Looking Through the Faith Telescope
Believing is Seeing
1/15/03
I. Introduction
Blondin lived from 1824-1897 and was a famous French tightrope walker and acrobat. His greatest fame came in 1859 when he accomplished one of his greatest feats for the first time- walking across a 1100 foot tight-rope suspended 160 feet above the waters of Niagara Falls. Blondin went on to walk across the falls several times each time with a different theatrical flare: blindfolded, in a sack, on stilts, and sitting down halfway while he made and ate an omelet. On one such high-wire walk, Blondin crossed over the falls pushing a wheelbarrow. When he reached the other side, he asked the spectators if they believed he could do it again. Everyone cheered. Blondin then asked if they believed he could cross the tightrope with someone in the wheelbarrow. Everyone cheered believing that he could do it and wanting to see this incredible stunt. Blondin then asked for a volunteer to ride in the wheelbarrow. No one stepped forward. It was one thing to believe Blondin could do what they had all seen him do, and another to put your life in his hands letting him push you across the falls on the high wire.
Tonight we are going to talk about this thing we call faith. First, what is faith?
II. Faith Defined
Faith – pistis – conviction, confidence, trust, belief, reliance, trustworthiness, and persuasion.
Faith is being totally convinced of something, being fully persuaded that it is real and true, enough to trust in it and rely on it, having total confidence that it will do what it says it will do.
Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” You gotta have faith. Faith is vital to receive anything from God. Do you want to receive from God? You gotta have faith. Faith goes into God’s pile and gets what it needs and brings it back to your pile. Do you want things from God’s pile? You gotta have faith. Let’s take a deeper look.
I need somebody that really believes they have faith. I mean, somebody with faith the size of a great big old mustard seed. Trust fall time.
____________ (volunteer)’s actions defined faith. ________ believed, was convinced that we would be able to catch him/her. We fully persuaded him/her not only that we were able to catch, but that it was indeed our purpose, our will, to catch him/her.
Some people are convinced after having seen someone else fall, that the group is able to catch someone. But, it may take a bit more convincing to persuade that person that the group will catch him. A lot of folks are like that with God. They are convinced, or have faith, that God can heal them. But they may not be as persuaded that God WILL heal them. Or, they are convinced that God can give them a new house. But they may not be as persuaded that God WILL give them a new house. Let’s keep digging here about faith.
III. The Telescope of Faith
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
The word substance here means title deed. It’s your legal claim to what belongs to you. If someone has a deed to a house, it’s his house. He owns it. You have a title deed to the things you hope for – faith. Faith says you have legal ownership of that Ferrari you’ve always hoped you’d get- by faith, it’s yours, you own it. What are you hoping for? Good grades? You got it. Lunch money? It’s yours. A boyfriend or girlfriend? You have it. A puppy? You own that. A new car? The title’s in your name. A later curfew? Go ask your parents. No. It’s yours. Faith is the title deed to those things you hope for.
Faith is also the evidence of things not seen. Now, what does that mean? Think about this. If someone is on trial for murder, the jury’s going to expect to see some type of evidence. For instance, the murder weapon, a revolver, a rope, a lead pipe, a candlestick, a wrench, or a knife, with the suspect’s fingerprints may be a type of evidence that they’ll want to see.
So, the prosecuting attorney presents exhibit A, and begins telling his story. Mr. Green was sneaking around the Conservatory and he found this lead pipe, which I will present as my primary form of evidence.
Well, this evidence is proof that Mr. Green was, in fact, the murderer. The prosecutor didn’t actually see Mr. Green commit the crime, nobody did but the victim, but the attorney knows, based on the evidence, or proof, that Mr. Green did commit the crime. Also, you can’t see the wind blow, but you see the leaves rustle, and the trees wave. The leaves and trees moving is evidence that the wind is blowing. Well, you may not be able to physically see the Ferrari that you’re hoping for, but faith is the proof that it’s yours. It’s the evidence that the Ferrari belongs to you.
If you look through the faith telescope, you can see the Ferrari, and the title with your name on it. Well, how do I go from seeing my Ferrari through the faith telescope to actually touching my Ferrari and sitting in the driver’s seat? I’m glad you asked!
IV. From Faith to Feeling
To move from faith to actually feeling something with your fingers is a bit of a process. It’s not just enough to be convinced that God wants you to be prosperous and have all the desires of your heart, which includes your Ferrari. James 2:17 “Faith without works is dead.” Smith Wigglesworth said, “Faith isn’t faith until it acts on what it believes.” There’s something you have to do other than just believing. There is a process, a formula, by which your faith functions. You know about formulas, right? You’ve all had a math class or two. What’s the Pythagorean theorem? A2 + B2 = C2 . That’s a formula. You put in the value of A, multiply it by itself, add the value of B, multiplied by itself, and you should get the value of C, multiplied by itself. What’s the formula for the area of a square? Length X width. You can put in the value of the length, and multiply it by the value of the width, and you have the area of a square. Well, there is also a formula for getting what you want from your Heavenly Father. The formula is this: (Faith + Confession) X Patience = Manifestation. So, you put in your faith, your persuasion and conviction that God’s word is true and that you really do get the desires of your heart, add to that your confession that what you want is yours, multiply that by waiting a while, and you’ll have what you believe and say.
