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HOW GOD BUILDS YOUR FAITH
The Six Phases of Faith -- Part 1
04-27-14 Sermon
Matthew 9:29
(Jesus said) "According to your faith it will be done to you."
Mark 9:23 (GN)
"Everything is possible for the person who has faith."
How Does God Build My Faith?
PHASE 1: D_______________________________________________________
"...God
is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of
-- infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or
hopes." Eph. 3:20 (LB)
PHASE 2: D_______________________________________________________
"You must
believe and not doubt...a double-minded man is unstable in all he does."
James 1:6+8
(GN)
- You must I_________________:
a.
T__________________
b.
M__________________
c. R___________________
d.
E___________________
- You must let go of S_______________________
PHASE 3: D_______________________________________________________
(God says)
"But these things I plan won't happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches
when the vision will be fulfilled."
Hab 2:3a (LB)
PHASE 4: D_______________________________________________________
"At the
present you may be temporarily harassed by all kinds of trials. This is no accident - it happens to
prove your faith, which is infinitely more valuable than gold." I Peter 1:6-7 (Ph)
PHASE 5: D_______________________________________________________
"At that
time we were completely overwhelmed, the burden was more than we could
bear, in fact we told ourselves that this was the end. Yet we now believe that we had this sense of
impending disaster so that we might learn to trust, not in ourselves,
but in God who can raise the dead!"
II Cor. 1:8-9
(Ph)
PHASE 6:D
_______________________________________________________
"He has
delivered ... and he will deliver us again!" 2 Cor. 1:10
"I am expecting
the Lord to rescue me again, so that once again I will see his goodness to
me..." Ps 27:13 (GN)
Examples:
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Noah (Gen 6-9)
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Joseph (Gen. 37-45)
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Abraham (Gen. 12-22)
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Moses (Ex. 2-15)
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Jesus (John 14-20)
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David (1 Sam. 16-32)
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HOW GOD BUILDS YOUR FAITH
The Six Phases of Faith
Matthew 9:29 & Mark 9:23
04-27-14 Sermon
The Bible says in Matthew 9:29
"According to your faith, it will be done unto you." That's the key to the great adventure. According to your faith. God says, "You get to choose how much I
bless your life. You believe and I'll do
it. You believe and I'll
bless."
Mark 9:23 says "Everything is
possible for the person who has faith."
That makes life a great adventure.
How many of you would like to have a stronger faith? I would to.
For the next six weeks we're going to do a faith building series.
Faith is like a muscle -- it can be developed. It can be strengthened. It can be weak or it can be strong. It depends on how much you use it. If you have a weak faith, don't miss the next
six weeks. How does God build my faith? He uses a very predictable pattern, a very
predictable process. If you understand
it, you can co-operate with it. The
Bible says, "Without faith, it's impossible to please God."
A question I'm frequently asked as a
pastor, is "Why is this happening to
me? I don't understand it." When you don't understand God's Six Phases of
Faith on how He builds your character and how He builds your faith, you will
get discouraged. You may become
resentful. You will certainly
worry. You may become fearful about the
future. You may become depressed. And most of all, you can't co-operate with
what God is doing. But when you understand
the six phases that God takes every believer through, and He takes you through
them over and over and over, then you can say "Oh, I'm in stage four right now" or stage six or stage
two. You understand what's going on and
don't get discouraged when times are tough.
I want to introduce the series this
morning that we'll be looking at the next six weeks. We will learn to "recognize the Six
Phases of Faith in my life."
How
does God build my faith?
1. Dream
God always starts with a dream. Nothing happens until somebody starts
dreaming. You've got to get an idea, a
vision, a goal, an ambition. You have to
set your sights on some target. When God
wants to work in your life He always gives you a dream -- about yourself, about
what He wants you to do, about the impact He's going to use your life in the
world.
There are many examples in the Bible of
this.
God
gave Noah the dream of building an ark.
God
gave Abraham the dream of being the father of a great nation.
God
gave Joseph the dream of being a leader that would save his people.
God
gave Nehemiah the dream of building the wall around Jerusalem.
God
gave David the dream of building the temple.
Nothing happens until you start
dreaming. A dream is a vision or an idea
about something that is not yet a part of your reality. You start to focus on something that does not
yet exist in your life and in faith you start moving toward that.
How do you know when a dream is from God
or when it's from yourself? Maybe you're
just kind of thinking it up. How do you
know if it's God speaking or the lasagna you had last night? What is really causing this thought in my
life?
Ephesians 3:20 "God is able to do far more than we would dare to ask or even
dream of, infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts or
hopes."
