Effective Faith
Notes
Transcript
Now here’s a joke that has NOTHING to do with the message tonight: There was once a man who stopped by a roadside stand that had a sign that said, “Lobster Tails $2”. So the man handed the stand owner $2 and the owner says, “once upon a time there was this lobster...”.
Tonight we sang the good old hymn, “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus”. This has always been a favorite of mine because it reminds me of the foundation of our faith.
Faith in what Christ accomplished on the cross is our only hope for a relationship with God. Christ became the sacrifice for us. What an amazing thought that we can be made white as snow.
The last two times I have spoken on Wednesday I have been talking about Faith. First we spoke about Acts 4 which tells us of the time that Peter and John had courageous faith to stand up and preach the Gospel in the face of prison and death. Second we looked at Acts 12:5 were we studied the earnest faith of the Christians praying that Peter would be released from Jail yet again!
Tonight we are going to talk about Effective Faith. The kind of faith that is successful in producing a result. We can have Courageous Faith, Earnest Faith, but we must be Effective in our faith if we are going to impact this world.
As you probably know, Kristen and I attended Oral Roberts University. It was a great blessing because before I went I didn’t really have any understanding about the healing power of God. Well, as you may or may not know, ORU was founding by Oral Roberts who was a preacher who decided one day that he believed what the Bible said about healing.
He started preaching about the power of the living God and how if you have faith, God could heal you. Physically and spiritually. Now Oral Roberts is famous for being a TV evangelist in the seventies, but to me what is amazing is the tent revivals they held in the mid 1950’s.
In these tent revivals, thousands of people would drive for miles and miles to come believing that they would be healed.
Guess what would happen to these people? They would be healed! It was amazing that when they got together worshiped the Lord something in the atmosphere would change and people would be healed.
One thing Oral Roberts did was document these healings and follow up with the people after they were healed in the tent. Let’s watch one of my favorite videos:
One of my favorite parts of the video is when the little boy was asked what he thought, he responded “I think I’m healed”.
Think about this child and mother.
Courageous Faith - If you were born with a disability would you have the courage to walk into a tent with 5000 people watching hoping you could be healed?
Earnest Faith - Oral Roberts asked, “Do you sincerely believe God can Heal your child?” She said yes because the Bible says He can heal the afflicted. He asked the little boy, “Do you have FAITH in the Lord” he said Yes.
Effective Faith - They didn’t just walk away, they acted in Faith…they prayed, they believed, and God did something miraculous!
Let’s talk about these three ideas concerning Effective Faith tonight.
Personally, I think that was the point of the healing because his faith in Christ was activated. Before that moment he was hoping, but when he said it out loud it was a proclamation of faith.
I sincerely believe that we are serve a living God who can do anything if we are willing to pray, believe, and put our faith into action.
Here’s our first point...
There is Power in Prayer
There is Power in Prayer
If you look at Acts 9 you’ll find an interesting situation. Peter was traveling all over preaching and teaching. The church was growing and many people would working with Peter. There was one woman mentioned at the end of the Chapter. Her name was Tabitha. The Bible says she was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor.
Well, she got sick and died. They sent word to Peter to come. Well, Peter didn’t come to mourn, he came with Faith in Action.
40 But Peter asked them all to leave the room; then he knelt and prayed. Turning to the body he said, “Get up, Tabitha.” And she opened her eyes! When she saw Peter, she sat up!
We read about Jesus bring people back from the dead, but this is the first time we see one of His disciples praying for someone who had already passed away.
I bring this scripture up because there’s something critical for us to see, there’s nothing amazing about Peter in this situation. Peter did not heal this woman.
All Peter did was pray. God healed her.
No one had been raised from the dead in the early church so far as the records of Acts declare, but the faith of the believers was so great they expected the Lord to use Peter to resurrect Tabitha.
Faith in action caused them to pray. Faith did not cause the healing. Faith caused them to PRAY.
This is really important because some people have been told they just didn’t have enough faith to be healed. Faith is praying. Faith is giving the situation to God. Faith is acknowledging it’s outside our control.
The power we get in pray is that we are giving it to God. We are released to allow Him to move on our behalf. God can do everything when we can do nothing.
Too many times we try to hold on to what we can when we really need to quiet ourselves in the presence of the Lord and pray His will be done.
Giving up our power in the situation is actually what releases the Power of God in the situation!
You know what is interesting about the video of Oral Roberts that’s on YouTube? The comments below the video! One in particular caught my eye. Someone was praying for the same anointing of Oral Roberts.
Immediately when I read that comment I thought, that poor person doesn’t get it at all. You see it wasn’t the anointing of Oral Roberts, it was the prayer in faith to God.
When we pray we must realize these are not just empty words we are saying. We are speaking to God himself. Who can and does answer those prayers according to His will.
To have effective faith we must pray. Paul reminds believers to always pray!
17 pray without ceasing,
It should be our first reaction to every situation. If we desire the Power of God then we must understand there is power in prayer.
If we are going to have effective faith we must pray and we must
Believe All things are Possible with God
Believe All things are Possible with God
We are all human in this room. Sometimes we come up to situations that just seem impossible. We don’t see a way for anything to change. Sometimes we might even ask, “What’s the point of praying?”. If we get to that point we aren’t able to have effective faith because we don’t believe in the impossible. In the very least we don’t know how we are supposed to operate.
