How to walk by faith and not by sight. Ask, seek, knock until you receive your answer.

Welcome to episode 321. I'm going to continue to talk about faith. We're going to start building on this foundation that we have the faith of Christ. We have the faith of the Son of God. We have the faith. So we've got to understand that we have it. And I'm going to show you the poison ivy or poison oak. I'm going to show you this real quick, and I want you to look at it. If you're watching YouTube, you'll be able to see my arms. And then if you are listening, you're not gonna be able to see it, obviously. We're gonna talk about this on our episode and how we walk in faith and not by sight. But before we get into that, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am here to tell you that it took me all of about 5 or 6 days to figure this thing out, and I'm going to go to scripture real quick because That's what we do here. In the Beatitudes, Jesus talked in Matthew, I think it's in Matthew 7, and we're gonna look at that here in a minute, but he was talking about ask and seek and knock. And let's read that real quick. Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Look at those two verses right there. If you ask, you're gonna receive. If you seek, you're gonna find. And if you knock, it's gonna be open. And it said it will, or it shall. So you just have to have faith. You just have to believe that if I keep seeking, it's gonna happen. And that's one of the keys, I think, in faith. And in another video, I'm gonna have a checklist and I'm gonna have some scriptures. But one of the keys to faith, we have to believe that faith works. We have to believe that the grace of God is something out there that is attainable, something that we can reach out and grab. And that's where I was with this poison ivy and poison oak, or whatever poison it is, as I was digging in my father-in-law's ground and I was ripping up these vines. If you didn't hear, it's on the previous episode, but I was ripping and tearing and tugging in a short sleeve shirt, mind you. So I'm not the smartest motor scooter in the whole world, but anyway, I'm doing all this stuff and it didn't look bad to me, and this stuff just ate me up. I'm telling you, within 5 days, it was just all my whole arm, both arms from the elbow to the wrist were just all swole up, and they were pussing and oozing. It was horrible. In fact, I was up visiting my dad and relatives. I actually wore a jacket, and in Michigan, it was like an Indian summer. I don't know what you call it, but it was like 75 degrees, and I think I'm the only one walking around with a jacket. Because— and it wasn't that I was embarrassed. I mean, I was. I mean, it was nasty looking. It's all that pus, or I mean, it was nasty. And I've just had this jacket on to keep it off of furniture and off other people. Anyway, it was going on. It was constant. And I'm cursing it, and I'm cursing because death and life's in the power of the tongue. That's Proverbs 18:21. We know that. We know that we can curse it. And I have multiple times have been feeling myself get sick, and I'll just tell Mona, "Look, I'm not feeling good. I'm gonna go lay down," and I start out loud, I start cursing any kind of strep throat, any kind of tonsillitis, any kind, you know, I can just kind of feel that stuff 'cause I've had it so many times. And I just tell myself, I lay down and I say, "By the, when my feet hit the ground the next morning, I'm gonna be well." And I say it, and I say it with confidence, and every time I wake up and I'm fine. And so I've gotten to where I can get all that, and I've told you of some other times where I have found out that I've got something and I curse it and it goes away or whatever. But that's not about this because I did this over and over and over. I'm doing all this and I'm cursing it, it's just getting worse and it's itching more. And every time I do that, it's telling me that I haven't done anything and what you're doing doesn't work, all of that. But you go to this scripture And it says to ask and seek and knock, all of those things. And it says it will be done. So I just, because I'm like a dog on a bone, and remember Proverbs 25:2 said, it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it's the glory of kings to search out a matter. So we are kings. Jesus is the King of Kings. So we are all a king. If you're listening to this, whether you're a male or female, You are a king, and Jesus is the King of Kings. It's to our glory if we search out a matter. God's going to keep it revealed because he wants you to seek, he wants you to knock, he wants you to ask, he wants to have a relationship with you, and he wants us to walk by faith. That's why we're here in these episodes. The just shall live by faith. This is not a place where we just go visit on Sunday morning, or we go on Wednesday evening, or we just talk about it, we do a little devotional with— this is not about that. It's not bad that you do those things, but to live by faith and you abide in the vine. We are to be there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This is how the just, the justified, just as if I had never sinned— that's me. I have sinned multiple times and continue. I don't mean to, I just sin every now and then. Sin is no longer the issue. So I'm not worried. I am justified. It is just as if I had never sinned. So I am justified in Christ, and I shall live by faith. So that's what I'm trying to do. And I just want to encourage you that this faith walk, it's a little bit tough. And if it's tough for you, it's by design. We have got to learn how to take steps of faith. And that's where Father God— I just believe that Father God has got his arms out and he's wanting us to take another step and take another step. God knew that I was going to be talking about this, and I don't think that this was anything that Satan did. I think it was just by my own stupid not putting a long sleeve shirt on to do yard work. That is how I get it. And you know, sometimes Satan brings diseases and sometimes just natural causes, and sometimes it's hereditary. I mean, I, I'm not here to talk about all the different ways that you can get something, but this way I think it was just me living life, and I got this poison ivy, poison oak. But I want to tell you how I got rid of it, and I want to go to an Old Testament. And remember that the Old Testament, that was the Old Covenant, and now we're in a New Covenant. So I don't think it's all applicable, but I think they're types and shadows. That's what the Bible says. So we are to use the Old Testament and to kind of get a pattern. And let's go to 2 