All right.
Good morning, Miss Debbie.
Good morning.
It's been a while since we've done one of these.
It's been a long time.
Christmas throws us off track, doesn't it?
It does.
Christmas and New Year's and yes.
We're always glad when Christmas is over because it's, you know, you got all these stress points,
increased activity, going to Christmas events, having to shop for people, which you know
how that is.
I do.
What am I going to buy this person that they don't really want but that I have to go through
the effort of purchasing anyways, you know, and traveling.
We traveled to Tulsa, which is an eight and a half hour drive.
So I'm glad it's over with.
It was fun, but I'm glad it's over with.
How was your Christmas?
It was good.
Like you, we were very busy, but we have a nine month old granddaughter and I told my
son we should have just given her wrapping paper and the box.
She loved that just as much.
Have you noticed how stressed little kids get during Christmas opening presents?
Oh, it's overwhelming.
Yeah.
And so they'll get to a point where they're so stressed they start acting out and screaming
and you know, it's like poor kids.
They're tortured with Christmas presents.
What a world.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad that you gave me a heads up on the topic today and I'll let you introduce
the topic.
Okay.
And I don't recall us talking about this before, but this is information that needs, we need
to do reps in this information because it's very important to the Christian life, to the
believer.
And so I'll let you introduce the topic today.
Okay.
We'll dive in.
Okay.
Well, basically, you've started a new series titled the Jesus episodes and we're going
to start in the book of Mark, but first we went to Acts 10, which 34 through 48, which
is the withering of the tree.
Is that right?
Acts 10?
No.
That's where Peter is basically giving a summary of the gospel that he preached.
Okay.
All right.
And many scholars see that as, since Mark is based upon the preaching of Peter, they
see that as like a concise summary of the gospel of Mark.
Okay.
So we went there first and then we went to Mark 11, 22 through 24, which if I can just
read that, and this is from the NIV, have faith in God.
Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, go throw yourself into
the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it
will be done for him.
Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received
it and it will be yours.
And you talked about we need to not only memorize that, but practice it, which came to my question
of how do we have that kind of faith and how do we use it in our lives and in the lives
of others?
And the second part of that was what do we do when a prayer we've asked for was not answered?
How does that fit into this?
So let me ask you, because you've been studying this in your class, right?
We have.
So how would you answer that question?
On growing faith?
Okay.
So we have been doing the Overcomer book.
And as you said, we've been in it a while, but we like to read together instead of just
coming in and then we discuss along the way.
So it takes us a little longer.
But we are now to the shield of faith.
And the first part of the book talked about what is faith.
And of course, Dr. David Jeremiah gives some, he gives some real life examples of what faith
can look like or should look like.
And one was a legally blind Olympic runner.
And she won medals.
And they said how, her interviewer said, how can you run toward a finish line that you
can't even see?
And she said, I can't see it, but I know it's there.
Isn't that a great faith story though?
That is so good.
That is such a great faith story.
Yeah.
But he talked about faith being action and that you've got to put it into action.
And then we got to the part where how do we grow our faith?
And we're actually reading through that now.
But I can tell you, there's five ways.
And one is we need preaching.
And we read through that one just recently and he said, you have got to be hearing sermons,
attending sermons and listening to the word of God being interpreted.
And that was the first one.
And you know, there's a, the Bible verse is where two or three are gathered.
There I am in the midst of them.
So God's presence is always with you.
But his presence, he's present in a unique way in the gathered body of Christ.
And of course our definition of the church is a gathering of believers where the pure
word of God is preached and the sacraments are duly administered.
So there is a grace available only through the gathered body of Christ that is very important.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
And the next one is, we all kind of laughed about this one a little bit, the next two,
but we need problems.
I know, right?
And he talked about how in those moments is when we draw nearer to God, when we need him.
And we exercise our muscles in a different way, our spiritual muscles.
I like to think of faith like a spiritual muscle, your most important spiritual muscle.
And without resistance, the muscle doesn't get stronger.
Exactly.
Everything's going smoothly.
Unfortunately, we're probably not growing in those times, but as much as when a problem
comes along.
And then the third one was we need people.
And it talked a lot about how we need each other, how what you're saying, that body of
Christ, even just the two or three gathered to pray, how that makes a difference.
And for the shield of faith, he used an example of not only did they use their shield individually
to thwart the fiery darts of Satan, but they would start putting their shields together
and forming a wall.
That's like the Roman soldiers used to do in battle.
That's how they were so successful.
Yeah, absolutely.
He used the John Wesley example of the Moruvians when he was on a boat with them.
And that this was like the fourth storm and every storm was worse than the one before
it.
And while he was fretting and making out his will, not really, but you know, he was terrified
of death.
