The Power of Faith
I am concluding my Sermon Series on Faith today as we look together at what I am calling, “The Power of Faith” This is the final part of a FIVE part Series, so be sure to write to me for your free copy of today’s message;
… and I am believing God today to develop faith in your heart, in response to this message, so that like me, you will see the impossible made possible. I am believing God today for a miracle in your life. Even if you feel you have little faith, I will show you how even the smallest faith can achieve results. So stay with me, and ask God to build your faith in Him and in his awesome power as you listen.
Gods priority in your life and mine is that we might receive His Salvation offered to you in the person of His Son the Lord Jesus, that you might know his saving grace and his forgiving fullness. Jesus said “ask of me” not “ask from me” the implication being that we cannot know forgiveness until we know the one who forgives and we cannot have a healing without the healer.
Once we have experience his pardon personally for ourselves, Learning how to walk with Him by faith is the next highest priority.
We need to learn the secrets of walking and working by faith. Believing and Faith are not the same. You can believe that the food on your table will help you survive, believe it all day, yet go to bed hungry unless you eat it. You can believe it is good for you, and it will keep you alive, but if you won’t eat it, act on it you will starve to death. Its like that with Faith. Many people have faith but never use it. Food builds strength, and the Word of God builds Faith, and faith builds stronger faith.
If you turn with me to Marks Gospel and the 16th Chapter, you can read there that some of the women who were in the circle of Jesus friends and disciples, had bought sweet spices and oils and were coming to anoint the body of Jesus after his Crucifixion. This anointing was common place in that the spices and oils preserved the corpse from odour, and early decay. We read that they had bought and brought these spices to the graveside
early on that morning at the “rising of the sun.”
Here is faith. They fully intended that the precious and costly spices they had bought would be used on Jesus, otherwise why would they have bought them? Heading towards the garden tomb, there was a question, unanswered in their minds? They said “Who will roll the stone away?” What a question! The stone was “very great!” It was the intention of the Roman Guard that that stone should never be removed and that it would be sealed for ever the tomb and watched over in case of theft. Some rumours were circulating that the disciples or his loyal followers might try to steal the body and try to convince the people of his resurrection, so the tomb was firmly sealed, by the authorities of that day. It was reasonable then for these woman to ask, “who would roll the stone away?” Yet undeterred, they proceeded on their journey to His grave.
In their minds they had doubts, but the sun had clearly risen in their hearts. Intellectually in their minds there was no way possible to get in there, but these women were walking by faith- not by their five sense intellect. nor by sight.
They were walking on a higher level than ordinary folks.
Remember however that their faith was not in His Resurrection,
( they fully expected to be anointing a dead Body )
but their faith was in the Love they had for Jesus, and that nothing would get in the way of this their last loving memorial.
I have discovered that when you get a Revelation you can meet someone with Information who asks “What are you talking about?” Those who know Jesus personally, experientially, will speak unashamedly of His Love and of loving him, this they do by Revelation. But those who simply “know about” Jesus, from an Information view point, will know nothing of His love, and have no understanding of its depths. Once these women folk had followed His Words and found His Way, this anointing of him, was in their hearts and they believed it and acted on it, and their Faith discovered that the “stone was already rolled away!”
Most of us have been trained to sit down and wait for all the evidence before we buy the expensive oils and spices. “don’t count your chickens before they are hatched” we are told, but that’s not Faith. Faith calls the things that are not as though they were. Faith is the “substance of things hoped for, the Evidence of things not seen ” Heb 11:1. That’s the best definition of “faith” that there is.
No dictionary definition can match it.
Don’t try to figure everything out within your mind, and don’t try to see how God can answer your prayers, because the mind naturally drops down to Information or detail and the Devil is into details. The details will often dissolve the faith.
You have been designed to walk on a higher level. These woman received the Word and they believed the Word and when they acted on the Word, “the word was made flesh” – it did exactly what it said it would do. God has promised to stick by and stand by his word. The Word cannot fail. If you stick by the word, you will come back with a testimony. You are not waiting on God, whatever your need today, I can guarantee that God is waiting on you. You have to meet the criteria for God to work.
The reason why many see no results, is that they “doubt” the word of God, or doubt that it will work. Today I am confident in His word, and that this message from that word today will create and generate faith and build and develop faith in your life.
That you will hear the voice of God above the voice of the Preacher, and respond to that. If you do, then anything and everything is possible, its Gods promise.
The greatest Miracle I expect today, is your Salvation.
