God Will Heal My Faithlessness — Sandeep Poonen

Confessing God’s Truth With Heart and Lips

I think we've been hearing throughout today and through the different people who've been speaking how important it is for what we believe and what we say to represent the reality of what God has for our lives.

And I was reminded of this verse in Romans chapter 10 which we've talked about so often that we have to confess with our lips. So important to confess with our lips. We may not understand the power it has but we must read this verse and ask ourselves very simply, Lord you put this in your scripture.

And this is not the only place he puts it, he puts it in different places too. But what does it say in verse 8, Romans chapter 10 verse 8. The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we have been preaching.

That is where the word of faith is, it's near my heart and near our mouth. Why did God have to add the mouth to it? Don't we believe it's the heart that matters, it's the heart that counts? God looks at the heart.

It wouldn't have been necessary to put it in the mouth but God says I'm putting it near your heart and near your mouth that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you shall be saved.

Faith for Victory Over Present Sin

Now we know salvation is not from death. Salvation is not from hell. Salvation is from sin. None of us have been done with sin. Where is the word of faith in your mouth from the sins that you still have?

All of us stand here and say we're sinners. Where is the word of faith that is in your mouth for your current sins? Or are we saying words of unbelief, God can only help me this level. Where dear brothers and sisters is the word of faith that is in your mouth that God will do this, that God will take me from this level of spirituality to this level of spirituality.

For with the heart man believes and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation. You have to put gas in the car and you have to drive it. So a lot of people are putting gas in the car and saying I'm going to go to New York.

What should you call such a person who does one part of it and not the other part? Call such a person a fool, doesn't follow the instructions. So when I say Lord I want to be saved from my sin, I want to go from this level of life living here to that level of life, let's say that's New York, well you've got to fill your car with gas and you've got to drive it.

In the same way, in the same way, you've got to fill the word of faith into our heart with God, what God says is true about your life, that He'll make you more than a conqueror in all things, that He'll fill you with rivers of living water, that He'll give you eyes to see the desolation of your life, that the walls are ruined, that He'll give you that, that God will give you that holiness like God is holy.

That has to be in our heart, that's just one part of it. It must also be the word of faith that is in our mouth. This is an honest reading of Romans chapter 10 verse 8 through 10. Confession with our lips is so important and it's not confessing with your lips to a priest, it is not confessing with your lips as a rote exercise, as just some kind of tradition.

Making Confession an Active Christian Lifestyle

It is an active lifestyle, everything in the Christian life is not an act that we do once but a lifestyle. So we have to make a lifestyle out of believing in my heart and confessing with our mouth. We have midweek groups, Tuesdays, Fridays, Sundays.

We must make it an active part of our life to confess with our mouth what God has put into our heart, not something that the Lord has not put into our heart, but what God has put into our heart. We must confess, not our sins, not our past struggles, but the word of faith.

We must confess it with our mouth. Maybe that is the reason why God has not taken you and shown you salvation from some sins in your life. I'm not talking salvation from problems, I'm not talking salvation from difficult situations.

All of us have difficult situations, persecutions, all kinds of things in our lives. God may make it worse, the physical situations, but God wants to save us from our sins. And maybe some of us have not used the opportunities that God has allowed for you in this church, if you're a member, that's who I'm speaking to, to speak the word of faith.

Abraham’s Faith in God’s Promise

Yes, maybe becoming a life where your tongue is completely free from anger may take twenty years. It took Abraham twenty-five years to have this child, from when we read in Genesis chapter 12. Twenty-five years!

But we see him doing all kinds of things. We see him saying Amen, we see him changing his name from Abram to Abraham. He kept the word of God in his mouth. You see in Romans chapter 4 verse 20, you see what he did.

You see in verse 19 and 20 that Abraham saw his body being as good as dead. The physical evidence was getting from bad to worse, literally. But he didn't become weak in faith, verse 20, when he considered the promise, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God.

To me that includes his mouth. This was not, let's come to church on Sunday and sing songs. That wasn't it. It was in respect to the promise of God. He gave glory to God. So when we sing the songs, I come before you today and I want to say thank you.

