Are You Building Your Faith Backwards?

TRANSCRIPT

For the last six or seven years, I've been a smartwatch kind of gal. I've had an Apple watch for the last few years. Last Saturday I went to a lake and I decided to do some rock jumping, and I forgot I had my watch on and my watch now belongs to the lake forevermore, but I lost my watch and afterwards I was a little bit sad because I, it's expensive.

If I didn't want it, I would've given it away. But there was also part of me that was like I was second guessing that watch anyway, so the next day I came to church, it was Sunday, pastor Simon was talking and he did that message about, we're talking about. What are you really living for?

Are you being distracted? Are you practicing contentment with what you have? And that watch was a massive distraction. I don't know if you have a smart watch, it buzzes and dings all day long. You're having conversations and it's distracting you. So afterwards I went, okay I'm hearing what I'm supposed to be hearing here.

I'm not gonna buy a new smart watch. And so I went to Kmart and I bought this $9 classic timepiece. That ticks when you listen to it, went back to the old days and it's been an amazing week like. I feel like a different person because I'm not being distracted all the time. But also I realized that I was living my life like I was judging the quality of my day by the metrics of my watch.

How many steps had I walked? How many rings had I closed? How many calories had I burnt in 24 hours? What was my VO two max at this minute? And even things like when I first went on a walk, 'cause I love walking and I went on a walk with no watch at all, which I haven't done in literally years. Because my walk would be all about what did my watch say?

And instead I went for a walk. And the whole time I'm going, but how will I know how long I've been walking? How will I know when my exercise ring is closed? And instead, I started to just enjoy walks for the pure joy of being outside, listening to an amazing podcast, listening to worship music. And I walked as long as I wanted to walk.

So it's changed the way that I've lived each day. It's brought a different kind of contentment that I didn't. Even realize I was missing. So I'm just letting you know this is a very practical series. That is the point that every single Sunday we can ask ourselves what is something that I need to change, a habit or a thought that I need to change or bring in so that I make sure that I'm focusing on the right things, that I'm looking at the right direction and not being distracted by things around us.

So before I get into, would you able to pass me my water please before I get into today? I had a cold this week and sometimes my throat's getting a bit dry. Sorry, you have to listen to me drink. Alright, I've got some questions for you. They're true or false questions, and I'm just gonna get you to yell out what you think the answer is.

They are all about me. I had to do that because otherwise they turned into fact or fiction questions. So I'm sorry. They're a bit narcissistic, but true or false, you just have to yell it out. Okay. True or false? I had to sit a really big test for uni. It accounted for half my grade. I was very nervous. I went and sat the test.

Whew. And then afterwards I came home and I started studying. True or false? True. True. False. False. Because I would be insane to sit a test and then go home and study for it, right? That's the wrong way around. Okay. Now do you get how? Okay, get the questions. All right. So the second one is true or false. I had a dinner party.

I invited eight people over to my house. Once everyone was there, we were gathered, hanging out. I went to the shops and I bought the food that I needed to make them dinner. True or false? False. False. Now you're getting it. False. 'cause that would be insane. Why would I invite people over? That is nightmare fuel to me To not be ready for people to come over to my house.

So that's false. I wouldn't do that. Okay. What about this one? I built an investment property in a zone up in the northern Gold Coast that was, had a flood risk kind of area. And after some big rain came and there was a little bit of flooding, the foundation cracked. So I went and I checked the building code.

True or false? False. False because you would be insane to build in an area like that and not check first that it needed a certain kind of foundation. Okay, last one. False question. Number four. True or false? He's already said false. He's noticed a pattern, but wait. Okay. True or false? My kids got really sick one time, like it was really bad.

I was very desperate. I was scared. We didn't know what to do. And then after the crisis was over. I picked up my Bible and I read the word of God. True or false? True. True. Yeah. Yes. I'm a terrible Christian. I thought maybe more of you would say false 'cause you'd think more highly of me than that, but that is very true.

That's what happened. So I'll tell you the story of that really quickly. I, it was 11 years ago and our kids were, I was eight and a half months pregnant, and we had two other kids. They were about six and three, and they got school sores. If you've never been blessed with school sores, they're these crusty sores that appear on your kids, and they are highly contagious.

And what I learned because a doctor did not tell me the right information, is that if you don't treat them properly, they spread like crazy on their body, on your body, on every, the cat gets it. It like it is so unstoppable. And so every single day, morning and night. For an hour each time, I would have to sit on the floor with my massive pregnant belly surrounded by medical supplies and peel bandages and gauze off my kids.

