The Faith Road

Bible next to you.

Why don't you pick it up, wave it around, and I'm just going to imagine through the camera I can see all of you waving your Bibles around, making Jesus glad and the devil mad.

And let's all say it together say Heavenly Father, I've tuned in to live screen because I'm hungry for the Word of God.

I have an open heart and I have a purpose in my life to not only hear the Word but be a doer of it.

I know that my faith is growing and the fruit is increasing in my life.

To your glory, father, in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, let's look at Romans, chapter 10, verse eight.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

These are some very familiar verses.

And Romans 10, verse eight.

Paul is writing and he says but what sayeth it?

The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart.

That is the Word of faith which we preach.

Before I go any further, just think about the fact that Paul preached the Word of faith.

I'm so glad to be a Word of faith preacher.

I'm glad this is the Word of faith church.

So the Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart.

See, in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the Word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

And so the last three weeks I've been speaking about faith makes a demand.

We've been looking at the Word asked in the John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

If you ask anything in my name, I will do it, jesus said In John 15.

It says If you abide me my Word abides in you you shall ask what you will and shall be done unto thee.

So the Word asked there means to make a demand, it means to require, and so it's not really prayers about making a demand.

We know that it's not a making a demand on God, but it's making a demand because of our covenant, and we're demanding the circumstance, we're demanding the devil, we're demanding poverty and lack, we're demanding pain, sickness, whatever it is that's contrary to our covenant.

We're demanding it to go.

And then last week we talked about the keys.

Jesus said I give you the keys of the kingdom, matthew 16,.

Whatever you bind on earth is bound in the heavenlies.

The power of binding and loosing, which is also making a demand.

So faith makes a demand, and so this week we want to talk about the subject of confession.

It's also words, and the title of the message is entitled the faith road.

The faith road.

Smith Wigglesworth said years ago that confession builds the road over which faith carries its mighty cargo.

Confession builds the road over which faith carries its mighty cargo.

And you know, I smile about the word confession because when I first got saved the only thing about confession that I knew as a Catholic, I had to go to confession.

I thought about confession, confessing sin, and certainly it does mean that a Christian should confess their sins as soon as they know that they've done wrong and we're forgiven.

As soon as we do that, we don't have to go to a person, we don't have to go to a priest, we don't have to go to the confessional.

You know, we used to go to the confessional.

It was a little room and the preach was on one side of the screen.

I was on the other side.

I always dreaded it, I hated it, but when I learned about confession of faith, when I learned that word, and so, going by what Smith Wigglesworth said, confession builds the road.

In other words, the word confession means to say the same thing as so to confess the word means you say the word, you speak the word.

And my question to you is what kind of road are you building with your confession?

I mean, is the road that you're building?

Is it got potholes, it's got washouts, it's got quicksand?

And I was watching an episode of Homestead Rescue.

It's family.

It's a father and a son and a daughter.

They're of one family that live in Alaska and they people write them and you please help me, I'm failing on my homestead.

And there are people across the nation that they've got, you know, some of them five acres, some of them 50 acres.

You know they live in the middle of nowhere, they're living off the grid and it's amazing how many people decide to do that.

And they don't know how to build anything, they don't know how to hunt, they don't know how to farm, they don't have to do anything.

So they get in trouble real fast.

They run out of money going to the grocery store to buy their food.

The whole idea of moving out like that is to be self sufficient, which none of them are on this program.

So they go up to this place and I forgot now where it was.

I think Montana, yeah, and these people live way up in the mountains and they had this long road that went way up, straight up almost, and it was a terrible road and it took.

It was 10 miles and it would take an hour sometimes to go down that road from their cabin and the husband had epilepsy and he would have a grand mal seizure and his wife would try to get him in the truck and take him for medical attention and then, if a tree, a rotted tree they had a lot of rotted trees that were dead and they'd fall across the road she was stuck because she was afraid of chainsaws and she just didn't want to touch chainsaw.

Well, so in order for this family, to help this family survive, they had to teach the woman how to get down the road and to cut the tree and move it out of the way so that she could get her husband.

And while they were there, that's what happened the man had a grand mal seizure and it just so happened that the EMS could come up to them and did, but in some cases they have to go there.

So it was quite a day when this woman had the courage to not only to pick up that chainsaw, but she had to start it.

