Believe God for Big Things

Well, good morning and welcome to Church at the Grove online.

Um we are back online.

It's crazy with the weather um changing the way that it did, um, that we were forced to kind of close down and move everything online.

But we're thankful.

We're thankful still, even though we don't get to meet physically, we're thankful that we get to be together online together today.

And so hopefully you and your family are gonna have a great day out in the snow or ice or whatever it's gonna end up being.

But we're excited this morning just to be together.

Um, as many of you guys know, we've been in the middle of a series called Vision 2022.

And uh we've been kind of laying out the vision for Church at the Grove as we move forward.

And so we obviously had some plans this morning as we gathered physically together to kind of hit on the next session of that.

But since we're moving everything online this morning, we wanted to just kind of take a pause and do something entirely different.

And uh, we're gonna look at just some things that maybe the Lord's teaching me uh just in recent days, just on this concept of faith.

Now, faith is one of those tricky things because faith is something that's so necessary for us as followers of Jesus.

But if we're just being honest, faith is a really hard thing for us to have, especially at this time and age in which we live.

When you think about it, we we have leaders, like political leaders, that we maybe have put our faith in in the past, but because of their indiscretions or because of their lack of moral kind of character, um, their faith, our faith in them has been ruined.

Um, same thing has happened for so many people when it comes to religious leaders.

Um, there's people that have been so burnt by the church and by people that claim to be followers of Jesus, but because of the way that they lived and because of their lifestyle or because of things that were done to them, there's just no way that they can even have faith in the church any longer.

And for many of them, they don't even have faith in God any longer.

And so this is kind of the age in which we live.

Not to mention that we're still in the midst of a pandemic now, almost two years later, and there's been all these promises of, you know, these magical vaccines that are gonna take care of everything.

And uh, while they might have helped some, the virus is still rampant, right?

There's still a lot of people that we know that are sick and that have uh contracted COVID in recent days, even when they had been vaccinated.

And so it's hard for us in our day and world today to really have faith in anything.

Um, just because we've been let down so much.

And uh it's hard for us as followers of Jesus if if that's the case, if what we kind of have just been bombarded with over the last years and really, for that matter, for the last several decades, um, if it's hard for us to have faith, then how do we become people that can have great faith in a God that is worthy of all of our faith?

Well, that's what I want us to kind of look at just real briefly this morning, is how can we develop a heart and a lifestyle of faith?

Um, and I think this is especially important, especially in the season that we're entering into as a church.

Um, for many of you guys know we've been going through 28 days of prayer and fasting.

And over these 28 days, we've had these devotions that have been coming out each and every morning, and hopefully you've been tracking along with those.

But in the devotions in recent weeks, we've been talking about just faith in general and just all throughout scripture, how God has moved mightily in and for his people, and how we want to see the same thing kind of happen here, right here locally in Social Circle and in Walnut Grove.

We want to see God's power and his hand and his might break through in just a powerful way, but that happens when his people believe him in faith.

And so that's what I want us to look at this morning.

And I've been reading just in my personal kind of quiet time, I've been reading uh just slowly through the book of Matthew.

And in Matthew chapter eight, uh there's a really incredible story about a uh Jesus coming into the town of Capernaum, and he's met by a centurion.

And this is what it says in Matthew chapter eight, starting in verse five.

It says, When he, being Jesus, entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, saying, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.

And he said to him, I will come and heal him.

So Jesus is promising to come and heal this man's servant.

Now, just to kind of, before we kind of jump in any farther, like when we see the centurion here, this is a Roman official.

This is someone that's not a Jewish kind of believer in the one true God.

But yet you can see that he's a man of great faith.

He's coming to Jesus and he's asking for Jesus' help.

You can also see that he's a man that has a lot of authority.

He's a commander of an army, of soldiers, a lot of them.

He's also someone that has humility.

For him to be coming to a Jewish rabbi and asking for help like this was not the ordinary way things were done.

And so this man is showing us a lot about his character just by him coming to Jesus.

And so Jesus commits and says, Hey, I'm there.

If you want me to come and heal your servant, I'm coming.

But then the centurion, verse eight, replied and said, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.

For I am two, I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me.

And I say to one, Go and he goes, and to another, come and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it.

When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those that were following him, Truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.

So this man had incredible faith, and his faith was so great and so uh vast in Jesus that he was uh he he made Jesus marvel, that Jesus was awestruck here, that Jesus was someone that was moved visibly by this man's faith.

Now just picture that for a second.

That here's the Son of God, and he is moved by this man's faith.

And so as I read that a couple mornings ago, I was really convicted, just asking myself the question, would God be moved by the faith that I have in him?

