The Muscle Of Faith

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. So for the next few weeks, we are going to look at these three items, these three that remain, that God gives us that, that really remain above all. And having a greater understanding of these three really does change things foundationally of how we deal with life circumstances, how we deal with the questions of life, how we go through those, how do we work those out, how do we work on our faith, how do we, how do we look around the corner for hope when we feel like there's no hope, when love doesn't seem to be there? How do we, how do we really make all of that out?

So this is how we, so this week we're going to talk about faith, but next week's going to be really good because we're going to deal with the issue of suffering, of when we go through suffering and how that relates to hope. And I'm calling that message the fight for hope, the fight for hope. And the Bible gives us a lot of information of how to deal with suffering and going through circumstances. And I, I pray that you would come. And if you know somebody that's dealing with suffering or dealing with hopelessness, that's the week you want to bring them because God has some things to tell us about that.

But today I want to talk about faith, faith. And there's a lot of definitions for faith. In fact, I've heard many different sayings and definitions. Here's just a few. Faith is taking the first step before God reveals the second step.

Faith is the process of unlearning our fears. Faith is the willingness to look foolish. Amen? Sometimes foolishness steps in, right? People see us as foolish.

Doubt is putting your circumstances between you and God, but faith is putting God between you and your circumstances. Faith is seeing the invisible. It's hearing the inaudible, and it's believing the impossible. In a sense, faith is beyond our five senses. And you can call faith a sixth sense.

Some, some would say that seeing is believing. But faith is the opposite of that. Faith is believing is seeing. Faith is being what? Sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Hebrews 11, 11 says that. And faith is expressed in so many different ways. In fact, just a very simple example of expressing faith. For Miranda and I, we've been married 12 years. And amen to that, yeah.

We made it through the first 12 years, and it just keeps getting better, doesn't it, baby? It's just trending upward every day. Not that we don't have. But one thing that we decided from the very beginning, and it wasn't even really a discussion, is that we would tithe. We would honor God with our tithing.

And no matter how hard times get, how hard life gets, how hard financial pressures get, we've always tithed because we see it this way. We see it that no matter how tough it got, we believe that God can do far more with 90% than we can do with 100%. And we operate on that in faith because we believe that in faith. And the Bible says a lot about faith. The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God.

It says that we are saved by grace through faith, right? It says that the righteous will live by faith. And that little phrase there is repeated over and over again. If you want an infusion of faith, just go to Hebrews 11. It says this, by faith Abel, by faith Enoch, by faith Noah, by faith Abraham, by faith Sarah, by faith Jacob, by faith Joseph, by faith Moses, by faith Rahab.

And the list goes on and on and on and on of people who believed without seeing by faith, by faith. So I want to take you to a scripture in the gospels. And a lot of us know this if we've grown up in church and we're familiar with the Bible. And this particular passage is the woman with the issue of blood. It takes place in Luke 13, 13.

And I want us to dig into this miracle a little bit and kind of pull some things out of it. And you probably are familiar with this, but if you would track along with me and you would turn it, you've got it on your notes up here. You have it on your note guide. But here's what it says. It says, now a woman having a flow of blood for 12 years who spent all of her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed in any way.

Let me just stop there for a second. 12 years, every bit of her money, every bit of her livelihood, everything that she had, she was trying everything she could to get this problem taken away from her. Now, how many of you have been there or you feel like you've been there in some type of circumstance? We've been there 12 years, 20 years, 30 years. Some of you, it's even been 50 years.

Maybe you've been suffering. Maybe you've been going without something that's necessary in your life. Maybe you're dealing with some hopelessness, whatever that might be. And you're feeling like you're going through that and you've been praying and you've been doing all the responsible things that you're supposed to do in that situation. Yet you feel like nothing's getting done.

Is God really listening? This woman, for 12 years, spent everything she had. And then she came from behind and touched the border of his, Jesus' garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped. And Jesus said, who touched me?

And when they all denied it, Peter and those who were with him said, Master, okay. Okay. Uh... Are you crazy? Everybody's touching you, right?

There's lots of people around you. They're all touching you. It says, it says, masters, there's a multitude throng, impress you. And you say, who touched me? But Jesus said, somebody touched me.

For I perceived power going out from me. And now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, when Jesus said those things, she came trembling and falling down before him. And she declared to him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched him and how she was healed immediately. And he said to her, and I love this endearing term here, daughter. Maybe you need to hear that today.

Daughter, son, be of good cheer. For faith has made you well. Go in peace. Today I want to talk about two dimensions of faith. But before I talk about these things and reveal these two dimensions to you that I want us to kind of look at briefly today, let me say this.

