The Faith Life

Lift our bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad in the devil mad.

Let's say this together Say heavenly father, I'm so glad to have a place where I can come and hear the unadulterated, complete word of God, anointed by the spirit to come right into my heart and build my faith, nourish my spirit.

I'll never be the same because I'm hearing, with hearing ears.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Let's turn in our bibles to Hebrews, chapter 10 and uh, and I'm speaking tonight on the faith life, the faith life, uh.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Last week we talked about the vision of faith.

I like to preach a lot on faith because our faith needs to be fed All right.

Hebrews 10, verse 35 cast not away.

Hebrews 10:35

Therefore, you're a confidence which has great recompense of reward, for you have need of patience that after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise for yet a little while.

And he that will shall come will come, and will not, terry?

Now, the just shall live by faith.

But if any man draw back my soul shall have no pleasure in him.

But you're not of them who draw back under perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.

Now.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen, or by it, that is, by faith, the elders obtained a good report.

Through faith we understand that the world's were framed by the word of God.

So the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear Verse six.

But without faith it is impossible to please God, for he that come at the God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

So it says here in verse 38, and it's also that person in 10, 38, the previous chapter.

We just read completely right through to 11, next chapter.

See, there's no chapters and verses in the Bible, the original manuscript, so it all flows together.

In Hebrews 10, 38.

It says that just shall live by faith, and it's actually quoting Habakkuk 2.

Three and four the just shall live by their faith.

You know, when you're a baby Christian, sometimes other believers can help you and you can get things on their faith, but that's not how you're designed to operate.

At some point in time God expects you to hear for yourself and to find out what belongs to you and to have your own faith.

Because he dealt to every man the measure of faith, romans 12,.

The Bible says the world's the faith.

Romans 12, three.

So you know, no, no, drawing back.

You know, no, no, turning back.

You know Israel, if you look in Psalm 78, it says Israel turned back and limited God.

I mean, it made God angry.

And faith, you know, faith is the only way to please Him.

Unbelief makes Him angry.

Now, god doesn't act on His anger, but it's good to keep in mind that the only way to please God is through faith.

Amen.

And so our life is the faith life.

That's how we're designed to live, the life that continually pleases God.

Think about that.

Isn't that what you want?

I think I'm that.

When I talk to believers, I know that's what they want.

But it comes down to this then, if you want to continually please God, then you have to continually quit going by how it looks.

You have to walk by your faith, and that means we have to pay some attention to what our faith is in different areas.

We have to know that our faith needs to be built up.

There's no treading water, there's no standing still in the faith arena.

You're either increasing or you're decreasing in the spirit realm.

See, faith is of the spirit or is of the heart, and spiritual things are never static.

There's no treading water.

You're either increasing or you're decreasing.

These are spiritual laws that we're dealing with, and so that's why we should continually act to build our faith, to gain more faith.

You know Jesus in the gospels.

It's amazing.

If you'll just look when you read the gospels, you'll find that he's always measuring faith.

How is it that you have no faith?

You know, old woman, great is thy faith.

I have not found so great a faith.

No God in Israel, oh, ye of little faith.

See, he's got little faith.

No faith.

Great faith, he's measuring when the Son of man cometh, will he find faith on the earth?

And Luke, he asked the question.

And so we are the generation, this end time generation, that has to master the faith life.

Say that word out loud the faith life, amen.

That's the only life we're called to live, the faith life.

And it brings me to the faith line you know I think about when I start looking at this.

Let's look at Isaiah 28,.

Turn back and look at these verses here, isaiah 28.

And while you're turning, just in March last month 1836, was the anniversary of the stand at the Alamo, and March of 1836, colonel William Travis drew a line in the sand, the floor of the Alamo, and he called everybody that would stay and fight Santa Ana.

In his army they were grossly outnumbered.

He said I want you to cross this line.

They crossed the line.

Everybody but one crossed that line.

They stayed and fought that battle.

It was a heroic battle it caused.

The next battle, which was the battle of San Jacinto, is where Texas gained its independence from Mexico and became its own Republic.

