All I Want For Christmas Is II, A Faith That Works

Lord, we in our praise invite you to now speak to our lives and let your word find a home in each of our hearts and stir us up, Lord, where we need to see faith arise today to the glory of Jesus in everyone's sight. Amen. Bless you, everyone. Let's have a seat. Thank you, Katie and everybody. I want to begin by thanking those of you who've been praying for my back to be better. As maybe mentioned last week, I had a couple of bad weeks, and I appreciate that. I feel much better. I'll try to not do any more swan dives off the platform up here, keep things in order. Well, it's almost Christmas. Are you excited? More than this service. The first service was one kid down here that said yes. Most parents are like, oh, my gosh, I have ten days to get this all ready. It can be a stressful time, but you know, in my view, it's really an awesome time of the year. I love the fact that it seems that the culture sort of opens its arms toward God. You notice that? I was driving over early yesterday morning to finish the message. I was picking up some coffee, and I had a borrowed car, so when I turned the radio on, there was a secular station on, and I was ready for it. And, oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel comes playing on the radio. And then another carol. I'm hearing Jesus' name on the radio in the car in a station that usually wouldn't even think of doing that. If you went into the mall, you'd hear, you know, our Savior is born. I mean, they would never do that. You're saying, well, they're doing that so they can make money off of us at Christmas time. Well, so what? Now, how many of you think Christmas was God's idea? How many think giving gifts is a good thing? I'm sure it can be abused, but you know what? I think it's one of the great byproducts of the fact that God says, show your love to each other. I love this season. People seem to be more open and engaging, and I've seen more kindness lately, and I've had better conversations with people. I think it's part of the spirit of faith, despite the fact that all the external circumstances that I'm seeing around me really haven't changed that much. I mean, you know, we seem to be making progress in the first stages of this war, but things are still very uncertain, and we're still on high alert and all the rest of that. And yet people seem to be reaching out in faith to the unseen things. And I so value that. And I want to talk today about what I believe the Lord wants to do, and I say this with a great deal of contemplation. I don't just throw this out there because I want to get your attention. But I believe the Lord, as I was preparing the message, prompted me to share with you that He wants to release to us as a congregation a gift of faith this Christmas season. Now, listen to this. We usually talk about faith in mystical terms, and we put it in the compartment that we define as religious for us. Are you a person of faith? By definition, that means somebody that goes to church and has a religious sort of commitment. I'm not talking about that today. I'm talking about a faith that works in your daily life. And God wants you to know today that some of us, if you're open to it, are going to receive a gift of faith. 1 Corinthians 12.9 says that gift is available. And I'm just telling you what the Holy Spirit prompted me to share with you. I don't normally do this. Now, not everyone's going to receive it, and I'll tell you why. Because some of you are going to be skeptical. Some of you are going to be cynical. Some of you have already checked out. You're already thinking about something else. But for those who stay tuned, God is going to release a gift of faith, and you are going to have a story to tell after today because of God's power. You're going to hear a story today about God's power. But rather than just hear a story, you can become one. A trophy for the glory of God. Faith is a specific exercise of your relationship with God that brings about a desired result. In Scripture, people were healed. Bondages were broken. Provisions were supplied. Wisdom was given. Why? Because of faith. Jesus said many times, your faith has made you well. Your faith has done this. Your faith has done that. Loved ones, do you have a faith that works? Or is faith just something you have when someone asks you what you believe? Are you with me? I want to have a faith that works day to day, that I see operating in my life, not just something that I believe as a sort of a subset of religion in my life. And I'm going to look at Mary's life as a parable to us. We read about Mary, and I know some of you grew up in Catholic or other traditions where Mary was revered in a certain way, like you could never aspire to her. But God gave us Mary for a very specific reason, so that all of us could relate to someone simple. She didn't have a religious pedigree. She didn't go to a seminary or have some kind of long list of degrees behind her name. She was just an ordinary person. But God gave her the gift of faith, just like he wants to give to some of us today. So let's look at her outline, and how is he going to do this? How is God going to do this? Well, first of all, the first thing you've got to do, let's read the scripture, and it'll come