Faith Diagnostics

I want to share a message with you today, and so let's just, you don't have to stand back up.

You've been standing a while.

Thank you, worship team.

You guys do an awesome job.

While I'm thinking about it, you know one thing about we have in our out, in the lobby, at our information, in our media center, we have scripture references for healing, and so it'd probably be a good idea.

You know we're talking about all these preventive measures.

The best way to prevent things is to keep the word of God on your lips, and so we've got all these wonderful healing scriptures you can confess over yourself and your loved ones.

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

Let's say this together Say, heavenly Father, I'm at church this morning on purpose.

I'm making a statement to the enemy you can't have my health, you can't have my nation, my city, my school.

You can't have it.

We're taking back what you're trying to steal.

We thank you for the word of God, heavenly Father.

It's the answer to all of life's challenges, and I embrace it in Jesus' name.

Amen, Praise God.

Let's turn in our bibles to a couple of places Romans, chapter five, and Hebrews, chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

And I'm gonna try to maintain my social distance, but the people on the front row know that I spit a lot when I preach.

I thought about buying a hazmat suit, but I decided against it.

And then so Romans, chapter five, verse one, therefore being justified by faith I like that word.

Justified Just as if I'd never sinned.

Justified by what?

By faith we have peace.

We have peace.

Everybody say I've got peace.

See, we ain't trying to get it, you got it.

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith.

Everybody say by faith Into this grace, wherein we retreat into a closet melt, into a quivering mass.

No, we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

I'll tell you, faith rejoices.

And then in Hebrews 11, verse one I don't know how many thousand times I've preached out of these verses and you're probably not gonna hear something you haven't heard, but that's not the important thing.

The important thing is for us to remember what we know.

Hebrews 11, one now, faith.

And faith is now, not in the future, faith is now.

Faith is right now.

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen for by it.

That that is by faith.

The elders obtained A good report.

Faith has a good report, and so I wanted to preach a message this week on faith diagnostics.

Faith diagnostics you know, last week we talked about defrost your faith.

How many of you enjoyed the frozen turkeys?

Amen, we talked about frozen turkeys last week.

So if you weren't here, get the media and but I you know, the surrounding, the surrounding out there, outside these walls, is one of panic and fear and a lack of faith.

People don't know what to do.

They're just, they're just going ape.

And so we've got to maintain an atmosphere of faith in our own hearts, and that takes an effort.

We've got, we've got to answer this atmosphere.

Notice how the atmosphere isn't here.

I mean, man, if you could just take this atmosphere right to your home, well, you can say you can have this at home, you can have this at work, you can have this everywhere you go, you can draw a circle around where you are at any time and have this atmosphere.

That's how important what I'm saying is to you and it's not new, but it's something that we have to remember.

You ought to do yourself a favor and go through the New Testament, especially the epistles, and find out how many times it says remember in there, remember, remember, remember.

Remember.

Jesus Christ was a seed of David, remember, remember.

You know, I mean Paul.

He was always saying remember to people.

That should never forget, we should never forget, but we do forget why?

Because of this atmosphere outside, it's easy for us to forget what we know and quit doing it.

And so, you know, faith is the switch that turns on the power of God.

Romans five too by faith, we have access into this grace.

The word grace, you know many times, is translated God's unmerited favor.

Well, that's only one tiny slice of what grace means.

Grace is much bigger than that.

Grace is God's ability to do anything.

So by faith, you're turning on the switch to God's ability that can come on the scene and counteract anything.

See, grace is a little bit, you know, that's just.

That definition is too small.

It's good, but it's too small for what really it is.

And so faith is that switch.

Just think about if we hadn't turned the switch on.

If we didn't turn the switch on, if we didn't turn the breakers on, we could have power coming to the building.

We didn't have the breakers on, there would be no live stream, there'd be no, no sound amplification.

There'd be no lights.

It'd be kind of dark and dreary in here.

I remember when a hurricane I kept we had no power.

All the lights were out.

We had to get a generator and we had service that morning, the first morning after Ike.

That was 2008.

We all gathered here, a bunch of people I mean it was about half the crowd, but we, you know, because a lot of people flooded out, a lot of people had no power at their own home, and so forth and so on.

