Faith - New Life Conference

Hello. You guys all awake? You know, the more I thought about this, the more I thought, sometimes we make Christianity way too difficult. It's simple. It's easy. And the thing that makes it easy, I'm convinced, is the whole idea of faith. Let me give you an ad.

I'm listening to us talk downstairs and I'm thinking, you probably don't know who these people are, but everybody know who Charles Barkley is? If you're a basketball player, you know who he is. And he's got a great sense of humor. And one day he was on a TV program with another famous basketball player, Shaquille O'Neal. And they were arguing back and forth, almost a little heated.

And Charles said to Shaquille, all I know is that you're gonna go to a place warmer than where I'm going. What did he mean? It's real simple. You're gonna go to hell. It's hotter there than where I'm going. It's not so hot where I'm going. It's the simplification of a comment like that. You don't have to explain it.

The other thought I had was, in terms of acceptance, what's the world's thought about salvation? The thought is I'm going to this place called heaven, right? And this place called heaven, has a gate. And at the gate is going to be somebody, depending on the denomination you come from, a guy who's going to stand there with your record.

And he's going to say, let me look at your record. You've got 12 pluses and 10 negatives. I guess you're in. So you get an or you have 10 pluses and 12 negatives, you can't get in. What does that say to you? What does that tell you that the concept of who God is, it's based solely on your opinion, solely on the world's opinion. So when we come to talk about the think faith, by the way, voice is a little crackly. I've been in the hospital a few days and they stuck this thing down my throat so they could look at the back of my aorta. The only good part about that was I was asleep when they did it. Anyway, so today we're going to talk about principles of your faith, the principles of Christianity.

And you know what a principle is? It's the way a thing functions or operates, and it does that the same way every time. So Christianity is full of principles. And the principle of faith is one of the most important ones, and it functions and operates the same way every time. And so to build a sound, Biblical faith is a step at a time, a principle at the time.

So, the very first thing, the very first verse that sort of grabs me is the fact that in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, Paul writes, examine yourself whether you be in the faith. I don't think we realize how important God puts—the importance that God puts on the whole principle of faith. If I'm standing at the gates of heaven and I want to get in, and my question is, well, I wonder what is the thing—what is the thing that pleases God above every other thing? What is it? It's pretty simple.

Hebrews 11, 6, without faith, it's impossible to please Him. Well, if you start with that premise, all of a sudden faith becomes important because I do want to be pleasing to Him. And if He says the most important thing to please me is faith. God has always had that premise from Adam forward. He just wants you to believe him. And it's so simple, yet complicated.

Faith is, and faith is, a lot of the things we're gonna talk about this morning is what faith isn't. One of the things that is absolute principle of faith is that it has to be based solely on scriptural facts. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So, if there's anything important, first of important, of your Christian and my Christian life, one, I need to find out the facts, and two, I just need to believe them.

I gotta find out what they are. And the only source of that information is God's Word. It's not the denomination you belong to, it's not the TV program you watch, it's not the books in the Christian bookstore, it's God's Word alone. That's where the information is. So, it leads us to understand, probably important when I spend a little time with God's Word every single day, It doesn't have to be much, just a little.

But I need to be there. It's like eating. I was in the hospital and they forgot to feed me one day because they were starving me to death so they could give me a test. And then the test didn't happen and I had to ring the buzzer and say, I'm hungry. Oh yeah, you are hungry, aren't you? Well, spiritually, we really ring that bell and say to the Lord, I'm hungry. I need the food. The food is God's word.

So we could say that unless our faith is established upon sound scriptural facts, it really is no more than just conjecture or superstition or delusion or speculation or presumption. Facts really matter in the Christian life. So I thought I have only one slide. And it's because, and it's kind of complicated, so we'll keep it up there for a little bit. Someone says to you, what is this thing called faith? What is it?

Well, the answer is there are four answers. But the basic elements of what faith is is in this diagram, and there's the same diagram just expanded. All of you who are English teachers, I should have Vani up here teaching this. In every diagram in English, there is the subject matter, there's the verb, and there's a direct object.

In this case, faith is the subject, and we're talking about It's an essence verb, which means, what is faith? Well, faith is substance. Well, that's kind of complicated. What if we should modify the word and say that faith is reality, and then a modifier of the things being hoped for. So you have to ask yourself, what are the things? What are the things? Things are the things of God. And you find out about the things of God in his word.

And then you find out that the second part of this definition is faith is evidence or proof of things that are not seen. So what faith does is it takes the things of God, which are spiritual reality, and makes them real to us. We can see them spiritually and we begin to understand them. So faith is a very simple thing. When someone says, well, what's the definition of faith? I can say, well, faith is really understanding the substance of God and the evidence of proof of what he says. That's what faith is.