Texas was its own country Kind of wish it still was, anyway.

But getting back to that line, they had to cross the line to stay and fight.

And so let's look at another line that God speaks of in Isaiah 28.

I call it the faith line, verse 13, 28, 13.

But the word of the Lord was unto them, precept upon precept, precept upon precept.

Again, say twice, twice, he does.

Says it Line upon line, line upon line.

Why is he saying everything twice?

It's called the double annunciation of God.

It means it's sure you can take it to the bank.

These are things that are facts.

They cannot be denied.

This is a spiritual law.

And though this teaching, he said the word of God was unto them.

Unto who?

Unto Israel.

And how did it come?

Line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept.

In other words, they didn't just hear it once, they didn't it's here twice.

They heard it over and over.

You probably heard me preach this message, maybe exactly this way, I don't know, or maybe you haven't, but you're gonna hear me preach on faith over and over.

Why?

Because it's necessary.

God delivered me from the fear of repetition, and so he said, line upon line, line upon line, hear a little and there a little, that they might go and fall backward and be broken and snared and taken.

Wow, that's kind of rough.

And see, that's exactly what happened to Israel.

See, god knows the end from the beginning.

He lives in eternity.

He lives on a line where there's no future and there's no past.

Why do you say that?

Why couldn't they do that?

Why couldn't they do what?

How they were gonna end up and listen.

He's got better things planned for us.

We've been born again by the Spirit.

Now we have the tools by which we don't have to have this happen to us.

We don't have to fall backward ever.

We don't have to ever stumble at the Word of God.

We can just simply believe the Word and act like it's true.

See, that's why, thank God we can do that.

Why?

Because we've been born again.

We are spiritually active.

We have the Holy Ghost living on the inside to help us.

They didn't, and so many today I see are just kind of like Israel.

They've been taught and they haven't been taught well enough.

They haven't been taught often enough and many of them are falling backward.

I mean, they just don't.

You know, covid has put them backward and all of the pressures of life have put them backward.

They're stepping back.

They don't want to be called a hater.

They don't want to stand up for the truth.

They want to agree with lies.

I call that stumbling.

I call that going back into perdition.

No, the Bible says in Romans 17,.

We go from faith to faith.

We ought to be increasing.

In second Corinthians, 3, 18, we go from glory to glory.

See, we ought to be increasing.

We go from strength to strength.

We ought to be increasing, not decreasing.

You know, demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world.

Here's a man in 2 Timothy 4, 10.

Paul, he was a, he was a right hand to Paul, the apostle and he.

He was accompanied Paul on many journeys and then all of a sudden he departed.

Having loved this present world.

He stumbled and went backward.

So listen, folks, it can happen to people that we think would never stumble.

See, I can't, I can't.

I can't always tell when people are going to stumble.

I can just.

I've got one person that I have to think about and that's me.

I'm telling you I am not going to stumble, I am not going to go backward, never.

I'm never going back, I'm going on.

I'm going on with God.

Amen.

I want all these God for me.

My name is Jimmy, I'll take all they give me.

So we have to cross that faith line.

It's like God drew the line, in the sense that when you're going to cross over or not, you're going to fall backward.

No, we're not falling backward.

So what does the Bible say here, going back to Hebrews 11?

Now, what does it define Faith?

Faith is defined here A lot of different places.

It's fine Define certain things, but here it says that faith is a substance of things hoped for.

It's real.

It's just not seen.

You can't touch it with your fingers, but you can hold it with your hand of faith.

The receive means to take with the hand of faith.

That's what receive means.

And it says that it's the evidence of things not seen.

There it is.

There's again.

It's not seen with the natural eye.

We talked about the vision of faith last week and you can't get away from it, see, because faith is a spiritual force, it operates in the unseen realm and it resides in your heart, and no one has seen your heart.

You haven't seen your heart.

You haven't seen your spirit.

Why?

Because it's hidden on the inside of your body.

Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost and your body is the repository or the repository of your spirit, man, and so these things are unseen by the natural eye.

