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Content type: Sermon Poem / Prayer Service / Tribute Incomplete Biography
Body: Hebrews 11:1-2NKJV Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. A small congregation in the foothills of the Great Smokies built a new sanctuary on a piece of land willed to them by a church member. Ten days before the new church was to open, the local building inspector informed the pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the building. Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be able to use the new sanctuary. Unfortunately, the church with its undersized lot had used every inch of their land except for the mountain against which it had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to move the mountain out of the back yard. Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all members who had "mountain moving faith." They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted before the scheduled opening dedication service the following week. At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation’s 300 members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At ten o’clock the pastor said the final "Amen". "We’ll open next Sunday as scheduled," he assured everyone. "God has never let us down before, and I believe He will be faithful this time too." The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud knock at his door. When he called "come in", a rough looking construction foreman appeared, removing his hard hat as he entered. "Excuse me, Reverend. I’m from Acme Construction Company over in the next county. We’re building a huge shopping mall. We need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We’ll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge if we can have it right away. We can’t do anything else until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle properly." The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned and there were far more members with "mountain moving faith" on opening Sunday than there had been the previous week! Would you have shown up for that prayer meeting? *** Now, the details of this story are not verifiable, so I’m not going to stand up here and say that this actually happened. I simply do not know one way or the other. If it did, then great - it is a great example of what can happen when a church takes faith seriously and asks God to do great things. If it isn’t true, that’s okay, because I know that God can do things like this, and that he does do things like this for hundreds of churches and millions of Christians across the world every day. My faith is not in the story, but in the God behind it. What is expectation…For the believer its acting as if your miracle has already happened. What are you expecting? One thing I do know if you expect nothing, you’ll hit that mark every time! Wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, these four virtues have been regarded as ‘natural virtues’, and they enjoy a history longer than the church itself. The Greeks and others held these virtues in high esteem, before the coming of Christ. They considered them to be an answer to life in and of themselves - be wise, be just, be courageous, be temperate, and you will live well. In their thinking, these virtues come from within, not from outside sources. When the church came into being, it embraced these virtues, and added three "theological virtues" - faith, hope and love. They are called theological virtues because they come from the very character of God himself, and to truly appreciate them we need to receive them from and for God himself. In other words, the first four could be generated from within, and so they are considered natural virtues, the last three could only truly be received from God, so they’ve been called theological virtues. We don’t earn our way to God’s salvation by being wise - we become wise as we take his input seriously in our lives. And it is much the same with the other virtues. They will indeed help us to live well, but they are in no way a replacement for the God we are to live well for! They are not the path to God - Jesus Christ is, and the virtues are one of the products of a life which takes him seriously. Faith is one of the few virtues that actually gets a definition in the Bible. We are treated to this definition in the first verse of our chapter - Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Sure, of what we hope for… Being sure of what we hope for is faith in the future tense. It is looking forward to our eventual arrival in Heaven even though we’ve never been there. We live with future tense faith in small and large ways every day. Parents raise their children with future tense faith, looking forward to the days when they will thrive as adults in their own rights. Sometimes we get scared that they may not succeed, or that they may be hurt along the way, and we all know that in some tragic cases a son or daughter may be lost before they reach adulthood. But we dare not drop our future tense faith in raising our children, regardless of all the possible things that might interfere with their development. They need that sense of sureness from us that they will learn, they will grow, and they will thrive as adults. There are other ways to describe faith in a future tense - loading up on freezer bags before a fishing trip because you know you’ll be packing some fish in the freezer before the day is done. - buying Christmas presents in July, - reserving a room at the beach for next summer, All of these are examples of the part of faith that is being sure of what we expect - faith future tense. But faith is not just looking ahead - it is looking around right now, and that is why we read that faith is being… Certain of what we do not see… Being certain of what we do not see is faith in the present tense. We do not see God, but we are certain that he is there. We make assumptions every day that demonstrate present tense faith. We go to work every day trusting that there will be a job waiting for us - we don’t "see" our jobs - we just know that they are there. We walk into a room and flip on the light switch, knowing the light will come on. We drive our cars trusting that the thousand parts are working in unison to keep us on the road. We don’t see them all working together - we just trust that they are and drive on. So, faith is being sure of what we hope for - future tense and being certain of what we do not see - present tense. So, what about the past? Our defining verse does not include the past, but the rest of the chapter gives examples of people who demonstrated great faith in the past. And I’m sharing some of them, hoping that you’ll accept them as truth - that you’ll put faith in them - and grow closer to God as a result. I have a present tense faith that you will accept these stories as accurate, and a future tense faith that it will benefit you spiritually, but how do we explain putting faith in something that is already occurred? Like the world being formed at God’s command. This is the primary stumbling block to the evolutionist - something from nothing. They can go on about fossil trees that have so many flaws that they end up kindling for the fire, they can go on about natural selection just to find out that nature doesn’t always select according to their rules. But they can’t get past something from nothing. God can - but can you put faith in that? Like Enoch being the first person to live without experiencing death, because God came and simply took him into heaven. Like Noah building the floating zoo, Like Abraham traveling from a life of comfort to begin a life of destiny. How do we know all this happened? How do we TRUST these accounts? In faith we are sure of our hope because God keeps his promises. We are certain of our present because God is always here for us, and we TRUST in the past because God has proven himself trustworthy again and again. Trust is based on experience - we learn to trust people as we interact with them, and we evaluate our trust based on our