Living a Life of Faith | Ps Andrew Staggs

Hey, welcome to the City Point Church podcast.

Thanks for joining us. Every day is an opportunity to

take hold of. So we hope this message inspires

you and build your faith that it helps you have more of a God

perspective for your day. Enjoy and.

If you just want to come and bring a message of faith.

To you this morning. So we've got a title tonight's

message. I hope most of you're going to

be taking notes this morning. It's encouraging us to live a

life of active faith, living a life of active faith.

And I've got a lot of material because I sort of teach and

preach. Can I trust you with my notes?

Like I'm not going to get through them all today.

But what you can do is I've made them available to you in Word

format so that you can click on the link and you can then

plagiarize. I mean, you can use them and,

and quote me as your source because I think we've got 16

students or something here from this church study at the School

of Ministries. I love this church with a big

focus on discipleship. Get you in the internship,

great, a great Monday night activity and then you then we

get you into the Upper Room Academy and get you full of the

Holy Spirit and power. And then you just want to go

change the world. And then it's time for you to do

a little bit more structured study with our academic

coaching. And then you're really literally

ready for ordination to be a man and woman of God to impact your

world in every sphere of life. So QR code's going to come up on

the screen there. Do you remember QR codes from

COVID? It was like the mark of the

beast, remember? Anyway, we won't even we won't

even go there, but it's a safe. Yeah.

My, my QR code's been vaccinated.

All right? It's it's So what you do is you

get a camera out. You're allowed to use your

iPhones in church as long as you're on air airplane mode, All

right? That way.

Because it's been a good week for Alex this week.

He's picked himself up a girlfriend.

So, so oh, so sorry. Anyway, it's family.

It's family here, isn't it? Anyway, hey God see, God's done

a good work in his life so that they're not going to be texting

each other in church, right? Like wow, you are a well

tabernacled spirit. Well, it's family time here.

It's in the lounge room. Focus, Andrew.

Focus, focus, focus, focus. There's a QR code here.

You get your camera out, put the camera and it should go to a

yellow link. Now, this is not an IQ test, but

you're having trouble with IT. We've always got Chris Collins

in the front row where he's good with technology.

He's got a beautiful wife too. Yours not working?

All right, we're going to Pastor Graham Polidanski or Rachel and

you should come up with something.

If you get the code, there's you got something that says like a

link tree or how bizarre. What's the very, very good top

of the school? What's what's the first thing it

says? First option, so there's a

course guide there, you see Upper Room Academy videos and

stuff. Go right to the bottom.

What's the very bottom entry at the bottom of the black?

That's my name. So you click on that.

This is where the propaganda starts.

Come into my little world, my greenhouse.

Start with your credit card details.

No, so there's podcasts on there, the Flourishing Life

podcast. I've got a great guest.

There's a great episode recently, Pastor Dave MacDonald

and Peter Earl talking about the power of prayer.

So you want to learn hardcore prayer.

It's a long episode because we have a prayer meeting on there.

It just goes hardcore and it literally broke my first seven

day record of people listening. But towards the top there, there

should be a Word document called preaching notes or whatever.

If you've got that fast, you've got an IQ of 120.

Click on that, it says open the browser and you should have the

notes. Once you notes, you want to yell

out got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.

Well, I don't have to preach today.

Now you've got all the notes, but I want us to talk.

I really am so impressed about next Saturday night because I

want, I want to talk to us about faith this morning.

I want to talk to you about your faith and how your faith can get

stronger and stronger. Talk to the Romans.

One if you read. It from the New King James

Version, the Apostle Paul encourages us to go from faith

to faith. It's like stand climbing up

steps in a staircase. We're going to go from faith to

faith and there's 5 levels of faith.

I want to encourage us about this morning because next week

there's going to be hurting people from our wonderful

community going to come forward. And then we're going to pray.

There's going to be an atmosphere of faith.

You've been praying and fasting. There's going to be a canopy of

faith. That's what I saw coming in when

I was coming in here this morning.

It's going to come under a canopy of faith.

And what happens is the minute people start even walking on the

property, all of a sudden people's doubts are going to

start to disappear because because you're people of faith.

But when we pray, we're just not going to just pray and lay hands

on people because this is what we do.

We're going to pray and I'm going to encourage you to pray

in faith because it's just not prayers.

They're going to bring healing and breakthrough.

It's prayers prayed in faith and a faith in God.

What I want to do is get you even to start your praying and

moving from praying to declaring and to decreeing.

And like we have tremendous power in our tongue to bring

literally heaven onto onto earth.

