Pastor Jon Evans “Is Your Faith Exciting?” This morning as you entered into service I had the ushers handed you a card. On that card is a picture of an infant mustard seed plant, and on the card is a saying, “Is your FAITH exciting?” Attached to the card is a ziplock bag containing five(5) or six(6) mustard seeds. I would like you to take those seeds home, place them in your pepper mill and grind them onto your salad and in a few days with a guarantee of freshness you will begin to experience exciting faith. Now if I could only read your minds, twenty five (25%) percent of you would be thinking “I think Pastor Jon you have lost your mind”, while sixty-five (65%) percent of you are thinking, “If it could only be that easy”. For those of you who did the quick math that leaves ten (10%) percent still wishing they would have had that last cup of coffee before attending church this morning. As we continue this morning it would be wise to looked a little further into the scripture by jumping ahead to the great chapter on Faith in Book of Hebrews chapter 11. Here you have the Faith Hall of Fame, fifteen (15) times in this chapter, a verse starts, “By Faith”; “By Faith” the universe was created, “By Faith” Abel offered a better sacrifice, “By Faith”Noah built an ark, “By Faith” Abraham being tested, “By Faith” Isaac blessed Jacob, “By Faith” Moses was hidden by his parents. From the beginning of creation, to the promise of God for “something better”, it has been “By Faith”. And then the crescendo, the height of our anthem on Faith in chapter 12, “ Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us”, listen closely here it is, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, (pause) the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Our faith does not lie in the knowledge that we have. Our faith does not lie in the works we do. Our faith does not lie in the fact that you are sitting in church this morning, it is only in the shed blood of Jesus Christ that we have this blessed hope. Once again we find ourselves among the crowd waiting to see Jesus. Word had spread that He would be coming this way and the crowd was beginning to grow, people are coming from far and wide to see Him. Coming down from the mountain with Peter, James and John, Jesus is confronted with two problems, the anguish of a loving father, and the inability of His disciples to heal. The father cries out “15 “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.” In a short amount of time the boy is brought to Jesus, the demon that had attached itself to the boy is rebuked and cast into outer darkness. But the underlying problems still remains to be answered, the ability of the disciples to cast out devils when seven chapters earlier they were given the authority “to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and cast out demons”. Sitting on the outside, watching everyone play the game of Monopoly you can spot a cheater. If you’re the Banker they don’t give you enough money. Or a simple move of the hand can position a player forward or backwards to avoid Marvin Gardens with hotels. In every game you will hear the words “You cheater”. When you turn sixty (60) the word cheater takes on a whole new meaning. I’m finding that type on most printed things is now too small and hard to read. Thus I now own several pairs of cheaters. The Disciples are having a hard time of seeing. Jesus is on top of the mountain with, Peter, James and John; the need of demonic deliverance has come and they are without the Master. In their hearts they are saying over confidently “this is demon number seventy-five (75), piece of cake”; with the absence of Jesus and been there done that attitude, they have lost their focus. In either way their spiritual life has dulled, and they are unable to cast out this demon. At a missionary convention a story is told of Gabriel a overly zealous missionary located in violent plagued country of Colombia. His calling is to share the gospel with the guerrilla soldiers hiding in the mountains. As he approaches a camp site with his bag of Spanish Bibles, a perimeter guard often steps out and sticks an AK-47 in Gabriel’s stomach. “What are you doing here?” “I’ve come to tell you about the love of Jesus which you can read in these books”. “We don’t want your books, Get lost or I’ll kill you!” It’s at this point that Gabriel’s faith rises. Pushing the barrel of the gun aside as he casually answers, No you won’t! You can’t kill me until God says you can kill me,” and in faith he boldly walks ahead into camp where he distributes Bibles and preaches the gospel to those who will listen. He is still walking on the mountain sides of Columbia speaking the Gospel of Jesus to the guerrilla soldiers. He is convinced the day will come when his life will be taken. But his faith is solidly grounded in the assurance that it will only happen with God’s permission. Meanwhile he is a powerful witness to the truth of the Gospel because of his Exciting Faith. Now that’s a good story but I could never do that, nor would I ask you to. You have got to admit though, in order to do something like that, your faith must be on a scale of one (1) to ten (10), a fifteen (15). In the scripture this morning we read, “that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains, cast out demons, up root trees and plant them in the ocean”. All you have to have is faith the size of a little mustard seed. Joyce was a stay at home