll be capable of love.

And so for by grace, you were saved, but it wasn't grace alone, it was grace through faith that you were saved, and you didn't earn it, it was the gift of God.

And so faith?

Where did faith come from?

Well, god had to give you something so that you would be capable of believing.

What he said is true, because all kinds of people out there find all kinds of reasons to deny, but to each one was dealt a measure of faith.

You had enough faith to get saved.

And then faith is something that can grow.

We go from faith to faith and from glory to glory.

We're supposed to be maturing in Christ and increasing in the knowledge of His truth on a regular basis.

God isn't necessarily expecting perfection right now, but he is looking for progress, and so we better be maturing and growing, and your faith better be growing.

It grows through the Word of God, by reading His Word.

Going back to the Old Testament, I'm just going to tell the story about this.

This comes from 2 Kings, chapter 4.

2 Kings 4 · chapter mention

You recall Elisha the prophet?

He passed through an area of Shunim on a regular basis.

The Shunimite woman I don't know her name, but it says that she was a notable woman she went to her husband and said the prophet comes through here and we need to build a room for him.

So they built a room for him, they did an addition on their house and made room for the prophet.

As often as he comes through here, we're going to feed him and put him up.

And so they honored the man of God, they honored the presence of God, and in the Old Testament, when people did things like this, it was accounted to them for righteousness, and so this was one of those conditions.

And so this prophet, elisha, had favor with this family and he says what can I do for you?

And she answered oh, nothing, I dwell among my own.

We got everything we need.

We're good.

And so he had to find out through another route, through his servant.

He said find out what she needs.

I want to do something for her.

And he said well, she has no son.

And so the prophet goes to her and said to this shooting of my woman says about this time next year you're gonna have a son.

She said oh, prophet, don't lie to me, don't be telling me something.

You know she's probably been trying to have a son for a long time and it looked impossible and she didn't want to be disappointed.

And so about that time next year she had a son.

And that son had had a few years on him and he was working in the field with his dad and he said my head, my head.

And the dad sent him inside.

He had a bad headache.

Dad's like oh, go rub some dirt on it, go see your mother, go to the house.

And dad didn't really worry about it.

Well, he went into the house and died and the mom was distressed, but she didn't express her distress, she didn't speak anything other than faith.

And so she asked her husband hey, can you have one of the servants prepare a donkey for me?

I'd like to go see the prophet.

He's like what's this about?

Why are you in such a hurry?

She said it's well, it's well with my soul.

There's a song that goes with that.

And so she hurries and goes to see the prophet and the prophet sees her from a long ways off and he sends his servant to go find out from her what the deal is.

Why is she coming.

This is abnormal.

Find out if there's something wrong.

And she said it's well.

And then she makes it all the way to the prophet and he recognizes that she is in distress.

But she didn't say it, he said he literally said that God is hiddenness from me, but she's in deep distress and he wanted to know what was going on.

And so she's somebody who was upright.

She had done her side of taking care of the prophet, she had done good works and so she would have been somebody that was considered righteous under that condition.

And so then she had to explain that the son that you promised me is not well.

And so he sends Gehazi ahead, the servant ahead, and says go, put my staff on him and I'll get my stuff and get on the road and get there.

And so the prophet goes, stretches out across her son, does that a couple of times.

The boy sneezes seven times and wakes up.

And that wouldn't have happened if she had been speaking anything other than her faith.

When asked, she was saying it is well, it is well.

And so the word of faith meant that she had a result that she wanted.

She wasn't speaking.

The condition was it really well with her son in that moment.

No, he was sick, dying or dead.

But she said it is well.

She believed in her heart and she confessed with her mouth.

The word of faith saved her son and God, through the prophet, came through for her.

And so that's an Old Testament example right there.

If I go to the New Testament, remember with Jesus and the fig tree.

He cursed the fig tree.

He spoke to a fig tree and says why come berth out of the ground?

And the next day that thing was withered up from the roots and his disciples were amazed by it.

