Sermon Tone Analysis

*Spring Life - Part 3*

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    Dave Ramsey has a phrase that I have come to like.

When he uses it he refers to personal finical management issues, but I think it applies in a much greater degree to all areas of our life.

He says this: If you are willing to live like no one else, then you can live like no one else.

We all want to live extraordinary lives, live full of meaning and significance.

I don’t know any people who say they want to live boring and wasted lives.

Yet, most people would not say they are really living they way they want to live.

Let’s make this a little more practical.

I have pointed out from the Bible that God has promised to give any Christ-follower, who wants it, access to the same power that He used to create the universe.

It’s available to anyone who is willing to receive it and align his or her life around it.

That’s pretty amazing promise!

And you might be thinking, as I have, that sounds too easy to really be true and you would be right.

If it was easy, then everyone would be living that way.

Please let that sink it.

The fact is that God’s promises are not automatically applied; in other words, you have to choose to do something, you have to respond to God’s offer, you have to choose to follow God’s leading – you have to choose to live like most people are unwilling to live.

The Apostle James pointed this out when he wrote that we are not to be just hears of the Word, we must be doers – or in other words we must be willing to live like no one else, so that we can live like no one else.

My hope this morning is to extend what we have learned so far and give you a practical way of tapping into that power.

How do you do that?

Ok, here we go…the way to tap into God’s power is through prayer.

Now my guess is that I just lost half of you.

I mean the images that just flooded your mind are religious images of ritual and boredom.

Please let me change that image for you this morning, because prayer is an amazing and powerful gift from our loving God.

If you don’t understand prayer in that way, hold on and let God blow your mind this morning.

One day Jesus became hungry and He saw a fig tree.

So He approached it as a snack pack.

When he went up to that tree he found that it did not have any fruit, which it should have had.

What happened next blew the minds of the disciples – twice.

Jesus cursed that tree and the Bible says that the next day the disciples walked by that same tree and instead of being green it had withered and died.

The disciples were shocked at what they saw and so they asked Christ what had happened.

Jesus’ explanation must have blown their mind again, as it has mine this week.

Look at Matthew 21:21-22:

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/Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more.

You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen.

You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it."/

*(Matthew 21:21-22, NLT)*

 

   There is a huge promise here.

I have been wrestling with this passage all week.

Let me point out a couple of things.

First the idea about moving a mountain is not about moving a mountain.

It’s no different from us using the phrase in MN.

The reference is made toward moving impossible things, or seeing road blocks removed.

So the promise here is that God will remove roadblocks through prayer.

Secondly, what is the premise to the promise here?

“Have faith” and “don’t doubt”.

Now there is an important distinction to make here.

The condition for answered prayer is faith.

This is not faith-in-faith.

In other words this is not you asking for whatever you want and if you believe enough you will get it.

This is not about having enough faith.

That is not a Biblical concept.

Faith in the Bible is all about the object of our faith.

So this is faith in God and specifically here God’s revelation.

Revelation is simply truths that God has revealed to us.

Revelation is something that we could not know by means of our own reasons.

God has to reveal it to us.

So if you know what God wants and is about to do, you can be assured (faith) that He is going to do it even though it appears impossible.

It is the belief, the understanding that God is going to act.

Biblical faith is not like Aladdin’s lamp where if you just believe enough the God genie will appear and grant you your request.

That is faith-in-faith and is not a Biblical concept.

When the bible talks about faith, it’s talking about a relationship a person has with God, to know Him, to know what matters to Him and to know what He is doing.

That kind of faith can only function through prayer and it is the key that unlocks bolted doors.

Now then the 10-thousand dollar question is how, how do you get that kind of faith when you are in a situation that just seems to big and overwhelming?

God tells us in Romans 10:17:

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/But not everyone welcomes the Good News, for Isaiah the prophet said, “Lord, who has believed our message?”

So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ./

*(Romans 10:16-17, NLT) *

 

   The word “welcomes” is the Greek is the word “hypēkousan” and is a compound verb that means “to hear with a positive response”.

So Paul points out that there are some people who hear the message, but don’t respond positively, “/not everyone hypekousan or responds positively/”.

Ok, hold on cause the Scripture is about to blow our minds again.

You ready?

If we want to build faith, there are two things we must do.

First, we must hear or read God’s promises found in the Bible.

Secondly, we have to positively respond to them, or in other words we have to live them out in order to discover the power.

The only way you can build faith, is to live as if you trust that God is as good as He says He is, and, therefore, you line up your life with what He says we should do, think or feel.

When we do that, we will then discover the power.

That is the faith principle.

Many times we get this backwards.

We wait to get the power before we act on God’s premises; and if you do that, you will be waiting a long, long time.

The order here is important.

First, we trust God and change, then God provides.

God rarely provides before we trust Him.

This is why I challenge you all the time to decide, to settle the issue of God’s goodness.

God is as good as He says He is and until you settle that issue, you will never be able to move forward in your relationship with God.

Do you believe, really believe that God is as good as He says He is?

The Bible is filled with clear teachings about any situation you and I face in life.

In it you will discover the attitudes, the thoughts and the actions that God says we can choose to believe (“hypekousan”) and when you welcome them in with a positive response you will discover that God’s promise are full of life and power.

So the more Bible knowledge you have, the more potential faith you can have.

The less you know about the Bible, the less faith potential.

The key to answered prayer is focusing on the promises of God and meeting the premises, the conditions for those promises.

There are over 7,000 promises in the Bible.

They're like gifts waiting to be received.

If you want to have a dynamic life, you must base your requests upon one of God’s promises found in the Bible and then you make sure that you are meeting the conditions.

It really does work like that; sort of.... that’s not a copout.

I heard about a man who was a diabetic and he read Jesus’ words found in John 14:14, /"If you ask anything in My name, I will do it."/

(John 14:14).

So he thought, "God, I'm going to ask that You cure me of diabetes," and he threw away his insulin and three days later he died.

What happened?

Why didn't it work?

- Very important question.

There are two kinds of promises in the Bible.