But we rented a generator and we turned the power on.

We had amplified sound and we had a service.

Yeah, when Harvey hit, I remember we had just us.

Four or five of us came down to the church.

It wasn't flooded in between my house and the church, but we knew it was flooding everywhere else and nobody was here, but just Lee and James and I and Gladys and who else one other person, I think.

But anyway, we had a service.

I preached to an empty building but there was lots of people watching my live stream.

So we know what it's like when there's no power.

And so we have faith, don't you Do?

You have faith, yeah.

And so when you turn on your faith, then you're tapped into God's ability.

You're tapped into whatever extremity you're facing, god's opportunity to intervene in that extremity and change it.

But sometimes when we're facing things and nothing changes, you know, it seems like whatever it is we're facing, it's just facing.

You're facing it day in and day out and whatever it is you're facing, not moving.

Perhaps you need faith diagnostics, don't we do that with our cars?

I mean, recently I've got a brand new Ford F-150 pickup and I bought it.

It was the owner of the dealership drove it for 5,000 miles.

When I bought it they put a new car.

It's all new cars, I thought a used car.

It sold as a new car, full warranty, full everything, and they had it serviced, had 5,000 miles, new oil, changed all the oil and I drove another 5,000 miles and my engine light, check engine light came on.

I had to have diagnostics.

I had to take it to the dealer.

Why is my brand new Ford truck got an engine light, check engine light on the dash and so they plug their diagnostic equipment.

You've got a little port under your dash and they plug the little plug in and they've got a code reader that reads the code and they interpret that and they found out that my truck was low on oil.

I said what Didn't register on the dipstick?

My brand new truck, there's no oil on the dipstick.

Well, relax, mr Griner, it had oil in it, but it just it was low.

I said, how low was it?

I've driven that thing to East Texas, I've driven it to Galveston, kuyas.

I mean, I made some trips in that thing and you're telling me it was hot weather when I bought it and you're telling me it was low on oil.

It's got a high output 450 horse motor in it.

It needs oil.

Well, mr Griner, we've changed the oil, we've put fresh oil, filled it up and we marked the dipstick bring it back in a thousand miles.

And if it's below spec, then we'll go from there.

We'll go from there.

What Go from where?

What are you gonna do?

So I'm still waiting.

I've got about a hundred more miles before I take it back.

That'll be the asset test.

But you know, I needed diagnostics.

That's the point.

Sometimes, when our faith is not moving the situation, we need to get into the garage and put it up on the lift and plug into some diagnostics.

You know, when you got symptoms in your body, I mean, and they're not leaving you.

Sometimes you go to the doctor to find out what's wrong.

They run tests, don't they?

And blood tests and x-rays, and this test and that test.

Everybody say diagnostics.

So I've got a quick diagnostic for you.

Then some things that you can check on in your faith walk to make sure that you are tuned up properly, amen, and all your levels are full.

You don't wanna be down.

You don't want your dipstick to be down.

Praise God, let's make sure there's oil on the dipstick, all right.

So everybody say I'm checking things right this morning.

All right, number one, this is number one, right here.

This is after 35 years of ministering to people.

Number one check your confession.

Check your confession, because usually that's where it's at.

In consistency lies the power.

It's not what you confess in church.

It's not what you confess around other Christians.

It's what you continually say, day in, day out, what you say when things are against you, what you say when it's dark, what you say when you don't feel like you have any faith.

You learn not to speak when you feel bad.

You learn to speak against it.

You learn to laugh at trouble.

You learn amen.

Check your confession.

You will never rise to a level higher than your confession.

Never your circumstances will never straighten out any higher than the level of your confession.

What does the confession really mean?

It means to say the same thing as, in other words, you confess what the word says about your circumstance.

Hebrews 10, 23 says you know to hold fast to your confession or your profession of faith without wavering.

Why?

Because he's faithful.

Who promised so.

Are you wavering?

In other words, you're saying one thing in the morning and something in the afternoon.

You're saying one thing to Christians and another thing to somebody else.

Are you wavering?

Say that's something you can check on, that's something you can look at.

That's what I would do.

