Words of Jesus Podcast - Faith of Jesus Christ

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Revelation 14 - "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." The Spirit of God has not ceased to speak to His people since the Voice of God walked with Adam in the Garden of Eden. The Scriptures record some of these conversations. God spoke to the people through Moses, through the Prophets, and through His Son (the Word made flesh). Jesus continued this communication to our day with the instruction, "Keep my commandments and the Father and I will come inside and lead and guide you - from the inside." Do you have faith?***Ch. 31 - JESUS STILLS THE STORMONE DAY Jesus said to his disciples: "Let us go over unto the other side of the lake." They launched forth in a ship and other little ships sailed with them. There arose a great storm which lashed the waves and beat them so so high that they broke over the ship. The boat rapidly filled with water while Jesus slept on a pillow in the stern. As they were in great peril, his disciples wakened Jesus, saying: "Lord, save us! We perish!" Jesus arose, saying: "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" Then Jesus rebuked the winds and said to the sea: "Peace, be still." The wind ceased and the sea grew calm. Jesus said to his disciples: "Why are ye fearful? Have ye not yet faith?" The disciples were afraid and wondering. They said to one another: "What manner of man is is this? For he commands even the winds and the sea, and they obey him.***Scriptures: Matthew 8:18, 23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello friends and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. Don Harris here. Thank you for all your response and your emails. If you'd like to send an email, you can send it to don at thinkredink.com. Love to get your questions, love to get your comments, and look around thinkredink.com. You see something that you'd like to have, something you're interested in, just let us know.

Write to us, give us your address. We'd be glad to send it to you. The whole purpose in what we're trying to do here is to reinforce Christianity with the things that were so important when it was created that remain important today, but I'm afraid a lot of them have been forgotten and certainly set aside for the modern,

the conventional Christian idea. I don't think that first century Jerusalem was running around pointing at this group and that group and talking about this guy and that guy and having church wars or any of the rest of this stuff going on. No. I think that there was a unity of the faith in the beginning that we need to have again. There's only one way to unify and that is for

everybody except Baptists to believe what Baptists believe. Just change what they believe. And let's just pick one and go that way. Or everybody who's not a Presbyterian now believes what Presbyterians believe. That's unity of the faith. You agree with me?

No. You know what I'm describing? I'm describing uniformity not unity. Unity in the faith is that I understand my relationship with God and I understand you have that as well and I wish you the best in that. The worst thing that I think that is to be opposed at every at the onset of any kind of argument or a discussion about doctrine and things like that is that

you want to make sure you're not talking to somebody who does indeed know it all. Or at least think that they do. You've heard me talk about holding doctrines, theologies, ideas philosophies of life, everything with an open hand nothing wrong with holding it, nothing wrong with having it but when we close our fingers around it, you just made a fist and that is exactly what is going on

among us, we ought not live that way we ought ought not live that way. Look, I don't necessarily want to hear that my Christian brother or my Christian sister is involved in idolatry. I know their denomination teaches idolatry all the time. They all do it. And they're doing it. And I hate that they're doing it. But you know what? Do it as long as you can. As long as you have an open hand when it comes to your particular denomination. Now, that's the fighting spirit.

But there's also that group of people out there that feel like that, why, by golly, they're just not qualified. I can't figure these things out on my own. I need people to help me. I want to talk to you. I want to help you. Because you can do this on your own. You do have what it takes to be a Christian that pleases our Lord God. You can do that. And friend, here's the secret. You can do that in error

as long as you're not closing your hand around something and insisting that you're right and insisting that it has to be a certain way. You're living with what you believe in an open hand where it can be taken out what shouldn't be there it can be put in there what needs to be there and you're taking time every day to hear the voice of God frankly I don't care what you're doing wrong it'll work out he's not going to allow this to happen it's like that thing

it could be several years ago now, discussing these kind of things with a person, and they were talking about, we were talking about prayer, and they were saying that, because people are very concerned that, you know, prayer is not an automatic part of my life. I don't pray because it's 9 o'clock. I don't pray because, you know, our show is opening, or our show is closing, or I'm about to preach or

they're about to take an offering or any of these kind of things. I just don't participate in those kind of things. And so people say, well, don't you ask the Lord to forgive you every day? And I said, no, I don't. Well, why not? I said, because I don't sin every day. I don't need forgiveness every day. Alright, so that goes into one conversation. But they're amazed that asking forgiveness is just not necessarily

an automatic part of my life. But I try to get across to people that if we are to sit before the Lord every day this person was saying, well what about the sins you don't know about? You've heard that. You know, Lord forgive me of all the sins I've committed which is just insincere as all get out. But I'm sorry, I can't help but say it.

