Words of Jesus Podcast - If You Had Faith

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

A change in direction happens in an instant; however, arriving at the destination you desire requires action. Daily action. It takes time to overcome the mess of living in error for years. Be patient. Keep the commandments. Never violate your conscience. Take time everyday to hear the voice of God. The discipline of change may be difficult, embrace it; knowing a relationship with God is worth every sacrifice you make. Lay down your life.  In the Scriptures Jesus says, “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.”***Ch 34. - JESUS HEALS A LONG-SUFFERING WOMANAS JESUS had passed along on his way to the house of Jairus, great crowds had thronged about him. Among the crowd was a woman who had suffered twelve years from a hemorrhage. Though she had spent all her money on physicians, none had cured her; instead, she had grown worse. She thought to herself: "If I may but touch his garment, I shall be healed." She pressed through the throng, came up behind Jesus and touched his garment. Immediately the flow of blood stopped, and she felt in her body that she was completely cured. Jesus turned and said: "Who touched me?" His disciples replied: "Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, 'Who touched me?'" But Jesus said: "Somebody hath touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." The woman knew that her act had not gone unnoticed. She came trembling up to Jesus and fell down before him. She declared to him before all the people why she had touched his garment and how she had been healed immediately. Jesus said to her: "Daughter, be of good comfort. Thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace."***Scriptures:Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friends and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host. And we've been, last time we were talking from chapter 34. Just a few more comments about this. This was so thick last time. You remember the story of the woman who was healed by grabbing the tzitzi of Jesus' garment because she had faith in him as Messiah.

She was totally convinced there was a doctrine that was just indelibly written into her mind, whether it was from the time that she was a little girl taught by her father or taught by the family, or she had heard the scriptures read or she was just convinced that this is one characteristic of the Messiah that is just a fact. So I wanted to make it very clear because in the day and age in which we live in where faith is so misunderstood and preached all over the world as, you know, a cure-all, a fix-all, an elixir that can heal, and it can bring about

money and prosperity, and what's wrong with you anyway, and why don't you have faith, and if you had faith, you wouldn't be poor. If you had faith, you wouldn't be this, wouldn't be that, or you would be this, and you would be that. And it's usually just coming straight out of the mouth of an idiot in most cases. It's somebody who has certainly not tried it and found it to be true because it's not. So what are they doing? Well, you know, they're just selling their wares. And if you want to buy into that, fine. If you'd like me to,

wouldn't it be nice at the end of your life, you know, when you're staring at the end of your life thinking, wow, if I had 10 or 15 more years, I can give those to you now. I can help you now with that. I can add, I can give you 15 years of your spiritual life today just by just warding you off of that road it goes absolutely nowhere

i assure you i've been down it i've been back i went down it again i've been back i realized not bridges out down there there is goes nowhere this road trickles off into some little cow path in the woods. There's nothing there. Please don't spend the rest of your life trying to find, you know, this portal to Oz. I can't even say the kingdom of God. It must be Oz. But, you know, can I save you a whole lot of your life? Because you're going to spend it. You're going to spend it like many people do and find yourself at the end of the life realizing this road has gone absolutely nowhere.

I'd have done better going to the physicians about my health. I'd have done better going to financial experts about my economic situation. I'd have done better going to college and learning a career than to try to, by faith, expect God to open up some will of His for my life. You would have done better to exert your own physical efforts into your life and to make it better than to go down that road.

It's a waste of time. So Don, what are you saying? You're saying that Christianity is a waste of time? Absolutely not. You want to get the most out of your education? Learn the wisdom of God. You want to get the most out of your life? Seek the knowledge of God in quiet communion with him. Become the person that can accept this kind of knowledge. Have you ever heard that there's nothing more dangerous than an educated fool? It's really the fact. What difference does it make how educated you are if you're still a fool? What difference does it make how much money you've got if you still can't talk to your children?

What difference does it make if you have everything that you've ever pointed at in your whole life if you know you're driving a bentley but your wife's in the back seat because you can't talk to her without arguing you know we just need to get our priorities straight in a lot of cases but are you saying that christianity are i'm i'm i'm speaking for you now so don are you saying that Christianity is worthless? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I can't imagine life without it. However, to take something, you tell me,

what's the difference in being ignorant and lazy? Nothing. One, you know how to fix a situation, but you're just too lazy to do it. The other one, you don't know how to do it. So does it get done in either case? Why no, it doesn't. There's no difference.

So what difference does it make if you have everything that you want, but you're a fool? Nothing. There's no difference. And I'm saying that there is no way that your education or your money or your opportunity or your skin color or anything like this is more important than your own character. And there is nothing, nothing, nothing in life that is offering you a character change other than Jesus Christ himself. That I know of, he's the only one that's doing this. Oh yeah, there's all kinds of messiahs and leaders and gurus and people that yap, yap, yap. But how many of them are talking about developing character?

