Developing a Daring Faith V, The Following-Through of Faith

As we're just getting settled here, you know, July the 4th, we're going to get started early but we need some of you to come tomorrow between 9 and noon to help us get all the stuff ready. The gray building out there in the front of our property is loaded with stuff and more is coming in. You can bring more of your own. But if you're off tomorrow or if you're not employed or you just have some time tomorrow from 9 to noon, our team sure could use some help pulling things out, marking them and all that. And then Tuesday morning, we're going to have prayer at 7 a.m. This is the morning prayers. Any of you who are, say, I want to go to that prayer time but 6 is too early, we're going to have it at 7 and then those of us who can are going to move right over and help out up front at 8 o'clock. We think the early bird folks will show up around 8 and so we need some help for that. And then the day's festivities really begin at 1 for those of us who really don't care that much about someone else's stuff. We'll be here at 1 for our barbecues and all that kind of thing. So that's just a little detail of things there for you. If you have kids, they're not going to want to miss all the stuff that Pastor Jeff and his team, Stacy and Jim and everyone have put together. Now, let's turn to your teaching notes and I'd like you to turn to the back, okay, and we're going to read Romans 4, 16 through 20 together from the message. Now I am not endorsing the message as the Bible that I would always read, but this particular passage is helpful in the message translation. Are you going to read it? Read it with me, would you? If you didn't get one, the ushers can bring a bulletin up to you, but let's read it together. We call Abraham father, not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture? God saying to Abraham, I set you up as a father of many peoples. Abraham was first named father and then became a father. Let me say that again. Abraham was first named father and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do. Raise the dead to life with the word, make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not in the basis of what he saw he couldn't do, but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, you're going to have a big family, Abraham. Let's pray. Lord, I ask you to teach us from your word, to inspire us Lord, by your spirit and to help each of us to take our next step in the journey of faith in the name of your son, Jesus. Well, as most of you know, if you've been here a year, although that's not everyone by any means in this service today, at this time of the year, the elders of North Way have granted me the privilege of getting away from the normal routines, the daily responsibilities, the weekly preaching opportunities, to get away for a time of focused prayer and reading and just get some physical refreshing in my life. Normally, I'll leave about now and come back early in August. During that time, I'll read about 15 or 20 books. I'll have the privilege of praying for, in some cases, hours every day rather than just minutes. I'll be able to plan messages for the coming year and just physically kind of restore my body and examine my heart. It's a very important part of my annual routine, and I want to thank the elders and the staff for supporting me in this, and it really does make a difference in my ministry. But this year, it appears that God has something different in mind for me, as many of you know. Two weeks ago, I shared that the Lord has clearly led me to go on in and have some surgery done on my back. And rather than spending the next couple of weeks or the next several weeks in a time of refreshing and so on, I'm going to be spending them probably in recovery. Lord willing, if everything goes as I pray it will, and I trust you will pray it will, I will return in September stronger than I've been in a long, long time, more energetic and more available to God and His purposes and His people, and, Lord willing, pain-free. Part of the thing that really pushed me to this decision was the fact that I came to realize I was spending too much of my time, too much of my energy, too much of my resource emotionally and spiritually dealing with my problem. And God wants me to get past that, and He's provided a way. And so I'm going to return in September refreshed, recharged, and healed, but with no messages. But that's okay. God will provide that as well. Now, in some ways, I'm both anxious and anticipative of this surgery. I'm anxious, I guess, a little bit, because, you know, who knows? I mean, you have to sign things that say, hey, anything can happen here, Mac. You know, that's kind of the way it is. And, you know, you do hear the stories, don't you? I mean, people going to surgery. My mom told me a story. Two days ago, she was over at our house. She said, son, did you see 20-20 or, you know, 60 minutes? They told of people who woke up under anesthesia halfway through their operation. Did you see that? She said, you know, and they wake up and they can't communicate. They're paralyzed, but they can feel what's going on. And she's telling me this, and I said, you know, go ahead, mom. You know, just encourage me with some more of this, you know? So add that to my nightmare list, you know, of like, she