Big God Big Faith

Mission and Vision

Big God Big Faith

What are you believing God for?

Notice I didn’t say what are you asking God for

I’m asking… according to your faith in who God is and what his promises are for you in his word… what are you believing him for

See we have a faith crisis in a good portion of US churches. Especially in our neck of the woods

I’m not talking about the kind of faith that recieves salvation from God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ

But the type of faith that then shapes how we operate

The type of faith that is such a part of our sanctified hearts that we constantly operate out of it

I believe if I asked most of you if you have faith that Jesus saves you would say yes

If I asked do you have faith that Jesus is still working on earth today with the same power that created heaven and earth… most of you would say yes

If I asked do you have faith that that same Jesus is prepared to do mighty things in your life through your faith… I would bet that there would be a steep decrease of yes’s

I believe that the reason for the lack of faith, the lack of belief that God is alive and active and ready to do miraculous things in and through you is because we have a small view of God

The size of your faith is directly connected to the size of the God that you serve

Now I’m not saying that we all serve our own personal God, but what I am saying is that the overall power, authority, and might that you recognize in God will influence how much faith you will operate out of.

Let’s look at our text

We have the Centurion

A military leader in charge of 100 soldiers

A man of authority and power. An important man

We have Jesus. A rabbi, a poor carpenter from backwoods nazareth

Even though by all logical accounts, the centurion was a man of great stature… socially at least. He was a large persona… he recognized the Majesty and power of Christ Jesus and that dictated how he interacted with Christ

First he asks Jesus for the healing of his paralyzed servant

He believed that JEsus could do it or he wouldn’t have asked

He had a faith that Jesus had the authority to heal something so severe as paralisis… in a time long before modern medicine

Long before MRI’s and CT scans… this man recognized who Jesus is and he acted on his recognition of who Jesus is

Not only did he believe and therefore ask… he takes his faith ever further.

He tells Jesus taht he believes that the words that come out of Christs mouth are so powerful that Jesus doesn’t even have to go

He says tha the believes that Christ is under authrity

This is interesting. he doesn’t just say… I believe you have authority but I believe you are under authority and the authority that you are under is so great that you have power beyond what I could imagine

The centurion recognizes that Christ is acting in the power of his father, God almighty

The faith of the centurion to ask Jesus for a miracle is directly connected to the power and authority he understood Christ to have

Jesus goes on and responds to the man’s faith

he says that there are those who will get to live in paradise in the kingdom of heaven while the sons of the kingdom will be missing it

He says there are those who haven’t grown up in church, who were not raise din good homes, who have never been given the opportunities that the children of thepromise have… and yet they are going to enter into the promises of God through faith

tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God

Jesus is telling us in this parable that there are those of us who have heard the stories of Christ and creation and calming the storms and raising the dead and healing the sick… and yet we still don’t have the faith the size of a mustard seed

Even though we know all this stuff in our head… we’ve heard all the stories… we know all the facts.

We don’t live as though we believe that the God we serve is able

We don’t live as though we believe that The same power that created the mountains can move them

How many of you suffered some sort of damage from the storm on Thursday night?

Did you see what happend to the old mill? To bret’s bikes?

Radio towers snapped like twigs, roofs ripped off

This all happend in less than 30 min.

The small amount of wind that blew through here is not even a fraction large enough to mention when it comes to the power present in the name of Jesus

The word says that at that name every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord

That all things have been given to Christ… that he has the authority over all things

But we look at christ as simply some fire insurance...

which if you ask me is accepting the larger miracle and then doubting the lesser one

You can sit in a church and say that you trust that God became man, died at the hands of men, ressurrected and through his sacrifice is offering you the ability to become the children of God...

Like you believe that, but you don’t believe Christ can heal your family

You don’t believe Christ can heal your marriage

That he can heal your finances

That he can do all things… or maybe you just don’t believe that he can do all things for you

Listen, this is not some prosperity gospel name it and claim it non-sense

I’m not saying that Christ’s answer is always yes. But I am saying that anything you ask without faith will always be no

James says that if we pray without faith we are double minded and we should not expect to recieve anything

What that means is that you can ask God, believing that he can do it. Knowing that he has the power and trusting that he loves you and wants to give you all good things...

Even if his answer is no, which sometimes good parents say no,… it wont be no because you don’t believe

You have such a small image of God… You don’t see God has the one who holds all good things in his hands

Truly think about it… God created heaven and earth

Do you understand the size of that God?!?! He created everything that is… everything that is visable has been created out of the invisible… through Christ

That God… the one who spoke cosmos’s into creation has chosen to call you his. To call you not his servants…not his footstools… not his mindless drones… but through Christ we are co-heirs. We are his children. We are friends of God.

Understanding that you have a big God should ellicit big faith

look at someone and say “I have a big God”

You have to remind yourself that you serve a mighty God. A big God. A holy magnificent God. There is no end to your goodness lord. There is no end to your majesty and your glory. Your name is mighty. At your name the heavens and the earth shake