Thanks for checking out the Anchor Faith Message podcast
from St. Augustine, FL.
Now enjoy this message. Glory to God, say I have the
faith of God. Say I have the God kind of
faith. Come on, say it again.
I have the God kind of faith. Come on, Hallelujah.
Do you have the God kind of faith?
That's what we've been talking about, Amen.
And I just believe we have to ask ourselves, do do we really
have the God kind of faith? Do we see our lives and the
faith working in our lives the way that he describes what faith
is through the Word of God, Amen.
Because we say many people think they have faith, but true
biblical faith can be found only through what the Word of God
says faith is, Amen. What does the word of God say
faith is? And last week we started our
journey talking about Kingdom faith and that we have all been
given the measure. Say I've been given the measure
and we talked about the fact that though we've been given the
measure of faith, each and every one of us are responsible,
right, to determine what return or what measure our faith will
become. Because we said last Sunday when
Pastor was, well, not last Sunday, but the Sunday before
when he talked about the seed of the word.
And we talked about the fact that there should always be your
face should always be producing something within your life that
you can tangibly see and what it's up to you whether that is
going to be 3060 or a hundredfold return, right?
And so the measures been given to us, the seed of faith or the
seed of the word has been given to each and every one of us.
And we talked about the fact that it came the minute we
believed in our heart and confess with our mouth that
Jesus Christ is Lord. The seed of faith was planted.
The seed of faith then can begin to germinate or grow or increase
within our hearts and in our lives.
But we see that there were several things that just as
Pastor said out of Mark Four, that try to come in and choke
the word out of our life. And so everyone of us have to
determine, are we going to let our hearts be a place where
nothing come on? Are we going to have good
ground? Because if we let the Word or
the seed of faith that's been planted within our heart,
planted in good ground, then we should be able to expect and see
3060 or a hundredfold return of our life producing that which we
believe. So we talked about last week how
faith came, and we talked about the fact that faith is the
exchange or the currency of the Kingdom.
So any promise that God says that belongs to us as a child of
God in His Word, how are we going to receive that promise?
We have to receive it by hearing what the Word says about it.
We have to then believe, believe that word that he spoke.
And the evidence of us believing the word that was spoke is that
we will speak it out. Not only will we speak it out,
we will act it out because faith without action is what dead.
And we went through all of these things, but biblical faith only
will come from the Word of God. Biblical faith.
This is why we have to ask ourselves, is our faith built
upon what Grandma and Mama has told us?
Is our faith built upon what religion has taught us?
Is our faith built upon our experiences or our opinions of
what faith is? Or is our faith true biblical
faith built upon what the Word says?
Faith is what faith looks like, and we gave a huge demonstration
last week of those that walked in faith in the Word of God,
Amen. Out of Hebrews 11, the hall of
faith is what it's called, Hebrews Chapter 11, and we read
verses one through 40. Yes, we did.
All right.
And we saw a true picture of what biblical faith looks like,
OK. And the fact that a lot of times
what we saw with those who actually walked faith out in
their life, it was always putting them in a situation to
where they were in the unknown. They were in, they lived in the
unknown. But the way American church and
Christianity looks today, nobody wants to live that way because
every example that I see through scripture of people living by
faith, they were in a peculiar situation or circumstance or
something was taking place that they would not be able to live
by. And we talked about this by
sight. God did not create us to live by
sight, He created us to live by faith and we read many
scriptures where he says the righteous should live by faith,
right? That those we should walk by
faith and not by sight. The just shall live by faith,
right? We read all of these scriptures
and so therefore we said this last week that true biblical
faith, and we have to say it that way because so many people
have what they say faith is, but it is in a lot of crazy
thinking, OK, we said this, that faith is a spiritual law in the
Kingdom of God. It's a spiritual law.
And that law started the minute we believed in our heart and
confess with our mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord.
The same way we we heard the word, we had to believe, receive
the word that we needed a Savior, that we had to believe
the word that we needed a Savior, and then we had to
confess Him as Lord of our life. That is a spiritual law in the
Kingdom or the law of faith. And that is how for the rest of
your life you will receive the promises from God through that
law of what we could call believing you've received,
speaking it out, and then acting upon it.
And so we saw last week as well that we have to be those that
live by faith. That means that we are going to
have to build our life upon faith.
To live by it means we build our life upon it.
And we said this, that faith was what?
A firm persuasion based upon what you believe and accept this
as truth because there's many people that believe Jesus Christ
is their Savior, but that's the only truth that they believe
about Him. So there's many truths within
His Word or promises within His word that belongs to every
believer, but you can only believe Him based upon certain
things that you want to receive from Him.
And many people choose not to receive healing from Him, even
though it's a promise that belongs to all who will believe.
Do you see what I'm saying? So it's based upon this firm
persuasion is based upon what you believe and what you accept
is truth. You know, we don't get to just
choose our own truth or live our own truth as a believer are the
truth is supposed to be formed in our life from the word of
God, not from what some psychiatrist says or what some
psychologist says or what some book says on how we are to raise
our children or all of these coaches that are now coaches on
Instagram, life coaches. My life coach comes straight
from the word of God. This is what I build my life
upon. So we saw that faith is a is a
firm for persuasion based upon what you believe, what you have
accepted as truth and that you adhere to it.