Faith is a muscle. In fact, I entitled the message, The Muscle Of Faith. Faith is a muscle. And if you look at Philippians 2.12, it says this, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

And I think the key phrase here is to work out. And I mean, we need to take that literally. We need to work out our salvation. We need to work out our faith. We need to take our salvation to the gym and bench press it.

We need to take it to our aerobics class and work on it, right? We got to take it to our step class and we got to do some step, right? My wife's a step instructor, so just putting a little, she says people think of the old school step, like, you know, with the bandanas on where you're just doing this. She said, no, it's not that at all. People couldn't hang if they went to this class.

So maybe you need to take your step or your salvation and your faith to her class this week and really work it out. You have to work it out. It's always good to have Matt here with us today to throw out the puns. Now, understand that faith is a gift from God, and you cannot earn faith, okay? I mean, you can't earn salvation, excuse me.

It's not by works. It's by the work of God. But you better work it out once you have salvation. You have to work it out. It's about exercising.

Faith is a spiritual muscle, and that is what I want to talk about today. That's what I want to get to today. How do we work out this faith? But having strong faith doesn't happen overnight, okay? It doesn't happen overnight.

Like any sport, it's going to take some time to produce some results. There's this phrase that we use in the exercise world. If any of you are physically fit and you lift weights, when I lifted weights, I don't lift weights like I used to. I need to get back into that. But I used to be adamant about lifting weights.

There was this term called progressive overload. Progressive overload. And the definition of that is a gradual increase in volume, intensity, frequency, or time in order to achieve a targeted goal. A gradual increase. So if I have a goal to run a marathon, am I going to run that marathon tomorrow and be successful?

Probably not. Because if I go out and I do a run, even this evening, I'm lucky, based on the shape I'm in right now, that I'll make it a mile, okay? And I need to work out, and I doubt I'll be able to make that. And practically, how do we build muscle? How do we build muscle?

You break it down so that it's built up. Physically, your muscles are being broken down, and you have to take breaks and rest for those muscles to be built up. And we feed it with protein, which I would say even, just a little nuance there, protein is the Word of God when we fill our lives up and get ourselves healthy. And then we practice our faith, even in a stronger way. So it's counterintuitive to think that we have to be broken in order to build our faith.

If God is fulfilling things, why doesn't our faith grow from there? But this is why faith is a muscle. It must be broken up in order to be built up. And it's not easy, and it's not always fun, and it's a little scary at times when we're practicing faith. I've had moments in my life where my faith has to be deconstructed in order to be built up.

A time that really happened to me was when I first entered my college years, when things were revealed to me, things that I always believed in about the Word of God, about Scripture, about text, and things like that. And when I enter into, if I want to say a heathen environment, if we could use that word, or an environment where I'm around those who are educators that would say things about, it was a time where I really had to lean in. I believed what I believed, and there wasn't any changing my mind about what I believe, but it helped me believe why I believe what I believe. It increased my faith during that particular time in my life. And over and over again, I have those times in my life where I have to be broken.

I have to be deconstructed. I have to be shaken a little bit in order to be strengthened to move forward and gradually grow progressive overload in my life. And sometimes God even puts us in places and we intentionally have to put ourselves in places where we have to depend on God. It's all that we have is Him. And He intentionally places us in that, in those areas of our lives so that we better see Him clearer and understand Him more.

I look at the woman in this scripture, and I see herself in a position that wasn't very easy for her. She had to put herself in a place. Because in that day, if you had anything like was going on with her, number one, women weren't like the women that we see today in our culture. They weren't allowed to go out and just touch a man in the first place, right? So that was an issue.

Not only that, if you were sick or diseased or something was going, even if it wasn't infectious, you needed to stay clear. And certainly you didn't come close to a holy man. You wouldn't come to a priest that way. You weren't allowed to. And if what had happened to her didn't happen, then it would have been worse for her.

Because people would have seen her, and people would have talked about her, and people would have ostracized her, and perhaps any hope would have been lost at that point in time. So, she put herself in a place that was not very comfortable. And for you, it could be that God isn't answering a prayer. For you, it could be that you've been waiting a long time for something. For you, it could be that you're in a situation where you don't feel like it's comfortable.

But perhaps God has you there in those moments to help you and strengthen you more progressive overload. spiritual progressive overload. And sometimes you may feel like it's a long time. So, you know how to steward a miracle? I love this.