A dream from God will require
faith. If a dream comes from God, it
will be so big in your life that you can't do it on your own. A dream from God will be God-sized. It will be more than you could possibly
accomplish on your own. If you could do it on your own, you don't need
faith . If you can do it on your own, if
you can work hard and eventually accomplish it by your own efforts, it is a
goal, maybe a difficult goal, but not a dream.
It will be “far more than we would
dare to ask or even dream of, infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires,
thoughts or hopes."
God starts with giving you a dream. He's been speaking to many of you, you just
didn't recognize it. That dream, that
idea, that concept, that thing that would really be of benefit to other people
-- where do you think that idea is coming from?
It's coming from God.
God's
Will will never contradict God's Word.
He is not giving you a dream of leaving your family and kids and moving
to Hollywood to be a star. That is not a
dream from God. God's Will will never
contradict God's Word. You have to keep
it in context.
He starts with a dream. But that is only one stage in the process..
2. Decision -- you begin to do something about
your dream.
Nothing is going to happen to that dream
until you wake up and put it into action.
You've got to make it work.
You've got to make the decision: "I'm going to go for it!" For every ten dreamers in the world there is
only one decision maker. A lot of people
have dreams but they never get to Phase Two -- To make the decision to go for
it. They just sit around and hope it will happen.
James says "You must believe and not doubt because a double minded man is
unstable in all that he does." Faith is a verb -- it's active and not
passive. It's something you do. Decision making is a faith building
activity. You use your muscles of faith.
During this phase -- the moment of truth
in decision making -- you must do two things:
1) You
must invest. It's a decision to
invest. What will you have to invest?
a) Time. If you won’t give time toward God’s dream for
you it is not going to happen. You give
time toward the priorities of your life.
b) Money. It will probably cost money. If it is God’s dream for you he will finance
it, but when God’s money comes in you need to put it toward God’s dream for
you.
c) Reputation. You may have to deal with the cold water
committee—you know, those who will throw cold water on any hot new idea. And people may think you are a nut case. Just remember that a huge oak tree was once a
nut that stood its ground!
Think
of Noah. It took him 120 years to build
the ark. What do you think his neighbors
thought about him working day in and day out on this huge boat. He was telling people that it was going to
rain 40 days and 40 nights and God was going to flood the earth. Up until that time the bible says that the
earth was watered by God sending up a mist each day like timed watering of the
vegetables at the Kroger store. So, the
neighbors would have wondered, what do you mean when you are talking about rain
and floods. What is rain? What’s a flood? Noah’s reputation would have suffered over
the 120 years of building the ark.
d) Energy. You will need to invest energy in
accomplishing God’s dream for you. Noah
didn’t just order materials from Lowes and have them delivered. The ark didn’t come in a kit. No one else had ever built an ark so no one
knew what one looked like. But for 120
years Noah had to invest energy in building God’s dream for him.
There
is an investment stage in this Stage Two of decision making. You lay it on the line, take the plunge. "God,
You've told me to do this and I'm going to go for it! I will do what I have to
do, and look for you to do what only you can do."
2) You
have to let go of security.
You
cannot move in faith and hold onto the past at the same time. You have to move forward. You have to let go. Abraham:
God said "I'm going to make
you the father of a great nation."
He had to leave his home for an unknown destination.
Moses
had to let go of the probability of him moving into the Pharaoh's position when
he died. He let go of that in order to
do God's will. Nehemiah gave up a secure
job in order to go build a wall around Jerusalem.
Like
John Ortburg said in the adult Sunday school study we did awhile back, If you want to walk on water, you've got to
get out of the boat.
The
best illustration of this is a trapeze artist.
They swing out on bars and then let go, grab the other bars and swing to
the other side. The bars are far enough
away that you can't hang on to the first and grab the other at the same
time. At some point you have to let go
of the first bar and grab on to the next one.
At a split second at some point the trapeze artists are up there holding
on to neither.
They
are suspended in air for a split second.
Have you ever been there in a career?
Where you're leaving one job for another and nothing's in between? You're up there 180 feet above, no net below,
and holding onto nothing.
But
if you don't let go and grab onto the vision God wants you to have, you swing
back toward where you came from. But
notice that you don't swing all the way back.
You just swing back lower and lower until finally the bar stops. And you're hanging there and there's only one
way out. Down.
God gives you a dream and you
make the decision.
3. Delay
We don’t like this one. Not in our You can have it all! I want it now!, society. There is usually a delay. God will not fulfill your dream
immediately. God has not promised to
give you the dream today and fulfill it tomorrow. You can count on a time lapse. There is always a delay, a waiting period.
The prophet Habakkuk: God says, "These things I plan won't happen right
away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time
approaches when the vision will be fulfilled."
