JAN 17 2016 | Built for Radical Faith, Part 2

Sea Change Church · "Built for Radical Faith, Part 2" · Adam Stadtmiller · January 17, 2016
Romans 12:3-7
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Turn with me, if you will, to a series on spiritual gifts, but I'm taking it from a different angle, which seems to happen. Romans 12, verses 3 through 7. I got so encouraged last week preaching. I just got preached out. I just felt good. I'm not going to discount myself, you know. A little, so good. You know you didn't do it when you go home and you're just feeding off what God gave you, you know. It's just so good.

But God is so faithful here in putting his word forward. Let me just pray for this and then we'll jump into it. Jesus, we don't go alone. We don't go alone. And you say to us, you are not alone. You are my beloved child and I will not leave you. I'm not going anywhere. Even when you die, you came back. Even when you died, you were still there.

And you saw us as children and you are our father and we are your sons and daughters. And we claim that territory of our hearts. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Verse 3. For by grace, by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you, circle, grace given me, do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment.

Circle more highly than you ought and sober judgment. Not drunk, but sober. Think of the difference antithetically to what it looks like. Have you ever seen someone in a movie or someone in person who is drunk? And then imagine what sobriety looks like. So what Paul is saying here is the way that you think about yourself, and he says in the positive, you think yourself better than you ought to, but we can go in the opposite direction, that you have become drunk in your estimation of yourself.

For positive or for negative. Thinking that you are either too good or too bad and not worthy of God's love. We become drunk. We become stumbling. We fall down. We give up. We lose our consciousness. We lose our ability to see things rightly. But God says, I want you to have what kind of judgment? A sober judgment. What is your judgment of yourself right now?

Maybe things are going really good. You're just killing it. Hashtag crushing it right now. At work, in life, everybody wishes they were you. And you've forgotten the what that has been given to you according to verse 3? The grace. Grace sobers you up. Grace is spiritual coffee that wakes you up out of how you feel about yourself, whether going too high up or too far down, that you are not worthy of God's love, that your sin is greater than Christ's blood, whatever it is.

And Paul says, wake up and get sober. Where is your thinking? I've got to say, we live in a world where very few, I don't see as many people living on the high extreme, thinking more of themselves than they ought. Although that creeps in when we judge people. That creeps in when you think, well, I could do that better. It's just little hits of pride.

Little crack hits of pride throughout our life. Little throughout the day. I don't meet too many people that live in such an egotistical high state because this is a crushing world. Matter of fact, I see a hopeless world. I see a world that says, you're no good. You've never been any good. You're not worth anything. You'll never be worth anything.

And the devil loves to sing that choir in your ear all day long, wake you up in the middle of the night. And so I see a world where there is this hopelessness, but at the same time on occasion, we'll have these moments of feeling pride, of judgment over people. What Paul says, grace will give you sober judgment. When you realize it's all because of what?

Grace. Grace. When you realize it's all God. It's all him. It's all up to him. Your worth, your value. It's all grace. It is spiritual coffee that will wake you up out of your stupor, out of the drunkenness of having an unright, if that is the right way to say it, right opinion of yourself. If you're too low, get sober. If you're too high, get sober. How?

Dive into grace. Drown in the grace of God. That's where you want to live. Swim in the pool. Dive into the deep end. And if you can't swim right now, dive into the deep end and kill yourself in his grace. Drown yourself in his grace. You never think about, it was interesting, one day I was praying, and I thought about, there's a song right now that talks about drowning in God's love.

And I was thinking about it. And then I realized that God always, everything he does speaks about his creation, speaks about who he is. It says in Romans that the creation tells his divine, his invisible qualities and his divine nature. If you want to know about God, look at a plant. If you want to know about God, look at the sun. Because in it all, in the story of it, he tells a story about who he is.

And in the midst of that, I was thinking about this idea of drowning. And I said, God, how do we, how do we drown in something? And I immediately saw the picture of a baby in the womb in its mother's stomach. And that baby, it is so attached to God, it is able to breathe liquid in and out of its lungs, and it doesn't drown. And I felt like God said, that's what I want you to do.

I want you to live in inculcated in the grace of God, so deep in his grace that you can breathe, you can fill your lungs with the grace of his anointing, of his presence, and drown in it. You see, that grace will keep sober judgment. So where are you today on the scale of awesomeness? Either you're horrible or you're great. Let me just say, let's wake up.