And so Jesus spoke what he willed and that thing dried up.

And so that was the word of faith.

And then people say, oh, that's Jesus.

Okay, who are we trying to be like?

Are we?

Is he not our example?

Aren't children supposed to be imitators of their heavenly father?

Aren't we supposed to imitate our heavenly father?

And so if we're gonna be like Jesus, we better start acting like Jesus.

That means we gotta do things that he did and say things that he said and believe there's a believing side for this to work.

And this is really point number one.

But if your word of faith is gonna work, it works because you believe and you speak, and so you're believing your believer's gotta get hooked up with your speaker.

You can believe something, but if you don't speak, it it's the two working together.

You're speaking faith, and then faith by itself is dead, being alone, and so there needs to be corresponding action.

But your words can be part of that action.

So there's believing speaking and then an action that goes with that.

That proves it out.

One more place in the New Testament, real quick.

Second Corinthians, chapter four.

This is verse 13.

And since we have the same spirit of faith, and so then you have to go up into the previous verses here.

If I go back up to verse seven, it says but we have this treasure in earth and vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not us.

And so we have this treasure in earth and vessels.

Are we not the temple of the Holy Spirit?

All right, so we're not our own, we're bought with a price.

We're the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit dwells on the inside of us.

We have this treasure in our earth and vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not us.

So I'm not laying claim to this, I'm just taking advantage of the Holy Spirit that's on the inside of me and doing things that the Bible said I can do.

And since we have this same spirit of faith, or the same God kind of faith, or the same faith that God has, because he gave us his faith in the beginning, right.

And then and that's how you got saved he gave you faith so that you could believe him, so that you could believe in your heart and confess with your mouth Lord Jesus, and then you can have everything that Jesus said you can have, and then that faith can grow.

So that's still the God kind of faith, or the same faith that God has, since we have that same spirit of faith.

According to what is written, I believe, therefore I spoke, which comes out of Psalms.

Paul writes we also believe and therefore we speak.

So believing and speaking is very important to our new covenant, to the understanding of the new covenant.

For that to work, your heart and mouth gotta be working together.

Your believer and your speaker gotta be connected together.

And I'm gonna skip through some of my notes tonight, because this is way bigger topic and I got lots of pages and then I've got more that I didn't bring with me tonight but I wanted to give you kind of the high points of this.

Paul, when he was boarding the ship remember, he was a prisoner on a ship and he says I perceive that this voyage is gonna end in peril.

And then the storm came.

The angel came and gave peace to Paul and told him that there'll be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.

And so Paul turns right around and says the same thing.

So God gave him a word to speak in that moment, says this voyage is gonna end in peril.

It's gonna be the loss of the ship, but no loss of life, because God gave me everyone that's sailing with me.

God's perspective of Paul was that there were people sailing with Paul.

He was a prisoner on the ship, but God saw him as the lead on that and he was.

So.

He said therefore, take heart, men, for I believe that it was just as it was told me.

I believe that God is gonna come through just like he told me.

So your word of faith can help build faith in others and give them courage along the way.

It can save others.

Your word of faith can save others in moments like that.

Jesus and his disciples.

I like sailing stories, in case you hadn't noticed.

But Jesus told his disciples get in the boat and cross over to the other side.

And so they did.

They obeyed and they got in the boat.

And it wasn't long before Jesus went to the back of the boat and fell asleep and the storm came.

And the storm was shouting at the disciples your boat's sinking and throwing water in.

The storm's throwing water in the boat.

Their boat's taking on water getting heavier.

They're not making way, they're going down, we're sinking.

We're sinking, we're gonna die.

That's what the disciples were saying.

The circumstances were shouting you're gonna die.

And so the disciples heard that and shouted the circumstance word and said we're gonna die.

So they believed in their heart that they were gonna die and they confessed with their mouth that they were gonna die.

And they were gonna die because they believed and spoke.

And so they were.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy here Believing and speaking.

Be careful what you speak.

There's power of life and death in your tongue.

