We Walk By Faith

Well, here we are, at the threshold of the year, 2020. I am calling this new year, the year of perfect spiritual vision! Obviously, because 20/20 denotes perfect vision in the natural, right?

What will be NEW for each of you this coming year? (I know of one thing that is going to be new in our family this year. We Dee and I are going to be grandparents!)

But, what things will be removed from your life from the past year and what things will be added back, in their place?

If any of you know me, I am not one who makes resolutions for the new year. And in the past, I have taught messages that deal with this subject.

I think that to many people, the prospect of a NEW YEAR, means newness in their lives and the hope of something better coming their way.

We tend to embrace the concept that the new year gives to us something better, something that the last year didn’t.

And it is true that each new day is a gift from God and as such, the prospect of a new year, is also a gift.

But, what does that really mean for you and I and our lives?

Do you see this new year as a chance to make you, a “new you”?

Is this coming year going to be a year of new opportunities and greater potential than the previous year?

I looked on the internet yesterday at all of the web sites that are advertising about making you, a “new you”.

Claims from plastic surgeons, to cosmetic enhancements, to exercise facilities and weight loss clinics, to hair salons and self-help meditation classes and so on and so forth.

They all promise to help transform the “old you”, into a “new and improved you”!

And yet amidst all of their claims and promises for a “new you”, I am reminded of the words of the wise King Solomon, who said that there is “nothing new under the sun.”

You can change jobs and make a new, higher income to improve your quality of life, and yet Solomon said that he had tasted of all of the wealth that there was in the world and it added nothing to his life; it was all pursued in vane!

In fact, it was Solomon that said that he had tasted of all of the pleasures that this life had to offer and they were all done in vane, because they added nothing to who he was and what his life truly meant!

I do agree that you can and you should, work towards improving your life and your quality of life and your health and your knowledge base, and yet, in doing all of these things, you are still you and the way that God made you.

Changing attributes about your life is good and healthy, but they are still just that, attributes. You are still YOU!

I would like to go on the record and state that there is but ONE way to become truly NEW!

The Bible tells us in , “That anyone who belongs to Christ has become a NEW person. The old life is gone; a NEW life has begun!”

It is only through Jesus the Christ that you are ever truly made a “NEW YOU”!

You can change traits about yourself and develop new habits in your life, make new friends and start hanging out at new locations, try different religions, adorn yourself in new clothing styles, alter your appearance with cosmetic surgery, but unless your heart has been changed by the Lord Jesus, Himself, you will still be the same person you have always been!

God promised that He, Himself, would remove your old heart give you a new heart if you would allow Him to do so.

And Jesus closed out the Bible by reminding us that He and He alone makes ALL things new!

And as a NEW creation in Christ Jesus, you see the world differently, you hear things differently and you desire things that pertain to God and His kingdom and His glory.

Not like the “old you”, and your desire for this world and things that are associated with it!

If there is a resolution that I make for each New Year, it is this; that I desire to become more and more like my Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ and become transformed into His glorious image.

So that when people look at me, they will not see me, but instead, they will see Jesus in me!

And when people listen to me, they will hear Jesus and and His words of comfort and love and of His eternal TRUTH and ultimately they will feel His love emanating from me!

You see, in Jesus Christ, our failures and our weaknesses and our brokenness and our hurts and losses and shame and regrets of who and what we are as well as who and what we are not, are all erased and made clean and NEW, by His power and His perfect shed blood!

The blood of Jesus can cleanse a murderer and make him into a great evangelist and leader in the church, such as was the apostle Paul.

One encounter with Jesus and His power to transform and renew lives, was enough to take a woman who had been filled with 7 demons and lived a life of misery and probably every shame that you could ever imagine and transform her into a NEW child of God. One who spent the rest of her life following wherever Jesus walked. Right up to the tomb that He was placed in and then right back back out of that tomb and all the way to His ascension into heaven. And every day thereafter, boldly declaring the TRUTH of who Jesus is! Only the blood of Jesus could create such a profound NEW daughter of God, from such a broken mess, as was Mary of Magdalene before she met the Christ!

The blood of Jesus can turn the heart of a thief and crooked business man, into the very opposite; a man of honesty and integrity and charity towards others, as was the case with Zacchaeus the Tax Collector.

