The Switch Of Faith 1

lift our bibles up, wave them around and make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Now let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I thank you for Wednesday night.

This is the timely message just for me.

I've tuned in tonight and I'm listening for my own benefit, I'm not listening for somebody else, because I know that this word has got application in my life and as I apply the truth of the word of God anointed by the Holy ghost, I have victory on every side.

In Jesus name, amen, amen.

Let's turn in our bibles, please, to the gospel of Mark, chapter five, and I'm going to read some verses here that we've we've taught in this on this subject many times.

God delivered me from the fear of repetition because faith cometh by hearing and hearing, amen.

And we're going to start reading with verse 25.

And it says a certain woman which had an issue of blood 12 years and had suffered many things of many physicians and had spent all that she had but with nothing better, but rather grew worse when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind and touched his garment.

For she said uh, you know the amplified says.

She continually said if I may but touch his clothes, I shall be whole and straight way.

The fountain of her blood was dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue or power had gone out of him, turned him about in the press and said who touched my clothes?

And his disciples said unto him thou see us, the multitude thronging thee, and say us, thou who touched me.

And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.

But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him and told him all the truth.

And he said unto her daughter thy faith hath made thee whole.

Go in peace and be whole of thy plague.

And so we wanted to give you a message entitled the switch of faith, the switch of faith.

Faith is the switch that turns on the power of God.

And this woman was in dire straits.

I mean worse by the day.

I mean it's affecting her finances, it's affecting, of course, her health is going down, her strength is going down.

And yet she heard, not just with her physical ears, but she heard something that she was thirsty for.

She heard something that her spirit received about Jesus.

And she must have heard the reports about Jesus healing all who came to him.

He never turned anybody away.

He never said wait a minute, just a minute, sister, just a minute, brother.

Let me pray and see if it's God's will to heal.

You know he healed them all and she heard and she and she Bible says she kept on saying I shall behold.

You know she did say if and of course you know if you were her you'd have to say if, because it was contingent.

She had to go where Jesus was, she had to go where the anointing was, and that meant that she had to overcome her weakness.

12 years of hemorrhaging and, of course, if she'd spent all of her living on doctors.

The main way that doctors treated you in those days was to bleed you.

I mean, she's already losing blood.

They're going to cut her some more and make her lose more blood.

Can you imagine the anemia that she had and along with that, all of the complications of a lack of blood in her body?

So she had to overcome her weakness.

She had to overcome her status.

She's a woman alone, and women in that time they didn't have the freedom that people have today, and especially women were always under men.

If you were traveling alone, you were immediately looked down upon and she was unclean.

According to the Jewish law, she's bleeding, so she's risking her life, literally.

If someone discovers that she is indeed unclean and she's not crying out unclean, that's the only way that you could get out in the public and get everybody away from you Similar to leprosy, really.

And then, finally, the if was the crowd.

She knew that there were huge crowds and you find out that when she got there the crowd was thronging him, pressed upon him, so she had to crawl on her hands and knees on the ground through this crowd of smelly, stinking, dirty feet.

The garments are dirty because they're close to the ground and the ground is filled with all kind of animal dung and everything Gross.

It was gross.

And she?

How did she know she got to Jesus?

Because he had a hymn around the hymn of his garment that was blue, that denoted healing.

He was a priest and she was able to find the priest and she just grabbed the hymn of his garment.

She said, if I can just touch his clothes, well, that qualified.

But she had to get down on her hands and knees.

So you can see why she said if.

If was not a lack of faith, but the faith part was, she continually said I shall behold.

Now I was meditating on this one time and I thought, well wonder why she just kept saying it.

Nobody had ever taught her the word of faith, nobody taught her how to receive like this.

And I'm sure it was because every step of the way of her journey we don't know how long her journey was, but every step of the way her mind is screaming you know, you're gonna, you're gonna be discovered, somebody's gonna stone you, somebody's gonna find out about you.

You're traveling alone.

Her body was screaming at her You're pushing me beyond the limit.

I can't make this trip.

I can't take another step.

She had to answer her mind, she had to answer her body.

I shall behold.

She had to keep talking to herself the whole journey to keep one foot traveling.

You know, one step after another.