So it seems complicated in that sense, but in another sense, we were talking, Miles was talking earlier about salvation. When the salvation message comes to you, it's based on what? It's based on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross. The substance and the proof. He did die on the cross. He is the Son of God.

And I couldn't see that he did it for me, but then I do, because I believe him. He did that to satisfy his father, but he also did it for you and me. So when I say, okay, I believe you about that, I thank you, I enter into the principle of living by faith. I understand. that is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things that aren't seen. I can't tell by looking at you if you're saved or not. Can you tell by looking at me? You know, I'm a good guy. I took a shower this morning. How do you know I'm saved? You only know it because I believe it and I live in it now.

Faith, standing on the facts of God's Word, substantiates and gives evidence of the things not seen. If you're a Bible student, and I know most of you are, you do read things and you think, boy, I just don't, I see what he's saying, but I don't see the evidence. I'm not persuaded about that. But if I'm going to have faith in something, there are times that I take God at His word. He said it, and that's good enough for me. And at some point, the evidence will show up in my heart, and I'll know, and I will be persuaded, and I won't be moved off of what I know to be true.

So, and when you think about it, every single one of us started on that premise. Just like I said, you're born again, And our belief stood directly upon the eternal fact of the redeeming death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. I was one of those guys that raised his hand.

I was saved as an adult, 35 years old, and I thought I was the smartest guy in the world and I knew everything until these men started to tell this message to me. And they would say to me, why don't you believe this? And I would say, it sounds really good, but you're telling me that if I believe what you're saying, that God is going to save me for all eternity and there's nothing I can do about that after I'm saved. And they said, that's exactly what we're telling you.

And being 35 years of a major league sinner, it was pretty tough to think that I couldn't do something that would take me out of the salvation that was offered by God. But when I did finally believe, there was a confirmation. And from that day to this day, I recognize that whatever God tells me, whatever I read in his word has got to be good enough for me, whether I really understand it or not. If he said it, I believe it.

You take the faith by which you began, and it's the same faith by which you stand. 1 Corinthians 16, 13. It's also the same faith by which you walk. 2 Corinthians 5, 7. And it's the faith by which you live. Galatians 2, 20. I've been crucified with Christ. There's a fact that I learned. took God at His word about that. Nevertheless, I live. I'm still here. But the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. That's how the life goes. And so therefore, I walk by that only because He said so.

So since true faith is anchored upon spiritual facts, you can't base your faith on impressions. Now, I know none of you have ever done that. Oh, I got a feeling, or I think there's an impression about something's going to happen, You know, I've been practicing with the team, and I know I'm gonna score a touchdown. And God, if you let me score, I'll give you the credit. Is that faith?

No way, no way. George Mueller, an old Christian leader, he said, impressions have neither one thing nor the other to do with faith. Faith has to do with the word of God and it's not impressions, strong or weak, which will make the difference. We have to do with the written word and not ourselves or our impressions. It's difficult for somebody like me to stand up and people and say, look, if you were smart, you would spend time every day finding out what those facts are. Because the world isn't going to teach them to you. You're not going to hear them on the radio. You're certainly not going to see them on television. Every input into your awareness all day long will be anything other than the facts of God's Word.

So in your life, my recommendation is find out the facts. Find out what they are. and find them out every day because you'll find that they're very different than what you're used to. Another thing that faith isn't is a probability. It's a big temptation when it comes to exercising faith to often the attitude is it doesn't seem possible that so and so will ever be saved. The way things are going, I wonder if the Lord really loves me. You know, things aren't going too well. I wonder if the Lord really loves me.

But again, George Mueller wrote, many people are willing to believe regarding those things which seem probable to them. Faith has nothing to do with probabilities. The province of faith begins where probability sees and sight and sense and everything else fails. Appearances are not to be taken into account.

The question is whether God has spoken it in his word. That's it. That's the criteria. Did God say it? You think about how important that is. The very first temptation that we know of in the Bible is when Satan tempted Eve. What did he say to her? He asked her this really subtle question.

Did God really say? And I would guarantee that that voice shows up in your life every day. Did God really say? And if you don't know the answer, We're going to go, well, what did he say? But if you do know the answer, you can say, yeah, he did say that. He did say that.

And I'm resting my life on that. So, faith must be based upon certainty. Every spiritual fact that you find out in God's word is a certainty. It's not speculative. It's exactly the truth. There must be definite knowledge of God's purpose and will. And if without that, there can't be any really true faith. I might feel something is right, but is it biblical faith? Is it there? Faith is not a force that we exercise or a striving to believe that something shall be, thinking that if we believe it hard enough, it'll come to pass. It may be positive thinking, but it isn't biblical faith. Lots and lots of believers function on that premise.