Precious few of them. And there's not a one of them that doesn't acknowledge that God is the purveyor of this particular commodity. It doesn't exist without him. And you're not going to exist without him. I don't care what kind of education or what you pursue. I just want you to know that the faith thing, that's a dead-end thing. It just doesn't work. You can't take your Bible and put faith in it and have money tomorrow.

You can't take your Bible and put faith in it and have money tomorrow. You can't take your Bible and put faith in it and be healed tomorrow. You're probably, if you get healed, it's going to be because he put that ability in you the day you were born. He created it in Adam and Eve. You want to know something amazing? I can take a razor blade and cut myself, and in two weeks' time, I can show you. Look, look, it's a miracle it all came back together and in in two years i can say you can't even see a scar is that a miracle well yeah sort of but is it is it worth me um you know pouring over the

scriptures and making positive confessions of faith and never saying anything negative. It's just foolishness. We don't want to belong to a club. We want to belong to a family. God need not be the grand poobah of the Christian club and he passes judgment on us whether or not we can be a part of the club. He wants to be our dad. He may not be the lock and key man

of the great storehouse of God, and he's going to let you in or push through the bars, you know, some little gift or trinket for you. No, Jesus said it's his pleasure to give us the entire kingdom what is this idea we have of god that if we had the key if we had the code if we could if we could read hebrew or if we could read greek or if if if it's always something that we don't have it's the american mentality you too fat it's because you don't own this bicycle. It has nothing to do with abstinence. It has to do with just adding more and adding more.

Ah, get a treadmill. That'll fix it. Ah, get yourself a bicycle. That'll fix it. Learn to play golf. That'll fix it. No, you keep adding to your life and expecting it to get smaller? Who told you that was the right way to go? Well, most Americans. The truth is, abstinence is a wonderful thing. You ever think about that? I don't know of anybody that gets fatter because they don't eat. I don't know. You know, people that have weight problems become offended when you talk like that

I don't mean to offend you. I just I want to point you in the right direction You want to pray about being overweight? Go ahead But you're going to be overweight next year tomorrow 10 years from now you're going to continue to be overweight as long as your character does not change and there is only one That I have ever found in life, bar none of them. You know, from Gandhi to gurus, from Muhammad to our Messiah. I mean, you just look around. Who is offering to change somebody's character? Absolutely nobody,

except Jesus Christ. you got a character problem you got a responsibility problem how you gonna fix that a book a dvd a tape what is it how is it gonna you're gonna fix that i'll tell you how you're gonna fix it and the only way you're gonna fix it first of all you're gonna keep the commandments of god so that you're tuned to the frequency so that there is even a possibility that the Lord will speak to you. Jesus said, you keep my commandments, I'll move inside you, and I'll lead and guide you from the inside. There's the promise.

You want to cut off the first half of that? You cut off the commandment portion of that? Is that what you want to do? Forget it. Forget it. He's not going to say, ah, that's close enough. We're not playing horseshoes this is christianity we're worshiping a sovereign god somebody who wrote and said things thousands

of years before you were born who's been living eons before you were ever even conceived in the in the heart or mind of god do you realize who we're dealing with? You can't just cut that off. You want character? You want to have a sense of responsibility? You want your life to start working? Here's the way you're going to do it. You are going to make a change within yourself that from now on, you're going to get your instructions from somewhere else. If you're keeping the commandments, the door is open. The channel is open. Now you're going to have to prove yourself worthy to yourself, not to him. He knows you. He knows what you're capable of. He knows the failures that you can do. He knows the successes that you can do without hardly even trying. He knows you're not proving

anything to God by this, but you're proving it to you i'm going to obey my conscience i'm going to do what i know is right why would god even bother telling you the right thing to do if you're not going to do it and you need to know that this is a dedication that you need to do every day. Well, Don, that means what? My conscience. My conscience tells me not to eat too much ice cream. Good. Don't do that. My conscience tells me to, you know, put some thick socks on this morning because it's cold out. Good. Do that. Don't disobey your conscience. It's the most foolish thing you can do. Your conscience is the closest thing that you can understand as a human being.

It's the closest thing to communication with God that you'll ever understand. True communication with God bypasses a conscience. The conscience is a residual back of the mind thing that just gets changed over time. It's kind of like trying to clean out a swimming pool or something by putting a garden hose in one end and letting it pour out the other it's going to take a long time for that muddy water to go clear it's going to take a while

but in the meantime obey your conscience every time even if it's wrong. Learn how to do this. The third thing that I tell you to do, absolutely indispensable. Take time every day to hear the voice of God. You'll want to schedule this first. For me, it was in the morning. Well, when I first started, I was doing it at night because, well, you know, now i laid me down to sleep right and um so we're taught to pray when we go to bed at night and so you know i hadn't learned better

than that because meditation at night after a long day's work will sometimes end in sleep and so i changed to in the morning so you're gonna have to schedule this at the beginning uh you're not because it's not going to occur to you during the day but you know in my day when i'm working and i have so many things to do i find myself in between jobs or in between thoughts or in between pursuits in my life, I think, ah, good time to be quiet. Get away from everybody. Go sit down. Go out in the yard.

