Spiritual Gifts - The Solution To Self, Part 3

God Centered Theology

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Daily Bites Of God's Word - Part 4 - Psalm 119:4

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And what I want to do is I want to start out by reading, I don't normally read through the passage that I'm going to preach in the beginning, but I'm going to do that this time because I want to set the scene for you.

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So if you have your Bibles, I want to turn to Matthew chapter 14. We're going to begin in verse 22. It says,

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Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, while he sent the crowds away.

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After he had sent the crowds away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Now just sort of a side note here on prayer, as my good friend

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Sam was with us, it's been over a month ago now, but he spoke on prayer and I've had a lot of good feedback on that sermon, a lot of things that he's showing you, and those of you who have talked to me about that.

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And this is just a note that I personally want to bring out about prayer. Notice that Jesus in the hustle and bustle of everything that he did, made the choice, sort of this awareness of the fact that he needed to be away from that.

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So you notice it says, He went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Now we pray in groups, we pray in church and things, but serious getting down to business with God and prayer usually happens when you're by yourself.

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It's when you can listen and let him move, but you can also talk to him. And when it was evening, he was there alone, but the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary.

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And in the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said,

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It's a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them saying,

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Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid. And how often the Bible tells us,

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Do not be afraid, trust in God. Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.

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And he said, come. And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

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But seeing the wind, he became frightened and beginning to sink. He cried out, Lord, save me.

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Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him and said to him, You have little faith.

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Why did you doubt? This word doubt is a

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Greek word that means to waver. It has the understanding of not being firm or settled, but there's a wavering.

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It's not being sure. It's not being firm. It's, well, I think, but, or, you know,

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I'm to this point, but then there's sort of a wavering. You can even picture a boat on the water, if you will, that rocking back and forth.

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It's not a firm thing there. And when he says little faith, it doesn't mean he didn't have any faith.

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It just means it was not enough. It was found in want. It was found lacking. It wasn't sufficient for what the moment called for.

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And that, my friends, is where we as Christians struggle the most. It's not that we don't have any faith. Obviously, we have faith.

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We have faith in Jesus Christ. We repented from our sin. We've placed our faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

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We have faith. And sometimes just getting out of bed and facing the day can demand a lot of faith.

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But it seems that, especially along the transformation process, as we seek to remove self from the equation and then uplift and glorify

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God, but also meet the needs of our fellow Christians, and as we move towards that in love, we struggle with faith.

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We struggle with not having enough faith at certain times in our life. Big decisions have to be made, or circumstances of life take us by surprise, or they're unexpected or sudden, or even for those things that we know are coming, can be tough.

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Everyone wants to naturally ask why, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's a difference between asking why and seeking understanding, and the

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Bible tells us, Matthew 7, ask, seek, knock. And there's a difference between that and I just simply don't trust

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God in this matter, and I'm questioning Him. There's a difference there. But while we want to ask why,

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God never promises to answer all the whys this side of eternity, He does promise to be with us through the whys.

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Barter Research, and this has been a couple years ago, this was back in 2012, but at the time, and I would imagine the numbers probably haven't changed that much in the last five to six years, so I went ahead and I wanted to use this this morning, but they said that only 18 % of self -identified

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Christians, these were just people that professed to be Christian, whether they were actually, you know, really

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Christian, or if they really even practiced it, just self -identified Christians, only 18 % of them claimed to be totally committed to investing in their own spiritual development.

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That's not good. As we saw last time, when I wrote down the numbers of those that actually read and study their

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Bible, only 13 % of those responded said they read their Bible every day. The Bible has the power to transform lives.

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If we're not using it, that's not a good equation. And if we're not taking in, digesting, absorbing, and then allowing the

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Bible to work in and through us and transform us from the inside out, it's no wonder that we lack in faith.

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It's no wonder that we make bad decisions, don't serve God as we should, don't love our fellow brethren as we should, don't use our spiritual gifts as we should, both the discovering of them, the developing of them, and the faithfully using of them.