And I'm talking, their welts were like this big on the backs of their legs, on their back, on their necks. And they would scream because it was excruciating. So they're screaming, they're begging for me to stop. I'm crying. They're crying. The neighbor's texting me, are you, is everything okay? 'Cause the sounds coming from our house were horrific.

And this went on for only weeks and nothing was changing. And then I had a conversation with Susie Moore who comes to our church and she said, oh, if you've got school sores, they have to have this antibiotic cream, which the doctor never told me about. So I went to a different doctor. He said, you're crazy.

You should put antibiotic cream on it. So we did that. They did eventually clear up. The biggest problem that we had, besides the fact that our kids looked like they had leprosy, was that at eight and a half months pregnant, I was about to have a baby at any second. That school saw, I think it's called Impetigo.

I dunno how you say it. Imp Yeah. That particular infection is really dangerous for newborns. So we had to have a whole plan in place that if I went into labor, I would go up and have the baby by myself because we didn't wanna get any cross contamination or anything like that. Then I was gonna go up to Brisbane and I was gonna live with my parents for who knows how long.

Maybe just start a whole new life up there and we would just burn the house like we were. It was. That's how bad it was. So we were really scared, like it was quite desperate time. And then the, the crisis was over. We got through it, everything went back to normal. Let me show you, because I like to keep evidence of how terrible a person I am at my journal from 11 years ago.

Let me show you what I did. This is March 13th, 2015. I said this, I guess I don't really get it. God, I'm too drained and exhausted to rage anymore. So all that's left is my defeat. You have defeated me. So if that was your aim, then you win. And then I said, oh wait, the drama continues. There's quite a lot.

I'm not reading you all of this. Look at you go picking on everyone. No matter the size. Seems like our family has become the next example of job. That's a spicy thing to say. And then later I said, this is now a few days later, I said, how can I praise you through this when I know you could fix it and choose not to?

I can't bring a single word of joy or praise to my lips. This was not the only, by the way, this was not the only thing going on. This had been the end of a year of one of the worst years of my life. Chronic pain, chronic illness, gaslighting from doctors. Nobody believed me that something was really wrong with me.

So there was a lot of other stuff going on. This just broke me, and then I said, just do us all a favor and take your hand off our family then. A week later, I put in a journal entry that I entitled Eating My Words. So I guess an apology is in order from me to you. Obviously I realized that it's highly likely you didn't smart our family with a common childhood illness.

I'm sorry that I blamed you. I'm sorry that I got so mad. I'm not very good at the whole faith thing. Am I. Yeah, so what had happened is that I was a Christian who believed in God. I believed in Jesus, but I did not have a foundation of faith that carried me through a difficult year and that crisis. So what I had done was go through a crisis and then ran to God afterwards, which is about as crazy as.

Sitting a test and then studying afterwards. It's about as crazy as inviting people to my house and then shopping afterwards, and it's about as crazy as building a house and not checking that the foundation was gonna hold firm. Good. Yeah. So what we're talking about today is. What is your foundation of faith that you are standing on?

Because inevitably something terrible is going to happen to every single one of us that is life. There is going to be a diagnosis, there's gonna be illness, there's gonna be pain, there's gonna be a financial crisis. Someone's gonna lose a job, there's gonna be intense pressure and stress. Are you ready for that or are you, we gonna respond the way that I did back then and I'm very happy to say I don't think that I would do that today.

So that's what we're talking about today. Now when I. Found out that this was the topic I was talking about. I actually saw the rundown of each week when I saw this topic. Are you ready? Is your faith ready for the storm? I was like, oh, I can't wait to see what someone says about that. I need to hear that.

And then realized my name was next to it. So I have spent a couple of weeks. Working on this, like this is the person that you're learning from, but I have learned a lot. So I have spent the last couple of weeks really prey on this, really thinking about it. Really reading through scripture. Funnily enough, I was in Hebrews at the time that I found out I was doing this, which is really a book of faith, so that was pretty amazing too.

So when I started thinking about, okay, how do we work this out? Because if all I, if I just sat here and said, have more faith. What does that actually mean? And how do we create that? How do we create a foundation of faith? So the first question you have to ask is. What is faith? Because it's really hard to describe.

It's one of those words that has a lot of nuance. It has a lot of used in different contexts in the Bible. So it's in the New Testament over 250 times, but it doesn't always mean exactly the same thing. It's a little bit like the word love in English. Like we can say, I love that a coffee shop opened up near me.

I love these new shoes and I love my newborn baby, and they're all forms of love, but we all know they're not the same love. Same for faith. So what I did was, as I went through, I noticed two different types of contexts that faith was used in that I thought would be helpful for us to start figuring out how to build it, how to be ready.