So the the writer of Hebrews, Hebrews 11 verse 6 says, and

Hebrews 11:6

without faith it is impossible to please God.

This is a family that wants to please God, that is pleasing

God. But I don't know about you, but

I I've walked with God a long time and I've had friends with

me on some part of the journey and some who don't, they've

fallen away side because they've lost faith or fallen out of

faith or they've jettisoned their faith.

They haven't held on tightly, haven't held on tightly to the

harness of faith to hold on because this is how you're going

to go from season to season, from faith to faith, from step

to step to faith. Now I've been meditating on this

and this is something that I've found in my prayer journal

because there was a season in my life where I'd started right at

these declaration because I just realized how important my faith

is. Without faith, we know it's

impossible to please God, but without faith, it's impossible

to live the life I meant to live in relationship with Jesus

Christ under that dynamic life flow.

So this is what I put. Here's what a couple of

declarations. Jesus, my faith in you is

precious. My faith enables me to connect

with you and your power. My faith in you means that I

what I trust, I trust you. My faith in you means I believe

your word is true regardless of what the context and the

circumstances are, which could be completely the opposite to

what you were saying or have said to me.

My wife and I know what it's like to be childless.

For years, God gave us a promise her womb would be open and a

miracle child would come forward.

For years we wrestled with that and we had, she had to literally

walk a fight of faith to see the word of God, the seed of faith

come to full fruition. Wonderful.

When beautiful Katie Rose was born in December 1995, family of

four boys. Then I had a girl didn't know

what to do. It was awesome.

And she started choosing my clothes from the age of 18

months. Wonderful.

Daughter's about to turn 30 and I think she's just picked up a

boyfriend recently. All right, so he's just just

great. But then I always wanted a son.

And God, I really felt like God promised me my faith.

I want to give you a son. And at my last month of Bible

college, God just said it was prophesied.

I'm going to make up something that's very dear to your heart.

As a matter of fact, God's already answered your prayer.

My wife was pregnant. It's wonderful.

And it was Jethro's wedding on Thursday.

So like, I know it, like I'm preaching this stuff this

morning. That's why I've got grey hair.

This stuff can be a wrestle sometimes.

But but your faith friend is precious.

Turn your neighbor and say your faith is precious.

Your faith is important. Is that you, Steve?

Is that Steve? No, Alan.

Alan. Alan, Steve.

For those of you who know YouTube, No, sorry Alan, my

faith is precious. Faith is essential to prayer.

On social media this week, some left wing ideologue commentators

were mocking a Christian leader. They said.

Oh. He's just talking to his

imaginary friend Jesus, mocking, mocking the truth.

But when you know Jesus Christ, when you know him to be real,

you know him to be real. You have an active faith because

your faith is precious. Your faith is the bedrock of our

ongoing relationship with God all throughout the Bible,

especially the Apostle Paul's talking about this idea of

holding on to our faith. Do not throw away our

confidence. Do not throw away our hard

gained faith, our gift of faith from God because it is precious.

Even have a look. This is one of the first verses

I ever memorized as a young teenager.

It's Galatians 220. Have a look at the Passion

paraphrase. It's awesome wording.

He says it's my old identity because I'm a spiritual being

having a physical experience here on planet earth.

The trouble is the flesh gets in the way of my spirit man having

a relationship with God. So this is battle, but God gives

us keys in the relationship of Jesus.

My old identity has been what Co crucified which is death.

There has to be an active daily dying.

The apostle Paul says I die daily or I literally take off

the persona of the spiritual man, I mean the fleshly man with

all its desires and lusts and I focus and activate on the area

of the 4th dimension, the spirit realm, my spirit man which is

the realm of faith, which is the realm which pleases God.

It's been Co crucified with the Messiah and no longer lives for

the nails of his cross crucified me with him and now the essence

of this new life is no longer mine.

For the anointed One lives his life through me.

We live in union as one. My new life is empowered by what

the faith of the Son of God who loves me so much that he gave

himself for me and dispenses his life into mine.

Galatians 220 look at the CEVI have died, but Christ lives in

me and I now live what by faith in the Son of God who loved me

and gave his life for me. Here's an example where we see

our faith, our precious faith, transforming our old identity

and giving us a new life and deep connection with Jesus

Christ. Faith is essential to living

well with God. I remember this clearly when

when I was at Bible college, I was a youth worker and we worked

with troubled kids from diverse backgrounds in low socio

economic areas and we took them out to the Gregory Terrace

Outdoor Education Centre. And when you're dealing with

people with different education needs and learning challenges,

you have to communicate in different ways.

So we did this thing called adventure based counselling or

group dynamics challenge in the outdoors.