Let's be sober. Dive into his grace. And so Paul says that there. Think of yourself with sober judgment. In accordance with what? Circle the word faith. The faith God has distributed to each of you. What tool do we use to harvest grace? Faith. Faith is a sickle. Faith is a shovel. Faith is a tool that we use to harvest the grace of God. And it says, the faith God has distributed to each of you.

So there is a measure. For just as each of us has one body with many members. And now all of a sudden, Paul goes from this idea of the individual to the body. So you're going to see that. As we figure it out as individuals, and that's why in the story of what this church is doing, what God is doing through his grace in this church, we start with the corner of your heart.

It's got to start with the corner of your heart. We will never touch the four corners of the world. You will never touch the four corners of this block unless God begins to work a mighty miracle in the corner of our heart. And so Paul starts in the corner of our heart, and he says, please take the faith that you have and access the grace that you have so that you might understand how you're worth to God the Father.

That you will have sober judgment and understand exactly who you are and who you were created to be and what you were built for. And then he takes that, and he brings it out, and he says that that will equal what the body does as a whole. He takes it from the individual to the body. Now, there's a lot of talented people in this congregation. I mean, we're seeing it.

I mean, even the decorations. People come in, they just decorate the church for us. Isn't that amazing? Like, I show up to my office, and all of a sudden, there's all these eucalyptus trees all around. You know, Melissa and the team and April and Chris and Karen Ogren, and they go to places, and they do design and shop, and it's awesome. They're just part of the body that are coming here and serving.

We have some amazing people that are serving. But it's when those little drops of rain gather into a little creek, and I've said it all over and over again, and those little creeks go into a mighty river that no one can forge, and they drop back out into the ocean of God's grace again, and they get dispersed into the grandeur of the ocean, only to be, through the reuptake of the clouds, back and then poured again, once again, over and over again, from ourselves and God working with us, through us with each other, over and over again.

You can even see the story of God and how a raindrop falls into the ocean. You see, God speaks of himself, and as a congregation, that's what we're doing. We want to work as an elder board and as a church to have a sober judgment that at the corner of your heart, you'll put a spiritual claim in the territory of your heart and say the kingdom of God lives here, and so does a child of God.

And out of that child of God that you will work together, that you will come and we will work together, whether it be here on this corner, changing La Jolla, or gathering with your friends that live in Carmel Valley that drive here, or like Alan and Jerry who live in Point Loma with Allie over there, wherever you are, or down in Crown Point, or in Bay Park, or these different places, where then we begin to come together and say, this is Jesus Christ's ground, and like Joshua, we will claim wherever we put our foot.

That wherever you put your foot is claimed because a child of the king walks upon it. Not in arrogance, but with sober judgment. Why? Knowing who our father is. See, we're going to take San Diego. We are going to take San Diego. We are going to take Southern California. We are going to take this nation. We're going to take the world in the name of Jesus Christ for Christ from the corner of our heart.

But let me just say, we've got to start with the corner of your heart. That's the hardest territory to win. You see, I think California and all that other stuff falls easily. So the battle is for your heart. Broken hearts break minds. I just believe that. I believe the brokenness of the minds that we're seeing with the mental illness is coming from the broken hearts.

I believe the heart is stronger than the mind. I believe that a healed heart can heal a mind. And God wants us to take that territory back by going deeper, by saying the next yes. What's the next right thing? You know how to be a Christian? Do the next right thing. No matter what happened yesterday, leaving the what behind? The former things behind, the scripture says, and pressing forward.

I don't care what happened yesterday. Yesterday is yesterday. We have today. And so harvest God's grace with sober judgment. And you know how to be a Christian? Just make the next right decision. You had a fight with your wife on the way to church today? Well, then when this is over, make the next right decision. You yelled at somebody. You had a, whatever.

You went back into that ugly place that you regularly go to yesterday or last week and you've been beating yourself up over it. You know what? Harvest his grace, the blood of his grace, through faith, which brings what? Righteousness, according to the scripture when it talks about Abraham. Abraham. And do the next right thing in righteousness, knowing that you were completely clean before the Father God.

That's how to be a Christian. The next right thing. That's how to be a follower of Christ. The next right thing. I haven't even read through the verse yet. We're still preaching. It's good for me. Thank you. It is good for the church, Zach. For just as each of us has one body with many members, these members do not all have the same function. You don't have the same function.

