Faith and Hope What does faith look like

Welcome to episode 104, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 104. If this is your first time, welcome aboard. We have covered a lot in this Faith and Hope series. We've even added grace, and we've talked about unbelief. You'll have to go back, it's in the '90s where I started. I can't really remember what the number is. I should do better at that. But if you've been here before, I want to welcome you back, you fanatic, and I am jumping back in. We talked about hope yesterday and what hope looked like, and we talked about a pickup truck, and we talked about a rock, and we talked about a chain. And I'm not going to go back into that, but I want you to start exercising that eyes of your heart, and that's your imagination. And that— when people, I don't have any imagination— I've said it before, I don't have any imagination, you know, I'm not very creative. Well, you know, I'm creating this podcast every day So there's a little bit of creativity in that. I can picture— I've pictured the pickup truck. The pickup truck that I had was big, had big old tires, and it was black, and it had a big old chain. And that rock, we had it kind of rounded, but it was pointed at the top, and it was huge. But anyway, I mean, I can picture things. I have an imagination, and I have— I can create hope. And I— and again, we went to Matthew, and it was 5:27 and 28. That Jesus gave you a negative picture about hope, or how you use the eyes of your heart. And that is saying that if you lust after a woman in your heart, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart. If you've lusted after a woman, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart. And that is strong. And so I'm going to just leave that there because the word of God is strong enough. To where it can make its own point, that it don't need me yapping about it. But I want to take us to faith. Now that we got a little bit of a picture, a little bit of an idea, we're going to come back to hope. But I want to get kind of give us something to hang on to with faith. Now, now faith— and we're going to go to Hebrews 11:1— now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So now faith, it's right now faith. And that's part of the FANATIC. What is that? Is that the acronym? I wish I— I wish English was better with me. But the acronym for FANATIC is action, and the N is now. It's right now action. And so now faith is the substance of things hoped for. The faith you have right now— we're not living in the past, and we're not going to go too far in the future. Today is sufficient, and we need to have faith for today. And so the faith is the substance. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for. And remember, we're going to get back into the hope. We know that hope is in there and we kind of have a little bit of an idea if you listen to yesterday's podcast how I've got it kind of defined in my mind. But the faith, I see faith as a bridge, and I see a bridge with a bunch of wires, you know, the hanging wires and their cables, and they're holding up the bridge. I can't think of what they call a suspended bridge or something, but it's a metal bridge. And I've got bookshelves that that show it, and I'm going to take a picture of it and I'm going to post it on the website. But the, the thing that— the way I see faith, I see it as a bridge. And faith is the substance of things hoped for. Faith is substance. Faith is something that you can actually walk on. I see faith as a noun and a verb, and I've talked about that before. But faith is not just a ver— it's not just the substance, it's not just a bridge, but it's actually a little bit of action too. You have to have faith. Faith without works is dead. So you have to actually put something to work to get faith to work. And so we're going to talk about that, but not on this episode. I'm going to talk about this bridge, and this is a suspension bridge, or— but if you can picture this bridge and it's, it's just going into a cloud bank It's kind of like going the Bridge to Nowhere or the Bridge to Somewhere, or whatever you want to look at it. But it's this wire suspension bridge, and you may have seen the picture, but when I saw it, I was like, wow, that looks to me— that's what faith looks like in my mind. It is a bridge that goes into something you can't see, and it's just this big cloud bank, and you see the bridge, and then you see all the clouds, and then you don't see the bridge. If you can kind of picture that, use your hope as we talked about in the other episode. Use your imagination and get, get that picture as you're driving, as you're working out, as you're doing the lawn. But whatever you're doing, I want you to stop for a minute and just think about how you got that bridge and it's going into this cloud bank, but the bridge has to be made of something. The bridge in my mind, in, in faith, in my mind is is made and you walk on the promises of God. So if you can imagine yourself stepping onto this bridge, and it's a faith bridge, and the only way you can walk on it is if you've got promises of God, and the next step is another promise, or each step that you take is the exact same promise. If you really want to get jiggy with this faith thing, is you just keep laying down the same word. The same promise. If you need your money paid, money to pay your bills, or if you need something, your debt canceled, or if you need to be healed— and if you could tell, I've got a little bit of a— I've got a sinus, or I don't even know what it is, but I've been speaking to it. I've been cussing it and cursing it, and it— I'm, I'm telling you, one of the things— I ain't got all this thing figured out, but I feel fine, but I just can't get this congestion taken out of my head. I don't know what it is. I'm not coughing and hacking as much, but it's just still just hanging around. And I'm cursing it in Jesus' name, and I'm commanding any kind of mucus, any kind of virus, any kind of bacteria— I'm cursing it to death in Jesus' name. But I'm talking to it, and it— you can kind of tell probably that I'm a little bit nasally or whatever. But gonna give you a little behind the scenes, a little insider baseball knowledge. I am making all this week's episodes on one day. So it's gonna sound like for the whole week I've been having this nasally cough, whatever, but it's really one day. So I just want you to know that I haven't struggled