Distorted | Week 1 | Full Service

And one of those has to do with faith. And that's the one we're gonna look at today as we kick off this series. And the myth we're gonna explore is the myth that faith can fix anything. Right? It's it's this idea that that if I've got enough faith, whatever problem I'm having, I'm gonna be able,

if I use that faith in the proper way, to fix the problem or change the reality. You know, as a new Jesus follower, I heard an awful lot about faith. It seemed to be an important thing. They kept talking about it. But I never And I always had the idea I needed more.

But I They never told me what it was, so it kinda ended up probably like for most of you, well, I I need to be more confident. I need to get rid of doubt. At times, I even need to kinda screw up in my imagination so I can just like picture it as real and God will even be more happy.

And so when our team was down by three or four runs in the ninth inning, obviously what God wanted me to do is imagine we're gonna win, even though we're not.

If somebody's diagnosed with cancer, then the most important thing is not to talk about what negatively might happen, but just kind of imagine those cancer cells just deteriorating or or disappearing and wow, that's the way to go. That's what I thought faith was. But the problem is that is not found in the Bible anywhere.

And as we're gonna discover by the end of our time today, it's literally the exact opposite of what Jesus said about faith and what he asked us to do. So the myth is faith can fix anything, and it's built on a belief that's very common in our culture and very common among us Jesus followers. And it is this,

that faith at its core is a positive mental outlook that has the power to change reality. It's a positive mental outlook. And if I can just harness it, it has the ability to literally change reality. And it's based on the idea that faith is kinda like a Jedi power.

Right? The Jedi comes along and there's this power called the force. And then it's up to the Jedi to be able to get more and more focused and and harness more and more that thing called the force and then you can do all this incredible stuff.

Well, that was built on kind of the cultural and and and Christian modern day viewpoint of faith that if I can just harness more of it, I can move mountains. And as I said, it's not true. It's not what the Bible teaches. Literally, now listen carefully,

but literally the Bible does not in any way say there's any power in faith. Faith has zero power. It is something we do. We're gonna see that. But faith has zero power. The power of faith is not how much you and I can muster up. The power of faith is what we place our faith in.

If I muster up tons of faith in something that's bogus, it ain't gonna work. If I have no faith in something that's real, it'll work. I live in Oceanside and Abias is a little regional airport where they do some parachuting. Now, there are guys that are the instructors that have done hundreds and hundreds of jumps.

And as they get ready to go on the flight and somebody's gonna take their first jump, as it were, they have total confidence.

They've done it a bunch of times. They got afternoon plans, dinner plans, a whole bit. It never even enters their mind something go wrong. I mean, they carefully check everything, but they have a 100% confidence and faith in it. Now,

the new person jumping with them that's gonna be strapped to them is often not quite that way. Sometimes they're daredevils who go, well, I just, you know, I'm having a blast just doing crazy stuff. But there are plenty of people, once they kinda jump out of the plane, they go, what am I doing?

You know, they kinda got talked into it or whatever, and they're scared to death. I've talked to people. And as they jump out of that thing, they are absolutely certain they're gonna die. They have no confidence, no faith. A lot of them start praying to Jesus for the first time in their life. But guess what?

It doesn't matter whether they have tons of faith or no faith, it's all about what parachute they've got. If it's packed right and it's good, the no faith and the faith are gonna plan to sing. And if there's something wrong with the parachute,

the person who's got a 100% of confidence and faith that it'll work, it doesn't work, they'd be dead. Faith is not a power that we muster up, that we harness. It's just something we place in one thing or another. I place my faith in a medical idea, alternative idea that I It's gotta be true. I read it on the Internet.

And it's some goofy idea is I'm not gonna get healthy. And if I'm convinced this thing won't work and it's the right medication, I get better. That's how it works. So in the balance of our time now, what I wanna do is I wanna talk about the truth about faith. What it is, what it isn't,

and what Jesus actually and the bible actually calls us to do if we're gonna walk by faith, not by sight, which we're told to do. So the first thing is I wanna give you a definition.

