Practical steps to releasing our faith, how does faith work, step out and find out, obey God and watch what He does in your life.
how do we release our faith well the
first thing we do is we ask
but you have to ask according to the
word
now what is faith hebrews 11 1 says
faith
is the assurance the confirmation
the title deed of the things we hope for
being the proof of the things that we do
not see
see when you’re asking for something
by faith you don’t see it yet as a
reality in your life
and a lot of times it doesn’t even make
any sense to your mind
it’s like it’s way beyond anything that
you would ever
in your sane mind think that you could
have but
faith sees things that
don’t make any sense to the natural man
what you know i marvel i look back and i
marvel
at why in the world i would have ever
in my wildest imagination thought
that i could do what i’m doing today
and yet when god speaks to you when he
puts something in your heart
when something in the word comes alive
to you
if you’ll listen to your spirit and not
your head you see
things and you can believe for things
that just
absolutely don’t even make any sense
and i remember 42 years ago when i had
listened to my first
teaching back then teaching cassette
tapes
and i listened to somebody preach for a
whole hour
on one scripture in mark chapter 5
called cross over to the other side
and first of all i couldn’t believe that
anybody could keep my interest for a
whole hour
preaching on anything because prior to
that
15 minutes in church was enough to knock
me out
but when the word that you hear is
anointed
by the holy spirit and it’s a word and
due season for your life
and it’s something that you can apply to
your life there’s a part of you that
gets really excited
so i just couldn’t believe how exciting
that message was to me and what i felt
on the inside
as i was listening to it and this desire
rose up in me a lot of people want to
know well how do i know if god’s
speaking to me
well one of the ways that he speaks to
us is through
desire like a strong desire that just
won’t go away and many times what we’re
desiring doesn’t seem to make any sense
and this strong desire rose up in me
and to me i felt like i heard words
but i’m not going to tell you i heard an
audible voice but
there was something that i heard in the
spirit
and this is the way it came to me you
are going to go
around the world and preach the gospel
and at that time what i heard because we
only can hear
based on what we know how to apply it
and i heard
and you’re going to have a large
teaching
tape ministry well
that was all i heard and from then on
my whole desire from then till now has
been to teach
the word of god and literally i do have
a teaching tape
ministry although that doesn’t make that
much sense today because
we’re on television in 100 languages
in two-thirds of the world on hundreds
and hundreds of tv stations now wait a
minute i’m not trying to brag i want to
make a point
this teaching that i’m doing here today
will be divided up into 28-minute
teachings
and those will go on radio and
television
and podcasts and the website
and so literally through recorded
messages
through cds teaching tapes now they just
download all that stuff and it’s it’s a
lot easier
but literally that is what has happened
this what we’re doing here today
is going to be seen and heard in a
hundred languages around the world
and i don’t think that’s very bad for
somebody with not a lot of education
and not really all that
[Applause]
and i still i told somebody recently i
said you know for the life of me
i don’t know whatever made me think
that i could do this what would ever
make i mean i didn’t have any religious
training i mean i went to church
i’ll tell you all i had i loved jesus
and i just either was pretty dumb or i
had not a lot of nerve one of the two
but i just started taking
little steps of faith and you see faith
is released three ways
if you’re taking notes you want to write
this down faith is released through
praying
through saying and through doing
praying you ask god for something you
release your faith with it
the bible says don’t pray in doubt and
unbelief pray in faith
believing that what you’re asking for
will happen
it may not happen right away but you
keep believing
that it will happen you say something
you line your confession up with what
you’ve prayed
you don’t pray for your kids to be saved
and then go to lunch with your friend
and talk about how you’re afraid they’re
never going to get saved
come on and that’s what we do so often
we pray for something when we’re feeling
spiritual
and then by the next day we’ve already
cursed our prayer
by saying just the opposite four or five
times of what we just asked god to do
god i pray that you’ll help us get out
of debt i pray that you’ll meet all of
our needs
i pray that the time will come god when
we can own our own house
i pray god that i can get my car paid
off and then you go to lunch with
somebody and you say we will never get
out of debt
i probably never owned my own home never
have a new car i’m just the tail end of
everything and every time i get 10
the devil steals 20.
sound like anybody you know come on
don’t sit there and look spiritual i
want to know the truth
and so we really need to learn
if we want god’s will to get our mouth
in agreement with god’s will
and you know this is not a name it
claimant message where you can just say
anything you want and get it
but you can say the word of god and if
you are
saying the same thing as god says
which is what confession is to say the
same thing as
if you say the same thing that god says
and you’re doing what god is asking you
to do
you know there’s promises in the bible
there’s conditions that go along with
those promises
you believe you obey you do what god
asks you to do when i got that vision in
my heart to teach
i had to take steps of faith i stepped
out i started a bible study
five years i felt like god said to stop
that bible study
and he was going to do something new for
a year i did nothing
that was not very much fun you know you
think
if you if you do something you believe
god’s asking you to do
and it doesn’t seem to work for a while
don’t give up
just keep believing if you heard from
god that god will bring it to pass and
make it happen
he’ll either redirect you or you just
need to wait on him
well then i went to work at a church in
saint louis and it was a brand new
church not very
big only had about 30 people the first
service i went to
and after a period of time they asked me
to start
a ladies meeting at the church well i
didn’t want to teach ladies because i
had a vision to teach
everybody that could breathe i mean i
had a big vision
i mean i prayed stupid stuff like god
let me help every person on the planet
and even while i was praying it my mind
would go that’s dumb
that’s dumb how do you think any one
person and especially a woman
come on ladies when i started doing this
it was very unpopular
very unpopular so i had to get out and
dig up a lot of fallow ground
and be really determined to not quit and
not give up
and so i didn’t want it i didn’t want to
just teach
you’re welcome i didn’t want to just
teach women i wanted to teach everybody
and so for a while i thought no i’m not
going to do that and then the thing that
god put in my heart is well that’s the
only
thing in front of you to do right now so
it’s better to do something rather than
do nothing
so i started doing that well
after that the pastor recognized there
was a real anointing on my life so he
started asking me to teach in the church
when he wasn’t there
so lo and behold now it’s not just women
there’s men there
and so i became an associate pastor at
the church i taught in bible college on
and on and on
i worked there five years and then god
spoke to me again to step
out and he told me to quit my job and
take the ministry and go north south
east and west
well the thing is nobody knew me north
south east or west
don’t you love it when god tells you to
do something and your mind goes well
that doesn’t make any sense
come on has god ever spoken to you to do
something and you just couldn’t get your
mind to agree with it
you know what most people do when that
happens they just don’t do it they wait
for something that makes
sense but i’m going to tell you
something
god is not always reasonable
he doesn’t always tell you to do
something that you can reason out
and fit it into your normal way of
thinking
now i’m not suggesting that anybody just
start doing all kinds of crazy stuff and
wild stuff and stuff that doesn’t make
any sense
but i’ll tell you one thing if you
believe that god’s put something in your
heart and it stays
and it’s not going away and it’s not
going away and i don’t think there’s
anything wrong with asking god if it’s
something major to give you
a good solid confirmation i don’t think
that we
should have to do that all the time we
need to trust god’s word but if it’s
major
you wait for a good confirmation and
then you take
one step and you see what happens
if that seems to work you take another
step
and you see what happens and if that
seems to work
then you take another step and pretty
soon those steps that were baby steps
are starting to get bigger
and bigger and bigger and before you
know it you know what’s going to happen
you’re going to be running with god full
speed ahead
doing things that you cannot even
imagine