Yes, he was afraid of death.
And the Moravians were the men, women and the children were on the stern of the ship
singing hymns.
And Wesley was ashamed because the little kids aren't scared, but he is.
He was.
He absolutely was.
And he said to them when it was over, were you not afraid?
And they said no.
And he said, were your women and children not afraid?
And they said no.
And he went, wow, I want that.
Yeah, I want that.
And of course, I think Peter Bowler is the guy's name.
He confronts Wesley after Wesley's interrogate him about that.
And Peter Bowler goes, brother, are you saved?
And Wesley goes, I think I'm saved.
And Peter, do you know it?
I think I know, you know, and Wesley says, I assured him that I was saved, but on the
inside I wasn't so sure.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
You know, I think that's the place we all want to be.
We want to be when when we talked about this verse, when you preached about it, that's
the place I want to be.
Yeah, I want to be there.
So we need people.
Then we need to purpose.
He talked a lot.
Dr. Jeremiah did about how do you find what you were sent here to do if you're not in
that close relationship, trusting the Lord?
Do I take he talked about himself?
He had opportunities that came up.
Well, which one did he take?
Should he take?
Yep.
And he said, you you don't know that you've got to pray to that you're in the right place
where God wants you to be so that you are fulfilling the work he wanted you to do.
OK, so you talked about using faith to solve problems.
I called that exercising our faith or praying in a defensive way.
If you want to win a championship, you've got to play both offense and defense.
OK, and so what you described there was you have to be exercising your faith to play offense.
What positive thing am I going to use my faith to lay hold of both for myself and the kingdom?
Yeah, I like that.
That's a great example.
And then the last one is you need perspective.
And one of the verses he gave was Luke 17, five through six, the faith of the mustard
seed, which reminded me a lot of this one, because it says if you have the faith of a
mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, yeah, go to go into the sea and it will go
into the sea.
And so he talked a lot about having the right perspective on it said, he said, when we see
God honoring faith at that level, we are we're encouraged to trust God for our needs as well.
And that was he had given an example of a general who needed to find water for these
troops.
They were in war.
They were stuck on this island.
Everyone he asked could not help him.
Fine.
He said, I prayed and I prayed and I prayed.
I had 80,000 men and we needed lots of water every day.
And finally, some some fellow soldiers came up to him and said, we think we found a well.
And he goes, we already looked there.
But they had.
And it provided just the amount they needed for every day.
And that's when he said that when we see God honoring faith that encourage us to trust him
more and more.
Amen.
Right.
Well, that was excellent.
Oh, good.
That was very good.
A very good outline.
You know, I've got I told you I'd done a teaching on this when I was in Amarillo, Texas, but
I still had the document on my computer.
And so I looked it up and went back through it.
And now the content that I have will probably wind up answering both of those questions
that you posed at the beginning.
But now I derived a lot of this content from a man named Kenneth Hagen.
Have you ever heard of Kenneth Hagen?
OK.
So he was kind of one of the founding fathers of what's known as the Word of Faith movement.
You never heard of that?
The prosperity gospel.
You've heard of the prosperity gospel.
I've heard that being reference to certain TV evangelists.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
You're on the right track.
So with any movement, you've got the original thing that God reveals.
And then as time goes on, it strays from what it originally was.
I would say that about the charismatic movement, the prosperity gospel kind of originally,
God does something and it's powerful.
And as time goes on, people take it sideways.
So this movement has a kind of a bad name, but that doesn't mean that everything they
taught was wrong.
God revealed some really important things to the people who started this movement.
And it's just like with any other group, if I teach something from the Roman Catholic
Church, for instance, that doesn't mean I believe everything that Roman Catholics believe.
And so if I teach something from someone from this movement, it doesn't mean I'm affirming
everything that they taught or stood for.
But this is right.
And this was the main thing that God revealed to these people was a heightened understanding
of what faith is and how to grow it.
And so I'm going to share some of their insights.
I've got a lot of Bible verses I want to use.
And so like I said, there's no time limit on this podcast.
If we go a little long, that's okay, because this is an important topic.
Faith is the most important tool we have been given.
So our salvation is established upon our, well, it's the grace of God, first of all.
It is by grace you have been saved through faith.
So this is the fundamental tool or ability that God has given to his church.
And so the Bible says without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Right?
And so if we do a little bit of a longer podcast, that's okay, because this topic really deserves
to have the light shined upon it.
So okay.
So Ross did a good job of preaching about faith and defining it.
This is going to be a little bit of a repeat of what he taught about.
At the end of the day, faith is grasping the unrealities of hope and bringing them into
the realm of reality.