I've prayed about it. I laugh sometimes. There's this Christian program that I sort of skimmed by, but I think it's on my way to another channel. It's called Saturation Prayer. You know what that means? If we get enough people praying for the same thing, then God will finally react. Oh, wait a minute. I can't find saturation prayer in God's Word. God has already laid out the agenda.

It's my job to find out what it is and rest in those facts. God said he's gonna save me for all eternity. Do I need to sweat about it? No, I don't. I just trust him about that. Faith needs the facts to rest upon. So you have to know your facts. And I'm not telling you all to become PhDs in biblical knowledge.

God wrote that, his word, to the common, everyday man. If you look at Paul talking about in the Corinthians, he says, look around in your church. There aren't a whole lot of really wealthy people, people with big degrees, people that come from good breeding. You're common, ordinary, walking around, human beings. And the Word of God is written for those people, you and me. Faith needs facts to rest upon. Presumption can take fancy instead of facts. But God in His Word reveals to us the facts with which faith has to deal with.

So as we walk and as we live, and I don't know if this is true of you, but I have been experienced in my life, not that experience verifies anything, but God, I've been exercised over something for some time and I've been praying about it. And then one day in his word, there it is. I think, oh wow, how did I, I guess I wasn't ready to see that. But there it was. Always look in God's word for the answer. J.B. Stoney said that real faith is always increased by opposition while false confidence is damaged and discouraged by it. Now that's another point that I'm gonna spend some time on here. We call them trials and sufferings. Your human makeup hates trials and hates suffering. You know, around here on Sunday morning, what do we pray for? So and so has a trial. So and so is suffering. So and so is this, so and so is that. And If you come to the understanding that, wait a minute, the sovereign, my father and father, who I have acceptance with, who is my father and child trains me, has brought a circumstance into my life.

Should I pray that he gets rid of it? Now, my buddy Nick back there says to me, I don't want you to pray for me anymore. Because every time you do, things get bad. Well, it isn't that. The point is that once you recognize that child training is part of the building up of your faith, you're much more willing to accept whatever that trial is because you know that there's an outcome. How do you know that? I found out about it in the Word. He says so.

And so, There can't be any steadfastness apart from the immovable facts. Peter said that the trials of your faith, being much more precious than that of gold that perishes, though it be tried by fire, might be found under the praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. What have you ever learned in your life that didn't take some sweat, that didn't take some pain, that didn't take maybe a trial or suffering? Nothing worth knowing.

God works the same way. So when trials show up, we begin to recognize and count upon the facts. Our Father begins to build us up in the faith. If I didn't have any trials, I would always be five years old spiritually. I would never grow. From the profoundly simplest trust in God, back to George Mueller was able to say, God delights to increase the faith of his children. We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God's hand as a means, I say, and I say it deliberately, trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats are the very food of faith. The very food of faith. Once this same subject, on the same subject, James McConty said, faith is dependence upon God.

And this dependence only begins when self-dependence ends. So we spend all of this time trying to be self-dependent, self-aware, self-conscious. And here comes the Spirit of God into your life and he shoots a torpedo right in the middle of your confidence. And the world blows up in front of you and you think, oh my goodness. if you understood what was happening from God because you belong to Him, He sent the torpedo because He wants your confidence to be in Him, not in you or not in your ability to be confident in Him, just Him. So, with some of us, when sorrow and suffering and affliction, broken plans, hopes, bring us to the place of self-helplessness and defeat, and only then do we find that we have learned the lesson of faith, defined our tiny craft of life, rushing onward to a blessed victory of life and power and service undreamt of in the days of our fleshly strength and self-reliance. you will find that the, let me make sure I use the right word here, the most godly person is the most dependent person. The most spiritual person is the most dependent person. That is truly a godly person because God has worked in that person's life to weaken their self-dependence so much You know, Miles Stanford used to say, you have to trust the Lord.

It's come to that. And oh, by the way, it has to come to that. Well, if you're like me, you fight against that all the time. You know, I think I've got assets about me that are getting me through this life, and the Lord comes along and says, well, let's see how strong your assets are.

And so I was in the hospital last week and I wanted to get out because they kept doing these tests on me and I just, and they'd come in and say, well, we haven't found anything yet, but we want to try this. So, okay, they try that. So finally they said, we want to do this test, what I told you where they put this thing down your throat to look at the back of your aorta.