If you'll hold your place there and go over to 1 Peter, I like to remind people that you know Peter got a revelation of all this.

What faith is in all?

1 Peter, 1, 18.

For as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold from your vain conversation, by the tradition of your fathers, but you were redeemed.

That's understood there.

You were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spots.

See that verse.

I just I confess that verse almost every day of my life.

I confess that I've been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ I've been bought, who, verily, was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times.

For you who, by him, do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God, seeing you have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the spirit and the unthamed love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart.

And and it and it goes on to say here, in whom?

Having not seen your love, see whom.

Having not seen your love, see, you haven't seen him.

No man has seen God at any time.

There's lots of people on the earth that don't believe in God because they've never seen him.

We're not those.

We're.

We're the people who believe in a God and love a God that we cannot see.

If you feel faith operates, that faith operates in the unseen realm, praise God, stay bent All right.

Now.

The faith life is not foolishness, it's not presumption.

Faith, foolishness and presumption those three things are operating in the church right now.

And say it out loud faith, foolishness, presumption.

You know, I heard a teaching by Dr Fred Price years ago 30, I don't know how many years ago it was.

It was, in fact, it was a six tape series on this subject faith, foolishness and presumption.

Oh, he was a great Bible teacher.

I loved listening to him.

He had a gift to teach the Word of God, had a huge church out there in California and 10,000 seats.

Before anybody ever had that many seats in a church building, he had 10,000 seats and I can see why.

Because he had a revelation of the Word of faith and, being a man of color, I mean, that's kind of rare back then, back in the 70s and 80s.

And he, you know, he was just so.

He taught this.

I've never forgotten it.

You know, he was giving testimonies about how he was stumbling around as a brand new Christian and just failing every, you know, because he didn't have the proper teaching, didn't know the Word of faith, and he was broke, you know, and they couldn't pay their bills and things were tough, you know, and his wife was giving him grief one day and he said, well, honey, I'm doing my best.

And she said, well, your best just ain't enough.

So Gladys says you used that one on me a number of times your best just ain't enough.

You know, we're not called to do our best, we're called to live by faith.

It's not about trying, it's about doing.

There's no trying of this, we do it.

You either do it or you don't do it.

There's no trying, there's no trying.

We do it why?

Because the Bible says to do it.

See, we can do.

See.

This is gets back to brother, brother Osteen.

Every service he would have us hold our Bibles.

This is my Bible.

I am who it says I am.

I can do what it says.

I.

I'm a can do person.

I can do what it says I can do.

See.

It doesn't say try to walk to live by faith.

It doesn't say that says live by faith.

The just shall, the just shall live.

See, shall live is the most powerful language in the, in the Greek.

You can't get away from it.

It's, it's an absolute.

It's not try.

Try has nothing to do with it.

But apart from walking by faith and living by faith, some people live by foolishness.

They live in foolishness.

What's a food?

What's foolish?

Trying to believe for something apart from God's will?

See, the faith of your faith begins where the will of God is known.

What's his will?

His word is his will.

Now, not everything that's the will of God is written down.

I like to use this illustration.

Our first building was at 6827.

6827 FM, 1960, west Houston, texas, and 77069, or was it 66?

I don't know.

Anyway, I still remember the address, but you know what that address is nowhere in here.

How did I arrive at that building?

Being the will of God for us to start this church when we started it, you know January 29th 1995.

How did I know that?

By the witness of the Holy Spirit, or the Ramah, the witness or the Ramah of God, or, you know, when you see in the Bible that healing belongs to you, by his stripes you were healed first.

Peter 2, 24.

That's not a Ramah, but it's an fact and that you can stand on the word of God and you know that's a will of God for you to be healed.

But living in foolishness is trying to believe for something apart from knowing what the will of God is.

You've got to know what the will of God is about your situation.

In other words, let's just say Billy Joe Blow and Betty Blow.

You know, joe Blow is believing for a mate, betty Blow is believing for a mate.

Oh, agree with me that that woman over there will be my wife.

Well, you don't have a word for that.