And I think if I was being honest, and hopefully you'll ask your quest that same question about yourself, um I think if I was being honest, I would have to say no.

I think that I'm too focused on what we can see and taste and touch and smell and the tangible world around me, that oftentimes I just kind of focus in on the common sense solution, what's logical rather than what's supernatural.

But the God that we have, although he does work in the created order, is also a God that can move mountains.

He's a God of supernatural miracles, that he can do things that we can even can't even imagine, ask, or uh uh think about.

That's the God that we have.

And so how do we connect those two things?

How do we connect being people of faith and not still losing out on just the logical side of life?

Should we just be people of faith that just kind of go off at a whim and never uh actually question and make good questions, ask good questions about the situations that we find ourselves in?

I don't think that's right.

I think God's given us a mind, He's given us wisdom, He's given us discernment.

So then how can we still be people of great faith while still being in the world in which we live?

Well, go down to uh a passage a little bit farther down in that chapter in verse 23.

We have another story of just where Jesus is talking about faith, but this time it's in the opposite direction, not great faith, but people that had little faith.

In verse 23, it says this and when he, Jesus, got into the boat, his disciples followed him, and behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but Jesus was asleep, which I love that.

Jesus is sleeping in the bottom of the boat, as everybody else in the boat, all the other disciples are freaking out because of the storm that has come up upon them.

And it says, And they went to wake him up, saying, Save us, Lord, we're perishing.

And Jesus said to them, Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?

Then he rose and rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was great calm.

And the men marveled, saying, What sort of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?

Now isn't this interesting that here we have another group of people that are marveling at Jesus?

Jesus was marveling at the centurion, but now the disciples are marveling at Jesus because he's just calmed this storm that he they thought was going to capsize their boat and they were all going to drown.

But it's interesting here that when Jesus is sleeping in the boat, Jesus is not afraid.

He's not fearful because he knows that he's perfectly in the middle of God's will, and that's the safest place that you can possibly be, and that God's got a bigger plan and purpose for his life.

He knows that his life is not going to come to an end prematurely.

And so Jesus can sleep soundly.

But the disciples didn't quite realize the whole plan that God had orchestrated for the life of Jesus, and ultimately how God was going to use them to further the church, begin the church, and further the church in the future.

And so for them, they're afraid because they see their lives as coming to an end.

But Jesus wakes up and he says, Why are you afraid, oh you of little faith?

Now, this is the interesting thing because faith, you think a lot of times when you have faith that it would be something that would be terrifying at times.

Because you're having to take God at his word and you're having to dare and do things that you normally wouldn't do.

Faith typically pulls us out of our comfort zone.

Faith is something that kind of shakes us to our core, and it can be something that's really uncomfortable at times.

But the incredible thing is that in the middle of us having faith, we see that there's an absence of fear.

Where there is faith in a great God, there is little fear that can be found.

And this is true in our lives as well.

When we understand who our God is, who we are in him, and that he has plans for our lives and a purpose for our lives, when we can kind of let that sink down, not just in our uh our minds mentally, it's not just an academic pursuit in knowing that knowledge, but when it sinks down to our heart and we really believe that truth in faith, then man, our fears suddenly subside.

That doesn't mean that there aren't times when we're a little wringing our hands and we're we're a little upset about what might be coming our way, but we trust that we have a God that's there with us, that he's there with us and he's there for us, and that he's moving in our midst and that he's going to take care of his children.

So we see that fear is uh absent when faith comes into being.

Now here's another interesting thing.

Jesus marvels at the faith of the centurion because it's so great.

His heart is moved.

But now here's another interesting story.

If you flip over to Mark chapter six, we see the same word of marveled or amazed in that chapter in Mark chapter six, where it says this Jesus left there and he went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples.

When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.

Where did this man get these things?

They asked.

What's this wisdom that he has been given to him?

What are these remarkable miracles he is performing?

Isn't this the carpenter?

Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon?

Aren't his sisters here with us?

And they took offense at Jesus.

And Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his own hometown, among the relatives in his own home.

He could do, it says, he could not do any miracles there except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

And he was amazed at their lack of faith.

Now, this is two polar opposite pictures, right?

The centurion had great faith, and Jesus was amazed in a positive way, but now he's in his hometown, and the people that knew him the best don't have the faith of the centurion, and as a result, he's amazed at their disbelief.

Now, this is a scary thing for us when you begin to kind of analyze it and maybe try to apply some of this uh truth to your life today.

The more comfortable we are with Jesus, and the more complacent we are with Jesus, the easier it is for us to not have the faith that we need to follow Jesus.

And so what I mean by that is I think that there's a lot of times in our lives that we can kind of get into the rut where we just kind of see Jesus as a friend, as a buddy, as our homeboy, as the t-shirt said back uh a decade ago.