That you adhere to it so firmly that not only do you just
believe it and adhere to it, it actually you allow it to govern
your life, life, right? This faith is supposed to govern
what we think, what we say and what we do.
It's supposed to govern what we think, what we say and what we
do. So our lives and what we, how we
talk, what we're meditating on and the actions or the fruit of
our life will be evident. You will be able to see if
people are truly living by what they believe because there will
be evidence of it within their lives, right?
Every day. And so he says it this, we say
it this way too. It's an assurance.
It's the reality of your what you are believing.
It's confidence or conviction, right?
A firm persuasion or a confident expectation.
This is true biblical faith and we saw this out of Hebrews 11/1
and three, I want to reread it Hebrews 11/1 and three, it says
now faith is the substance or assurance.
I added King James and the SAB together.
So now faith is the substance, the assurance of things hoped
for, the conviction or evidence of things not seen, say not
seen. This is what we're going to
focus on this tonight. The not seen, the not seen.
So it's the conviction or evidence of things not seen.
For by it the men of old gained approval.
And by faith we understand that the world's listen to this.
By faith we understand that the world's were prepared by the
Word of God. By the Word of God we know in
the beginning in Genesis, what did He do?
He said in Genesis one, let there be.
And what was there? He created the world.
He created everything we see in this world by His word, we can
be assured, we can be firmly persuaded.
We should have the conviction that His word will form, will
create whatever world we see that we want to live in.
And if we want to see the promises of God, then we have to
base our faith on what the Word says about our marriage, what
the Word says about our finances, what the Word says
come on about healing and health in our body.
What does the Word say? Because that is what I'm going
to build my faith upon. That is the substance of what
I'm going to build upon and that is going to create the reality
in the natural, in this natural realm.
And to do that it will always be unseen.
To start, it was all. It was unseen to God before He
created the world, but then He spoke it and it came into
reality and he said in a mark we read this last week, Mark 11/22
to have the God kind of faith, the God kind of faith.
So if he says something and can create it, then what is He
saying that we should be doing? Saying something and what?
Creating it. But we have to believe what
we're saying. And that belief has to be based
upon what his word has said, right?
It's not just, you know, whatever.
No, it's what the Word has said belongs to us.
So by faith we understand that the world's were prepared or
created by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made
out of the things which are visible.
And he tells us this is the kind of faith that we are to have,
has given us the measure of that faith.
And therefore we are people that are not going to be able to live
by what we see in this natural realm or this natural world.
Period. We can't live by that.
True people of living by faith is not going to live by what we
see in this natural realm. We're going to live by the
substance of faith, that substance.
And we said that stop substance was to be the foundation or the
structure, that word substance. Let me find that again.
It means that thing that we're setting up under to support us.
It is concrete. Come on, It is the foundation,
the substance of faith. Get that?
The substance of faith is what we are to build our foundation
upon, not anything else. Not anything else.
And faith, before it is brought into reality, cannot be seen.
It cannot be seen. We know that there's wind.
You can't see the wind. You only see the effects of the
wind. So wind is not seen.
What you see is the effects of the wind.
So faith is not seen, but what you should see is the effects of
your faith within your life and whatever promise God says
belongs to you, right? So you should see the evidence
of that. That is the substance that
you're building your life upon. That is the foundation.
And we have to act, truly ask ourselves, is, is that my
foundation? Is faith truly the foundation of
what I've built my life upon? Because we know that many people
say they have faith. And this is great to reiterate
because they say, oh, yeah, I believe that there is a God.
I have faith that there's a God. But they don't know how to
appropriate that faith to where they live by it every day.
And he tells us that we are to live by this, right?
We're to live by it, not just believe that there's a God and
that he can do anything. But actually, what Pastor has
taught us, I believe that what he says that we can do and he
can do, he'll do through me, through me, through us.
That's where we have to be, OK? And faith we saw last week is
useless if it's not activated, if we're not acting on it or we
are not believing God. And the most of the time that
it's going to be activated is in the situations, the tests, the
trials, the circumstances where it looks like you're going
under, where it looks like your marriage is falling apart.
When it looks like, come on, you're not going to be able to
make your mortgage when it looks like these are in the unseen.
This is in the unseen realm that you are to apply your faith
within those moments and in those times.
And that is to really lives by faith.
I'm not going to live by what I see.
I'm not going to live by how I feel about the situation.
I'm not going to live by so we can sing about it, but I'm
finding a lot of people are actually doing it in the midst
of these situations. OK, So we have to stir ourselves
up in faith because we said that in Second Corinthians.
He says, test yourself to see if you're in faith.
So this is a test of what true biblical faith looks like.
And we should test our lives according to what true biblical
faith looks, not not according to our imagination and what we
think or how we think, right? And this, this is always, always
a heart, always wanting to say, am I in faith in this situation?