Things like high ropes courses, low ropes courses, soft

challenge, hard challenge and then group debriefing and

processing around a a campfire. It worked brilliantly.

So I would take all my young people on and we'd just go

weekends away. It's an amazing transforming

experience. We had about 8 or 9 challenges,

but the peace Dear resistance, the last one is a challenge

called the the Americans called the Pamper Pole.

Now pampering America means nappy.

So it's like it's the nappy pole.

It's it's, it's a real challenge what it is it's a very tall

Telegraph pole and you have to climb up.

They put a harness on you and then they connect a rope to you.

And I think, thank God, there's a safety rope on this thing.

So you get saddled up with a rope.

They get this carabiner and they connect it up to you and they.

Yeah, you've got the idea anyway.

They hook you up and you climb up this pole and there's this

little platform no bigger than the size of basically just two,

two feet. So you climb up there.

And so so I was ever up there going, you can do a breath.

You're awesome. You're a legend.

You know, you're breaking stuff in your life.

You're getting confidence. And my mate Rod said, hey,

Stagsy, you want to have a go? You want to get there.

Oh, no, it's all right. Let the young fellas have a bit

of a go. It's all right.

So anyway, after a while, mate, he goes, mate, I I reckon you

could nail that, mate. I mean, you just show these

young fellas what it's like. Oh, OK, mate.

Yeah. All right.

Next thing, I'm halfway up the pole and it's a long pole.

It's, oh, it's starting to sway. I finally get up.

It takes me about 20 minutes to get to the top and then stand on

this little platform. The idea, as you can see from

the picture here, you stand on this this platform and out the

out the front is a trapeze, a triangle.

And So what they do is they get a bit of rope and they work out

how far it is that you can jump out and you've got to grab the

trapeze. And So what happens is there's

no net underneath, but thank God there's a rope that which should

be shackled onto here to help saviour.

So what we did was we saw all morning guys, some miss and some

some achieve. So I'm, I'm up there and I'm on

this pole and I'm just thinking, and as I'm thinking, and then

I'm sort of lowering down thinking like a powerful thighs.

This is going to be awesome spring.

And they put the bar out there and the sun's sparkling down on

this stainless steel bar. And I'd say it's going to be

about probably 3 meters out in front of me.

So I start the spring and so I just start to test.

And as I start to do some fake springing, I see the sort of

pole begin to wobble. I think, oh, I'm going to have

to overcompensate for this anyway after.

A series of. 10 to 15 minutes. I remember just visualizing that

bar. I thought I got hope on a rope.

This is going to be awesome. And I just you, you should have

seen me. It was awesome then.

Like a tiger and I just remember in everything in slow motion and

then the next thing I know I grabbed the bar, seal the bar

and it's like whoo, you know, right from deep and he's like,

and then they lowered me down. Everyone's high fiving me and

stuff like that. I just remember it's the most

amazing experience. But literally, I had to put all

my faith, had to fight in a harness with the rope of hope

that it would save me. It was in.

The most amazing, exhilarating experience is that day I

overcame a series of obstacles that I didn't realise were

lurking around in my life, like I overcame ignorance.

That day there was a lack of knowledge about my ability.

I overcame an unbelief that day because I overcame a sense of a

lack of trust that was in my life for my abilities.

I remember I overcame doubt that day because I became aware of a

lack of certainty that was lurking around in the depths of

my soul. I remember that time I overcame

fear and anxiety and I overcame distance.

There was a sense of a distance between me and my ability to to,

to achieve epic things with an an adrenaline rush.

And I tell you this story to let you know this is a bit like what

our faith is. And sometimes faith is the gap

between where we are and where God is calling us to be.

And sometimes it just takes a giant, literally a leap of

faith, trusting in the abilities, God's deep work

within us and trusting in his power to get us to where he

wants to become. I began to realise I was just so

aware of the essential nature of my faith in Jesus Christ and my

faith is literally like a hope on a rope.

Some of us grew up with soap on a rope.

This is not soap on a rope, this is hope on a rope.

So this idea of faith and our launching pad, pardon the pun,

our launching pad is Hebrews 11 verse one which I mentioned

before. It says this now faith is what

being sure faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain

of what we do not see. I love the message.

It says this the fundamental act of existence is that this trust

in God, this faith is the what a firm foundation under everything

that makes life worth living. It's our what handle is this

great language. It's a handle.

It's a substance. It's being sure the amplified

says this now, faith is what the assurance it is, the

confirmation, it is the title deed.

You can own a house, you can be renting it out and bikies are

living there. They may be destroying your

house, but you're the owner of that because you have the title

deed. You may have a promise from God,

a gift of faith. It may look like there's bikies

or someone squatting on your promise, but God says you own

that and one day you will take full possession of it.