I think it is. Forgive me of all the sins that I've ever committed, whatever. And the ones that I know about and the ones that I don't know about. Friend, are you really sinning against God and you don't know it? Is that really true? Because if it is, you've got another problem that you probably need to deal with right away. I know without a doubt you're not spending time before the Lord. Oh, you might be spending time before him praying, asking Him for stuff. You might spend a lot of time before Him, you know, praising Him and telling Him what a wonderful person He is, or

what a wonderful God He is, or I don't know. I don't know what you're doing in your prayer life, but here's one thing I'm sure of. You're not listening. Do you really have sin in your life that you don't even know about? And if you did, let's just say you did. Let's say you were committing a sin. You didn't know it was wrong. Paul says, I didn't know it was wrong to covet. How would I know it was wrong to covet unless the law said to me, thou shalt not covet? Good question. So let's just say that you are committing a sin and you don't know about it. You didn't know about it. You read across in the scriptures and say, oh my goodness,

I can't do that anymore. And I've been sinning all this time. Do you really think that saying to the Lord, forgive me of a sin that I didn't know I committed is sufficient? Or are you going to repent the very moment you find out? And if you do repent the moment you find out, what was all that other prayer for? Friend, we need to just quit yakking. We need to just be quiet and just stay before the Lord. And He'll open sin to you. It's one of the first things that happens, as a matter of fact.

He shows us the blackness of our own heart. Hope you got a strong heart, because it's a very difficult thing to encounter. But you'll do fine. I know it. As the Lord was oh by the way we're in chapter 31 of the little book talking about Jesus stilling the storm and naturally these stories go toward faith and I think that it is in the area of faith

that a lot of these things are just not being done properly, not being understood properly. That's the reason our prayer life stinks. It's the reason that we lack power in our life. And there's all kinds of problems with our Christianity. We don't understand. We need somebody to teach us. We need somebody to help us.

We need, we need, we need, we need, we need somebody to teach us. We need somebody to help us. We need, we need, we need, we need, we need. Well, the truth is, is that we're likely not living a life of faith. Because, frankly, I don't think a lot of people even know what it is. In the moment I say that, there's a little verse pop in your head. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for. I'm sorry. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Yeah, so?

What does that mean? How does that help me define faith? You know, you've got to know what faith is to even read that scripture. And then when you read it, as you know what faith is, and you read that scripture, you say yeah that is true but it doesn't it doesn't describe it you think about trying to describe to a blind man what green is you want to think about that for a moment well i'll tell you exactly what green is. You take the primary color yellow and mix it in equal parts with the primary color blue, and that's green.

Really, did you just complicate the problem for the blind man? Or is this some little trite saying that your preacher taught you? You know, what are you doing? You're trying to describe color to a blind man and you think by complicating it that he's going to be more satisfied? That he's going to understand? That's the category that I put that scripture in.

Faith is a substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. You didn't describe anything for me. You just added words, other words that I don't know what means. But you know what we do? We're kind of embarrassed at the fact that we don't understand. We're kind of, we want to succumb to, and we want to honor the person that we're talking to,

and we don't want to insult them. So what do we do? We kind of nod our head and say, yeah, okay, yeah, I understand. And we go off about our business and we never really pursue understanding what faith is. Faith has certain elements to it that lacking any one of the three is just simply not faith. And it's bound to come up over and over again in our study

because the life in Christ is all about faith. But can I just make it very short and succinct for you? That have you never heard the Word of God? There is no way to have faith in what the Lord has promised you. There is no way. I can't read in this Bible, I would that you prosper and be in good health. Take that scripture, you know, and I just made it mine. And I wrote it down and I put it on my mirror

or whatever else. And I just believe that it's going to happen or I believe it's true or I'm putting my faith in that scripture. Well, you see, what you've done is, you put your faith in scripture, not in the word of God. You see how this problem keeps popping up? You want to know the boil down of all the sermons that have ever been preached across the entire world for eons about

what's wrong with the church today? That's what's wrong with the church today. We're out of communication with our God. We're out of communication. The lines have been cut. The frequencies have been closed down. They've been jammed. The satellite is out of orbit. There's no power to run the receiver. Friend, you're just out of communication with God. You know, if that is the case, I understand that a person would turn straight to his Scriptures, but to the Scriptures first? Really? Is that

really what we're supposed to do? We're supposed to go to the scriptures first? Really? Is that really what we're supposed to do? We're supposed to go to the Bible and pull some verse out and believe it? And that's what we're calling faith? No. Faith requires a living word of God. This is what Jesus said when he says that we don't live by faith we we don't live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of god this is how we live we're not living by bread alone we're living by the daily bread jesus christ says i am that bread i i make provision for this bread. I have open lines of communication for you. This is the way this is.