In Phase 3 you start asking the
"When?" question. "When, Lord? When are You going to answer my prayer?" Americans hate to wait. We don't like to wait in doctor's offices,
traffic jams, or restaurants or for Christmas presents or for anything
else. But what we hate worst of all is
waiting on God. Have you ever been in a
hurry when God wasn't? Irritating. You're ready but God isn't. It’s because God wants to work on you before He works on the dream. Every believer in history has had to go
through, eventually, the University of Learning to Wait. ULTW.
Some of you have not gotten your degree there yet.
Noah waited 120 years from the time he
started building the arc until it began to rain. Abraham was told he would be the father of a
great nation and didn't have a child until he was 99. God told Moses he would be the leader to lead
his people out of 400 years of slavery and then makes him wait in the desert 40
years before it happens. Joseph spent
years in prison before God raised him up and he became the ruler God wanted him
to be. God had David anointed as king
and then he waited for 17 years until he actually got to be king. We go through these waiting periods.
Even Jesus who came to be the Messiah of
the world and waits for 30 years in the carpenter's shop.
Why do we wait? It teaches us to trust in God. We learn that His timing is perfect. One of the facts we have to learn is God says
delays never destroy His purpose. A delay is not a denial. Kids must learn the difference between
"No" and "Not yet".
Big difference. Many times God
says to you "Not yet" and you think He's saying "No". A delay is not a denial. A delay never destroys God's purpose in your
life.
The common reaction in this phase is
doubt. We start doubting. "Maybe
I missed God's vision. Maybe I didn’t
hear God right. Maybe I need to work on
this myself.” That is how Abraham
ended up with Ishmael while waiting for Isaac, the child that God had
promised. He couldn’t take the delay any
longer. After years of waiting for this
promised child of God, Abraham’s wife was still not pregnant so Abraham and his
wife decided that maybe God wanted Abraham to have a child through his
maidservant, Hagar. Bad idea. The roots of the whole Arab—Israeli conflict
go all the way back to that bad move.
How do you handle the Waiting Rooms of
life? This reveals your faith. Once you start moving through the Delay
period you come to Phase 4.
4. Difficulty
Not only do you get to wait, you get to
have problems while you wait. Aren’t I
just a whole big bundle of encouragement this morning? Two
primary kinds of problems: Circumstances and Critics. You can count on this. When God gives you a dream there will be
circumstances and critics.
Moses had difficulty. He led the children of Israel out of Egypt
into the desert to the Promised Land. He
had one problem after another. First
there was no water. Then there was no
food. Then there were a bunch of
complainers. Then there were poisonous
snakes that bit many people. Then the
earth opened up and swallowed some people.
They had one problem after another.
They were doing what God wanted but they still had problems.
David was anointed king and then for the
next several years he is hunted down by Saul and forced to hide in caves.
Joseph has a dream of becoming a
ruler. He's sold into slavery. He's falsely accused of rape. He languishes
there and nobody knows he's there.
Difficulties on top of delay.
Imagine the difficulties Noah had. How would you like to build a floating
zoo. Who was responsible for cleaning up
the bottom of the ark after 4 days and 40 nights?
You have all kinds of problems that come
along. The Bible says that when Moses
died, Joshua was then appointed the leader.
Moses led the people across the desert.
Joshua leads them into the promised land. The easy part? He leads them into the promised land and the
next verses it says "Now there were giants in the land." Even in the promised land there are problems,
because God is working on your faith and character.
Why does God allow this? I Peter,
"At present you may be temporarily harassed by all kinds of trials. This is no accident. It happens to prove your faith which
is infinitely more valuable than gold." You might circle—this is no
accident.
Difficult circumstances and critics are
not an accident, they are part of God’s plan to prove your faith and build your character.
Finally the difficulties become so bad,
you've come to your limit, tried everything, exhausted all your options. You come to phase 5…
5. Dead End
The situation deteriorates from
difficult to impossible. Hopeless, no
way out, no alternatives left.
If you are at this stage,
congratulations. You are in good
company. Even Paul went through dead
ends. 2 Corinthians 1 "At that time we were completely
overwhelmed. The burden was more than we
could bear. In fact, we told ourselves
that this was the end. Yet now we
believe that we had this sense of impending disaster so that we might learn to
trust not in ourselves but in God who can raise the dead." If God can raise people who are dead physically
He can raise people dead emotionally. He
can raise a dead marriage. He can
resurrect a dead career. He can
resurrect a health problem and make it better.
If God can raise the dead He can do anything. That’s one of the great messages of Easter
that we just celebrated last week.
In Abraham's situation, God said, "I want you to become the father of a
nation" and then he waits until he's 99 years old to have a baby. The Bible says it had gone from difficult to
impossible. He looks at his body and
says, No way! Then he looks at his wife and says, Double no way! They were at a dead end.
