Prepare Yourself for Jesus’ Return (part 7)

Faith and words go together!

8.20.2023

Review

This is the 7^th lesson on preparing yourself for Jesus’ return.

We are living in an unprecedented time just prior to Jesus’ return.

 

We’ve talked about the time period we are in as the time period at the close of the age of grace and the time just before Jesus returns.

It is a time of judgment.

Friday morning the Lord spoke to me before I even lifted my head from my pillow. Matthew 24.

The seedbed for Matthew 24 is in place. The framework for world government is being formed and slowly implemented. The rise of the world leader the Bible calls antiChrist is being formed. America is in turmoil. Our Federal government has forsaken our constitution and bill of rights, creating a form of lawlessness.

One world gov’t ideology has formed: to weaken the family structure through immorality and woke ideology, to remove parental rights, to control the individual, to force compliance by limiting access to your money, to create an eventual digital only currency, to create the dissolution of the worth of the dollar and its use worldwide in a play that will eventually produce hyperinflation, to move the world into WW3 as nations prepare for conflict. The goods you need and infrastructure services may be cut or drastically reduced. Get ready now!

At the same time, the power of God is rising. Prayer movements are forming. God’s people are waking up! Get involved in our prayer meetings!

It is a time of God’s miracle-working power helping His people in not only meeting their needs, but in helping them minister to people who have no clue what is going on.

It’s a time of getting close to God and keeping your heart clean and open to Him.

It’s a time of getting serious with the Bible and letting it fill your mind and heart!

Make yourself available to our services, podcasts, blogs, Small Groups. Press in and pursue God!

I spoke last Sunday on what it looks like to live by faith. I want to continue that today.

If you can grasp the principle of faith, you will be afraid of nothing, and will be prepared to go into whatever the future holds.

Philippians 4:19 (NKJV)

19 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

We have a covenant with God where He has promised to help us during judgment times.

God’s people were provided for in the OT during: a flood in Noah’s Time, a meteor strike during the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, a famine in Joseph’s time, during Egyptian judgments during Moses’ time, and during national judgment during Daniel’s time.

And our faith in God’s Word will take us through whatever we face in our future!

Hebrews 11:6 (NKJV)

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Understand that there will be a challenge to faith just before Jesus returns.

Luke 18:8 (NKJV)

I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?”

1 Timothy 4:1 (NLT)

Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons.

2 Thessalonians 2:3 (AMP)

Let no one in any way deceive or entrap you, for that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first [that is, the great rebellion, the abandonment of the faith by professed Christians], and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction [the Antichrist, the one who is destined to be destroyed],

Pressure will come to conform and yield, giving up or compromising your confidence and faith in Jesus.

When you understand the elements of faith, you will learn not to be moved by what may come!

Until Jesus returns, faith should be our response to the pressures of living in chaotic times.

Matthew 24:13 (NLT)

But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Now is the time to be living by faith and getting accustomed to operating in life by faith!

When I came to Jesus in 1976, I had attended church all of my 18 years of life, mostly 3 times a week – Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night.

Yet, I knew very little about faith other than being saved by faith in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

The concept of living by this faith in the daily grind of life was a foreign concept to me.

The idea that you could actually trust God in the details of life in family, career, finances, health, relationships, and in all sorts of tough places, was foreign to me.

I have found that most believers have not heard the simple principles of how to apply faith to every single element of life.

1. The New Testament emphasizes living by faith.

Mark 9:23 (NKJV)

Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

1 John 5:4 (NKJV)

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world (the thoughts, the reasonings, the mindset, the way of living, and the circumstantial challenges). And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

Ephesians 6:16 (NKJV)

Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

2 Corinthians 5:7 (AMP)

For we walk by faith, not by sight [living our lives in a manner consistent with our confident belief in God’s promises]

2. Living by faith means taking God at His word even when you don’t see it working or feel that it is making a difference!

Philippians 4:11 (A.S.Way)

No, I have learned in whatever condition I am, to be independent of circumstances. I am schooled to bear the depths of poverty; I am schooled to bear abundance. In life as a whole, and all its circumstances, I have mastered the secret of living – how to be the same amidst repletion and starvation, amidst abundance and privation. I am equal to every lot through the help of Him who gives me inward strength.

The reason a person living by faith can be the same in the good and in the challenging times is that the person living by faith is looking at God’s Word during the pressured time. You expect God to honor His Word, period.