So faith is the ability, the muscle by which we reach for the resources of the unseen realm
to manifest positive things, whether it's a solution to a problem or an advancement
of the kingdom, we're grasping supernatural resources to do that, which would be otherwise
impossible.
Okay.
In our own strength.
Okay.
In our salvation, our salvation would be impossible without the divine power of the Holy Spirit
working in the life of a believer.
So the key, the fundamental verse is Hebrews 11 one, faith is the substance of things hoped
for.
So hope is an important part of the equation.
The evidence of things not seen or not real.
We could say that another translation would be now faith means that we are confident of
what we hope for, convinced of what we do not see.
So at the end of the day, that starts with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Right.
And if that's possible, the virgin birth, the resurrection, if those things are possible
and real, anything is possible.
That's why Jesus says, if you say to that mountain, something that's like an exaggerated,
you know, never happened before, but that doesn't mean God can't do it.
It's dependent upon how much you believe it.
You know, okay.
Faith will say about itself, everything that the word says, faith in God is simply faith
in his word.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
So that is the key nutrient by which our faith is strengthened.
Now if you're lifting weights and you're wanting to build your muscle, okay.
If you want to get bigger, stronger biceps, you work your biceps.
Okay.
But that's only half the equation because if you exercise the muscle and tear it down
and break it down, if you don't eat enough protein, which is the key building block of
muscle, the muscle is not going to get stronger.
So working your faith is half the equation.
Feeding your faith on the word of God is the other half of the equation.
That's the most fundamental thing that you can say.
Okay.
Okay, so I'm going to read a testimony.
All right.
This was a testimony from Kenneth Hagen.
He says, I learned an important lesson on faith shortly after I was raised up from the
bed of affliction many years ago.
So a lot of people who functioned in this realm had major crises in their life that
God supernaturally solved and that launched their ministry.
That's true of Oral Roberts.
Oral Roberts had a major healing ministry.
It was because he was miraculously healed of, I believe, tuberculosis when he was a
young man, when he was going to die.
And so Kenneth Hagen was in a pretty dire physical situation as well whenever God raised
him up.
He says, after that, I needed work and since this was during the depression, work was not
easy to find.
I was able to get a job in a nursery helping pull up peach trees.
With another boy on the other side of the tree, together we would pull up these two
year old trees to fill orders that had come in.
This was really hard work, especially since I'd been bed fast for 16 months.
At this time, I'd only been up and running for a few months.
Every day, the number of workers would be less and less and each day someone would say
to me, well, I didn't think you'd make it today.
You know, two or three quit yesterday.
If it wasn't for the Lord, I wouldn't be here, I would answer, for you see, His strength
is my strength.
The Bible says the Lord is the strength of my life.
My life consists of the physical as well as the spiritual and the Lord is the strength
of my life, both in the spirit and in the natural.
If I had gone according to my feelings, I wouldn't have gotten out of bed.
I acted upon the word because I knew what faith was.
I never received any strength until I started work.
I think that's an important lesson.
He did it whether he felt like he was able or not, right?
And then because he acted on faith and not feelings, God provided him exactly what he
needed when he needed it.
Okay?
Yes.
Many people want to receive the strength and then believe that they've got it.
It doesn't work that way.
You have to believe first and then you will receive.
So I would pull myself out of bed each morning and go to work gaining strength as I went
along trusting in God's word.
Although I was the weakest and skinniest one among that group, I was the last one to stay
on the job.
And so there's a very practical good example of faith working in action.
Faith works whether you think it's going to work or not or whether you feel like it's
going to work or not.
You are acting upon the truth of God's word, not your feelings, not by sight.
And I think one of the points that's going to be made is a lot of times people don't
get their prayers answered because they give up too easy.
And they don't act according to those principles.
They'll pray a few times and it doesn't look like it's working.
So I guess God's not going to answer that prayer.
When God's looking down, it's like, well, I guess they didn't really want it that bad.
You know?
Yeah.
So let's talk about the difference between heart faith and head faith.
And a lot of this is really cross-fertilizing with what you shared from your teaching.
So John Wesley once said that the devil has given the church a substitute for faith, one
that looks and sounds so much like faith that few people can tell the difference.
This substitute he called mental assent.
Mental assent.
Many people read God's word and agree that it's true, but they are agreeing only with
their minds.
And that is not what gets the job done.
It is heart faith that receives from God.
The difference between head faith and heart faith is determined by what you put into practice.
So you read the verse from Mark 11, 22, and 23.
And Kenneth Hagin goes on to talk about the difference between speaking to your mountain
and speaking about your mountain.
Right?
So a lot of times when people have a problem, they'll go to God and they'll go into great
detail describing the problem.
But they don't ever get around to speaking to the problem.
Yeah.
Right?
Yes.