The reality of our being transformed into a NEW PERSON, is that in and of ourselves, you and I are completely incapable of being able to make ourselves anything more than what we were already born as, which are sinners. We can become smarter and all that makes us are smarter sinners and we can become richer and we are just richer sinners. Regardless of what we add to our lives, it is just sin plus whatever we bring.

We were born into a marred and sinful vessel and no one is immune to the disease known as sin. The Bible tells us that everyone has sinned and that we, in and of ourselves, fall miserably short of God’s eternal glory!

That’s the bad news!

The good news is that Jesus came and paid a horrible price for our sins, by His death upon the cross and by His perfect shed blood for our atonement!

And because of this, we can become the righteousness of God, through Jesus and His atoning blood. (A.K.A “NEW PEOPLE”).

And as Paul said in , Jesus laid down His perfect life for our sinful lives, so that He could take us, in our filthy, shame filled lives and transform us into a new and glorious creation, His bride, the church.

Not just a bride, but an entirely new creation, one which will appear pure and spotless, without any blemish and holy and perfect, on the day that He claims us for His own!

He did this, according to , through the washing and cleansing of the water of the Word, which is to say, the hearing of the gospel message, that begins the process of justification and sanctification in our lives.

It is through the glorious truth of the gospel message, that we find ourselves, either standing at the foot of the cross and accepting the free gift of salvation and thus being cleansed and made whole into a NEW creature, or we find ourselves walking away from that cross and rejecting the glory of God and embracing the sickness of our sin and shame, always to remain the same marred vessel!

How many of you here this morning can say that your being made whole and changed into a brand new, pure and spotless person, one that is free from shame and regret and filled with love and peace and eternal glory, sounds good to you?

And how many of us, I wonder, throughout our lives, have tried before on our own to make such a change and failed miserably, only to say something like, “Well, there’s always next year”?

And then there will be the year after that and the year after that and so on and so forth.

You and I could never do this on our own works and merit! WE NEEDED A SAVIOR and GOD THROUGH HIS GREAT LOVE AND MERCY AND ETERNAL GRACE, PROVIDED FOR US JUST THAT! A SAVIOR, HIS SON, JESUS THE MESSIAH!

And it’s when we are beat down and wearied from our constant strife and efforts in this life to find peace and love and acceptance and our trying to change ourselves into someone new and better, that we find Jesus standing before us, with His loving arms open wide and saying to us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Jesus is there, waiting for us, as His children, to run to Him and feel the embrace of His love and forgiveness and acceptance.

And as we walk with Him throughout our lives, as His new creation, we will still mess up, but because His love is eternal and His blood is sufficient for all of our sins, He tells us that if we will confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all of our unrighteous actions!

This amazing transformation into these new vessels that we become, can only come about through our FAITH and BELIEF in Him and of who He is and what He did for us!

Even our FAITH in Him, is a gift that He gives to us, to help us walk through that door of salvation and into His kingdom!

We bring nothing into this life changing transformation, except ourselves and our need for salvation!

tells us, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;  not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

FAITH is the very thing that is quintessential in our becoming transformed into NEW CREATIONS and it is also the very attribute that is absolutely necessary in our lives in order for us to please our heavenly Father, just as tells us, “And it is impossible to please God without FAITH.”

If FAITH is necessary for our becoming children of God and it also absolutely imperative in our daily walk with God, then I believe that this year, more than ever, must be a year of FAITH building for the body of Christ.

I believe that we need to step out in FAITH this new year, as we have never done so before, both individually, as well as a family! I believe that the time has come, which will require us to move in accordance with the FAITH that is necessary for the kingdom of God to advance and in doing so, we will witness the spiritual dead being raised and lives being transformed into NEW CREATIONS, on a regular basis! I believe, according to the Word of God, that signs and wonders and miracles will follow us, as our FAITH and belief in Jesus grows!

There is a need, now more than ever, in the history of this nation, for truth of the gospel message to be taught with zeal and accuracy and in its entirety, as we step out in FAITH and boldly share the TRUTH of the gospel message!

Paul said almost 2,000 years ago to his beloved spiritual son, Timothy, that there would eventually exist a spiritual drought in the world, he said, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

We are at that point and time, as there is a spiritual drought in this land. Jesus told us that springs of living waters would flow from the hearts of those who came to Him and drink; to those who are spiritually thirsty and longing for the TRUTH.