James, the book of James warns about this.

How great the power of the tongue.

Look that up and see what all kinds of things the tongue can do.

And so they were going to die, except they woke up the word Jesus in the back of the boat.

Thank God, they woke up the word.

So Jesus believed in his heart that this storm is sub my authority and so I'm gonna speak to this storm and it's gonna obey me.

So he said peace be still.

And immediately there was a calm Jesus word of faith.

And then he said where is your faith?

What happened to your faith?

He was critical of the disciples because they didn't do what he expected them to do.

They'd been with him they've seen him talk, they've seen him minister, they've seen how he operates and he expected that his disciples would have been able to cross over to the other side.

He wouldn't have given him that direction if he didn't know that they could do it.

They could have done it, but instead they listened to the circumstance and repeated that with faith in the wrong direction.

Faith in the wrong direction is fear.

God didn't give me a spirit of fear.

He gave me one of power, love and a sound, stable mind.

And so when you feel fear, come in.

When you feel that fear and anxiety come in about anything in your life, do not give it a voice, do not repeat what you're fearful of.

And Job it said that the thing that I have feared the most has come upon me.

Job went wrong when he feared, and the thing that he feared the most came upon him because he gave it a voice.

And so don't give fear a voice in your life.

Fear is faith that what the devil says is true.

Faith is believing what God said is true, and so only speak the word you know in Galatians, chapter five.

It lists the fruit of the spirit, and faith is one of those words.

I know it says faithfulness, but it's the same word for faith, and the fruit of the spirit is something that grows, and so we need to let our faith grow.

It's nourished by God's word.

Faith comes by hearing.

We hear God's word.

It says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

How can people hear, except that they're taught?

How can they be taught unless one of you gets up and goes and tells them about it?

And so we need to be helping people with the word of God so that their faith can grow and we can help get them over the hump.

That this word of faith is somehow a vile thing, because this is how we're saved.

And again, there's ditches on either side, but God is right down the middle, and so let's stick with God on this.

Your faith can be an anchor during hard times.

It can be a stability thing when everything is going wrong around you.

It can hold you steady and keep you from going down.

But wrong words can ensure that you're anchored when you should be moving, and so don't stop your progress with your words.

In Corpus Christi.

I had a captain's license.

I worked for a sailing charter company.

I got to teach people how to sail.

I had a hard time going through college because I would drive down to ocean drive and I could turn right and go to class, or I could turn left and go down to the city marina and get on a boat and go sailing.

And there were a lot of days where I didn't go to class and some days where I made the good decision first to turn right and go to school and the bay was so calm and I kept a fishing rod in the back of my truck, and so some days I ended up just waiting out there.

I almost made it to school and I made it to class a couple of hours later, wet, smelling like bait, but on one of these charters that I took.

So I was a captain and we had a large group of people that wanted to go sailing and we couldn't fit them all on one boat so we had to take out two boats and I had to call up a friend of mine who was also a captain and say hey, mike, I need you to take out this second group.

And so there's two of us out there sailing in Corpus Christi Bay and anytime you have two boats out on the water there's a race.

It's just how it is.

We're full on competitive, and so we're sailing along and I think I was ahead by a little bit and I don't know where we're going.

Whatever direction it doesn't matter.

But we're sailing along and it's a spirited sail.

It's kind of choppy out there, there's splashing and wind and it's kind of exciting.

And the next thing I know I look over my shoulder and they're way behind and they're making a turn and the boom that holds the mainsail is flipping around the other way and they're kind of getting all wrapped up and I thought what in the world just happened to them?

And so I didn't get the story until I got back to the dock.

So we're sailing along at this clip right here and Mike's telling me we were moving along, and he hears this voice.

You know, the Holy Ghost talks to us in a still small voice.

Really, it's the Holy Spirit that talks to our spirit, and sometimes it takes a while for our brain to recognize what our spirit knows.

But your spirit is entitled to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

Your spirit knows things that your brain doesn't know, and the Holy Ghost communicates with your spirit, and so sometimes it seems like a small voice.