There was a fella how bought a super amazing computer. It had all the bells and whistles. I mean like 5 Terabytes of Hard drive, 16 Gigs of memory, a Retina Screen, plus it was a cool aluminum body.
Well, he took the computer back to the store and took it to customer service. They said, “Wow what a nice computer!, what else could you possibly need?” The guy looked at them and said, “Actually, I just need help, I don’t know how to turn it on!”
That’s a funny little joke, but it really is a good picture of us in our relationship to Christ. We might understand that we are connected to the source of all life. That Christ in us is greater than any enemy we can face, but we aren’t walking in victory because we don’t know where the power button is!
Imagine that you are Peter for a minute. You walk into the room and see this lady laying on the bed.
37 About this time she became ill and died. Her body was washed for burial and laid in an upstairs room.
This meant everyone knew she was dead, they started the process of burial. Peter should have had no hope for her life. No one besides Jesus had ever prayed for someone who had died before and seen them come back to life.
Put yourself in Peter’s shoes. What would you have done? I probably would have prayed thanks to God for her life and faithful service. I would have prayed for her friends and family. But I’ve got to say, praying that she would come back to life would not have been high on my list.
But Peter was operating in the realm of the impossible. He was daily seeing God do things that were miraculous. He had been with Jesus and seen what was possible in faith.
He believed. He believed that God could do more than he could do.
That video we watched I could see in the face of the mother and son that they truly believed that God could do the impossible. They trusted God.
If we are going to have effective faith we can’t stop with prayer. It’s powerful, but only if you believe. All of us can say empty words, but words of faith will always require us to believe what we are saying.
Jesus said something that clearly illustrates this point:
22 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God.
23 I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart.
24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.
What is Jesus saying to us? Can we really start telling mountains to move?
Jesus said in a hyperbole that whoever says to this mountain, the Mount of Olives He was standing on when He was speaking, representing an immovable obstacle, Go, throw yourself into the sea, it will be done for him by God. The one condition is belief, unwavering trust in God, that the petition will be granted.
You see, believing prayer taps God’s power to accomplish the humanly impossible, Jesus told His disciples to believe that they have already received whatever they request in prayer. Faith accepts it as good as done even though the actual answer is still future.
Now, I must tell you that Jesus did say this to them after telling them that these prayers must be in harmony with God’s will.
God is always ready to respond to obedient believers’ prayers, and they can petition Him knowing that no situation or difficulty is impossible for Him.
We must believe that God can do the impossible. We must start praying God’s will over our situation and start believing He will answer the prayers.
Peter walked into an impossible situation and chose to pray, believe, and allow God to work.
To have effective faith we must pray, believe, and my final point is that...
We must Allow God to work
We must Allow God to work
40 But Peter asked them all to leave the room; then he knelt and prayed. Turning to the body he said, “Get up, Tabitha.” And she opened her eyes! When she saw Peter, she sat up!
Get up, Tabitha! and she opened her eyes. Amazing! What a miracle.
In my opinion, when He said to Get up, he was allowing for the miraculous. If he had only prayed and believed would the miracle have happened? Possibly, but I believe there is a lesson here for us today. We have to allow for God to work.
Say you’re praying and believing for a job, but you never leave your home…it would be pretty miraculous if an employer came knocking on your door!
I think we must put action behind our faith if it’s going to be effective.
The video we watched showed Effective Faith. We saw the prayer, the know they believed, but until he put the child on the ground we didn’t know if he was healed. When the child took that first step they were allowing God to work.
I really want to give some homework. I want us to think about things we are praying and believing for in our lives and then ask God how we need to act that will allow Him to work. In our relationships…our family…our church…our service…our education…etc.
I think about those early believers praying in the upper room. The believed that the Holy Spirit had come when the rushing wind and fire came. They went out in the streets and allowed God to do the impossible. They acted so that God through them could change the world.
The same Holy Spirit that was gifted to the apostles that day is living inside of me and gives me the strength and authority needed to stand up in faith to claim the things God has already said He wants to provide!
On that day Peter preached a message to a group of people. When he activated his faith over 3,000 people came to the saving knowledge of Christ.
From a tiny upper room where they were hiding praying to the first mega church!
Listen to me today. God is bigger than the issue you are facing.
You might be in pain in your body, God is bigger.
Your money might be funny, God is bigger.
Your family isn’t saved, God is bigger.
You don’t feel you can face another day, God is bigger.
You’re afraid to pray for someone at work, God is bigger.
Your boss doesn’t like you, God is bigger.
We must be determined to have effective faith. We can do that through prayer, believing, and allowing God to work in our lives.
Miracles are possible because the greatest miracle of all happened when Christ shed His blood on Calvary. We need to remember that each and every day. If we keep that in our hearts and minds then when we pray, believe we can know that if God saved us by that blood then all things are possible.
Oh how precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.
I love this verse of the hymn:
Now by this I’ll overcome—
Nothing but the blood of Jesus,
Now by this I’ll reach my home—
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
I hope you are encouraged. If you need prayer tonight, I want to pray for you, right here and right now. You can come to the front and Kristen and I will lay hands on you in faith, believing that God can do the impossible in your situation.