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And I'm there, too. I'm never excluded from anything I preach. In fact, you know,

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I don't know, we probably would never do this, but you could, theoretically, put a mirror right there in the front row, footing right back at me, because by the time

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I get here on Sundays, I've already done that plenty of times. In fact, I'll just, you know, I keep letting everybody in on the secret.

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So I'll just let you all in on the secret, so that way it won't be a secret anymore. Just about everything I preach is something

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I struggle with or something I fail at. So, we're all on the same boat.

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I'm never excluded here. So I ask why, I doubt, I lack faith at times.

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So this message is for me, too. Without a full determination to live like Christ and for Him, the path to complete transformation,

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Romans 12, 1 and 2, is blocked. You have to be determined.

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We can't manifest or just, as Brother Abe was saying this morning in Sunday school class,

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Christians think sometimes he walked over to the light switch and just flipped it off and flipped it back on. We think you've become a

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Christian, you're just like a computer. You're downloaded all the information, you just have everything you need. Faith doesn't work that way.

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We don't have all the faith we need immediately, or it's just an ample supply that we can just pull from.

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Now, it is an ample supply, but it has to be developed. It has to be stretched. It has to be grown. It's like a muscle.

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In track and field, we used to stretch before the races, and you'd have to work out, and it was hard work, and anything worth doing in life will take what?

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Hard work. Because you have to stretch muscles. You have to stretch your mind. You have to work and work, and that develops, and it produces things.

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This faith that is needed won't just come easily or naturally.

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It has to be developed over time. God wants to grow your faith, but He's going to do it in ways that's going to require us to trust

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Him. We have a very serious problem in our world today. There is a lack of serious

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Christians who take God seriously. It's just the truth. If we took God seriously, we wouldn't have stats like 18 % are committed to their spiritual development, and 13 % read their

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Bible daily. We just wouldn't have it. I forget the country

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Ed mentioned this morning. I want to say it was South Korea. Where was it? It said it had a million people?

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South Korea. He said Billy Graham preached a message one time in South Korea where they said it was a million people. Can you think of anywhere let's start small in the last 10 years in America where a million people have showed up to hear the gospel preach?

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20? 30? I know Billy Graham is doing a lot of crusades, but a million might be stretching it for one of the

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American crusades. But regardless, why don't we have every single church?

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Now granted, we probably have way too many churches in every town. Yes, story for another day. But regardless, we have them.

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Why aren't they in the field? Everywhere. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, you can have church any day of the week you want to.

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If Sunday's the day we do it, that's fine, but pick any day. We can't fill them up any day.

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It's not the pastor's fault. It's not Sunday school teacher's fault. It's not really anybody's fault. Faith is measured on the individual level.

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It's our fault individually. We don't take God seriously. We don't take His Word seriously.

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We say we believe it. We say it means a lot to us, and it impacts and changes our life. But does it really?

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Has it changed anything behaviorally about you or me? I would venture to say that yes, it has.

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But is it doing it as much as it could be? What it leaves us is seriously ill -equipped to fight the daily battles.

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If you don't think the Christian life is a spiritual war, you're mistaken.

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It's a daily war. Forget behavior for a second. Just think about your thought life.

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Can you go just one day without a bad thought? It bombards you all the time. It isn't that you're just so abundantly sinful and we're just horrible people.

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It's just reality. Satan wants to either keep you unsaved, or if you're saved, he wants to ruin your witness in such a fashion that you're basically rendered irrelevant.

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And he does this by bombarding us, making us think bad things, want to say bad things, do bad things, hurt our testimony, not be what we should, not pursuing

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God's Word, not praying, not living righteous and holy lives and lifting one another up in agape love.

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This is mostly mostly my age, my generation, us millennials, but you can apply this pretty much across the board.

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You will find people of all ages that will fit into this next category. But Christians want entertainment.