Or have I responded differently and and I responding differently
in whatever circumstance I'm going to?
Or do I go straight to the word and do I believe the word, speak
the word, act upon the Word no matter what I see, right?
Do I act upon the word no matter what I see?
Am I firmly persuaded that my faith that's built upon him will
not fail? We said the Weymouth
translation. Read it this way out of Hebrews
11. Now faith means that we are
confident of what we hope for, and convinced of what we do not
see, say, do not see. Moffett translation reads it
this way. Faith is the title deed of
things hoped for, putting to prove the things not seen.
Faith is the title deed. The title deed, it is done.
I own it right. Hallelujah.
So faith will always operate in the unseen.
Let's talk about this tonight. Faith is the substance that is
unseen. Pastor had ministered a sermon
called the Unseen Principle a long time ago.
How many of you were here when he did that or remember that?
So we're going to just kind of read not, I don't have his
message. We're just going to be talking
about the unseen principle. So one of the greatest examples
and scripture that we see that lived by faith was Abraham.
Abraham, who is called the father of faith, also was called
the father of us all. He was our example, He was our
father. He was the father of faith, the
father of us all. And I would like to look at his
life and how he lived by faith and he lived in the unseen.
OK, now let's go to Romans chapter 416 through 20.
Romans say my faith is out of this world.
Say it again, my faith is out of this world.
Say my faith is out of this world.
My faith is out of this world. Come on, it's out of this world.
It is not of this natural realm. It's not our faith is out of
this world. Hallelujah, which would be a
good title for this message, though it wasn't.
But so look at Romans, as I said, is everybody there?
Because we see here through Abraham's life.
It says, therefore it is of faith that it might be by grace
to the end, the to end the promise.
Excuse me, to the end the promise might be sure to all the
seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also
which is of the faith of Abraham, which is US, who is the
father of us all. As it is written, I have made
thee a father of many nations before him who he believed, even
God, who quickened the dead, and called those things which he not
as though they were, who against hope believed in hope that he
might become the father of many nations.
According to that which was spoken.
So shall thy seed be without becoming what?
Weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as
dead, since he was about 100 years old, and the deadness of
Sarah's womb. Yet with respect to the promise
of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in
faith, giving glory to God. Hallelujah.
So we know Abraham and Sarah, God promised them a child and
they were up of age, that they, neither one of them were in
child bearing age, right? They were old OK and we see that
God spoke this promise to him and said you will have a child
and you will be the father. What of many of of all these
people in the nation, many nations and we see here Abraham
he said this that he what called those things which be not as
though they were so faith did not go by what he saw in this
natural realm. Faith, the God kind of faith
will always defy natural laws. Always God's faith will always
defy natural laws. It can supersede it because his
faith is out of this world. So it doesn't matter how dead
your circumstance looks. It doesn't matter what's going
on in your life. If we would take up the faith
his what his word calls faith, a firm persuasion, a confident
expectation and begin to let it operate within our lives, then
we would begin to start calling those things that be not as
though they were. That be not as though he said
his word would would be as though he said his word would be
in whatever situation you may go through.
And that is the substance of faith, his word.
It's the substance that we are to build our life upon, and it's
going to go against everything we see in the natural.
Everything we see in the natural.
Abraham had to believe. What did it say?
Hope against hope, according to that which was spoken by God.
His word is what He has said. So whatever was spoken in His
Word, that's what we are to believe in the midst of whatever
circumstance we're going through or whatever situation we're
going through. And what did he do?
He did not contemplate when translation said that the
deadness of Sarah's womb, He didn't contemplate it, right?
That means, guess what? He did not meditate on that.
But what he meditated on was what God had promised him.
And so his faith was in what God had promised him, not with his
circumstance or the evidence of what he was seeing in the
natural. Because faith will always
supersede it. Because our faith is to be out
of this world. It does not function like this
world system. Come on it doesn't function like
this world system. I want to reread James chapter 2
because James chapter 2 which is what we read last week and I
didn't elaborate on Abraham but they mentioned Abraham in James
chapter 2 and I want to read it again in James chapter 2 verses.
Actually we read last week 14 through 26 but I want to start
in 18 and listen to this. It says, now someone may argue
some people have faith, others have good deeds.
But I say, how can you show me your faith if you do not have
good deeds? I will show you my faith by good
deeds. Because we started, we talked
about the fact that faith will act.
Faith will do what it believes. Verse 19, you say you have faith
for you believe that there is one God.
Good for you, good for you. This is those people.
Oh yeah, I believe there's a God.
Well, good for you. OK, but do we live by it?
Because he goes on to say this. That's good for you.
Even the demons believe this. So you have the faith of demons.
It's all if all you do is believe that there's a God.
Good for you. Think about that, because does
this faith work in your life every day?
Because if not, you're no better than a demon.
Come on, let's just say it like that.
You have no more faith than what a demon has.
The demons believe this and they tremble in terror.
But I know believers that don't even have one ounce of the fear
of the Lord. But demons tremble because they
do believe there is a God. They know that there is a God
and they know that they will give answer to that God and they
have more fear of God than we do.