Believe for a bigger and better miracle. Believe for a bigger and better miracle. That's how you steward a miracle. When you're waiting for the miracle, when you're praying for the miracle, believe for a better miracle. And even when you receive a miracle, continue progressively to seek God for more, because God wants to do more than you can ask or think.

There's this story, and I love this story. It's a true story about a couple in Gainesville, Virginia, and they decided they wanted to purchase their dream home in the country to raise their kids. So they put their home on the market in Gainesville, obviously an outskirt of D.C., you know, a very busy area.

They wanted to kind of go outside that area and really look for a solid home. And they were in a place where they can do it. The market was hot to sell their house, and they priced it to sell. So they put it on the market. Every realtor that came in, they were excited about it.

They said, this house is going to sell right away. There's going to be no problems selling this house. But nine months later, and 110 people later that never came back a second time, they began to wonder, why is this home not selling? So the realtor's contract actually expired at this point. So the owner says, you know, I put together this cheesy brochure, and I was hoping maybe that would get somebody to come and look at my home.

And their church at the time had a new pastor from New Zealand come in. And he and his wife had just come to the area, and they were looking for a home. And he says, you know, it couldn't hurt anything. I can give them this brochure, and maybe they'll come and look at our house. So they decided to give a house a go, and they pulled into the driveway.

And they sat in the car for a long time. So this man's looking out his window, and he's like, are you kidding me? Is this happening again? They're not even going to come in the house. So after about 15, 20 minutes of them sitting in the car, they get out of the car, and they come into the house, and they look at the house, and, you know, they do their appreciations and all that.

Thank you so much. I really love the house. We'll be in contact with you, and they leave that day. Well, they ended up coming back the next day, the second visit, you know, their first second visit, amen? And they're like, wow, this is great, you know?

And not only did they do that, they gave them the offer that they asked for the house and said, we want to take this house. And then they followed it up with a story. It says, you know why we were in the car for 20 minutes before we came into the place? Well, and the wife of the pastor said, I had a dream while I was in New Zealand, and we were coming to America that God would give us a specific home, and I saw that home. And when we pulled into the driveway, that was the home.

That was it. So we stopped, and we prayed for 20 minutes over this place. And she said, you know what? When God gave me that dream, nine months ago, I prayed that a band of angels would be over that place and nobody would take that home. Wow.

And Bill, the owner of the house, said this. He said, through the testing of our faith that we, it was through the testing of our faith that we learned what it means to wait on the Lord and to trust in Him, even when He's not meeting our agenda. That's right. That's right. And he said this in retrospect.

He said, and this caught my attention when I was reading this. He said that the way that their faith wanted over time, person after person came to look at the house, but then it ends up being this incredible faith builder. He says, it built my faith to be able to have to wait. Why? Why?

Because you have to break down before you can build up. You can increase faith by breaking down and going through those times. And then when God comes through, it's a game changer. It makes you see things completely different. So this morning, quickly, I just want to share two dimensions I believe we can receive from this scripture and our understanding of faith.

And both of those, I'll just be up front and give you both of them. It's believing for and trusting in. Believing for and trusting in. Let's start with believing for. This woman, I'm sure, heard the news about Jesus.

She saw him perform the miracle. She believed that the same thing could be done for her. She believed for. Now, she tried everything for 12 years. Her faith was, but just perhaps one more time, one more chance, one more opportunity.

Among the 100 things that she probably did in her life, if I can just pray one more time, if I can believe one more time, I'm going to believe for regardless. This woman was in a position where she had no reason to believe that God would do anything less than what had already happened to her in her life. No answers. No healings. Nothing.

Nothing had happened yet. Nothing has happened yet. I have told all of those who were schooled for their people like, Believing for, but she believed for. Stretch your faith and believe for, is what I'm getting from this scripture. Go a little further and believe for.

It didn't take much faith for her to believe. In fact, Jesus says, faith of a mustard seed is all you need to tell a mountain to move and be cast into the ocean. She believed just a little bit. If I can just touch his robe. If I can just reach for his robe among the crowd.

If I can just get through that just a little bit more. For Abraham, it was believing for a son. For Moses, it was believing for deliverance. For Joshua, it was believing for a promised land. For Isaiah, it was believing for fire from heaven.

And for Solomon, it was believing for a temple. It was believing for. I love the story of Nick Wojtich. If you, if you're not familiar with Nick, you can look him up on YouTube. His last name is spelled V-U-G-I-C-I-C.

So I don't know how you get Wojtich out of that, but that's how you pronounce his name. And he's an Australian man. And he's an evangelist. And he was born with no arms and no legs. And you can go on online.

I mean, the, the, the, this dude, he is incredible. He's amazing. He can swim. He could surf. He could do all these things like that a lot of people can't do.