And I said to them, I said, well, you've gone through all these other tests and you haven't found anything. Why are you going to do that one? Didn't the one from the front show? Well, I said, well, I want to go home. And they said, well, you can go home if you want, but then you're going to have to come back.

And so I began to think, you know, Lord, I suppose I ought to stay here and just let them finish. what they finished, and I could feel my ego building up that I was going to have a standstill with these doctors who were all trained. I'm not trained at all, but I was, you know, I'm thinking in my mind, I can deal with these guys. Well, I shouldn't have been dealing with them. The Lord wanted me to stay there, and he wanted me to go through those tests, and I still don't know what's wrong with me, but that's okay.

The Lord knows about that, and that's the way that's gonna go. It's a great thing to learn faith, that is simple dependence upon God. Simple, simple dependence upon God. It will comfort you much, to be assured. The Lord is teaching you dependence upon himself.

And it's very remarkable that faith is necessary in everything that you do. Everything that we do, faith is necessary. God said in his word, the just, which is every one of us, shall live by faith, not only in your circumstances, but in everything. Believe the Lord allows many things to happen on purpose to make us feel our need of him. If you've been a Christian very long, that is a statement that you're real familiar with.

You would not have known or learned or been where you are if the Lord hadn't put you in a position where you had to trust him. You had no other avenue to go. The more you find him in your sorrows and wants, the more you will be attracted to him and drawn away from this place where the sorrows are to him in the place where he is. Set your affections on things above.

Do you realize that when you got saved that you became what the Bible calls a spiritual person? What that means is that you're no longer of earthly person. You're now a godly man, a godly woman. You have a life that is the life of the resurrected Son of God who is above the fray.

I have in my house a saying from my Stanford, if you were in my house and you're on the second floor and you come down, there's a big wall up there. And it says, keep looking down for your life is hid with Christ in God. Well, the view from up there is a lot better than the view from down here. You get to see farther ahead. You know that God's in charge.

Actually, you can't trust anybody further than you know him. And trials and suffering will teach us and create in us an intimacy with Christ that we've never had before. So we must trust only We must not only trust the facts involved, but even more intimately come to know the one who presents and upholds them. The whole idea of the Christian life is to know Christ personally and intimately, and that's done by faith.

If you want to say, well gee, I wonder, what is this thing eternal life? Notice the explanation or the definition of eternal life doesn't have anything to do with some sort of substance. Here's what it is, John 17, 3. Eternal life, that I may know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. That's eternal life. Eternal life is him and a relationship with him. It's not a fact about him, it's not anything other than personal, intimate fellowship with the Son of God.

I forgot to write down where this is, but Paul says to the people he's writing to, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, And of Jesus Christ our Lord, according to his divine power has he given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Through the knowledge of him and has called us to glory and virtue, whereby he has given us exceedingly and great and precious promises. Now there's a couple of facts in there that if you just think about them, it would change the way you view your circumstances. So, we could say about all of the Lord's people, it can be said that the whole of their life, in every respect, starting with salvation, which is the first step, and every subsequent step of spiritual growth, of spiritual substance, and sustenance of spiritual victory and works and service and fellowship with the Lord Jesus. And ultimately, glory is all resolved in one thing, and that one thing is faith.

That's the thing. Back to the original premise. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Impossible. So, it comes down to maybe this question. It doesn't, in my mind. Based on what's going on right now, right this minute, Do I believe God or don't I? Do I rest in Him by faith? And am I gonna trust Him? Right now, no matter what the circumstances, do I believe Him? And if you say yes, you've pleased Him. And you can say thank you for whatever the situation brought you to, the fact that you had to trust Him right now.

So that is the true all the way along, and it always will be so. And sometimes those testings are very, very acute. But he has a purpose. In 2 Peter 1, 2 to 4, he gives you an answer, that we might be partakers of the divine nature. Now when you think about that, God is not in the business of making you healthy, wealthy, and wise, and happy, and all those other things. He has a goal, and his goal is to make you a partaker of the divine nature. Not only do you have it when you are saved, but something that you live in and understand and walk in in fellowship with the resurrected, glorified Lord Jesus. And all of that is done by faith.

So, I don't know, I haven't been watching the time. How am I doing? So I'm done. So we'll break for 15? How's this gonna go? Okay, and whatever questions you might have about faith, we'll be there to answer them, hopefully. Thank you. Let me pray and we can go. Father, we thank you for this time together. We thank you for this conference and we thank you for your spirit. We pray that each one of us will walk away from today with a closer understanding of your word and a greater faith and rest in what you have to say. And we pray in your son's precious name, amen.