Biblical faith is simply trusting God enough to do what he says. That's all it is. You have biblical faith when you trust God enough to do what he says. Nothing more, nothing less. But unfortunately, there are two key things to our walk with Jesus that in our culture, we've kinda turned away from from what they actually are.

And the first one that one is faith and the second one is love. Would you all agree Let me take love for a moment. Would you all agree love is a very important part of the Christian faith? Right? We're told to love our neighbor. We're told to love God. We're told to love our enemies. Love is a big deal.

But most of us have no idea, like, well, do you really mean by love? We just notice we'll have more of it. Well, actually, love's an action word. Just like faith is an action word,

and it is something I can do whether I feel like it or not. If if love meant I'm supposed to like you, well then loving my enemies is a non sequitur. It makes no sense because if I like you, you're not my enemy. Right?

But we've turned it into, like we talk about falling in and out of love. Like, what do we mean by love? I love my wife. I love my baby. I love my biscuits dipped in gravy. I mean, like, what do you mean by that word? But the bible's actually pretty clear. You love somebody when you put their needs and interests first.

It's an action. You know? First Corinthians 13, if you wanna look it up later, tells us a list of things I can do whether I want to or don't want to. They're all action words we've turned into. They're only authentic if we feel. Now, that's the same thing we've done with faith. And I wanna take a few moments,

and I wanna you know, so buckle up because we're gonna take a little theological dive into the original language of the New Testament. But, I wanna show you how the English language has made it a little harder for us to understand the biblical concept. There are three words in the bible,

and when we hear They're important words. When we hear them, we jump to a conclusion. The words are faith, believe, and trust.

And when you and I read in the bible that we need to have faith, as I've already been talking about, we have this idea that we need to feel something. We need to have confidence. We need to not have any doubt or whatever. We turn faith into mostly a feeling word. When we hear the word believe, we tend to think of facts.

I gotta believe the facts are true. Right? I gotta Well, I I I think that's probably true. So I I I believe these things about Jesus. Now, you gotta help me out for just a second. My church actually talks back to me. Okay? So you have to. You you good with that? You're not good enough. You good with that? Alright.

So I got a little test for you. I wanna see how you guys line up and where pastor Bill is doing a good job or not. So number one, do the demons believe that Jesus is the son of God? K. Just a few of you. Bill, you're not doing that good. Do they believe he died and rose again? Do

they believe that he is alive and well at the right hand of the father? Are they going to be in heaven? You kinda passed. You see, we've turned it into, well, I I I believe in Jesus. I believe in UFOs. I believe I gotta exercise or whatever. We've turned it into just a mental thing, a scantron test,

where the bible isn't talking when it uses the word believe about me going, yeah, it's true. It's The demons believe it. It's I do something with it. Now that third word is trust. When you read in the Bible the word trust, you tend to think, okay, I'm supposed to trust them enough to do something. Right?

Well, here's what you need to realize. All three of those words are translations of one original Greek word. Pistos, pistuo, verb noun version of it. That word sometimes is translated faith, sometimes belief, sometimes trust. So here's a practical application.

Anytime in your bible you see any one of those three words, have to think of all three of them. And they'll have kind of a leading concept. Just like in the English language, we will use words and they mean different things in different contexts. So, when my dad was young and playing basketball,

if somebody said that guy is bad, that meant he was no good. Right? But today, if my son were to say, hey man, that dude is bad, what's he mean? It's really good. So you have to listen to the context and then the nuance of it.

So anytime you see faith, believe, or trust, it's the same word and and your translations are good. You can trust them totally, but you just have to figure out like what's the main emphasis.

So when Jesus said you believe in me, you gotta actually believe that I am who I claim to be, but he wasn't like, and that's all you gotta do. He also included faith and trust as a part of it. Does that make sense to you? You with me on that? So

biblical faith is so far from what we've turned it into when it's a very simple thing anybody can do. Trust God enough to do what he says even when I'm kind of freaked out and don't think it will work. Now, it's rather important because the second thing I want you to understand about biblical faith, not the myth,

is that we can't please God without it. We cannot please God without faith. Well, how do I know that? Because the bible says so. Hebrews chapter 11 verse six reads this way,

and it is impossible to please God without faith. So that's why I told you to write that down. And then he says, let me explain it to you a little bit more. What do I mean faith? Well, anyone who wants to come to God must number one, believe that God exists. I can't please a God who I go, you don't even exist.