First, look at your confession.

In Mark 11, 23, jesus said you could have what you say.

It talks about believing.

One time in that verse and some form of say three times God told Brother Hagin.

He said you're gonna have to talk to Christians three times as much about what they're saying as you do about what they're believing.

My people are not missing me on what they're believing.

They're believing right, but they're not saying right.

You're gonna have to teach them how to talk.

Told him that all those years ago and Brother Hagin's whole ministry going around all those decades and decades preaching in churches, and preaching I mean I don't have any times I heard him preaching.

I'm not even pumped.

Tulsa, I'll tell you one thing when he was in Houston I was right there listening to him and I read all of his books and that was his.

He was like that's all and Mark 11, 23 people thought he wrote the book of Mark.

No, he didn't write it, and so it's important we need to make sure we're consistent in our confession.

Years ago I had been, I moved to the corpus from Houston during the last major depression that this city had, and that was 1985 and 86.

This city didn't have a recession, it had a depression.

You know oil has dropped.

Recently it's $32 a barrel.

Back then Oil was $6 a barrel and in my subdivision, where I was a home builder, we had 18 van pools.

People would ride the van to work.

You know Carter was big on car pools and all that.

Remember the gas crisis of the 70s.

Some of you are too young to remember that, but I mean you know there was lines.

You know that you had to wait in to get gasoline.

Gasoline was in charge supply.

Now we have a glut of gasoline.

Why?

Because we quit importing it from Saudi Arabia.

Now we're a supplier.

But anyway I had to move.

I had my business, just I couldn't sell it in my houses.

I had a inventory of houses and I got a job down in Corpus Christi.

We moved our family down there until the until the recession or the depression, hit corpus.

And then, when that happened, I got laid off and we moved back to Houston broke I'm talking about so broke, we couldn't pay attention.

I'm a tither, I'm a giver, and I was broke anyway.

And and so, you know, moved in with my sister.

My sister had to give us place to live.

I mean, you know, that's pretty.

I mean I, just when I'd get up in the morning, I just felt the pressure I'm not providing for my family, I can't even provide a place to live for my family.

I mean, god, they're buying the groceries.

I mean this is awful.

And so I knew I had to talk better.

And so when people say, hey, john, how you doing?

I go to Lakewood church.

You know it'd go back to Lakewood and I'd be walking around Somebody say, hey, john, how you doing?

I said, well, I'm hanging in there, well, I'm plugging along.

That was the height of what I could possibly say about my situation.

I mean, that was as far above as I could get.

Well, I'm hanging in there.

I don't know how many thousand times I said it.

I didn't say I'm blessed.

Go where to God?

I'm on top, I'm shouting the big.

I didn't say the right thing, I just said I'm hanging in there, I'm plugging along.

And so one morning, sunday morning, waiting for the church service to start, somebody asked me.

I said Well, I'm hanging in there.

And immediately I heard this gruff, rude, aggravated voice say yeah, and your fingernails are about to break.

I learned around.

I wondered who said that it was.

It was the Holy Ghost.

I wasn't used to that voice and I knew I just got rebuked.

I knew that I had just been corrected.

You know, the Holy Ghost will correct you.

The word will correct you.

He didn't condemn me, he just corrected my confession.

And let me know hey, you're not going to hang on very much longer.

And so I chased that person down and says Let me change that.

Things are better and better.

And he looked at me like Huh, what?

Like that it didn't mean a thing to him.

I thought he heard the voice.

That's how loud it was.

Everybody say I'm checking my confession, oh, faith is calling the things that be not as though they were.

When are we going to get a hold of that revelation?

See, call the things that be not as though they were.

Anybody can call it like you see it.

That's not what we're called to do.

Abram, if he'd have called it like he saw it, he never would have had Isaac.

He had looked at himself and looked at Sarah, and that would have been stayed the same as it had been until he's a hundred years old before he got a hold of calling the things that be not as though it were.

We don't, we're not.

I don't think anybody's a hundred years old in here Lonnie's the closest one, I think, and he knows to call the thing that be not as though it were.

All right.

So check your confession.

Everybody say it doesn't matter, I'm not going to be a good person.