Go sit in the grass. Go get you a lawn chair. You know, after a while, you'll get to where you won't want to live without this. But friend, these three things, they're the most important things in your life. And we replace them with some of the dumbest things in our life and call ourselves Christian.

Look, we can't do that anymore. This is not working. It's not logical. It's not common sense. Why do we continue to pursue it? Oh yeah, that's right. It's all bolstered by the devil's trying to trick you right right it's just one fairy tale after another fairy tale after another and they just keep stacking them in there until you're just locked in this circle the circle

that goes absolutely nowhere and i just want you you to know that it takes somewhere along the line, you're going to have to have faith in what God says for you to do, like this woman did. Jesus would not have looked at her and said, Thy faith hath made thee whole. If she had just got up from listening to a to a healing CD and started making positive confessions about it. It's not faith.

It's hope. And what comes out of your mouth at that point is prattle. Not faith. It's prattle. It means nothing unless you have the character and the honesty and if you had that you wouldn't

be doing it do you know just frankly that's true if we were honest we would have to say you know i doubt this entirely oh well you just have to have faith you have to stay with it you got to keep on asking and keep on knocking that's what the greek says no it doesn't no it doesn't jesus is saying this is the worst kind this is the worst kind of answer to prayer what are you going to do aggravate god into finally okay give this woman what she wants. She's driving me nuts. That's, you know what? I really think that perhaps down deep in your heart, that's okay with you. And because that's okay with you, that shows no love or worship toward God. It shows no faith. You don't really care what God thinks about you as long as he gives you what you want.

My goodness, do you think that could have been from a lifetime of treating our parents that way? I think it is. We don't, you know, the fruit don't fall too far from the tree, does it? Look, get a relationship with God. You know, if you ever hear his voice, your life is going to change so drastically, you're going to wonder, why did i do this any other way don't expect to hear a voice in your ear don't expect to see letters in the sky if you see those kind of things walk away from them give them what i call the jonah approach which is jump on a boat to nineveh and run as fast as you can and see if he can catch up with you he'll have no trouble catching up with you he will find you wherever you are um so

did we get off on a rabbit trail well that's a rabbit trail that just needs to be paved because we need to hear this from time to time you need a relationship with god more than you need any education or any training or any guidance of any kind by anybody on the earth. And that I know of, nobody's telling us how to do this. They're just throwing it all in one bucket that says, get saved. Wow, okay. Hey, if you want a way out, I just gave it to you. If you don't, you'll be fine.

Everything I said to you won't hurt you a bit. All right, so when Jesus says to the crowd, who touched me, he said so because virtue had gone out of him. And I confessed before, I don't even understand what that means. I don't even know what that means. Virtue has gone out of me.

But here's what I don't, I don't need to understand what virtue means to understand that when he says gone out of me but here's what i don't i don't need to understand what virtue means to understand that when he says gone out that was that's what caught me gone out of me he didn't say hey what was that i got goosebumps what was that somebody must have touched me that would mean nothing or i perceive by the Spirit of God that somebody touched me. And in their address is an S and a K, or whatever hoodoo you see on television today. That would have meant nothing to me. Absolutely nothing.

I mean, really, if she touched him and one of his arms fell off, it wouldn't mean anything to me. But he chose his words carefully, didn't he? He said, virtue has gone out. What does that mean? Dropped out from under his robe and it's laying back there on the road where she touched him? No.

See, the virtue came out and it went in and when it went into her absolutely healed her from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet she wasn't making any confessions of faith she wasn't pretending that God had healed her even though he had she wasn't afraid to say that, you know, anything negative or any of the rest of this voodoo that we've attached to healings by Jesus. No, she had something that was totally different than anything you've ever seen on any miracle rally or any, you know, in the downtown Holiday Inn room

by Reverend so-and-so, something happened that was just absolutely unheard of in our 21st century experience of healing. She felt within herself that she'd been healed. Amazing. She knew that she was healed. Hey, can I say something here without getting you to jump and holler? Looks to me like she knew it before Jesus did.

This is a very strange encounter what happened here. A woman that Jesus didn't even know. He didn't know her name, didn't know where she was. All he knew was somebody touched me. Somebody took from me jesus didn't even have the volition to push virtue out of him into her it wasn't even it wasn't even within him i mean we know that it was in his within his power to ask the Father to, you know, what is to be done. He always said it wasn't me that does these things, it's the Father that's in me. I do what he says to do. He wouldn't even take credit for it, if you want to call it credit. And he didn't make the decisions to do those things.

