Increase Our Faith
12-16-07 Judges 7:1-8 Luke 1:26-45
When I asked Pastor Kellie if she would like to preach on her anniversary she quickly replied, “no and you can preach on “Increasing our faith.” So that is why I am up here instead of her on her fourth anniversary. How many of you have ever wanted the Lord to increase your faith? Have you ever prayed for more faith. Few things are as dangerous are as nerve wracking as making that prayer.
You are opening yourself up to all kinds of unpredictable situations. We would like for God to send us a package with a faith cake or faith candy bar inside, in which we could simply eat this cake or this candy bar and as we did it we could feel faith rise up inside of us with each bite. We’d become super Christians instantly.
I have not found a single story in the Bible in which it happened that way. There is always a price to pay if we want an increase in our faith. The price is a willingness to learn just how big of a God we serve. The bigger we see our God, the greater the possibilities become for our lives. If you serve a great God, you will become a great saint.
It’s interesting how God chooses and uses people for His purposes. God has His eyes upon us long before we even know He’s looking at us. When Pastor Kellie first came to this church, her sole intent was to march down the aisle at her sister’s wedding and be on her business with her life. Glenville was simply to be a stopping point in both of their lives for a wedding. At best a footnote.
Yet today her twin sister Kacie is one of our most dedicated elders, and Kellie is our associate pastor and both of their husbands and kids are involved in the ministries of this church. She walked down the aisle thinking of herself as the maid of honor, but God saw a mighty warrior reporting for duty.
The amazing thing about God, is that God can change the course of your life on any given day, and you will not have a clue about what the Lord is willing to do through you. The bigger your God, the greater the change. There was a young lady in the bible, that was not well known at all. No one took note of her. She was from a very small insignificant town. She’s a teenager with her virginity intact. She is looking forward to the plans for her upcoming wedding, and how perfect she hopes things are going to be. She sees herself just as one of many small town girls, and just hopes for an ordinary life, with an ordinary family, in a little ordinary town called Nazareth.
This young girl, whose name is Mary is one day alone by herself. That’s when God decides to come calling. God speaks to the angel Gabriel to go to Mary with a message. The angel Gabriel arrives, and says to her “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord Is with you.” The Scriptures tell us that Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.
Notice that it was not the appearance of the angel that frightened her, but the words that He used. Mary probably thought the angel had the wrong person, because he said, “hello, you who are highly favored.” Highly favored by whom. Most people do not even know my name. I have not done anything to get God’s attention. I’m not living that holy that the Lord would be with me.
I want you to know that as a child of God you are highly favored by the Lord. God knows your name. You are not a mistake. God has a plan for you and it’s okay to be a little scared. God is a big God and God can handle your nervousness. Having God’s favor upon your life is going to get you through some very difficult circumstances.
Mary may also had been frightened by the words the angel used, because she knew, that the presence of God in one’s life, meant the equipping of the person for a task. When we ask the Lord to be with us to increase our faith, we are saying we will submit to doing what you want us to do because you are with us. Do not forget the size of the God who is with You, and that will help to increase your faith.
Sometimes we plan to go in a direction and hope that God will tag along and bless us. We forget that God is in control. How many of you have had those moments. When Pastor Kellie began recognizing that God’s hand was on her life, she started to plan for the future. As a single mom, she wanted to look out for her and Whitney at the time. She set up a meeting with me one day to discuss a legal matter about guardianship.
She was thinking of going into the military to get a degree I think in medicine. I listened to her plans, but she didn’t like what I had to tell her from the legal perspective about her situation. Sometimes what we want and what God’s plans are, are not the same thing. That’s where the challenge comes into our walk.
Mary is probably hoping the words of this angel are not going to alter her plans for a happy normal wedding and a happy normal family. Luke 1:30-33 (NIV) 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
When the angel finished speaking, Mary probably breathed a sigh of relief. She probably thought, “I knew he had the wrong person. There’s no way it could be me he’s talking about because I’m still a virgin.”