I'm not going to be a good person.

So check your confession.

Everybody say a diagnostic test, all right.

Number two check your action.

Have you acted on the word?

You know, a simple definition of faith is faith is acting like the Bible is true.

It's acting like the Bible is true.

That's the simplest.

You know you want to go through the technical definition of faith, but really faith is just acting.

Like the Bible is true, it's really not rocket science, but it's easier said than done.

How many of you discovered it's easier said than done?

I mean, you know when symptoms are raging, when you're, when you don't have enough money in the bank and there's no money to pay the bills and this and that and the other, and I've been, I've been in all those cases.

It's a little harder to act like the Bible is true, but if you do see faith that James two twenty says faith without faith, without works, is dead being alone.

In the Weymouth translation, faith without corresponding action Faith has a corresponding action that's linked to it.

Are you with me?

I know you've heard it before, but listen, I'm talking about diagnostics and everybody goes through this.

I'm telling you, I knew when the word of God came to us in September that 2020 was going to be the greatest year.

Yet I knew that we were all in for a battle.

I didn't have to even wonder about it, and that's why we began to preach and teach on that subject.

And then what happened?

Let's think about just a moment.

You know God alerted me in December.

You know if it's the greatest year yet.

A lot of your congregation has suffered in the health area and I realized that we needed to really concentrate on healing and health, and the first I could get enough space to do it all in a row was February.

This was in December.

I started looking at the calendar and I came to the staff and said we're going to make, we're going to make February healing Wednesdays, and every Wednesday night during February we're going to preach on healing, and then it spilled over into Sunday morning.

So we doubled up and we, we, we preached and taught on healing the whole time in February.

Guess what?

What we're facing right now?

We're facing a global pandemic.

That's why we're not we're not panicking.

That's why you're here in church, because your faith has been fortified against that thing that everybody else out there is afraid of.

You're not afraid of it, and so we're preaching this so that we can get our faith tuned up, so that we're not influenced by the economy right now.

The stock market fell, oil fell.

I realized that many of you have stock market holdings.

Many of you are in the oil industry or related.

I understand that it looks scary.

Where we don't go by.

Looks like faith doesn't worry about.

Looks like we're holding on to the idea.

That's the greatest year yet.

So have you acted on the word?

Are you acting like God's word is true?

A great prayer to pray, you know, when things aren't moving.

His father, show me how to act.

My faith, show me how to act like your word is true.

Give me a specific thing I can do.

I've had to pray that prayer many times, many times.

Sometimes it's kind of obvious.

I mean, if you're sick, well, just get up.

Resist being sick if you can, and you might well.

I didn't feel good.

I had to go back to bed, or at least you got up.

Right, stay up as long as you can, and when you just can't stay up any longer, well then just go back to bed if you have to.

I'll tell you.

The other night we've just lived transparent lives.

I woke up at like two o'clock in the morning and I went to the restroom and all of a sudden I had this cold chill hit me and I felt like I was gonna faint.

I started getting right on the edge of dizziness and I didn't know whether I was gonna throw up or not.

I had to stay in that restroom and I mean, I felt terrible and I had to kind of get on my hands and knees and I thought about just laying on the floor of the bathroom.

I felt so bad.

But I just started saying well, glory to God, I'm healed.

Thank you, jesus Took about 15 minutes.

I drove that thing away.

I don't know what it was other than the devil, but I could have given into it.

Have you ever had symptoms hit you so hard, so quick that you didn't even have an answer for it before it overtook you?

Well, don't feel condemned, but just rise up and resist it as soon as you can.

I said as soon as you can.

And so I mean, if you broke, give.

That sounds kind of crazy.

I'm broke.

How can I give?

We'll find something to give.

I sell something to give, give, give up.

You know, I like what Copeland did.

He gave buttons in the offering.

Don't, please, don't, put buttons in the offering.

But anyway, no, you can if you want to.

I'm just joking, I love it.

I love it.

I love it.

Are you sad?

Laugh, learn to laugh at the devil.

Oh man, so blue today.

You know the Holy Ghost is a remedy for blue Mondes and blue Tuesdays and blue everything, Amen.

Are y'all getting anything out of this?