That was the perspective part I should have added to because they said your perspectives
on like the man needing the water.
It was on the water.
And every time everything was failing, failing, failing.
But he didn't stop praying because he knew God could find the answer he couldn't find.
So his perspective, although it was about the problem, it was focused on what God could
do, not what was not happening.
Exactly.
And that's a point that's going to continue to be made here.
Speaking about your mountain will magnify the problem.
The problem will begin to look bigger and bigger in your sight when that's what you're
focused on.
But speaking to your mountain keeps things in the proper perspective.
When you put God's word in your mouth, magnifying the answer above all else, speaking to the
mountain will cause it to move.
So that's good.
Here's a few more statements.
So Jesus says in Mark 23, which I referenced, he goes to heal the man's son and the man
says to Jesus, if you can heal my son, and Jesus says, excuse me, right?
If I can, God doesn't like that kind of weak expectation.
And I hear weak prayers offered all the time.
If you want your muscles to be strong, be strong.
Be aggressive.
Jesus doesn't like these kind of limping in requests.
If I can, well, God, if it's your will, I just pray that you'd help this person endure
their sickness.
They're limping in and then they're not really asking for a solution.
They're just describing the problem.
You don't have to wonder what God's will is.
It's God's will that you would be in health and prosper even as your soul prospers.
The Bible says what God's will is.
And so this isn't going to be a teaching on physical healing.
We could do that some other time.
But we don't have to wonder what God's will is.
By his stripes, you were healed.
God wants to heal people's physical problems.
Maybe he uses death to accomplish that.
But at the end of the day, if you're going to live, there isn't any example other than
the apostle Paul where the disciples pray and they're not expected to pray for healing.
If there's any sick among you, bring the elders of the church and they will anoint them with
oil and they will recover.
So let's pray that and not limp in with a weak prayer, weak set of expectations.
So according to this verse in the Bible, what you believe determines what you receive from
the Lord.
All things are possible for one who believes.
In other words, your believing affects your receiving.
Now, I've heard people say, I'm still reading from Kenneth Hagin's words, but the thing
I've been praying about hasn't come to pass yet.
Well, if you already have it, you wouldn't have to believe it.
Right?
True.
I mean, these are simple concepts, but for then you would know it.
You have to take the step of believing in order to come to the place of knowing.
Believing is a choice.
It's something you're going to choose to do.
Faith chooses to believe even if I don't have any evidence or data or I can't cite this,
that or the other.
So Charles Stanley, I like to listen to him.
And he, I don't remember the sermon, but I remember this part of it because he said,
wait for the big, you don't have to wait for the big, I'm at the end of my rope, prayer
request to God.
He said, ask now, where do you want me to be working?
Where do you want me to live?
He said, let him start showing you in the small things that he is aware and guiding
you and build your faith on those for when the big things come.
He said, so many times we say, I don't want to bother God with that.
I can figure that out.
Or, you know, I believe this is the thing without asking.
And he said, we make a mistake by not start including him in more in our lives earlier
before the big things come.
And I think that's good advice, you know.
And I also think we should keep kind of in our trajectory out on the horizon.
The more I believe God for, the more God is glorified in my life.
God wants us believing him for big and great things because that just brings more glory
to his name.
But you don't start there with your faith, you build up to it.
Build up.
Yeah.
Okay.
So how do we get faith?
I'm going to read a few Bible verses.
Okay.
Romans 10 eight.
But what does it say?
The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.
That is the word of faith that we proclaim.
Speaking the truths of scripture that we're believing God for is not an optional part
of the equation.
You can't just believe it.
You have to speak it.
Ephesians two eight.
For by grace you have been saved through faith and that is not your own doing.
It is the gift of God.
You don't have to wonder whether or not you have faith.
God freely gives faith to every person.
The question is, are you building your faith or are you destroying your faith?
Because you can do both.
Romans 12 three.
For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly
than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure
of faith that God has assigned.
So not everybody has the same faith, but everybody can improve and strengthen the faith that
they have.
So how do we grow faith?
Second Thessalonians one three.
We ought always give thanks to God for you brothers as it is right because your faith
is growing abundantly and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.
And those two things kind of go hand in hand.
You can have little faith when Peter's being invited to walk on the water and he steps
out and first he gets it right.
But then his focus gets on the problem rather than the solution.
There's that perspective.
That perspective thing.
And Jesus rebukes him.
Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?
One of the things that destroys our faith is doubt, fear and unbelief.
So it's just like there are things that we can eat that destroy our health.
There are things that we can eat and consume that strengthen and fortify our health.
Doubt fear and unbelief.
If those become our dominant mindset, it's just going to kill our faith.
You can have great faith and you can have little faith and you can have ruined faith.