And, and so every step of the way she turned on the switch of faith and the power of God heal her infirmity.

You know, jesus said your faith has made you whole.

But really, when you do a deep dive into it, it's not your faith that has the power, it's your faith that controls the power, your faith is the switch that turns on God's power and I just wanna encourage you tonight.

A lot of times people you know they have such a big problem.

You know what's wrong in your life.

What do you need?

What needs to change?

Have you got chronic illness?

Have you got chronic pain?

Are you tempted with depression?

Are you tempted in your marriage?

Or maybe your home is filled with strife and division?

Maybe there's trouble there.

Maybe there's trouble on the job.

You're having trouble, you know, on your a lot of people having trouble on the job.

Their beliefs are being held against them, especially if they refuse the jab and so forth and so on.

We keep hearing about people that are being fired for not getting the jab.

They don't seem to have the freedom anymore to make their own health decisions.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing where we are right now.

What do you need?

Is there fear?

Is there torment?

Is there dread?

You have trouble sleeping at night.

What needs to change in your life?

This woman had a life and death struggle.

Something had to change or she wasn't gonna make it much longer.

Maybe your trouble is not that serious or maybe it is.

My experience in 33 years of ministry is that people underestimate their faith and they think their faith is not big enough for the trouble they have.

Oh, I've got to have more faith.

For this trouble, my faith is not big enough.

Well, jesus said, if you had faith as a mustard seed.

So it's not about how big your faith is, it's whether or not you turn on the switch.

It's just a switch, it's not the power source.

The power source is God Himself and this is just a switch that makes that power available for you to bring that power to bear against whatever it is that your circumstances are.

Now I just kind of like it.

At this building we have a pretty good size building 50,000 square feet.

I honestly can't remember how many tons of air conditioning we have.

We have a bunch of air conditioning units.

They take a huge amount of power.

We've got like 3,600 volts of power out there at the power pole and it goes down to 600 volts by the time it gets into the building.

I think 660 or something like that, and then it steps down and all our lighting is 220.

And then, of course, we have to step it down again for our plugs that we plug in our computers and have our normal things that we plug in.

It's 110 volts but needless to say, it's a lot of power out there and yet that power is controlled by a little thermostat like the air conditioning.

We've got a little thermostat sitting on the wall.

It's not huge, it's small, it's just a little thing.

It just sends a little signal and it controls.

I think there's 440 volts going to the air conditioning units.

Well, you know, it's not the size of the switch, it's not the power source.

The power is controlled by the switch.

So I want you to encourage you to go quit letting your trouble intimidate you and think that you're out of your league, by using the faith that you have.

I tell you, your faith is a switch that turns on the power of God.

I want to encourage you tonight.

I'm not listen.

I'm far growing your faith.

I want to preach messages that will increase your faith.

But at the same time, don't wait around.

You use the faith you have.

Now.

You have the faith that you got saved by.

That's the greatest miracle you'll ever see is the faith that you had, that God gave you to get saved by, and you got saved by faith, and so anything after that is less.

That's the way I look at it.

I mean you've got enough faith to get healed of cancer.

You've got enough faith to get healed of chronic insufficiency lack.

A lot of people are hurting financially right now.

Listen, your faith can access the power of God that can turn this thing around, amen.

And so when we read about this woman, she used the faith that she had.

She wasn't real sophisticated and this miracle occurred in the Old Testament.

No, pastor, this is the gospel, this is the new.

Well, this is what you have to understand.

This is before Jesus died on the cross.

This woman was a Jew and she had a covenant that the Jewish people had with God, and the Bible says in Hebrews 8, 6 of us believers that are born again, we have a better covenant found upon better promises.

So in our covenant, we don't have to go to where Jesus is.

We don't have to go to some healer.

We don't even have to go to a healing meeting.

We don't even have to go to church to get healed or to get our need met, whatever that need is.

We can go direct to God with our faith, and our faith can make a demand on the anointing because the Holy Ghost, since the day of Pentecost, is everywhere present.

We don't have to make any long journeys Now, as I obviously I believe in going to church.

You know we have services here on a regular basis.

We want people to come to church.

We want people to be here so we can teach them the Word of God.