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They want to be entertained. We're lazy. We just are.

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And this one's probably more primarily my generation, but we're entitled. We just are.

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We need to seriously get over ourselves. But you see them every day on the

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TV, so and so is like, I get over it. I just can't get past it.

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I mean, the generation before me worked so hard, and fortunately

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I had a family that made me work so hard, and I got to sit there and listen to them, like, go get a job or something.

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Do something. You're not entitled. You can apply the same thing to spirituality.

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It doesn't just get downloaded. It won't just come sitting and listen to a message, although those are important.

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It's part of the primary role that I play here at the church. You've got to do the work.

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And that goes for me, too. It's one thing to do a sermon on Sunday, but I need to be in the

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Word, in prayer, in things that don't involve the sermon for Sunday, my own study.

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And if I'm not doing it, forget being a good pastor. I'm not going to be a good Christian, because it takes work.

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It takes effort. It's just so sad to see just the sheer laziness.

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Sometimes Gina tells me all the time, so you just need to take a break from the internet. I was like,

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I know, because I'll see something. I'll do this thing where we'll be sitting there, and I'll be looking at something, and she'll be like, what?

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And I'll be like, and she'll read it, and she'll be like, why do you do that to yourself? I'm like,

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I don't know. I think I have some kind of crazy addiction where I like to see things that make me mad, and then I get some kind of high off of it or something.

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I don't know. But I just see these things before me, and it's just, I have to remind myself

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I can't control them. I can control me. You can control you. God wants to completely transform us.

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It is a process. You don't get saved, as I've already said, and then immediately become 100 %

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Christ -like. And this is going to transition us now to the main point of our message this morning.

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One of the biggest ways He works this transformation in our lives is by growing our faith.

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We have a lack of growing faith in Christianity today. The one thing we lack the most is the one thing

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God is looking for the most. Often in the Gospels, He would say of either individuals or groups

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He encountered, you know, ye of little faith, this group doesn't have the faith they need.

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It's repeated often. And God grows our faith by allowing or initiating challenges to our faith.

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Hence, the hard work. Allowing or initiating challenges to our faith so that we can learn to trust

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Him and stay focused on Him so that our faith will grow as we go through these challenges.

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No promises that will be void of challenges in our life. No promises that the challenges will be easy.

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God says those challenges that I either allow or initiate in your life are there for a reason and they're there to grow your faith.

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So instead of trying to resist them or avoid them or get around them, we should embrace them.

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We should joyfully walk through them. Much easier to say than to do.

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Why are Christians' faith not growing? Well, I want to take a look at this story here.

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I want to give you a couple thoughts. And largely what I'm going to be talking about in reference or instance here where Peter walks on the water is going to be sort of metaphorical and just trying to draw some symbolism here.

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And this was a literal account. This is something that actually happened in history.

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But I'm going to use it to sort of demonstrate some things that we struggle with. Take for instance first.

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Notice Peter got out of the boat and took some steps towards Jesus. He says in verse 28,

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Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And he said, Come. And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came towards Jesus.

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So our first thing that I want to draw some symbolism from and uses sort of the metaphor for us today is the boat itself.

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What is a boat? And keep in mind, all the disciples are in the boat. Now there is a storm going on, but look, these guys are fishermen.

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They're used to it. There's another account, I believe it's in Mark, where they had this other storm, and they go and try to wake him up.

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And you know, if you get fishermen that are scared in a storm, you're in trouble because these guys are used to it.

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They wake him up, and when Jesus calms the sea, they're more scared about him calming the sea than they were the storm to begin with.

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So the storm, you know, hey, it is what it is. But it's getting a little rough. And you notice it says when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, then they were terrified because they thought it was a ghost.

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The boat represents comfort. It represents the known, something you can work with.

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If you're an analytical mind like me, think about it in these terms. You have the parameters. You have the limits.

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You have the boundaries. You have the confines in which you're working. And you know, if you stay within that box, you can work with that because you have known variables.

