Faith is NOT What You Think It Is! It's MORE!

Have you ever wondered what the word faith actually means? A lot of people associate faith with spiritual or religious information. Today I'm going to share with you the most important thing in your life is your faith, but even more importantly than that, what you put your faith in. Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome author and world renowned public speaker as he shares stories and involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rohm. Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rohm and on this broadcast today, I'm going to be talking to you about one of the most important aspects of all of life. We call it faith. When someone says the word faith, they immediately begin to think about church or religion or some kind of spiritual meaning. The truth of the matter is we use faith in every area of life. For example, when we go to the doctor, we're sick, we're not feeling well. We go to the doctor and our male or female physician examines us, runs some tests, then tells us what's wrong with us. We don't ask them how they did in medical school. We don't ask them what number they graduated. Someone once jokingly said, do you know what you call the guy who graduates 500th in his class of 500 students in medical school? You call him doctor. That's right. Then they send you over to the pharmacist to pick up some prescription medication to help your illness or to cure your infection. And you don't know anything about the medicine. You just by faith, trust that the physician gave the right diagnosis and the pharmacist gave the right medicine. We call that medical faith. There's another kind of faith. There's traveling faith, which when you get on an airplane, you don't ever talk to the pilot much and say, hey, how many hours have you flown? Where did you go to flight school? Have you ever done this before? You just get on the plane and sit down like, well, I guess they know what they're doing. That's called traveling faith. Then we also take money and we put it in a bank. We may have a checking account or savings account. And we just trust that when we write a check or when we go make a withdrawal, there'll be some money in our account. We call that financial faith. Then there's also another kind of faith that we study history. We in America believe that George Washington was the first president. We even have our country's capital named after him. Washington D.C. i've even been to the Washington Monument. If you ever go There you can walk all the way up to the top, which I've done many, many years ago. If you look at it very closely, about a third of the way up, you'll notice the brick color changes. That's because during the Civil War, construction halted and nothing was done for many, many years. Then after the Civil War, they completed it. It's the Washington Monument. I've never met George Washington. I'm assuming that what I've read in history books and what I've read.

Throughout my lifetime, as it relates to our country and our country's history, that George Washington was a real person and that he was the first president of the United States and the father of our country. We call that historical faith. All those faiths are good. But today I want to tell you the story that I believe is the most important faith and how it really works. You know, when we think about spiritual faith, the key. Listen carefully, don't miss this took me a long time to learn this. The key to really understanding faith is not how big your faith is. It's not the size of your faith. It's what your faith is in. Let me use a couple of stories and examples. I think you'll really like this.

If we listen or we read or we see biblical stories. In one particular case, the disciples asked Jesus, increase our faith. He was talking about faith, he was teaching about faith. The disciples said, increase our faith. He said, well, if you had the faith of the size of a grain of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, be moved into the sea, and the mountain would be lifted up out of the earth, out of the dirt, and would be cast into the sea. You could say to that mulberry bush, be cast into the sea, and it would just be lifted up and cast into the water. Now, I don't mean to be disrespectful. I don't mean to be sacrilegious, but honestly, let me ask you a question. How many people have you ever known in your life that can speak to a mountain or mulberry bush and tell it to be moved into the sea, and it just got up and moved into the ocean or into the sea? Well, I've never seen that done, and neither have you. So there must be something we're missing. There must be something we're misunderstanding. Because Jesus said, if you have the faith of a grain of mustard seed, which is the smallest among seeds, you could say to this mountain or that mulberry bush to be moved, and it would obey you. Yet not one of us have ever seen that done. They used to bother me. I used to think, well, lord, I want to have faith. I want to have faith in you.