I'm just talking about diagnostics.

I mean, you know, instead of struggling and fighting and fretting Like the Bible is true, I said, act Like the Bible is true.

During that same period of time, we got back to Houston and people stood in line to turn me down for a job.

They all said I was overqualified.

You see, I had.

I had had my own business for years, even though I had a degree in engineering.

I never really worked in the engineering field as an adult.

I did work on my way through college.

I did.

But but once I graduated college I was a home builder.

And then, you know, when I went to corpus, for a year and a half I was a manager of a subdivision.

I was in a development business, learned the development business residential development but when I came back to Houston I looked for a job.

I tried to find anybody that would hire me.

Nobody wanted to hire me I'm overqualified which meant that they didn't want to pay me and they knew, if they paid me, what their job opening was worth, that I wouldn't last very long.

Soon something better would come along.

I'd leave it.

They were right, they were exactly right.

I wouldn't gonna stay there for some penny-any job, and they knew it.

And so finally, a guy wanted to open a remodeling business.

I went to work for him and it wasn't my my heart's desire, but I it paid some bills.

It didn't pay all of them, but it paid some of them.

And then he laid me off because the company just didn't make any money and it didn't work out as well as he had hoped.

And so when he laid me off, he, he gave me a week's pay.

How about that for a severance weeks pay?

Wow, hold me back, john.

What are you gonna do?

I'm gonna.

I said I'm gonna do exactly what I did before I ever knew you.

I'm gonna trust God God's gonna meet every need I have.

He's well, we really hate to do this.

He didn't hate it too bad.

He gave me a week's pay.

I mean, you know, I Don't know how you do that.

I don't know how you lay somebody off and give them 300 bucks and say be blessed, but anyway so.

But yeah, I wasn't offended, I just you know.

And so on the way home, in the driveway after that little meeting, I Said you know, I can think that the devil just stole my job, or I can think that this is a promotion in disguise.

This had to end.

For the good thing to happen, for the best thing to happen, this had to end.

And so I said that's my attitude.

By the time I got home I was full of joy, I was full of strength.

I bound it in the house.

I said honey, we got good news.

Now she didn't see it the way I saw it.

I Almost got thrown out the same door I came bouncing through, but I wanted to get back in the home building business.

By that time I've been out of business for a couple of years.

I saw opportunity in Houston.

By that time is 1989.

Things were opening up, things were better and and Lakewood had started construction.

I guess they've moved into their new building.

I was one of the only Construction projects in this entire city was Lakewood Church's new building.

That was the only crane you could see in the whole city was Lakewood Church and so.

But things started breaking and so I saw the opportunity and I wanted to get back in the home building business.

I sat down the table and, and, and I figured out what do I need?

I need $25,000.

I had we glad I had $30 in our checking account.

I Said, okay, honey, we're gonna sow a seed tonight.

God Moses prayed the Lord, make you a thousand times more numerous than he has today.

I said we don't need a hundred fold return, we need a thousand fold return.

We need to put $25 in the offering.

It's gonna leave us $5.

Whoever heard of having $5 in their checking account?

They should have closed my account.

I don't even know why they kept it open, but they didn't they.

They kept it open and and we gave $25, checking the offering on that Wednesday night, believing for a thousand fold return, 25,000, what it's gonna take.

I didn't care how it took.

I said now, father, Tell me how to act.

My faith, I've acted, my faith by sowing a seed.

Now, what do I do?

And he gave me three names of businessmen at Lakewood that I knew and he said I want you to call them and have them agree with you in prayer for the 25,000.

I said now, father, they're gonna think I'm trying to get the money out of them.

Come on, don't.

And there was silence on the other end of the line and oh, it was just all I could do to have to call these three people.

And then I went through this long spiel.

Now listen, I'm not looking to you to supply this money.

All I want you to do is agree.

I know that $25,000 is not going to intimidate you.

In fact, god gave me your name as one of three people to agree with me about this money.

So would you simply agree?

Well, two of them did.

They prayed with me over the phone.

The third one says oh yeah, I want you to come meet me at my house.

And I went to meet him at his house and we went into his big old mansion, you know, and went into the music room and we stood in the corner of this big palatial estate and he and his wife came out there and he started weeping.