What are you built for? So in Christ, we, though many, form one body and each member belongs to all the others. Listen to that again. Now I know that that's true in marriage and it's physically true in marriage and the scripture talks about the physical intimacy that happens in marriage being a representation of God. That's why marriage and gender diverse marriage is so important in the scripture because it is a true story about God's character and nature.

And it says, so in Christ, though, we have seen that in marriage, but it says, for us in the church, so in Christ, though many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. Oh, get out of my territory. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't, no, we all have, we can come together, we can work, we can sing Kumbaya. but to think that there's actually something deeper because the scripture talks about continue to keep the unity of what?

Spirit. Probably says the body as well. It says, keep the unity of the spirit and when we enter into the spirit, we enter into that giant ocean which is God's unity and we become one. You see, there's something deeper than just agreement. We're not just agreeing with each other. Hey, should we hand out coffee to all the neighbors? Yes, let's all agree. No, there's something deeper than this that actually there is a spiritual, do you understand this?

There is a spiritual power that when we come here together that we dive into the depths of God and we become one and that's why it's so important that we own the corners of our hearts for God's grace and glory because the scripture shows especially in the Old Testament that when one person goes astray it affects the entire body. No one sins alone. That's why this whole idea, well, you know, as long as you can do something in the name of love and you're not hurting anybody else, do whatever you want.

That is such a lie from demons from the pit of hell. It is impossible, especially in Christian community and faith, that you can do whatever you want and not have it affect us. It will affect us. Now, don't wear a cloak of guilt right now if you've had an ugly place in your life lately. Take off the Gandalf cloak of guilt and do the next right thing. You see, the more of us that can live on the corner of our heart and say, like Gandalf does says, you shall not pass.

Remember when that demon comes and he says, and he says, you shall not pass. And some of us need to get back onto the corner of our heart, myself included, and stand in that ugly place because maybe it's become a little bit, the sidewalk's cracked and maybe the flowers have died and there's weeds growing up and you stand back up and when the monsters come down the street to take over your heart with depression, fear, hopelessness, journeying back into sin that you stand there with the word of God and say, for this time, today, you shall not pass.

And if we begin to, yeah, thank you Dave, I appreciate that man. Thank you. You shall not pass. And if we all begin to do that, what would it look like? Because we are one body. It's impossible to sin and not affect this church body. You get that? It's impossible to walk in that brokenness of sin and not affect the body. Now, if you're going to put a cloak of guilt on, please take that off and do the next right thing through his grace.

And if you don't want to do the next right thing, then just pray the simplest prayer. God, get me to the place where I want to do the next right thing. I've had strongholds in my life and realize this, that a foothold will always work to become a stronghold. Foothold will try to work itself into a stronghold until the devil and the enemy can get into the keep of your heart and close himself in and live there.

I'm not saying you're demon-possessed, but the scripture talks about strongholds and it talks about footholds and you can have things that hold you back. And we want to get to a place as a body where we begin to let those things go, to stand up to those things and let God reclaim the territory of the corners of your heart. Amen? In accordance, it says, let me go, we have different gifts according to the grace.

I'll get more into this next week, talking as we start going through the gifts, but I'm trying to set you up as a congregation to want to live for what you're built for. And we have different gifts according to the grace given us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy. In accordance with what? Your faith. If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach.

If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, and I hope, pray for the gift of mercy, do it cheerfully. God says, there's all these gifts. Now, according to the measure of your faith, go out and live them. You're the multi-campus. You are the one that's going to go to your street corner and take your gifts and just use them.

Well, I don't have any gifts. I'm not as talented. God has given you a gift. And it is according to His will and His purpose. Remember, it's not your purpose. This whole Christian idea, again, of the Western eyes, find your purpose, is upside down. The scripture, I'll show you over and over again, test me on it. Come in and ask me questions. It is God's purpose and according to His will.

And our deal is just to get in alignment with it and flow in that stream. To jump in the river of His purpose and will and just enjoy your life. Like Augustine said, and I read it last week, love God, paraphrase, love God and do what? Whatever you want. Because the heart that loves God will not offend the beloved. Just go do what you like. Jeff's a painter.

He's new to the church. Went over yesterday with a few people. He organized a crew. He probably hates me telling you guys this. Comes over there. He's here a few nights this week painting our children's area downstairs. We have a beautiful paint, brand new. It needed to be painted. He just came and said, let me just roll a paint roll. That guy can roll a paint roll.