And we can see Jesus in that way.

And in some ways, there's a positive, that there's a closeness, there's a familiarness there.

But when we become so accustomed to just Jesus and that he's just there for us, but we don't see him as almighty God, as we don't see him as holy, as sovereign, as set apart, the creator of the universe, the one that spoke the world into existence.

When we don't see him like that, then man, we become quickly pretty comfortable and complacent with him.

And just like the people that knew him the best in his hometown, we start to ask the question I mean, isn't this just Jesus?

The same guy that we knew, the same guy that we used to play on the football field with in the evenings?

Like, is this the same Jesus that has just kind of always been around?

And I think this is true in the American church, where we've just become kind of so accustomed to Jesus, but not really moved by Jesus.

Where we know him, but it's more of an intellectual knowledge, not a deep heart, emotional level knowledge of him.

And as a result, man, I think Jesus looks at our lives, many of us, and he sees our faith and he marvels at our unbelief.

But that's not how we should be.

As we kind of look forward as a church and as we're looking forward to the things that God is calling us into, and man, God's given us a big vision for the next uh three to five years with the number of baptisms that we want to see.

We want to see uh two, we want to see a hundred people baptized over the next two years.

That's a huge number, but even bigger than that, we want to see 500 people that are baptized over the next five years.

That's a huge number, especially in the world in which we live today.

And that's only going to happen when God's people, when our church believes that Jesus not only can, but that he will, when we start to have incredible faith in him and in him alone.

We want to plant new campuses and we want to start new works and new churches.

We want to be people that raise up new leaders that are sent out on mission all around the world.

And none of these things are going to happen if we are not people of great faith, that believe in a God that is capable of more than we can ask, think, or imagine.

When you think about faith, if you're familiar with scripture, the obvious place to go is in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

And in Hebrews chapter 11, the very first sentence of that verse says, or of that chapter says, Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

That's what faith is.

But then the writer of Hebrews begins to break down exactly all these, uh he begins to break down all of these examples in the Old Testament of men and women that had incredible faith, and as a result of their great faith, God moves mighty in their midst.

I mean, let's just take a look at a few of these.

In verse 5, he talks about Enoch, who was taken his life so that he did not have to experience death.

Enoch was someone that walked so closely with the Lord that he never died.

He just kind of one day just kept walking and walking with the Lord, and then he just ended up being in God's presence.

There's Noah, who in the midst of a flood that was coming, but they had never experienced rain before.

And here's this lunatic that's following and trusting God, that God says, Hey, build this boat.

And Noah just does it, even though rain has never even existed.

They don't even know what rain is at this point in history.

But Noah trusts him in faith, and as a result, God moves mightily in his midst.

There's Abraham that God calls out from a foreign land and then leads to become a great nation.

And Abraham believed that God was going to make his descendants great, like the number of stars in the sky or sand on the seashore.

And that wasn't likely.

I mean, he was old, and his wife was old and barren and had never been able to have children prior to this.

But man, they trusted that God was going to come through, and as a result, he does.

God comes through and they have Isaac and then there's Jacob and then the heirs that come and the descendants that come from them.

There's Jacob, and Jacob was somebody that when he was dying, he blessed Joseph's sons and worshiped as he uh leaned on top of his uh staff.

Joseph, someone who found himself up in a pagan land of Egypt, was someone that believed God even in the midst of the pagan society.

There's Moses who spent uh his uh at three months, three months old, he was sent down a river because his life was in jeopardy with Pharaoh killing all of the Hebrew boys.

But yet through faith, his mom put him in the basket and he finds shelter in Pharaoh's kingdom, and he's raised in Pharaoh's kingdom.

But then I love this how it says it in verse 24.

It says, Moses, by faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

And so just because we have faith doesn't mean that just it's always miraculous and it's always great and it's always comfort and it's always things that we enjoy.

But instead, there's sometimes where faith leads us in directions where we're having to take the road that less people travel.

There's the faith that the people had as they passed through the Red Sea out of Egypt when God rescued them.

There's the faith when the walls came tumbling down in Jericho.

In verse 33, it kind of summarizes this and it says, Who through faith, talking about all of these people, conquered kingdoms that ministered justice and gained that what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions and quenched the fury of the flames and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength, and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.

Women received back their dead, raised to life again.

So these incredible miracles took place, and according to what Scripture says, it was because of their faith.

Now ultimately, God's the one that's doing this.

It's not in their strength and their ability that these miraculous signs and wonders are happening.

But man, when we have faith in the God of heaven and earth, the one that spoke the world into existence, it unlocks the treasures of heaven.

