The God Promises Part 3Transcribed from Pastor Melissa Scott's Live Sunday Service. Faith Defined FurtherSome make the mistake of trying to define Faith by Hebrews 11:1. You read Hebrews 11:1, what does it say? "Faith is," what? "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" but it does not define Faith. And, paradoxically, if you're going to grab a promise, Faith transubstantiates the promise. I'm going to use an analogy of something and then I'm going to get to my message. Jesus said 'Except ye become like children,' you'll read the passage in Mark 10:15. Then you read Paul in Ephesians 4:14 saying 'Be no more like children, tossed with the doctrine to and fro.' They're not contradicting each other. Jesus says 'Except you be like children,' 'hear the voice of your Father, listen and obey.' Paul is saying 'once you come to know that voice, quit running around for some other doctrine.' That is like a child looking for different toys to play with. Once you know where you're going, quit looking for something else. Listen to the voice of the Sayer, grab hold of it, that's that! That's what Ephesians 4:14 is saying. Now I came up with an analogy because I see people wrestle with this all the time. We are like children on aplayground. You climb up the monkey bars and you go across and you go back down. You watch kids play on the playground—there are some kids that will get up on those monkey bars and they really are like monkeys. They just swing right across, they skip a couple of the rungs, right? They're to the other side and zip they're down. Other kids will climb up there and they have to grasp rung by rung right across—grasp each one of them with a tight grip. Then you've got kids, and I could tell you I was one of them, that couldn't make it half way across and had to fall down in the middle. We think there are levels of Faith. It is true, you can have levels of Faith, but Faith fixed in the right place begins to grow like a seed planted in good soil that takes root. Now imagine God from a bird's-eye view looking down at these children, taking the analogy of the children with the Faith element involved. You have from God's perspective the child that can't make it across. "I just need to ask for more strength," in this case more Faith. The disciples asked for that. Do you think that after the Day of Pentecost, after that day when the Spirit was poured out, that they went and asked for more Faith? They were endued with power from on high and they went out and preached the Word. I highly doubt if you look at these "sent ones" as an example, that any one of them wavered afterwards. At the beginning, before they were endued, when they were with Jesus...look at Peter, that's all you need to see—a little bit of doubt here, and a little bit of denial here, and off we go. The Day of Pentecost he's 'Mr. Pentecost;' he stands up to preach the message boldly. Sometimes I'm grieved in my spirit because I know if people understood the real battle—the devil is a copycat. Some try to get you to take your eyes off Jesus and examine yourself. With the focus being taken off Jesus, of course the devil tricks you into seeing if you're worthy. It's a trick! Maybe you'll begin to see who is planting the seeds of doubt in your life. God's not the author of fear or doubt. You look in your Strong's Concordance under 'faith' and you'll find, strangely enough, in the Old Testament there are only two references, two Scriptural references that use our English word faith in the Old Testament. The rest of them are all in the New Testament. It's staggering. In Hebrew, you've got the three words which we've become familiar with: batach, 'to lean on a staff;' hasa, 'to run to a shelter;' and amen, which is pretty much self explanatory. These three Hebrew words encompass the Greek word pisteo. It's too bad we don't have a verb 'faither,' or 'faithing,' because that's what it should be. It's an action word. Everything points back to rock-solid Faith and I always ask myself the question "Why do people waver so much?" I'm not talking about little bits, I'm talking about one day we're up and the next day we're down. I'm not talking about emotions because I think most people have this confused. Faith and your emotions are not the same, they're not synonymous. Faith is based on a fact starting with the Resurrection. Now how can you slide around that? How can your Faith become less? Are you less sure today than you were a year ago about Jesus Christ's Resurrecting? Absolutely not! Then why would your Faith move? Now I'm not talking about being a stoic. A stoic is more than "I shall not be, I shall not be moved" (like the song), it's more like "I refuse to let anybody see me cry, blink, or smile." I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about Faith. Read about Paul in the New Testament. He's in prison, he's in a cell, he's shipwrecked, he's beaten, he's being tried, and yet he's still Paul full of Faith. He doesn't have anything other than the fact that he's been converted, his Damascus road experience, and the element that makes him go out and proclaim the Word with certainty and confidence—the power of Jesus Christ. There's a good definition of Faith right there. This is like a spiritual blast, every once in a while we need to come back to the basics. Go back to God's promises, they're yours, they're mine. I had a good laugh when I was thinking about these children on the playground. I thought of one of the promises, "Shoes of iron and brass." I got to thinking about it, you know God's a funny fashion designer. Shoes of iron and brass wouldn't cut it in this day and age. But there's something about what He says, we know 'tough shoes for a tough trip,' but if you think about it, to give us shoes like that it's going to be tough. Not only do you have to make the trip but you've got to drag these things around.
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