out to us. Let's read this first. Luke 1, 26-38. Let's read this together. In fact, I'd like you to declare with me as God's Word. It'll be up on all three screens, or you can read it from your Bible in the NIV. In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at his words, and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. I want to stop right there and say, you know, I'd be in a lot more trouble if he said, Greetings, Mary, you're in deep weeds. I mean, this is a pretty positive thing. But anyhow, like most of us, she was somewhat frightened. The angel said to her, verse 30, Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end. How will this be, Mary asked the angel, since I am a virgin? The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God. I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered. May it be to me as you have said. Then the angel left her. Every time I read that story, I just get so moved, because that same God today is moving in my life, and he wants to move in yours. How does it happen? Well, first thing you've got to do is you've got to receive a dream. If you want to have a faith that works, you've got to receive a dream. The place we all have to begin is to see that Almighty God wants you to grasp His purpose, His plan, His dream for your life. And loved ones, you've got to believe that. I want you to turn to someone right now and say, God has a great plan for your life. Look right at them and tell them, God has a great plan for your life. Now, why is that important to know? You know, Sherry Yift has been in 60 countries sharing the gospel. I've only been in a dozen or so, I believe. But I can tell you this, a couple of times I've been, for example, in India. I have seen something that I carry with me, and if you ever go to a third world country particularly, you'll see it. It's not just the poverty, it's not the grinding poverty of not having food or clothes or shelter. Do you know what really gets to you? It's looking into the eyes of people, particularly young people, and seeing a sense of despair, almost like looking right through them. A sense of emptiness, a sense of not knowing what life is really about. A sense that unless something happens, they'll not ever discover why they were created to be underserved. You want a passion for world missions, you just have to look into those eyes one time and you'll realize what God sent us to do. But here's the amazing thing, you don't just have to go all the way overseas. Sometimes you can go down to Ross Park Mall, and you can see it in the eyes of young people today who don't have a clue as to, why am I here? What is this about? And they try to fill up that life with something else, but it always leaves them empty. Because you see, God has a purpose. He has a dream. He has a vision for every one of us. I was talking with a college student after the service last week, and we had a good exchange. But that person, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. And I said, well, have you really been seeking God about your next step? You see, one misconception we have is we all kind of think, well, God's going to give me my life's plan by these screens. He's going to put it up right on the wall and say, this is what I'm to be. I've discovered that God kind of leads us in segments. Have you discovered that? And all He requires you to do is just to be obedient in that segment of your life. And then you know what? Then you might go this way. Now, you didn't miss God when you were going this way. He just took you here in order to get you to go here. And now He might have you go here. That's a very important thing, because if you don't have a master plan, it's okay. You just have to be obedient to God's purpose and plan in your life for right now, because there will come a time that you'll see Him. He's weaving it all together for His glory and for His good. Mary is a type for all of us. You see, Mary was just an ordinary gal. Every record that we can discover indicates that she was a teenage gal, probably 16 or 17 years old. Very common in that culture for that age of a gal to get married. And God appeared to her and said, not because you're someone deserving, not because you've earned this, but because God has chosen you. You are highly favored. The word favor there is the word grace or charis, C-H-A-R-I-S in the Greek. Now, here's where a lot of us disconnect. You say, well, I'm not highly favored. I'm just ordinary. But listen to this. Because of Jesus, in John 1, 16, the Bible says, through Him, Jesus came full of grace and truth. And through Him, we have all received one blessing after another. So we've received grace. So listen, all of us today who name the name of Jesus, we are highly favored. There's favor on your life just because Jesus Christ has come to live in you. You have favor. So you can anticipate that God wants to use you in a powerful way just because of His presence in your life. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible reveals that God has a dream, a purpose for each of you just like Mary. You have to discover it. Second, though, you've got to recognize the facts about your circumstance. Mary wasn't dumb. Luke 1, 34, how will this be, Mary asked the angel, since I'm a virgin. Mary understood. She had not had intercourse with anybody. She had not become, there's no human way she could be pregnant. So she said to the angel, how is this going to happen? The first step in every journey of faith is to be honest with God and recognize the facts. Don't go into denial about them. If your dream isn't clear, don't say, well, there's just no problems at all. I'm just going to close my eyes and all go away. Don't try to fool yourself into thinking these aren't real obstacles. Facts are facts. God knows them. You might as well just acknowledge them. The reason I point that out is because there was an extreme element of Christian faith in the last couple of decades that sort of prided itself in denying reality. And so you go to a person and they had a 104.5 degree temperature, sweat was pouring down them, they were sicker than a dog, and you say, how are you doing? Bless God, I'm fine. It was extreme. It was called positive confession. And the whole idea of that sort of extreme side of the faith was, if you ever said anything negative, you were denying God. No, you're just, you could say, hey, I'm sick. But that's not the last word. That's what's important. So begin by saying, all right, here's the facts. Mary said, the fact is I'm a virgin. How can I have a baby? Faith never asks you to deny reality. Faith calls you to face reality in your life without being controlled by it. Now, loved ones, listen, sometimes things happen that just aren't going to change, and you need to face that. And I grieve sometimes. I see people who are holding on to things that just are never going to change. Listen, if you have eight tracks, give them up, okay? They ain't coming back. It's not going to be some great big discovery that's going to appear. If you're waiting for some special guy or gal to invite you out on a date, you know, that high school friend, and it's your 50th reunion, okay? Give it up, all right? Not going to happen. Al Gore is not going to become president, at least in, well, at least in this particular round, okay? There's an old rule from the days of the Calvary, when the horse is dead, dismount. So sometimes you just have to close the book and say, that's not going to happen. And it's okay to admit that. You're not giving up on God. And don't let yourself be consumed by the grief of something that clearly isn't going to happen. I've mentioned Corrie ten Boom, the survivor of the Nazi concentration camp, who I heard speak a number of times in my formative years as a Christian. And maybe what I haven't said in the past about her story that's quite fascinating is that she was engaged to be married as a young woman. She was deeply in love. And then, in a total surprise to her, her fiance came to her and said, I don't want to marry you, and broke off the engagement, and shortly thereafter married her best friend. And you can imagine the pain of that. And Corrie was devastated by it. And in fact, she never remarried, or never did marry, rather, at all. She went through life as a single woman, but she redirected. Rather than just to fall into this pity party, and just become self-absorbed in what was taken away, she directed her love toward God, and became one of the most loving and sought-after Christian leaders of the late 20th century, touching millions through her writings and speaking gifts. Sometimes you just have to grieve things and let them go. But sometimes you face the facts, and you aren't clear about letting them go. Something in you says, no, it's not time to let it go yet. Well, listen, that's when you take the posture of not just looking at the facts, not just acknowledging them, but denying the fact that they are the ultimate statement. Sometimes you have to just say, wait a minute, that's true. What you're talking about is true, but that's not the ultimate reality. Look in your outline. I want to just talk for a moment about Abraham. Here's somebody else who was dealing with babies. I'd love to go for 10 or 15 minutes, but I just want to touch on it. Maybe we'll look at it later. Abraham was promised by God that he would be the father of many nations. He was to be the father of God's chosen people. He got that promise when he was 75. That's pretty old. But 24 years later, he still hadn't had the baby. So he was 99, and Abraham's wife, Sarah, she was no chick either. She was 90. Imagine what he thought in the morning when he looked at himself. You've got to be kidding me. Did they have mirrors back then, Pastor Scott? I don't know. But if he looked at him, he said, how's this going to happen? In fact, the Bible says that, look, without weakening his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, and Sarah's womb was also dead. I mean, in the natural, it wasn't going to happen. But look at the next line. Yet he didn't waver with unbelief. You see, he was not called to let go of it yet. That's the difference. He was not called. He was not called to let it go. He defied the facts. Sometimes you have to accept them, but sometimes you defy them, and you say, no, I'm called to hold on. I'm called to believe. Abraham believed, and as you know, eventually he bore Isaac, and of course, Isaac began the lineage from which Jesus later was born. Loved ones, there are many applications of this. In our congregation