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We’re back for another session. This is going to be a fun session. We’re going to talk. So this is actually the final part of our Walking in Radical Faith series. And we come through a lot. Today, we’re going to talk about kind of an interesting thing. It’s that faith is a choice and we can choose to have faith and we can choose not to have faith. And it’s kind of eye opening when you start to realize that it’s all in in your capacity to do that. So real quickly, for my audio podcast subscribers, don’t forget to subscribe if you’re not subscribed to our channel. Also, be sure to share us on social media and as always, come back and listen to the same message again. You’ll get a lot more out of it, I promise you that. So just a real quick review. All right. Last session we were talking about the three aspects of belief. We’re talking about that we’re to believe in God. And there’s three aspects that we talked about. And that number one, the first aspect is simply just believing God, right? Not only believing that God exists, but believing that he has the power to do all that we ask. And it’s real interesting. We were looking at Mark 1120. You don’t have to go there, but this is the passage where the disciples are asking Jesus, why could we not do this? I’m talking about the fig tree.

And Jesus says, Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Okay, So what we find is that we’re to believe God and have faith in God, believe that he will do it, that it will be done for us as long as we do not doubt. The other thing that we found and talked about in this section is that there’s kind of these two parts in believing God. Number one is faith is knowing. God can right, knowing God can do that for which you’ve asked and belief. The difference between faith and belief. Belief is expecting God will okay. It’s an expectation that God will do it, and the faith is believing that he can do it. And this is where we talked about with faith. All things are possible. We’re going to hit that in just a moment. So that’s the first thing we we discussed in terms of kind of the big the big rocks that we were concluding on. The second thing we discussed last time was that with God, all things are possible with God, all things are possible. And what’s interesting with this, we’ve always heard, but we’ve usually discounted the fact that. If you just believe all things are possible for one who believes and we get our human mind in the mix of that and we go, Well, that’s preposterous, because you can’t simply believe in anything happen.

But yet that’s not what Jesus teaches. First thing Jesus teaches is believing in God, believing God’s word, and it’s have faith in God. And what we discussed on this is, are all things possible with God? And the answer is yes. And therefore, if faith is simply believing God to do it for you. Then all things are possible for one who believes, and we use the example of a key in the ignition. And I was thinking about this a little bit further. We talked about this last time, but imagine that I’ve got this great big old weight, this trailer with a five ton piece of equipment. There is no way possible I can move that. I can’t even pull five tons. However, my son has a Ford F 350 and it’s got a little key and all I have to do is stick the key into the ignition and the ignition ignites the engine. Right. And so the key is faith. You either have faith or you don’t. The engine’s either running or it’s not. But then with God, all things are possible. We have to believe it. And belief is pushing the accelerator down. We talked about you have heavenly truths, right? These are heavenly truths. These are the things that Jesus teaches.

He teaches heavenly truths, not earthly truths. We then have earthly truths or earthly realities down here. And the reality what’s actually going on is we have this thing called faith. And faith is the connection between the heavenly truths. And the earthly realities. But its belief. That opens up how much travels through that faith. In other words, faith is the key that turns on the engine. But belief is the accelerator that opens up the fuel line to push fuel into the engine, to then do that for what you want. I can crank up the F-350 with the key, and if I never push on the accelerator, that five ton trailer will never move. Doesn’t matter. Quote unquote. How much faith I have, Because it’s only one faith. It’s either faith or not. But the level of belief, the level of opening up the fuel line to actually engage the engine, to start pulling that thing. That’s what causes the thing to occur that I am praying in faith to have. And that’s what we started to see with with God. All things are possible because it’s not us doing it, it’s God doing it. He’s doing it on our behalf because we pray in faith. And He says that whatever we pray for in faith he will do, because by definition, faith comes from God and therefore, by definition, it is God’s will. But this is where we see Jesus says, But you must pray without doubt in your heart, believing that what you say is going to happen.

And then once you believe it will happen, it’ll be done for you. And then the final thing we talked about in our last session is that all things are possible. All things are possible for can anyone fill in the blank for blank? All things are possible for. One who believes right? One who believes this is what Jesus says. The father with the epileptic son comes and asks Jesus to cast out the demon, and the disciples were unable to do it. And the Father says, Help me if you can. And Jesus says, If I can. All things are possible for one who believes. And that’s when this is Mark 923 And that’s when. The father says, I do believe help my unbelief. Right? And so what this means is we must believe that God will do it. We must believe that all things are possible for God. And so when we believe all things are possible and believe that God will do it on our behalf, that’s when he does it. I was talking to a man earlier today, and he’s struggling with this whole idea of faith that in his in his understanding, if he prayed for something to happen and it does not happen, it is not God’s will. Okay. Well, I pray in faith, he says essentially. And if I pray and it doesn’t happen, it must not have been God’s will.

