The Faith Life | Pastor John Greiner

Let's get into the word together with like our custom is around here.

Let's pick our Bibles up and wave them around and make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Let's say this together.

Say, Heavenly Father, thank God for Wednesday night.

I'm hungry and thirsty for more of you, more of your word, more of your spirit, so that I can bring forth fruit for more glory for the kingdom of God and for my heavenly Father.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's look at Hebrews chapter 10, please, tonight.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Thank you, Rick.

Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 35.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

It says, Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.

So I'm picking up verse 35, and right away I see the word therefore.

What's it therefore?

So you back up a few of the other verses, and he's talking about the troubles that he's been through, and he's talking about the troubles that they've been through.

And so when you're going through trouble and trials, which is, I mean, it's just part of the Christian life, you're going to have tests and trials.

There's no great faith without great tests, no great victories, without great battles.

So he said, Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward, for you have need of patience, that after you've done the will of God, you might receive the promise.

For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and he will not tarry.

Now the just shall live by faith.

But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.

But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.

Now faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the elders obtained a good report.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen are not made of things which do appear.

Verse 6 But without faith it's impossible to please God, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

And so we look at verse 38 there in chapter 10.

It says, the just shall live by faith.

And actually, if you have a study Bible, it refers you to other verses, and eventually it refers you back to Habakkuk 2.14.

In the Old Testament, it says, the just shall live by their faith.

The just shall live by their faith, not by grandma's faith, not by mama's faith, not by my husband's faith or wife's faith.

The just shall live by their faith.

And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled, The Faith Life.

The faith life.

You know, this is the year of the new 2026.

God spoke to me last end of last year and gave me a word about this year.

Behold, I make all things new, and we've been going along that Revelation 21, 5.

We've been going along that course all year, and God has done new things.

I mean, we God is unfolding.

He's brought new health to some folks.

He's brought new understanding.

He's brought new healing and relationships.

There's just so many things that he's done this year.

He's not finished.

We still got several months left.

But there's no having the new without faith.

You know, you've got it involves faith, your faith, not someone else's faith.

It involves your faith.

And there's no drawing back and no turning back.

No, no, you know, you've got to keep pressing forward no matter how difficult the circumstances are.

You know, Israel, but in Psalm 78, Israel turned back and limited the Holy One of Israel.

You know, you can limit God by your lack of faith.

I mean, God can't do anything apart for you.

He doesn't respond to tears.

He knows you're sad.

He doesn't like it when you're sad, but he doesn't, you know, getting sad doesn't make God move.

I mean, only faith, only believing his word and acting on it will cause God to move.

So, uh, and besides that, the fa the life, the faith life is the life that continually pleases God.

How many of you want to please God?

See, I mean, you can't, you can't, apart from faith in God, you cannot uh please God.

And so uh our life is the life we've been called into to continually please Him, not just occasionally.

Now, some people, you know, they can get in faith for a car, or they can get in faith for a new uh place to live, or they can get in faith for their healing or something.

But I'm not even talking about faith for a certain thing.

I'm talking about your life.

I'm talking about how you live your life.

I'm talking about your consistency day in and day out, and that's how you're able.

Really, it's a lifestyle.

Everybody say lifestyle of faith.

That's really what I'm talking about.

We could call it, we could have called it the faith lifestyle.

I mean, some people they kind of alternate between the faith life and the and the natural life.

I mean, they alternate between believing God's word and believing what they can see, touch, taste, smell, and feel.

In other words, the five senses.

Well, you're gonna have to learn how to discount your five senses because that's the language of the natural, that's the language of your body, and uh it is not the spirit life.

And so the language of the spirit is gonna feed your faith.

So let's look over here.

Uh everybody say lifestyle.

So Isaiah 28, let's turn over there.

I want you to see something.

Uh Isaiah 28, verse uh 13.

And this is talking about the prophet Isaiah and his ministry to Israel.

And it says, but the word of the Lord was unto them, Israel was unto them, precept upon precept, precept upon precept.

Did he stutter?

No, he put it in there twice, and then line upon line, line upon line.

So that was twice on each one.

So that's what is called in the Bible, the double enunciation of God.

That draws a, I mean, if I've got a uh a grease board and I'm writing across it, I'm gonna underline that with a with a red underline.

