Is Seeing Really Believing?

We Don’t Believe Cause We choose not to

Have you ever heard the saying “seeing is believing”?

We don’t believe in miracles cause we haven't seen them first hand

What if I told you the modern day christian doesn’t have faith in miracles?

We all say we believe in miracles we all pray for miracles but then we get disappointed when the miracle doesn’t come true

So why don’t they come true?

(Scripture)

v.18-19 In the opening two verses verses we read that God has revealed his righteousness to everyone and it was only by our own stupidity people didn’t believe in him

Just cause we believe in God doesn’t mean we believe in what he is doing in our lives

I can safely say we all believe in God but that doesn’t mean we believe in him deeply

Just cause we believe in God doesn’t mean we believe in what he is doing in our lives

The scripture were in is talking about how these people dismiss Gods existence but we do the same thing everyday by dismissing what God is capable of

Each of us believe God can do it but few of us pray without doubts

Each of us believe in God but we don’t speak like it

Each of us believe in God but few of us believe in miracles

v20 Each of us see what God has done in this world

Each of us see the trees, the sky, green grass or the snow

Each of us see the seemingly infinite ocean

How do we believe we can come into the thrown room of the creator of all thing and tell him our prayers with doubt in our heart?

(James 1:6-7)

But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. 7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord (KJV)

We overlook this

It says he shall receive nothing

He that doubts.

I know most of us have been guilty of praying and in the back of our mind thinking this probably wont happen

God has turned into our last ditch effort instead of our first call

We’ve grown to doubt God despite seeing all the amazing things hes done in our world

Then we expect to take our problems to the thrown room of God with doubts

Every word we pray goes directly to the thrown room of God. We have a fast, easy, anytime connection to Jesus but we don’t think its good enough

v.21-22 Paul tells us these men knew who God was yet they didn’t honor him

They became futile mean ing they became useless

Our faith in miracles are no different our prayer becomes empty and useless without complete solid faith in Jesus

MIRACLE MANDY

Topics: Doubt; Faith; Infertility; Miracles

References: ; ; ;

The doctor told Marsha Mark and her husband they would never have biological children. In their disappointment, Marsha clung to a friend’s words: “Somehow, God is going to use your struggle with infertility for his glory.” Marsha began to pray for a glimpse of that glory.

“I asked everyone I knew to pray,” she said. “One five-year-old prayed, ‘Dear God, please send Marsha a baby. Maybe someone could give her one, or she could just find one on the street.’ ”

Marsha’s husband, Tom, a scientist, stopped praying when Marsha showed signs of menopause. Tom had seen lots of data. And in his lifetime, he’d never seen prayer change scientific facts.

Six months later, Marsha made an appointment for another pregnancy test. The doctor said no because Marsha hadn’t had a period for seven months. “Asking for another pregnancy test indicates you are not accepting things as they are,” he said. Marsha begged for the extra test anyway. And it came back positive.

“Over the next fourteen days, I had four more pregnancy tests and three more sonograms at the hospital’s request. I think this time the doctor was having trouble dealing with the facts,” Marsha said.

Her full-term pregnancy was uneventful. On October 22, 1996, Amanda Joy was born. “We call her Miracle Mandy,” Marsha said.

—Marsha Marks, “Special Delivery,” Christian Reader (September–October 2000

When science says no but Jesus says yes Jesus always wins

I think a lot of us are like Tom in the story

Most of us can relate to Tom even if we don’t want to admit it

We see odds stacked against our miracle and we either give up or we lose most

Marsha made the appointment out of faith

She believed Jesus would allow her to have a baby and she trusted in his plan

When we trust in the plan of Jesus we take action when science says no

When we have faith and know Jesus will answer we plan a doctor appointment even though everyone else says its useless

Why do we fail to believe in miracles even though we all see them everyday

How does a try grow? or a animal always have the perfect attributes?

We see Gods work every sing day yet avoid the fact he is a miracle worker

v.23-25 We may not have exchanged our God for other gods as the verse tells us but we did manage to forsake Gods power in exchange for our own selfish beliefs

We see something that seems impossible and we somehow think that even though our God made a universe from nothing he wont heal us or help us or changes the situation around us

We may not worship other Gods but in a sense we worship our own thoughts and we nearly worship science cause it says it cant be done

You’re prayer will not always be answered but it will never be answered without faith in you're prayer

We know the devil is going to play doubts into our mind but we have to have enough faith to push the devil to the side and say im not listening to these doubts

I was kinda tested in faith in prayer once

I had something going on and I prayed and never saw anything changed then I prayed again and I never saw anything change again

And Jesus answered and said to them, "Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' it will happen. "And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."

These verses come to mind at the end of my second prayer and I realized id preached and taught a lot on this subject but often failed to believe it myself.

Id pray and id almost always have a doubt in the back of my mind

So as I prepared this sermon I thought about this story cause what happens next was Jesus telling a doubter to be a believer in miracles

through the remainder of my problem I would allow doubt to occasionally slip back in and as the doubt came back in I would feel my problem being with it.

Then as I was knock the doubt off my problem would go away

It took me believing without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus would fix this before anything would leave.

I wanted Jesus to fix me but I didn’t want to believe he could

(close)

The reason why I had doubts was because id never seen it happen

I realized in that moment just cause we don’t see miracles happen doesn’t mean they don’t happen everyday right in front of us but they only happen with faith