Well, no, that’s not what scripture say. Scripture say if you pray by faith and believe it will happen, it will happen. So if it doesn’t happen, it’s it’s it’s a it’s an element that you either don’t believe. Or you never had faith, but you got to have faith and belief. Is this making sense? I’m seeing some some eyes that not quite sure. So you have to have the faith which gets you in the game, right? The faith is a connection between God and you, between the heavenly truths and the earthly reality. But then you have to believe. For it to occur. It says by faith we understand. We start to understand what’s going on. And once we understand it, then by faith, that’s when God does it. This is what we’re talking about earlier. When faith is rooted in love, if we understand how much God loves us. And we ask him something that he is not opposed to. Then if as long as we believe he’ll do it, he’ll do it. That’s what he says. Faith, Faith, Hope and love. All three abide. The foundation of faith is love. You remember this little diagram we did? So faith, Hope and love. This comes from first Corinthians 13. Says Faith, Hope and love abide. They abide because they’re all a part of God. There abide eternally outside of the creation realm. And faith comes from the Lord.

And faith is rooted on the foundation of love. It says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for. And hope is the promise of what love gives. And so when we understand how much the Lord loves us. Faith is rooted in love. And then we believe that God will do it. Believe and do not doubt in your heart. Then that’s when he does it. Okay. Tonight, what we want to talk on is how faith is a choice. And we can choose to believe it or not. This is the hard part, because so often we try to we try to believe. And the more you try in your own will and your own effort to believe, you’ll never believe. Because now that belief becomes a work of the flesh, not an expectation of the heart. Does this making sense? Am I okay? So with that, let’s move in a little bit to where we’re going. I shared this testimony a little bit earlier, but I just wanted to kind of show how simple it is to believe. Okay. Years back in early stages of our business, we had taken a downturn and for six months we were basically underwater. We battened down the hatches. Everyone took as big a pay cut as they could. I took a big pay cut. And after six months of just kind of weathering the storm, I was kind of worn out. And I knew that the Lord could change it.

And I had a sense that he was the reason nothing was happening, right. So I took some time off from work. This was toward the end of January. And I just went out to the golf course just to spend time with the Lord. And I remember the conversation. The conversation was, Lord, when are you going to let up? Because I knew he. There’s something in here that he’s doing. When are you going to light up? And he spoke to me in my spirit and he said, Well, do you really believe that I will take care of you? I said, yes. He said, If you really believed, I would take care of you. How would you be acting differently than you’re acting right now? And I thought that was a fair question. And I said, Well, I’d be at full pay and I’d put all my people back at full pay. He said, Then why don’t you trust me and do that? So I did. I called my business manager and said, Put everyone back to full pay, retroactive to January 1st. So the next pay period at the end of January would be a catch up for the short pay we had at the middle of the month. And within within that month, from that point to the end of February, we’re a small company. We had a $20,000 profit swing and it wasn’t that we had more sales.

It wasn’t that we had less expensive some. In other words, there was nothing you could clearly define. It just happened. The PNL, it just we had $20,000 more and every month for the next 6 or 8 months we were in constant profit from six months underwater to six months in profit. And the only thing that changed is I chose to believe God. I knew in my heart he would take care of us. But until he actually confronted me, I wasn’t acting on that. And we see this in scripture a little bit, too. I want to show you just a couple of things of what I call faith in action, if you’ll turn to Exodus 17. Exodus 17. And we’re going to just read verses ten and 11. This is during the time that the Israelites were coming out of the land of Egypt. And they are now fighting the Amalekites. Moses is up on the Hill. He’s got his staff. And here’s that’s where we’re going to begin. Exodus 17, starting with verse ten. So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill and watch this. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. And whenever he lowered his hand, amalek prevailed. So this is a picture of faith. Faith is something we do in the earthly realm that has an impact in the heavenly realm that then gets manifested back down into the earthly realm in a change of reality.

Okay. Reality changes as long as Moses chose to hold up his staff. Israel prevailed when he chose. He couldn’t hold it up any longer and he lowered it. Amalek prevailed. A total change in earthly reality based on one thing what Moses did in the natural. Let me show you another one. This comes from judges. Seven verses eight through 15. This is Gideon and the Midianites. And we see as something similar. We see that Gideon chooses to act by faith. Even though he’s scared. But God has compassion on him, just like he did with me and God prompted me to act in faith. So this is Judges seven, starting with verse eight. Now the camp of Midian lay below him in the valley during the night. The Lord said to Gideon, Get up and go down against the camp because I’m going to give it into your hands. Watch this. This is his compassion, he says. If you’re afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant and listen to what they’re saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack the camp. So he and his servant went down to the outposts of the camp. We’ll skip to 13. Gideon arrived just as a man was telling a friend his dream. I had a dream, he was saying. A round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midianite camp.

