Living The Good Life

Having Faith in the God Who...

Today we close out a 13 week series entitled “Fresh Faith

A series which I hope has encouraged you to a greater faith in your spiritual life

A series that hopefully expanded your view of What God can do, and gave you a greater faith to see Him do those things in your life.

If you’ve been abused and knocked around in life, you need to know the God who can restore all things. The God who can go back and correct those things that got out of whack so long ago and cancel their effects today and even tomorrow

If you have some heavy stuff on your mind. You are having trouble forgiving someone or even yourself, you need to know the God who is able to make us forget all of our troubles.

If life has dealt you a bad hand. Maybe it’s the price of sin, maybe it’s just living in a broken world, you need to know the God who can make you fruitful in the midst of your sufferings. Maybe the enemy has told you that you will never be anything - God says that you are fruitful and an overcomer.

This type of faith will change the way that we see God and trust Him

It will make a greater place for him in our lives - Every area

It will cause us to be patient in God’s moving. Giving him the time that He requires to see things perfected in our lives (not just done, but perfected)

To wait on His truth

To wait on the power and process of his grace and work of salvation in our lives

It will enable us to trust him even in the midst of the disturbances and disappointments of our lives.

It will cause us to praise him and worship him more

It will created a greater testimony in our life. Our Story of What God has done.

We will praise him and testify about him as our source of life

We will walk in a heightened level of faith, experiencing his love for us with a new understanding of what it means to be loved by our heavenly father.

It will keep us going until we get to the place that he wants us to be - no more throwing in the towel

No more wearing out or allowing discouragement to impede us in our spiritual walk

It will give us the ability to trust God in the deep internal stuff of life, even when we don’t know what that might be

Loving him from a new heart - a fleshly and pliable heart in his hands

serving him from a renewed spirit

and following him with a spirit that is willing to go the distance.

And then last week, we looked at how he gives us a living hope

Which creates a genuine faith

Which enables us to trust him for a full salvation.

So we started the series with the plan and the attacks of the enemy

Those things that threaten our faith

Those things that bring destruction and depravity into our lives

And we ended with the plan of God

To bring us to a place, by faith, of a changed, fruitful and energized life.

But here is the deal -

The Book is Finished!

Or is it?

I can tell you that mine is not.

Now if you just read it because we recommended it - it’s finished

If you didn’t even bother reading it - It didn’t interest you, it wasn’t your type of book, You put it away for later, because the new book in your favorite series came out

It’s finished.

But if you heart was touched, like mine was, during these 13 weeks

If a dead faith, or a new faith has arisen in your heart

If something that was said during one of the messages and you were one of the many that stood up for prayer each service

We still have a ways to go. God is building up a new faith in each of us.

Hebrews

Hebrews 3:1–19 NKJV

Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in all His house. For this One has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as He who built the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God. And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward, but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ” Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

You see our faith is important.

In fact, we see here it is so important that our faith and confidence in God is what makes us part of his house or his church

It’s what makes us the people or children of God

The people of God should be marked by a living, confident and timeless faith. (all things we have talked about in these 13 weeks.

Another lesson for us that we cannot forget is that the people did not enter into his promise for them because of their lack of faith in him

I believe that this is still true of people today. They don’t achieve those things that God has for them because they do not believe that it can happen.

So today, if you hear his voice. If He has been speaking to you through this book

If these 13 Sundays have been speaking to you

Don’t harden your heart

Don’t say, I don’t believe that. don’t say I’ll do it later

Don’t say I don’t understand that. Let God do his work in your life.

Remember the righteous live by faith.

So how do we Grow our Faith?

How do we get there? How do we respond to the things that God has spoken over these last few weeks?

How to Grow Your Faith! - Read It!

Today if you will hear his voice

Can God speak to us today - Sure

But I want you to know that anything that God says to you from a voice today is going to totally back up and confirm this (BIBLE)

People say - I can’t hear him, God doesn’t speak to me

He will if you will read this (Bible)

So many people discouraged today - This is your Hope

So many people lost today - This is your truth, your map

So many people fumbling and stumbling through life - This is all you need.

It’s that easy? YES - if you will read it and follow it.

Yesterday - following GPS and doing my own thing - lost 15 minutes of time and drove in circles

You have to follow it. You have to be okay with where it’s leading. You have to be obedient to it when you aren’t.

If you don’t yet understand how important this book is then you need to write these scriptures down

John 1:1 NKJV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Matthew 24:35 NKJV

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.

Matthew

2 Timothy 3:16 NKJV

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

Hebrews 4:12 NKJV

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Psalm 119:105 NKJV

Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.

These are just a few. This is God’s Word speaking about itself.

Are you listening?

You need to read God’s Word to your Spirit

Like a child who gets read to every night at bed time

Their imagination comes alive

They are seeing things bigger than their world

The only difference is that for the Spirit, this imagination becomes truth as they hear God’s Word

You need to read God’s Word to your faith

You need to challenge your faith - every day in the classroom challenging kids to think

You need to give your faith something to stimulate it.

When you read it, don’t read it to just read it

When you come to service, don’t just listen to hear it

But Receive it into your heart. If you need to check it first, go home and check it. Then if it is God’s Word - Receive it.

How To Grow Your Faith! - Meditate On It

Hebrews 3:10 NKJV

Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’

This is tough for us in the West, but it is so important.

What we do is study everything. That is man using his reasoning capacity to figure out what is being said

Meditation is prayerful reflection where you ask the Holy Spirit to illumine your understanding just as the disciples had done to them by Jesus on the road to Emmaus

Luke 24:32 NKJV

And they said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”

Luke

Here at the church we recommend the SOAP Journaling Method

S - Scripture - Copy the verse by hand if possible. There is something to writing something with our own hands. If you have a 3x5 card or some other way to carry it with you - do so and look at it throughout the day.

O - Observation - What do you see from God in this scripture? It might be words, pictures something else

If you can take time here. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show you what he needs you to get through the context, the original language and culturally

A - Application - Quiet yourself in his presence. Put some soft praise music on. Let the Holy Spirit begin to guide you through the scripture. He picked this one for you today for a reason, what is He saying through it?

Repeat it, and hear the Rhema

Logos is the written Word

Rhema is the voice of God in His Written Word

P - Prayer - Respond to what God is saying. Accept the revelation of the Holy Spirit and repent, move in it, speak it forth and act on it.

When you meditate on God’s Word, your faith will grow.

Your Spirit man will be strengthened.

Each morning I have a bowl of cereal to get the digestive system going

Each morning, you spirit needs to eat. And it needs to eat well. It will set the Spiritual part of your day in motion for the rest of it.

How to Grow Your Faith! - Live In It

This really is what the whole 13 weeks has been about.

The righteous live by faith

It is impossible to please God without faith

As we sang today, what did you thank God for?

Actually, did you even take time to thank him?

Our lives should be full of thanksgiving because of our faith

Even if we haven’t seen it yet - We know the God whom we serve

We know what He is capable of

We expect that He will do what He has said

What are we doing by thanking him for those things?

Living in Faith.

Hebrews 3:13 NKJV

but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

That’s putting our faith in action, in this gathering

Exhorting one another

Encouraging to faith

Striving together to be a community of faith

Seeing God move here because of our faith

Hebrews 3:14 NKJV

For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end,

Again - We are children of God, partakers of the promises sealed in Christ if we have confidence (faith) to the end.

PRAY