And so he heard this still small voice amongst the wind and the waves and the splashing and the conversation out there.

He hears there goes the anchor and he looks up for a minute and he looks out to the bow of the boat and he sees the anchor road, the line that's attached to the anchor, flying out of the deck.

There's a hole in the deck where the anchor line is kept and it's just spooling out of there as fast as it can be.

There were two kids playing up on the bow of the boat and one of them had somehow messed with the pin that held the anchor in place and it deployed.

And they're moving along at a rapid pace and suddenly they came to a stop.

The boat came to a stop and spun around inadvertently, and so that was my analogy right there, for wrong words can anchor you suddenly and kill every bit of progress that you have, and then let me win the race, but it made for a great story when we got back to the dock.

The word of faith will drive out fear.

That's my second point.

In 2 Timothy 1.17, paul's writing here and communicating with Timothy, he says I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscious, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers both day and night, greatly desiring to see you and being mindful of your tears.

So Paul's writing this from prison, timothy is feeling ashamed of his father and the faith, and Timothy's having a pity party and feeling bad because of what he's going through and what Paul's going through.

He said, mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy when I recall the remembrance, the genuine faith that is in you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and, I'm persuaded, as in you also.

Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of hands, for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and sound, stable mind.

And so we've got to stir up the faith, the things that we know.

Timothy knew these things and he was feeling pretty awful, and so Paul's reminding him to stir this stuff up.

Remember, hands were laid on you.

There was something godly imparted into you, there was an anointing imparted into you.

Stir that up.

Don't forget that you have a gift on your life.

Don't forget that Everyone in here is of tremendous value.

Don't forget you were bought by the blood of Jesus.

You can do what Jesus said you can do.

You can have what he said you can have.

God's words in your mouth will accomplish the same thing as God's words in his mouth.

They're his words, they're not yours.

It's not boastful, it's not prideful or arrogant or putting yourself on a level that you don't belong.

No, it's putting to work the things that belong to you and the things that we should have.

And so, when fear comes in, let the word of faith stir up faith.

Don't let fear get stirred up on the inside of you.

Don't give fear a voice.

Stir up faith when fear comes.

Stir up faith and then give your faith a voice.

The word of faith will drive out fear.

Paul could have looked at that circumstance and says there's no way we're making it out of this storm alive.

But he said I believe God that it will be.

Just as it was told me and he was explaining to people in the ship.

He stirred up their faith.

Hey guys, don't worry about this, we're gonna throw some stuff overboard, we're gonna run this ship aground, we're gonna throw some anchors out, we're gonna stop this thing, but every one of us is going to shore and we're gonna be okay.

So stir up your faith in whatever condition, whatever circumstance you're in.

Let faith drive out fear out of you and then you drive out fear out of others.

Your faith can bring people up.

Revelation 12, 11 says that they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.

So we can't overcome anything without the blood of the Lamb.

So some things are just obvious to Christians.

Yes, I know I would be incapable of all these things all by myself, but Jesus, he defeated the devil.

We get to enforce the terms of his surrender by the blood of Jesus.

So there's two things here.

It says they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.

Your testimony is a legal profession of facts, just like in a court.

When you go testify in a court you're giving legal testimony.

God is very much concerned with all things legal.

Our laws come based on God's laws.

They come from God's word.

God sees injustice in the earth and it's vile to him.

He hates injustice.

He hates that criminals are being let out of the court here in Harris County, let back out onto the street to commit more crimes.

He hates the corruption that's in our county.

God is somebody who initiates laws and is he loves law.

He provided us law, he gave us spiritual laws to live by, and it says they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, or the word.

So you have a testimony, but you have to speak your testimony right.

So then you're speaking the word of faith all over again.

You have an example in your life of how faith saved you, how faith healed you, how faith provided when you didn't see any other way, when it was insurmountable and that mountain looked way too big and I did not see how it would be possible.

And your word of and faith came through.

And so I believed.