And this is a chainsaw that had like a three foot bar on it, so it's real heavy and this is a 99 pound little woman, and so they had to train her to pick up the chainsaw like this and hold it like this and then drop it, at the same time pulling the recoil.

So the weight of the saw kind of helped pull the recoil, you know what I mean.

And it took a while for her to get the hang of that, but she finally did it.

The last part of the episode she started the chainsaw.

She cut this huge tree which they had put in the way just to test her, and it was a 24 inch big old tree and she cut it in pieces and she was able to move it out of the way enough for the truck to get through.

And all the celebrating that they did.

Oh, my goodness, they were just so overjoyed.

And so it reminds me tonight.

I mean, what kind of a road have you got for your cargo to come down, because you're building it with your confession?

Is it really?

Is it a wide, straight, strong, smooth road, able to bear the weight of what it is you're calling towards you.

I mean, whatever it is that you have in your life, it's because you called it.

Whether it's good or bad, you can call it.

You can call the good things or you can call the bad things Confession with the mouth and faith in the heart.

I want you to think about that.

And I remember all those years, almost 40 years ago that I first started listening to Brother Hagin on the radio.

It was 15 minutes at a time and we had like four preachers all in a row, so I spent an at first hour of the day after I got in my car and started driving around.

I go to a spring post office pick up my mail.

I had a PO box and then I'd go kind of check my jobs and I was a home builder and I listened to four people every day and Brother Hagin was always teaching on faith and Charles Capps, rw Shambach and Derek Prince those were the four.

And boy, by the time I listened to them every day, five days a week.

In the first few months I started learning something about faith.

I started learning something about, and I needed more than just church on Sunday.

I needed something every day and I'll never forget learning about the power of words and how important they were, and confession with the mouth, but also faith in the heart.

And so the word confession there in Romans 10, 10, means it's the Greek word homologio, which means literally to say the same word.

It means covenant, agreement.

So there again, it's so important for you to know what Jesus bought and paid for and then to agree with it, speak it out of your mouth and believe it in your heart.

And so it says it right here in verse 10, how a person gets saved.

But this is the way that you get anything from God you believe it with your heart and speak it with your mouth.

I asked the question last week do you believe that those things which you say come to pass?

It's kind of a challenge to you Do you believe the things which you say come to pass?

Because if you do, that will help you clean up your confession.

Because many times we speak in the wrong way and many times we waver in our confession.

Many times we say one thing one moment and say something totally different in the next moment.

You know, let me read you a couple of verses.

It says here in Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 23.

Hebrews 10:23

It says let us hold fast the profession or the confession.

That word is the same exact Greek word, so it means confession.

Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering.

Waivering.

What is wavering?

Well, it means being inconsistent.

It means saying one thing around maybe church people and saying something else around somebody else.

Well, I mean, which is it?

So you're wavering in your confession.

That means that you're not going to get what you're calling for, or it means that you might get something bad that you don't want.

Look at the epistle of James.

James said much the same thing in his epistle James, right after Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 5.

Hebrews 1:5

It says if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives liberally to all men, and at great a thneught.

It shall be given him, but let him ask in faith, nothing.

Wavering, here's that word again.

Wavering, for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with a wind and tossed.

For let not that men think the one that wavers in his confession See, that's what he's talking about the one that's wavering in his faith.

Well, wavering in your faith means you're wavering in your confession.

Sometimes you waver in your words and then it says let not that men think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.

A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

It would be like if I'm setting out on a journey in a ship and I've got the wheel and I'm moving through the water, I'm headed toward a destination, I've got it on my compass, I've got it all on my GPS.

I'm headed there and all of a sudden I decided oh, I decided not to.

And you just turn the ship around and go the opposite direction, go right the way that you were going.

Except now you're going the opposite direction.

You're even driving over the prop wash that you just left in the water.

I mean, you're not ever going to get to the destination, are you?

You're just wandering around.

I bet your crew is going to wish they were on a different ship, maybe like your family, people that are depending on you to be consistent.

Oh, listen, we can't waver.

So with the heart, man believes, and with the mouth, confession is made unto unto what?

Unto what we're saying, unto what we're believing.

And again, this is the word confession.

It's talking about a covenant agreement.

See, he's talking about what belongs to you, what belongs to you.

And so if we keep reading.

Let's go back to Romans, chapter 10.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Here you get anything out of this.