You're going to have to have a witness, you're going to have to have something more than just a desire.

That's foolishness.

And if you proceed and call it faith, it's not faith, it's foolishness and it's going to cause shipwreck.

See what I mean.

So your faith begins where the will of God is known.

You know, brother Copeland taught that years ago.

I heard him teach this 40 years ago that Christians have a tendency to pray too quickly about something and believe for something, and they haven't really waited to find out what.

What does God's word say about the situation?

When you're facing something?

Don't be so quick to pray.

Find out what does the word say about my situation and take the time to find out how you can pray in accordance with God's will, because God's word is God's will.

So foolishness is is widely practiced across the church.

The other part is presumption.

Presumption is proceeding on mental ascent or mental agreement without building your faith.

For instance, okay, so you are sick.

Let's just suppose you have been given a bad report by the doctor.

Let's just suppose that the doctor has said you have cancer.

That's a terrible thing to hear and you say oh, praise God, I know by his stripes I was healed.

I don't accept that.

I don't accept it and I'm not going to be treated and I'm not.

Well, there's many treatments we can do, sir.

I mean your.

Your cancer is very treatable.

We've got a very good percentage of possibilities for you and I would certainly recommend that you partake of our program that we have for this type of cancer.

It's it's not advanced and we can have a very high percentage of success.

No, I just believe I'm healed.

I don't need any treatment.

I don't want to go through chemo, I don't want to lose my hair, I don't want to have radiation.

Well, who does?

Who wants to stand in line to do any of that?

Nobody wants to do it.

But you're saying oh no, I have the faith.

Well, you don't know if you've had the faith.

If you've never, if you've never believed God to heal a headache, if every time you get a headache you run to the medicine cabinet to get an aspirin or a Tylenol, your chances of having the faith it takes to overcome cancer are just about zero.

So what are you doing?

You're being presumptuous.

That's.

That's not faith, it's presumption.

It's.

It's based on the fear of the treatment Basically what it is that you're afraid of the treatment.

Well, you can't have faith and fear at the same time, or, in some cases, it can be vanity.

I don't want to lose my hair.

Well, I don't know anybody that does want to lose their hair.

You might have to lose your hair just to go through the treatment.

Why don't you find out what the way of escape is?

See, that's the point.

See, it gets a similar foolishness in the fact that many times people just blunder ahead before they pray, before they get God's answer to their situation and presumption.

See, faith works Not instantly.

Faith is a seed, and if you have cancer, cancer grows at a rate and you don't know how fast it's going to grow.

The question is, are you going to overcome it by faith alone?

By faith alone, because you might run out of time and then you die.

You didn't run out of faith, but you ran out of time.

I've seen this many times.

People run out of faith.

They don't.

They run out of time.

They didn't run out of faith, but maybe, you know, maybe they just didn't soak themselves up enough in the Word of God.

You know, all failure is a faith failure.

Pastor, that's so hard.

Well, it's true, and you need to understand that all failure.

God healed you.

It's already done.

If you don't wind up healed, it's not God's fault.

Who's fault is it?

That's the devil?

No, really, it's your fault.

Let's, let's own what's ours, let's own.

See, when you get mature enough to know that it's up to you, see, then you will do whatever it takes to receive what Jesus blood purchased for you.

But it's not just going to fall on you automatically.

I mean, you know, a lot of people have a good confession but it's empty.

Why?

Because they really don't believe it.

In their heart, you know they'll say, oh, thank God, I'm healed.

Well, they didn't take the time to fully persuade themselves.

They didn't meditate very much when they got that bad report and a lot of the elements of their quote unquote.

Faith is just plain old presumption.

It's just mental ascent, mentally agreeing with the word.

No, you got to have that down in your heart.

Faith is of the heart, faith is of the unseen realm.

It's got to be down in there.

And so your words and your actions have to line up with your faith.

You know, in any kind of attack, whether it's with health or finances, you have a brain.

It's going to work.

It's going to start reasoning.

It's going to start making excuses.

Your mind might even accuse you.

Listen, that's what your mind is supposed to do.