Right? That's like obvious. And then he says the second thing is not just that he exists, the demons believe that, but also that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. That he's a God who responds to how I respond. I can't please God if I think he's a cosmic, he exists but he's just a cosmic consultant.

I can please God when I go he exists and he rewards, he responds based on how I respond. And therefore, I live that way. That's why we need faith.

Now the third thing, I'm gonna spend a little more time on this one. The third thing is, if it's just stressing God enough to do what he says and that he exists in his rewarder, guess what that means? That means biblical faith has room for doubt and fear, but it has no room for disobedience.

I can please God filled with doubt. I can please God filled with fear if I still trust him enough to do what he says. I like to illustrate it this way. We are all in our own cell on death row waiting to pay the penalty of our sin. Because the fact is, our God is a holy and righteous God.

There is not like a mostly righteous God with a little sin sprinkled in like salt and pepper. He's holy and righteous. Sin and evil is destroyed in his presence. So that creates a problem for all of us as sons and daughters of Adam. We sin. We've done treason against the most high God. We can't be in his presence.

We're we're in deep weeds. And that's why Jesus came. Jesus came where Adam failed and all of us as his descendants.

We've chosen to hurt people. We've chosen to take things. We've gossiped. We slandered. We've done horrific things. A lot of small little things. We've all done stuff we never would have done if God was standing right there watching. We cut somehow had the idea. He's at church, but maybe not at work. Right?

And and that has separated us from God. So Jesus comes along, though he is God in the flesh, lives as a human being, and passes the test of temptations that Adam failed. So when he dies, he's paying our penalty. None of us could die for our own sins. That's or somebody else's sins, like we're on death row.

His final words are, it is finished, which was a phrase they'd stamp on a receipt or bill of goods, meaning paid in full. He's crying out, it's paid in full. It's done. So now let me go to the death row. He comes to your cell and mine and he opens the door and says, come on out. I wanna lead you to freedom.

Am I gonna trust him enough to follow him or not? Now, we all have different reactions. For me, once I really understood that offer, I'm like, I'm out of here. I had friends of mine who said like, I'm not so sure. I don't know. I Who are you? I had other friends who's kinda were like, well, know, it's

We'll get the weight room on exercise this afternoon. I'm trying for a PR in my lifting and we have that spinach spinach, that spaghetti I like so well tonight. And they go, I think I'm gonna stay. But those of us mostly in this room, some of you, you need to get out of that cell and start following. But once we do,

what happens? He leads us not only by opening the cell door and say come, but he leads us to the freedom from our sins and all the baggage we have. So he takes us through the jail as it way, as it were, to get us out to freedom. Well, all along the way, I'm making a choice.

Do I trust you enough to do what you say when you say stop, when you say go forward, when you say hide, when you say turn to the right or turn to the left?

Because if truth be told, and I'm sure I'm not the only one in this room, there are times where God tells me to do something and I think he doesn't understand my situation. You ever been there? It's it's it's kinda like directions. Now, you need to understand, I'm a geographical moron.

When I get home from a trip like this, my wife is always shocked when I show up. Mildly disappointed as well, but that's another issue. And when we're drive If there's not ocean and and hills and mountains, I cannot figure out what north, south, east, west.

When we're driving, it's fairly common for me to be in the left hand lane about to make a turn, and my sweet wife, she's so kind, she'll say, honey, why are you in this lane?

I don't know. The guy in front of me is. She says, well, we're supposed to go straight or go over here. I'm sure many of you've had my experience. I have it all the time. The GPS is telling me to go one way and I know it has no clue. You been there? How many of you have tried to outsmart the GPS?