Mark 11:12-14 “Now the next day, when they had come out from Bethany, He was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, He went to see if perhaps He would find something on it. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response Jesus said to it, ‘Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.’ And His disciples heard it.”
Now, if you know anything about fig trees, you know that they bear fruit before they grow leaves. So, Jesus, having seen this fig tree with leaves on it, thought that this tree would surely have figs for him to munch on, cause he was hungry. But when he got close enough to the tree, he didn’t see any figs. This tree just lied to Jesus. The tree said, “If you can see my leaves, then I have figs.” Then Jesus walks over to the tree, and the tree starts doing this little dance, and singing, “Na na na boo boo, I fooled you. Ha ha.” So, Jesus responds to the tree by saying, “You’ll never have fruit again, you liar,” or something like that. Then he moves on. Jesus and his disciples keep traveling and in the next passage you see that Jesus stops to kick some booty at the temple in Jerusalem, and then the next day, they travel back the same way they came.
Mark 11: 20-24 “Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered away.’ So Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
Well, here you go. Jesus just gave us the same formula for getting what you want. Faith- he says whoever does not doubt in his heart, but believes. That’s faith. And he adds confession- whoever SAYS to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea.” That’s confession. Faith + confession equals “he will have whatever he says” which is manifestation. He doesn’t necessarily include patience here in his version, but had Jesus and his disciples sat there at the fig tree the moment he told it to die, and stared at it until the next day when it withered, they would have had to have some patience. He said, “he WILL have whatever he says,” not “he will automatically, right at that moment be able to see and feel whatever it is that he wants.” Have you heard the phrase “A watched pot never boils”? Well, if you actually watch a pot with water in it on a stove, you’ll see that it does eventually boil. However, if you walk away and do something else, it’ll seem to boil a lot faster. And you may walk away for five minutes, come back, and you see just a few bubbles rising in the water. Then you come back in another five minutes and it’s boiling over. Well, you have faith that it’s going to boil, and you say it’s going to boil. All it takes now, is waiting for it to actually boil. And it does, eventually. That’s why I added patience to our formula for getting what you want.
Well, why do I have to have patience? Why don’t I automatically get what I want right then. I mean, I can go to Burger King and have it my way right away, why doesn’t it work that way with God? He’s the King of more than just burgers. Many things may cause the lag time. I mean, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the span of time between your amen and the moment that the answer to your prayer comes knocking on your door, right? There are a number of reasons why some lag times may be longer than other lag times.
V. The Lag Time – Why Patience is a Factor
Operators are standing by in heaven to grant your requests. Literally, angels are waiting to be released to go to work on your behalf. So, here’s the process. Dear Father…God’s listening. You say, “I know your Word says that I can have the desires of my heart if I delight myself in you. I am delighted in you, so I would like a Ferrari.” God says, “Great. I’ll send out the angels right away. So the angels go back to the warehouse. They go to the row with all the Ferraris, they pick up the blue one, and they say, No, he wanted the black one. They find a black one with a cassette player and cloth seats. No, he wanted a CD player and leather interior. They finally find your Ferrari. That’s taken them one day on heaven’s clock…that’s a thousand days earth time. You’ve already had to wait awhile-almost 3 years. So, the angel’s on his way to deliver your Ferrari, and suddenly he stops in his tracks. Why? Because you cancelled the order. How? You said, “I don’t think that Ferrari is ever going to get here. Why did I even want a Ferrari in the first place?” So, the angel heads back to the warehouse to put the Ferrari back in its place. While the angel’s on his way back, you ask God for forgiveness and tell him, “I’m sorry, God. I don’t know why I ever doubted you. I know you’ve got that Ferrari for me. I thank you that it’s on the way.” Well, the angel does a 180 and starts heading back to earth. He finally gets to your door and he’s about to ring the doorbell when he hears, “Man, that Ferrari’s never gonna come to me. I can’t believe I asked for something so expensive.” The angel turns around and heads back to the warehouse. There is no telling how long this process goes on. This process also works the other way.
Proverbs 18:21 “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.”
A nice car, a Ferrari, is life, it’s in the abundant life package. But what about death. Why would I order death? You’re working on your woodworking project for Shop class – a bird house. You’ve got your hammer and your nails and you’re banging away. You weren’t paying very close attention and suddenly you hit your thumb with the hammer. Instead of thanking God that your finger is in tact, you give the order for destruction, “Damn it.” You just spoke death over your thumb. To damn something means to condemn to an unhappy fate. Now, if you hadn’t cancelled the order ten minutes later by saying, “Father, forgive me,” you wouldn’t have a thumb right now. Well, day in and day out, we’re probably ordering and canceling, ordering and canceling, over and over. It’s a wonder some of us have anything we want.
If you want your lag time to be short, practice the formula for getting what you want day by day. Faith speaks, Faith believes. Don’t cancel the order for life, and you can have what you see when you look through the faith telescope.
You need faith every day. You need faith just to get up in the morning and go to school, but I believe it’s time for our faith to go after some mountains. I’m tired of moving mole hills. Once we learn this formula of faith and confession, we’ll realize that seeing isn’t believing, but believing is seeing. Because looking through the telescope of faith, with eyes of belief, you’ll see incredible things. Not just things for me, myself, and I, but things that God wants for you. Things that will affect this youth ministry, and things that will affect this world. Learn how to use your faith to make an impact. Talk big and you’ll move some mountains.