God is at work through the faith that He's placed within us.

It's of the things we hope for is the proof of things we do not

see and what the conviction of their reality.

Faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the

senses. NLT says this faith is the

confidence of what we hope for will actually happen.

It gives us assurance about things that we cannot see.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence

of things not seen. ESV says it's the assurance of

things hoped for and it's a conviction.

You get the idea. A little further, on the Hebrews

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Chapter 11, we see almost 40 verses where people in the Old

Testament are commended for their faith.

Their faith is doesn't actually see the full fruition in their

lifetime. Like Abraham is known as the

father of faith and you and I are an example of the outworking

of the promise that was given to him so many, many thousands of

years ago. It's an amazing thing.

Your faith is precious because God is deep at work within you.

Faith is being sure, it is being certain.

We have this absolute assurance that is within us.

I remember my daughter in a very dark period of her life, which

is, I only recently found out the full implication of what

was. Driving the pain and I almost

lost it twice in a month. It was a very dark time for our

family, but God gave me a promise out of Isaiah 61.

Your children, the nations will see that your children are

blessed of the Lord. And I just.

Remember holding on to that, doing a 40 day fast, believing,

just basically depriving myself of food as an act of faith,

standing in the gap for my daughter now to see her you, you

wouldn't even like she's been in an emotional head on smash and

she's been panel beater. You wouldn't even know there'd

been any work that that that that had ever been done, any

tragedy in her life. It's an amazing thing.

This is the depth of the assurance and the conviction

that God has got us. It says this, that we have faith

not in ourselves or in karma or in good coffee.

We have faith in God. faith in God who saves, God who gives

life, God who speaks destiny and purpose in our life.

Faith must begin with the fact that God is and nothing can be

known of God unless a person first believes that God is.

God is faith. Faith is essential because when

God speaks to you. Faith comes because it is the

spoken word of God. Quickly in your notes I put

here, why is your faith important?

Faith is vital because it enables us to connect with God

in God's power. Without faith, I I cannot know

that God is real and I cannot feel a connection and a life

flow coming in with that. My faith enables me to receive

guidance from the Holy Spirit. I can trust His guidance and His

wisdom. It doesn't happen magically.

It happens when I open up a channel of faith and say, God, I

believe you. I don't see it, but I'm trusting

you to speak in the building of my life #3 my faith helps me to

have victory over sin. Living Christ Jesus within me

gives me the power to overcome temptation and to live in sin

and to draw down His righteousness.

When your body and your life and your spirit is wracked with

guilt and shame, you know nothing, no matter what you do,

can eradicate that unless by faith you accept God's free gift

of salvation and He can cleanse you.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Now you think what's blood like once you get the symbolic and

there's a sacrifice or whatever. But I know if you're here this

morning, I believe Holy Spirit right now if you are not walking

in relationship with God. God is an act of faith.

He's given us all the measure of faith.

Some of you are resonating right now.

That's me. I don't understand the blood or

whatever, but I can feel and sense that there's hope that the

God is wanting to and has the ability to reach into my heart

and mind right now. And by faith I can access that

free gift and I can be clean and I can behold and my life can be

free from guilt and shame in Jesus name.

My faith helps me experience God's peace in challenging

circumstances, trusting that he is control that God's got this

is I can only access that by faith and and the fifth thing is

praying. My faith is essential for

effective prayer, believing that God hears and God answers

prayers. The Bible says in Psalms that

even a sigh when you don't even have words.

A sigh is considered a prayer. God bottles up our tears as

expressions of faith and he answers them.

Another version I think is Isaiah 32 that says God answers

speedily. There's another version, a Bible

verse that says that God even answers our prayers.

Before we pray them. That's awesome.

What about the prayers that God still hasn't answered yet?

Well, I'll come to that in a minute moment.

God is at work within our life and we activate His presence

through faith. Mark 1124 says therefore Jesus

says wherever I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer,

believe that you have received it and it will be yours quickly.

A couple of laws of faith on the screen.

Your faith is a spiritual force. No wonder the devil is trying to

steal it. Somebody said if the garage was

having it, if the devil was having a garage sale and getting

rid of all these tools, the only tool that he would not sell is

the tool of doubt. He knows as long as there's

doubt there, it will start like cancer.

It will just nobble away at your faith because he now realises

your, your faith is precious and your faith is a spiritual force.

So next weekend, the people in this community who don't know

anything about this, they're going to be leveraging off your

faith. Your faith is a spiritual force.