If you've heard this before and you're tempted to say well, then let it be water to what you've already heard, because this needs to be watered.

Inside of us.

The word that goes out is both seed and water at the same time.

So let it water you, because your seed needs to be watered as well as you need to plant.

And it says in verse 14,.

Then how shall they call on Him in whom they've not believed?

See, how can you believe something if you hadn't heard it?

How shall they believe in whom they've not heard?

And how shall they hear without a preacher?

So it all gets back to what you're hearing In this church.

You're hearing the Word of Faith and a lot of churches.

They're not preaching much of anything.

They're preaching stay home.

They're preaching wear a mask.

They're preaching socially distant.

They're preaching all the fear.

They're mouthpieces for the one kind of doctor they haven't heard the kind of doctors I've been listening to.

The kind of doctors I've been listening to say it's a bunch of poppycock.

I mean, this is a virus.

There's no way that any kind of cloth can stop a virus from contacting you.

It might stop a sneeze out of your mouth, but then you've got the mask wet.

Then what are you going to?

Are you going to change the mask?

Are you going to touch it?

Now, you touched it, the mask, it's contaminated.

Come on, let's have common sense.

We don't need a scientist to tell us that kind of stuff.

There's a whole lot of people giving a whole lot of trust to a whole lot of things that are not trustworthy.

But the Word is trustworthy.

How can they know that?

You need a preacher, you need a pastor, you need somebody to teach you and preach the Word, and so then, when you hear it, you give voice to what you believe.

If, after you've heard a message or heard the preaching and the teaching of the Word, you don't have anything to say, well then it's all for naught, because it doesn't do a bit of good for you to hear something if you're not going to speak it.

But you have to agree with it.

You know you have to mix faith with what you hear, and mixing faith is all about speaking.

We don't get what we believe.

We get what we say with our mouth and believe in our heart.

That's the definition of faith.

So we give voice to what we believe.

And here comes faith Memorial Expressway.

It's ready for our faith to bring us that cargo down that road that we just built with our confession.

And we can't build much of a road if we're going to dig it up.

I mean, with our words.

We start building and start pouring some concrete, you know, and we've poured about ten feet of road and then the next day we dig it all up with our words and crack it and break it all apart.

I mean we haven't accomplished anything, have we?

So tonight, I know what some of you are thinking.

I mean I've heard this for years.

I don't know if I could get much out.

Yes, you can, because, again, this is water for your faith.

We have all can improve in our confession.

We can all speak more consistently.

You know, I often think about our angels.

You know our angels are sent forth to the minister on behalf of those who are heirs of salvation.

And it says Hebrews, chapter one, says and it says they hearken under the voice of God's Word.

So God's Word in your mouth will accomplish something, the same way God's Word in His mouth does.

And the angels, your angel is waiting to hear something come out of your mouth that they can act on.

And if you're not speaking the Word and confessing the Word, they don't have anything to act on.

So tonight I just had five confessions that you can use to build faith Memorial Expressway.

Are y'all getting that?

We're talking about the faith road and we need to be cognizant of and recognize that nobody can build our road but us.

You know no one else can build.

I can't build it for you.

You can build your own road, but I can't build it for you.

So the first one is in verse nine.

It says if you confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus so you know, one of the basic confessions that I confess almost every way, every day, is Jesus is Lord.

You know Kenneth Coflin has been saying it for about 50 years Jesus is Lord.

I can still hear him say it.

Jesus is Lord.

I've been hearing him say that for a long time, but you know when you well, yeah, that kind of goes no, that's a confession we ought to make all the time, because it proclaims that he is at the top of the heap.

Jesus is Lord, not, not Washington, not government, not you know some razzmatazz.

You know mayor or county official or not some unelected official.

No, jesus is Lord, he's Lord of all, and we ought to confess that every day.

He's Lord over my, he's Lord over me, he's Lord over my home, he's Lord over my city, he's Lord over my business, he's Lord over my job, he's Lord over.

He is Lord, but he's only Lord if you believe it and you confess it, and so it's just kind of a basic confession that that I, that I use every day.

It says right here in verse nine if you'll confess the Lord Jesus, so let's believe that he is Lord, he's Lord over Satan, through us.

That's another thing that we don't confess enough that Jesus is Lord, and so the church comes out weak.