It's not just some song to sing, it's with respect to your problems and God's promise. Take into account your problems, take into account God's promise, and with respect to the promise, looking at your body, seeing it's as good as dead, we sing God, I want to give you glory.

I want to confess with my lips the word of faith that God has put into my heart. It's so important for us to keep doing that. This is how our midweek groups have to be. One word of faith after another.

Humility, Faith, and Words of Prophecy

That's what prophecy is, it's faith filled words, not misery influenced words. We're not interested in hearing how miserable your life is, and it can come across as in a way of, well that's humility, no it isn't.

Humility and faith are like twins, God separated them, two parts of a coin. True humility has nothing to do with sin, Jesus was the humblest man, he had no sin. We must meditate on the humility of Jesus, it had nothing to do with sin, but it was so broken before God, he was crushed, but he also was full of faith, he was fully dependent on God.

This is true humility. So we want to hear words of faith spoken in every time we meet. This is how we will get salvation, confess with your lip. And you can do that in private, if you're driving in the car and you're thinking about some situation, thinking about your relative weakness, confess.

If you're struggling with an uncontrolled tongue, confess with your lips what the Lord is going to do. If there's some habit in your life that you've not gained complete victory over, confess with your lips what God says is possible.

You will be holy as I am holy. Rivers of living water will fall out of your lips, will flow out of your heart, and on and on, that God's life will be an anchor, confess with your lips. You don't need to make it complicated, but keep confessing with your lips the words of faith God has put in your heart.

And I think you're all old enough and smart enough to know the difference between just repeating meaningless repetitions and the word of faith. Ask yourself, is this meaningless repetition, me just saying something, or is this a word of faith?

You may find that the words you can say, the words of faith, are much smaller. That's okay, just say that amount, rather than the whole dictionary of words that you may not believe. Speak the words of faith.

God’s Promise to Heal Faithlessness

And I want to share one other word in Hosea chapter 14. I want to give this verse to all of us, because this is one of our biggest problems. I'm pretty sure when I show you this verse, you'll all agree this is one of our biggest problems.

Everybody sitting here, this is one of our biggest problems. Hosea chapter 14 verse 4. God has a wonderful promise for us in this verse. Hosea chapter 14, Hosea is after Daniel. Hosea chapter 14 verse 4, he says there, I will heal their apostasy.

What does the word apostasy mean? This is what the word apostasy means. Apostasy means faithlessness. The opposite of faithlessness is faithfulness. That means constant, consistency. Consistency to confess our word of faith.

Consistency to live in victory over sin. Consistency, that faithfulness. The opposite of that is faithlessness. The opposite of faithfulness is faithlessness. And he says, I will heal their faithlessness.

I will love them freely. What a wonderful promise that we can have, and God is telling me here, I will heal it. I will heal it. God is my healer. I'll tell you this, I don't have faith that God will heal me 100 guarantee if God shows me that I have cancer tomorrow.

I can't say that. I don't have that faith. God may give me a very specific individual faith, specifically, but I can't tell the whole world, hey, God's going to heal all of our cancers. But I do have faith for this, that God says, I will heal their faithlessness.

I will give you a faithful heart. I will heal you, Sandeep, so that you will be faithful hour after hour, day after day, month after month. And as I said, I think all of us can relate with that. All of us are not as faithful all the time as we want to be.

And it's a wonderful promise that I will heal their faithlessness. But I want to look at the condition, starting with verse 1, return, O Israel. Okay, God, I can do that. I keep returning to you. But then he says this, take words with you, take words with you.

Offering the Fruit of Our Lips

We just talked about how important our words are. And God is saying, look, this is what you need to do. Take your words with you and present the fruit of our lips. And I kind of saw that in the margin of my Bible, it says, present your lips, the words of your lips as bulls.

That's what the Old Testament did. They brought bulls as sacrifice. So if I wanted to say sorry to God, I brought a bull and I killed it. And God is saying here in verse 2, present the fruit of your lips, your words as that bull.

This is the words that we have to say. Now, I believe it's words we have to say in our heart, and I believe it's words we have to say with our mouth as well, as we've seen in Romans chapter 10 and other places.