But Sarah got pregnant and they laughed
about it. When the baby was born they
name him Isaac which means "laughter". This is a joke. We know that Sarah didn't believe God when He
told her she'd have a baby, because she laughed. If she had believed Him no woman at that age
would have laughed; she would have cried.
God often lets problems become
impossibilities. The disciples planned
to follow Jesus. They thought He'd be
the Messiah. And then the next thing
they know He's hanging on the cross and dies.
Dead end for the disciples. For
three days they went through a real dead end.
At this stage you start asking, "What's going on, God? Did I miss your will? Your plan?
Have I missed God's vision? Is it
really something I thought up on my own?"
The best example of this is when Moses
led the Israelites out of Egypt. They'd
been slaves for 400 years. Finally
Pharaoh, after 10 plagues, says "Get
out of here! Good riddance!" They take off. But one day later Pharaoh changes his mind
and starts coming after them. They are
at the Red Sea, they have mountains on each side, the Red Sea in front of them
and the enemy army in hot pursuit behind them, ready to kill them. God's cul de sac. There is no way they're going to get out. I'm sure many of the people at that time
complained that they should have stayed in
Egypt rather than die at the Red Sea.
Some people prefer bondage rather than
risk. They'll put up with a bad
situation that is not God's will rather than take a risk and trust God in some new
situation. The risk to be open, the risk
to free, the risk to confront a problem.
It's interesting that the place where
they were hemmed in was called Baal-zephon.
That means "God's hidden
treasure". They were exactly
where God wanted them to be. If you are
in a dead end, you are exactly where God wants you to be. God knows where you are. He's got your number. He knows every hair on your head. He put you in that dead end for a
purpose.
Dead ends are a part of God's plan for you. You will have many of them in life. You're just in Phase 5.
What's the best response to a dead
end? Expect. Positively expectat
that God will lead you to Phase 6.
6. Deliverance
At the end, God comes in and
delivers. God does a miracle. God provides a solution. This is what happens. Paul says in 1
Corinthians "He has delivered
us and will deliver us again."
Psalm 27 says, "I'm expecting
the Lord to rescue me again so that once again I will see His goodness to
me."
In Moses' case, God splits the Red
Sea. In Abraham case, he and Sarah
miraculously conceive a child. In
Joseph's case, all of a sudden his dream comes true and he finds himself moving
from being imprisoned in the dungeon to being the second in command in
Egypt. Jesus died but was then resurrected
from the dead.
God loves to turn crucifixions into
resurrections. Dead ends into
deliverance. Because He gets the
credit. He gets the glory.
The best response to a dead end is to
expect God to act. If this is God’s dream
for you, God is ultimately responsible for the fulfillment of the dream. It if it is a God seized dream it will take
God sized power to accomplish it. But
you have to have faith that he will fulfill his dream for you as you are
working through the phases of that fulfillment.
What are you expecting God to do in your
life? He's doing what you expect Him to
do. The Bible says "According to your faith it will be done unto you." When you wait for deliverance then God gets
the credit.
Let’s review before I close:
Phase
1
-- What is the dream God has given me?
If you don't have a dream, start praying, "God give me Your dream."
If you don't have a dream you're not living, you're just existing. God didn't plan that. You're here on this earth for a purpose. When you discover that purpose, that's your
dream God wants you to go for.
Phase
2
-- Some of you have got a dream from God but you've not made a decision to go
for it. You're still sitting on the
fence. God's word for you at Phase 2 is
"Go for it!" Some of you need
to make the decision to give your life to Christ. Some of you need to make the decision to be filled
with the Spirit of God. Some of you need
to make the decision put away lesser things and distractions and get on with
God’s dream for you.
Phase
3 --
What has caused my dream to be delayed?
If your prayer hasn't been answered, it's OK. You're in God's waiting
room. Do not detour. When things don't happen on our time table, we
tend to run ahead of God and create detours to make it happen. You may end up making the wrong
decision. Wait, wait, wait for God to
work His hand.
Phase
4 --
What difficulties have I faced waiting for the dream to be fulfilled? What negative circumstances and critics do I
see? You are being tested, but it's not
going to be the last time. You'll go
through many, many tests in life. God
says, "I know exactly what you're
going through. I see it. I'm watching.
Don't think I've forgotten you; I haven't." I am building your
character.
Phase
5
-- Have I come to the dead end yet? Some
of you are there ready to give up.
You're right where God wants you.
You're getting prepared for deliverance.
God's word for you is "Hang
on! Keep on believing! Don't give up!"
Phase
6
-- Do I expect and trust God to deliver me?
He will. "According to your faith it will be done unto you." God is faithful. What He tells us He will do, He will do. But it doesn't happen overnight.
You go through Dream, Decision, Delay, Difficulty,
Dead End. And then comes Deliverance.
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