When the people no longer desire the truth of the gospel message, but would rather hear an altered version of that message, then there exists a spiritual drought, because the living water that Jesus offered comes only from a hunger and thirst for the TRUTH and without the TRUTH going forth and lives being transformed, these “springs of LIVING WATERS” are not flowing and thus the drought continues!

This reminds me of another time and place, as recorded in the Bible, of an actual, physical drought that took place. One that happened because God had said that it would happen, as He spoke through His servant, the prophet Elijah.

Elijah came onto the scene in and delivered the following message to the evil King Ahab, he said, “As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives—the God I serve—there will be no dew or rain during the next few years until I give the word!”

Let me say, pause here for a second and make note of something about the prophet Elijah, in order to make a point for you and I, as we move into this new year.

The great and mighty prophet Elijah, was a NOBODY, before he stepped out in faith and followed the commands of God in his life.

There is no genealogy listed about who Elijah was and of what great blood line he came from.

There is no mentioning about Elijah being trained up by some other great prophet, or school pf prophets and of his past experiences in walking in boldness with the Lord God, prior to .

This is all that we know about this obscure man of God, and who he was, as we find in ,where it reads, “Now Elijah, who was from Tishbe in Gilead”. That’s it, that’s all that we know about him, is that he was a Tishbite from Gilead!

And the reason that I point this out to you, is simply for this reason. Most anyone who has any knowledge of the Bible, knows about, or has heard of the great prophet Elijah. And yet, this mighty man of God, who called down fire of God from heaven and changed the course of an entire nation, was basically, an average Joe; a nobody, whom God called to follow Him!

That’s you and I! We are seemingly nobodies who emerged onto the scene, onto the pages of history, because we have been called out by the Lord God and filled with His fire from heaven and then sent out into the land, to walk in FAITH and to declare His message to the nation around us!

As Solomon said, “there is nothing new under the sun” and so it goes today. God spoke, you heard and listened and answered the call and now here we are today.

The only difference between who you are now and who you were when you heard the call of God, by His gospel Message, is that if you TRULY answered that call, then God has opened you up and performed a radical heart transplant on you. He ripped out your old heart of stone, full of shame and unforgiveness and darkness and He replaced it with a new heart of flesh.

Then, He poured His Holy Spirit inside of you and instantly, you became the NEW YOU and the old you, died, right then and there! No NEW YEAR resolutions, no self-help books, no counseling sessions, no recovery programs........BAM…instantly you were changed into a NEW CREATION!

And it will happen again, to those who are looking and awaiting the return of our Lord and Savior. You will again and for all times, be radically, instantly changed, as Paul mentions in , where he reminds us,

1 Corinthians 15:51–52 ESV

51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

If we can understand that we are NEW CREATIONS here on earth, well, you ain’t seen nothing compared to what is going to happen to us, as we take on a NEW GLORIFIED body for all eternity!

BUT, you and I MUST walk in FAITH and BELIEF in the Lord while we are here and serve Him with our lives, until that time comes.

And so, we are greater than even the prophet Elijah, because he did all that he did for the Lord God, without ever having been filled with God’s Holy Spirit! If you are a NEW man/woman in Christ, then you have most definitely been filled with His Holy Spirit, to empower you and guide you!

Jesus, Himself said in ,

Matthew 11:11 NLT

11 “I tell you the truth, of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least person in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he is!

Jesus said this because of what He was about to for us on the cross and His because of His resurrection, which gives us the right to become NEW CREATIONS, filled with His Holy Spirit, which was something that even John the Baptist, knew nothing of.

Back to Elijah though and to the passage in . Elijah stood before the evil King Ahab and told him that there was going to be a drought in the land, until he said otherwise.

You know, you have to be pretty bold to stand before the leader of a nation and pronounce judgement on him and his people, knowing that it could cost you your very life!

Elijah believed enough in the Lord God, to know that God was backing him up and that even the ruler of an entire nation, could not harm a single hair on his head, as long as God’s hand of protection was upon him!

As the Bible reminds us, “If God is for us, who can ever be against us?”

And if you go on and read through and into chapter 18, you will how God supernaturally provided for Elijah during the drought and even used Elijah’s faith in God, to supernaturally provide for a mother and her child.

And in chapter 18, we find the amazing showdown that took place between Elijah and King Ahab and the nation of Israel and the 850 false prophets of Baal and Asherah, on Mount Carmel.