It's going to break chains. Generational bondages are going

to break. Next week a chain reaction is

going to start because your faith is a spiritual force #2

faith. I love this.

Faith is God giving you the ability to see what He can do?

Wish I was holding a microphone now I could drop it.

Doctor Elmer Towns look at this for definition of faith.

It's a positive, correct response to God's revelation.

We're going to go through the names of God and the team, the

worship team. We've already started to go

through them today. Well done, Matt.

Matt. Matt where?

Are you studying you you studying Bible college?

Where? Where are you studying?

CHC? Oh, CHC.

There's a there's a free product placement going through the

names of God because that's God's revelation of himself.

There's 85 different names of God, which I've counted up 85

facets. If he's wondering the way that

he can express his power, one of them is he's.

A God who heals. So faith is a what?

A positive, correct response to God's revelation.

God says I'm a healing guy. He's demonstrated it.

Yet. There'll be some people in our

community next week who come and go.

Yeah. Nah.

Yeah, Nah. There's some versions of church

going on today in this city which will go.

Yeah. Nah, stop.

Stopped at Acts 28. Yeah.

Nah. Where are people of faith?

Where are people of an active faith?

My guess is there may be people who come in here next Saturday

night. Yeah, Nah.

But when they get in here in this room under a canopy of

faith, all their objections will disappear and they're going to

go. I don't know what's happened.

Because faith, friends, is not a logical thing.

It's an act of the Spirit. It's an act of the will.

When we part and with God #4 faith is not measured by your

intellect, emotion, or will, or how much you know.

It is not how deeply you feel or how decisively you act.

Faith is measured by God and His ability to do what you ask.

Faith is dependent on the integrity of God.

Because it says that God honors his word above his name.

God says I am the God who heals you.

I am the God who forgives your sin.

It says in one John 3, Even if our heart condemns us, God is

greater than our heart. Regardless of what we think #5

I'm to grow and live from faith to faith, which is Romans 117.

I mentioned that before. And when I live by faith, I live

by the principles of the word of God.

So you get the idea. Faith is essential.

So this morning there's five refractions.

And somebody gave me this. They saw me preach and they

prophesied and said. Andrew, you're like a prism and

you refract the light of God and they they spend a lot of money.

It comes all wrapped in velvet. Anyway, I'm here to show you to

say that I'm going to talk about the refractions of faith.

Can some of you see that If it goes through the light properly,

we should see all the colours of the rainbow.

If you're lucky, you might even see some unicorns while you're

there. We might find a pot of gold at

the end. But basically there's a number

of colours on the spectrum. It's the same light, but it's

reflect refracted through a prism.

And it's the same with our faith.

Our faith has a series of refractions or different

expressions or different elements of the same light

expressing or manifesting itself in different way.

So there's five refractions of faith I want to quickly mention

today. The first one is it's saving

faith. Step one in our journey is a

staircase of faith is saving faith.

And this is believing in Jesus for salvation based on God's

gracious. Gift to us.

It's God-given, it's an act of faith, for salvation means that

we then obtain a spiritual life. We obtain salvation by faith.

At that moment. It says we are justified, which

really means it's just as if I'd never sinned before.

We are made right when we activate saving faith and when

we say yes to Jesus. A note to our old life and you

actually say I'm under new Management Today.

Jesus is the Lord of my life. At that moment you get a deposit

of Holy Spirit living within you and.

Basically, it's a it's a down payment.

It's a guarantee that when time stops and eternity kicks in, you

will go to heaven to be with Him.

It's a wonderful thought. So we have Jesus and Holy Spirit

living within us. We have a deposit of his Spirit

and it's that's when we obtain spiritual blessings and favour.

It says in John one that is many of us who've called on his name.

It gives us the right to become the children of God.

This is level 1. This is refraction #1 it's

called saving faith. And that's a great place.

For us to start. And I'd say before I finish,

I'm. Going to give you an

opportunity. To say, oh, I want a bit of

that. I want to pull the lever.

I want to, I want to go to the first step.

I want to activate and move into the dimension of saving faith

and accept God's free gift to salvation.

The second refraction is this. It's the fruit of faith or

faithfulness. This is the fruit of faith.

This is evidence that we've received saving.

Faith. We have a new life, a new

nature, and over time we will have a changing character.

This is the process of transformation.

It's beautiful. What you start to see is the

character qualities of a new nature.

The nature of Jesus are articulated in a couple of

verses where Paul writes about what he calls the 9 fruit of the

spirit. There is there is a

manifestations or fruit. You know someone who's been a

Christian a long time, they just smell good, don't they?