So I'm not using faith in the context of, faith as religion oh, my faith is Christianity. So it's not that we're not using it as faith, as faithfulness. Oh, he's a faithful servant of the Lord. Like he's loyal and he's steadfast. We're not using it in that context. What we are gonna use it in, there's two.

First one is faith as belief. So belief is a conviction, an absolute conviction of your heart, that God is real. That he did everything that he said he did, that he created everything he said he created, that he really had a redeeming plan for humanity, that he sent his son Jesus Christ to die on a cross for us, and that we have an identity within that plan as a child of God.

That's the conviction. The problem is, of course, that we can't see any of those things. We live in an era where we didn't get to see Jesus in person. No one was around for the creation of the world. So there is an element of belief there. And when Jesus was, this is written in John, one of his disciples wrote this down when Jesus was crucified and resurrected.

He came back and he visited the disciples, and they were like, whoa, you're back. But one of them, Thomas was like, I don't really believe it. So Jesus showed him the scars on his hands from his crucifixion. And Thomas believed, and Jesus says to him, you believe because you've seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe, because that's the faith.

But we also don't have to have blind faith. We don't have to just believe 'cause someone said it, because we also have scripture. So we have this God's narrative, his story, and when we read this, it becomes imparted to us by the Holy Spirit as truth. And not only does this become truth, 'cause that's what the Holy Spirit is here for.

Holy Spirit is here in lieu of Jesus to help us to learn from this. But it's transformative. So when we read scripture, it transforms into something our heart understands and becomes convicted by. It becomes a truth that we would die for. And people have been dying for this truth without seeing anything for centuries, because that's the role of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said, I think this is John 14, he says to his disciples. The Holy Spirit will teach you in lieu of me. The Holy Spirit will teach you everything you need to know. He will remind you of the things that I've said, but we have to be reading this for that truth to happen, and for Jesus to become real and reveal himself to you comes through this.

Okay, so that's faith as belief. That's the kind of belief I'm talking about. The second one, if we say that's the bottom foundation of belief. On top of that, we could say faith as assurance. So faith as assurance of. Our eternity in heaven with God. That's the promise that was made to us, that our reward is God and our eternity with God.

So the best scripture to highlight that would be one that even if you've never set foot in a church, you might've seen it before, is John three 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. That whoever believes in him shall, there's that word, belief shall not perish, but have eternal life.

If you look through scripture, especially the New Testament, so much of it points to eternity as our reward because Jesus came yes to teach us how to live, and he came to die on the cross for our sins to make us righteous so that we could have eternity. The whole goal of all of this redeeming plan is for us to have eternity in God's glory.

That's an assurance that we have. But what that assurance does is give us a different kind of perspective. So I'm gonna show you something that Paul. Said so. Paul is one of the biggest, he was one of the biggest persecutor of Christians. So he wanted to get rid of all Christians until he met Jesus, and Jesus changed his mind.

And then he became one of the biggest fans of Jesus, and he went around and taught a lot of people. So in this one, he's written a letter to the Corinthians. There's two Corinthians chapter 11. And this is a church in Corinth, which is in Greece near Athens, and he's talking about Imprisonments and things like that.

He says this five times I have received from the Jews, the 40 lashes, minus one, that's 195 lashes from a whip three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning three times, I was shipwrecked for a night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food.

Cold and naked. He forgot to say, bitten by a snake. Did anyone notice that? He forgot that one. That's quite a resume of affliction that he had to go through. A lot of suffering, basically, like just your everyday resident of Summer Bay. If you grew up watching, if you grew up watching home and away, most dangerous place to live was in a 1990s soap opera.

So that's Paul. That's what he endure. But what's really interesting is that just a little bit before that, in this same letter in chapter four, he says this. Now I've got some of this on a slide, but I'm gonna read what comes just before that. In verse 16, he says, so we do not lose heart even though our outer nature is wasting away.

Our inner nature is being renewed day by day. And then he says, verse 17, for our slight momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure. Yes, this is the same guy who then just on the page over talks about all the things that he suffered, and he calls it slight and momentary.

That's because he has faith as assurance. He has a perspective of eternity, and I don't think he's downplaying suffering. I don't think he's saying, take it on the chin. You'll be right. He's not saying it doesn't hurt. He's saying that it's slight in comparison to the glory of eternity that is coming for you.

