Faith Walk
Faith Walk:
British playwrights Joe Orton “It is not death, its life that defeats the Christian church, she has always been equipped to deal with death.”
-Os Guiness
Privately engaging, socially irrelevant.
Faith pregnant with action!
How many times have we viewed the faith of another person and been awestruck?
Moses – his desire to have God go with him
Things we want to know most about…what are we curious about?
Steps to fullness in Christ:
Step 4: Experience freedom in Christ.
Failure to thrive.
Sometimes, they guess, it happens when a parent or care-giver is depressed, and the depression seems to get passed down. Sometimes something seems to be off in an infant's metabolism for reasons no one can understand, so FTT is one of those mysterious phrases that sounds like an explanation but explains nothing.
Failure to thrive.
“Joy of being a child of God” (1 John 3)
“You belong to your father the devil.”
-not centered in nationality
Before/after
They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”
34 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Rivers of living water that flow from within.
Joy that bubbled up from within. We are children of the living God!
“Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death!” - Unknown
Ever been thinking of something that made you laugh in an awkward situation? And you cant even explain what you are laughing about? Life in the bible.
Step 3: Know the truth of Christ.
Don’t we want that?
“Now I see!” Amazing Grace
Wisdom/insight/clarity
“Believe the lie instead of truth.”
37 I know you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
39 “Abraham is our father,” they answered.
“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did. 40 As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things.
Hebrews: We have this hope as an anchor for our souls.
Step 2: Become a true disciple of Jesus Christ.
False vs. true disciples “Don’t we want that?”
41 You are doing the things your own father does.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.
"The Lord is my Shepherd" is written on many more tombstones than lives.
—Dallas Willard, U.S. philosopher and writer (1935—)
That one is the “real deal.”
“I do not pray for success. I pray for faithfulness” – Mother Teresa
Step 1: Abide in Christ’s Word
Stuart Briscoe, author and long-time pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, tells the following story:
Many years ago, during the Cold War, I traveled to Poland for several weeks of itinerant ministry. One winter day my sponsors drove me in the dead of night to the middle of nowhere. I walked into a dilapidated building crammed with one hundred young people. I realized it was a unique opportunity.
Through an interpreter I preached from John 15 on abiding in Christ. Ten minutes into my message, the lights went out. Pitch black.
My interpreter urged me to keep talking. Unable to see my notes or read my Bible, I continued. After I had preached in the dark for twenty minutes, the lights suddenly blinked on, and what I saw startled me: everyone was on their knees, and they remained there for the rest of my message.
The next day I commented on this to one man, and he said, "After you left, we stayed on our knees most of the night. Your teaching was new to us. We wanted to make sure we were abiding in Christ."
We want to sample. We want to dabble. A little here, a little there. Not with Jesus. If anyone would come after me he must take up his cross and follow me.
Faith walk?
1 John 1:5-7
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Conclusion
Some of us are saying, “I want to go deeper.”
Some of us have gotten to a point where we are saying, I just want Christ to be with me continually.
31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Gathering of Christian leaders in the Philippeans a few years ago studying evangelism in our world.
A Chinese pastor gave a brief talk about his experience during the years of the Chinese red revolution where as a Christian he was put into a concentration camp. Listen to how he expresses his faith and abiding in the word.
“My friends wonder what kind of work I did while I was in the labor camp that kept me healthy and sane. I answered them that life in the labor camp was very very hard. The authorities in the camp put me to emptying the human waste cesspool. Most of the prisoners were afraid to approach the cesspool but the authorities were well aware of my background. I was well educated and from a well-to-do family and especially because they were aware that I was a Christian leader and they were atheists. So they put me there. They enjoyed putting me to work in a human waste cesspool. But they didn’t know thought he years how much I enjoyed working there. The cesspool was two meters in breath, two meters in length collecting the waste of everyone in the entire camp. Once it was full the human waste was kept until it was ripe and then dug out and sent to the fields as fertilizer. Because the pit was so deep I couldn’t reach the bottom to empty it so I had to walk into the disease ridden mass and scoop out the successive layers of waste all the time being forced to breathe the stench. The guards and the other prisoners kept a long way off because of the stench.
So why did I enjoy working in the cesspool? I enjoyed the solitude. In the labor camp all the prisoners were under strict observation so no one was able to be alone, but when I worked in the cesspool I could be alone and I could pray to the lord daily as loudly as I needed. I could recite Scripture as well as all the Psalms I had ever memorized. And no one would protest. That is why I enjoyed working in the cesspool. And I could sing hymns I remembered as loudly as I wanted. In those days one of my favorite Christian hymns was “In the Garden.” Before I was arrested this was my favorite hymn. But at the time I didn’t realize the real meaning of the hymn. When I worked in the cesspool I knew and discovered a real fellowship with the Lord. Again and again as I worked I sang the hymn and I felt the Lord’s presence with me.
“I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses and the voice I hear falling on my ear the Son of God discloses. And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”
Again and again as I sang this hymn in the cesspool I experienced the Lords presence. He never left me nor did he forsake me.
Jesus did not come to make you religious. He did not come to give us a list of facts. He came to make you his own. He came to give us FREEDOM. He came to give us TRUTH. Will we abide in his word? Will we remain in his teaching?
When you turn to God you discover he has been facing you all the time. - Unknown