You have to have faith in what I am saying. Not what I said. Certainly not what I said to somebody else. Certainly not what I said to somebody else 1,500 years ago, 3,000 years ago, or however long or short it is. I can show you a scripture in the Bible, a story in the Bible, where the Lord empowered the children of Israel to do something,

and because they refused, that power was gone immediately. The next morning they tried to pursue what the Lord said had empowered them the night before to do that they refused and they found themselves absolutely powerless and some of them died over it. You see this bread, this manna, it has a characteristic and that is when the sun's up, when the sun's hot, when the sun's hot, which means up, it melts away.

It disappears. It doesn't hang around forever. I know. I know. I get the premise of the scriptures that talk about never being too late. God's mercy endures forever. And the word of the Lord shall endure forever. And I have heard it all. But you're going to have to come. You want to replace this thought in my head that works so perfectly for me? That makes sense out of all the scriptures? You're going to have to tell me why. That doesn't work.

Because it doesn't. I think that honesty is probably one of the most, can something be most missing? But I think that it's number one that is the missing ingredient in many Christians' lives. They're just not honest. They're just not honest. We have preachers that encourage us not to be honest. Don't go around telling people you're sick. Tell them you're healed in the name of Jesus. Well, I'm in a wheelchair.

Doesn't matter. I'm not moved by what I see. I'm only moved by what I believe. Well, that's a really nice saying, but, you know, after you're gone on your jet, I'm going to be pushing these wheels to get where I need to go. And I've said to people, they said they've prayed about something and it never happened. I prayed to speak in tongues and it never happened.

I prayed to prophesy and it never happened. I prayed for interpretation and it never happened. I prayed for healing. I prayed for my baby. I prayed for my husband. I prayed for my wife. Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened. Why do you think that is? And I said, well, probably because you're honest. Because you see, if you're not honest and you're willing to just claim something in the name of Jesus, man, I can nurse you along for the next 5, 6,

7, 8, 9, 10 years giving to the ministry and telling people what a wonderful guy I am and giving you little pieces here and there and say, well, you know, you left out one of the 12 steps or whatever. It's, you know, I shouldn't be giggling about it because this is pitiful. These are people's lives that these preachers are messing with. Why don't you just tell them the truth? Why don't you tell them the truth? You want your baby healed? Sit before the Lord and listen for the

Lord to say, it's time for your baby to get up. Let's go in and spend some time with him. And you go in there and you can have faith that what God has told you in your quiet corner, in your quiet closet, that he's told you that he's going to raise that child up. You've heard that in your spirit. You know that to be fact. Now you've got something to put your faith in. But you want to go see where Jesus touched the beer, touched the casket, and

raised some widow and named son from the dead, and you're going to claim that for yourself? I'm afraid there's a funeral in your future. And we all know this. Why do we continue to do this? Some people make us, try to make us ashamed of ourselves that we can't do these things. You don't want to be ashamed of yourself. We're waiting to hear the voice of God. If Jesus can walk by a lame man for 38 years and never touch him or speak to him and never raise him on his feet. That man who laid at the gate beautiful did so for 38 years. The entire life of Jesus Christ

that man laid right there. Jesus never touched him. Why? Because I always do what the Father says for me to do. I always do what pleases the Father. Jesus didn't have the power to raise him up. Yeah, he had the power, but he didn't have the trigger. He didn't hear the word from his Father saying, this is what needs to be done. The Father had intended for Peter, James, and John

to walk by that guy and raise him up. Later on, he needed that to be done then. He doesn't think like we do. But you see, when we don't know this, we don't know the back story, it'll drive us out of our minds thinking God doesn't care and God doesn't do miracles today or I'm an atheist now, I'm an agnostic now. We just knee-jerk reactions to very

hurtful situations. It hurts to watch your baby suffer. It hurts to watch your children suffer. It hurts when you realize every day you wake up, your marriage is going to be worse today than it was yesterday. These are tough times, and we all have real problems. We need to have a God that we trust. And the only way to trust Him is to let Him speak for Himself.