Chronicles. This is a very familiar scripture. You see it in yards, you see it on signs a lot. But it's 2 Chronicles 7:14: If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. That's pretty fascinating because I've taught on different episodes that when you see an 'and' That means something else has to happen. So if you've ever had a check where it says Greg and somebody, so both of those people have to endorse the back of that check for the bank to be able to cash it. So that's the same thing with this and in here, that if God is gonna hear from heaven, you've got to humble yourself and pray and seek his face and turn from your wicked ways. Then God hears from heaven. So that's how it happens in the Old Testament. God waited for the people, his people, to do all those things, then he healed. But now we have Christ, now we have a new covenant, and God is with us all the time. The Holy Spirit is here all the time. And I want to go to James 4:6-7. But he gives more grace Therefore, he says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. And that's a popular scripture. We've used that multiple times. I want you to see this theme here. The Holy Spirit is forever here. In John 16:7, you remember we love that scripture. John 16:7 says, look, it's to your benefit. This was Jesus saying It's to your benefit that I leave, because if I don't go, I won't send the Helper. But if I leave, I will send the Helper to you. But that is John 16:7, that Jesus said to his disciples, hey, it's to your benefit that I go away, because he's going to send the Helper. And the Helper is here. The Helper is always here. But we still have to humble ourselves. And that is what I'm getting to. That's my point. I knew you're wondering if I was going to get to my point. I kept seeking, I kept praying, I kept cursing, I kept doing everything that I knew to do, but something wasn't working. It was still itching, it was still aggravating, it was swelling up, and it was getting ridiculous. And so I finally just turned to my wife and said, "Baby, I need you to pray for me. I need you to put your hand on me, and I need you to curse this stuff, and I need you to pray for it to go away." And would you know, within about 12 hours, of her doing that, it dried up completely. And I'm telling you, it doesn't itch anymore. It is gone. Everything that I did and trying to do everything that I'd always done, it— none of it worked. But when I humbled myself and asked for help, it happened. And that's what I want to encourage you to just keep seeking, keep asking, keep knocking. If it's not working, you don't keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and expect different results. Do something else. We're going to talk about all this in our faith walk, but I just wanted to give you an example that, hey, we don't have to be perfect. Look, I've told you multiple times, and I think even in the description, this is an imperfect man following after a perfect example. That's what this whole podcast is all about. It's about my walk through life, my Christian walk through life, my ups and my downs, my successes and my failures. Look, I'm not here to tell you that I've got this thing all figured out, but I'm here to tell you that I know the truth. I know the answer is in this word, and I want to encourage you, get into the word of God, plant that word of God inside of you, and let it start growing, because this word is the incorruptible seed. It'll grow in your heart. It will become part of you, and it has become part of me. God is not a respecter of persons. If he'll do it for me, he'll do it for you. And I want to give you a New Testament scripture because I know I do a lot of scriptures, and me just knowing, hey, where'd you find that? If you don't know, it's in James 5, and it's 14 and 15. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him. Anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. This is the scripture that I use because I'm trying everything. I know it's not God's fault. I know that by his stripes we were healed. It's a done deal. Jesus isn't going to get beaten again. He's not going to get stripes on his back because I went and got poison oak, poison ivy. Jesus has already taken that beating for me, and I thank God for that beating. By faith, I'm reaching out and I'm appropriating those stripes for my illness or for my whatever sickness, disease, whatever. And so I by faith reach out, but it wasn't working. So I had to try something else. Knock and keep knocking. Seek and keep seeking. Ask and keep asking. So that's what I was doing. Those are the scriptures that I was using.. And in the next episodes, we're going to dive into some of the steps and some of the requirements that we have to have to start walking in faith. And I'll remind you, we're still in 2 Corinthians 5:7, for we walk by faith and not by sight. We are walking through this world by faith, and we're going to learn if we're supposed to walk by faith, if we're supposed to keep taking steps and keep taking steps. I want to remind you one more thing before I close. Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. We are walking in the Spirit. There's no condemnation if you fall down. If I had poison oak, poison ivy for 5, 6 days, God's not condemning me. I'm not blaming God either. I'm looking for that answer. I'm looking for how do we get this off of me. And I'm so hard-headed because I know the truth and I know those stripes. So I'm looking for— and many people just give up and go to the doctor. And I know I could have got a steroid shot, and I know all of that, but I am a fanatic, and that's why I'm here. I wanted God to get the glory, and I think God's going to get the glory for all of this because I am totally healed. But I'm telling you, 2-3 days ago, it was not looking good for the Bubba. But anyway, let's close. God, I thank you so much for your word. Jesus, I thank you for coming and walking a truly perfect life. I thank you that you took those stripes, and by your stripes we were healed. God, it is a done deal. You have done everything that you were going to do. You said on the cross, it is finished. Lord, as we dive into faith, help us to understand that you've done everything. That you're gonna do. And now it's our turn and our chance to give you glory by reaching over into the spirit realm and grabbing those promises, that grace, by faith. Lord, help us to learn how to do that. Help us to get excited about this faith walk. And God, help us, lead us, and guide us and direct us. God, we thank you, we love you. 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. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.