Yes, that is a miracle. “that Gods own Son should come to earth and die to save a wretch like me” – John Newton writes “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me” We are all wretched, poor, naked, blind, helpless and hopeless without God. We may live without him, but we dare not die without Him! For that reason, our Salvation is Simple, not complicated, not only for the intellectual, not only for the religious, not only for the affluent, but for all. “The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus a pardon receives”.
The apostle Paul sums up our Salvation most succinctly in Romans 10, verses 9 & 10. Here is what he writes:
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” In order to be freed from the Penalty, Power & Presence of Sin, one must be willing to do these two things, First, “confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus,” or the Lordship of Jesus. The Lordship of Jesus means that we must repent of our sin, turn from it, and surrender our lives to Jesus Control. We must make Jesus Lord. That’s the First thing. Are you willing to do that and to tell that, – confess that?
Secondly, we must “believe in our Hearts that God has
raised Him (Jesus) from the dead”.
There are two things implied in this statement. One, that the belief in the Resurrection is in the “heart” and not merely in the “head”… and Two, that the belief is in the Resurrection and not simply in the Death of Jesus. Of course we acknowledge that there could not have been a resurrection without there having first been a death, the one is implied in the other.
So then as Paul clearly says, if you are prepared today to accept Jesus as Lord, and believe in your Heart that he is the Resurrected Saviour, – you can be saved right now, today!
That miracle is yours, and I will pray with you and for you
at the close of this service. If you can accept this, then
“confidence” in that Word of God, will build Faith so that you can boldly speak out and tell what you have done, thus completing and confirming the Salvation that is yours.
Faith is a Spirit, and you cannot feel a spirit, so don’t look for feelings. 2 Cor 4:13, tells us that “we having the same spirit of faith … I believed and so I spoke, we too believe and so we speak”
shows us that the Spirit of Faith is developed by declaration.
I can tell when the Spirit of Faith is on someone because I can see it on their face. The spirit of fear which includes unbelief and doubt, one will also see on the faces of the fearful. The Spirit of Faith yields a happy countenance; you don’t see that worried look on the face. Satan, the Christian enemy controls all of humanity by different levels of fear, but we must realize that Fear too is a Spirit, and you cannot feel a spirit. The Five physical senses, cannot detect faith or fear, but God can give
you a way of detecting Faith thru confidence. Why is faith
so important? … because faith has no limits!
There is nothing that faith cannot accomplish. let me repeat that.
There is nothing that faith cannot accomplish.
Faith is like a “river of life” that flows from the Throne of God. Most of us are contented just to dip our “big toe” in the waters of faith, while God wants us to “plunge right in” and to enjoy everything that He can give us. In my spirit today I can see that River, flowing from the throne of God, flowing down through Banbridge. My faith sees the waters running through the streets of the town, out into the country roads, along the dual-carriageway. The river of God is full of water, and it flows every day! If you can believe it, then this will be the day of a “great out-pouring” for you – miracles are most certainly going to take place, there is a saving and a healing in that river for you, just step into it by faith. God is the God of the impossible. God is waiting on you to step up and step in.
Many of you have been waiting on God, for your healing, but you were healed when Jesus died on the Cross more than 2000 years ago. God is waiting on you to believe it. God forbid that you should allow anyone or anything to keep you from your miracle today. The Faith is Your Part, the Doing was Gods Part! Don’t confuse facts or feelings with truth, stand on the truth of God, not on the changing facts or feelings of life, and you’ll be amazed at what happens.
Now turn with me if you will to Luke Chapter 17
and verse 7. … Jesus here is speaking of Faith and he says
Lets look at Faith as a Servant
“But which of you, having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? 8 And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink”
Jesus is telling the disciples that Faith is a Servant, we do not serve Faith, but Faith serves us. Don’t take away his part. Faith is used to working, don’t let him get on the couch for a nap, but instead put Faith back to work and he’ll bring you into every promise that God has for you. The more work he does the stronger he gets. Once you build him up, build up the “muscle” of faith, it will take a shorter time to get results.
Jesus could work faith anytime and anyplace. The disciples of His day had little faith because the Devil was stealing their faith and giving them fear. We need to remember that Satan will try to talk us out of faith, because he knows that we can defeat him by faith. He is always trying to convince us that we are not yet ready to fight the good fight of faith. Faith always works. “The grass Withereth, the flower Fadeth, but the Word of God abides for ever”, and you can trust that Word always!
