Water Walking Wednesday: Learning to Walk By Faith

Hey, sorry about that. We had a little disruption and this technology is a mess, but I am attempting to and I'm going to walk on water. One of these days I'm repping my shirt, it's time to get violent in the spirit. But we have got to start taking action. And one of the biggest things, one of the biggest challenges I see in the body of Christ is that a lot of us are just sitting in the pew and we're not doing anything. We're not trying to make something happened in the body of Christ and we just look exactly like the world. And that's not our goal. We are supposed to be like Christ. We are told to imitate Jesus. Jesus in John 14:12 says, "Most assuredly I say to you, he that believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also, and greater works he will do because I go to my Father." And Jesus is already at the Father. And we've talked about Mark 11:22-24, multiple times where it says, "Have faith in God. If you say unto this mountain, 'Be thou removed and cast in the sea,' and do not doubt in your heart, but believe that those things you say you shall have, you shall have them." And I know I probably just chopped that up, but basically it says, if you say unto the mountain, the thing that's bugging you or the thing that you want to have changed, "Be thou removed and cast in the sea," and don't doubt in your heart, you can have it. Jesus just cursed the fig tree, and we're going to talk in the next episode about David and Goliath. And you know, we've talked before, if David would have slung the slingshot and hit a little 4.5-foot or 5-foot man or a 5 or 6-foot child, it wouldn't have had the impact. But since he killed the giant and everybody was cowering, and David, through his faith in God, killed the giant, and he just knew that he was not— the giant was not under the covenant., and I'm not going to start teaching that, that's in the next episode, but what I want to do is I just want to challenge you to, we just need to get involved in this body of Christ. We need to become Jesus' hands and feet, but we also need to represent God as best we can. And is it okay? And what I want to do, and the reason I'm doing this, and for years, and I'm going to post the note on my video to where I wrote back in 2007, "I will walk on water." And I have the little notepad, and it's still in my Bible where I was taking notes. It was April 22nd, I think, 2007. And I was looking at the backdrop. It was a billboard, big banner that said, "We will do something so great." that unless God intervenes, it's bound to fail. And what I watched that, I looked at that for 2 or 3 years sitting in the pew looking, and I'm, you know, I'm kind of ready, fire, aim. So I'm looking at this thing, I'm wondering, what are we doing? That's so great. And so I just kept looking and I kept wondering and I kept getting irritated. And after about, I think it was about 3 years of looking at that banner, I finally had just had it. And I said, "Look, I'm sick of looking at this thing. I am sick to death." And so I just wrote in my Bible, "I will do something so big or amazing or something." I can't even remember the exact words, but I'll post it. But I said, "Unless God intervenes, I'm bound to fail." And I'm here to tell you, I then wrote, I prayed, I sat there for a minute and I thought, what is something pretty outrageous? And I thought about it and I thought, "I'll walk on water." And so I just made up my mind, I'm gonna walk on water. So with that in mind, I wrote that down, "I will walk on water." And then I had a swimming pool back then in 2007, maybe not, but it don't matter. But I started trying to walk on water. And I'm here to tell you that I have failed every single time. And I just wanna be here to encourage you, you do not have to succeed at everything you do. In fact, most of the time when we start, we fail. And I've used the example of my son walking multiple times, but he said, you know, when he took his first step, he fell. He took a step and his wobbly little knees and then he fell. But I called my mom first thing. I said, "Man, Seth is walking." And so with that in mind, he didn't just keep falling. He learned how to walk. He learned what he was doing. He got his balance set. And so everything that we do in life is gonna take learning, it's gonna take time, it's gonna take effort, and it's gonna take failure. We are not here to do everything perfectly. Jesus did that. Thank God he did everything perfectly. He never failed one time, and we are trying to use that as our example. But we're gonna fail, we're gonna mess up, we're gonna make mistakes, and we're gonna do some crazy stupid crap sometimes. But we just gotta keep moving on. We gotta pick ourselves up. And we've got to keep doing what we're doing. And so with that in mind, I'm, I'm gonna try again one more time. And I've been doing this for 15 years now, and I'm here to tell you that I failed every single time. But I've been praying, I've been reading the Word, and faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. And I just believe that sooner or later, I believe that I am going to be able to walk on water. And the only reason that I believe that is because I believe the Bible is true. And I believe that Jesus said, "If you see me doing it, you can do it." And greater things— we're not even going to talk about the greater things. We're just going to talk about the things that we see Jesus doing. And I just want to encourage you with this. Even if you fail, even if you fail, try, look, find something Jesus is doing. Get in your Bible. This is your soapbox moment. Get into the Word of God. Allow the Word of God to get into you. And let's start getting off the pew and let's start getting active. You know, there are people going to hell all around you.. And we have got to be an example, a better example of how to live life. And that don't mean we just get ignorant and angry at everybody. We're supposed to act in love. We are supposed to get angry and violent with the enemy. And our enemy, if you can see the person, that's not our enemy. It is Satan. It's his imps. It's the powers, the principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this age, and the spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places. Those are the people we're fighting. Those are the things or the beings that we're fighting. So we're not fighting people. If you can see them, they may not agree with you. Heck, most people don't agree with me, but I don't fight them. I don't fight them on it. I mean, I let them have their say, but we are to engage in this world and we are not of this world. As we engage in this world, I want to remind you that our kingdom is coming and our kingdom is with Jesus. And so this is just a testing ground. This is— and again, there's another scripture, I think it's in Luke 18:7 or 