said, yeah, they tried to blink, and they tried to get, but they can't move. Oh, that's great, mom. That's good. Good story. But I'm also anticipative, really, of this process, because I do believe that God has really pointed this direction, and every single trusted opinion that I've sought from my spiritual counselors and from my medical ones has been to encourage me to go ahead. And I really believe that it's the Lord's directive to me. I have to admit to you, I have not accepted it very well. It's been a long process. I've had to struggle with it, and it's okay to do that, I think, for all of us, because, you see, we all have this thing about ourselves, I think, that wants to do what's right and wants, you know, just wants to keep going as if, you know, nothing will ever change. But folks, things do change in our lives, and adapting to that is very important as we go along. I'm just going to ask you to pray. Pray for me, if you wouldn't mind. I'd very much appreciate that. Pray that the will of the Lord would be done, and only His will would be done, that the procedure would be 100% successful, that the recovery would be total and without any complications or infection, that I would be able to be pain-free at the end, and that I'd experience the peace of God's presence throughout the whole time. That would be a great blessing. And many people have already said, well, I'm praying for you to learn everything God has for you. Okay. You know, I'll accept that. And they're kind of saying, you know, it's about time. But you know what? God does teach us in these moments, doesn't He? And I have to say that I'm not feeling particularly gung-ho or strong about all this. In fact, I feel kind of weak and a little bit maybe out of control, a little dependent. But then the Lord is reminding me about what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9. He said, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. Folks, how many of you like to boast about what you're good at? I do. I like to boast about I can do this well and I can do that well. But Paul said, no, I'm going to boast about where I feel the most out of control. Because God then is invited to come in and establish His control. In fact, my personal prayer in these days is that I would praise God in my weakness, in my difficulty, in my out of controlness. Because as I praise Him, it's the very thing from my lips that invites His presence to come and fill up my weakness. Because where I am weak, then He is strong. And that should be an encouragement to anyone here today who feels inadequate about any area of your own life. These next weeks are going to be a time of faith for me, a time different than any other in my life, I'm sure. But not unlike a time that hundreds of you are facing right now. Some of you right now are facing things that are beyond your control. Some of you right now are looking at situations that you wish weren't happening in your life. How many of you have one area that's not ideal in your life? I mean, there's a gap between the real and the ideal, huh? How many of you have a gap between what God's promised for your life, but really where you're living? Most of us do, if we're really honest. For some of us, it's the person next to us just isn't matching up to what we want them to. Or maybe they're not even next to us, and that's the problem. For some of us, it's a job that's just a dead-end street, and it debilitates us and discourages every time we go in in the morning. For some of us, it's a physical condition. For some of us, it's a child or a grandchild that's wandering far from God, and you have no idea what's going on in their life. But all of us have something where we sense, you know, God, this isn't working the way you said it would. What's going on? And it's at those times that we need to come in a posture of faith before God. And that's what these last five weeks have been all about, about developing a daring faith. Nancy, let's review the five weeks that we've had on this subject. I know many of you have been in and out for vacation or whatever. Here's where we've been, if you want to get the tapes. The first week, we talked about discerning where you are, having the courage to say, hey, honestly, I'm not just going to ignore it. Here's where I am. And then the second week, we talked about God's dream, having his purpose. Actually, it was sort of an overlap of the first week. What's God's purpose in our life? What's his plan? Number three. Then we talked about having the courage to make a decision to act on faith. James said faith without action, without works is dead. And remember, we talked about walking down and which way to go and making those decisions. Then the fourth week, we talked about delay, about what happens when God just doesn't seem to answer. And Dave last week talked about, you know, just hanging in there and trusting God and that great cloud of witnesses while you're going through it. But today I want to talk about deliverance. I want to talk about the follow through of faith. I mean, how faith finally gets us to where we need to be. Now, here are two things I used to spend a lot of time with. Actually, probably more than was good for me, but I had a lot of fun with it. Ron, step up here real quick, would you? I need a volunteer. Faith has follow through. This is Ron Willis. He