It’s good when we can go back to our plans, because it really does not require a whole lot of faith on our part. We just go back to doing what we used to do. When I told Pastor Kellie, the bad news, I also offered her a challenge. I said, “well why don’t you consider going to seminary, and becoming a pastor.” Her first response was, “what, I could never do that. I can’t do what you and Pastor Toby do” Her second response was “I don’t have the money to go to school that’s why I was thinking about the military.” Her third response was, “do they want to take a single mom at seminary.”
God’s favor was on her, in the same way it was on Mary. God had a plan and Mary had a plan. Pastor Kellie had a plan. The temptation is to look for ways out of God’s plan in order to maintain your own, by coming up with reasons for why God’s plan is not going to work.
Mary told the angel Gabriel. That’s all nice and good but it won’t work. How can this be she asked the angel, since I am a virgin. I haven’t had sex before so there’s no way I can be pregnant.
I think God takes a delight in showing us how the impossible can become possible when He ordains something to happen. What is it that you would really like to do but you don’t think it can happen? Realize that you may be making your God to small. You increase your faith only after you’ve increased your God.
The angel tells her, Luke 1:35-37 (NIV) 35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God."
Mary has a choice to make. Will she risk God’s plan for her life, or will she cling to the plans for the life she wants to live. When the angel mentions her aunt Elizabeth, she knows that he knows who she is.
Every saint faces this choice in life. We can choose the path in which we just live life as it comes, or we can rise up and choose the path God has for us, with all it’s unpredictable ness. Mary decided to take the uncertain path of God’s will by saying, “I am the Lord’s servant, May it be to me as you have said.” Little did she know how much her life was going to be altered.
At some point Pastor Kellie believed that even though she did not know what would happen, she packed up her and her daughter and went to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She too had a very altered life. Money did not always fall out of the sky when they had a need. Her car didn’t always run like it was suppose to. She didn’t always get the grade she thought she deserved.
But it was all a part of increasing her faith and of discovering God was far bigger than she first thought. The person who did not have enough money to go to seminary her first year, had to turn down aid her last year, because she had enough in scholarship. You do not know what God will do, until you say Yes, to God’s plan for your life. Christ died for you because He knows you’re worth dying for. Let him live in you and reach your potential.
God’s plan requires an increase of faith, because things do not turn out in the exact manner we hope they will. With God doing all that He did to get Pastor Kellie through seminary, she didn’t think five years later, she would still be working part time at the church, making about the same as before going to seminary. Her vision as an associate pastor, has not reached its’s fulfillment here at Glenville as she would like it to. There have been great moments here and a lot of hard work as well. She is waiting for God to bless this church in a way that she can join the ranks of her colleagues with a full time salary for full time work. But you’re looking at here where she is now, not where she is in God’s fulfillment. Like Pastor Kellie, Mary got more than she bargained for in saying yes to the will of God.
God’s favor on Mary’s life was a tremendous challenge. Her fiancée did not believe the story of her becoming pregnant by the Holy Spirit. He could have insisted on her being stoned for marital unfaithfulness. Instead he decided to divorce her in secret. That did not coincide at all with the wedding plans she had made. When they did get back together after an angel spoke to him, that was by no means an easy reunion. Did it take in increase in faith to take back a man that called you a liar and cheater?
Then toward the end of her pregnancy, she had to travel by donkey a very long way to pay their taxes and be counted in the census, as well as to fulfill the prophecy about where Jesus would be born. That journey over hills and mountains was not a very pleasant one with being jostled up and down. Then to get to the city of Bethlehem only to discover, every inn and hotel is fully booked up was not a great encouragement.
So she has to give birth to Jesus in a barn, where they kept cattle and sheep. Jesus spent his first night of sleep in a box that the animals would eat their food out of. There were no halo lights around them in that stinking barn as we see in pictures. Who knows how many other people were also in the barn with him. Do you think Mary had this in mind when the angel told her he had great news for her, and that she was highly favored.
Then when things did finally begin to settle down, and they were making a home for themselves in Bethlehem something good did happen. Some wise men from the East came to see the toddler Jesus and presented them with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Finally it looks as though God is really with her and life will be normal. These gifts from the wise men, was like money in the bank.