I mean, it's emphasized.

Uh His word was precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little, that they might go and fall backward and be broken, ensnared, and taken.

Boy, that's kind of wild.

I mean, what in the world?

You know, God wanted them to fall.

No, no, not at all.

So when you start looking up this word uh precept, the word precept just means command.

And the word line there, when it says line upon line, the word line is rules.

So what it was, what he's saying here is that the people were mocking Isaiah, and they were saying, you know, all you've got for us is uh is is one rule after another.

All you've got is one command after command, rule after rule.

We're gonna do things our way.

And see, God already knew that from the very beginning, and he knew that they were gonna do what?

They were gonna they were gonna just uh go and fall backward and be broken and snared and taken.

And that's really the history of Israel, pretty much.

They just always balked at God's word.

They they would not and could not believe it.

I mean, God, God manifested himself to them, and they had the audacity to keep uh worshiping gods of wood and stone.

You know, I mean, how do you do that?

How do you whittle uh uh carved something out of wood and bow down to it and call it God when God just appeared to you over there on the mountain?

It shook.

You you know the truth, see.

You know the truth, but you want to you want to be like the other nations.

You want to have those gods.

And I'll tell you what, God was not pleased with that generation.

So uh, you know, you know, God knew that they would fall backward and be broken.

And uh many today, I've seen a lot of people, I mean, in in church, I mean, I've seen a lot of people do the very same thing that Israel did.

They fell backward, they got offended.

They, you know, they got into COVID and they got to listening to the the naysayers, they got to listening to the government that told them not to go to church and told them to stay six foot away and put a mask on and just do what you're told and shut up and keep your kids out of school.

And and I mean, you know, we spoke against it from the first day.

You know, we we stood up and we and we had people give us death threats online.

You're gonna kill people, you're a murderer, you know.

You know, I would thump you in the head if I could see you.

But anyway, I wouldn't murder you.

But uh, you know, it's just it's outrageous.

So I've seen Christian people, and then they get off of the word and get into fear and get into obedience of uh despots.

These are despots.

I mean, they they well, Romans 13 says to obey those.

No, it you're misreading the entire thing.

They have no authority to say what they're saying.

They were lying from the beginning, and now we know it.

We know it now today.

But back then, what I saw was people drifting away from church, and for a while they'd watch on live stream, and then after a while they wouldn't even watch on live stream, and then their relatives died, or maybe their significant others died, or maybe their children died because they got the jabs.

Lots of, there's millions of people died in this country.

Many of them were Christians.

And we tried to warn people don't get the jab, don't listen to this, it's not scientific, and it wasn't.

And we're finding out today.

So, what am I talking about?

I'm talking about you go to this line and you fall back and you're destroyed.

There's a lot of a lot of Christians.

I'm not saying they went to hell, but I am saying that they lost out on the blessing and they lost out on the reward of the faith life.

They instead they they they went to uh they went back.

They drew back under perdition.

Everybody say, I'm not drawing back.

I'm not backing up from faith.

Amen.

You know, in Romans 1.17 says we go from faith to faith.

2 Corinthians 3.18, we go from glory to glory.

We're supposed to be always increasing.

And uh and so there in verse 38 of Hebrews 10, if you draw back, God has no pleasure.

I mean, God has no pleasure in people that draw back away, that decide to just believe their five senses, or believe the news media, or believe some politician.

No, we better stick to the word.

And uh, I think about Demas.

You know, Demas was a blessing.

He was a businessman, he supported Paul's ministry, he was a guy that was his right hand, he was there all the time, and the next thing you know, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world.

I mean, he just he I mean he fell backward and was broken, and you never hear about Demas again.

Uh did I did he go to hell?

Well, I'm not saying he went to hell, I'm saying he didn't finish his assignment.

And uh so we have to cross the faith line.

What do I mean by this line?

See, he said line upon line, see.

He said line upon line, precept.

What is the line?

See, there's a there's a faith line.

And when I when I see that word line there in Isaiah, I think about uh March of 1836, you know, Colonel William B.

Travis was commanding the garrison at the Alamo, and uh you had uh Santa Ana's 5,000 strong army surrounding the Alamo, and they were threatening to uh you know, made them want them, told them to surrender or else.