is a golfer. Without taking any divots out of the platform, face the congregation and show them what would happen in a normal swing without follow through. If you just kind of flubbed your follow through, what would it look like? Yeah, you get up about halfway, huh? OK, now show them your professional model. This is what it really supposed to look like here. All the way over. All right, good job. Just give me a hand. Thank you, sir. OK, now I have found that many people with their faith toward God are somewhat like that. They they bring it to about here and then they look at what's going on. Then they look at the circumstance. Then they look at the stuff around them and they just stop short. Now, Ron would tell you if you stop right here in your swing, you know where the ball is going to go. Where is it going to go? It's going to go that way or that way. Or in my case, right down the steps. I mean, in order for the ball to go where you want it to go, you've got to go all the way through it, right? Because that puts the spin on it, that gives it the direction that propels it where it's supposed to go. And without really stretching the analogy, I mean, it's the same with tennis. If you had a tennis ball real hard, dead on like this, what happens to it? Bleachers, right? So what do you have to do? You have to put the follow through and put the top spin on. If you don't, you don't have anything. Folks, with your faith, if you stop here, if you say, oh, God, I'm really trusting you. And then you stop and then you give up and then you start to look at the stuff. You're going to find that your faith is not going to deliver. It's not going to come through. So what do we do? How do we get into a place where our faith really has a delivering quality to it? What do we do to bring ourselves to the place where we can see God come through and cause to have happened in our lives, what we've been trusting him for. Some of you know right now that if God doesn't come through, you're about to give up. Some of you are facing bankruptcy. Some of you are facing problem with drugs. Some of you are in unemployment. Some of you are in a case where you've longed for children, much like Abraham is described here. Some of you have doubts and fears about different things. What are you going to do in those times? All I know is this. Abraham has been sent to teach us what faith is all about. And Abraham is just like you and me. Abraham got something from God and then started out and he went ahead and he went right to this point and he flubbed a couple of times. What did Abraham do on his first drive? He got to here and he said, you know, I think I'll have an Ishmael. And just because he got impatient and tried to do it on his own, he got to he created a whole race of people that have now for the last 4,000 years been in conflict. You see, Abraham was just like you and I. And I have to tell you, that encourages me just a little bit. So what do you do? I mean, what do you do then to go all the way through in faith? What did Abraham do right? Well, let me just say this. If you're feeling today like it's never going to happen, like it's there's just no way you're going to get where you're supposed to be. If you're feeling like your dreams are turning to dust, that God doesn't hear you anymore, that he doesn't really care about what you're feeling. Can I say this? And really, this is a sermon in a sentence, if you would. Here's what I believe. The darker your situation, the more despairing your circumstance, the more hopeless it seems, the closer you are to a more dramatic deliverance than you could ever imagine. Here's why I believe that. What was the darkest moment in all of human history? On the day that Jesus Christ, the perfect sinless man who never did anything but good, who never did anything but heal people and restore them and unite them and love them and teach them truth, hung innocently on a cross, his hands and feet pierced with nails, blood dripping down his marred face, that son of God. On what we call Good Friday, hanging on the cross, that was the darkest moment in history. The son of God crucified by arrogant men. Could things have been any blacker than that? I don't believe they ever have or ever will be. But just three days later, what did God do? He did the greatest miracle in history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And you see, what we need to understand is when we are on our Good Fridays of life, there's a resurrection coming. God will do what he needs to do to bring about his purposes in us. And folks, that's such an important principle, no matter where you might be. Let me just share three things from Romans 4 and I'll do them quickly. Three things that Abraham teaches me right now, where I am and where maybe many of you are, many of you who give me those communicators every week. And I pray that those little yellow sheets that you see next to you, that you fill out your prayer requests and just confidentially let me know how I can pray for you while I'm recovering. I'd really love to know that. Put them in the offering basket next week, whatever, send them to me in the mail. Because I know you're facing things just like I am. Here's what Abraham teaches me. Three things. Number one, Abraham celebrated God's character. You know, in these times you need to go back to what you