Just a side point. Because the American church has
lost all reverence and fear of God because they still want to
just live the way they want to live.
Look what he says in verse 20. How foolish.
Can't you see that faith without good deeds is useless?
Don't you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be
right by God or right with God by his actions when he offered
his son Isaac on the altar? And aren't you glad that God is
not ever asking us to have to offer our children because He
offered His only Son in our place?
But how many of us say we have all this wonderful faith and go
to all these grand, wonderful faith conferences and can echo
everything that we're supposed to say Faith does, how faith
comes, what faith, how you to act upon it?
But yet we don't believe Him and actually do the Word every day
in our everyday life, in our everyday life.
To me, that is useless, right? And so he lets us know because,
you know, the American Church does not believe in sacrifice
any longer. Nobody wants to have to
sacrifice anything. They don't want to sacrifice
their time to serve. They don't want to sacrifice,
you know, their finances. They don't want to sacrifice
walking in love with somebody that may have done them wrong.
Come on. They don't want to sacrifice
their time. They don't want to.
They don't want to sacrifice any law, but they do want to say
they have faith in God. They don't want to sacrifice
anymore. And we're going to be a church
that's going to have faith that endures till the end because
we're seeing many people that are falling away from the faith
and not enduring, and they don't endure because they just simply
don't believe what His Word says that it is and that it can do.
It's just as simple as that. It's it's not some big
revelation, OK? It's not a big revelation.
This thing on how we, I wasn't even feel, I wasn't even, I had
not even been taught faith and was living a life of faith,
didn't even know that I was living a life of faith.
But you know what? I did know what his word was
telling me to do and I believed it.
And guess what else I did? I acted upon it had no
revelation of the AB CS of faith, had no revelation that I
have to believe and speak and and act.
But what I did know is what the Word was telling me to do.
And guess what I did? I obeyed that.
And every step of the way, God always took care of every single
need, every single thing. Hallelujah.
And the sacrifices that were made were done by faith and what
He was asking and requiring of me.
And there was always a sacrifice and there was always a
requirement to be able to do what He was asking of me to, to,
to do. And we, we said this, that when
he called pastor and I to ministry, we were living in
Georgia at the time and we're going to a Baptist Church, a
Baptist Church. That's where our faith was.
We had no idea. We picked up US and our two
children at the time, loaded up a pickup and headed to Georgia
because Pastor heard the Lord say go to Georgia, you know, and
live with my father because at the time he was not born again
and all these things and that he was going to get a job and we
were going to, you know, whatever.
He was coming off of a, a National Guard tour at the time
and we knew nothing. And actually my husband was
reading the Bible and he had picked up a little booklet from
Charles Stanley and in it he was talking about faith according to
Charles Stanley's faith, right. And that was the seed of faith
or the measure of faith that we were walking in at the time.
And all he knew is we are supposed to pick up and go, no
job, nothing. Well, that was a sacrifice
because I mean, you're asking me to just pick up and go with you.
And, you know, whatever. I don't even remember how long
we had even been married by them.
Only maybe four or five years. Not even that long.
And so we we sold everything, picked up and loaded up the
pickup and you know, you've heard the story.
It was on the 4th of July weekend when we were moving up
there and didn't even get out of what was at Lake City and a
overpass had collapsed, collapsed in the middle of the
highway. So 4th of July weekend still in
Florida in Lake City, the middle of right, no breeze.
I mean it's 4th of July and it's hot.
It's 90°. We're in line for.
We are in traffic for four hours with a child that hated the car
seat in the 1st place, which was Chase, Pastor Chase, who
screamed bloody murder every time you put him in a car seat
and got carsick all the time. And so he's screaming he's hot.
What happens? We are in this Interstate for so
long, car stop, just start pulling off the side of the road
because they're overheating. So everybody's overheating and
we finally get to a gas station. We cut our car off and it
wouldn't crank back up. And you heard the story where
the one guy showed up, put the pliers on one side of the jumper
thing and a tire iron on the other.
One Junior and with short shorts and it's his no shoes, no shirt.
It was welcome there at that Jiffy store and with the pockets
of the shorts, you know, the front pockets hanging out.
He was our Angel that day, junior, and he cranked our car
right up with his bare hands and those two things.
And we took off to Atlanta and, you know, the rest is history.
Maybe we'll get into some of those testimonies, but we had
nothing, you know, and here's my husband telling me I'm going to
get a good job. We're going to, you know, all I
wanted was a, a house with a white picket fence.
And you know, somebody that worked 9:00 to 5:00.
So he got a good job all right. And they were getting ready to
send him. He was working for like a DAPA
corporation or something. And he was doing mainframes with
the computer stuff and was get, they were getting ready to send
him so that he could see that he saw in the paper in Atlanta that
they could start making six figures.
So we're, we're going for it, right?
The American dream. And but God arrested him on his
way to work one night because he was working shift work and he
had that open vision of him preaching.
To masses and was called into the ministry.
Came home the next morning and told me this grand vision.