But that plan was quickly shaken when, Herod decided to come looking for Jesus to kill him as a baby. An angel again appeared to Joseph to tell him to take Mary and Jesus and run for their lives all the way to Egypt in Africa. That was another very dangerous journey. But it was also a part of Scripture being fulfilled, for God’s word says, out of Egypt I have called My Son.
Not every challenge in your life is from the devil. The hard things you are going through will sometimes come from your obedience to God. Mary received God’s favor, but that did not mean that her life became the blessing she would have desired for it to be. Saying yes to God, did not bring her the blessings of wealth, comfort, or social standing. God’s favor will often involve some adversity. Sometimes God’s favor will increase the challenges you face in life. But you have to keep in mind what the end product is going to be. We can’t know what God is trying to birth in us to bring out of us.
God’s favor requires obedience on our part. Can we be bold enough to say Lord, I am your servant. Whatever your plan is for my life, you have my permission to make it so. I want you to know that is really a prayer for God to increase our faith. More than anything Mary needed God’s peace in the midst of all of this. She could not control everything that was happening. At times everything was falling apart. But she had this inner reality that God is big enough to meet me at my point of need.
When your God is big as Mary’s God was, you can say, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” I can face anything that life throws my way, because Christ gives me strength. Because nobody else can give this to you. Your circumstances, your natural abilities, they cannot give this to you. This is between you and God.
If you do not know Jesus, then I think this is His word for you, I’m bigger than your problems. I am bigger than your failures. I am bigger than your regrets, many though they may be. I am bigger than your sin and guilt, though I know what that is. And if you will let Me, if you will try Me, if you will open the door of your heart, I will come into your life and I will be your forgiver and I will be your strength and I will be your friend,
Because only Jesus makes possible the big-God life because it’s on the cross that we see the God who is bigger than our sin and guilt and regret and it is in that empty tomb from which Jesus comes forth that we see the God who is bigger than death itself—disease, illness, cancer, death.
If you know Him, then I think His word for you and me, in these days together is—I think God would say to you— I know all about the Issues and enemies in your life. I know about your worries. I know about your kids. I know what you’ve lost. I know about the divorce. I know about the crumbling marriage. I know about the affair. I know about the abortion. I know about the job failure. I know. I know. I know about where you are stagnant. I know where your dreams have died. I know where you’ve decided to just give up.
But I have better dreams for you. If you just ask Me every day, I will be as big a presence in your life as you will let Me be because I am so big and I will help you to increase your faith.
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick
Increase Our Faith 12/19/07
Isaiah 9:6-7 Luke 1:26-45
A. Do I Want An Increase Of Faith
1. Pastor Kellie 4th Anniversary
2. Praying For Faith
3. Faith Cake—Faith Candy Bar
4. How Big Is Our God
B. God Chooses Whomever He Wills
1. The Wedding More Than A March
2. God Sees Something Different
3. Just An Ordinary Teenager
4. An Ordinary Plan For Ordinary Life
5. God Sends Gabriel To The Task
Luke 1:28 (NIV) 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
C. Mary Gets The Call
1. You Can’t Mean Me
2. God’s Favor Makes Us Afraid
3. The Size Of Your God
4. Pastor Kellie’s Plan
5. Will God Change Things
Luke 1:30-33 (NIV) 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.
32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
D. You Have The Wrong Person
1. It Will Not Work
2. God Likes The Impossible
3. Choice We Have To Make
4. Will I Say Yes Or Not
Luke 1:38 (NIV)
38 "I am the Lord’s servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.
5. Not Always Easy
6. Jesus Thinks You’re Worth It
7. Hang In There And Wait
E. When God’s Plan Seems To Go Wrong
1. Mary’s Life Is Altered
2. Relationship Problems
3. Travel, Lodging, Birthing Problems
4. Fugitives To Egypt
F. God’s Favor Is Mixed In Life
1. Saying Yes Is Not Instant Fame
2. Adversity & Favor Combined
3. God Is Birthing Something Out Of You
G. The Call For Obedience
1. Lord Increase Our Faith
2. Doing All Things In Christ
3. Jesus Is Bigger Than We Think
4. Jesus Knows & Jesus Cares.
