The Action Of Faith

So let's get into the Word tonight and to get your Bibles out.

It's our custom to lift our Bibles up and wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Let's say this together Say, heavenly Father, I've tuned in to Wednesday Night Live Stream and even though I'm not there in person, there is no distance in the Spirit, and so it's just like I'm there in person and I have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to me tonight, and I will have my faith fed and my Spirit nourished in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's look at James, chapter two, the Lord's brother and we'll.

We've got three verses.

They're kind of scattered.

But James chapter two, verse 14, it says but what does it profit, my brethren?

Though a man say he have faith and have not works?

Can faith save him?

And then verse 20, it says but it wilt thou know, o vain man, that faith without works is dead.

And then the last verse, verse 26,.

For as the body without the Spirit or without the breath is dead, so faith without works is dead.

Also, the Weymouth translation of verse 20 says faith without corresponding action is dead, corresponding action.

And so that's what I want to teach you tonight about the action of faith.

Faith has a corresponding action.

If you say you have faith, then there has to be an action.

It can't just be words alone.

Words are important, what we say, what we speak, very important.

But there also has to be a corresponding action.

He goes as far as to say just the same as the body without the breath is dead, so is faith without corresponding action is dead.

So real believing is acting on God's word.

You know, many say the word is true.

They, they admire the word, they agree mentally that's that it's true.

And yet their actions don't line up with what they're saying.

They actually act like it's the opposite.

They act like it's not true.

They are in a panic, they're in there, they're busy, busy, busy.

Faith has a rest.

Faith, you know, listen, that doesn't mean you don't do anything.

It means that you're not nervous, it means that you're confident.

You know faith has a confidence.

And so to act like the Bible is true.

I like how Brother Hagin put it.

To act like the Bible is true.

You know, he, he, he pastured for 12 years and he said every church he ever pastored had trouble.

And he said you know, when we had trouble, you know the elders got into an argument.

He said I don't care if they got in the fist fight in the church yard.

He said, you know, I just you know, I just knew that the greater one lived in me, I'd get out there and get them, get them calmed down, and and we just act like the Bible is true.

You know, come up with trouble, paul, brother Hagin.

What are we going to do about this?

Well, we're going to act like the Bible is true.

It works.

And so people that that don't have a, have an action of faith, discover, sadly, that mere mental ascent is not faith and therefore they don't receive God's promise.

And then many times they blame God and say well, God didn't answer my prayer.

Well, god is teaching me a lesson.

Well, god, this God, that's like God.

No, it's there, it's there, it's on them, it's on them.

So at Mark chapter two, we won't read the whole account.

I'll describe it a little bit.

It is Wednesday night and I don't want to take a long time.

Mark, chapter two is the account of the man with the palsy who had four.

I like what brother Mark Hankins calls them four crazy friends.

Everybody needs four crazy friends to agree with them.

And why do we call these four people.

They bore him on a cot and took him to Jesus.

And Jesus was in the house and the house was so crowded there was no room in there for anybody else, so they just hauled him up on the roof.

I mean, can you imagine how crazy that looks?

I mean, here's a man that can't move and he's strapped on this stretcher and they pull him up on the roof and then they break a hole in the roof and lower him down in the presence of Jesus.

And so they were determined See that's.

You know, this is before Jesus died on the cross.

Healing was only available to those who were basically in his presence.

The anointing was not everywhere present, like it is now.

And so they had to get to where Jesus was.

And the Bible says and when Jesus saw their faith.

And so when Jesus saw their faith, you know, can you physically see faith?

Well, of course not.

You can't see it.

It's of the spirit, faith is of the heart, faith is of the spirit, it's a spiritual force.

You know you can't see the wind, but you can see what the wind has done, you can see the effects of wind.

So you know when wind.

You know Gladstone.

I went to San Antonio last week and it was blowing 30 miles an hour across the freeway, just right across winds, those big old trucks, man, and they're working on so much of our energy by 10.

I mean it gets kind of exciting.

You know, the trucks are kind of coming over on your side.

I'm in the fast lane, I've got a concrete barrier on my left and that truck is over there halfway into my not halfway, but he's close and Gladstone's on that side of the truck.

She had to use her faith to ride with me.

But I mean you know it's exciting.

You can see the effects of the wind.