And do y'all know what my comments were?
I did not marry a pastor. That's good for you, but that is
not who I am ever wanted to be, ever want to be right and said
you going to be doing this thing on your own.
And that's where I was spiritually.
OK. And you know, so all of these
things, I mean, we're living in my dad's house and you telling
me we call and going into the ministry.
I said I'm not pastor wife material.
I mean, don't you know, I was a teenage dropout pregnant girl?
I mean, you know, that's not pastor wife material.
You know, I had in my mind what I thought a pastor and then
every pastor wife I really ever had known looked miserable,
wasn't really raised in church, you know, or anything.
But it did not look like this grand life that you're, you're
telling me we going to make 6 figures.
And now we going into the ministry where they didn't wear
makeup and had buns in their hair and I cannot play the
piano. My mom didn't make me finish my
piano lessons. I mean, this is what I
envisioned, you know, and I said we might as well sign the papers
now because that is not what I signed up for.
I didn't even know what I signed up for at the in reality, OK,
but anyway, but God had other plans And you know what I had to
do? I had to surrender my life to
His plans. I had to sacrifice my life to
His plans. I had to make a decision.
Am I going to live out the Word of God for my life and for what
He is saying or what He is requiring and begin to start
living by faith and not by all the circumstances and the
situations that I was encountering on a regular basis
with this husband of mine? So then, you know, he gets, you
know, so he's telling me he's called to the ministry.
We didn't know what that meant. We had no clue what that meant,
had nobody in the ministry in our family but a stepbrother.
And I said this last week that now doesn't even serve the Lord
and has a pot farm. OK, He's into the municipal
marijuana stuff and actually was the very first person that sewed
into our ministry when we started this church at Gamble
Rogers and gave us all of the sound equipment to start with,
but now doesn't even serve the Lord and has a pot farm.
So what does that tell me? His faith did not endure.
He was in Bible college and felt called to the ministry.
And that is the only person we knew.
Like, OK, so my husband's like, well, I mean, if God's calling
us, I guess we need to go to a Bible school, you know, because
I made good grades and everything, so surely I can go
find a Bible school. Well, that was the only Bible
school we knew of, which is where he was going.
And I said this last week and it was a living hell when we then
he tells me we weren't even in Georgia very long, not even two
years. And at the same time got
pregnant with Brianna and moved into an apartment in Rose,
Roswell, GA. And it was infested with
roaches. My dad was trying to talk us out
of moving into this apartment. Stay with me, stay with me, it's
fine. So we move into this apartment
and did not stay there two days, packed everything back up and
move back it. How do you think that made me
feel? You know, I didn't want to have
to, you know, put down my pride and go back and live with him.
And, you know, now this new found, you know, thing of
knowing you're called to ministry and to be a pastor and
yet you can't even move into an apartment, be there for two
weeks, whatever. I don't know.
But all I do know is in that night of sleeping in that Roach
infested apt, I had to take a pregnancy test and found out I
was pregnant with little old Brianna, right, Who's 30 now,
you know, so here we are, you know, in Georgia.
He's telling me he's called to the ministry.
We moving having to move back with my dad.
This is all within like not even six months period of time, you
know, that all these things are transpiring and then tells me
we're going to pick up and move to South Carolina.
Columbia, SC is where this seminary was that my stepbrother
was going. So that's all we knew.
So now he's telling me we're going to sell any little
belongings we had left and now we're going to move to, we had
to load up a U-Haul and move to South Carolina.
I'm pregnant, right? I'm all these things.
Now he is jobless again because we're moving.
He couldn't keep his six figure, you know, job, which we never
obtained to believe me anyway. So we get to South Carolina and
now we're in a place where we don't know anyone other than the
stepbrother. It's still it's a Baptist
seminary at that, which is what we call cemeteries today, right.
Baptist seminary no job. I mean, was just miserable and
not knowing, having a clue what's happening and no money
until he, he started doing some side jobs with somebody through
the church where my stepbrother was going to.
But it was barely enough. You know, my kids don't even
know that that Christmas, the only Christmas presents that
they got was because someone knew we had moved there from the
other church we were going to in Georgia and asked if they could
their Sunday school class could bless our children with
Christmas gifts. I didn't.
My kids don't ever know that, but of course they got presents
from their grandparents and then this Sunday school class wanted
to send our children Christmas presents and thank God they did
because we had nothing. They don't even know that when
we then God calls us to Rhema out of that cemetery and thank
God I prayed us out of South Carolina.
I'm serious. My husband, I was still so
locked up. I had never told him that I was
actually filled with the Holy Ghost because he was a good old
Southern Baptist boy. And I was so locked up and
didn't trust people and didn't trust what he would have think
would have thought. And so I never told him that I
had gotten filled with the Holy Ghost at a Church of God.
And so during that six month span that we were in South
Carolina, I started praying in the Holy Ghost every single day
while he was at cemetery. And listen, I started praying in
the Holy Ghost. I mean, I was like, this is not
where I am supposed to be. This is not what my life is
supposed to be. We had no money, you know, I
mean, just it was miserable. It was just miserable.