Yeah, he's saying it's momentary because we don't know how many days we have, but they're such a blip in comparison to the eternity that is waiting for us with God. That's the perspective. He had the assurance of eternity, the reward that's coming. So when you put those two things together, we get the way that the author of Hebrews put it, which is he said in chapter 11 verse one, he said, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

The conviction of things not seen. The assurance of things hoped for. What we know is coming and the conviction of things not seen, but is revealed to us through God, through the Holy Spirit and through Jesus becoming alive to us. So now that I've given you all of that info and I've shown you how that looked for Paul and his perspective, I thought I would tell you a story of someone who lives now.

Has anyone heard of Dylan Mandel? Anyone listened to his story? So Dylan Mandel is a young guy, he's 22 years old, lives in America. You can hear his story on all sorts of YouTube podcasts, whatever. He's done a lot of sharing his testimony. So when he was 18, it was his first year of high school and he got some test results back that showed that he had a cancer tumor in his.

So they had to do a surgery. It was very invasive. They had to remove part of his jaw and get some bone from somewhere else and put it in. And then he had to do 25 rounds of chemo and radiation. But after that, he got the all clear and they said that was, there's only 20 cases recorded of that kind of tumor in your body.

So they said, there's no way that's coming back. That was so rare. And then a year later, he got a follow-up scan and the cancer was back. He had another tumor. It was even more aggressive in his jaw. So they did another surgery, and this one was even more invasive. They had to remove an enormous part of his jaw, rebuild it with his whole tibia from his calf, and then a whole huge chunk of his quad muscle, and they had to rebuild his jaw.

And this surgery is so excruciatingly painful in the recovery that they strap you to the hospital bed because otherwise you will lose it and you will start screaming and pulling out your ventilator and things like that. So he said that he woke up. From this surgery, and he would've said that he was a Christian beforehand.

Like he grew up in a Christian home had a praying grandmother, things like that. But he said when he woke up in that agony, that was unbearable. He cried out to God in a way he never had before. He surrendered his life completely to Jesus, and he felt this wave of peace come over his body. It was a whole new experience and relationship with Jesus in that moment.

So he gets through that surgery, gets through the recovery, they give him a all clear, you're in remission, everything's fine. Go on with your life. And then a year later he gets another scan done and the cancer is back. He's now had three cancers in three years. He's about 20, 21 years old. This time. They said the cancer is in your jaw and your throat.

The only way for us to remove that cancer and get it where it is in both places is to remove the entire lower part of your jaw. So you will literally just be teeth and a palate going down into a neck. And then as he's preparing himself for this horrific surgery, they discovered that the tumors were also in his lungs.

And they said, okay, we're so sorry, but at this point that's terminal. We can't do anything about that. Start preparing to transition to death is what they said to him. And they were so sorry. Like this team of doctors were so sad. They'd traveled with him through it all and he was sitting in this doctor's office and he said, the doctor said to him.

Why are you not reacting? Like I'm telling you you're 20 years old and you're about to die. Why aren't you reacting? And he said, because my belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus is greater than any result on a scan. That was his faith as belief, an absolute conviction of the power of Jesus.

And then he said, what the cancer came to kill is already dead. I am alive in Jesus. Okay. Yeah. That's that kingdom vantage point. That assurance, that faith in his ultimate, you know exactly what Paul was saying, that our outer nature wastes away, but our inner nature is renewed day by day. So he walked away and he just launched himself into prayer and healthy eating and four months later they did another scan and he was completely healed like it was gone.

And the doctors could not believe it. They were saying this is actually impossible. And he was saying, because my God is greater. So that was amazing. September last year he got another scan done and the cancer is back. So there's a whole lot to this end part of his story or what we're up to now.

But I wanna just point out a couple of things that I think are really important. This guy had rock solid faith. I'm talking like really amazing. But when this fourth cancer happened in four years, he's 21 years old, he said he had a moment where he just stumbled a little bit. And he thought, God, I don't get it.

You healed me. Why have you allowed this to happen again? What happened to my healing? And he said in that moment, he had this thought that said, maybe you're not a child of God anymore. Maybe he's taken his favor off you. And he knew in that instant that it was an attack from the enemy. So pause. I wanna show you something.

That Paul wrote, I got a lot from Paul today, so this is, he wrote this to the Church of Ephesus, which is Modern day Turkey now, and I've looked this up the other day because there's been a lot of stuff happening in our world in the last few weeks. There has been such an exposing of the work of Satan in our world.

We're seeing that through what we're being told through the Epstein files for this is the first time in a really long time that people are seeing firsthand. Like the enemy and action in our world that people are doing things in the name of and because of Satan. My prayer in all of this horror that's happening is that as people see evil properly in the face for the first time, that they search for the antithesis of that.

That they realize there must be a good, if there exists such an evil, and I pray that they find Jesus. This is an incredible time. Yeah I just. Yes. Keep praying. Keep praying 'cause lots of things are happening. But because of all that, I looked up this where Paul talks about the armor of God. He says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.