Those trucks were moving and I was moving, and so Jesus saw their actions, say.

He saw them break a hole in the roof and lower that man down in there, and not only the four friends, but that he saw the action of faith of the man, because it took faith for him to go on that trip.

It took listen.

He's got to think about what's going to happen if I slip out of this cot and fall to the ground.

I'm probably going to die.

So he had to have faith when Jesus commanded him to rise up and take up his bed and go back to his house.

He's think about that a moment.

He told him to rise up.

Now.

He didn't do that at first.

At first he said, son, thy sins be forgiven thee.

That's the first thing he said.

When he saw their faith, he said, son, thy sins be forgiven thee.

And then, of course, the people in the room.

He perceived could he see their thoughts?

No, but he perceived that they were offended.

Why you offended me?

You think that I don't have the power to forgive sins?

Let me tell you.

Let me tell you, I do have the power and I'm gonna show you that I have the power to forgive sins, because I'm going to heal this man.

I, you know, sir, I say that they rise up, take up your bed and go back to your house.

And the man got up and walked out and went back to his house.

We don't really think about that part.

Wonder how long he'd been in bed.

He'd been paralyzed a long time.

You know, when you don't use your limbs you get your muscles get atrophy.

I was with my open heart surgery four years ago.

I was in bed for 12 days.

Halfway through, about six days into that, had been in bed, hadn't been up.

I hooked up with all kinds of tubes and monitors and everything else and I'd sat up on the side of the bed and all that stood by the side of the bed some Mr Griner's time to take a stroll, and so it took him, you know, a while to get everything arranged and put all my monitoring equipment on a cart and put the containers where the fluids were draining out of my body and they had.

I'm sorry to be so graphic, but I'm hooked up and it's all on this cart and I'm supposed to push the cart.

I walked about four steps before I wanted to quit.

I mean, I hadn't been inactive, but just a few days.

Yeah, I'd had surgery, but I hadn't been inactive for a long and it was all I could do to walk down to the nurse's station and back.

I didn't think I'd make it back, I was so tired, so it was so painful and I think about this man being in bed.

As long as he had been in bed we don't know how long it was, but it had to have been a long time and he rose up, took up his bed and carried his own bed all the way back home and it wasn't just next door He'd been.

And so we see this mighty miracle because he made the effort to begin to get up and when he did, his faith kicked in, and the faith of those friends of his.

You know it's so powerful to be part of a great church that believes in miracles because sometimes you know you need people to believe with you.

It's always good to have people that'll encourage you and believe with you and agree with you.

And so he made an effort and this miracle was consummated.

He walked all the way back home with his bed on his back.

You know, brother Hagin tells a story back in the early days of the Pentecostal revival.

It was a healing evangelist that was preaching and he had four people and they were in a wheelchair been in the wheelchair for a long time and he went down by the Holy Spirit and he said I say unto thee, rise up and walk.

Number one Number one person got up and walked right out of a wheelchair and then he went to the second one.

I say unto thee, rise up and walk.

The second person rose up and walked out of the wheelchair and then he went to the third one rise up and walk.

The third one rises up and walks out of the wheelchair.

Three fantastic miracles.

He goes to the fourth one.

I say unto thee, rise up and walk.

He said didn't you see me?

Come in, I'm in a wheelchair, I can't walk.

See, even though three people had walked, there was no faith to even make an effort.

You know, sometimes we have to make an action, we have to have action.

We can't just sit there, we can't just sit there in the wheelchair, we've got to make an action.

So some of the people in the meeting this was a long time ago, before people know what they know today.

I think we still have people that the Bible ignorant today and they thought to themselves well, why did that preacher heal the fourth one?

Well, the preacher didn't heal anybody.

Jesus did all the healing and he couldn't heal the fourth one because the fourth one didn't believe.

He healed everyone that believed.

And remember, believe is an action verb.

Believe means action.

It doesn't mean mentally agree.

I've told this testimony many times and it's got probably five or six parts to it, so I'm only going to give you the main part of the testimony tonight, just in the interest of brevity.

But I've been laid off and glad I had $35 in the bank after we paid some bills.

I got my weeks paid.

That wasn't severance pay, they were just paying me for what they owed me.

And then they laid me off.

So we paid some bills and tied and when it was all said and done, we had $35 in the bank and I'd been desiring to build homes.