And their job was to hold up Santa Anna long enough for uh for the army to be built down here in San Jacinto.

And uh and so they were trying to give uh they were trying to give uh that colonel, I can't think of his name now, all of a sudden his name leaves me.

Huh?

Colonel Travis?

No, no, not Travis.

Travis was the commander there.

Uh William B.

Travis was the commander in a band there.

But anyway, uh he hadn't got his army together yet, and so they were giving him time.

So Goliad fell, and that took up some time, and then Alamo fell, and that took up some time.

But anyway, before they fell, it was looking bad, and there's 180 some odd guys that are gonna die.

And so Travis went out in the in the courtyard of the Alamo and took his sword out and drew a line in the sand.

And he said, All right, everybody that will stay with me, I'm gonna stay here and fight.

You want it's no disrespect.

If you want to leave, you can leave.

If you're gonna stay with me, I want you to cross that line.

The whole group of them crossed that line.

And they all died, including Davy Crockett, including uh Jim, Colonel Jim Bowie.

I mean, some heroes died there, uh, you know, protecting uh that that timeline.

And basically, uh that timeline resulted in a victory.

Uh, the Texas independence was won at San Jacena later that year in 1836 in April.

And so that was that was a key sacrifice that was being made in order for uh Texas to become a republic.

So what am I talking about?

I'm talking about a line in the sand.

I mean, are we gonna are we gonna are we gonna cross that faith line and are we gonna are we gonna stick with what God said about the situation that we're that we're facing, or are we just gonna go with what our emotions say or whether what our friend says or our mama says or somebody else says?

No, let's let's stick with what God said.

A bit.

So it goes on here, and after there in chapter 10, it goes into chapter 11, verse 1, and we have uh faith is defined, and I want to read some of these verses in the amplified.

We we find out that faith is substance, evidence, and the title deed.

So let me read it to you, uh Hebrews 11, 1 in the Amplified.

Now, faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see, and the conviction of their reality.

Faith perceiving as real fact what is not yet revealed to the senses.

See, that's what that's what trips you up, is when you de when you depend on what your eyes can see, your ears can hear, and you what you feel and and and how you encounter the situation.

No, faith is not of the senses, it's of the heart, it's of the spirit.

For by faith, that is trust and holy fervor born of faith, the men of old had divine testimony born to them and obtained a good report.

By faith we understand that the worlds during the successive ages were framed, fashioned, put in order, and equipped for their intended purpose by the word of God, so that what we see was not made out of things which are visible.

Which right there tells you that man didn't make it and man can't destroy it.

I mean, it just doesn't even make any sense that man would have the power to destroy the planet when we didn't have anything to do with building it.

Only God could do that.

I mean, it's just outrageous.

Can we damage it?

Well, certainly we could damage it.

We can damage a lot of things.

There's no question.

Nuclear power is pretty bad.

And it can, it can, it can, it's pretty dangerous, and that's why we haven't used it in a long, long, long time.

We we saw how horrible it was.

But we have, I'm glad we have it, because if we didn't have it, we'd be the victim right now.

We had to have it.

And if we hadn't gotten it, guess who would have had it?

Well, Germany would have had it.

Because they were working on it.

They were right behind us.

And right under them was Russia.

So, you know, it was good that we got it.

So don't let people tell you how bad nuclear power is.

In fact, we got talked out of nuclear uh transmissions, I keep getting off the subject, but we got talked out of nuclear uh electricity.

That was the stupidest thing.

We just a handful of Jane Fondas and all these goofy Hollywood types are still goofy today.

And they got out there and they they made up all this uh furor and all this hysteria about the danger of nuclear power.

There hasn't been one nuclear accident in this country.

There was in Russia, but that's Russia.

That's not America.

Anyway, we'd be way ahead if we had nuclear power.

We wouldn't have any shortage.

And we our power our power bills would be about probably about you know$25 instead of$500.

All right.

So uh we get in here, verse 6.

Let's look at verse 6.

Uh but without faith, it's impossible to please God and be satisfactory to him.

You know, how many of you want to be satisfactory to God?

See, I want to be a little bit more than satisfactory.

Well, he's satisfactory.

No, I want, I want, I want him to brag on me a little bit.

I don't want a satisfactory.