That works well, doesn't it? It's when it tells me to do something, even when it makes no sense, I need to do it. These are all pictures of as the Lord is leading us in our life out of the prison cell to the freedom he's called us to.

He's saying trust me enough to do what I say even on those days where it makes absolutely no sense. Faith and doubt are not opposites. Faith and fear are not opposites. They can coexist. The only question is when I have fear, when I have doubt, which one is gonna win? Trusting God enough to do what he says?

Or like, ah, you ain't got this one, Lord. I wanna give you a biblical example and story, one of my favorites. It's found in Acts chapter 12. And it's a story about the apostle Peter in the early days of the church being imprisoned. And king Herod,

king of Jerusalem in the area, kind of a a like a feudal leader when not like king we would think of, but but king Herod there, he had just put James the apostle to death, had his head cut off.

And the religious leaders in Jerusalem loved it, and so he thought, man, I wanna earn some more points with these guys. Peter's in jail. I think I'm gonna cut his head off tomorrow. So he's sentenced to die. Well,

the word gets out and the Christians gather together in a home to earnestly seek the Lord. Please are praying with faith, will you spare Peter?

And I don't think it's too much. Would you agree with me it's not too much to assume Peter was praying something like that? Like, Lord, would you spare me having my head cut off tomorrow? So these two prayer meetings are are praying that the Lord would deliver Peter from certain death.

Now, I'm gonna read to you from Acts chapter 12 verse five, explain a little section, jump down to 11 and go on. But but here's what happens. We're told at the beginning, while Peter was in prison, the church prayed very earnestly for him.

And then you jump down to verse 11, it says he finally came to his senses. Well, here's what happened. An angel showed up in his cell, unlocked his chains, led him somehow through the prison out into the street, and then disappeared. And Peter stubbed his toe or something and realized, what? This is real, not a dream.

That's what's going on. So the first thing I want you to catch is Peter, the apostle, the one who knew Jesus, saw the resurrection, is ready to die. He's praying that the Lord will spare his life. An angel shows up, and Peter does not get up and give him a chest bump and a high five and go, I knew you were showing up.

In fact, as the angel unlocks, leads him to the prison, brings him to the street, he's still thinking it's the spicy last dinner he had. It's a weird And then, he finally realized, oh my gosh, This is real. So what's he do? Well, verse 12 tells us,

11, Peter finally came to his senses. It's really true, he said. The Lord has sent his angel and saved me from Herod and from what the Jewish leaders have planned to do to me. Verse 12, when he realized this, he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many were gathered for prayer.

And he knocked on the door in the gate, and the servant girl named Rhoda came to open it. Well, when she recognized his voice, hey, would you let me in? Would you let me in? When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed

that instead of opening the door, she ran back inside and told everybody, Peter's standing at the door.

So you can imagine, he's there knocking. He's finally come to his senses and and she's like, ah, it's Peter. And she runs in and tells him, like Peter is here, Peter is here. And so they all go because they're great men and women of faith. Hallelujah, we knew it, God had come through.

Not the Bible I got. Here's a response. Verse 15, they said to Rhoda, you're out of your mind. And when she insisted, no, no, it's true, they decided, crap, he must be dead. It's his angel or his ghost. Do you catch that? For Peter and for them, when God did the very thing they were praying for,

they had so little confidence, so little so much doubt that when it happened, they didn't believe it happened. They thought, well, we failed. When they finally opened the door and saw him, they were amazed. You see, the faith that God rewarded

was not something they mustered up or you and I've gotta be all positive or whatever. The faith they're rewarded is that we're doing what God said to do. God says when you're in deep weeds or you got a situation you need me to do something, pray. And pray persistently and keep after it.

And then it's up to God what he does. James lost his head and Peter was spared. But he said, your job is to bring it to me. And that's what they did. Filled with doubt,

so much so that when God did it, they didn't believe that he had done it. I don't know about you, that gives me incredibly great confidence. I can pray that kind of prayer all day long. The prayer I thought I had to pray as a new Jesus follower, like I had a hard time with that because I'm a very practical realist.