It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed. His friend responded, Well, this can be nothing other than the Sword of Gideon, son of Joash the Israelite God has given the Midianites and the whole camp into his hands. When Gideon heard the dream and his interpretation. Watch this. He bowed down and worshiped. He returned to the camp of Israel and called out, Get up! The Lord has given the Midianite camp into your hands. So what happened is. Gideon needed help believing he then. At the Lord’s direction went down and listened. And once he saw the plan of the Lord, he chose to believe. He came back and he told the rest of the Israelites to get up because now the Lord has given us this victory already. He proclaimed it ahead of time because he knew what was going to happen. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and therefore he chose to go out. And the reason this is chose is he could have doubted. He could have still looked at the 135,000 Midianites and say, No, it just can’t happen. But he chose instead to believe. So we start to see that faith is a choice. And I want to show you this a little bit clearer. I want to turn back to Peter walking on the water. You’ll find this in Matthew 14 verses 28 through 31. I feel like I use Peter walking on the water all the time in these examples because it’s just the perfect example of faith, because you see faith in action.

And you get one outcome. And in the identical situation, you see doubt in action instead of faith and you get a completely different outcome. So Matthew 14 and we’ll start with verse 28, we’ll read 28 through 31. So Jesus is walking on the water. And then we pick up in verse 28. Lord, if it’s you, Peter replied, Tell me to come to you on the water. Come, he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. So now we have a miracle occurring. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink. Cried out, Lord, save me. Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. You of little faith, he said, Why did you doubt? So let me show this. This is real interesting. When Jesus says, why did you doubt? That means it was in Peter’s choice not to doubt. Do you see that? Jesus would not have rebuked Peter for something that Peter had no control over. But because Peter had control, whether he doubted or not, Jesus rebuked him. Why did you doubt? In other words, walking by faith or walking in doubt were completely Peter’s choice. It was his choice to doubt. It was his choice to believe.

We see this again a little bit in Mark 11. And I want to read you the passage with Mark 11. We’ll start with verse 22. This is back on the Half Faith in God Passage. But I want to pull a couple of things out of this that we haven’t discussed much before. So this is Mark 1122. And it starts like this. And Jesus answered them, Have faith in God. Notice that this is a command. It’s an imperative. So here’s the question. If Jesus commands you to do something, do you have a choice to obey or not? You do have a choice, right? Jesus. The Lord even gave Adam. Do not eat of the tree, of the fruit, of the knowledge of good and evil or tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He had a choice to obey, but he chose to disobey. Here we have Jesus giving an imperative, a command. Have faith in God as an imperative, as a command. It was. His choice. Our choice whether we have faith in God. So that’s the first thing we start to see. But then watch this. If we continue starting in verse 23, it says Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Notice how this is phrased.

Does not doubt in his heart, but believes that indicates it’s our choice. Do not doubt is a command because you have the ability not to doubt. Believe that’s a command because you have the ability. To believe. Okay. So what we see is these are choices that we make. But then the question comes up How in the world can I believe at that level? Well, it’s a choice. How you get there is a process, but it’s still a choice. We’re going to talk about that. Let me show you one other. This is going to be marked five. Starting in verse 35, we’re going to read Mark five, 35 and 36. This is the synagogue official. Giris or giris, depending on how you pronounce it. And starting in verse 35. Watch this. While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house. So just let me give you the background on this. So Jairus daughter is sick to the point of death. He comes to Jesus and pleads, Please come heal my daughter. So Jesus comes on the way along the way, the woman with the flow of blood grabs his tassel. She gets healed. And then Jesus continues on to the synagogue official’s house. Right. And now that’s where we pick up. While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house. Someone who said Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further? And listen and watch the compassion that Jesus has.

But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, do not fear, only believe. So Jesus directs Jairus to do two things to not fear. And to believe. And the only reason he directs him to do that is because it’s in his power to do it. It’s in his choice to either not fear and believe or to fear and doubt. It’s all in his choice. And that’s what we have to realize whenever we are running into a situation that we’re concerned about. We don’t know what’s going on and we start to get anxious. We can either choose. To get anxious and fear. Or we can choose to believe in faith. It’s our choice. The question is, how do we do that? I’m about to show that to you, but we’re building into it. So our big takeaway from all of this is very simply, faith is a choice. Faith is a choice. You have the choice to walk in faith. You have the choice to not walk in faith and to walk in doubt. It’s entirely up to you. And because it’s entirely up to you what you get in this life in terms of the heavenly promises and blessings the Lord has for you is entirely your choice. I remember someone was talking about he was a friend of mine named Bruce, was talking in front of a group of young men and he was talking about pornography and helping people, you know, just trying to turn away from that.