Therefore I spoke, and then I had, and now you go back to that time in your life and you remember.

I remember when God did this.

I remember when God's word worked in my life.

I remember when.

And so during those times when fear comes in, the word of faith can drive it out.

You can speak what the blood of Jesus paid for.

You can speak salvation.

You can speak every provision, every benefit of being a member of the kingdom of heaven, a joint heir with Christ.

You can speak all of that and you can speak your testimony and overcome the devil with the blood of the lamb and your testimony.

He can't talk you out of it, because you've lived it.

Some of y'all have some amazing testimonies, some very supernatural things that have happened, and so remember those things.

Don't forget those things.

Think about those things when you're going through a tight spot, a tough time.

Remember those things and it'll get you through the next time.

Overcome the devil with the blood of the lamb and the word of your testimony.

Point number four is that the word of faith speaks only with the eyes of faith, see, and not with your natural eyes.

See In Hebrews 11, 13,.

It says that they and talking about the Old Testament, the Old Testament fathers in the faith.

It says these all died not having received the promises, so they didn't receive it but, having seen them afar off, were assured of them.

They didn't get to receive it in this life, but they were so convinced they were assured of them, they embraced them and they confessed them.

They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on this earth.

They saw something far away and they were so convinced, so assured of it, that they spoke and they confessed all the way.

So they believed in their heart and they confessed with their mouth the promises of God.

They didn't receive them in this life, but you can be sure that they have them now.

They saw them afar off.

You know, moses didn't get to go into the promised land and I'm convinced that he didn't get to go into the promised land because he violated what God told him to do at one point and God told him that, hey, you're gonna get to see the promised land, but you're not gonna get to go in.

But he was assured of it all the way through.

You know, when these Old Testament figures died, there was no salvation for them and so they died and went to a holding tank, a holding cell called Sheol.

There's different references in the word about this, but they went to a place where, when Jesus died on the cross, he went there and he preached salvation to these captives and he led all of the captives out of there.

They had the promise of salvation and they never received it in this life.

But they had promissory notes.

You know, in Hebrews 11, one.

It says is it 10, one faith Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, and so faith is substance.

When we bought our home at closing, as soon as we signed those papers and the money transfer had happened, the transaction was complete.

I had not yet been in our home, but I had a paper that said this home was ours and I believed it.

I was fully assured of that.

I said, claire, we got a new home, let's go see what we got.

So faith is the substance, faith is the title deed.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for.

You hoped for something God said you can have it.

I believe what God said about it and so I speak it with my mouth, and that's faith.

I speak faith.

So that goes to the obvious one.

Mark 11, 23.

Jesus, talking to his disciples in verse 22 said have faith in God or have the God kind of faith.

For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, is it a literal mountain?

No, this is a figurative thing.

I mean, I guess it could be.

If you literally needed to move a mountain, then I guess literally it could be.

But this is really a figurative thing, that it's the impossible thing.

Whatever the impossible thing is, who can move a mountain?

That's impossible.

Okay, whoever says to this mountain be removed and cast into the sea, that means it's cast into a place that can completely swallow that mountain up so that there's no evidence of it left in your life anymore.

Whatever the impossible thing is, there's a place to cast it where the evidence of it will be completely gone.

Whoever says to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart but believes those things that he says, believing and saying those things that he says, he believes that those things that he says will be done, he'll have whatever he says.

So whatever things that you ask when you pray, believe you receive them and you'll have them.

Does this mean that we can ask for anything that we want?

God, would you please take my neighbor out.

I can't stand them.

They are a pain.

I'm done with them.

Take them out.

No, you can't ask for anything that you want, but we can ask for things that God said that we can have.

And James and I don't have the scripture reference here.

It's in here somewhere, but it says that you I think it's in chapter whatever.

James is a short book.

Read it.

Figure it out for yourself that when you ask for things you do not receive because you ask a miss, we can't ask for stuff outside of God's word, outside of His will.

How can you know His will?

Read His word, have a relationship with Him, have your ears on, be listening for what he says.