The nuns used to give us satisfactory and unsatisfactory in certain things, you know, when I was going to Catholic school.

And boy, to get an S in something, and that was usually behaviors.

Now you had grades for for subjects, but behaviors and all that kind of thing, you had a satisfactory and an unsatisfactory.

So I was always kind of, you know, I'm a pretty good kid.

I didn't, I didn't misbehave.

I never had any licks.

I didn't, you know, we got licks in our school.

I mean, a male teacher gave us licks with with a little uh, I don't know, it was it was a paddle.

It wasn't it was not a ruler, it was a paddle designed for such a thing.

But anyway, I never had to have paddles.

But the best I ever got was satisfactory because that's all they gave me, see.

I believe God can give us a little bit more than satisfactory.

So it's impossible to please and be satisfactory to him, for whosoever, uh whoever would come near to God must necessarily believe that God exists and that he's a rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek him out.

Praise God.

So we have faith defined, and we have to believe that God is a rewarder.

I mean, let's he's not a, you know, let's get off this idea of him punishing.

He's really not the author of destruction, he's not the author of death, he's not the author of all the terrible things that are going on.

He didn't send COVID, he didn't send the results, he didn't send any of that, you know.

But we have something to do with being protected in that uh as a nation, we have drifted out from under his care.

One nation under God, we're no longer under God.

We're under a multitude of different gods.

We have allowed other gods to come into our country.

Uh and I can just tell you right now, Islam is not compatible with America.

It's not even compatible with anything that we do here.

So Islam at some point is going to have to be moved out.

And uh there's all kinds of solutions, and I won't get into that, but well, we have freedom of religion.

Well, it's really not a religion.

It's an ideology, it's a political.

Uh it's it's it's really no different than Hitler.

I mean, will we let Hitler come here?

I mean, they want to dominate us.

They tell us that right up front.

They're here to dominate, they're not here to assimilate, they're not here to be one of us, they're here for make us be one of them, and actually we can't be, so they're gonna kill us.

That's what they want to do.

That's what the Quran says.

So let's believe what they say, and let's not get let it go any further.

Uh, in 1 Peter 1:8, see, you know, we believe in a God that we cannot see.

1 Peter 1:8

See, God, we can't see God.

We can't encounter God with our flesh.

We have to learn how to relate to Him in the spirit.

And that we do that as the faith life, see, the faith, everybody say the faith life.

Everybody say, I'm living the faith lifestyle.

See, that's really what I'm talking about, a lifestyle of faith.

It's not just like, again, we're not just trying to have faith for a certain thing for a little while, and we get that thing, and it's all over, and we we might tell somebody about it a time or two, and then we forget it.

You know, and then later we'll find out, oh, yeah, I remember when God did that.

You know, we should never forget what God does.

Amen.

It ought to be a permanent uh testimony.

So um the faith life is faith and it's not foolishness and it's not presumption.

Uh years ago, 40 plus years ago, I heard uh a six uh back then we used cassette tapes, and I had a six-tape uh six-tape uh set of uh a message on faith, foolishness, and presumption by Dr.

Fred Price.

And uh I tell you, he's in heaven now, but I you talk about a teacher.

Man, he was really good.

And I mean, he got that into me.

I listened to all six messages way back there.

And as far as I know, he never did come to Lakewood, not while I was there.

And I never ever was in his meetings personally, but I just had those six tapes, and they really, really helped me to understand about faith, foolishness, and presumption.

All three of those look similar.

You can be in foolishness and think that you're in faith.

You can be in presumption and thinking you're in faith.

So it's it's you know it's good to you know good to look look at it at some of these definitions so that you can kind of identify, and maybe you can see something maybe that you're doing right now, possibly, or you have done.

So what is foolishness?

He was he was basically foolishness is trying to believe for something apart from a Rhema word of God.

See, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the rhema of God.

What is a rhema word?

It's a God-breathed word.

It's not just the general logos.

Faith doesn't come from the logos.

You can read your Bible and you should.

But faith comes when the Bible comes off the page and you receive something as for you.

And then that is the beginning of faith.

Faith begins where the will of God is known.

This is the general will of God.

It's the general will of God for you to be healed.

It's the general will of God for you to be blessed.