Think about that, in the natural, it looked as if Elijah stood on that mountain, all alone against the king and 850 of his 850 prophets, as well as the rest of the nation.

However, in the supernatural, standing beside Elijah, was the God of creation, Yahweh, Himself!

And when you and I stand in FAITH for God and speak out the TRUTH to the world around us, the God of creation is not only beside you, but in you and protecting you, so that not even a hair on your head can be harmed, if God doesn’t allow it to happen! WE ARE NEVER ALONE! (Come on church and say that with me, “I am never alone!”)

“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear NO EVIL” For GOD is with me. His rod and staff, they comfort me!

So, right after Elijah calls down the fire from heaven, and kills the prophets of Baal, he then turns to King Ahab and says, “Go get something to eat and drink, for I hear a mighty rainstorm coming!”

Did you catch that church? Why did Elijah say that there was a mighty rainstorm coming?

Did her see the clouds on the horizon? NO!

Did he see lightning flashing off in the distance and did he hear the distant sounds of thunder rumbling? NO!

Did he smell rain in the air and know that it was near? NO!

The reason that Elijah said what he said, was because he stepped out in FAITH and believed in God and His power!

That’s what FAITH is. It is moving and believing that something is going to happen, even when you see NO evidence of it.

Because your FAITH in God, becomes your evidence. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

When you step out in FAITH and declare that something is going to happen, your FAITH becomes the guarantee of that thing happening; your FAITH is all of the evidence that you will ever need!

I don’t have to see the doctor’s reports to prove to me that I am healed, because my FAITH in God is my evidence that it has already happened!

I don’t need an economist to bring out graphs and charts and show me that the economy of the country is improving, because my FAITH proves to me that the economy of the kingdom is already supplying for me!

In fact, when it comes to my provisions and my needs here on earth, my FAITH tells me “My God will supply every one of my needs, according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus!”

Stop looking for the surveyors to come and prove to you that the mountain that you have spoken to has moved an inch over the past decade! Speak to that mountain, as a NEW CREATION in Christ Jesus, in FAITH and BELIEF and tell it get out of the way and then go on, as your FAITH is the guarantee that it has already happened!

We’ve wasted too much time in our lives staring at the mountains, the obstacles that the enemy puts before us to hinder us and derail us, instead of speaking to them and then INSTANTLY moving forward and never looking back!

The American writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, “We live by faith or we do not live at all. Either we venture or we vegetate. If we venture, we do so by faith simply because we cannot know the end of anything at its beginning. We risk marriage or we stay single. We prepare for a profession by faith or we give up before we start. By faith we move mountains of opposition or we are stopped by molehills.”

Listen to me church, this year MUST be different than any other year in the history of Cumberland County and in the history of the body of Christ in this city and in this county! Let’s make the declaration that this year, we are going to step out in FAITH and take the gospel message to this area, as see lives being transformed!

The Bible says, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

In other words, our FAITH is directly related to our hearing the Word.

The problem with too many people, is that you are hearing too many other voices: Snapchat, Instagram, FaceBook, Twitter and all of the news networks!

Let’s make this year, the year that we stop seeking Facebook for input into our lives and start seeking His Face through the Book for our lives and watch our FAITH build!

God’s Word tells us, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to his own glory and excellence.”

Did it say through the knowledge of Betty Sue and her daily posts on social media? NO!

Did it say according to the knowledge of your sports idol, or your favorite musician, or your next door neighbor? NO!

It says through the knowledge of Him who called us and made us into a NEW PEOPLE, for His glory and His His excellence!

Let’s stop living according to what the world tells us, which requires NO FAITH and start living according to the Word of God and His will, which is living by FAITH!

“For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

Stop looking at your natural environment for answers to your problems and start believing in your supernatural environment and walking in freedom from those problems!

I read something the other day that said, “Certain beliefs ought to disqualify a person for certain jobs. For example, a vegetarian probably shouldn’t be the lead chef at a steakhouse. A pacifist wouldn’t make a good general. And people who DO NOT WALK BY FAITH, are not the most qualified to call themselves followers of the Christ!”

says,

Colossians 2:6–7 ESV

6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Let’s move forward into this new year, this new season, as NEW CREATIONS in the Lord and let’s begin to grow in our FAITH!

Let’s decree that 2020 is going to be the year that we WALK BY FAITH and call this year, the year of SUPERNATURAL FAITH for our church body, amen?!