He's like diving into the pool, you know, just plop, just comes right up, just swims to the side and hops back up out of the pool. I mean, just these amazing things. And, and he's got this, this believing, he's got this believing for a mentality. And he believes that miracles can happen and will happen. In fact, if you talk to him, he will tell you he keeps a pair of shoes in his closet.

Why do you keep a pair of shoes in your closet when you don't have legs? You don't have feet to put those shoes on. And he says, because I believe that miracles can still happen. But in the process, I will gladly accept what God has given me. Believing for, faith is believing for.

Dr. Mark Batterson, um, uh, of, of National Community Church, he shares this story often, um, that, uh, he suffered asthma for 40 years. I mean, really terrible asthma that put him in ICU. If he had to calculate all the times he was in ICU, it would be months. He said there were times where it was code blue.

The doctor was walking in the room and he thought he was going to die that day. Never went out without an inhaler, an emergency inhaler in his pocket. And he was sharing a story. Um, he, he started a, a series called Mountains Move. And he wanted to talk about praying prayers, like these audacious prayers, these miracle working prayers.

And he says, you know, I, I prayed hundreds of times for God to take the asthma away from me. But I don't know why, but hearing this series, I just felt God challenged me one more time. And I felt like I needed to pray this prayer just one more time. Hundreds of times I prayed and I prayed that prayer. And that day something happened.

God took my asthma away. He says, even to this day, and that was a few years back, that he has not had to take an emergency inhaler with him because God performed a miracle in his life. And he, and he believes that, you know, the impossible. And, and, and, and he says, I don't know why he didn't heal me those other times, but I kept praying for. I kept praying for, I kept believing for, I kept believing believing the impossible.

And even when it seemed like after a hundred times trying to pray this thing away, I still did it. And I believed. Because I believed for. And I think it, it is believing for things that are absolutely impossible. Because God is a God of the impossible.

And it's, it's believing in salvation. It's believing in healing. It's believing in miracles, guys. But it's just not believing for. It's the harder side of the equation.

It's trusting in. And this is harder. And it's, and it's, but it's the highest form of faith, actually, when we trust in. In which we trust God no matter what, and when, and where. Because when the belief for doesn't happen the way we believed it should be, it's harder for us to trust in.

The belief for is the easy part. But when the trust in has to come into play, it's much more difficult. And there is something here I want to point out about the woman with the issue of blood. And, and, and, and it says here, your faith has made you whole. Your faith has healed you.

So we, we kind of just step back for a second. Okay. It says your faith has healed you. But what we have to understand here, clearly what healed her and was obvious in scripture was the power of Jesus Christ. When she touched Christ's robe, she was healed.

But we often stop at the faith peace, you know, like, oh, it's by faith she was healed. But if we, we put it together, if there was no Jesus, if there was no, uh, uh, man walking down performing healings, then she would have never been healed. No Jesus, no healing. And unfortunately, there are those who have used lack of faith as a reason that perhaps someone lost love. When I have a friend who, uh, who think by the grace of God, he, he loves the Lord today, but he lost his father at 12 years old of cancer.

And they were a part of a church that believed in miracles and believed in faith and believed in healing and prayed and seeked God, but God took his father anyway. And the reasoning behind it not happening for that church was that they didn't have enough faith. So we need to be careful not to turn faith against people. It is a misuse and it is abuse. And we've seen far too many fall away from God.

So let's recognize that even faith is a gift from God. It's that, that's what Romans 12, three says. Do not think of yourself more highly than you all, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith that God has given you. And it's incredible that faith is a gift. Our faith really is a function of God's faithfulness.

So it's not faith in faith itself, it's faith that's attached to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's Jesus that we see. It's the personification of our God that we trust in, trusting is, and it's a relational thing. I've been married for 12 years. Now I can tell you that I trust my wife with all my heart.

Like, I know she's not going to cheat on me. I know she's not going to be unfaithful to me because I trust in her. I trust because, why? Because it's a relational thing. We know each other.

She's full of integrity. She even told me the other day I could not even possibly fathom ever finding somebody else or cheating on you or whatever. And that's because it's a byproduct of our relationship. And I feel the same way about her. I would never do that.

It never even has crossed my mind. And that's because of relationship. It's trusting in who God says He is. And when you can't see God's hand, you can trust His heart. You can trust His heart.

And that's what being spiritually mature is all about. It's over time God providing Himself, His faithfulness, over and over and over again. We see His faithfulness. And it is then His faithfulness that gives us trust in Him. So let me be brief as we come to a close.