You can have revelation, knowledge out of here that applies to your very specific situation in this life, and He'll tell you what you can have.

And as soon as you know this is God's will, I can have this.

It is God's will for you to be healed.

We don't have to question that.

Yet people do.

I remember I met a man one time that had had a headache for 11 years at that time, who has a headache for 11 years, and he said oh, god gave me this headache.

God doesn't have headaches to give people.

He doesn't have cancer to give people.

Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

He said God gave me this headache and now I've been to every doctor and every hospital and I've got to preach the gospel.

I wonder what kind of gospel are you preaching?

That they can have a headache too?

How many souls are you going to win with that message?

So he didn't start off by telling me God gave me this headache.

He said I've had this headache 11 years and telling me about this history and that it had some kind of name.

I said, oh, thank God.

I was looking for some point to get in because he was just talking.

I said, oh, thank God, it has a name, because Jesus is above every name that is named in heaven and on earth, and I was ready to lay hands and pray on him.

Why?

Because it says believers will lay hands on the sick and they shall recover, and I was ready to do that.

He said, oh, god gave me this headache, then why are you trying so hard to get rid of it?

You've been to all these doctors and hospitals and taking all this medication, trying to get rid of what God gave you.

Why don't you just rejoice and thank him for the headache every day, you dummy?

So people confuse what they can have.

And Jesus came.

He took our sickness, he took our illness so that we don't have to put up with it.

It's a gift.

Just like we receive salvation as a gift, we can receive healing as a gift.

But not everybody does receive healing and people are at various levels of faith and faith grows and we're not all at the same place.

But, my God, we've got to be aiming at the same thing.

Let's aim at wholeness, let's aim at wellness.

Let's aim at an abundant supply.

We've already got the salvation thing down.

We die.

We know where we're going.

Well, when we get sick, let's aim at this.

Sickness didn't come from God, it came from the devil, and I'm not receiving that.

I'm going to receive what Jesus did and so receive His word.

Faith speaks only what the eyes of faith see, and so we see things out in front of us that we haven't yet received.

Yet We've got our natural eyes that are around us, and we've got this circumstance, this condition, but we don't speak that we speak out in front of us.

Jesus did the same thing.

He hung on the cross, despising the shame, but seeing the joy that was out in front of Him of all of you that he gets to call His family.

He looked through the cross, beyond the cross, to every one of you.

He looked beyond the cross to everyone in this world, because it's available to everyone in this world.

It doesn't matter what you've done in your life.

It's available to everyone in this world.

And finally, the last point I'll make tonight is that the word of faith frees you from toil and gives you rest.

In Hebrews, chapter four, it's in verse one.

It says, therefore, since a promise remains of us entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.

For indeed, the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, the Jews, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith.

So there's unbelievers here and believers.

The word was preached to both.

But when you mix faith with it, it says for we who have believed do enter into His rest.

There's a rest, there's an ease, when we apply our faith and put our faith to work.

Your faith can work at night while you're sleeping.

I believe in my heart, I confess with my mouth and now I'm going to bed and I have peace and sweet sleep when I lay my head down and faith is working all night long.

But you have to mix faith with God's word and then you can have His rest.

And rest is a quiet place.

It's a peaceful place.

There's no struggle.

Your circumstances can be boiling and toiling and turning all around you and you can have peace.

In this world you'll have trouble, but in me you'll have peace.

And so mix faith with God's word, believe it in your heart, confess it with your mouth and you have no more toil, no more struggle, because faith is working in your life and you can have what God said you can have when you put the word of faith to work in your life.

And so there is so much more to this.

I could go on and on, but I'm not.

I'm going to stop right there.

The word of faith is how the earth was created.

The word of faith is how you were saved.

The word of faith is how we're healed.

Jesus operated by the word of faith.

Don't let people talk you into a ditch one way or the other, just stay right down the middle of the road.

God said I can have it, I believe it, I confess it with my mouth and I receive it, the word of faith Amen.