Put on the whole armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against blood people and flesh, but against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Then he says, stand therefore and belt your waist with truth.

Put on the ble breastplate of righteousness and lace up your sandals in preparation for the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Pray in the spirit at all times, in every prayer and supplication. So when Dylan had this moment when his faith cracked, when he questioned God, do you really love me if you've taken this healing away? The enemy shot a fiery arrow right through that. But because of his faith, he recognized the voice of the enemy and he went into the word of God, because that is the sword.

That is our offensive weapon. He went to the word and he spoke back, and what he said he actually did was he went outside. He, this was a habit of his anyway. But he went outside. He had just gotten this diagnosis and he went outside and he sat on a towel, kneeled on a towel in his backyard for two hours.

And he prayed and he cried out and he worshiped. And when he came back in, he said what are we doing today? Because his whole perspective had changed because what God said to him was, there is no life or death. There is only life and life. God was reassuring him, when you pass from here, a greater life is coming.

One more abundant. That's what Jesus promised. He had a conviction of who God was that had healed him. And now he had the assurance of faith that Heaven was his home. And we don't know the end of his story. We'll just have to wait and see what God does with that. But he's at peace because he knows that there is only life or life for him.

So I'm gonna ask the team to come back up. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna spend a little bit of time. I thought that I would just give you guys a few minutes. It's the song that the team are gonna sing is one that you know, but they're just gonna do it a little quieter and give everyone some space.

Because what I thought might be good is if we just take a few minutes to ask, where are you at? If you were very honest with yourself, where are you at? In just those two aspects of faith, your conviction of who God is, your conviction and understanding and relationship with who Jesus is and what he did for you and your assurance.

How much of a heavenly vantage point do you have over what happens in our life? Can you see things as slight and momentary affliction because the greater reward is still coming and I like, I know it's something I have to work on. There's no shame in saying. Yeah, I'm not great at that. Like we can start to work on that.

The way that we work on it is so easy. God made it so easy. Jesus made it so easy. We read scripture because this is the sword. This is the word. The Holy Spirit will make it truth to you. Jesus will reveal himself to you. That's where we get that conviction of belief, which becomes faith. And then we have to spend time with God.

You have to pray. You have to worship, you have to listen. One thing that Dylan said that has stuck with me is he said, revival begins in the quiet times with God. We keep asking God to send revival, but revival starts here. So those are the two things that we need to start with. So the question that we can ask is what do you, what do I need to change?

What habit do I need to start? Where am I at with that? What practice do I need to start doing? What habit do I need to change?

And the other thing that I thought that you could maybe think about if you want to in these next few minutes, is this something I do every now and then? And it is so awesome if you just sit and you imagine heaven. Just put yourself there because if you love Jesus, if you have confessed with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is your Lord and savior, then you are going to heaven.

Life and life is yours to have. Have you ever just sat and thought about what it would feel like to be in eternity where there is no pain, no suffering, just peace and worship and love? So sometimes it can be really helpful to give ourselves that perspective by just sitting in it. Let the Holy Spirit just flood you with that feeling of peace that builds faith really quickly.

So I wanna give you guys a few minutes. I'm gonna pray and then I'll leave you to it. And then after that, Nara will just keep going on with our worship for the night. For the night, for the day. Alright, I'm gonna pray.

Lord God. I think that all we really want, Lord, is to love you, to worship you, to know you, and to tell people about you. But there are so many things that distract us. There are so many things that get in the way. I know I have been guilty of thinking I'm saved, and then I coast along and I forget, Lord, that constant intimacy with you is what?

Build such strength for us to get through this world. Not just praising you, but actually letting the world know about you. To be able to sit the way that Dylan did in a doctor's office and say, my God is bigger. He can heal anything. He can do anything. That's the God I serve. So in these next few moments, God, I really pray that the Holy Spirit would come and meet people to either give peace, to give love.

Or to highlight things that we need to change or fix. I'm gonna leave that in your hands, holy Spirit. But we invite you to come now in these next moments to do what you want to do with the people who are really seeking something, really seeking change. We thank you, Lord for your incredible power in this world, that you defeated the grave through Jesus, that Jesus in his power has defeated the enemy.

And that when we have that foundation of faith, we are picking up the shield and we are defending ourselves from those fiery arrows that you have given us everything that we need to conquer in this world. And I pray that we can start asking the questions and start changing the things, and bringing in the things that are gonna help us to build that foundation of faith so that we can be warriors in this world.

Thank you, Lord. We leave it all with you in your name. Amen.