And and I told y'all last week I had like $14.00 to my name to
our name and had to make a decision whether I was going to
buy baby formula or pay my tithe.
Back then I didn't even know how the principles of faith worked.
All I know is his word said to tithe.
So I made a decision to buy her cow's milk which was $200.00,
two dollars and something a gallon at the time.
Put my tithe in the offering and that very week we owe I opened
up the door and there was groceries filled in bags on our
front doorstep. So because I'm praying in the
Holy Ghost and I'm crying out to God and saying this is not my
life. I don't want this life.
What have you? What are you doing to me?
What have you asked of me? What have I done to deserve
this? I mean, what have I done to
deserve this, right? I mean, I was saying it all.
And you know, there was not really the only faith that I had
was in what I knew in the word of God.
And so he got us out six. I mean, one one day he walked.
Well, I'll tell you what happened.
He was having to ride a bike to the cemetery every day, and
that's how he had to get there. He was riding a bike and in
South Carolina there's hills, guys, right up and down these
hills. His wheel flew off of the bike
and he flipped and wrecked and had to get a ride on the side of
the road with somebody, a complete stranger.
He shows up with this wheel in his hand and the bike in the
other hand and some random car that showed up dropping him off.
And I walk outside and I'm like, what is up?
And he said, I think we need to move back to Florida.
I said, I think you're right. I think you're right.
And so we loaded up the pickup again from South Carolina with
bald tires on our van and bald tires on this trailer from a
friend to help us pull this, whatever we owned at the time.
And the tires were so bad, the friend that loaned us or the
yeah, that loaned us the trailer and ended up buying us new
tires. He's like, you're not going to
make it to Florida with these tires.
And this is how poor we were, guys.
And and so we get back to Florida.
Well, he goes to work for Orkin and we're moving.
We moved in with his mother. So yay for me.
That was fun times with three kids, her, her other son, his
brother that passed away and that was another whole scenario.
But anyway there's so many stories I could tell.
Y'all just want story night of how we had to live by faith.
Hallelujah. And so anyway, let me see if I
can move on from here. Oh, glory to God.
Is this helping anybody? Listen, this is called living by
faith. This is called do you believe
his word or do you not? This is called, there's going to
be things that he's asking you to do.
You're not going to want to do. You're not going to want to
sacrifice. You're not going to want to
sell. You're not going to want to have
to do this, to do that in which he's asking of you.
But I'm telling you what? No risk, no reward.
We would not be doing what we're
doing today if we had not risked it all.
Everything, spirit, soul and body risk it all.
Let it all go and completely trust in who he says he is.
Apply it to your everyday life. Walk this thing out, carry out
what he tells you to do. And I'm going to tell you every
time he will come through every single time.
Because if there is no risk, there is no reward at the end.
And he is not in. Listen, true biblical faith does
not look like this mamby pamby, Sissy American stuff that we're
seeing today across this nation in churches.
I'm just telling you, it is not real faith.
It's not real faith. It is not comfortable to live by
faith. It is not easy to do the things
that he is requiring of you to cut people out of your life, to
cut off this, to cut out that, to say I'll never take another
look at that. I'll never do that again.
I'll never. I mean, come on.
These are the things that he's asking of us to truly grow and
mature as the body of Christ. There's going to be sacrifice.
There's going to be suffering, which nobody wants to hear
today. It's, I mean, I suffered, but I
suffered in the grace of God. I suffered in the rest of God.
I suffered in the plan of God, in the will of God, and the only
thing that really suffered was my flesh and my will to align my
will with His. I mean, my kids don't even know
that I had to sell blood platelets while we were at Rhema
to buy them Christmas presents 'cause you could go multiple
times during the month. And we didn't have the money to
buy them while we were at Bible school.
So we would. We found out that you could get
20 to $40 every time you went to give blood platelets downtown
Tulsa. So that's what we did.
And yet we can't even give our time to serve His body.
There's requirements, guys, to live biblical faith, true
biblical faith. That means He's going to ask us
to give when it hurts. He's going to ask us to do
things when it is not convenient, when it is not
comfortable, and when you want to say no.
But if you do it, come on, there's going to be real faith
operating in your life. Hallelujah.
So we've all been given the measure of faith and he expects
us to walk it out. And we have to be people that
listen in the natural. In the natural, there's no
groceries. This is what I'm seeing.
No food for my children in the natural.
But my God is out of this world, so I couldn't look.
Look at the empty cabinet. What I had to look at is that
God, you said that if I tithe, that you would open up the
windows of heaven and pour out upon me a blessing.
Oh, Hallelujah. You told me that if I sowed my
seed. Come on and put it in the ground
that my God would supply all of my needs and I'm in a need right
now. And my need is is that I don't
see anything that. But let me tell you something.
And you know what else he said? That his righteous would never
have to beg for seed. And I'm going to tell you we
never had to beg for seed. We never had to beg for food.
We never had to beg even though many a times, and I think maybe
it was more pride than even faith sometimes because you
know, all along I'm thinking I never got food stamps.