experience with them. If they prove themselves to do what they promise, to do what they should do, we trust them more and more. If they break their promises, try to harm us, or just neglect us, we trust them less and less. The trust that is built on past experience will affect how certain we can be that they will hold true for the present, and that affects how sure we can be for the future. Now what does all that have to do with our faith, right here and now? Do you trust that God is who he says he is, that his word is what it claims to be, and that Jesus is all that he said he was? If you can answer these questions affirmatively, then you will find that it is easier to be certain that God will help us with the present, and that it is easier to be sure that what he encourages us to expect, will one day be provided. Again, Faith becomes the substance of things…hoped for…the evidence…think about it, your faith becomes evidence. What is Evidence? Evidence is any information so given, whether furnished by witnesses or derived from documents or from any other source. Hearsay evidence is not admitted in a trial. “If what you’re believing for, moves you, and it moves God, stay in faith, because it’s just a matter of time!” P.H Faith means, “organizing your life around your expected miracle.” P.H You begin to—plan it. Talk it. Believe it. a). You begin to plan for your expected miracle. b). You begin to talk it, talk it to yourself, as well as others, as the Lord permits. c). You begin believing, seeing, and having visions of your intended miracle. Expectation qualifies you for receivership. It transfers you from the masses who need miracles...to the chosen who receive them. Expectation begins with a single seed and grows from there. Hebrew 11:32-40TLB Well, how much more do I need to say? It would take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and all the other prophets. 33 These people all trusted God and as a result won battles, overthrew kingdoms, ruled their people well, and received what God had promised them; they were kept from harm in a den of lions 34 and in a fiery furnace. Some, through their faith, escaped death by the sword. Some were made strong again after they had been weak or sick. Others were given great power in battle; they made whole armies turn and run away. 35 And some women, through faith, received their loved ones back again from death. But others trusted God and were beaten to death, preferring to die rather than turn from God and be free—trusting that they would rise to a better life afterwards. 36 Some were laughed at, and their backs cut open with whips, and others were chained in dungeons. 37-38 Some died by stoning and some by being sawed in two; others were promised freedom if they would renounce their faith, then were killed with the sword. Some went about in skins of sheep and goats, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in dens and caves. They were hungry and sick and ill-treated—too good for this world. 39 And these men of faith, though they trusted God and won his approval, none of them received all that God had promised them; 40 for God wanted them to wait and share the even better rewards that were prepared for us. Are the things I have expectations for Godly? Do they make a difference in my spiritual life? How do they affect others? Do the things I hope for touch God’s heart? Do they have any eternal value? Will my expectations help me, so that in return, I can help God’s Kingdom? I’d like to close today with another story - one that’s intended to build our faith, a story that shows what happens when all of God’s guidelines are met and we expect our prayers to become reality through faith. Unlike our opening story, this story has been checked out and found to be true. A Little Girl’s Prayer One night I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all we could do she died leaving us with a tiny premature baby and a crying two-year-old daughter. We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive, as we had no incubator. (We had no electricity to run an incubator.) We also had no special feeding facilities. Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts. One student midwife went for the box we had for such babies and the cotton wool the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly in distress to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst. Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates. "And it is our last hot water bottle!" she exclaimed. As in the West it is no good crying over spilled milk, so in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over burst water bottles. They do not grow on trees, and there are no drugstores down forest pathways. "All right," I said, "put the baby as near the fire as you safely can, and sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts. "Your job is to keep the baby warm." The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with any of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me. I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby. I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle. The baby could so easily die if it got chills. I also told them of the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died. During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt conciseness of our African children. "Please, God," she prayed, "Send us a water bottle. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, as the baby will be dead, so please send it this afternoon." While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added, "And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl, so she’ll know You really love her?" As often with children’s prayers, I was put on the spot. Could I honestly say, "Amen?" I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything. The Bible says so. But there are limits, aren’t there? The only way God could answer this particular prayer would be by sending me a parcel from the homeland. I had been in Africa for almost four years at that time, and I had never, ever received a parcel from home. Anyway, if anyone did send me a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle? I lived on the equator! Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses’ training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door. By the time I reached home, the car had gone, but there, on the verandah, was a large twenty-two-pound parcel. I felt tears pricking my eyes. I could not open the parcel alone, so I sent for the orphanage children. Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot. We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it unduly. Excitement was mounting. Some thirty or forty pairs of eyes were focused on the large cardboard box. From the top, I lifted out brightly colored, knitted jerseys. Eyes sparkled as I gave them out. Then there were the knitted bandages for the leprosy patients, and the children began to look a little bored. Then came a box of mixed raisins that would make a nice batch of buns for the weekend. Then, as I put my hand in again, I felt the . . . could it really be? I grasped it and pulled it out-yes, a brand-new, rubber hot water bottle! I cried. I had not asked God to send it. I had not truly believed that He could. Ruth was in the front row of the children. She rushed forward, crying out, "If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly, too!" Rummaging down to the bottom of the box, she pulled out the small, beautifully dressed dolly. Her eyes shone! She had never doubted. Looking up at me, she asked: "Can I go over with you, Mummy, and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?" That parcel had been on the way for five whole months, packed up by my former Sunday school class, whose leader had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle, even to the equator. And one of the girls had put in a dolly for an African child--five months before—in answer to the expecting prayer of a ten-year-old to bring it "that afternoon."
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