It's the general will of God for you to be, to have protection and not have to worry about danger.

It's the general those are those are things that we can appropriate.

But, you know, occasionally you'll come across things that are more specific that are not really written in the word.

For instance, you know, our first building was at 6827, FM 1960 West, Houston, Texas, 77066.

I can't find that address anywhere in the Bible.

How in the world did we arrive at that address?

The witness of the Spirit.

I went looking for our building and I kept taking faith steps every day.

It took me a couple of, well, I don't know, about five weeks, I think, from uh middle of December until early January, and our opening service was January 29th.

That didn't leave us a whole lot of room.

I mean, I'm running out of time.

I got to find a place.

I went, I remember I went and looked at a at a at a place in uh where the Randall Center is, and they had a little storefront that had been a ballet school.

It was 3,000 square feet.

It had a parquet wood floor with the little ballerinas.

We'd get out and dance, and and and they didn't even want to talk to me.

I I met the lady, oh, you're a church lead.

We're not interested in rich.

I mean, I didn't even get a chance to make them an offer.

3,000 feet.

I don't know.

You couldn't have gotten, I mean, that's that wasn't enough room for maybe 20 people to be in there, you know.

It was, it was, and it was real expensive.

I forget what they wanted for it.

So anyway, I finally found the place.

I looked at it and I had the witness.

And I had, and the favor came with it, and we we leased that building.

We were there for three years.

Are y'all with me now?

So foolishness is trying to believe for something apart from a Rhema word of God.

See, the will of God uh begins where uh faith begins where the will of God is known.

I've seen people try to do that for, you know, they spot uh, you know, Joe Blow or Betty Blow, and they think, ooh, they'd make a good husband, they'd make a good wife.

I'm gonna believe God for them to be my husband.

You know, you can't do that.

You don't know if that's, you know, you're just going after the flesh.

You're you're looking at something from the flesh standpoint.

There's nothing in the Bible to tell you who to marry.

It gives you some guidelines.

In other words, it says don't marry an unbeliever, don't be unequally yoked with an unbeliever.

Gladys got unequally yoked with an unbeliever.

It turned out okay for her, but she really, she'd, if she'd have really known her Bible and her pat her Baptist pastor had really preached the word in that church, we never would have been married.

Because I'm an unbeliever.

She didn't know it.

She thought I'm Catholic.

She thought I was a believer.

Well, I was a believer after a fight, but I wasn't born again.

She's born again.

But you know God worked it out.

It took a while, though.

It took from, let's see, what I got married.

We were, I was married 21.

I got saved at 33.

12 years.

We lived as husband and wife, and she was married to the devil for 12 years.

That's not so anyway.

No, you you you've got to have the will of God.

So, where where does the will of God come from?

It comes from a ram of words.

Sometimes that that word comes off.

You just have a witness of the spirit that that this is that's otherwise it's foolishness.

Otherwise, it's foolishness.

Foolishness won't produce anything but foolishness, and you'll feel like a fool.

All right.

Then the other one is presumption.

Presumption is proceeding on mental assent or mental agreement without building your faith first.

In other words, what it is that you want may or may be in the Bible.

It may be fine, it's not immoral, but you have not really built your faith.

You still don't know that God has given you that thing.

And the the example I I'd like to use is somebody that uh has been diagnosed with cancer, and they say, Well, you know, God's healed me.

I don't, I'm not gonna worry about, I don't want to chemotherapy.

Who does?

I don't know anybody that volunteers for it.

And so you just say, and I heard a lady say this, oh, I'm not about to, all my hair will fall out.

Well, I knew she wasn't in faith.

That's not faith.

Uh, you know, I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't.

What I'm saying is you can't rule it out if you've never believed God for a headache, and you suddenly are faced with cancer, it's not likely that your faith is really ready to tackle that thing.

You've got to spend some time in prayer and say, God, this is the report.

I believe the report of the Lord.

Now I need to know my way of escape.

Do I go the medical route or what do I do?

What do you want me to do?

I mean, that's that God can have respect about a prayer like that instead of going off in presumption.

I knew this person, and I knew that they had a history of really being almost like a hypochondriac.

And I knew this person well enough to know that they did not have faith to be healed of cancer without intervention medically.

I knew that.