Don't be all disturbed about what your mind is thinking, what your mind says.

Your faith is not of the mind.

Faith is of the heart.

That's why you should take lots of time before you proceed in faith and make sure it's faith.

Does that make sense?

I mean, make sure that you're proceeding in faith and faith is what, again, according to these verses?

Well, faith is the.

Is the uh, uh substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

One version says it's the title deed.

It's the title deed, and until you can really get it down in your heart that this is exactly what you should do and what is the way of escape for the trial that I have, that's another good question to ask the Lord.

When you're, when you're facing any problem, you got to know what the Bible says about it and then you've got to know what is the way of escape.

We talked about this just recently.

But when, when David's wife and and and kids and family and stuff was they?

They burn the Amalekites, burn Ziklag and stole his wife and all of that he had to.

He had to ask the Lord shall I pursue and overtake them?

See, he didn't know for sure what God's plan was.

He had to find God's plan.

Yes, you shall pursue and surely overtake and surely recover off.

So he had to get God's assurance about what the plan was, find out what God's plan is for your situation that you're facing.

So your words and your actions have to have to line up with your faith.

Amen.

And these three mighty men of God had different definitions of faith that I found very useful over my years in the ministry.

Raymond T Richie, who was a great pastor here in Houston, a pastor of the great evangelistic temple, had a healing ministry of his own, and he brother Osteen.

Many people used to say that brother Osteen's ministry was very similar to Raymond T Richie his healing ministry.

But Pastor Richie said faith is acting on the word.

Acting on, you hear the word, you act on it.

You know you get an order from the general.

What do you do?

You act on that order, you obey it.

It's really simple.

Smith Wigglesworth, the apostle of faith I mean, I don't know, I've heard 19, I've heard 23 people raised from the dead in his ministry.

He said faith is an act.

You know, faith is an act.

You've got to.

You know, a lot of times we we want to, we want to say what we're doing is faith, but we have mixed signals.

I was reading the testimony of someone who got a bad report about their child.

The doctor said the child is going to die.

And they stood, they had all the scriptures they had.

They'd done everything I talked about, studied, got the word.

They had a whole list of verses and scriptures.

They were standing on.

They had made their, they had made their faith stand, they had made their approach.

And they went back for another checkup and it was still a bad report.

And he was in tears, in his prayer, closet, talking to the Lord.

You know, lord, you know out of the, you know what we're standing on.

We know.

He said why are you crying?

Well, you heard what the doctor said.

Well, do you believe the doctor?

You believe me?

I'm not a man that I should lie to the son of man, that I should repent.

You know you ought to be, you ought to be shouting the victory.

If you really believe, you wouldn't be crying.

See what was he doing?

Well, he wasn't really acting.

He wasn't acting.

See, sometimes you've got to put on an act.

Oh, I can't do that.

I've got to be like I am.

Well, you know what you can do without them.

Because if you, if you're going to, if you're going to cry and say you're trusting God, if you're going to be sad and say that you're joyful, I mean, come on, you've got.

You've got to.

You've got to change everything about your faith.

Stand, your faith is an act.

And then the last one is Kenneth E Hagan.

Faith is acting like the Bible is true.

I like it kind of combines the first two definition Faith is acting like the Bible is true.

So you know, we hear we say this all the time here, at glorious way.

How would you act if you knew that that thing you were praying for has already come to pass?

See, that's how you ought to act all the time.

You ought to never, ever act like you're under having a sweat.

You ought to never act like you're like the like it's in any kind of doubt.

Amen.

I know it's easier said than done, but that is our goal is to plant in you the tools that it takes for you to live the faith life.

And I'll tell you, the faith life brings victory in every circumstance.

Praise God, the faith life.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight Hallelujah.

Thank God that we've been given these wonderful truths.

I just think about the men and women upon whose shoulders we stand, all the way back to the apostles and prophets and Jesus Christ himself, the chief cornerstone, and then all these years and years of wonderful, faithful teaching.

And I tell you, the whole church needs to hear these truths and needs to employ them.