And I had some friends who could do mental gymnastics and imagine all kinds of stuff. But like for instance, my wife had very bad cancer a number of years ago. She's fine fine now by the grace of God. But it was stage four and it looked like she wouldn't make it. Well, we prayed, I'm sorry, you know, I knew the diagnosis.

I knew what was going on. But he told me to pray and we prayed. And lo and behold, he showed up and answered. But it wasn't because of our mental gymnastics. It was because that was his will, and because we simply were following him on our way out to freedom. Now I talked about fear as well. You know,

maybe some of you have had your son or daughter climb up a high dive. They go to the top, everybody's looking, and they suddenly freak out. And they do one of two things. They turn around and do the walk of shame down the stairs. And you're sitting there going, I'm not the dad. I'm I'm the uncle.

I don't wanna identify with this kid. Or they scream and jump, scared to death certain they're gonna die. You see, it wasn't a lack of fear. It was just the presence of obedience. That's Are you gonna climb down the stair, or are you gonna jump off? That's the simple issue. It doesn't matter how you feel.

You want a good example of fear? How about our Lord Jesus? This might surprise some of you, but Jesus. The the the story is given to us in in the various gospels. The version I'm reading from is Mark. But what happened, Jesus knew he's about to go to the cross. So he takes three of his closest associates,

and he says, come with me. The scripture says he was troubled. He was in anguish. He was like emotionally messed up. And he says you stay here and I'm gonna go pray. Now, maybe if you've been a long time Christian, you've seen the pictures of Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane.

You know, the one where he's got that little kinda halo y thing that I guess always showed up at night, and, you know, his hair is nicely washed and conditioned, and he's wearing that kinda goofy little stuff. He's got his hands folded and he's just looking up at the heavenly father. That makes for a famous picture.

But that ain't what scripture says. You know what scripture says? I'm so troubled I need three of you to come with me. You stay here. I'm gonna go over here. And what scripture says is he fell on the ground. He groveled in the dirt, crying out to the heavenly father,

knowing what was before him. Is there any way this can be taken from me? Is there any way? And the father said no. And Jesus didn't get up and go, well, okay, whatever. No, he did it again. And he did it a third time. And then he got up and he said to the father, not my will but your be done.

Well, if the Lord Jesus can be scared to death, anguished, troubled, so much so that he just falls on the ground, I go, okay, I can do that. What I can't do is pretend that bad news is good news. What I can't do is all the stuff I kinda thought I had to do and they call it faith. It's a very simple thing. Just trust God enough

to do what he says. Now, I wanna take a little sidebar here. I probably should've made another point, but I didn't. But there's one other thing faith isn't I need to address. And that is God is not impressed when you take make risky decisions.

Have you kinda picked up the idea like most of us in our culture and therefore in Christianity as well? That God loves it and we show great faith and we do risky crazy things? Like I've been at conferences

and and one of the speakers will say, if you don't have some area in your life where if God doesn't come to your rescue, you're gonna be in a mess, you're not walking by faith. I'd never done it, but I always, when I'm the next speaker, wanna get up and say, that dude was jacked up. Because the truth of the matter is,

if you go out on a limb presuming God will save you and he didn't send you there, you are not a know, a, great picture of faith. You're a moron. You're an idiot. Because he never promised he'd do that. And then we fall and we go, God, why'd you let this happen? He says, I never told you to do that.

All the time I will run into people who are doing something risky and they're saying, well, I'm just trusting God. And I have the same result. Well,

did you like have a burning bush where he told you to do this? What do you mean by your trusting? Like, you got a bible verse on this? Well, no, no, but I I just feel he's calling me. Well, like, are you sure it's not last size pizza? I mean, let's be careful with this thing. You see, faith is never risky.

Disobeying God is risky. Faith is never irrational. It's the most rational thing you could do. Couple of biblical stories. I know some of you are brand new at following Jesus, but you've probably heard of a guy named Moses. Now Moses had been a Bedouin shepherd for about forty years

when there's a bush that gets on fire just by itself and it keeps burning without being consumed. They did not have propane tanks. They didn't have natural gas, and this sucker keeps burning and burning and burning. So he goes over to investigate. And when he gets there, it talks to him.