Faith allows God to move mightily in our midst.

But when we are people that don't believe and don't have faith, then it kind of ties the hands of God, mighty move in our life.

But this is interesting.

There's all these incredible things that the writer of Hebrews lays out that God did.

But then in verse 35, towards the end of that, it says this there were others who were tortured, refused to be released, so that they might gain an even better resurrection.

Some faced jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment.

They were put to death by stoning.

They were sawed in two, they were cut by the sword.

They were about in, uh they went about in sheepskin and goat skin, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated.

The world was not worthy of them.

They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

And so we see two very different pictures here.

There's people that have great faith, and God comes through in a mighty way, supernatural way.

But then there's also people that had incredible faith, and they lived very difficult and hard lives.

But the lifestyle they had was still a life of great faith.

And so for some of us, when we have great faith in God, that means that we'll see the miraculous break through.

We'll see the things that we've been praying for come to fruition.

We'll see those mountains being moved.

But maybe for others of us, we'll we'll have great faith in a God that is capable, but for whatever reason, God might determine for us to not walk down that path, but walk down a path that might be hard and it might be difficult, but our faith is unwavering and it's still secure in the one that we trust upon.

And so for us, as we kind of move into a new season in ministry, and as you're at home today, and you maybe have kids that want to go out and play in the snow or ice or whatever that might look like at your house, man, I want us to ask the question of what am I ready for?

What kind of faith do I have today?

Am I believing that God is not just capable, but that he will come through, that he will move mightily in our midst?

Am I believing that the prayers that I've been praying for years and years and years are actually going to come to exist?

Am I believing that?

Because when we believe, when we have that faith, man, God unleashes his power in our midst and in our lives.

And things don't always go the way that we want, and things don't always go the way that we planned.

But man, God is in the middle of it all, and he Bringing it for our good and for his glory.

And so we trust in him.

And so I don't know what obstacle maybe stands in your way.

I don't know what big thing you're maybe praying for.

I don't know what maybe relational issue that you face.

I don't know if there's a financial difficulty that stands in your way.

It might be the dreaded C-word of cancer, which seems to have been thrown around so often in recent days.

But whatever you face and whatever lies in front of you, or whatever you're trusting the Lord for in this new year and in the years to come, we've got to be people of faith, believing that our God not just can, but our God will.

Let us not become comfortable and complacent in his presence, but instead let us press in and let us believe that in his presence there is fullness of joy, and that in his presence we are able to see mighty things happen in our midst.

And so with that, I would love for us just to pray together for God to move in our midst in the days and the weeks to come.

Let me pray for us.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for who you are.

And I thank you that you are a God that does miracles.

And Lord, that so often I think that we fall into the trap of thinking about just the tangible and what we can see in front of us.

And we let logic and reason kind of come into play.

And Lord, we just miss out on just the supernatural work that you want to do in our midst.

We settle for the finances that we currently have.

We settle for the doctor's diagnosis and the treatments that he's kind of put into place.

Lord, and in some areas and in some sense and in some situations, Lord, those are all that there is.

But in many ways, Lord, we need to believe you for more.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would stretch our view of you.

Lord, that you would stretch our understanding of what who you are and what you're capable of.

And Lord, that you would allow us to be people of great faith.

Lord, I'm reminded of the passage of the man that interacts with Jesus, and Jesus asks him if he believes, and the man says, Yes, but help my unbelief.

And so, Lord, I pray that for us today.

Lord, I pray that you would help our unbelief and that we would be able to be men and women, teenagers and kids that believe that you can do more than we can ask, think, or imagine.

And so, Lord, as we move through the rest of today and this week coming forward, and even into the months and the years to come, Lord, deepen our faith in you.

And as a result, Lord, let us believe you for more.

And Lord, I pray that one day in the very near future, Lord, you'll look upon our lives, Lord, and you'll be amazed by our faith.

You'll marvel at it, that it will move you because we have such great faith in a God that is capable of so much more than we oftentimes give you credit for.

And so, Lord, we love you.

We thank you again for this morning for just this quick time together this morning in your word.

And Lord, we pray that you would keep people safe with the weather and that you would allow us to be able to come back and gather together this upcoming Sunday and continue our vision series for 2022.

And so, Lord, we love you.

We thank you again for today.

And it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Hopefully, you guys have a fantastic day with the weather outside.

And uh, we'd love to see some pictures, and so please uh share pictures on social media, and uh, we'd love to be able just to connect with you as they're there as well.

But until then, hopefully we'll see you back next Sunday online or in person.

And remember, we've got our online devotions that are happening each and every day this week, and so we would love for you to be a part of those as well.

But we love you guys, and we can't wait to see you back again next week.