And a young man came up to him at the end and said, Dr. Bruce, I just can’t stop. I can’t control it. Right. So Bruce said, well, let me ask you a question. Let’s say it’s you’re at home. It’s 11:00 at night. The lights are all out, and you open up your computer and now you start searching the web and going to the porn sites. Then your mother walks in the door unannounced. What are you going to do? I’m going to slam the computer down. He said, Right, you have a choice. It’s your choice whether you do it or not. It’s always a choice. That’s why even when we sin, when temptations come our way, it’s always a choice whether we choose to obey. Or choose to give in. It’s our choice whether we choose to believe or whether we choose to doubt. You can choose to believe what God says. Or you can choose to believe what your eyes say. When you’re in this situation that you don’t know the outcome and you’re concerned and God’s Word has promised certain things. Then you can choose to believe on God’s word and not doubt. Or you can choose to believe what your eyes are telling you is reality and doubt. It’s always a choice. It’s not an easy choice, but it’s always a choice. And what this shows us is that there’s really no limit to what we can do through faith.

There is no limit to the amount of God working in your life through faith. The only limit. Is your choice to either believe or to doubt. That’s the only limit. You are the governing factor on whether you get what God has promised or not. So let’s look at three levels of faith real quick. Faith is a choice. There are three levels of faith that we find in scripture. This is going to be real simple. The first level of faith is faith. You choose to believe. That’s what faith is. Essentially. Faith is that you’re going to you choose to believe in this situation. So let me show you on this where we start to see some of this come up. Go to Mark. 527. This is right before the passage we just read. This is the woman with the flow of blood. We’re going to read 27 through 29 and then verse 34. So here’s how it reads. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment, for she said, If I touch even his garments, I will be made well. And immediately the flow of blood dried up. And she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Dot, dot, dot, verse 34. And Jesus said to her daughter, Your faith has made you well.

She chose to believe to the point. And if you’ve watched the Chosen on this, you’ll understand. She chose to believe, to the point that she put her own self at risk because she was such an outcast. Everything was unclean. And they would they just would not allow it. But she pressed through, no pun intended. To get to Jesus because she chose to believe that if she just touched the tassel, she would be healed. We see this also with blind Bartimaeus. This comes from Mark ten, starting in verse 46. Mark ten, verse 46. And as Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd Bartimaeus a blind beggar. Dot, dot, dot was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more Son of David have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, Call him. And they called the blind man. Dot, dot, dot. He sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, What do you want me to do for you? By the way, this is a side on this by faith. It’s always what we want. Not assuming God knows. Now we do know that Jesus understood Bartimaeus wanted his eyesight back. But Jesus made Bartimaeus ask because there’s something about asking, believing that you have received.

And then it shall be yours. That’s what Jesus says is the pattern. So we see Bartimaeus asking, What do you want me to do for you? And the blind man said, Rabbi, let me recover my sight. And Jesus said to him, Go your way. Your faith has made you well. And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. So what we have is we have one level of faith, which is the choosing to believe. How do we know that both Bartimaeus and the woman chose to believe? Because they chose to pursue. They heard stories of Jesus. They chose to believe those stories chose to believe it’s true for them, and then chose to pursue Jesus because they chose to believe. Sorry for the Redundance on choosing. So that’s faith. The second level of faith is no faith. Okay. And this is where you have neither faith. So no faith. This is a level of faith, right? And this is where you are, neither faith nor unbelief. All right. So no faith. We see this also in scripture a number of times. People ask me, well, is it important that when you pray for healing, the person has faith for their healing? I said, no, not at all. It’s only important that at least one person in the mix has faith. It does not have to be the recipient. It can be the initiator.

So let’s look at this and I’ll show you just two examples in Scripture starting in Luke seven. Luke seven and starting in verse 11, 711. This is the dead man in Nain. So you can now tell right off the bat he has no faith. Luke seven, starting in verse 11. Soon afterward, he went to a town called Nain and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the town. Behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, Do not weep. Then he came up and touched the buyer and the bearer stood still. And he said, Young man, I say to you, Arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother. The dead men had no faith. Which is obvious, right? He’s dead. But then we have something less obvious. And that’s going to be in John five verses two through nine. This is the lame man by the pool. And as you’re turning there, I’m going to go on and start reading because I’ve still got a lot to cover and we’re going to run late if we’re not too careful. John five two through nine.

John. 5239. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheepgate, a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids blind, lame and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be healed? The sick man answered him. Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and while I’m going, another steps down before me. So we see right here that this lame man does not know who Jesus is. He may have heard the name, but the person talking to me has no clue who he is. Right. Because of that, he has no faith. Jesus said to him, Get up, take up your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed. And he took up his bed and walked. So we see that you don’t have to have faith for God’s workings to happen in you. But there does have to be some faith. But no faith is one of the three levels of faith. So far we’ve talked about faith, which is where you choose to believe. No faith where you have neither faith nor belief. And then the third one is unbelief. And this is the critical one. Unbelief is where you choose to reject.