I'll tell you that much. I never see him get so close to the, I think he's going to hit the ceiling. It's a bap, bap, bap, bap, bap. Just loving God. Awesome. Just showed up. Just did it. Amazing wife. Allows him to come and do that. And I said, we're not going to overtax him. We're going to let him go home now. But thank you so much. Use the gifts. Right.

Just use the gifts. If it's to pray, pray. If it's to have faith, we've had people that have been at the end of the quarter who's just said, who called to the, you know, that heard the message of, hey, let's share as a congregation. Share your stuff. Share your toys with this congregation. Share your time, your treasure, and your talent. We were going to end up 20,000 upside down as of the end of the summer.

And we ended up, I think 40,000 or more up. That in a fall. Right. Give yourself a hand, please. And we're able to start making some changes and going after the vision because you said, we will share. And there's people that came and called me right before I went on Christmas break. We want to share. We want to share in this way. And they said, I'm going to bring a check to the church.

And I said, no, you're not. We're going to come pick it up. You don't need to come to the church. We'll meet you. They said, I'm going to take a taxi to the church. I said, no, you're not. God is good. Verse three, at the beginning of the sermon, trust me, I know where I am. I'll get you out of here. I already preached. You know, I told you this before. I preached the message, right, as I read it.

And then I kind of see the points I want to re-say and I re-say it. So you've heard the whole thing. But let me just clean it up a little bit now. My wife, she says, just read the scripture. I said, I preach, read. I preach, read. I can't change it. I'm going to keep doing it that way. For the grace given to me. First of all, great. Let's see here. Let's learn a couple of things about grace.

It's free. Can't buy it. Can't earn it. Free. Free of charge. Free of charge. The most costly thing in the world. Free of charge. It's unlimited. Scripture says it's unlimited. There's no, there's no, and it's not a natural resource. It's an eternal resource. Big difference. We don't need to have a bunch of people meet in Paris to talk about how to make sure it doesn't run out.

I'm glad that they did that. Okay. It's unlimited. But it's not cheap. It costs God, his son. Any of you have children? Take the child and give them away to be killed for others. That's what it costs. The darling of heaven, as a friend of mine says, the jewel of heaven, given, crushed, broken, beaten to the, Scripture says he was unrecognizable as a human being, given so that we could swim and be free.

Grace. Grace. Grace. It's all about grace. It's not free. Bonhoeffer says this. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. It means you just, I've done pretty good. You know, I did good. I did this. I did that. Now I can do that. That's cheap. It's because you're harvesting it from yourself and it runs out. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.

That's rampant. That's been rampant for 2,000 years in the church. And hopefully on my watch and our elders watch and your watch as a congregation, that's not going to happen here. It is baptism without church discipline. It is communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.

It costs. It costs. Sin is still alive in the world. And while we've dressed it up, it's like putting lipstick on a pig. Sin is still ugly and it has one purpose. To destroy you, to destroy the world and make sure that you spend eternity in hell separated from God. No matter if you call it love, no matter if you call it grace, no matter, however you want to dress it up, sin is sin.

And the word of God, you know why that we don't have to judge people? You know why Jesus said in John that he doesn't need to judge people? Because God already made judgments. The judgments were done. That's why Jesus says, I have not come to judge. You get that? You ever wonder why he said that? He said it because the judgments are already made. You don't need to make judgments when the judgments already exist.

So as Christians, I don't need to say this is right. I can agree. I just agree with the judgments of God. But they're not my judgments. Now how do I share the judgments of God and the grace of Jesus Christ in love? That's where the rubber meets the road today. And so we see that. It's not cheap. But what I want to say is grace has been given to you. Are you harvesting enough grace?

Pray for more grace. Ask God for grace. Grace keeps us sober. We read that. Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought. But rather, think of yourself with sober judgment in according to the faith that God has distributed each of you. Now let's look at faith and let's juxtapose faith with grace because they're different. They're very similar but they're very different.

You see, grace is free and it's unlimited. But faith, it is also an eternal commodity that has the ability to be unlimited should you harvest it. But it is something that can increase or decrease in your life. Grace is just there for you. But faith, according to how you decide or to ask God for more or less is something that is on a measuring line because we see it measured out in Scripture.