And, yes, we pray for the sick.

We pray for people's needs, whatever they are, and people get healed, people get delivered, people get free, people have answers to their prayers.

Yeah, there's an atmosphere that makes it easier to access God's power in church.

But I'm telling you that when you learn these things that I'm going to teach you tonight and practice them, you don't have to be intimidated anymore by big problems.

You'll face those things down instead of running from them.

The devil will run from you.

Those problems will run from you.

Faith is a switch.

It turns on the power of God.

Just flip on the switch.

That's what we do.

That thermostat does.

It automatically.

Just flips on the switch at a certain time.

Now, it's not instant.

If the building's hot, you come in here and the thermostat said you know, for Sunday morning service for instance, I think those thermostats come on like five o'clock in the morning.

I mean they have.

They take so while to cool the building down.

So we have to have lead time we don't just turn the switch on and then all of a sudden everything's.

You know, 72 degrees.

And so that's the way your faith is.

Your faith turns on the switch of God's power, but we don't always see instant results.

But your faith says as soon as I exercise my faith, things begin to change.

And see, it's not about whether you can see them change, they begin to change.

Otherwise God lied, and we know God cannot lie, don't we?

Amen, praise God.

So everybody say I'm gonna turn on the switch of faith.

See, let's not be intimidated by the size of the problem.

You know, we've got a switch.

That's all it takes.

Just turn the switch on and the faith is the switch that turns on that, the endless supply.

You know what that power is.

It's resurrection power.

It's the same power that raised Christ from the dead.

That's how much it is.

And so turn on the switch of faith.

And I've got a couple of things.

I'm not gonna share all four of them tonight.

There are four things that we see this woman did that I believe we can learn by, and I think I might be able to have time to give you a couple tonight.

But the first one that I wanna share with you is number one is turn on the switch of the word.

See, the word is so integral with your faith.

You know she had to say it.

What did she say continually?

What did you keep on saying?

She's kept on saying I shall be whole.

Well, how did she come to that conclusion?

It was based on what she heard about Jesus.

So, if you will, basically what we say is we confess.

The word confess means to say the same thing as so you've got to say it and you don't, just you don't say it once.

You keep on saying what the word says about your situation.

That is step number one to turning on the switch of faith is to turn on the switch of the word.

So it's really good, I mean, you know, start agreeing with the word.

Don't talk against the word.

I think about.

I've been saying this recently.

But you know, the children of Israel, the prophet Malachi, told the priests he was preaching to the priests and he said your words, and he was prophesying this.

Your words have been stout against me.

You know they were saying bad things against God.

And what were they saying?

He says it's vain to serve God because here we've served God, we've given up everything to be priests, and we're no better off than the heathen, we're no better off than the people that are disobedient.

So that was wrong of them to say that.

He said put me to the test and put me first and bring all the ties into the storehouse.

And he started telling them all the things that they would get if they would just obey his word.

So let's examine, you know, when we're having a situation that we're facing, whatever it is, how big it is, how small it is, let's examine how are we talking about it.

Are we speaking in line with God's word or are we going against God's word?

You know Bible says Romans 10, 9 and 10, believe in your heart and confess with your mouth.

We have to believe in our heart and confess with our mouth.

You know, if you're gonna say you have faith, you've gotta speak that faith.

And that's what the woman did.

She said continually I shall be whole.

When she felt worse about it, when she felt intimidated by it, when she saw the crowd all out there, she made a way where it didn't seem to be no way.

She just crawled on her hands and knees.

I've seen people that won't even come to church.

When they're sick they won't even come to church.

Well, we're not close to come to church when we're sick.

Well, you know what?

Sometimes you've gotta start yourself up.

If you haven't gotten well on your own, get to church, amen.

Get somebody to get an agreement with you.

So in John 647, it says believing is possessing.

And so what have you been saying?

What have you been saying?

That's a good question to ask yourself.

What have you been saying about your situation?

And check up on your words.

Turn on the switch of the word and your words All right.

And then the second thing we see her doing is turn on the switch of action.

You know she didn't just sit there in her house and kind of pine away and just say well, you know, if Jesus was right here, I know I'd be healed, but he's way over there in the next town, there's no way.