It’s where you choose to reject. So let’s turn to Mark six. Let me show you a couple of passages on this. This is Jesus in his hometown of Nazareth. Mach six and we’ll read verses one through six. He went away from there and came to his hometown and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath, he began to teach in the synagogue. And many who heard him were astonished, saying, Now notice that the questions are not nice, curious questions. These are questions of ridicule and judgment. Where did this man get these things? What is this wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us. And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household. And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And watch this. And he marveled because of their unbelief. He’s not marveling that they actually didn’t believe. He was marveling because they chose to reject. This happened to me twice now, as I’ve spoken with pastors just here in town. One pastor I was talking about as I would be going out and praying for people and God would heal and all kinds of things.

Right. And that pastor said, well, you know, Satan can heal, too. That was his. So choosing to reject, choosing not to believe. I was talking to another pastor. And we got into the conversation. I was talking about how just a number of different things I’ve seen as the Lord heals, is it God’s will to heal and things of that sort? What’s sad is his wife at that time she was dying. And you would think, right, that maybe there would be a spark of hope. Well, you know, God has healed all these people. Maybe could you pray for my wife? But no, none of that even came up. It was I just don’t believe that he chooses to reject in the midst of the evidence. Okay. And that’s what we see. And we’re going to see this again in John 12 verses nine through 11. So, John 12 verses nine through 11. This is as Jesus is just about to come back through into Jerusalem, just before he’s going to be betrayed. He has already raised Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. He raised him from the dead. Word spread out. So to put this in perspective, Bethany is only two miles or less from Jerusalem. I mean, it’s just like it’s a simple couple of minutes walk almost. So word has spread all over.

Jesus has now returned to Bethany. And this is where we pick up in John 12, starting with verse nine, nine through 11. Meanwhile, a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came. Watch this. Not only because of him, but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So here we have. They know that he raised Lazarus from the dead. But watch this next sentence, verse ten. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well. For on account of him. Many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him. So the chief priest heard the stories that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Rather than choosing to believe by faith, they chose to reject. And what we see is this pattern you can choose to believe. You can choose to reject. But it is a choice. You can choose to believe the claims of Christ. You can choose to reject the claims of Christ. It is a choice because believing in Jesus is faith. And you have a choice whether you want to believe or not. You can choose to believe or you can choose to reject. So here’s the big question I wanted to ask. If faith is a choice, why would we doubt? Why do we doubt? And when you get down to it. There’s only two reasons that I can come up with. One is.

It violates your doctrine. We believe differently. Therefore, I choose to reject all of the evidence of what I see going on and choose to assign it to Satan as opposed to God. So that’s one way. But the thing I want to talk more about here in this session is it’s easier to doubt than it is to believe. And I think that’s why we doubt, because we take the easy route out, because the easy route is what our eyes tell us is true. And therefore we choose to believe what is familiar to us. Because to believe by faith. It’s unfamiliar. It’s scary because we have no grid for it. Does that make sense? What I’m trying to describe. We see this in Romans eight. It says the mind set on the flesh is sin and death. So that’s doubting. And then it says, the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. And that’s with faith. We can choose to set our mind either way. But when we doubt it’s sin and death. It’s always destruction when we believe, it’s always blessing. And here’s what we find. That because we dealt. Faith is a choice. What it really is, is where we choose to focus. This is the simple aspect of it. Faith is a choice. And it’s where we choose to focus. What you focus is what you get. I shared this several times, but it’s just so appropriate. Years back, a study was done by automobile insurance companies because they found that the great propensity of single car accidents hit telephone poles.

Okay, so here’s the idea. You got this telephone pole, you have 60 yards, a telephone pole, 60 yards, another telephone pole. You would think that if cars are careening off the road, statistically, they would go in between because that’s where the greatest distance is, where there’s no telephone pole. But statistically, an abnormally high percentage of cars hit those poles that little one foot wide pole out of 60 yards. And they couldn’t figure it out. So they surveyed the people. Those owners. And what they found is they all said the same thing. Why did you hit the pole? I wasn’t trying to. I was I was keeping my eye on the pole and trying to avoid it. But what you focus on is what you get. This is the simple truth of walking by faith. You can choose to focus on God’s word, or you can choose to focus on your circumstances. When Peter walked on the water, he was focused on God’s word. When he chose to focus on the circumstances, he sunk. Because you can only focus on one thing at a time. So I want to walk you through three steps. How to. Choose to believe. Okay. Number one is you need to get your mind off your circumstances. Get your mind off your circumstances. In other words, stop focusing on what you’re where you’re currently going through.