Lack, challenge, adversity, or sickness attacking in any way moves a person living by faith to remind God of what He says!

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NLT)

For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

3. Living by faith means believing right now that what God says in the Bible is true, even when it contradicts what you see and feel!

Living by faith means that you believe that right now, not some time in the future, you have what God has promised you. You are not looking to get it one day. You believe that you receive it right now!

It may at the moment seem untrue, but you just keep your focus on God’s Word, and act like you believe it, period!

 

Faith is for what God has provided for you but you can’t see, feel, or experience at the moment.

Hebrews 11:1 (NKJV)

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Substance – Greek – Hupostasis – Hupo = under, stasis = a standing

A standing under, that which stands, or is set, under, a foundation. Used in the technical sense of a title deed, standing under the claim to the property to support its validity.

Title deed.

Evidence

Something that furnishes or tends to furnish proof; that which supports the existence of something.

Three things found in this verse:

1. Faith is NOW.

HOPE looks to the future for something. But when you apply faith to your hope, it brings the future hope to right NOW.

If it’s not now, it’s not faith.

If you are looking to get it some time in the future, you are living in hope, not faith.

Faith takes your hope and brings it from some time in the future to right now!

Our natural responses to life say that I will believe it when I see it. But faith turns that around and believes before it sees.

1981 – I went to visit a man in the hospital. He did not understand faith, even though he thought he did. His words gave away what he was believing. “I am going to be healed.” He died the next month…

2. Faith is the title deed to what you have asked for. You may not see or feel it, but it exists!

Ephesians 1:3 (NKJV)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

2 Peter 1:2-4 (NKJV)

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

3. Faith is the evidence that what you have asked for actually exists.

Dr. J. Oswald Sanders Quote:

Faith enables the believing soul to treat the future as present and the invisible as seen.

SO you THINK as though what you have asked for is yours already. You SPEAK as though you believe you receive what you asked for. And you ACT as though you believe you receive what you asked for.

Your “job” is to stand in faith until it manifests. You think, you speak, and you act as though you believe you receive what you asked for.

Faith is a gap-stander. Faith takes the place of what you asked for until it shows up.

Illustrations: Physical

Tennis elbow –

My foot – achilles tendon

My back – December 9^th, 2:00 pm – L4 and L5 bulged.

Purchasing this property 10 years ago…

4. Your faith and your words are inseparable.

There is no faith without words.

If it never comes out of your mouth, or if there is a mixture of doubt with hope, you are not acting with faith.

Hebrews 11:3 (NKJV)

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

And God said in Genesis 1.

Words filled with faith bring what exists with God in the spiritual world into the seen world.

Romans 10:8 (NKJV)

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach)

Romans 10:9-10 (NKJV)

That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

2 Corinthians 4:13 (NKJV)

And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak

Matthew 12:34-37 (NKJV)

Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. 36 But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. 37 For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.

Your words show what you believe.

What you say is your faith speaking.

Well, you say, I am not saying anything! Then, you are not believing anything!

Even if you do not believe it at first, start saying what you believe.

If something happened to the economy, I would immediately ask God to supernaturally make a way for us and me financially, and would begin to say that God is making a financial way for us!

If suddenly I had to comply with aberrant beliefs to be able to do commerce, I would immediately ask God to intervene and make a way! And then I would begin to say, “God is making a way for me. My family and I will be supplied!”

And I would then go into the worship and praise mode!

Mark 11:12-14 (NKJV)

Now the next day, when they had come out from Bethany, He was hungry. 13 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. 14 In response Jesus said to it, “Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.”

And His disciples heard it.

Mark 11:20-24 (NKJV) Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. 21 And Peter, remembering, said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.” 22 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. 23 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. 24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”

Says is mentioned three times, and believes is mentioned one time.

Words are three times more important than believing, because words can actually change what you believe!

What are you saying about:

Health, Money, Job, Family, Marriage , Children, Future?

If you say nothing, you are believing nothing!

And nothing will change until you act your faith!

I filled note cards with scripture and said them out loud each day for years. At first they did not seem real, but now they rule my life!

You can have what you say! But, most people are saying what they have!

Action Points:

1. After you pray and ask, do you believe that you have it right now?
2. Do you talk as though you have what you have asked God for?
3. What are you saying about the various areas of life? What you are saying is what you are believing.

Next time: actions that correspond with faith.