He was so touched.

The Holy Ghost hit all three of us and he wound up being my business partner.

A month later he put $100,000 into our new business and we started building homes.

Are you with me?

That's where we can laugh.

Just laugh at the devil.

I didn't even want a partner.

I tried to talk him out of it.

I tried to sell him off of it.

I couldn't stop him.

He wouldn't be denied.

Are you with me now?

Act like the Bible is true.

Act on your faith, all right.

The third one we're checking our diagnostics.

We've got our port plugged in.

We're reading the codes.

The next one is obedience.

What was the last thing God told you to do?

Have you done it?

Sometimes God gives us little assignments.

I'm convinced if I hadn't called those three businessmen, I would have had a tough, tough, tough time.

I don't even want to think about how things would have played out.

It had not obeyed the Holy Ghost and called Him.

I had to humble myself.

I had to cast the care of what people thought of me, because I knew my heart and God knew my heart.

But those three men, they could have judged me.

Those three men could have said, yeah, griner called today, and they could have, and there wouldn't have been a thing I could do to change their opinion.

I had to throw that aside and obey the Holy Ghost.

Have you obeyed?

Has he given you something to do?

And you haven't done it?

Because until you do it, things stop.

I said things stop.

And then, of course, there's just the simple obedience of the Word of God.

The Word of God has all kinds of things.

We are under the command of love, for instance, we're commanded to love one another.

One of the most common disobediences is not walking in love.

I like what Brother Hagin used to say.

He said when you're feeling mistreated, that's when you know the devil is working on you.

That's right.

When you feel mistreated listen to me when you feel mistreated, that's when you know the devil is working on you.

He's after your love walk.

He's trying to get you into offense.

He's trying to get you to look at something or someone or some situation and get offended.

And that is the closest, that's the easiest way for the devil to steal and kill and destroy in your life is to get you out of love Worry.

Bible says fret not, be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will rise and mount God over your heart and mind, through Christ Jesus.

So if you're worrying, you're disobedient.

It's easy to worry.

Look at all the worry out there.

Look at all the fear out there.

Look at all the panic out there.

No toilet paper left in the entire city.

No fajitas, leave my fajitas alone.

No, I'm not so.

Bible says in Galatians 6, 7 and 8, so into the flesh.

Rapes, corruption, rottenness.

Don't sow to the flesh, sow to the spirit.

Galatians 2, 21,.

Don't frustrate the grace of God.

You know, faith accesses.

Faith accesses the grace of God or the power of God, and fear frustrates it.

Are y'all with me now?

You cannot make up by the sacrifice of prayer what you lose through disobedience.

You can pray till your voice gives out.

You can pray till your knees are bloody and it won't matter if you don't obey God's word and obey God's spirit.

Amen, are you getting anything out of this?

And then the last one is joy.

Check your joy.

We had the last song full of, in fact, all of our songs this morning.

I mean we just need to learn how to laugh at the devil.

We need to learn how to rejoice.

I mean Romans 14,.

17 says the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy.

And the holy ghost Nehemiah says the joy of the Lord is my strength.

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

I mean enjoy God.

I mean enjoy God.

That's another aspect of joy is enjoying God.

I mean when you pray, it's not a duty.

When you pray, it's not a burden.

When you pray, it's not.

Oh, I hope he doesn't ask me to do something today.

I just, oh just, as a joy to spend time with your heavenly father.

I hope he doesn't call me to be a missionary or an African like God.

Some people keep it a little bit on it.

They've got social distancing in the wrong area.

It's just social.

They've self quarantined in the wrong.

All of these words, all these I'm gonna, I'm gonna never forget these.

Are y'all getting anything out of this?

I mean just rejoice, learn how to rejoice in the Lord.

And again I say rejoice.

Come on, let's lift our hands and receive, make adjustments according to your faith diagnostics.

Hallelujah, glory to God.

It's not the end, it's just the beginning.

Everybody say we're in the midst of the greatest year of my life.

I'm not changing what I'm saying.

I'm not changing what I'm believing.

Come on, let's give the Lord a big shout of praise, hallelujah.