And let me kind of land this here because I know we're ready to land this. There's two things right here. Don't put your faith in people. Don't put your faith in church. Don't put your faith in me.

Don't put your faith in people. And I know so many people who lose their faith in God because they lost their faith in a person. And they put too much faith in that person. And when that person disappoints them, they project the disappointment on God. And they think less of God.

And God gets the bad rap. We don't put our faith in it. We don't put our faith in people. Because I think as people, we fall short of God's glory. And if you put your faith in people, it disappoints others.

Also, don't put your faith in doctrine. Okay? Don't put your faith in... Sometimes we limit ourselves because of doctrine. I've heard it said, essential is uni, non-essential is liberty, and all things charity.

And sometimes we get negative with people and the church if they're teaching certain things that actually are not essential things. One of those things is we have a lot of... Some of you may be young earth creationists believing that the world is developed in seven days. Some of us may be old earth creationists believe that... That we believe that the earth is millions of years old.

But somehow God is a part of the process. But the thing is, we tend to divide and we lose faith in God. We lose faith in the church. We lose faith in teachers. We lose faith in people because we put our emphasis on doctrine more so than we do Jesus.

And I believe he is who he says he is. Right? No, not unless what... That's the one essential thing we put ourselves on. He is the son of God, the son of man.

He is fully God. He is fully man. He lived a sinless life. He died a subsidiary... Excuse me.

A death on the cross. And on the third day, I believe the tomb was empty and he thereby validated his identity. And I believe he ascended to the right hand of the Father. And he is by the Father today. And I believe that.

And I know that. I know that I believe that. That he is alive today. But I think we have to be careful how we put God in doctrinal boxes. That we need to be a church that is willing to debate over non-essentials but gather over the essentials of our faith and our love and our hope that these three remain.

2 Corinthians 8 says, he who thinks he knows does not even know yet. Right? When we think we know everything, then we begin to not know. So let me just end with this. Just this one thing.

In Genesis 15, it says, Abraham had been losing his faith. He lost his faith because after 25 years, God had promised him a son, a child. And that child didn't happen. And what did Jesus say? Or God say?

He says, I want you to go outside. I want you to look to the heavens. And I want you to see the stars in the sky. And I want you to count them. He tells them to count them.

And those will be as numerous as your descendants. God, you can't even give me one child. Now let's put this in perspective. Let me use a little science here. There are 9,096 stars visible to the naked eye.

And that's just a fraction of the Milky Way. The latest estimate I've heard is there are about 3 billion stars in the Milky Way. And there are 31,536,000 seconds in a year of 100 years. That's 3.15 billion seconds.

Right? So if Abraham tried to count the stars, just the Milky Way alone in the galaxy, one star per second, it would take him 10,000 years. That's 100,100 lifetimes. Okay? And that is just one galaxy.

And we have astrophysicists that are telling us there are literally 2 trillion galaxies like ours. So in other words, if we take this literally, if we take what God said literally, this is the hardest command in the entire Bible. That Moses could never do this. Good luck trying to count the stars in the sky. And it takes all the faith Abraham has to believe God for for just one.

One. And God promises more descendants than Abraham. So the question is, why did God take him outside? Because inside, he only had a limited view of the sky. An eight-foot ceiling, perhaps.

And he says, I want you to go out. And I want you to look at the limitlessness of everything around you. I can do this. That, and I'm going to do that. That's what God's telling us.

How do I know this? Because He is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine according to the power that is at work within us. That's my God. A God that I can build my faith on. That I can build hope on.

That I can trust. I can trust. And He can change you today, wherever you're at. If you'll join me in prayer as we bow our heads. And maybe that's you today.

Maybe you've been far from God for a while. Or maybe you just, maybe you've never believed that God could change you. If that's you today, just, just raise your hand. Say, you know, Pastor, that's me. And I want, because I want to pray for you.

Just put it up and put it back down. That's fine. You don't have to hold it up. Just say, that's me. I've never believed that God could change me.

I've never given. It says, it says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God saved him from the dead, we will be saved. So confessing with our heart. So confessing with our heart and confessing with our mouth is what He said. That's the belief.

That's what we connected to. The person of Jesus Christ. That's faith. That's hope. Through faith, we can have grace applied to our life.

Let's pray together. Father, in the name of Jesus, we are asking that whatever area in our lives, whether it be just a circumstance that we've placed between you and us, or whether we've even made a decision for you, God, that you would change our lives right now, that you would change our hearts, that we would make a decision for you today, that we are walking in faith with you. And we ask this in your name. Amen.