And I knew that if they went down that road, they'd probably go to heaven.

So I, being pastor, I said something, you know, don't talk like that around me.

If I'm your pastor, I'm gonna say something.

I might not say something about a marriage, I might not say something about buying a house or buying a car, but if you're gonna go do make a life and death decision that I know is wrong, I'm gonna holler at you.

No, don't do that.

Well, you know, I mean, I'm I'm here to help correct you and get your feet back in the right deal.

So I, you know, I let it rest for her, and she'd said that a couple of times and I'd heard it.

It was too bad.

She, I mean, I'm the pastor, I'm gonna say it.

So I said, uh, you don't have faith to be healed of cancer.

I said, that's a phony, baloney excuse you're using, just because you lose your hair.

Here, I bought her a$300 wig.

I said, here, wear this wig and take your treatments.

And she did, and she lived.

And she had her$300 wig that she wore even longer.

Okay, so anyway, praise God.

It cost me a lot of money to keep her alive.

Okay.

You're worth it.

You all you sheep are worth it.

You're worth it.

All my money.

Praise the Lord.

So everybody says, presumption, foolishness, or faith?

See?

Let's make sure we're walking in faith.

Let's make sure we have a faith lifestyle.

You know, your words and your actions must line up with your faith.

You know, faith, uh, the initial action when you believe God is what is your confession of faith?

You've got to have a confession of faith that lines up with the word.

The word confess means to say the same thing as.

So the word that you're standing on, you've got to say the word.

The word says by his stripes you were healed.

So you've got to say, I was healed.

I'm not paying attention to any symptoms.

I'm not paying attention to any diagnostic test.

I know that's what the test said.

I know that's where the symptoms are, but I believe the word, and this is the word.

Okay, so now you're doing good.

See, your confession's lined up with your faith.

That's good.

And then you go to bed.

And you say, I'm too sick to come to church.

Well, now, see, you've shooting yourself in the foot now because your actions are not lining up with your faith and with your words.

You've got to have action that lines up with your faith and with your words.

All three of those things have got to line up.

And you know, not it's not always easy when you're really fighting a tough battle, it's not always easy to get to church.

And sometimes you're gonna be so ill that you can't.

Don't get be condemned, but you are not gonna, you're not gonna stay there.

You're gonna do whatever it takes.

I just think about, you know, uh, we had a uh a young lady that uh was here in the service on Sunday morning, and she had been hit by a car a number of years ago and had traumatic brain injury.

It's a massive, horrible accident, and she's uh uh impaired, and and she uh has to have a nurse all the time.

And just to get her to the church, it took uh two full cars and they and they couldn't get a medical transport, and they brought her, wheeled her in here.

I thought about all the effort it took for her to get to this service just to be under the anointing.

And she did get hands laid upon her.

You know, we haven't heard anything yet, but we don't need to hear.

We know that the healing power of God went into that body and it's affecting a he a healing and a cure.

That's what we're saying.

So sometimes, you know, you just go to extraordinary lengths to say to the devil, you're not keeping me out of where of my miracle.

We are going to resist pain, we're gonna resist uh symptoms and sickness.

Amen.

Are y'all with me now?

Your words and actions must line up with your faith.

You know, uh Raymond T.

Ritchie, a famous pastor here at Evangelistic Temple, uh, Brother Lonnie Rex knew him and actually played the organ for him many years ago.

He he was he had a healing anointing, was a famous healing anointing.

Many people uh said that Pastor John Osteen had his anointing on him after he died.

Brother Osteen used to have burning in his hands, and he had a lot of healing uh in his ministry.

But uh Raymond T.

Ritchie once said that faith is acting on the word.

It's a good definition.

Uh Smith Wigglesworth said, faith is an act.

Uh Kenneth E.

Hagen says, faith is acting like the Bible is true.

So what's common in all those three definitions?

Acting.

Act.

Faith is an act.

It's an action.

Faith without corresponding action is dead.

So I, you know, a number of years ago, I heard uh uh brother Mark say this uh recently.

He was in a meeting, but he said, you know, Brother Hagin was preaching and he threw me a curve.

And he said, you know, is it possible that someone can have faith to be healed and not be healed?

And and everybody went, what?

What you know, wait a minute.

Someone has faith to be healed and yet is not healed.