know about God, not to what the things that you're going through are telling you. One of our problems is we look at what we're going through and we're saying, this is the real thing. And I don't know where God was. I mean, I know God once was good, but I'm not sure right now where he is. He seems to be far off. What we have to do is to celebrate what we know about his character based on the history of his love in your life. You know, those of us who are fathers and those of us who had fathers know what an image our dads have been and what we are to our kids. And one of the things I remember, and when I was a kid going my freshman year in college, I had a girlfriend back here in Pittsburgh and I went to school about 300 miles away, actually where my son David's going to be going. And back then, this was in the sixties, you know, you did irrational things and I thought this girl was like terrific. And so whenever I could, I'd hitchhike home 330 miles to see her for a weekend. Now that was nuts. Okay. That was, I mean, that was really nuts. But sometimes I realized the time was really limited. So I called my dad and said, hey, could you meet me somewhere? Meet me halfway, you know, like meet me at Breezewood or pick me up at the Turnpike or whatever. And, um, I always knew something. I remember one time I said, you know, how about Breezewood? How about halfway? And dad said, well, you know, I'm going to be out of, I'll meet you at seven o'clock and such and such a restaurant. And so I'm out hitchhiking my way up old route 11 or 81 or whatever it was. And I'm knowing that if my dad said he was going to be there for me, he's going to be there because for the previous 18 and a half years, he was there every time I needed him to be there. And I knew he wouldn't be thinking, hmm, well, maybe I'll just come four hours late. So he'd be surprised. And, you know, maybe I'll make him wonder if I really care about that. Wasn't his character. His character was to be there. And so you see, I know, just like I knew my dad would be there. I know God will be there. Why? Because he's been there every other time in my life, because his word says he'll always be there. It's his character. And Abraham celebrated that character, God's character, his power. Look what it says, is able to raise the dead to life right in the middle of that paragraph. And with a word, make something out of nothing. God can make anything happen. There's people saying, there's nothing left. I have no love for my husband. There's no hope in my career. I have nothing to give God. Well, you know what? You know what God needs to work with to get his miracle done? What? Nothing. In fact, I think, I think heaven has a little chuckle when we say, well, God, I just don't think you can do anything with this. In fact, if there's a candy in heaven, it's probably Snickers. You don't think I can do anything with nothing? God said, that's all I need to work with is just the nothing that you give me. But you've got to give me the nothing. You've got to come and say, I need you, God. See, the Bible says Abraham dared to trust God. He dared to trust God, not he dared to believe in himself. Or, you know, he dared to believe in the rocks and the trees and the wind and the sky, you know, Pocahontas, whatever. I'm sorry. It all sounds so nice, doesn't it? Abraham didn't believe in positive mental attitude. He believed and trusted God. And the Bible says that Abraham celebrated, he worshiped. We don't have time to turn it, but just jot down in your notes, Genesis 12, verse seven, and Genesis 13, verse eight, when God spoke to him and said, I'm going to make you a great nation, the Bible says Abraham listened and then he built an altar and worshiped God. He celebrated God's character. You know, one of the reasons why we worship in this church, why we spend the first moments and sometimes other parts of the service quietly or expressively before God, listen, folks, please. We are not just singing. It's not just the warm up to the, you know, the important stuff. It is a celebration, a reminder of the character of God that we're building our lives on. It's the very thing that we do in order to affirm what it is that we believe about God. One of the praise teachers that has helped us over the years, an excellent book said this, praise is being preoccupied with who God is and what he has done. It focuses on both his incomparable character and his wondrous acts on behalf of his children. We praise God so that we say to one another, in essence, we're doing this because God can be trusted. We're singing of his name. We're singing of his character. We sing, God is the strength of my life. My heart, my strength, they may fail, but there's one truth that always will prevail. God is the strength. You see, when you sing that and I sing that to one, we're reminding each other, no matter what we're facing, God's character can be trusted. It's very important. Number two, Abraham confirmed God's word. Abraham, you see, was the father of our faith. The Bible says he was the one who taught us how to have faith. He trusted what God said more than what he saw around himself. And folks, could you imagine a more difficult thing than to trust that God was going to give you a baby when you were 75 years old? I think we have some people here today that might be 75. I don't think