today, there are people struggling with a report, a report of cancer, for example. You get that report. You can't deny that you got the report. Oh, I don't have it. Well, the report says you do. But you can defy it, and you can believe God that he'll heal you. My wife's mom, on Friday morning, received a report that she had cancer. The doctor was concerned that the situation was very serious, and so they decided to do surgery yesterday. Carol's out with her mom in Lancaster today, and will be all week. Her mom made it through the surgery. She's 90 years old. She made it through the surgery, a four-hour surgery. They believe they got all the cancer, and we're going to pray that she's restored. We're going to believe in God. There are many of you in here today who know somebody with that prognosis. You need to help them, not just to lay down and just puddle up, but just at times to rise up and defy the report and say, I believe God. I choose to believe God's Word. Some of you lost your jobs in the last few months, and it's easy to just sort of crumble down and say, oh, this can't get any worse. Wait a minute. Why not rise up and say, wait, God is my provider. God will make a way for me. He's my ultimate reality. Some of you, you know, Christmas time is the worst season of the year because it reminds you of your failures. Maybe your kids don't talk to you, and you have great pain. Well, maybe that's been the reality, but that's not the ultimate statement. Maybe this year you can say, God, I'm going to defy those facts, and I'm going to believe you for something new in my life. Well, how do you do this? Well, the only way I know, and Mary exemplifies this, remember what God can do. Number three, remember what God can do. These situations may be out of your control, but not out of God's. So you don't focus on what you can't do. You focus on what God can do. When Mary faced the facts, the angel reminded her, here's what she said, for with God, read it with me, for nothing is impossible with God. Say it again. For nothing is impossible with God. What does nothing exclude? Nothing. That's right. I got that right. Give me three services. Nothing excludes nothing. So whatever it is that we need, God says, I can supply. You ought to take that promise of nothing else today and put it up somewhere where you can remind yourself that God can do anything He sets His heart to do. You see, the initial and most critical issue of our faith lifestyle, the day-to-day faith, is the focus of your thoughts. Will it be on the people that you're looking to, or the circumstance, or your own inabilities, or the externals, or the numbers, or the reports, or will it be on that? Will it be on Him, for with Him, nothing is impossible? That becomes the battleground, the focus of your faith. I remember when I had my back surgery some years ago. There was a lot of reasons why I didn't know that I would fully recover from that. I took little scripture cards, little 3x5 cards, 4x6 cards now, I think about, and I plastered them all over my house and on my bathroom mirror, and I put them on the refrigerator, every place I'd look often, just to remind myself that I was believing God, that He would fully restore. And you know what? You need that if you're going through a battle of faith. In this simple verse, we realize that God, no matter what we face, can supply what we need to see our dreams fulfilled. Mary said, how is this going to happen? This has never been done before. And the power of the Most High will overshadow you. That word overshadow is used about five times in the New Testament. It's the word episkiazo, which means to envelop with radiance. Now, we don't read this anywhere else in the Bible, but apparently at some point after this encounter, the Holy Spirit came and literally, remember when Jesus was transfigured and the Bible says that His clothes became white, and there was this sort of, this glorious moment. Apparently Mary had a moment like that. But look at this with me for just a second. Because you see, I've said all miracles are parables. We don't all experience them the same way, but we can all have a miracle moment like Mary did. I don't know how the Holy Spirit may come upon you, but I know that He will do that to fulfill His word to you. Let me give you one illustration in my life of how that happened. It was many years ago. I came to a dead end in my journey of faith to see a church started here in the North Hills. And so I felt I was called to move on. And by the way, any time you've been given a dream, you're going to hit a dead end. I hit a dead end. It looked like it was over. The only thing I know to do, I said, well, Lord, remember I talked about going in one direction. And the only direction the Lord seemed to open was to take a church 400 miles from here. And so I said, Carol and I prayed. We said, well, I guess we're going to move. So we told the congregation we were with, we were moving. We got a realtor, put our house on the market. We said, we're moving 400 miles from Pittsburgh. Started making arrangements, lined up the moving people, all the rest. Ten days after I accepted the call to go to that church, I got a phone call from the executive director of that whole entire region of those churches. He said to me, we've had a real