8 or something, where he's talking about the unjust judge. That's kind of— that was— that's challenged me to— when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith here on earth? And, and I'm just— I'm trying by faith to do what the Bible tells me I can do. And with that in mind, I'm sitting here looking at this water right here, and it's kind of bugging me because I know in the back of my head— and this is where I've just got to tell you that if you don't think you have doubts and unbelief, go do something outrageous that you know you can't do without God helping you. And this is one of those things. This is— I have failed every time I've done it. And before I start to take a step step, the first thing that floods my head, the first thing that floods my, my body before the water does is all the doubt and unbelief. And it's, it's difficult to walk. No one said— Jesus said in, I think it's Matthew 7:13 and 14, that wide is the, is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to heaven and few find it. It difficult and narrow. It's— no one said this thing was going to be easy. Wide is the path that most people are on. Most people says many are on that path, wide and narrow. And so I just want to encourage you, let's get on that narrow road. Let's get to this difficult thing. Let's do things that aren't easy. I mean, everybody can pray. Anybody can get in their closet and pray. But how many people can open blind eyes? And how many people can help your neighbor with their sickness or illness? And Jesus did not tell— and I'm going to get on my soapbox real quick, but Jesus never said, "Pray for the sick." He never told his disciples to pray for anybody. He told his disciples, "Heal them." And he gave his disciples— I don't know if that was a command or not, but he told them to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead. Freely you've received, freely give. So, you know, I'm not here to pick on anything or anybody, but I just think we in the church have been doing this thing all wrong. We're taking the easy route. We're making a prayer list and we're writing people's names down and we're putting little prayer emojis up and we're doing all these things that it just looks like we're doing something, but the world's looking on and these people are still sick and these people are still suffering and the body of Christ is throwing up prayer emojis. And you know, we need to get into the battle for the souls of men and people are going to heaven and hell and we just need to start working our way to helping more people get into heaven. And you're not going to do that by beating people over the head with a Bible, but you can do that with love and service. And I think that's the greatest thing. That's why water wells are so wonderful. When people are drinking dirty water and somebody comes and and digs a well to where they give. It don't matter if you're Christian or non-Christian, that just helps everybody. Everybody needs water. You can't go days without water. So I just want to encourage you to try something besides just sitting there with your prayer emojis. And I'm just going to go, I'm going to switch cameras now. I'm going to flip this thing over and we're going to see about this well. And one of the things I want to add, one more thing, And then I'm going to take this step off into this mess. But I am going to, with this in mind, just so it costs me something and just so I've got to remember that I failed, but I did try. So there's going to be some positives if I don't make it. But if I do make it, then we're going to have a video of it. But I am going to walk around with my wet shoes and my wet— I hate wet socks. I don't know about you, but I hate it. And I've done this in the past, and I've taken them off, and I'm like, no, I'm going to pay the price. I'm going to walk around all day today. I've still got work I got to do. This is the middle of the morning for me, but I'm going to go to work today if I don't walk on water with wet socks and wet shoes. Well, that's enough of all this. Let's go ahead. I'm going to switch this camera And I can't tell, it's so bright out here, I can't really tell if it's working, but I just want to real quick, I just want to pray. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for everything that you've done in my life. God, I thank you for my family. I thank you for encouraging me and challenging me to be more with the life that you've given me. And God, I pray that one day I will hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And God, I pray this listener or this video watcher will hear the same thing when they stand before you. Well done, Lord. That's our goal. That's every Christian's goal, I believe, is just to hear Father God say, well done. And if you're not working that way, I want to encourage you, and that's in Jesus' name, I want to encourage you to just be more cognitive of hearing those words. And I want to curse anything that would try to come against me. Doubt and unbelief, I bind you up in Jesus' name and I cast you out. Water, I command you to hold me up. Body, I command you to not sink in Jesus' name. Here we go. Ah, well, that's like 150— that's like 150 times out of 150 times I fell in. Well, that, that stinks. And now I get to go to work all day with wet shoes and wet socks. And I got to admit, I wasn't feeling it. I don't know if you go by feelings, but all that doubt and unbelief, and that's the whole thing. Everything limits God, doubt and unbelief. Most people think it's just, oh, and the disciples said, man, we need more faith. God, we need more faith. Give us more faith. And Jesus said, all you need is the faith of a mustard seed. If you just had the faith of a mustard seed, you could say, you could say unto that mountain, be thou removed and cast into the sea. It's the doubting. And most people don't talk about all the doubt. And most people think, oh, well, you're doubtful. You this and that. I mean, I tell you, go walk on water. If you don't think you have any doubt, or if you don't think you have any fear, go get up in there. Go walk on water. All right, well, I'm going to pray real quick for us. I'm walking back to my house. I told you I would. Was here by this pond, but I just want to stop right now. I'm gonna pray. God, I thank you so much for everything that you've done in my life. God, I thank you for your word, and I thank you that I can mess up and still be your kid, and you still love me. And God, I thank you that I don't have to do everything perfectly, but I just need to keep taking those steps. And God, I pray that you would continue to lead and guide and direct me Holy Spirit, teach me what it is that I need to know about this failure and help me to learn from it. And I'll see everybody here next Wednesday. I'm gonna try it again. 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.