He did what the Father told him to. But it wasn't even volition on his part to give healing, to administer healing to this woman. Wasn't even there. It didn't have to be. She drew it. Computer people understand the difference between a push and a pull command. This was not a push. This was a pull. And she actually drew from him virtue. Drew it out of him to the point that he actually felt it happening. Friend, I don't know

about you, but that makes me so jealous I can hardly stand it i want that kind of faith there's only one way to get faith there's only one way to practice faith and that is to hear the voice of god you're gonna have to hear the commandment from god go and do this or your your your son's healed uh or you know we need to pray about this situation or as he told peter and John as they were coming into the temple, you see that guy over there? He's got faith to be healed. Come on. And they went over there and healed him.

Do you think that they were just reading scriptures, you know, and saying, oh, here's one we can stand on. This is good. Here, listen to this. Do you think that's what they did? Oh, Father, we believe your word or some faith teachers teach us to hold our bible up and say you said right here i'll tell you what you want to do that stand over there if you don't mind i don't know how close I want you to be

when you do those kind of stupid things. But God's merciful, isn't he? A lot more merciful than I am. I guess I feel that we're at the end time. I just feel like, you know what? There's just not that much time left to get this right. I was preaching Sunday on the radio and talking about how i i just don't

think people understand that you you know i'm okay so you're 60 years old you got trouble in your life chances are you caused it how'd you cause it well 40 years of living like a fool probably and you want god to fix it in an afternoon he's not going to do that no more than you're going to go get a mop and try to mop up water where a pipe busted without turning the water off first you're gonna have to fix the problem then clean up the mess there's a lot to all this stuff this is not magic this is not rubbing a lamp and looking for smoke pouring out of its out of its throat and turning into a genie this is not incant a book of of witchcraft incantations if i say this 15 times that something's gonna happen where do we get these ideas this is a lifestyle we have to repair

we have to fix we have to back up we have to do it differently this time and you're going to have to do this for the rest of your life i can't impart to you all the wisdom of god in a half an hour i don't even know it myself but i'll tell you what i can do in a half hour i can challenge you to sit at his feet i can challenge you to sit at his feet. I can challenge you to stop your life long enough to hear his voice. And as he speaks to you, obey. Just do as we're told to do. You want to know how to do that? You want to practice that?

Keep the commandments. Oh, that was step one. You remember that? Yeah. Let's keep the commandments. I don't care if they separate you from your church, your congregation, your doctrine, your seminary. I don't care. Do it anyway.

Do it anyway. What's more important to you? You know what? We're going to find out what's more important to you. And there's people that would rather live with their illness, live with their sickness, with their financial reversals, with their children hating them, with them hating their children, hating their parents,

trouble in the home, losing this job, losing that job, car blowing up, and all these problems. You'd rather live with that than to have anybody look at them and say, you know, you're some kind of a heretic. You're some kind of a freak. You don't belong in our church anymore because you believe something different. Friend, if you go to a church that will kick you out,

you need to find that out now. Because frankly, if you have any guts at all and you have what it takes to exercise character, to exercise responsibility, and to worship a sovereign God, they're going to kick you out. It might not happen this week. It might not happen this year.

It might happen 10 years from now. But friend, if it's going to fail, let's fail it now and move on and try to reclaim those 10 or 15 years that we're just going to waste otherwise. You've heard about getting a new lease on life? There you go. Would you like to just be light years ahead in an instant? Stop what you're doing. Stop what you're doing. Seek the Lord about what to do. Do what he says to do. Go where he says to

go. At what time he says to go. But you're going to have to have that relationship. Starts with keep the commandments. Never disobey your conscience. And take time every day to hear the voice of the Lord. Man, what I am telling you, this is gold. Absolute gold. It's like handing somebody a sack of silver. It's like handing somebody a surefire medicine. Trouble is, it's kind of a bitter medicine. It's not going to be so pleasant, but it's going to be effectual.

You tired of this? Boy, I am. I'm so tired of this, I decided just to give it up it up boy there was something at the end of that road too when the lord looks at you and said did you forget about me you see i'm all you need i'm all you need i had to fall on my face and uh and just repent of being an atheist before I actually declared it. Almost happened because I demanded to know the truth. I demanded logic. I demanded that I need not fake my way through.

I had to believe that this was real, that this life was for me. Same thing will happen to you. Oh gosh, time's gone. Hey, if you'd like to write to me,. Same thing will happen to you. Oh gosh, time's gone. Hey, if you'd like to write to me, I'd love to hear from you. I'm loving the emails I'm getting so far. This is all great about how your life is finally making sense. Your Christianity is making sense. Ah, you're making my heart swell. That's what I'm here to do. Don at thinkcreating.com. I'd love to take your email. Time to go for now. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com.

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