But I don't know if I can say to a mountain to be moved. And then I've heard people talk about it and they say, oh, well, it doesn't really mean a literal mountain. It means mountain experiences. Mount experiences that are big and that are difficult. Well, that's. I think that's an easy way. It's a cop out on what Jesus was actually saying. Here's what I believe he was saying. And then I'm gonna tell you the best story I've ever heard in my life that explains what I'm trying to talk about. Jesus was trying to say to them, it's not the size of your faith. If you have little bitty mustard seed faith or giant King Kong faith. That's not the issue. The issue is what is your faith in? In who is your faith? Is your faith in who is your faith in? In other words, if your faith's in God, God could certainly pick up a mountain, throw it into the sea, since he's made both of them. He could certainly pick up a mulberry bush and throw it into the ocean or the sea, since he made both of them. Jesus was trying to help us to see it's not the size of your faith. You're looking at the wrong thing. It's not the size of your faith, it's who your faith is in. Now for the best story I've ever told and ever heard. And this got it cleared up for me. I think it was around 1975, 76. It's been a while since I heard this. I've never wavered in my faith. Not one day have I ever wavered in my faith in God after I heard this story. I have a friend named Ron, and Ron lived in Texas. Ron wanted to go see his friend Richard, who lived in Minnesota. Now, in Minnesota, they go ice fishing, ice fishing. Their lakes up there can get so cold and so frozen in the wintertime, they'll be 10, 15ft thick. I mean, people go ice skating, people go play hockey. People can drive vehicles on them. So Ron said, I went to see Richard. And Richard said, hey, I got some good news for you. Tomorrow we are going ice fishing. Ron said, what? What do you mean? Richard said, we're going to. I've got my vehicle. I've got it loaded up with wood and a barrel and all the fishing gear. I'm going to give you the treat of your Life. We're going to go out on the ice and we're going to fish. We're going to drill holes down in the ice and we're going to catch some really good fish and come home tomorrow night and have dinner. Ron said, I was scared to death. I've heard about things like this. Ron said, the ice is going to crack. We're going to. There's going to be an article in the paper. Two men drown in a lake. He said, I was just. He said, I didn't sleep all night. I got to thinking, how can I get out of this? I mean, I like my friend Richard, but I don't want to do this. I don't want to die. Tomorrow. We're going to get out on the ice, the ice is going to crack. We're going to fall in, we're going to drown, we're going to freeze to death. This is like Ron said, I was worried all night. He said, we got there the next morning, Richard was just whistling and singing. And Ron said, I was thinking I need to stay close to the shore in case the ice starts to break. I can dive back onto shore and be safe, he said, but now Richard would hear none of it. We just drove the vehicle out on the lake, he said, I looked around, there were other vehicles on the lake. And I thought, oh no, there's so much weight on this ice, it's going to crack. We're all going to die. He said. After a while, Richard got the drill out and he drilled down into the ice, he said. Then he showed me how to fish and he said, man, he was having the time of his life. He said, I was still scared to death, he said, but it got a little bit better and we started catching fish. And he said, I'll admit I was fun. It was fun, I was having a good time, but I was really scared. I wasn't enjoying it like Richard was. Richard was just so happy. He was just so content. And Ron said, I scared to death, he said, but I, I tried to enjoy it. I tried my best. And we did have a little bit of fun, he said that afternoon, he said, oh, and one other thing. Richard got a big barrel, a big 55 gallon barrel. Had it full of wood and paper and he started a fire so they can be warm. So they're out on the lake. The big trucks there, their pickup truck. And then the lake well had the big barrel, 55 gallon barrel and the wood and the wood and the paper and the fires going so they could stay warm. Ron said, oh, no. I thought, now, now that's going to do it. The. That fire is going to heat up this ice. It's going to melt. The truck's going to sink. We're going to drown. This is awful. Well, he said, by the end of the day, I'd gotten over it just a little bit. And he said the barrel was no longer. All the fire had died down and we had caught a bunch of fish. And we put him in the truck. He said, when I got in that truck, I'd never been so glad in my life. We were driving back across the ice. He said, when the tires in that truck got back on land, I could feel peace coming over me. Whoo. I made it. I made it. He said, I never let on to Richard how scared I was or I didn't even want to do it. He said, he's my friend, so I just decided I would do the best I could. He said, but honestly, I was so, so grateful to be back on land. He said, we got home that night, we cleaned the fish and cooked them. He said, gotta admit, it was some pretty good eating. He said, we really had a great dinner. We talked a little bit. He said, we've been friends for many, many years. He said, then I went on to my bedroom to go to bed. And he said, and while I was getting ready for bed, I put on my pajamas and I laid down. He said, all of a sudden, God spoke to me. He said, it kind of caught me off guard. He said, I just. I didn't hear a voice, but I just heard something deep inside of my heart say, hey, Ron, I want to talk to you. He said, I want to ask you about something. He said, today you went out ice fishing. How. How'd you like it? He said, well, Lord, I didn't like it at all. I was just afraid the ice was going to break. We were going to drown, the fire was going to melt the ice. The trunk truck was going to sink. I didn't really like it at all, but. But I did it. He said he just heard God say, no, I'm not talking about that. He said, I know you were nervous about that. He said, but what were you so nervous about? Think about it. He said, well, God, I was. I was just. I never done it before, and I. I didn't. I didn't know how much weight the ice could hold, and I. I just was uneasy because I. I had never done it before. I. There's a lot of weight on that ice with a truck and with a fire and Other people. And then he said, God asked me the strangest question he'd ever asked me in my whole life. He said, ron, he said, I want to ask you something. He said, richard had great faith in that ice, didn't he? He said, yes. Yes, he did. He said, ron, you had little faith in the ice, didn't you? He said, yes, Lord, I had little faith. He said, Then God asked me. He said, richard had great faith and you had little faith. Ron, one last question. Which one of your faith, Richard's great faith or your little faith? Which one of your faith held you up?