problem. We have to call you back. There's something wrong. He called me three days later. He said, I've never had this happen in my 30 years of being involved in ministration. He said, but there was a real mistake in this church, and you shouldn't come. Well, that just totally, I said, now what? Now, you know, did I miss God this way? I thought this is what you were saying. And we went to a prayer meeting and I remember the exact living room where we were. There was a handful of people in that prayer meeting time, and we were just kind of confused when we were praying. And the Lord spoke into our hearts. And he said, he said, this was to be as your Isaac was to me. He said, Lord, I needed to see that you would lay down your dream so that I could give you my dream for a church in this region. That was 20 years ago. And that was so important. You see, that was my Episcopal moment. That was the moment the Holy Spirit came. I felt that quickening in me that it was God. And then I knew, you see, no matter what happened over the last 20 years, criticism, lack of funds, lack of places to be. When the church threw us, you know, when we got thrown out of the restaurant, didn't have any place to worship, I knew God was in it. I know God's in this because he was in the beginning and he's going to make it happen. The only question is I just have to wait on him. Now, was I missing God when I went here? No, I just had to go here so he could say, now I want you to go here. And loved one, that's what he'll do for you if you just trust him. You just got to trust him. With God, nothing's impossible. Thirdly, remember what he can do. And fourth, learn to rely on his promises. Let me just say this. I've talked a lot about the Bible lately. Mary says in verse 38, let it be unto me as you've said, I'm your servant. Or as King James says, be it unto me according to your word. There are times that all you have to hold on to is the promise of the word. I love the book because you see, it's tangible. And once I get a promise, I can, I can hold on to it and I can, you got to memorize it and you can quote it and you can rehearse it. And when doubts come in, you can say it back. And the promises become life to you and they sustain you in moments when you want to give up. And there will be times that you want to give up. There are going to be times when hope's going to start to ebb away and you're going to come to the place where hope's going to begin to die. You want to know when hope begins to die? You want to know how you know hope's dying? You start using the word never. I'll never have children. I'll never be better. I'll never have my dream come true. That's not God talk. That's you giving in to the lies of the evil one. God wants you to rely on his promises, rely on his word, and trust in him because he can do things that seem totally impossible to you. Would you listen this morning to a wonderful story of a couple that went through the worst that life really could bring. In many respects, this story's compacted down, but six years of a journey has brought them to this point to share their testimony with you today. Give a warm welcome, would you, to Phil and Julie David as they come to share. A warm welcome. Come on. Welcome, guys. Thank you. In 1995, as a healthy single young man and many miles from home, I increasingly longed for my own wife and family, but found relationships to be consistently disappointing. I wrestled with God and with my own thoughts over what his purposes might be for my future and whether a family was actually in his plan. Through hardship and God's discipline, I was learning to put my trust in him for all things, but my hopes did not appear to be materializing. It was in this season of life that I was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer. Apparently, I had a malignant tumor half the size of a footfall growing deep within my abdomen and ill-defined by known cancer diagnosis. I found myself sitting in the exam room of a well-regarded cancer surgeon as he described that this mass could metastasize at any moment and spread uncontrollably. My doctor and I engaged in about 45 minutes of some fairly technical conversation until I finally felt my head, my heart, and my limbs starting to go numb. In this doctor's best estimate, if I did nothing, I might have six months to live, and I might not. His recommendation was to perform a radical and aggressive operation as soon as possible, followed by aggressive radiation therapy. It would be a very difficult and risky procedure because of the location of the tumor. If I survived the operation and post-operation procedures, then I might have a reasonable chance of recovery. He also offered the disclaimer that significant collateral damage was possible and that there may be temporary or even permanent dysfunction or failure of certain nearby tissues and organs. He offered the strong suggestion that I should get my affairs in order. And oh, by the way, if you think you might ever be interested in having a family, you should make some provision for preserving your lineage. Assuming you survive the operation, you may not be able to have children otherwise. So began my effort to face cancer, my doubts, and fears. With darkness building about my future, I was faced with a choice, either let despair have the victory or to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with praise for my creator. With only the grace that God gives in battle, I answered the darkness with God's word from Psalm 18. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge. I was in a conflict in which I could do little, but abandoned myself to the grace and mercy of God the Father. If he chose to take me, so be it. If he delivered me from death, so be it. Surgery occurred in the May of 1995 and resulted not only in removal of the tumor, but as predicted, collateral damage to surrounding tissues. I awoke to find that the procedure had also produced complications in my left leg, which required immediate surgery within an hour of regaining consciousness in order to save the leg. After 10 days in the hospital and 50 days of bed restricted radiation therapy, I began the process of rehabilitation with the added prospect of more radiation and more surgery. During this time in many sense, I cannot tell you how incredibly close friends here, pastors, elders and their wives, and many folks I did not know well, ministered to me and my family with food, cards and encouragement. You have an unusual gift if this is your church home, and that is your fellowship with each other, with your pastors and with your elders. This is perhaps the most caring and closely connected group of believers I have known. By January of 1997, I had waited two long years for my surgeon to pronounce me clean, clean from cancer and ready for reconstruction. Having all but given up on having my own family, I set my heart and mind on other things. That is until I met and became acquainted with a certain pretty young woman who was just new to North Way. At this time I was trying to get past some bad choices in my own life and looking to find a strong church family to help me to heal. The Lord prompted me to come to North Way, which a dear friend of mine had told me about two years prior. Although completely intimidated to come to this large church all by myself, I came because I felt God insisting. I am thankful beyond words that I was obedient. I not only found the incredible church family I was looking for, but I also met Philip. I fell in love instantly. I knew Philip was the man God had for me. I knew Philip was the man God had for me. However, it took Philip a little longer to agree, and those that know me will attest to the fact that patience is not my strongest asset. With Julie's encouragement that she was committed to walk with me through another likely difficult surgery, I surrendered to the surgeon's knife again in April of 1997. With Julie waiting anxiously, along with my brother Kevin, the surgery proved significantly more complicated than was expected, lasting an exhausting 12 hours. More surgeons and specialists had to be called in to consult on various complications, more damage, more repair. Of course, I had the easy part. I was under anesthesia with my eternal hat in hand, just waiting for someone to wake me up or send me home. But I survived to live another day, facing another long recovery. To make the future even less certain, the procedure was not completely successful, and I would need to plan yet additional surgery. In reality, I would face two more major surgeries and numerous procedures. Each surgery encountered difficult circumstances and were nearly terminal. By this point, I had observed Julie and was a recipient of her care under the most extreme of circumstances. The walls in my heart and mind were falling like the iron curtain. Despite the uncertainty of my condition and our future, she was still there. By Christmas of 1997, I asked Julie to marry me. I figured if the worst occurred, she would at least inherit all my wealth and riches. She had to think about it for a bit and said yes anyway. I didn't have to think about it. I was anxiously awaiting that proposal for a month. We had an exciting time of planning yet another surgery in April of 1998 and a grand wedding in July. This procedure went well with no new complications. However, I would continue to deal with the daily challenges from so much internal trauma. As soon as we were married, we started trying for a family. A family had always been my greatest dream and hope. We knew that it would be difficult, but we believed it was entirely possible, at least that's what the doctors had told us. With each passing month, it became increasingly clear that it was going to be even more difficult than we had anticipated. My fears and anxieties grew as time went by. I never doubted that we would have a family. I just didn't know how, and more importantly, when. Still struggling with impatience, having a baby became my obsession. It was my main prayer request whenever anyone asked. I was desperate for some direction, some indication from God as to when he would allow us to become pregnant. Even in the midst of my anxiety, I never relinquished the knowledge that God had provided in the past and would again. After trying for over a year to have a family, we decided it was time to seek some medical advice. Additional doctors were recruited, and their evaluations proved that, indeed, the numerous surgeries and radiation had left me with nothing to show and tell. I was devastated, b