Faith is a Law that over-rides time. In John Chapter 11 …
at the raising of Lazarus, when Jesus delayed the call to help, Jesus said to his disciples “Lazarus has died” not as we read “Lazarus is dead” that’s not the Greek words. Jesus is Lord over time. Lazarus’s sister Martha complained “Lord, If you had been here earlier.” The time factor was uppermost in her mind but not in His. Jesus said “I am the resurrection.” That title I AM takes me away back to Moses days and Gods declaration concerning himself then. He was, and is the “I am” There is no time in God. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Jesus was telling Martha…
“I have come from the resurrection back in time, to this day, for there is no time in God“. Faith is a law, and Faith can become Governor of your world. Gods word and your faith
is in control, ignore other facts, -its not what the doctor says, not what your circumstances or your appearance look like but what
God says. People around you might think you are a little bit cuckoo, they may ridicule you, and your faith may seem weird
to most, but persist in speaking the Truth of Gods word,
over every other apparent fact or feeling of life.
Let me teach you this: Everything that God is going to do for you he has already done, because God does not live in “time“ but in “eternity“. If you don’t understand how time works and faiths dominion over it, it will be hard for you to get into miraculous and supernatural expectation. Everything God is going to do for us he has already done because he saw the end from the beginning. Results work out in this way, we first believe the thing is done, by faith, it is already there but it is there in a dimension not that the human natural eye can detect. It is in the spiritual realm but true Faith can see it done. Again Heb 11:1 says “Faith is the substance…and the evidence… of things not seen”
You can boldly declare it there, as you’ve got evidence of it.
The Bible says “…these signs shall follow them that believe… they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover”. Mark 16:18. Yet for most Christians, we simply lack the faith to do it? This is because we do not fully understand the authority, the power, and the position that is ours in Christ.
Today I am not going to pray for your salvation and healing, I am going to pray that God will give you faith to see that your salvation and healing are already a done deal. I will pray with you to thank Him for it.
By the authority that in mine in Christ Jesus, I bind the power of sickness or disease or infirmity in your life, and demand that it leave and leave now, and command that your physical body line up with the TRUTH of the word of God, that
“by His stripes you were healed” 1 Peter 2:24
Believing it is done is your job, the doing was, and is Gods job.
Remember that the Word does the work. In Isaiah 55:11 God promises: “My word shall not return to me void”. His word will make things happen. The Law of confession by Faith, always has a predictable outcome. Today I have the precious privilege of coming into your hearing to tell you that “Your future is not in other folks hands, but in your own, if you speak Faith, everything else must line up” Numb 23:19 says “God is not a man that he should lie”. Proverbs 18:21 says:
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”
In Mathews Gospel in Chapter 9, at verse 20, we read that;
“a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood for twelve years, came behind Jesus, and touched the hem of his garment:
21 For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment,
I shall be made whole” She did, and she was!
This woman who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had on them, and was no bettered but rather grew worse, heard about Jesus. Somehow or other she had heard of His supernatural healing power. She believed that the key to unlock her own healing, lay in Him. So, she purposed
within her heart to find him, and reach out to touch his garment
for she said “I shall be made whole“ That’s Faith.
NOW THIS FINAL WORD
I believe right now that many of you are truly longing to be made well, and believe that this is your day for a miracle, but you feel that you have only little faith, or not enough to get the job done. But the job is already done, you just have to believe it.
Supposing I wanted to buy a new suit. I see one that I like for £200 but I have only £100, can I get the suit? NO
But supposing I have a friend who will lend me or give me £100, then can I get the suit. YES, I can borrow from a friend.
Now supposing you have a sickness and just a little faith, can you be healed? and can you be healed today? YES
Jesus said “faith the size of a mustard seed can remove a mountain” Supposing if you believe that in your head, but not in your heart, can you be healed today? NO
But supposing that you have a friend, who has the Faith for your miracle in his heart, can you borrow on his faith…. YES
I have that faith in my heart for you right now.
Remember that you are ALREADY Healed, I am not going to pray for your healing, but for faith to believe that it is already yours in spite of any appearances or feelings to the contrary
and when we pray you can get up and do what you could
not do yesterday. Just do it by faith; you may feel a little strange at first, no baby is expert at his first steps, but persist, and fight for your faith. Keep speaking faith words, and walking faiths way. God has done the work already.
The same is true of your Salvation, it is already a “finished” work, done, and done perfectly.
“Finished Christ cried, when on Calvary he died,
So its done, done DONE!.”
Let us Pray together…
(Prayers are found in the PRAYERS section of this website)