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You have something like scientific tests and stuff where you have controls. And then you have things that are variables that things will change.

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And based on how they change when something is fixed, you can make decisions, so on and so forth. Being in the boat's comfort, it's known.

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It's controlled. It's something we can work with. It's something we're used to. Christians love the boat.

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They love the boat. We love it. We love to stay in it.

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And we love it because it doesn't rock. It's comforting. We know where it's going.

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We've been in it so many times before. It's the way we've always done it. And we just keep going along.

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Life's stream. And as long as nothing messes with our boat, we're good. I can work with this.

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I'm fine. Just don't mess with my boat. Then this crazy guy,

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Peter, gets the crazy notion to get out of the boat. What's wrong with this guy?

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Don't he know there's comfort in the boat? What in the world is he doing? Don't leave the boat.

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You might stretch and grow your faith and be more Christ -like.

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But Peter gets out of the boat. And he takes some steps towards Jesus. Some Christians' faith is so small they never get out of the boat.

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They may get out of the boat and then jump right back in.

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They say, that water's a little rough. I don't even know if I'll... I'm good. I'll just kind of test the temperature here.

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Oh, yeah, I'm good. I'll just back away. Notice something else that happens.

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It doesn't say that Peter got out of the boat and just stood on water. It said he walked towards Jesus. Now, it isn't recorded for us how many steps or how far before he starts to sink, but it says he walked towards Jesus.

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That means he had enough faith to get out of the boat and start walking, start moving.

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You cannot look at this passage and say Peter was a colossal or complete failure because he eventually sinks.

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Now, we're going to get to that part in a minute. But just him simply getting out of the boat, trying something, allowing his faith to be stretched and grown to that point, took faith?

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Because think about this. Think about this with me. It says Peter got out of the boat, right? What are the other ones doing?

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They're still in the boat, aren't they? They haven't moved a muscle. They didn't even have the faith to even get out, much less walk some steps towards Jesus.

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And see, that's how things work in churches. So many times you'll have somebody step out, take a step of faith, or even make it a little ways.

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What we've got to be careful of, my friends, and what we cannot do is if someone among us takes a step of faith, developing this culture of ministry and wants to serve in a new way or try something, and they get out of the boat, and they take a few steps, it either doesn't go like they think they will, or they have to abandon it because it didn't work out, or it wasn't quite the best idea, we never need to go to that person and say they failed.

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Because the rest of us probably were still in the boat the whole time, while they at least had the faith to get out and try something.

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No, it's not a failure, because sometimes you get out there and you try something, and it doesn't work. Trust me.

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I have failed and failed and failed and failed and, you know, things were trying.

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It didn't quite go like you want to, but it doesn't mean I was a failure for trying. It just means that particular time wasn't the right thing.

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God's will works like this. Imagine a closed door and an open door. If you walk up to a door and it's closed, guess what?

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God's telling you don't go that way. If you come over here and this door's open, you keep on walking through.

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And then the meme you'll see on Facebook and Internet all the time, if you're in the hallway and all the doors are closed, praise

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Jesus in the hallway. God works that way. And sometimes it involves just simply having enough faith to get out of the boat, take a couple steps, try some things, and if the door gets shut at some point, maybe that's all the distance

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God wanted you to carry. Now, in our situation here, we have a challenge that comes.

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Peter gets out of the boat, walks on the water, and comes towards Jesus. Now, notice verse 30, it says,

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But seeing the wind, he became frightened and began to sink.

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What changed? He started looking around.

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He took his focus off Jesus, took his focus off God, and started thinking about all the, well, it can't work because of this.

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This is why it won't work. This is why I can't do this. I can't do this because I'm a human.

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I shouldn't be walking on water. I can't do this because I'm a human, or I'm Andy, or I'm whoever, and this is not within the realm of my talents and abilities.