Is it possible?

And so then Brother Hagin, so nobody had the answer, you know.

And so, you know, Brother Hagin is the one that God told, go teach my people faith.

You know, you know, he I heard him myself many, many times.

He almost always taught on Mark 11.23.

I don't think he ever taught anything else.

Well, one time he taught on prayer.

But most of the time it's Mark 11, 23, over and over.

And I got something different out of it every time he preached it.

I mean, you know, and you just never exhaust his knowledge.

I mean, he had to know something about what he's teaching.

So he'd been thinking about this.

Is it possible for someone who have faith to be healed and yet not be healed?

Let's look at Acts chapter 14.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

And uh I know it's a trick question.

And the answer is yes, you can have faith to be healed and not be healed.

Acts chapter 14.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

So here uh Paul is out there with Barnabas, and they're under pressure, and they have to they have to leave, you know, they they have to leave, they're they're they're under persecution, and so they land and uh they had a plot against them in verse 6.

They were aware of it, and they fled unto Lystra and Derby, cities of Lycanea, and under the regions that lieth round about.

And there they preached the gospel.

There they preached the gospel, and there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked.

Think about that.

Think about what it took for him to be at the meeting.

Think what I mean, he'd never walk, so how did he get to the meeting?

I mean, they didn't have wheelchairs, unless somebody drug him on a mat or somebody carried him or something.

I mean, it took a lot of effort to get to that meeting.

And he's sitting there, and what is Paul doing?

Paul is doing what?

He's preaching the gospel.

And the Bible says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, which includes Ealy.

So he was hearing something that stirred him on the inside.

And Paul looking at him, see, Paul the same, heard Paul speak, who steadfastly beholding him and perceiving that he had faith to be healed.

See, Paul perceived that he had faith to be healed.

He didn't say the Holy Ghost told him, it didn't say he heard an inward voice, it didn't say, you know, a big uh arrow pointing to him or something.

He perceived, in other words, he simply had a knowing on the inside.

Think about how much faith it took for Paul to say what he said.

He hollered at him, he shouted at him, stand upright on thy feet.

I mean, think about the faith it took for Paul to say that to somebody.

All he had to go on was a perception that he had faith to be healed.

Before he spoke that, was he healed?

He had faith to be healed, but was he healed?

No.

He was not healed until when?

Until he stood up.

So just a couple of seconds before that, he had he had faith to be healed and yet he wasn't healed.

And if Paul hadn't obeyed that unction, if Paul hadn't obeyed that witness and that perception, if he hadn't hollered at him, stand upright on my feet.

And if that guy hadn't obeyed him, he could have said, Oh man, are you kidding?

Do you realize I have never walked in my whole life?

I was born like this.

I can't, I was in my mother's womb like this.

What do you mean, stand up?

I can't stand that.

No, he got up.

He leaped up and walked.

Come on, lift your hand right now.

Oh, I'm telling you, praise God.

And it wasn't the apostle's mantle.

It wasn't the gifts of healings.

It was not a, it was the gospel.

It was the it was the gospel being preached, is what it what did.

Oh, I tell you, we we just need to tell the good news more.

Quit worrying about whether we're anointed to get somebody healed.

Quit worrying about the gifts of the Spirit.

You know, if we'll just preach the good news, what preach means is just declare.

Doesn't mean get a pulpit and do like I'm doing and spit.

I'm spitting now.

I better dry my mouth off.

I'm sorry, Irma.

I didn't mean to spit on you.

Amen.

You don't get anything out of this.

I'm talking about the faith life.

I'm talking about the faith life.

And it and it's anchored in the gospel.

The gospel is what?

Good news.

See, Paul was not preaching like Billy Graham.

I mean, he wasn't getting people saved particularly.

He's preaching what I believe the full gospel.

He's preaching like Jesus did.

Jesus didn't just preach just repentance, he preached the whole thing.

I mean, that's why people got healed.

That's why people got delivered.

They heard that it belonged to them.

It was the full gospel.

Amen.

That's what this church is.

It's a full gospel church.

And the power of God is available for anybody that hears it and believes it.

Hallelujah.

And more importantly, it's available to those who have a faith lifestyle.

Come on, lift your hand and receive today.

Glory to God.