And then he says like, who are you? And the bush says, I am God. Like, okay. And then it says, and I have an assignment for you. You, mister Beto one shepherd,

are to go to the most powerful man in the world, the pharaoh of Egypt, and you were to tell him to let all of his slaves go and follow you to a promised land I have for them. And Moses begins to argue with a bush, you know, which is pretty crazy except for it was arguing back, so maybe not.

And then the bush says, well, throw your stick on the ground. He throws it on the ground. It turns into a snake. He says, pick it up. It turns back to a stick.

Well, wanna tell you, when you have a burning bush, not consumed, tell you it's God, prove it with a miracle like that, the most risky thing you could do is say no. And the most rational thing you could do is like, well, whatever. I'll go to this pharaoh dude and see what happens.

The same with the famous story about Peter walking on water. What had happened is Jesus had sent them to the other side of the small little lake called the Sea Of Galilee. It's not a sea, it's a little lake.

But as they're rowing across, Jesus walks on water to meet him. It's a bizarre story. You ought to read it sometime. But as they're doing that, Peter sees him. First of all, they're freaked out. It's a ghost. Then they realize it's Jesus.

And so Peter says, well Lord, can I walk in the water to you? Call me out. And Jesus says, yeah, come on. And he gets out of the boat and walks on water. Now when somebody gets out of the boat and tries to walk on water, would you agree with me that's rather irrational?

But if Jesus is walking water and he's right there and he tells you to walk, then it's irrational to stay in the stinking boat. But we do things like, oh man, need to, in your life, you need to like get out of the boat. I go, yeah, get out of the boat if he tells you to. Other than that, put a life jacket on first.

There's no value in risk. There's value in obedience. And when a verse tells me to do something the rest of the world thinks is crazy, well I'll do it. But that's not risk. And I I I say this because so many times I've seen people do things and get

they thought God was telling them to do, but God hadn't clearly told them to it. They just thought God was telling them to do. And when he doesn't come through, they're so angry at God. And I go, God didn't do this.

In fact, Jesus so much didn't authorize risk. Here's what he said. He said, you know you're building a tower and you haven't figured out the cost of it and that you had the money before, everybody's gonna mock you.

And he said, if you're kind of a feudal king of a city state and you're gonna go go to war with another one, you better first know how big their army is and how big your army is. That's what Jesus said about risk taking. He said a lot about obedience, and sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's weird,

but it's always crystal clear. Then I would say, that's not scary. Number four, biblical faith is the map that guides us. It's not a power that rescues us. Again, early on I thought, well if I could muster up enough faith,

then my wife's cancer's gonna be healed. If I could muster up enough whatever, then this is gonna be taken care And and faith was not a way to get a problem solved. Faith was a map that told me how to walk through the valley. And sometimes walking through the valley and doing what he says will lead me to victory,

and sometimes it'll lead me to the cross. When Nance entered cancer, we did what he told us to do all the way through in terms of how we responded to people. We prayed like we're supposed to, all of these things. And it led us to her healing, and she's now fine and well.

I had another friend through the same time. They walked through, and she's dead. She's with Jesus, so it worked out okay, but it's not what they wanted. That's why it's called faith. I don't know where it's gonna lead me. And by the way, that's why the most important verses in the bible

are the ones I don't agree with. People ask, hey, what are the most important verses in the bible? Well, mine, it might be different years, but they're all the ones I think Jesus has whacked. Like, you want me to do this?

Like, if I do this, it'll end this relationship. If I do this, my finances will fall apart. If I do this, what you know, the the only time faith comes into play is when I don't agree. Right? Like, there's a whole lot of the bible I just naturally agree with before I was a Jesus follower. Right?