mom of five (5) boys. As she was outside watching her youngest playing she noticed that he was not totally into the games like the other children. She called him over for a moment to see if he was ok. He assured her that he was fine and went on to play for a while. Soon after Joyce went back into the house, her son followed and began to cry in pain. She called her husband at work and told him that he needed to take Ben to the hospital. Before they could get there she began to worry about the payment, living paycheck to paycheck there was not a lot of extra money. All the time they were in the ER she was thinking about the payment. Emergency surgery was required and corrected the problem for Ben, but the payment was still a concern. The hospital promised to send a bill as soon as all the items were entered. Over and over again she pictured the amount of the bill. As she opened her devotional book one morning the scripture was from Psalm 50:10 “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills”. In her mind she foolishly said “Lord, all I need is one” and went on with the daily activities. That day the hospital bill came in the mail the total due was five thousand dollars ($5000), she sat down and began to cry. Three days later a voice within her said call the hospital. Not knowing how she would pay the bill, she stuffed it and the idea in the dresser drawer. The next morning unable to release the thought of calling the hospital, she sought council from a friend and they agreed that she would call that afternoon. After a short waiting period the accounting office came back on the phone and said that the bill did not have a balance. Insistent on rechecking, the response came back the same, “there is no balance”. But I owed $5000.00 dollars she said, how can this be? The clerk said “all I can tell you, that the note on the bill says PAID IN FULL and signed the letter J”. Exciting Faith, is faith that believes in a simple prayer and the promises in the Word of God when it says, Philippians 4:19 “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” The story is told of a blind boy who was flying a kite and enjoying the pastime along with others. A passer-by, knowing him and wanting to tease him said, Where is your kite? You dont know whether it is on the ground or up in the sky. Oh yes, said the blind boy, I do know. It has taken awhile but it is high up in the air. How do you know that? asked his friend, you cant see it. No! replied the boy, I cant see it, but I can feel the tug of the string. It is not the quantity of faith, but the quality of faith, that is important. Exciting Faith, the size of mustard seed is small, but it’s powerful, it’s explosive. “Faith the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Can you for a moment take off the glasses of doubt, fear, and disbelief? Can you for a moment come to Jesus as a child, climb upon His lap; and only as a child can, reach up to His face and remove His glasses, place them over your eyes and as a child begin to see the things that Jesus see. He sees a little shepherd boy with a sling shot and a few stones coming against the giant Goliath with Exciting Faith. He sees three Hebrew children about to be thrown into a fiery furnace with Exciting Faith. He sees a family building an Ark large enough to hold two of every animal He created with Exciting Faith. As a child of God, He wants to see you with Exciting Faith. It is easy to stand here this morning and say Lord increase our faith. All of us at one point or another in our lives have said something similar like that, and we stand at the church alters there expecting a lightning bolt of faith to hit us. Just like Beatrice and her facebook friends said “That not how it works, that’s not how any of this works.” F. F. Bosworth said, “Most Christians feed their body three hot meals a day and their spirit one cold snack, once a week. And they wonder why they’re so weak in faith.” In James 4:8 we read “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”. So many Christians never get past the baby steps. They go to church on Sunday, they tithe, once in a while they will attend a special gathering, they understand the basic need of the Gospel, but that’s as far as it goes. God’s word says in Romans 10:17 that “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Increasing your faith begins with a desire to being closer to God. Next you need to adjust your hearing. Increasing your faith requires you to spend time in God’s word. You need to open the Book and begin to read it. Look at a passage of scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to talk to you about it. If you still don’t understand, then study a little harder. I’ve always said, if you didn’t get it from one passage, search the scripture and go to the place where the concept or passage was first used in the Bible, there you may see what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell you, through cross reference. Find a spiritual partner, not just a prayer partner, but someone you trust, someone that you can discuss spiritual things with. Read books from Christian authors who are trying to plant seeds of growth into your life. Assemble together for worship and praise. If your desire is to have great faith, then begin by planting the seeds of faith in God’s word. Amen & Amen.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 18:42:14 +0000
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