It’s your conscious mind that causes doubt. That’s why you need to get your mind off of it. I remember years back as I was studying and kind of pursuing supernatural healing type stuff, and one of the things someone said and it made a lot of sense, he said, When you pray for healing. Look away and don’t even concentrate on what you’re praying for, because at that time I’d be looking at the knee in Jesus name knee be healed. And it’s like I was concentrating really hard so I could really believe. But he said, Just look somewhere else. So I tested it. I’m always testing things. So on the next person with a knee, I knee and Jesus name be healed. Oh, look at that bird flying around. You know, I’m just distracted over here, as I say, words. Increased number of healings, increased speed in healings, increase in intensity. Why? My conscious mind was distracted. It wasn’t engaged. That would bring doubt into the mix. Here’s something else. I’m going to write this down. One way to walk by faith is to get drunk. All right. Get drunk. Now there’s a story behind this. Don’t write it down. You don’t need to get drunk. But I want to make the. I want to make the point. Because the point is very important. A friend of mine is a guy named Dan. He’s a homeless man.

The Lord’s given him a gift of healing, and he just goes out everywhere. And he sees all kinds of great healings and they’re pretty, pretty dramatic. Sometimes I get jealous of it, right? But he was saying that when he drinks and he gets gets a buzz. God heals even more. And so he misinterprets that, that God is pleased with him when he’s drunk. So he will get drunk and think it’s not bad. But what’s really happening is when you’re drunk, your conscious mind is just somewhere else. It’s not interfering with your faith. And so this also shows how your body is separate from your faith. You have faith outside of what’s going on with your body because faith is of the spiritual heart. Doubt is of the physical mind. Another person as a friend of mine, I’ll call her Virginia. Years back when she was in high school, she was really sick and sick for a prolonged period of time, I think. And her mother came in just stone drunk. I mean, she was just she was just really drunk. And it really upset Virginia. But mom came in, laid hands on Virginia and prayed and she was instantly healed. And then it really upset Virginia because her mom was drunk. But what’s going on is when you’re drunk, your mind is off of what’s going on. You’re you’re not in that reality mode. Right. And so it’s a humorous way to understand get your mind off your circumstances.

I’m not advocating, you know, go get drunk, but just showing how how powerful that is. So the first thing is get your mind off your circumstances. The second way to focus and to walk in faith is to review God’s past works. Okay, so we want to review God’s past works. These are the works that He has done in the past. These are works that he’s done in your past and these are works that he’s done in the Bible past. Okay. I want to show you for time. I’m just going to read these rather than have you turn to them, but I’ll give you the scripture references. I want to show you in Scripture where this comes up. So you have first Samuel 17, verse 37, first Samuel 1737. This is David. Talking to Saul before he goes out to Goliath. And it says, Moreover, David said the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. In other words, he’s reviewing the things that God did in the past. To show God’s going to do it in the future. We see the pattern. Then if you look at Matthew 16 verses eight through ten, this is Jesus talking to the disciples and Jesus is training them. Okay. He has told them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.

Matthew 16, verse eight. And they thought he was talking about he didn’t they didn’t have any bread. Right. And what to do with that. And we pick up in verse eight of Matthew 16, but Jesus being aware of it, said to them, Oh, you of little faith. Why do you reason among yourselves? Because you have brought no bread. Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves of the 5000 and how many baskets you took up, nor the seven loaves of the 4000, and how many large baskets you took up. In other words, these were teaching moments. Jesus is going back to the past and saying, Look at God’s faithfulness. You don’t have to worry about your provision. Your father takes care of it all. I remember looking at our self one of the things that really shifted my whole this is this is in the last year in terms of how I walk by faith in God from a position of finances, right? I started to notice that no matter where my life was, if my expenses were high, they came down, they came up, they go down. Just the ebb and flow of our personal expenses. I started to see a pattern and that pattern was our income was always just above whatever our expenses were. And it made no difference. If we’re on the verge of bankruptcy, we have almost nothing coming in the business.

$8,000 a month in monthly debt service, plus everything else. And yet God always brought in just enough money to cover everything paid in full and nothing in arrears. And I started to see this pattern and I started laughing. I say, okay, God, I get it. You’re always taking care of us. He said, Yes. And that’s why you never have to fear financially. Go out and do as I ask, as I direct you to. And don’t worry about the money, because if you’re following what I’m calling you to do and I’m telling you to do it, I’ll always bring in the money because I’ve been doing this your entire life. So a lot of times what happens is we shrink back in faith because we don’t think we have enough money. This is when we batten down the hatches, put everyone on reduced pay. I went on reduced pay myself, and our expenses dropped. Guess what happened to our income? Our income dropped as soon as we put our expenses back up at the top, our income came right back up. Our income followed our expenses. And so you review what God has done in the past and that gives you the confidence that he will do it in the future, and that increases your level of faith and belief. And then the third step in. Where you choose to focus and therefore choose. Faith is you review and claim God’s promises. Claim God’s promises.