They just, if you known someone who in their old life, you see

them now, they're often kinder, more patient, more sweeter, like

it's just a beautiful thing watching the transformation.

Like I remember my brother, 323 of my brothers a long, long way

away from God when they said yes to Jesus, activate saving faith.

You look at them 10 years out, they are completely different

people. That's what it says in Two

Corinthians 517. Anyone who is in Christ becomes

a new creation. They've been transformed.

This is what I'm talking about here, the evidence of

faithfulness. So one of the one of the one of

the 9 through the Spirit is this faithfulness.

The Greek word is translated faithful, trustworthy, reliable

or dependable. If you take some old or old or

fashioned versions of the Bible, it says we use the word

fidelity. It means to be loyal and

trustworthy in one's dealings with others.

It's a beautiful thought. Imagine this community, they

say. Oh, the people who've been

around City Point North for a while.

They are a faithful group of people.

They have gone the distance they do the time as a fruit of the

Spirit. Faithfulness is the character

quality produced by the Spirit of complete reliability.

This means that you and I will be faithful in our service.

Our word can unreservedly be accepted.

They are loyal and trustworthy in their relationships or

dealing with others they are unswervingly faithful to.

Jesus to friends, if we had say we have faith in God.

Then it must over time be displayed by the character

quality of faithfulness, a supernatural fruit of the new

nature produced by the spirits work in our lives.

A colleague in my network died this week, Alan Lucas.

He ran real estate businesses in the Redlands.

He was a man you should see in the eulogy.

He was known as a man. You could trust his word.

We all know that real estate agents have different

reputations just like car used car salesman do.

Alan said this three strikes, three lies and you no longer

work for me because he believed in the through the spirit of

faith, there are faithfulness and that we should be true to

our word. The third reflection of faith is

the gift of faith in One Corinthians 12 Paul.

This what we Spirit filled Pentecostals call the 9 gifts of

the Holy Spirit. And these are 9 divine

enablements of the Spirit for supernatural ministry which can

operate either in the public gatherings of Christians or

through Christians involved in gospel ministry through 7 days

of the week. In verse 9 we read that one of

these gifts is faith by the same Spirit.

So some would say this is a manifestation, an expression of

the Spirit is known as the gift of faith.

I love this dimension. This is the third refraction.

Refraction. And this is the gift that we're

going to need next Saturday night and next Sunday night.

It's a supernatural faith. It's a special faith.

It's a faith given by the Holy Spirit.

It's a gift or manifestation from the Spirit so we can ask

God for it. It's an enablement of faith from

the Holy Spirit. It's a supernatural endowment of

faith from the Spirit at a specific time for a specific

person, but for a particular purpose.

It's just not faith in God, but it is faith from God, or it is

the faith of God. It's a divine endowment of faith

to know, to do, or to receive the will of God.

Friends, there is a difference between the prayer of faith and

the. Exercise of faith and the gift

of faith. Faith is this gift of faith

manifests itself like this in the next 7 days.

Some of you may be praying and believing sex Saturday night.

Next Sunday night you're going to see someone row 3 fur one

back. There'd be someone wearing a red

jacket with a red jacket with a with a purple shirt with dots on

it. God will give you a picture of

it and then all of a sudden you like you don't make this stuff

up. God on his supernatural ability

will put an impression on us and you'll know God says I want to

work in that person in their right arm.

They've got a tumor there. They've got surgery next week.

I want to shrivel that thing up. That's that's literally when you

you don't actually. Have to make.

That up, you don't actually have to conjure up any faith.

All you got to do is pray because at that moment you then

have the faith of God. You know what God wants to do in

that particular person. And I just think that's awesome.

So I'm trying as much in my life and I pray this God moved me to

the dimension of this gift of faith.

Where it's like I'm not having to prime the pump, I'm just

channeling and coming the frequency and coming alongside

you. So I'm saying, God, you want to

do that in that body, I'll come and I'll pray in partnership

with that. And I believe and I know that

God wants to heal. I know that God's good.

I know that the House of God is the House of miracles.

And nothing's impossible for God in this place.

Come on, let's do it. Some of you want to get The Time

Machine. Go hurry up and let's have next

Saturday night right now. So I'd encourage you this week

start to believe and pray, especially for people you

invite. You wouldn't be surprised.

Something going to get coffee this week and someone's going to

say oh. I'm having a bad day.

My mum's just been diagnosed with something and and you're

going to have to work out what comes out of your mouth next.

You've got a brochure ready in your hand or whatever.

Can I just say that I don't want to sound freaky, but.

I, I I. We're, we're praying for things

like that and we believe God could do something good.