I'm ashamed to say that so many churches are still are still closed, and why, if they really believe that Jesus is Lord, they wouldn't be closed, they just wouldn't be.

I mean, that was one of the reasons why we opened as early as we did.

I mean we were open on Palm Sunday, we were hoping that Sunday before Easter, you know, listen, we were way out there in front why?

Because Jesus is Lord over this, over this church, he's Lord over me, he's the boss, and so Jesus is Lord over Satan through us, as we confess Jesus as Lord, we confess His Word, we confess His name as we resist Satan in Jesus' name.

Yeah, jesus is Lord.

Will that work?

Well, does the multiplication table work?

Like what Brother Hagin used to say one time.

You know, he, just his, his, his aunt called and his, his cousin was near death and he said that's all right, aunt so, and so I forgot her name, it's all right.

So you know he'll live and not die.

Just go whispering in his ear, you know, tell him.

I think his name was Homer.

Homer, you're gonna live and not die.

Just go whisper that in his ear.

And Brother Hagin's mother says oh, son, I'm so glad you got a word, I'm so glad that the Holy Ghost spoke that to you.

Oh, that's so wonderful.

And he said yeah, mama, I got a word.

I got Mark 11, 23,.

I got a word.

She says, oh, like she was so disappointed that God didn't just give him a personal prophetic word about the situation.

He was just quoting Mark 11, 23,.

Speak to the mountain and it'll be removed.

And she said oh, son, do you think that's gonna work?

He said will it work?

Does the multiplication table work?

He was kind of on the edge of disrespect for mama there for a little while.

Don't blame him, but will the multiplication table work, mama?

I mean, you know it's 10 times 10 is still 102 times two is still four.

Yes, it'll work.

You know, faith works every time it's tried, every time it's done.

Hallelujah, jesus is Lord.

Number two is found over in 1 Peter 5, 7.

It says casting all your care on him, for he cared for you, and so this confession is built on that.

I don't have a single care.

I don't care about anything.

I have not a single care.

Now here's let me just talk about this just a moment here.

Casting your care upon the Lord has done one time, kind of like when you got saved.

You know you got saved one time.

You know you didn't get saved over and over again.

And this, that's the way this, these verses, are designed to work.

They're designed to work when you, when you see them, that that you, that when you, when you come across these verses, is just casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you.

You do that one time in your life and then, from then on, after you've confessed this almost every day, then, when you're tempted to worry, you absolutely have are able to say no, no, I'm not going to worry about that.

I've already cast all my care upon the Lord because he cares for me.

There's no point in both of us getting nervous about this thing.

Let him take care of it.

I mean, you know, you, you've, you've got to do that one time.

You don't do, you don't cast your care on him every day.

You do it once, and then you'd, then you confess your position in him, that I have cast my care upon him already and I don't care what's going on.

It's the kind of thing that that some of these men of faith, like Smith Wigglesworth I told this story recently, but one time he was awakened in the middle of the night and he looked at the foot of his bed and there was Satan standing there.

And he looked at Satan and he says, oh, it's you.

And he turned back over and went back to sleep.

Well, how, how, how could he do something like that?

Well, because he, he had long since cast all of his care on the Lord.

He, he, he didn't care if Satan had appeared to him.

It didn't mean anything to him at all.

He wasn't a bit intimidated.

So so practice and say that every day, I confess every day, I don't have a single care.

I don't have a single care.

And that way it replaces fretting with peace.

You'll always have peace instead of fretting and worry.

All right.

Number three here's a good one.

And Psalm 23,.

The Lord is my shepherd and I do not want it, says you shall not want so, since he says you shall not take it as a command.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want so, since it says that, like in a command, I just confess I don't want.

I don't want for anything.

I mean all I don't want for anything, because he leads me in the right ways and all my needs are supplied.

Everything I want is supplied, everything I need is supplied.

He's my shepherd.

I tell you I don't lack for peace because he knows where all the still water is.

He knows where all the calm water.

The Lord is my shepherd.

He's always leading me.

He leads me and I'm hooked up, doing the right thing with the right people at the right time, and things are working out great because he's my shepherd.

Well, pastor, this seems so basic.

Well, it's my experience in about 40 years of being saved, in about 33 years of full-time ministry, that in 26 years of pastoring that most people miss it on foundation things.