Says in first Timothy one eighteen.
This charge I entrust you Timothy my child in accordance with the prophecies previously
made about you.
You know prophecy is intended to edify believers.
Edify means strengthen.
So have you ever been prophesied to Debbie?
About myself or about anything?
I don't think so.
You know when wonder why that is when Paul says that's the most important spiritual
gift out of all of them.
I don't know.
You mean would have I spoken or have received or either way either way.
I'm just trying to make a point here.
Okay.
If faith is so important and if prophecy is the most important gift we've been given to
strengthen and edify believers, why doesn't it ever happen?
I don't know the answer to this.
I just want to leave that hanging out there and point that out as being a problem.
So when I preached last Sunday, the supernatural operations and manifestations of the Holy
Spirit are not an optional part of the equation.
If we're going to see New Testament Christianity restored in our day and time.
You know and that's one of the things I'm talking about.
Okay.
Sorry that was a little bit of a side trail but not really.
Accordance with the prophecies previously made about you that by them the prophecies
you may wage the good warfare holding faith and a good conscience by rejecting this.
Rejecting what?
Faith?
Prophecy?
Both.
Okay.
Some have made a shipwreck of their faith.
Among them, Hymenaeus and Alexander whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn
not to blaspheme.
So Paul's talking to, he wrote to Timothy but is he saying that about Timothy to warn
him or is he saying it about one of the churches that have gone off?
Well like you say it's written to Timothy so yes he's using that as an example.
If you neglect and shrink back from what God has called you to then you're in danger of
the same fate as Hymenaeus and Alexander.
You know.
So I got a few just a few concluding statements here.
Okay well let me ask you a question about prophecy.
Because I always think of prophecy as something that is going to happen.
Is that correct?
Is that a wrong assumption on my part?
So we've got two different concepts.
You've got Old Testament prophets and prophecy.
Now that was a governmental office, the Old Testament prophet.
The prophet was to hold the king in check.
So there's a different level of accountability when you're both a religious and governmental
high-ranking officer.
If you're going to prophesy it better be right.
Now New Testament prophecy is different.
So the Bible says that prophecy is for the strengthening and edification of believers.
You're not holding kings accountable or in check or giving guidance for a nation.
So that's why that if a prophet prophesies and their prophecy doesn't come true they're
be put to death.
That's for the Old Testament prophet.
That's not what's going on in the New Testament.
It's a different thing.
And in the New Testament prophecy isn't so much a prediction of what's going to happen.
It's an invitation to participate in something that God wants to do.
And with any invitation if you don't hold up your end of the bargain or the proposal
then it's not going to happen.
And to the extent that you hold up your end of the bargain, it's like a covenant.
A covenant is you know God has the greater party has their responsibility and the lesser
party has their responsibility.
And to keep the covenant intact both parties have to do fulfill their obligations.
So I would say New Testament prophecy works more like that.
Okay so it's more it sounds like purpose.
Am I doing what God sent me here to do and how do I know what that is?
I mean how do I know is part of the prophecy me seeking God's direction for my life?
I'll give you an example.
I'll give you an example Debbie.
I've got a friend that I've developed a good friendship with.
He is a prophet and he's part of a church in Tulsa.
And you know his ministry has always kind of struggled to get off the ground.
And so he's always been by by vocational but it has a very powerful anointing and gifting
from God to preach and to prophesy you know strong man.
And so one of the things that I was encouraging him to look at was you know really what you
need is favor with man.
You've got favor with God.
You need favor with man to take your ministry to another level.
So I was encouraging him to look at joining the global Methodist Church because there
you're going to get plugged into a network that can help you develop a platform for your
ministry you know.
The very next day so this is a private phone conversation.
The very next day he's in church and one of the ladies in his church starts prophesying
to him.
I just believe that God is going to open the door to the denominations for you and he's
going to be like a forklift.
And I don't know this lady I've never met her.
So she's just speaking this out of her spirit to him basically confirming what I had told
him from the Lord you know.
And so that's just God helping someone gain clarity around what direction they might take
in the future.
Now if he doesn't follow through on that it's not going to happen.
You've got to you've got to put your faith into action in order for that to start unfolding
you know.
But absolutely you know there's a good example of how there's a purpose behind it to help
somebody get over the hump of perceived obstacles in their way.
The obstacle could be I'm not sure if that's what I'm supposed to do.
The obstacle could be I'm not sure that's possible.
You know whatever the obstacle is it's God energizing us to get over that hump and pursue
some objective.
You know do you feel like that's a big that's the Holy Spirit is very active in that piece
of it.
I mean it's that John Wesley called it a warmth.
Yeah.
Remember his inner witness.
Yeah.
He had a very warm feeling.
