Faith: When the Impossible Becomes Possible
Watch the Full Service Here
Listen to the Podcast Here
(The following are my sermon notes/outline from this particular message)
I want to talk to you about how to walk a victorious faith-filled life, a faith that believes for the impossible to become possible. Things in your life that you are praying over and having faith in. Things that God's going to move that seem like a mountain. Something that seems so crazy to everybody else, but to you, you're hanging on to faith.
There are things that I'm believing for that hopefully you're believing for that seem crazy to everybody else until it happens. And isn't that what faith is sometimes? Faith is believing the impossible. Faith is believing when everybody else is saying it's not possible. When the doctors say that's all they can do, when the job market looks like there is no job, when your kids are running away from God, when you're struggling in areas of life, when you're struggling in a broken marriage. Those times when everything seems impossible until you look to a God of all possibilities!
Faith is such an essential part of our Christian life, but it is an area that most people struggle with. In this blog I want to give a baseline for what faith really is and how we can walk in a victorious faith filled life.
To have the kind of crazy until it happens faith to believe for the impossible to become possible.
Let's start first by Biblically defining faith.
Define Faith:
Hebrews 11:1-3
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
2 For by it the people of old received their commendation.
3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
Faith is hoping for the unseen and unknown. To recognize that all we see was created by a Creator that is unseen.
Faith is an Action:
James 2:17-18
So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
Your Christian life becomes exciting and victorious when you are walking in active faith. If you’re not practicing active faith then your Christian life will be boring, lazy, and purely for self-consumption. Faith requires action!
What are you doing that if God doesn’t show up it is doomed to fail?
Let’s have crazy – impossible until it happens faith!
Similar to “victory” – where in your life are living by faith??
Hebrews 11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
We can often to get a point that our life would not look any different if we eliminate God from it.
We live safe and don’t see the full experience of God.
We can get so used to living without God and His Holy Spirit that we think just because we are a good person, or we’ve been faithful in the past that we are still walking in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The following is one of the saddest passages in the Bible. It is Samson’s final days and Delilah has worn him down to reveal where his power comes from.
Judges 16:18-20
18 When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up again, for he has told me all his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands.
19 She made him sleep on her knees. And she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him.
20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
He did not know that the Lord had left him.
WOW! May we never live our lives apart from the Lord.
If we live our lives in and for the Lord it will require Faith.
Think of Noah – building an ark and has never seen rain.
Hebrews 11:7
7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Genesis 6:22
Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
You don’t always have to understand what God may be doing to obey Him!
God Is Calling You to Unique, Crazy, and Powerful Faith! To Believe that the Impossible is Possible!
Matthew 19:26
But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
John 9:1-12
As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.
2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.
5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud
7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.
8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”
9 Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.”
10 So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”
11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”
12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
4 Characteristics of a Faith Filled Victorious Life
1. Our Faith is God Working Through Us So that “the works of God might be displayed” in and through us!
2. Faith Requires Trust: Jesus spitting and making mud + the blind man allowing Jesus to put that on his eyes and then going to wash it off. This probably seemed crazy – until it worked!
3. Faith Can Be Unique for You & the Circumstance: we don’t have a spitting / mud making program.
4. Faith Should Always Point People Back to Jesus.
SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS:
1. What has been impossible or “crazy” until it wasn’t in your life when it comes to faith?
2. Where are you currently practicing faith?
3. What has been the biggest obstacle to faith and trust?
4. Has there been a time where your faith has pointed someone else to Jesus?