Look at what it says. It says, according to the, excuse me, faith. Sorry. Faith is unlimited yet a measured commodity. And it is God's desire, let me say this to you, it is God's desire that you increase your faith. That each one of you has been given what of faith it says in this Scripture? A what? A measure. A measure. Each of you, God, it is a gift, has been measured out to you.

So when you come up against an obstacle, certain of you will go like this, oh, I just can't do it. Oh, I can never do it. No, I'll never get over that ever. And there's other that are going to be, where's the climbing equipment? Let's get over this thing. It is a measure. But that measure is not static. It is a measure that will increase or decrease according to how we use the muscle of faith in our life.

Having faith means believing in hope that God will do it. Stepping out in faith, believing that He will show up. It doesn't mean jumping off cliffs. It doesn't mean not using wisdom in your decisions. But it means there's a certain element where you say, I'm not sure how this is going to go, but I'm going to move forward. Or, maybe not even moving forward.

Maybe it's just standing. Maybe it's just not retreating. Because when the Scripture in Ephesians talks about spiritual warfare, it says, when you have done everything to what? Stand. It says, then do what? Stand. It doesn't say, go, you know, kick spiritual booty for Jesus. It doesn't say, go take the enemy and come to the devil and start shouting at the devil and all these different things.

It says, with that, just stand. Sometimes, the most faith-filled thing you can do is stand. I talked to an older man one time and I had been married for 70 years, 50 years, or I don't remember what it was, a long time. And I said, what's the secret? He said, I found the best way to stay married is to stay married. What advice do you have? He said, I mean, what's the best, he said, the best way to learn how to stay married is to stay married.

Stand. You just stood there. Marriage is not, right? Relationship with your children, business, whatever it is, put it there. Some of you are just standing and the heaven is applauding, just applauding. And you're so full of grace and you feel so defeated but you're there. You're showing up every single day. And God is saying, just be there. And heaven and the angels sing and you can't see it and you applaud and it is faith.

And each time you go, that faith is increased. Let's look at the faith. The disciples, how do we get faith? Faith is meant to be asked for. If you don't have faith, like wisdom, it says in James, ask for faith. Do you ask for faith? Do you ask for wisdom? Like if you have a situation you don't know what you're doing, I do it all the time. God, show me how to do that.

I love how David did that in prayer. Show me how to do that. God will regularly show me how to do something. I'll get an idea, I'll hear something on TV, I'll read a book, the scripture, a worship song will give me an idea. It'll just show up. And it comes accompanied with the bridesmaids of hope and peace. When I get a word from the Lord, it usually comes accompanied, you know, with the bridesmaids of hope and peace attached to it.

I can feel it. It feels like the right thing. It's meant to be asked for. Luke 17, 5, the apostle said to the Lord, do what? Increase our faith. Go back, get one of the elephant cards and write, increase my faith and put it on the tree. If you have something where you're fearful, you're afraid, you're not making it, increase my faith. It's a great prayer. God loves to answer it.

It says he gives wisdom in James. How does he give it? Anybody know the word? Abundantly and generously. He's generous. God wants to give you more gifts. If you're a one gift person, he's cool to give you 10. Just ask. The more that we step out, it'll be measured to you. And the scripture also talks about the way in which we shepherd our gifts will either be increased or decreased.

I realize that whether it be a preaching anointing or a teaching anointing, at any point, because it is supernatural when you're living in your gifts, you're doing something beyond what you can do on your own. That at any point, God can say, you know what? Done. I've seen it. And I've seen pastors hang on. You ever seen that? There are people, they're just hanging on to something that no longer exists anymore.

And I just want to treat any gifting God's given me with great secrecy, with a great holiness. And if your gift is greeting or serving or giving, treat it like it's holy and ask for more. Don't be afraid to ask. Just ask for more. You know, with eternity, there's no measure. You know, we're so embarrassed to ask God for something. I'm trying to get on the 700 Club right now to promote the Praying for Your Elephant.

I was kind of embarrassed to put it on that because what do people think? No. I believe in the message. I believe that God called me to write that message and I believe that's one of the best ways to get it out with Pat Robertson and get on the show. And so I put it on the tree first one, even though it embarrassed me, what are people going to think? You know what?

I don't care. I want to be on the Pat Robertson show and I want the book to go further and I'm asking God to bless it. It's on the tree. Because God doesn't think like we do. It's a little too much. I'm not sure I've got enough here to go around. It's a big world. You know? What if we just get audacious with God? Jesus says ask for what? Anything. Ask for what?