It's like, yeah, good idea, Lord. I would've told you to do that too. It's like there's no faith when I do what I already think is a good idea. But when I'm following him out of the jail to freedom, and he says go this way, and I feel that won't work. That's where the guards are. That's when faith shows up.

And that leads to the last.

This is all why we don't need more faith. A mustard seed is enough. We need more obedience.

Have you all heard the phrase, if you got enough faith, you can move a mountain? Got enough faith, you can get a mulberry tree and throw it into the sea? That's what I always heard. That's what I always thought.

So the idea was, well, I got faith, but if I can get more faith I I mean, I know I can't literally move a mountain. It's a weird picture. But if I can just get a little more faith, can move the mountains in my life. But actually, literally, I told you at the beginning,

not only are our ideas often goofy, they're opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus never said you need more faith. We need more obedience. And let me give you the context of one of those statements he made.

He had pulled aside his inner circle and was teaching them on importance of forgiveness. Setting the stage for the undeserved forgiveness they would receive and helping them understand they need to pass on to other people who don't deserve forgiveness.

And so he says, when your brother sins against you, if he comes and asks to be forgiven, forgive him. Well, that's so far so good. They're taking copious notes. Yeah, right. And then Jesus goes, by the way, if they sin against you seven times in the same day, you need to forgive them each time.

And they were like, what? Say that one again. Says it again. I go, like, we can't do that. We know you are master and lord. They didn't fully understand everything about who Jesus was. He hadn't died or been resurrected yet, but like, they already went like, you I think you're the Messiah, whatever that means.

So we're gonna try to do that, but we can't do that on our own. We need more faith. So that's exactly what they say. They go, we'll increase our faith, Lord, and we'll do it. And Jesus says, a mustard seed can move a mountain. Now you and I read that and go, okay. But we didn't understand what a mustard seed was.

It was the smallest thing they could imagine. It was their word picture for the tiniest of tiny. They didn't know molecules, atoms, electrons, and all that. And a mustard seed was so small that if the light isn't bright enough, you won't see one in your hand.

So Jesus is not saying, as I always thought, you need more faith. That's what they asked for. And he said, you don't need more faith. Like, dude, it's in the Greek, dudes, if you got just a mustard seed, that's all you need to do and have to move a mountain. Just forgive like I told you. I go, holy mackerel. That's all faith is.

Trusting God enough to do what he says, no matter how much fear, no matter how much doubt. He's not angry when you're afraid. He's not angry at you when you are shocked that he comes through. He just says, would you whether it makes sense or not, do what I say. It reminds me of a famous story

of Jesus raising from the dead a man named Lazarus. And when Jesus shows up, he's already been in the tomb four days. They don't embalm bodies, they just put the body either in the ground or in a cave. And Jesus shows up and he says, roll away the stone. And they're going, what? Roll away the stone. Lord, he stinketh.

Like like this is four days. That odor's gonna knock us over. Roll away the stone. So guess what they did. They held their nose and rolled away the stone. And to their shock, out walks Lazarus.

The passage actually says they were so freaked out and shocked, they just stared at him. And Jesus has to tell them, you know, might be a good idea to take those gray clothes off him. He was like, however it was. And that's a picture of all God's calling you and I to do.

He doesn't care whether you're a realist, your imagination is great, you're a pessimist by nature, optimist by nature. He just wants you to hold your nose and roll away the stone. And my bet is every one of us here, well, maybe not every one of us, but a good majority of us have right now some area

where we know what God wants to do, but we're afraid it won't work. It might backfire on us in work or a relationship or we can't afford it or what. I mean, there's a million reasons. And Jesus is not saying you gotta agree with him. You gotta come to a point where you go, it'll work. He says, just hold your nose

and roll away the stone and see what comes out of the cave. Father, would you take the things that we have talked about, looked at, and seen in scripture today, and would you show us how they apply to our life and our faith? Lord, let not your word be binoculars

where we check out everybody else and how they're doing. Let it be a mirror that we're able to know, see, and understand the next step you're calling us to do. Whether we're confident or scared to death, help us to hold our nose and roll away the stone. In the name of Jesus, amen.

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