No, she got up.

Did she feel like it?

No, was she all just excited about it?

Well, you know she's sick, she's just barely able to move, but she moved.

So turn on the switch of action.

She came to Jesus and she overcame.

We talked about all the overcoming that she did.

She acted on what she heard, and that's really the simple definition of faith Faith is acting on the word.

We could say it this way faith is acting like the Bible is true.

So another thing to think about when you're facing a circumstance, a symptom, anything, whatever it is, it's not right, it's not according to God's word, it's a curse, it's a problem to you.

Then think about what you've been saying about it.

Have you been talking about the problem?

Have you been telling everybody about the problem?

See, that's magnifying the devil really.

Or you say and I, you know it.

Really, it's more important for you to say to yourself you know, she didn't say to everybody on the road, I shall be whole.

She said to herself.

So mainly it's about what you say to yourself.

But I found 33 years of ministry, a lot of people talk about their problems to other people and every time they say to themselves I shall be whole.

And then they say to the other person yeah, I'm going to the doctor.

I sure hope this test turns out better than the last one.

Oh, man, you have to say look, you're magnifying the problem.

You're talking against yourself.

See, you've got a double divided confession.

And then turn on the switch of action.

What are you doing?

How are you acting?

The word James 220 in the Weymouth says faith without corresponding action is dead.

So we do need to act in accordance with what we're saying.

Our actions and our saying and our words need to line up together.

And again, in 33 years of ministry, I have to say that in most people's lives, they say one thing and they do another.

There's a gap.

There's a gap between saying and doing.

If that gap is like that, the results are gonna not be good.

And so what do we need to do?

We need to close that gap, close that gap and start getting our acting along with our saying.

Brother Hagin tells a story about a woman that had cancer and he went by, was a member of a church that he was pastoring at the time and she needed a lot of help and a lot of attention.

She was a young mother in her 30s, had a couple of kids and a husband, and he'd go by and pray over and listen to this tape and at months and nothing she didn't wasn't any better, it was good, it was progressing, didn't look like she was gonna make it, and he went to the Lord about it and he said Lord, you know, I've been coming by there, she's listening to doing everything I tell her to do and she's listening to these tapes.

She's just nothing better.

What's the keys?

This is where she's an unbelief.

She's not.

She doesn't have any faith.

What?

Well, if she had faith, she'd get up and cook dinner for her husband.

You know she'd act like she's healed.

She's just laying in bed all day, she's not doing anything.

And so Brother Reagan got to her house.

He was on his way to church to have a service that night and he said I went to the Lord about you.

He said you didn't have any faith.

You know, if you had faith, you'd get up and cook dinner for your husband and act like you're healed.

It's time to act.

It's kind of act like the Bible is true.

And she kind of got offended at first, kind of flustered her, and he went on and said you know you just, I'm just going to tell you what the Lord said.

I've been coming by here for six months and nothing's happened.

What's?

Because you hadn't moved, you hadn't acted.

I'm going to go to church now.

So by the time church was ended, this woman come busting in the door and she was feeling so energetic she had completely huddled.

And well, that night it happened so instantly when she started just getting up and cooking dinner.

By the time her husband got home he had dinner on the table.

He was utter amazement.

Amen, let's act like we're.

Like the Bible is true.

You know, one good question or one good prayer to pray is Lord, how do I act on my faith?

What action do I need to take next?

I've been speaking right.

I've checked that out, I'm checked that box.

Now what?

How do I act like?

The Bible is true, and God will help you with that portion of it.

And of course, the last two is that you know.

So.

First she had to say it, then she had to do it, then she had to tell it.

She told Jesus everything that happened.

And then she, she had to receive.

She felt in her body, she was whole about plague.

He felt virtue or power go out of him.

So it's important for us to receive.

We believe we receive, and then we always receive.

With what Thanksgiving.

So we'll talk about those last two next week, god willing.

And but I wanted to give you this tonight and I wanted you.

You've heard about the switch of faith, we've preached on it and talked about it before, but but I want to encourage you.

You know whatever your, your needs are, they respond to your faith and the switch of faith is not the power source, it turns on the power source.

Amen, praise God, hallelujah.

Well, I pray you got something out of that.