He said. I thought for a minute and said, well.

Neither one of our faith held us up. What held us up was the ice.

He said, it was like God spoke to me and said, do you understand now, the size of your faith is not what's going to hold you up.

It's what is your faith in. He said, you see, Richard had great faith in the ice, so he enjoyed it. You had little faith in. In the ice, and you didn't enjoy it. But in neither case did the ice worry about how big your faith was because the ice was very capable of doing its job. You see, Richard had great faith in the ice, and the ice held him up. Ron had little faith in. In the ice, and the ice held him up. And in neither case did the ice get its strength from the great faith of Richard or the little faith of Ron. The ice got its strength and its endurance and its power because it was the ice. Friend, I got to tell you, when I heard that story almost 40 years ago, over 40 years ago now, I said, I understand. I got it. That makes perfect sense. You see, some people have great faith in Jesus Christ. I believe you died for me, paid for my sins, and arose from the dead. And I trust you. Then there are others who. God, I don't even know you exist. But if you're real, I want to know you. I want to have my sins forgiven, and I want to come to heaven. You see, there's probably a million different degrees of faith, and nobody has a faith measuring thermometer. I don't know what my faith. I don't know what number my faith is, and you don't know what number your faith is. And here's the beauty of everything. It doesn't matter. You see, the size of your faith is not what's important to God. What's important to God is who is your faith in. You see, my faith is not in Buddha, Mohammed or Confucius or.

The Pope or Mary or Martin Luther King or anybody else. Are you aware that there's never been a religious leader. Listen to this. In the history of the world to promise you two things. But Jesus Christ, he's promised you he would forgive all of your sins and he would give you eternal life. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm glad. I need my sins forgiven and I want to go to heaven when I die. My faith is fixed firmly in him. And that's why for over 40 years, I haven't worried one bit about the size of my faith. You see, it's what my faith is located in. When I fly, my faith is located in the pilot. When I have money in the bank, it's located in the banker. When it's in a history lesson, it's located in the historical facts of history. And when I go to a medical doctor, it's located in the fact that he or she went to medical school. And I've known them and they've helped me many, many times. It's not the size of my faith, it's what my faith is located in. So, as we wrap up this particular podcast, I hope you've clarified in your mind. Wow. I never have to worry again about the size of my faith. God, do I have great faith in you or do I have little faith in you? It doesn't matter because it's in who you have your faith in that matters. I heard Ron the night he told this story, and you know how he ended? He said, you know the difference between Richard and me? Richard knew the ice better than I did. Richard knew the ice better than I did. He was comfortable with the ice because he knew it better than I did. My job was to get to know the ice better, and I would enjoy future ice fishing trips with Richard. Folks, that's your job. My job is just get to know the ice. Just get to know God. Just get to know Jesus, that He loves you. Get to know the Holy Spirit who lives inside of you. Get to know Him. Put your faith and trust in him, and you'll never worry about the size of your faith ever again the rest of your life because it will be located in the right place. You might just say something like this in your own heart to God. God, my trust and my faith is in you. Thank you, Jesus, for dying for me. Arising from the dead. Holy Spirit, live inside of me. Help me to get to know you better. If you pray that simple prayer, God promises you he'll bring you to heaven one day when you die for God so loved the world they gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. God bless you, my friend. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I look forward to our next time together. Bye. Bye. For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becomingwiserpodcast.com.