But there's something that seems to be inside you that is guiding you if you're listening
and willing and open.
And that's you know there are things like that.
The example that I just described to you that's the only possible explanation for that the
very next day.
You know.
Yes.
That has to come from the Holy Spirit working in the inner man you know.
And you know to be able to speak something like that faith is required.
You have to believe that you're hearing from God and then have the courage to take action
and take the risk.
It's often been said that faith is spelled R.I.S.K.
It's always going to require some risk on your part to give expression to it.
And so you have to be vulnerable.
You have to take the risk of looking stupid.
You have to take the risk of being completely off.
You have to take the risk of hearing and listening from God and speak on it anyway.
You know.
Very true.
I think you said a lot there.
Sometimes I think we or I would just say me.
I don't know what other people think about that.
But I would like him to you know write it out for me.
Yeah.
Here's what I want you to say.
Here's who's come.
And you don't always know that ahead.
I'm just thinking about not all the time but there have been a few occasions throughout
my Christian walk that somebody literally came back to me and said I couldn't forget
you saying this.
Well that's not me.
No.
And that's what I say to them.
Well then that wasn't me.
Right.
That was God using me to tell you something he needed you to hear verbally hear it verbally
and that is a species of prophecy.
OK.
So if the Bible describes it as a word of wisdom word of knowledge.
OK.
And so it can be a written down prophecy that you write down all in private and give to
someone that's still prophesying.
OK.
You know it doesn't have to be this energized speech that you give to somebody even though
those are pretty cool when they happen.
You know.
But you know that can manifest in a lot of different ways.
But the point is somebody's hearing from God and speaking to edify somebody else.
Yes.
And I've been on the receiving end of that too.
Where I've said to I have a friend of mine that she's like a mentor for me because she's
a very strong Christian.
I think of her as stronger than I am.
And she will say something to me and I will say why did you say that.
What made you say that.
Those words those words.
Because they it it it pricked you right.
You know and that's the thing prophetic words can energize us and they can prick us you
know because you know there's something God wants to do and we're afraid to confront it.
And it's a powerful thing.
Yes.
But it's nice to think of.
I never would have.
I don't know.
Didn't know what I would have called it but I wouldn't have called it prophecy because
I think of revelation and I think of you know it's something so huge.
Yes.
But it can actually be something very.
Absolutely.
And it usually is.
You know.
OK.
So.
OK.
Back to you.
Home.
We're taking it home here.
OK.
You can automatically grow as your understanding of God's word grows.
If your faith is not growing it's because your knowledge of God's word is not growing.
And of course you can grow in the knowledge of God but if you don't exercise it and put
it into practice you're kind of spinning your wheels.
You cannot grow or develop spiritually if you're not growing in faith.
Faith just like we talked about with prophecy faith is the raw ingredient of everything
that happens in the kingdom that pleases God.
F.F. Bosworth said most Christians feed their body three hot meals a day and their spirit
one cold snack a week.
Nuff said about that.
If you want if you want your faith to grow you have to start where you are.
You kind of already developed that idea for us right.
Start with small things and work your way up to bigger things.
You know that's the problem.
People want to use their faith to do big things when they have never used their faith to do
small things and it's they bite off more than they can chew.
That's why you'll always hear me praying about Hobbs and Lee County.
I don't have the faith to change this nation with my faith.
I'm going to exercise my faith where you know I can I feel like I can make a difference.
Where just because someone has fed more on God's word and has exercised his faith is
not a sign that God gave him more faith than someone else.
That's a lot of people make that mistake.
Well God just gave them or maybe they just developed it.
You know the person who fed on the word of God and has exercised his faith had the same
measure of faith to begin with as others had.
Now I don't agree with that.
So I'll just say that out right.
Some people according to what we read from Romans are given different measures of faith.
But when you exercise and strengthen your faith you are capable of believing God for
more and having more of an impact.
So again the three killers of faith doubt fear and unbelief.
That's what got Peter off track when he got his focus off of the word of God who is Jesus
and onto the problem.
When he got his focus off that's when fear doubt and unbelief crept in and he began to
sink right.
So those are the three things that will kill the faith that we've been given more than
anything else.
And so Kenneth Hagen finishes with this.
So when we're talking about something like healing for instance physical healing you've
got to deal with fear first.
In some cases before you get people healed you've got to deal with their fear and your
fear.
I'm afraid if I pray and nothing happens I'll look stupid.
That's what's going to retard most people from praying for healing.
And then even though they get healed as long as they're going to fear then fear will open
the door and the miracles will never be consummated.
This is the person you're praying about or you who are doing the praying.
I think it's both and.
You know Jesus goes to a certain town to work miracles and he says he could work no miracles
there because of their unbelief.