I was in the remodeling business for a year.

And so I sat down and said well, you know, I'd looked at West University plays, I'd looked around at a place called Bear Creek.

Bear Creek had a thousand or more vacant homes.

People had got laid off from their jobs and abandoned their homes.

The banks had foreclosed and there were just street upon street of mostly vacant homes with broken glass and they needed repair.

And so I got to thinking, you know, I'd really like to build houses again.

I'd like to build houses in West U, but I just didn't have the faith to start there.

I said, you know, I could go to work for those banks, I could take care of those houses, I could fix them up, get them marketable or, where the realtors could sell them, clean them up, you know, maybe replace whatever's broken, maybe do whatever needed to be done to make them saleable what little market there was.

And then I could parlay that into possibly building houses again.

And so I sat down, what would it take for me to do that?

And so I just, I just did some calculations.

Your faith without works is dead.

And I figured out that it would take me $25,000.

You know, I knew that was skinny, I knew that was skinny, but that's all.

I just, I just didn't have, I didn't have $100,000 faith, I didn't have $200,000.

I thought, you know, $25,000 would probably do it, and I've got $35 in the bank.

So I said, honey, let's give $25 in the offering tonight, let's believe God, for a thousandfold return.

Thousandfold, a hundredfold is a massive Well.

I had a hundredfold wouldn't do it.

I needed a thousandfold.

So I was using, you know, moses prayer over Israel and Deuteronomy, where the Lord make you a thousand times as numerous as you are today.

That's what my confession was.

I said, lord, make me a thousand times as new my money, a thousand times more numerous than it is right now.

And so we went Wednesday night and we put that $25 in the offering and that left us $10 in the bank.

I mean, how in the world that the buy?

I kind of expected to get a letter and a check in the mail and say we just closed your account, this is not enough money to have a bank account.

But they didn't.

They kept my bank account open, thank God.

And and then I prayed and I said you know, lord, what else can I do to give action to my faith?

I believe I want to have corresponding action.

What else, besides giving in this offering, what else can I do?

And right away, I mean I didn't even have to wait.

He said it will call some businessmen, call three businessmen and get them to agree with you for the $25,000.

And then he gave me the three names of the three businessmen and I said God, I can't call them.

I knew all three of them.

I knew them well.

I said I can't call them and ask them to agree with me.

They're going to think I'm kind of going around about asking them for the money and I'm not asking them for the money.

I just want you know.

He said no, tell them.

Tell them that I said that I gave you their name, that they wouldn't be intimidated, that they had that level of faith to believe for $25,000, about being intimidated about the amount, and it'll bless them and they'll agree with you".

I said, okay, I didn't want to do it.

But that's what I did.

All made God and I called the first man, told him that story.

He said oh, john, absolutely.

And he agreed with me over the phone.

Second guy did the same thing.

I called the third guy and he said oh yes, I want you to come to my house, we want to pray.

My wife and I will pray with you in person and I don't need to do that.

I know you're no, no.

So I drove to his house big mansion of a house, you know.

I'd been there before.

I knew him and I knew his home.

It's a beautiful home.

We stood in his music room Do you have a music room?

I don't either.

And we stood there and I mean he and his wife, we joined hands together and they made the prayer and I mean the wife had tears running down her face.

He broke, could hardly finish the prayer.

The Holy Ghost hit three of us.

It was so anointed and witnessed, so strong with the two of them that I was to have this money.

And this is the part where I just have to skip over three or four things that happened, but I'll just go to the chase.

30 days after that I gave the offering.

Within 30 days, that guy was my new business partner and we had $100,000 in a brand new bank account and we were getting ready to build in Westview.

I never went to Bear Creek.

Listen faith without corresponding action is dead, say.

In order for my faith to work, I had to do something.

I had to do something, praise God.

And so faith without corresponding action is dead.

Believe in your heart, yes, speak with your mouth, yes, and act on the word.

Act like the Bible is true, the action of faith.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight, Praise God.

I tell you, it works in every area.

It works in finances, it works in every area where you use your faith.

You know the just shall live by faith.

This is how we live.

We live on the water, walking ways of God.

You know we walk on the water all the time.

We're always out there, testing and moving out, not according to what our eyes can see, but what the Bible says.

Praise God, hallelujah.