They have little foundation things that they've let slip.

They do know it but they don't do it and it's they think that they're more mature than to have to pay attention.

But everybody has to pay attention to basics because they're the foundation of your faith and Jesus being Lord and you not being fretful and you realizing you have a shepherd that leads you every day and moment by moment.

Those are basics that it's easy to forget and easy to let them slip.

All right, this next one's, fourth one is based on Isaiah 53, three and five, and I think it's worth going back and looking at Isaiah, because he's prophesying over Jesus.

This is what Jesus did on the cross.

Isaiah 53,.

He has despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him.

He was despised.

We esteemed Him not.

Surely he had borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we did esteem Him, stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes we're healed.

So you know, one good confession is to have every day is every sin, sickness, sorrow and lack was laid on Jesus.

Therefore, I'm free.

Very simple, but if you say it over and over again with faith in your heart, and you believe it in your heart and you speak it with your mouth, it becomes reality.

It's building the foundation of your road.

Your road is not gonna have potholes, it's not gonna have a dead tree that fell across it or you're gonna have to get a chainsaw out and start sawing logs.

I mean you don't have time when there's emergencies, you don't have time to clear the road.

I mean that road needs to be wide, it needs to be solid, it needs to be smooth.

That cargo needs to be moving towards you without any interruption.

And when you get into these basic confessions, I'm telling you, your life will start to line up.

Now you have to believe them.

So I mean you know if you have to take your Bible and open it and look at the Word while you're making your confession, until you can quote them, you can quote them.

Once you've done it a thousand times, you can quote them.

And you don't need to open your Bible necessarily.

You just have the Word in your heart.

It's on your mouth.

Everything that's in your heart is in your mouth.

It's the Word of faith which we preach.

It's in your heart but it's on your lips.

Gotta have it.

Every sin, sickness, sorrow and lack was laid on Jesus.

Therefore, I'm free.

I mean, there's no blue Mondays.

You know, I knew that, an old guy.

He went to heaven over the coronavirus.

He was witnessing and preaching at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, right, and he was at the wrong place, I'm sorry what to say and he was already suffering.

I think he had some symptoms and he went to New Orleans and he picked up that virus.

But I've heard him minister a number of times and he was an ex blues man.

He could play that blues guitar and he wrote a song no more blue Mondays, you know.

He knew how to get drunk in the Holy Ghost and he sure not having any blue Mondays now.

But a long time ago he found out that he didn't have to be blue anymore.

He quit singing the blues, started singing for the Lord and now he's in heaven singing Praise God.

So every seed, sickness, sorrow and lack was laid on Jesus.

Therefore, I am free.

And then this is one of the ones that I tell you this is.

You know, some of these I might not do every day, it might be a couple of times a week.

I do them, but this one is every day, this last one here.

First Corinthians, chapter one.

First Corinthians, chapter one.

Oh, what a powerful confession you can make.

First Corinthians, chapter one, verse 30.

And I remember Charles Capps preaching on this one time when I just first got saved, and he was talking about this first and I was so amazed I had never heard anything like it in my life.

Verse 30, but of him arguing in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

So Jesus is my wisdom, he's my righteousness, he's my sanctification and he's my redemption.

So he just confessed that that belongs to you, the virtue of the blood of Jesus.

He was made unto you, he is your wisdom.

You don't ever have to doubt about wisdom.

You don't even have to ask for it, just claim it.

I mean, james is talking about asking for wisdom, but really and truly, when you come up against things that you don't know what to do, just say Jesus is my wisdom, he knows all about how to take care of this and I believe I receive what I need right now it's inside of me and it's rising up because it belongs to me.

It's not something you got to fast for and go out and, oh, I got to find out.

No, he's your wisdom, the secret's in the Word.

He's your righteousness, he's your sanctification.

You're separated and set apart for great things.

He's your redemption.

And so we believe in our hearts and we confess with our mouths unto until it manifests, essentially, until it manifests Some of these things.

There'll be a lifetime of manifestation, but one thing for sure when you start confessing these with your mouth, believe in them in your heart.

You are going to lay that road, that faith memorial expressway, and your faith is gonna allow your cargo, that precious cargo, to come to you unimpeded.

In Jesus' name, Receive the Word of God tonight.

Hallelujah, rejoice that God has given you your victory, amen.