It's something that I must present with both my heart and my lips. And this is what we say in verse 3, Assyria will not save us. We will not ride on horses, nor will we say again, our God, to the work of our hands.

For in thee, the orphan, the fatherless finds mercy. And so, very simple, the word, the confession of our lips must be a product of the confession of our hearts, which says Assyria, which is the world system, this world, everything that this world has to offer, will not save us.

It's a confession that I have to make with my lips, it's a confession that has to come from my heart. Lord Jesus, nothing on this earth will save me. My retirement plan has no worth. My education has no worth.

My intelligence has no worth. My family heritage has no worth. My culture has no worth. My health has no worth. Nothing in this world system, nothing that the world offers, my job, my car, my house, it has no worth.

It won't save me. And God always is asking for that to become the cry of our hearts, I have to come with that as my offering. And I have to ask God to give me light that I might see. Lord, perhaps I'm saying it with my lips, but I don't mean it in my heart.

Rejecting Worldly and Self-Made Dependencies

Lord, give me light that I might see, help me to judge myself. Where is it that Assyria, this world, somehow I still believe can save me? Where is it, Lord, that my identity, that my definition of who I am or what I need to be is driven by something in this world, what the world thinks about me, what my friends think about me?

And the other thing I have to also say is, nor will we say our God to the work of our hands. Lord Jesus, none of my efforts, even to be spiritual, I'm going to lift up as a God. Nothing, Lord Jesus, that I do, my Bible study, my spiritual thoughts, I'm not going to make them out to be something big.

I'm not going to make them out to be like a God. Lord Jesus, I want you. I want to really come to the point where I feel like an orphan who has no inheritance, who has no father, no mother looking out for me.

Lord, do you reduce me, taking away all of the dependence I had on Assyria, this world system, all of the things that I thought would bolster me up, take it away, Lord. Take away all of my works, all the things that I've been doing that may be good, that may be spiritual, that may be holy, take it away, Lord, till you reduce me to the state of an orphan.

No inheritance, no future, no backup plan, nothing. And I'll come to you, Lord, as an orphan with absolutely nothing. I'll come to you, you'll show me mercy. And then God responds saying, I will heal your faithlessness.

The Prodigal Son’s Return to the Father

You keep going back, you keep going back into sin, because you've not been reduced to the heart of an orphan. And I think about the story of the prodigal son, when he comes back to the father he says, I am no longer worthy.

Lost all hope of being worthy. I used to have a backup plan before, I'm not even worthy to be called your servant, I'm no longer worthy. I've been reduced to an orphan. It is out of that spirit, he prepares to say a lot more, and then he ends up saying very little.

But in both what he prepares to say and what he says in Luke 15, the prodigal son says, I'm no longer worthy. And the Lord is trying to reduce us to the spirit of having that spirit of an orphan, where God takes away all of our pillars that seem to hold us up, and we can confess it with our lips.

Lord, in the orphan, you show mercy. So it is good when the Lord convicts you. It is good when you feel almost that the Lord specifically pulled you up to the front of the room and spoke right at you, it's good.

Returning to Dependence on God’s Mercy

The Lord is trying to remove all of these pillars on which you think you stand. Things in the world system, maybe our jobs, the things in this world, or even our spiritual life, our works, the work of our hands, the work of our diligence to study God's Word, God is trying to remove it all and saying, Sandeep, come back to being an orphan.

Come back to being an orphan. When you first came to the Lord and you wanted my Holy Spirit, you had nothing. You came with nothing. You said, God, I'm a complete wreck. I can't live without you. Please give me your Holy Spirit.

And I received you so freely. I gave you forgiveness of sins. I gave you an assurance that you were born again because you had nothing. In the same way, God wants us to keep coming back and then the Lord will heal our apostasy.

God will heal our faithlessness. Dear brothers and sisters, this is what the Lord wants to do in our lives. He wants to make us faithful. He wants to love us freely, as it says in Hosea 14, verse 4, let us come with the fruit of our lips.

Let us confess with our lips what the word of faith the Lord is putting in our hearts. Amen.