we have anyone who's 90. When Abraham was 90, he still didn't have a kid, the kid that God promised. And it was when he was 90 that God appeared to him and changed his name from Abram to Abraham. Abraham means father of many nations. Can you imagine? I mean, here he is. God appears to him. Your name is now Abraham. So he goes over to Danny's for a cup of coffee and the guy says, hi, my name is Abraham. Oh, father of many nations, huh? Yeah. How many kids you got? None. How old are you? 90. Doesn't look real promising for you there, old Abe, does it? And imagine every moment of Abraham's life. I mean, he'd get up and I don't know what kind of mirrors they had then. Anyone know? I guess they weren't real highly polished mirrors, but he had to look in some kind of thing to get a reflection and he'd see this body that was 90, 92, 95. And God's saying, you're going to have a kid. You're going to have a kid. He was impotent. He's looking at this body thinking there ain't no way I'm going to have a kid. And then he looked at Sarah's body. Ain't no way you're going to have a kid. Okay. Now imagine, but seriously, imagine living with that every day. Here's the promise of God and here's the reality. And folks, there's a message right now, prophetically for someone right here. You look in the mirror all the time and you put yourself down and you choose to believe what you see more than what God said about you. God said something about you and about your life and you say, ain't no way it's going to happen. You can't focus. Listen, you don't deny the facts. You don't say, well, I'm not 90. Yeah, I am 90. It doesn't matter. The facts are there. I mean, we're not talking about changing facts. We don't deny facts, but faith looks at facts and chooses to believe God more than it does the facts. That's what faith is. Faith doesn't get discouraged when it looks in the mirror and see something that denies what God says. Faith is facing facts without being discouraged. It's as 2 Corinthians 4, 18 says, we fix our eyes, not in what is seen, but in what is unseen. That's the key. My eyes aren't what is seen. My eyes are in what God has said, because what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal. When you hit the dead ends of your faith, you know, I'm never going to get married. I'm never going to graduate. I'm never going to get well. I'm never going to get out of debt. Never going to get free from my past hurts, never be able to change, never have a stable kind of life. If you focus on those nevers, you know what you'll get what you believe and you'll get discouraged. When I hit dead ends and I do, I have to choose and many times I have to choose to get alone with God away from my normal routine and look in this book and say, okay, God, tell me again what you said. You know, remind me, Lord, I'm a little slow here. Just speak to me from your word. Encourage me in my faith. Sometimes, you know, folks, God is just testing you. Do you know God tests you sometimes? Don't you wish he got on the phone and said, Charles, this is a test. He doesn't say he doesn't call you and tell you he just lets the circumstance happen. In fact, once Abraham had this wonderful child named Isaac, some years later, God said, now I'm really going to test you. Now I'm going to tell you to sacrifice this little guy. And the Bible says, Hebrews 11, 17, by faith, Abraham, when God tested him, not when the devil tested him, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son. But Abraham knew that God would not be unfaithful to him. In fact, if you read Genesis 22, Abraham turns to the servants, he said, the son, the boy and I are going to go worship God. And it says, then we'll be back. Genesis 22, 5, we'll be back. He knew before he went up that he was coming back with his son. And so they're hiking up the trail. And Isaac says, hey, dad, you know, I see the you know, I see the little fire and I see the wood and I see the rope. Dad, I don't see the sacrifice. Dad, the sacrifice. Abraham turned to Isaac and he said, what, son, God, the Lord will provide. And that's where we get Jehovah Jireh. The Lord will provide. I don't know how, son, but the Lord will provide. And Hebrews tells us Abraham believed even if he had to slay his son, God would raise him from the dead. Dear ones, God will do whatever he has to do to deliver you. Expect the test, but expect God to see you through. Remember, God's word is eternal in perspective. It's not just what you see. My problem normally is I just see things and kind of make decisions emotionally based on that. David, my son, had his graduation party from high school a few weeks ago and it was on a Sunday afternoon and it looked somewhat like this when we went outside. It was kind of nice. And we said, well, let's go ahead and put the food and everything out back and we'll have it outdoors. Be a lot more pleasant. I said, well, I better check the old radar. So I pushed in the button and watched the weather channel. And lo and behold, you know, here it comes. I'm looking on the radar and here's the risk and coming over the Pennsylvania, Ohio borders, this big red line of flashing. And down on the bottom was the screen was, you know, do not leave your house. Life-threatening hail, you know, the same things they have in wintertime. And you all read that stuff and don't, you know, it's