Anything. It is such a huge... Anything. Anything. Even what you might not want. Does He say ask for what you want? He says ask for anything. You see, anything might not be what you want. You see how that word's bigger than want? It's... Lord, help me be more patient. No, no, no, no, no, no. Lord, help me be more of a servant. Lord, anything. Matter of fact, it's more like this.

What are you willing to ask for? What are you willing to ask for? What you're willing to ask for might show more about your faith than what you want. You see, want is so small. Want is so... It's pitiful. Want is just... It's shepherded. It's surrounded. It's encompassed by what you know about yourself. You see, want is just based on what you know. It's based on you.

But willingness beyond what you want, that's faith territory. What does that look like? Lord, if you actually took this to this level, or I prayed beyond my wants, or I prayed for something I don't want. You know, I encourage you. Pray for something you don't want really desperately. Maybe it's an enemy's blessing. You see, that's... Now you're living in a...

You're living in on the other side of the veil. You're living in transcendence. You're living beyond your own desires and wants. Harvest faith. Ask for faith. Ask for wisdom. Mark 9, 24. This is the boy when he was demon-possessed and he'd run out. He was at the end of his rope and he said, Heal my son. And Jesus gives him this answer and he says, I do believe.

Jesus says, All things are possible. You know, this boy can be healed. He says, I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief. It's a great prayer. If you're desperate right now, if you don't even believe in prayer, and I was there this week. I'll just be straight with you. I was there this week. I'm like, I've been praying for this. God, you're not going to do it.

I'm going to be 90 years old and this thing is never going to be answered and I'm going to die and this thing will never be answered and I'm going to toil my whole life with this struggle. I don't want to pray anymore. Matter of fact, I'm tired of praying, God. I told God. By the way, if you're upset with God, he can handle it. He's dealt with it before.

I just said, I'm done. I don't even have a prayer. I'm just, I'm discouraged. And then he reminded me of my favorite four-letter prayer. Help. I said, God, let hope rise. Help. Grace. Grace. And I got a little into the embers. Just enough. See movies about survival. Just get that little spark. That's it. No different than you. Pray for faith. Faith. Finally, faith, as we come for a landing, I'm circling the tower.

Faith is the most, faith is the most, I meant to put, is faith the most powerful spiritual force in the universe? I think it might be. I think it's more powerful than love because Jesus died on the cross for God so loved the world but that doesn't mean that the world will accept his love. So faith is an acceptance. So faith is a bridge and faith also, we saw by this scripture, is a tool to harvest grace.

So it puts grace in a subordinance to faith because we have to have faith in order to harvest that grace. We have to have faith to harvest that love. It is not love that makes us righteous. The scripture says it is by faith that Abraham became righteous. And so perhaps for some reason God began, he put us into the equation because faith has a little bit of us in the equation.

Now I understand that is it all God or is it all me? I don't know. I think the scripture teaches both in regard to faith. And I'm not trying to answer that question but I know that I need to take baby steps. But I also know that Romans 5.8 says that while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me. so it's all about him but at the same time I need to step forward and step towards him or at least stand on that corner of desperation and hopelessness and say I will not leave and you shall not pass and show up.

Watch so many of you do that on a regular basis. I'm so inspired by you people. I love coming to work. I don't even call it work. I don't know what it is. It ain't work what I do. It's hard but it's great to watch you and I hope you enjoy watching each other. Look at this faith. Genesis, Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as what? Righteousness.

Righteousness means you can stand in front of God. Without righteousness, without complete holiness, with any sin you cannot stand before God. This is why good people don't go to heaven because good isn't good enough. Perfect people go to heaven and you can't be perfect because we're born with the stain of sin. And so you need someone, the scripture says, to overcome that bridge, to live a perfect life and to pay the suffering and Jesus did that.

And only now, by believing in his name, will we go in heaven. That's the Christian message. That is the message that will be preached on this corner. We will continue to preach it to the world and I don't care if it's culturally, politically, theologically correct in any way because I know it's the truth of God's word. And we will continue to preach that word because it's the only thing that gives me hope.

I got no hope in anything else. But it says, this faith causes you to be righteous. You know what it means? It means that we go from under God's judgment and under his curse that was over the entire world to being able to run, burst into the throne room and jump on your daddy's lap, hug him around the neck, pull on his beard if he has one, I don't know, and love him and say, Daddy, I love you so much and have him throw you up in the air and put you on his shoulders and run around heaven with you on his shoulders, laughing and throwing the ball with you and being the kind of father that maybe you never had.