And no shame on anybody that lived.
Food shamps should not be your source and supply.
As a child of God, you should not live on that.
No, what you should live on is the word of God, the bread.
Come on, every word that proceeds out of his mouth.
We didn't have food stamps. And I thought to myself, well
how stupid. All these years later, well how
stupid, why didn't we go get food stamps?
I didn't know you could get WIC and milk for.
I could have had formula for my baby, but really I was just too
prideful probably. But in my pride, I learned how
to what? Trust in God, Have faith in God,
because this government is not my source.
That's what I learned. But I learned it the hard way.
And nobody wants to go through the hard way of true biblical
faith to actually learn how to exercise faith and live by it.
Hallelujah, I'm telling you this works every time.
It works every time it works. Never had to beg for bread.
He always came through. He always supplied because we
always did what his word said to do and we believed it and we
acted upon it and we lived by it.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah. So that your faith.
The measure of faith can grow and increase in your life some
3060 and 100 fold. If you don't exercise when
there's nothing, guess what? It's not going to grow.
It's not going to increase to where, as I said, Brother Hagin
used to say, how can somebody act like they're going to
believe God for $100,000 and can't even believe God for gas
to put in their car? You see that?
So you have to what? What do you have?
Start with the measure of faith that you have, just like the
widow woman. What do you have?
You know what she said. All I have was this, a little
bit of flour that I'm going to make for me and my son.
This was her confession so that we can die.
Have you ever felt like you were going to die?
I have, I have. We're going to die if this don't
come through. I mean, you know, we're going to
die if God don't come through. But what we do have is faith.
We've been given the measure of faith.
And therefore, I'm going to stand upon what His words said
and believe God in the midst of these situations where you feel
like you're going to die and that you have nothing else.
This is true biblical faith. So Abraham, listen, this is what
he he had to be a person that said, listen, I'm not going to
look at the deadness of the womb, but I'm going to in hope
against hope and belief in faith, I'm going to believe and
call those things that be not as though they were because my life
is built upon the promise of God.
My life is built upon the word of God.
Faith is the substance that I have built my life upon.
So therefore you had to what, walk it out?
And did it happen for Abraham overnight?
And what if he would have shrunk back?
Because Hebrew says, right, he has no pleasure in those that
shrink back from faith. What if he would have quit?
Believe it. What if he would have quit
calling? Well, I can assure you we
wouldn't see the things that he was able to see.
So say my faith is out of this world.
We are not to live by what we see in this natural realm.
Hallelujah, glory to God. Now let's read Hebrews.
We'll close with this Hebrews again about Abraham.
Did I finish reading James about Abraham?
OK, OK, let's read Hebrews about Abraham because I wanted you to
see this. So starting in verse one.
And it goes like this. Now faith is assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by it men of old gained approval by faith.
We understand that the world's were prepared by the Word of
God, so that what is seen was not made out of the things which
are visible by faith. Abel offered to God a better
sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony
that he was righteous. God testifying about the gifts,
and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks by faith.
Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, and he was
not found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness
that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God and
faith. And without faith it's
impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe
that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him
by faith. Noah, being warned right by God
about the things that were not seen, not yet seen in reverence,
prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by
which he condemned the world and became an heir of righteousness
according to his faith. And Noah is a whole nother, one
you could talk about. But by faith, Abraham, when he
was called, obeyed by going to a place which he was to receive
for an inheritance. And he went out not knowing
where he was going. This is my life.
Call pastor when next time you see him.
If some call him apostles, some call him pastor.
Why don't we start calling him Father Abraham, which is what my
sons used to call him, because this was my life.
We just going to go and we don't know where we're going, how
we're going, or what we're going to do when we're getting there.
OK? But God, it said.
But by faith, Abraham, when he was called obeying and going out
to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, he
went out not knowing where he was going.
But by faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as
in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac Jacob, fellow
heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city
which has foundation whose architect and builder is God.
By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive
even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him
faithful who had promised. Is he faithful?
Hallelujah. He is faithful to His Word.
So Abraham is a perfect example because there were many even
tests that Abraham had to go through.
He had to OfferUp Isaac, right? He had to go to a place where
God had called him and he didn't know where he was going.
He had to call those things that be not as though they were to
conceive a child. These were three testings that
Abraham had to go through with his faith towards God.
So again, this is an example of him not being able to live by
what he saw. He had to live by faith.
He had to live by faith, which is out of this world, out of
this natural realm. And what did he do?
He had to believe it. But not only did he have to
believe it, he had to act upon it.
And he's a perfect example of him believing well, receiving
the promise of what God said, believing the promise of what
God said, calling forth the promise of what God said,
because he called those things that be not as though they were,
and then acting upon what God had said to do by offering up
his son Isaac. So Abraham's that perfect
example of someone who lived by faith, who is the father of our
faith, the father of us all, and actually walked it out and saw
the reality of his faith in action, saw it in the reality
after he had to believe in the unseen.
Amen. He had to believe in the unseen.