So you've got to be ready to do your bit because even right now,

God's already got he, he knows what he's doing next week with

it, with the full expression of what he wants to do depends or

not whether we're on the frequency and we're moving to

this refraction of faith, which is the gift of faith.

I, I love this, this area of interventional faith.

This is the level of faith where one of my mentors, Mike, his son

Paul, had a brain tumour and at the time the top neurosurgeon at

the PA hospital was Doctor Lee Atkinson and they had a series

of consultations. That morning.

Mike and Wendy got up to pray and Mike was reading the

scriptures and got a verse that says my son will be healed, he's

going to behold and saw a picture of Paul married with a

couple of kids. Amazing.

So he, he, he. That morning in the wood had

literally believed he had something from God.

He was moving in the the the area, the dimension, the third

level of the gift of faith, the intervention faith, Doctor Lee

Atkinson said. Mike and Wendy, I'm a good

surgeon. In fact, I'm a great surgeon.

But I think you need to prepare yourself for the worst.

Yeah, Mike said. Level 3 noted but not accepted.

Noted, but not accepted. This is why we need to have a

living, active faith, friends, because otherwise you're going

to be sideswiped by the pressures of everyday life.

And it can. Hammer us from time to time,

can't it? We just need to know.

We need to move at this level. The 4th level is the era of

trusting faith. This is more than simply

believing. It also incorporates this

element of trust, the appropriate responsive, active

right responsive. And expecting, believing should

be trust. In Scripture, to trust can mean

the following. To wholeheartedly depend, to

lean on, to take refuge in, to hope, to have confidence in.

Faith is based. On our relationship of trust and

as a result of knowing the person of Jesus Christ.

Proverbs 3 five verse 5 says there's trust in the Lord with

all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Verse 6 in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make

your path straight. Trusting God is the heart and

soul of the faith that centres on our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the tough area of faith. I love the ZAP and the bells and

the whistles. This is what I would call even

call the grind of faith. This is the fight of faith.

This relationship of trust says it's irrespective of what has

happened, is happening, or will happen.

God cannot be inconsistent with His nature, His character, His

promises, or His word on the basis of the blood that was shed

by Jesus and his resurrection with the dead.

I am now, He is, and He is mine. He lives in me and I in Him.

And because he is love completely faithful and true, I

declare God. You are a good God who has my

ultimate good in mind and I trust in you, friend.

This is the the faith of the dark night of the soul.

This is the faith of Job, who under extreme pressure, I've got

to admit Job's a pretty sad book.

I remember the season God said, I want you to read the book of

Job. I said I don't think we want to

do that. You when you realize it, it's

just two bad years in a life of 120 years, it's 22 bad years, 2

very bad years, bad, bad years. But there comes to a moment

where the pressure is so great and even his Christian or

believer friends around him are giving him advice and it's a bit

rough. But this is what happens.

Just him and him and God and Job goes this level of trusting

faith. God, even if you slay me.

Yeah, well, I trust you. This is the faith of Jesus in

Gethsemane. Not my will, but yours.

This is the faith where you know God.

This is the faith where sometimes it takes years or

decades for something to come to pass that God has promised.

This is the faith where we hold on, friend.

Now this is the dimension where when this service is closed and

we always close with a big woo Hoo, but some of you are

carrying heavy burdens today. And after the service is closed,

I'm happy to stay down the front and, and I'll pray with you if

you're carrying something and you just need a bit of a push.

I just know this. There are many people who I've

leaned on from time to time and I'm saying, look, I'm not strong

enough in this area. Can I, can I rent?

Can I rent or borrow some of your faith right now?

Because this is what the family of God does.

We stand with each other. And for some of you, you may

need myself or some of the team to come and do that and I'd be

happy to do that. Level 5 quickly is the life of

the lifestyle of faith. And this, the New Testament

teaches that our whole Christian walk should be characterized by

faith in Two Corinthians 5 or 7 pulpits that we live by faith

and not by sight. So as believers, we must move

from small faith to great faith, from weak faith to strong faith,

from acts of faith to a life of faith.

I remember the first time God said, I want you to leave this

job. I was first one from my family,

educated, first one to go from university.

I'm studying to be an accountant.

I'm a trained accountant. I'm in good jobs.

God says to me, Andrew, I want you to give that up and I want

you to work part time and I want you to go set up a youth group

and plant a church like it takes me four months.

I need to have dinner with 10 mentors, fast for 30 days, get

100 scriptures. That all.

Line up, get my bank balance organised Excel spreadsheet.

And then I think tippy toe, I might just take a little tippy

toe of faith. Like like that's what happens

when you first start off now, like we're talking harness of

faith type stuff. I'm on the edge.