That's God and that is what faith will give you. You will either live as a son of God or we will live as an orphan with an orphan spirit. And there's no difference between, there's a big difference between the two. And it is faith that bridges us there. That's why faith, love doesn't do that. I love that we've made love God in our society, but love is not God.

God, love is subordinate to God. Love is a characteristic of God. God is love, but love is not God. And I don't know if you've seen the cultural argument that's tried to make love God, but love is not God. And love will not bring you righteousness. God's love gives the opportunity for righteousness through what? Faith. And faith has boundaries, the ones God made up, that set.

He said, this is how I see a holy life. This is what I say you believe in. That's the message of faith. Faith is tangible. Let me say this final thing and we're done. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Let me just, let me just assure you that faith is not this intangible, smoky thing that's out there that you can't see.

The scripture, when it talks about faith, says faith is real, just like this stone. That faith is real. It isn't, you know, we think about faith in this invisible, non-tangible way. The scripture says, like this stone, faith is real. It says that it is as a substance and it is a substance that will give you eternal life. What can be more real than eternal life?

That faith, if you believe, you see, even when you believe for the smallest things in your life, like the child that you want to have but you can't or these other things that you want for your life or the finance to come through, do you all realize that that is just another raindrop going into the river that is the faith of God that leads to righteousness? So every time we believe in faith, not only are we having faith for what we're believing in, but it's also casting that little stone of faith into the mighty ocean of faith and it becomes one with that so you are able to harvest all of the faith of God, that you step into that and it will be the faith that will save you.

It will be the faith that will allow you to come into the throne of God. And so we see that it is a substance of things that are not seen, of things that are not seen. It is tangible. Romans 5, let me read this. Therefore, since we have been justified through what? Faith. Are we justified through love? Are we justified through grace? The answer to that is no.

We have the opportunity through grace to be justified, but we are justified, the scripture says, through what? Faith. Don't forget that. We need to know that because faith has boundaries in regard to God's judgments over the world. If love becomes the primary thing that we live for, then all of a sudden we can do whatever we want as long as we call it love.

See, faith is different than that. Faith is rooted in what God said are his judgments and his way of kingdom life. So it says that we have through faith, we have been justified through faith, and that gives us what with God? Peace. Do you have peace? When was the last time you had peace? I'm not talking about peace of mind. The peace of, that Philippians says does what to understanding?

Transcends. The peace of understanding says, oh okay, I understand that now a check came in, now I feel better. Oh, but then I have another bill, I don't feel good. Philippians says the peace that transcends. Imagine living in a peace that like we said today, all of a sudden you got all these problems but you're just on top of them. I'm there a lot now. I'm not there all the time.

This week I told you I had a, I was just tired of prayer, tired of asking. Just like the rest of you probably. But I had a lot of other times where I was like, I can't believe I feel this good. Where's that coming from? Transcendent. Don't be normal, be transcendent. You're higher than angels. Do you get that? The scripture says that? You're immortal. You're a child of the king filled with eternity.

With fireballs of peace and joy at your ready. Ephesians says it has every, every spiritual blessing in all the heavenly realms are available to you to just cast out like breadcrumbs on the water. That's you. That's who you are. Be that. Rise up. Through whom we have gained access by faith into the grace which we now stand. So how do we get into the grace?

Through faith. And we boast in the hope and the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings. I hate that scripture. Because we know that suffering produces what? Perseverance. Stand on the corner. You shall not pass. Perseverance gives you character. And I have seen character being forged in the valley of despair. And it's happening today in our church, in this body, in our lives now.

Because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance, character. And character gives what? Hope. Breath when you've been under the water. And hope does not put us to shame or disappoint. Because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Nothing else to say. Let's have the band come up. Lord Jesus, you are just that.

Goodness gracious, Lord. Pow. There is so much truth in your scripture. The grace that you would even give us your scripture to make yourself known. I breathe peace and grace and hope. Ask for faith if you need it right now. Ask for hope. Ask for wisdom. Ask for perseverance. Ask to beautify that ugly corner. Go stand there again in the cold, driving rain.

If you're the only person there and know that God watches over you and he applauds you, the angels sing. They know your name. They know your name. Because you're his kid. Jesus. Make us more like you. Amen. Amen.