Sermon Central
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Having Amazing Faith
Contributed by Anthony Zibolski on Sep 6, 2011 (message contributor)
Summary: Faith must be exercised or it becomes limited. You will never do what God desires of you in your own strength. Faith works best in the impossible realm because that is where God does His best.
Amazing Faith
Introduction-
Talk to you about faith!
If you had to describe your faith, what would it look like?
Better yet, how would someone else describe your faith? Is it out of the box? Extreme? Expectant? Or would you have to shaky, unstable, overtaken by times of doubt?
I want to look at the faith of an unnamed centurion. One that dared to go outside of the normal.
As long as we are talking about faith.
When is the last time you experienced a miracle?
Do you even believe in miracles? Or is that only for the people of the Bible? Someone else?
Faith is believing what God has said in His Word, trusting in His promises, and wanting the will of God in your life.
Faith believes when our senses say it is impossible.
Faith is believing even when we cannot see it!
Illustration-
There is a story about a train traveling through the night in a very violent rainstorm. The lightning flashes were almost blinding. The rain hitting the windows was deafening and the strongest winds rocked the train from side to side. When the lightning flashed and lighted up the darkness, the passengers could see the rising water along the tracks. This created terror in the minds of the passengers. Several passengers noted that through all the noise, lightening and wind, one of the passengers, a little girl, seemed to be at perfect peace. The adult passengers couldn’t figure out why the little girl was so calm during this excitement. Finally, one passenger asked her, “how is it that you are so calm when all the rest of us are so worried about what might happen? The little girl smiled and said, “My father is the engineer.”
There is truly peace when God is the engineer of your life.
The one that takes us through the storms of life.
Faith is taking promises God has made and apply them directly to your life.
He did it for others and he will do it for you because God is not a respecter of persons.
Let me set this up:
This centurion is a Gentile. And if you remember a Gentile was anyone that was not a Jew.
This Gentile centurion had authority. He had at his disposal 100 roman soldiers that he was in charge of. He says go, they go. He says come, and they would come.
Slaves during that period of time, were considered possessions. A slave that was terminally ill or old would be literally thrown out of the house to die.
This unnamed centurion had a unique relationship with his servant and placed high value on him.
He hears about Jesus who could heal and he sends some Jews to locate and ask Jesus to heal him.
The Jewish elders gave all kinds of reasoning that Jesus should come. He loves our nation. He builds our synagogue.
A Gentile building a Jewish synagogue?
Jesus shows up and is headed toward this man’s house, when again this man sends Jews out to stop him from entering his home and says that if he would just say the word, his servant would be healed. This centurion understood the principals of the Jews and he understood the power of God.
He knew that Jesus did not enter Gentiles homes, and he knew that God did not have to physically be present to have his servant healed.
After Jesus heard all this:
(9)“When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, I tell you , I have not found such great faith even in Israel.
” Two times Scripture tells us that Jesus was amazed.
One is that Jesus was amazed at the lack of faith of the Israelites .
The other time Jesus was amazed at the faith of the centurion.
Question for you this morning- which faith do you have this morning?
Lack of faith or amazing faith?
In this chapter Jesus has called his disciples.
He has told them to love their enemies.
Stop judging others and take the plank out of your own eye before you become a speck inspector in others.
He says that believers should bear fruit. All believers should bear much fruit!
Then he runs into the faith of the centurion. One that understood the principals of God.
Jesus was amazed by faith. I want Jesus to be amazed by my faith- don’t you?
I want to do something outside the box because the God we serve works best outside the box!
Truth be told this morning. Do you expect God to do something extra-ordinary to happen to you this morning?
To the body of believers here this morning? Or do you just live a life of survival, and if God would do anything that would surprise you?