God says jump and you go like that.

Like this is what grey hair does.

It just you learn to make bigger decisions quicker.

I love grey hair. Some of the young guys say, oh

bastard, Andrew, you're a bit old man.

No, I just can make, I can make the big decisions.

He's quicker than you. You got three months of fasting,

man. I just say, Yep, let's go with

that. That's what that's what.

And you move towards a lifestyle of faith.

You can move on a big thing. So I can believe God for all

sorts of stuff. Now, Jacket, Pastor Graham and

Mel can believe God for buildings and property.

How many times this place being flooded and blown up, whatever.

Yeah, that's nothing. That's a walk in the park.

We overcome that. Let's take on another campus.

All of a sudden, Bribie Island pops up.

See the flood? The flood was just getting you

ready to take on more campuses. All right, you look back right,

probably now and go what was I worried about it.

I was a source of our masters in faith.

Now just get yourself a. Bigger harness mate, that's what

you need to do. So here we are, saving faith,

the fruit of faith and faith on us, Gift of faith, trusting

faith or lifestyle of faith. Hey, we better stand up.

We better land the plane you're looking forward to next week.

I just feel like I'm John the Baptist coming along, just

providing a bit of support, getting you ready.

Jesus is going to come. He's the seven names of God,

Jehovah Jireh. He's going to provide Rafa.

He's God who heals. Jehovah Nisi.

Is it Jehovah Kia or Toyota? Jehovah Nissan?

No. Jehovah Nisi.

He's the Lord our banner. He's our peace, Raha.

He's the Lord our shepherd. I love this one Tiskindu.

He is the Lord our righteousness.

I love this Shema. The Lord is present.

He is here, but as well as long as there's oil in the house,

nothing is impossible with God. So knowing the name of God, I

got story. I was supposed to tell you 10

stories about how this has worked in my life.

Anyway, you got the idea. Let me just close with a couple

of faith defaults. All right, like I, I.

See, next week, some of you, you're going to be in groups of

four bringing needy people. You don't have to RIP a hole in

the roof next week, all right, Just bring them through the barn

door. But, but this week God's going

to get your people to bring along and, and, and, and other

people are going to lean on your faith.

And hopefully today some of you think, you know, I need to go to

Level 3, the, the Level 3 refraction of the prism.

I need to move to the, you know, the gift, the gift of faith.

I want to have the faith of God to see what's going to God wants

to do and break chains in people's lives.

For some of you, you've just decided I just need to move from

head faith. I've got good doctrine faith,

but I need to move to an active faith today.

You know, I got to give myself a giddy up.

I've got to, I've got to believe.

For some of you, you just might want to add to your prayer list.

God, give me interventional faith, the faith of God.

And that's going to be your focus in this next season as you

walk the walk of faith. Some of you just think, I just

need prayer at the end because I just, I'm, I'm, I'm in the gap

between where I was and, and where God wants me to be.

So I've got a series of faith defaults.

And this is just five of them, but I want to give them to you.

And this is really going to help some people to just land this,

this teaching today. Here's my faith defaults or my

reflex actions. The number one, God is good and

only ever does good, and he always does good.

All right, you look back things that you thought were going to

crush you, you realise God was good.

He's, he's the trapeze net, He's the hope on a rope.

He's holding, he's holding you there all right.

He's the rock underneath the cloud you're standing on #2 The

Word of God is true, is the only foundation of our faith.

As you read the Word, you say God.

Here I am. As a prospect.

They're looking for another nugget of wisdom and hope today

and gold to some of you. We'll need to ramp up your

reading of the Word. You worry about your faith.

Your faith will be strong as you read more of the Word and

meditate on more of the Word. And I won't even sell you a

Bible college course that will teach you how to read the Word

of God. You got good discipleship here

locally #3 I love this one. The steps of a good man are

ordered by the Lord. Even if you or I trip up stuff

up, inflict trouble on ourselves, we will not be

utterly cast down. I'll be restored to a place of

blessing and favour. God looks after US #4 God will

make all things work together for my good and make me more

Christ life. I love this.

God always restores the righteous with double for your

trouble. There are two things that God

hates, shame and pain deals with these and promises us a double

bonus. Except for some of your paydays

coming, you're going to get reward for your grief wage as it

says in the message in Jeremiah. I've just chronicled my life the

last 40 years, my relationship with Jesus and I've proven this

time and time again. God shows me something in a

challenge and he creates something new in me and He's

just strengthens my faith. I have loss, I have pain, and

I'm restored to a stronger position than I ever have been

before. I bet you that's your story too.