So their unbelief.
Wasn't that his hometown?
Yeah.
Yeah that's right.
So their unbelief was the part of the equation.
But then if you're praying in unbelief that's not going to work either.
Right.
And so a lot of times the person being prayed for they're afraid of their sickness.
They're afraid of dying.
And they can't get their focus off of what they're afraid of.
And that just like causes them to clinch up.
And you've got to open up to receive.
And then the person needs to pray with boldness because that will help the person overcome
their fear.
Your boldness is infectious if you pray with clarity with boldness and with strength it
will be infectious and it will help the other person to receive what you're praying and
believing for to overcome their fear.
You know.
Yes.
And.
I.
You're right.
It's hard to know let's say I was praying for you.
I've prayed for someone for their healing.
And you can there.
Right away you get a feeling.
That they that wasn't what they wanted you to say.
For whatever reason.
And it may be the fear.
So I.
I didn't I don't know what to do when.
I feel like I've not offended but maybe frightened.
The person that I was praying for.
You know that's an important thing to bring up here.
Because 90 percent of the time I'm just going to make up a number but a lot of the time
when you initiate prayer it's going to be awkward.
When you ask somebody to pray because they might be under the impression that.
Not so much they don't want you to pray but they don't want to be a burden they don't
want to be a bother.
I know this is awkward you don't have to make this awkward just to help me that kind of
a thing.
You've just got to push that aside.
OK.
And go for it.
And so hey I mean I want to look at you mind if I pray for you right now.
He's hardly ever going to say no.
And then whenever you go for it.
And you pray with strength and with clarity and with conviction.
It's just like.
After you've had a good hard workout you had to drag yourself to that gym to do it but
then after it's over with like I'm so glad I did that.
So 90 percent of the time it's going to be awkward.
Ninety five percent of the time you're going to have both people leaving.
I'm glad that happened.
And thank you.
For having the courage to really go for it.
That's good.
You know I guess one of the things that that's on that side of it.
How's the person going to receive it.
But on on my own personal side of it.
How do I know God's will.
Let's just say it is an illness for that person.
You know whether I pray for them out loud with them present or I'm praying for them
as part of you know my own prayer time.
I think you had mentioned earlier so the person could be healed.
The person could be healed through.
Medical means you know or they could be taken home.
I don't know that which one is God's way.
So I always pray for the healing.
Amen.
Is that.
Well and so here I don't see any example otherwise in scripture.
Every time people pray it's for healing.
It's for healing.
And so I'm always praying for healing and I always understand God can heal this person
how he wants to.
When he wants to.
If he wants to.
Right.
You know.
Yes.
But I don't have any other example of well if it's your will.
No the Bible all in the Bible prayers for healing are always prayers for healing.
Yeah.
That's what I.
That's what.
And then you've got two different ways that God's going to answer that he can do a miracle
where he can do something all of the sudden all at once and it's done.
He can do a healing which is different from a miracle.
That's where the person recovers their strength gradually over time.
And then he can.
Bring the person through the doorway of death and the next life which is where we're
completely free from all suffering.
In this life.
And that's an underestimated.
You know I would never advocate for suicide or taking your own life or anything like that.
But trying to prolong a miserable life is also probably a bad idea.
Artificially prolong miserable life.
Absolutely.
You know.
They.
I remember I had there was a girl who she knew she was going to die.
And she wanted me to pray for her to go ahead and go.
I mean they there was nothing.
I couldn't do it.
I don't I just couldn't.
I couldn't do it.
So I really let her down and I felt bad about that.
On the other hand I had.
Did she live or did she die.
She died.
Yeah she did.
Praise God.
Yeah.
And she she just she wanted to stop suffering.
Yeah.
And so she.
But I never.
I was so taken aback.
No one had ever asked me to pray for them to die.
Before.
Anyway.
Another time we there was a young woman who.
Needed to transplant.
And we had been praying with her.
And she we thought.
A donor appears out of you know.
Someone in her past but you know we were thanking God for the donor and they were setting her
up to to get that you know she's either got to have the transplant or she's her body won't
survive.
The last test that they do the donor.
Fails.
Everything else worked.
The blood work.
The all of that.
So she when she called to tell me that she said.
I thought this was it.
I thought God had answered our prayers and that we had gotten a donor and that everything
was going well.
She said.
Do you think he wants me to die.
So I said.
I don't know the will of God in this.
But whatever his will is we need to stay faithful to that.
I mean I I didn't know a good answer for that.
I don't know what his will.
You know that's tough.
Yeah.
And even the apostle Paul struggles with knowing the will of God.
You know he talks about praying three times that the Lord would take the thorn in his
flesh away.
Yes I was reading that as part of this.