He had to believe that there would be a seed within him for
his wife to conceive in the deadness of their womb.
He had to believe it, and it was not seen.
And how long did it take her to conceive the promise?
And do we give up? Do we give up in the midst of
the things that God's asking of us?
Or are you one, that I'm going to walk this thing out so that I
can see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
I'm going to see what he promised me.
I'm going to walk it out. I don't care how long it takes,
look at Noah and his faith and listen.
These people were not even born again.
These people were not even filled with the Holy Ghost and
God required of their faith to be put into action and to live
by it. Noah having to build an ark when
they had never seen rain and was mocked and ridiculed, called
crazy. And some of us don't even like
it when people talk about you because of what you believe.
And he put up with it day in and day out, doing what God had
said, building that ark, doing all the necessary things to that
was required of him to be able to live by what God spoke over
him that he needed him to do in the earth.
And that is the same faith. This is true biblical faith.
This is what he's still requiring of believers today.
It is not this comfortable Christianity that America has
made. It's not.
There are things that are required for us to live by on a
daily basis of sacrifice of of things that we're going to have
to give up to be able to produce true biblical faith for people
to see what the Kingdom really can offer people's lives.
Amen. And I'm going to tell you, it
don't ever stop. This is the faith law that
whatever he's asking, whatever we're doing, we are going to
have to receive it. We're going to have to believe
it, We're going to have to speak it, and we are going to have to
walk it out. If we are going to see the
promises of God within our life, if we're going to see the the
reality of the Kingdom in demonstration in our life, then
we are going to have to walk these things out.
That's being required of us. And the majority of it is us
just, you know, him requiring us just to grow spiritually.
And that's a sacrifice. I remember when I was having to
grow up spiritually and grow in. And I'm not there because we're
always should be growing until he returns.
But we should be in a place where we've matured.
And it's evident. But I remember, you know, having
to cut friends off because there was a requirement that, you know
what? I can no longer hang out with
these that are partying. You know, that was a
requirement. Oh, God forbid you tell people
they have to cut people off today.
Oh, you're a cult. Seriously.
Oh, God forbid, you know, he say, you know, you really
shouldn't be listening to that type of music because it's only
promoting lust and it's only promoting anger.
And it's only, I remember him speaking to me and say you can't
listen to that any longer. It is not good for your
spiritual growth. You're no longer going to be
able to, you know, do this. I mean, because he was requiring
more for us to grow spiritually. And therefore there was things
that he is requiring to cut out of your life so that you can
grow and that you can mature. And once you get to a place,
he's not saying you can never speak to them people again, but
you're not going to habitually hang out with them because they
want to party and drink. And God's trying to separate you
out of this world. So there's requirements, there's
things according to his Word so that we can grow and mature.
And those things are sacrifices. And you have to put up with the
people saying, oh, you just think you're better now that
you, you know, you and Earl got married and, and y'all are
living for the Lord. You think you're better than us
and you don't want to come over and, you know, have a cookout
and party and drink beer anymore.
What is that? You know all these things.
Well, who knew he actually wanted us to be holy?
Who knew he actually was calling us into the ministry when I was
having to do all those things? Who knew that I had to drive
around in a $400.00 car because that's all we could buy?
And I was embarrassed because I had drove way nicer ones before
I met him. But guess what that was doing?
Stripping down my pride. But guess if I wouldn't have.
You know my son used to hide in the back of the seat when we
pulled up to the school because of the hoop Dee we were driving.
Literally $400.00. That's all we had because our
van had gotten repossessed. You know what we learned?
Completely surrendered everything.
Everything. That's why I don't care what
people think. They don't know where I've come
from. They don't know what God has
proven himself to do through my life.
They don't know the sacrifices. They don't know the things.
So they get up and they want to say what they want to say.
You know what? None of them can live the life I
lived. It was all by faith.
It's still all by faith. To get beyond myself, to believe
God for others, to pray for others, that their seed would
increase, that their marriages would be blessed and prospered
when all I knew was divorce. But yet I have heaven on earth
now when He stays right. Just teasing, but I had to learn
how to submit. And you know how I learned how
to submit to my husband through submitting to God, submitting to
his word. And I know many people that
don't submit to the the word of God.
And that's why there's a submission problem, because once
you learn how to fully submit to the Word of God, you have no
problem submitting at all to anyone, to anyone.
Because I fear God, fear God, and I want to submit to what His
Word says in every area of my life so that I can walk this
thing out and see the promises of God and see a return of faith
being produced in my life. Amen.
And that's what He wants for you, every single one of you.
We want to see faith arise in people's lives, people to
overcome all the nonsense and just start living by faith and
walking this thing out every day in your life.
And you do it by simply believing what His word says,
acting upon it, speaking it out, doing it every day, in every
season, in every circumstance, in every situation.
Let me tell you, there should not be any season that you are
not living by faith. That means my faith is active at
all times, at all times. Active faith, active faith in
whatever it is, because nothing is impossible for those who will
believe or have faith. And what God has said above,
what we're seeing in this natural realm.
Amen. Thank you so much for listening
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