Take your scriptures. You can trust your scriptures. You read the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. What are you going to find? People to whom God spoke instruction and they put it into practice. They put faith in His words. They believe that what He said would actually come to pass. You see, that's faith

in a living God. That's faith in a living god that's faith in living words you're not going to find them you know thumbing through the scriptures and finding scriptures and putting their faith in that or pasting it on their wall or writing it on their mirror and lipstick or whatever they do i don't know what they do. But they're just constantly disappointed and disappointed and disappointed. And the preachers that lied to them, you know, pass out candy and make them feel better about it. And you know, when the worst comes to worse, you know, what do they say? Well, I guess you just didn't have enough faith. This is all done by faith.

They make all kinds of excuses. Or they say, well, you know, the Bible says God works in mysterious ways. His wonders do perform. No, preacher, I don't know who taught you that, but the Scriptures don't say that. That's a song. But to them, it's all the same. It's all the same. That's religion. It doesn't have to make sense. Alright, so Jesus is stilling a storm. Let's get into our story.

One day Jesus said to his disciples, let us go over to the other side of the lake. Are you listening? Are you listening? What did Jesus say? He said, This is important. the waves and beat them so high that they broke over the ship. The boat rapidly filled with water while Jesus slept on a pillow in the stern. It must have got wet in there. And as they were

in great peril, his disciples wakened Jesus saying, Lord, save us, we perish. In one of the Gospels, they said, Carest thou not that we perish? Doesn't that just kind of make you ill in your stomach to realize that, oh my goodness, I think I've said that a couple of times. Don't you care?

Jesus arose and said, Why are you so fearful, O ye of little faith? And Jesus rebuked the winds and said to the sea, Peace, be still. The wind ceased and the sea grew calm. Jesus said to his disciples, Now, why are you so fearful? Now, Jesus said to them,

he called them, O ye little faith. Actually, the Greek lends an idea of fledgling faith to this. There are people that have no faith, that's true. But there's also people of very small faith. And I think that the Greek, I don't think the Greek does that here if I remember correctly. But in another place where it talks about having very small faith, that it's really talking about fledgling faith.

They're just learning how. They're just learning how to believe that God means what he says and says what he means. And when he gives us a commission, we should obey it. To the best of our ability, we should obey it. So he says, why are you so fearful? After everything's

quiet and down. There's nothing. They can't hear anything but the sails of the boat dripping into the water that's in the hull and they're all soaked and they're all standing there in the glistening sunlight. Now there were clouds a while ago but everything looks like it's going to be okay. And Jesus is saying, you were saying? And then he says, have you not yet faith? You see, faith is something that you don't just acquire it. You don't just have it. You don't muster it up. But as you exercise your faith in the Word of God, what happens is

one day you realize, oh my goodness, I really do have faith that everything's going to be okay. I've heard from the Lord on this. There's nothing to fear here. I'm working under a commission. Now let me explain to you that at the beginning of this story when he says let us go to the other side of the lake. Here we have the introduction to this faith scenario. What we have is the introduction of God's word.

Here you have Jesus Christ saying, here's your commission, boys. You see that city over there on the other side of the lake? We want to go over there. Now, I happen to believe that, you know, Jesus has been around a pretty good while. And, you know, you can find a man that's just been a fisherman for 40 years can pretty much tell that bad weather's on its way.

But when you think of a guy like Jesus Christ, the creator of the world, our God, I mean, second in command in the universe, you know, I would say that he probably has pretty good instinct. And I think that when he told them, let's go way out yonder. You see way over there on the other side, that's where we're going. I think he kind of knew that we're sailing in the bad sea. And so, he said, let's go.

Well, they, when they take that commission to themselves, it's hard to have faith in those words. There are people who are very proud of being what they call called to preach. I have a lot of people, because I preach a controversial gospel. Yeah, I do know that. You know, they say, were you called to preach? And I say, you mean today?

Or yesterday when I was preaching? You see, I don't feel like this is some, you know, God didn't give me a badge or a license, or yesterday when I was preaching. You see, I don't feel like this is some, God didn't give me a badge or a license or stamp my hand so I can return. My life with Christ is on a daily basis. I might not be a preacher today. I might have to do something else. I don't know.

But if He calls me to preach, then I do that. So if he's called me to do something that's seemingly a mundane task, and I'm out doing some glorious preaching work, you know what I am? Disobedient. Don't get caught with this. Don't get caught. All right, time for us to go. We're going to see you right here next time. Till then, think ready, my friend. Bye-bye. Time for us to go. We're going to see you right here next time. Until then, think ready, my friend. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Email don at thinkredink.com.

That's thinkredc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you