with this for a long time. It was over the weekend. I did the yard. I feel fine. I'm cursing in Jesus' name this congestion, and it— I mean, I'm telling you, I feel like a hundred bucks. I need to get to about 150. Before I'm all the way out. But anyway, I, I wanna— I wanted to give you that kind of heads up to let you know that again, this is imperfect action as we follow a perfect example. Jesus— I don't know that Jesus ever had a head cold, but I have. For whatever reason in my mind, I must have made an agreement and said, you know, when I heard, you know, there's no cure for the common cold, and for some reason maybe I've come up with agreement on that. But I'm, I'm cussing that and cursing that and claiming the name of Jesus. And I'm taking my Thor hammer, my Jesus hammer, and I'm just pounding congestion and stuffiness and any of that mess out of my nostrils in Jesus' name. So anyway, I don't know who needed to hear that. If someone was wondering, I wonder why he sounds kind of stoppy and he's been sounding like that all week, well, now you know. It's actually one day, and I am, uh, I'm gonna be fine. I'm good. But let's get back to this bridge. We're gonna take the promise of God. Let me give you an example. And since I was just talking about a cold, let's go to Isaiah 53. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. So that is the picture. That is Isaiah looking into the future. And we've talked about this on a previous episode, but he's looking into the future and seeing Jesus. This is him prophesying about Jesus on the cross and what he went through in that when he was beaten. If you haven't read Isaiah 53, I would encourage you to read the whole chapter and then reread it. But this is, this is where Jesus was beaten, and it tells why he was beaten, and he was ridiculed, and he was riled. And everything that he did, he took for you and I so that we didn't have to. Well, now we go to this, this truth that by his stripes we are healed. And then Peter talks about by his stripes we were healed. Isaiah was looking forward, and I think it's like 700 years before Jesus was born is when they think that the book Isaiah was written, somewhere around there. But he was looking forward and prophesying. God, the Holy Spirit, showed him what the Savior was going to suffer, and so Isaiah saw it and wrote about it. Now Peter was looking backwards because Peter was there. Peter saw our Lord and Savior getting beat And he saw that and he said, by his stripes we were healed. So it's a done deal. Jesus has already died. Again, my favorite scripture, if in case this is your first time listening, is Revelation 12:11: And we overcome him, which is the punk, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives to the death. That is a warrior scripture. That is, we're here to the battle, we're battling to the death. But Jesus has already died for us. Jesus already went to the cross and spilled his blood on the ground, and that perfect sinless blood is what you and I can use to defeat the enemy. It's already been spilled. Your testimony is your testimony. And then did not love their lives to the death— that's the sacrificial lifestyle. You just got to get in your mind, I die daily, it's not a big deal. So I don't know what's going to happen next Thursday, but I'm going to die next Thursday. I'm going to present myself to God, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is my reasonable service. That's found in Romans 12:1. And I'm going to get after this thing. I do that every morning, and I want to encourage you to do the same thing. You can find that in the 5 daily prayers that I do. It's 5 different steps, one prayer maybe. I get after it every day. It's just By faith, it has— I look into this word, I get on this word, and then I just start stepping on these promises. And the promise is that by his stripes I'm healed. It's already been healed. Jesus took that stripe. Why would I be sick if Jesus already took it for me? By faith I'm accepting that, and by faith that's the bridge I'm building, the bridge I need right now I need to curse this congestion in my nose. So right now I'm walking across this bridge of faith for my healing. Now when I look at my checkbook, or when I look at the debt that I've accumulated, because I've got— had 3— I've had 4 kids that's gone to college. They didn't all finish college. 2 of them have already, and 2 of them I think will. But by faith, I'm looking forward and seeing the 2 that haven't. I'm seeing them finish college, but I'm also seeing some debt that I accumulated. I didn't do a wonderful job of saving for college. I'm not perfect, but I, I'm trying my best. I'm paying off some of that stuff. I'm cursing the debt, but right now I'm using the promise of God to curse this congestion. And so I'm expecting by tomorrow morning I'm going to be fine. I— you're not going to hear this and I'm going to be just completely and totally healed. I don't know why it takes— sometimes it takes a day or two or three, and sometimes it's immediate. Again, I've said this multiple times, I don't understand electricity, but I refuse to sit in the dark till I figure it out. I just flip the switch and let electricity do what electricity does. And with this, with faith, I don't have to figure all this stuff out. I don't have to understand how it all works, all the intricacies, what's going on in the spirit realm. I just read it, I believe it, I read it again, I believe it again, I start walking, I start seeing myself healed, I start listening in my head, I start hearing my, my voice normal and not congested, and boom, it just happens. So, and I thank God for his word. And so I'm going to stop it right there. God, I thank you so much for your word. Jesus, I thank you for the stripes that you took, that by your stripes we were healed. It is a done deal. We do not have to walk in sickness. We can walk in complete health. God, I thank you, and I pray that whoever's listening to this, if they're struggling with something physical in their body, Lord, have them go read Isaiah 53 and have them start declaring those promises and start walking that bridge of faith. And Lord, we're going to talk about getting over there into grace in the next episode. But God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for what you've done for us. We love you, and we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

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