And good.

So in Scripture, we see this a few times and I’ll just read them real quickly. The first one is Joshua, 23, verses five and six, and it says, And the Lord your God will expel them from before you and drive them out of your sight. So you shall possess their land as the Lord your God promised you. Therefore, be very courageous to keep and do all that is written in the book of the Law of Moses. So what we see is Joshua is telling the people of Israel, God has promised. Therefore, you can act with courage, right? We’re going to claim God’s promises. We see a similar thing in First Kings. 856. And it says, Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people, Israel according to all that he promised. This is First Kings. 856. There has not failed one word of all of his good promise, which he promised through his servant, Moses. So are we going back and reviewing not only he hasn’t failed one word, so that’s reviewing God’s past works, but we’re claiming God’s future works in the promises that he’s given. We see this with Abraham as well. This is going to come now from Romans 419 through 22. And because I still have a lot of just moving a little bit fast in this section. Romans 419 through 22. This is talking about Abraham or technically Abraham. And it says, and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead since he was about 100 years old.

And the deadness of Sarah’s womb, he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was also able to perform. He did not waver because it was promised. In other words, he was claiming God’s promises. Right? Believing God to be true. Claiming those promises. One of the things that I have done for years is have you all ever noticed that as you’re reading through God’s Word? That every now and then some passage just kind of leaps off the page at you. And I call it where God highlights His word to you. Whenever that happens, what that is, is that is God speaking that word personally to you? And let me ask you another question. Let’s assume that Jesus appeared in the flesh right here. Hi. I’m Jesus, right? If he were to appear and start to teach you something, tell you something that is for you. Would you all write that down? Yeah, you probably take notes on what he’s saying and you probably hold on to it because this is something really special that Jesus spoke to you. When God highlights Scripture as you’re going through it. That’s the same thing. He’s speaking it directly to you.

And in often cases, it’s a promise or direction of what to do in your life. I started to recognize that and I started to write down since 1998 or before, every single time he would highlight something to me, write it down. And I dated it and I still got it. And it’s reams of stuff. But what happens is then you can go back and review all of those promises he made to you personally in Scripture, and that gives you faith and confidence to move forward in those uncertain circumstances that your eyes tell you all is doomed. But God’s Word tells you stand strong and do not fear. And it’s a choice I can choose to review and believe God’s word, or I can choose to reject it and believe what my eyes are seeing. And this is where we see Romans 1017 says that faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. So as we hear it, the other thing that started to really make a big impact for me is we see in Joshua one eight do not let the law of the Lord depart from your mouth. Faith comes from hearing hearing by the Word of Christ. So I found that if I would read his promises out loud. Then they made a greater impact because I’m actually hearing them, not just mentally absorbing them. So I would read out loud and faith comes from hearing God’s word audibly.

So as we start to wrap up, I want to share a couple more thoughts on how to apply this. I was going through not too long ago. This was probably just a few months back. I was going through a real funk, right about four months ago. And this funk hit me because I had a couple of torpedoes of life hit me, some in business, some in personal, and it just kind of crushed me. And I felt this heaviness and this darkness in my life that couldn’t get rid of. So I went to bed early that night just to escape. I wasn’t tired. You all ever been that way? You’re just. You just want to escape, so you just go to bed, right? So that’s what I was doing. And I was saying, okay, tomorrow is going to be better. I wake up in that same heaviness is upon me. I’m out there exercising, doing my walking and stuff, and it’s just it’s just following me. And I said, Lord, what’s up? And this is what the Lord told me. So why am I in this funk? And the Lord said, It’s because you are not trusting me. Watch this. You’re looking at circumstances through your natural eyes and believing them as truth. Earthly reality is not my heavenly truths. And you have taken your eyes off of my heavenly truths and looked instead only at your earthly circumstances.

This is the same that happened with Peter walking on the water when he took his eyes off my heavenly truths and placed them on the earthly circumstances he was going through. Those circumstances manifested into his earthly reality. You need to look at life through the lens of my heavenly truths and not through the lens of your earthly circumstances. Heavenly truths are greater truths than earthly circumstances, and wherever you look will determine your ultimate reality. That is why you’ve been in a funk to get out of the funk. Simply change where you look. And then he shared one last comment. He said, A prism reflects light to go around a corner rather than looking at earthly circumstances, head on with your natural eyes. Look instead through my prism of heavenly truths. Look up through my heavenly truths and let my prism of truth reflect your vision back down into the earthly circumstances. At that point, my heavenly truths become your earthly reality. This is the essence of growing and maturing in Sonship, learning to look only through the prism of my heavenly truths. When you look into your earthly reality, does that make sense? It’s kind of powerful. What he’s saying is it’s your choice of where do you look? You either look in your natural eyes directly at your issues or you choose to look through my eyes.