dangerous, it's sick, you'll be killed. Well, I look at this and I said, well, you know, maybe it's not a great idea to put the stuff outside. But I also saw that right past the line of thunderstorms, it was clear. So I said, well, why don't we wait for the storm passes? Then we'll put it. That's exactly what we did. If those of you came a couple hours later, got nice, then we're not hit golf balls. You see, the problem with us is all we see is what's right in front of us. God looks on the radar screen of our whole life and says, hey, look, yeah, there's a storm, but I know what's coming afterward. It's clearing and sunny. Just hang in there. Trust God's word. The third thing that Abraham did was he came up strong. Look at your, I love it. I want you to read this with me. This is so powerful. Look at the second paragraph. Would you read it? Almost done. Hang in there. Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say it's hopeless. This hundred year old body could never father a child. He didn't say that, nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise, asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong. Why don't you circle that? Ready for God. Sure that God would make good on what he had said, but that's why it is said Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right. It's not just Abraham. It's also us. It's also for us. You see, in every fight of faith, the key to following through is the expectation that God will deliver. He will do whatever it takes to fulfill his will and purpose in your life. It may not be exactly what you envisioned, but God will be glorified. Abraham trusted he knew that God was able to do anything he needed. And folks, you know, we're fairly creative. Human beings can be pretty creative when we need to be. I mean, when we're in a jam, have you ever created something that you thought, hey, that's pretty clever? I saw I don't know how many of you saw this on ESPN several months ago. And the end of high school basketball, there was a tournament out in Iowa or Idaho. Forget. But there was two schools playing it out. One was sort of the perennial big school powerhouse that won all the state championships. And the other was this little like, you know, David and Goliath type, just a small school, but good team this year. And they had won all the way up to the championship game. And they're playing head to head, back and forth. Championship game comes down to the last second. The big powerhouse school has a one point lead. There's one second left, but the little school gets the ball underneath their basket. So they're going to get they're going to get the ball in with one second. This these big kids just put their hands up and the game's probably over. Everyone's thinking, oh, man, what a great game. Almost had it. Coach calls timeout. This team, the small school kids go over and they talk it out and they think up their strategy. They come back, the guy takes the ball inbounds and slaps it. And when he slaps the ball like that, three of the players from his team go to the foul line and lay down and start barking and writhing around like dogs. All the other teammates look at him from the other team. They all look at these guys and they dump the ball off to the one kid. He dumps it in the basket. They won. Most creative basketball play I've ever seen. Perfectly legal. I mean, they didn't didn't fake an injury. I think we just started barking and carrying on and rolling. Creative, you got it, boy. Now, if if we can think of these kind of ingenious ideas, can God not think of something to get you out of a mess you're in? Maybe God has to part a Red Sea. Maybe he has to put an asbestos suit on you in a fiery furnace. Maybe he has to create something from nothing. But God is able to do whatever it takes. We just need to come up strong and expect him to do it. Expect him to do it. Expect him to do it. And along the way, just simply have the courage to offer him the sacrifice of praise, Hebrews 13, 15, the fruit of lips, giving thanks to his name. How did Abraham sustain his strength? Once he buffed it a couple of times, you know what he did? The Bible says that he gave glory to God. In other words, he spoke praise to God during the time and said, God, I praise you because I know you're able. I know you can do it, whatever you call it, folks. The turning point of faith's follow through is when you say, Lord, I'm going to praise you all the way through. I'm going to keep praising you, even though I don't know how it's going to work out. I give you praise because you are going to do it. Your character proves it to me. You don't just plead and keep begging. You just thank him. Jesus, when he faced Lazarus to him. I love that story in John 11. And Martha said, oh, God, if you'd only come, Lord, if you'd only showed up earlier. You know, my brother had been spared. Jesus said, hey, it's all the way I planned it. Roll the stone away. Martha said, but Lord, you don't understand. He's been in there four days and the King James says he stinketh. I said that in the locker room once, this stinketh and people. It's he stinketh. Jesus said, just watch. And here's what it says. John 11, 41. He said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. That's all Jesus said, I thank you that you've heard me. But just so that these know. That it's yo