Yeah.
And so that's about put that in the exception rather than the rule.
There are things that we just don't have an answer for or understand.
Right.
And you know you know what the Lord says to Paul.
He says no.
Because my power is made perfect in your weakness.
Right.
You know and.
You know most of us don't function at the level of the apostle Paul so we don't require
we got plenty of thorns in the flesh.
Yes.
So but there are things that are just.
You can't put a nice bow on an answer for people.
But that doesn't change the example that we have in scripture of how we are to approach
the problems of life on behalf of our brothers and sisters.
We pray for God to intervene.
We're going to pray for the healing.
Absolutely.
Well I will tell you the end of that story is.
She was on a list.
But the for the cadaver transplants and but there weren't cadavers coming in.
So she's near the top but she's not there.
They're just not coming in.
And so I told her I said why don't you check on that and see where you're at.
Because she's so down you know all of I thought all of this was going to happen.
And anyway so she called me in and I don't know the time frame between there but in a
week or so and and she said cadaver transplants are coming in and they told me that within
three months I should be they should have one for me.
It was just once again God intervening in an unexpected way.
It what looks like we thought was one way.
Well it wasn't.
It was and she's she did miraculously well.
She got her transplant.
She was where she should have been six to nine weeks.
She was out in three to four.
She she's just doing amazing.
So I would I would just say I think that's where why we hold back because we don't know
which of the three ways it's going.
Something is going to occur.
But having gone through that with someone now I would say don't hold back.
Don't hold back.
I'll close with this story because you that you telling that story triggered me a person
as a story of my own life.
I was young in ministry.
I was a campus pastor at West Texas A&M University and I remember I got this ten thousand dollar
bill from I think my newborn baby Emma's hernia surgery.
And at that time that was like a death blow to me and I'll never forget I threw a temper
tantrum.
I got I got mad at God and the whole time I was throwing that temper tantrum I could
feel the Holy Spirit in me saying calm down.
It's going to be OK.
I'm going to take care of this.
How how are you going to take care of this?
I want to be paying payments on this the rest of my life.
Is that how you're going to take care of this?
You know?
Yeah.
And so it wasn't a few days later in the same day.
Not only did I get a solution to my problem I got three different solutions to my problem.
Wow.
Because you know in that health care exchange I had called the health care company before
we had the surgery they assured me that it was covered under my insurance and then come
to find out it wasn't.
And so that was one of the things I was mad about.
But in that same day the board of our Wesley Foundation offered to pay that bill.
Oh wow.
I forgot there was another solution to the problem and then the health insurance company
called and said well we actually had that conversation recorded and you're right that
person did tell you and so we are going to cover it.
And of course God stayed in there.
See?
Yeah that's great.
You know that reminds me of one of the things I underlined here and I was thinking about
last night as well is always being grateful.
Whether it's turning out the way you wanted or not always being grateful.
Because there are things going on that we don't see or know about.
Because I'm praying for a person and I'm not seeing the change doesn't mean change isn't
a good thing.
Amen.
Right.
We walk by faith not by sight.
We keep our focus on what the word of God says not what our circumstances say.
We act upon faith and we refuse to be discouraged by our circumstances.
And so at the end of the day that's just the bottom line.
Absolutely and I'm like you have been in your same shoes been mad at God about something
but it comes back to what you just said.
Yeah.
Leave it in his hands.
God may not be early but keep the faith he's never too late.
You heard that song?
He may not be early but he keep the faith that he's never too late.
I've never heard that.
But I do say to him many times especially if I'm in fear of doubting your timing's
perfect.
Amen.
Your solution's perfect.
Amen.
So speak speak words of faith to your fear and it will disappear.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I'm a poet and didn't know it.
And you may have to do that a bunch.
You may have to do that a bunch depending on the circumstances.
Yes ma'am.
But he's working.
We don't always know but he's working.
All right.
I think.
So what would we walk away from this?
I think to follow Jesus you have to be willing to put in some work including growing your
own knowledge, trusting him even in the small things in your own life so that you can help
someone else who may not have made that step yet.
In growing the knowledge of God in conjunction with taking action and specifically the action
is going to require risk at some level on your part.
You have to exercise courage to overcome your fear of the risk and that's all a part of
the equation.
Yeah.
So that's good.
Yeah.
Good talk.
OK.
Well thank you.
Thank you for answering my questions and pulling it all together for me.
Well don't be such a stranger.
Yeah.
Hopefully I'm not going to catch every flu virus that comes along in this new year.
Although I think I've had several of them in over December and November but hopefully
I've helped build up some immunity.
Yeah.
So.
Amen.
Maybe I'll stay well.
All right.
Thank you Miss Debbie.
All right.
Bye bye.