And say it from my perspective. So what we have is we have heaven up here, right? The heavenly truths here, heavenly truths. This is God’s word to us. These are all the things He’s highlighted in in Scripture. And we’ve written them down. We focus on them and other things that he promises. And then this is us down here. And we see in our life this great big mountain, right, this big mountain of some issue over here. And we are scared as long as we look at that mountain head on with our natural eyes right here, then we’re going to doubt and we’re going to fear. But God has a prism up here in the heavenly realm, if I can make this work. And that prism. Is like this. And what he’s telling us is look up through my prism in the heavenly truths of what I’ve told you is my truth. To then redirect your vision back down into that mountain of circumstance you’re dealing with. And when you look up through My heavenly Truth at the situation, you see it completely different because you now see it through my vision, through my perspective. And when you see it through my perspective, that’s what you get. In essence, faith in a very simplistic form, is seeing from God’s perspective, because faith is what God declares, not what we believe. And this is where all of the spiritual truths and all of our spiritual blessings that have been placed in the heavenly places for us are ours to receive, but only through faith.

There’s not a single spiritual truth or a spiritual blessing we can receive without faith. We cannot even receive the gift of salvation without faith. And all of that is through the heavenly truth, back down into the earthly reality. So just a couple of closing thoughts with this is very simply what you believe, right? Becomes your reality. This is narrowly focused statement. What you believe in accordance with God’s truths. Becomes your earthly reality. Because it’s God’s truth that become reality in our lives. But we have to believe them and we have to choose to believe them. When God said, If you really believed I would take care of you, what would you do differently than you’re doing right now? Well, if I really believed you, God, I would put everyone at full pay, including me. Then why don’t you do it? And as I believed enacted, it became my reality. As long as I doubted it never did. The other thing is believing can only happen through faith. There is nothing we can receive of the heavenly truths except through faith. And this is real interesting. You can have two people doing the identical activities. One with faith. One without faith. And they get a completely different outcome. This is what we see with Peter, the identical activity walking on the water with faith.

Without faith, he either walks or he sinks. And this is really the key with that. This begins then how all this starts to happen. This is what we see in Romans called the renewal of your mind. The renewal of your mind. Right now we see what the renewal of your mind is. The renewal of your mind. Is your mind is conforming into the mind of Christ. When your mind is the mind of Christ, you will always you will start to see more and more all of life through the heavenly truths rather than through the earthly circumstances. So just final thing. Doubting is a choice. Doubt right here is the midway point between faith and unbelief. Okay. You lose what you’re about to get when you doubt. But you’re not quite at the point of full rejection. It’s right there in the last couple of thoughts is if you can turn off your faith, would you all agree that you can turn off your faith by doubting? If you can turn off your faith. It means you can turn on your faith. Faith is a choice. You are in control of your faith. It’s only a matter of where you choose to focus. And whatever you choose to focus on is what you’ll end up getting. So it’s all a choice. So with that, any questions?

So stepping out as encouraged where you’re still afraid, but you just step out anyway so you can’t step out in faith and still have doubts.

You can. You cannot. You can have natural fear, but not doubt. So think about Gideon, right? Gideon, When he and the 300 men went against the 135,000 Midianites, they stepped out by faith. But I can promise you there was something in their human makeup that was going. Their heart was probably beating really hard. And he’s going, Oh, Lord, I hope this works. I hope this works. But they’re stepping out by faith. You have Naaman, the Syrian general. This is in the time of I think it’s Elisha the prophet, and Naaman is a leper. And one of their slaves that they conquered from Israel is a little Hebrew girl and she’s telling her mistress, Oh, if my master just went to the prophet, he will heal him of his leprosy. So the General Naaman goes over there and Elisha says, Go dip in the Jordan River seven times. And Naaman gets furious. He said, I came all this way just to dip in the Jordan River or in our rivers any better, and he was about to fully reject it. And then some of his servants said, But sir, if he asks you to do something really difficult.

You would have done that. Why don’t you just try? So Naaman had lots of doubt. He did not believe it would work, but he obeyed. This is the other thing we see about faith. Faith in its truest sense is marked by obedience because the evidence of your faith is your obedience. This is where James says, You say you have faith. But you have no works. I’ll prove my faith by my works. Because of my works. I’m going to step out and do that, for which I believe. So you can have doubt. You. You can have fear. You simply doubt will decrease your faith. But if you’re if your drive to obey overcomes your doubt, God will still honor it. Right? But if your doubt keeps you from doing it, then that’s where doubt has killed your faith. It’s kind of a fine line, and it’s still murky at times for me. This wraps up our session on walking in radical Faith. And for our podcast listeners, if you’ve enjoyed this, please press the share button and share it with a friend. You all have a very blessed day.

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