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Solution to self. See how these all tie in? If you start making it about you and what you can do, yes, you'll probably not get past a certain point.

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But if you keep your focus on Jesus, keep your focus on where you're going and where He's leading you, you'll succeed.

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We face many challenges in life, everything from money to jobs, illnesses, decisions about all those things.

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God doesn't always tell us what we will face. Let that one sink in for a little bit.

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Think about that. We don't know what tomorrow will bring, do we? Things happen suddenly and unexpectedly every single day.

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And it isn't until the point in which it happens that you're like, Whoa! Where'd this come from? We're not told what to expect.

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Our faith prepares us for the unexpected. And you can't run or hide from the storms of life.

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The boat that we're in, this metaphorical boat, was a real boat for these guys. And it was in a real body of water in the midst of a real storm.

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And although they were prepared for those types of things, if you don't do that which is necessary to be prepared for said storm, you're going to drown!

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I don't care how seasoned a fisherman you are, or how seasoned a

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Christian you are. If you do not prepare yourself in the

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Word of God, in prayer, you won't be ready. And in the worst cases it will just completely defeat you.

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But it doesn't have to be that way. Challenges are there to help us grow in our faith if handled the right way.

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Peter began to question if he could do it. Notice when he gets out of the boat, he just starts taking steps towards Jesus.

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There's no question in his mind. There's no wavering. There's no doubt. He says,

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Lord, if you would command me to do it, tell me and I'll do it. That's all he needed. We always start out with the best of intentions, don't we?

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And we start out strong and start out good. And we're on fire for the thing

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I did last April 9th. And I'm still on fire now, but a couple weeks later, this has nothing to do with anybody that's at this church.

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This is just Satan. The thing I wasn't prepared for that my pastor tried to prepare me for is the level of spiritual attack.

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And I'm not saying that it's unique to me. It echoes for all of us. I'm just speaking from my own life here in the role that I play, but in your role, if you want to know if Satan's real, get out of the boat and try to do something for God today and tomorrow.

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And as you find him showing up at your doorstep in a very quick, fast, and a hurry. He will try to get in your mind.

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He will try to discourage you. He will try to stop you. Challenges will come. What do we do when the challenges come?

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Peter began to question if he could do it. If you focus on self or what you can or what you think you can do, then your faith will waver and you'll begin to sink.

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Why? Because, my friends, doubt sinks, but faith walks.

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Doubt sinks, but faith walks. It's not going to be easy.

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Being a Christian, trusting God, walking on water, which probably isn't going to be something we would do in our lifetimes, but let me tell you, there's a lot more things you can do in life that I think

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Peter would take walking on water over that any day of the week. Because there's things that you are going to face, that I'm going to face, that are going to seem infinitely harder.

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We would gladly trade them in for the test of walking on water. It's not easy.

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Doubting's easy. It's easy to doubt. It's easy to give up, but it takes faith to stay focused and focused on Jesus Christ, not focused on what can or cannot be done, but focused on what

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God has commanded. Because don't lose sight of this fact, my friends. In this account,

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Peter did say, if you will command me, I will come, but the Lord followed it up by commanding him to do it.

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There are certain things we're commanded to do, and one of them is to live by faith. And notice that Jesus Christ didn't rebuke

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Peter for getting out of the boat, did he? And he didn't rebuke him for walking on the water, and he didn't rebuke him for even sinking.

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God knows we're going to do it at times. He rebukes him for the lack of faith. He never expected

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Peter to be able to walk on water on his own ability. You see?

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If he expected us to get out of the boat and walk on the water and do something like that, which we're not capable of, well then he wouldn't be a very fair, holy, trusting, and just God.

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No, he says, Peter, you're going to get out here and you're going to do something. You're going to do it through my power, and all I require of you is your faith in me that I have the power to help you and enable you to do it.

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That's all he's asking you for. That's all he wants out of you is the faith.

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What may be miraculous in your life may not be as miraculous in someone else's life, but for your specific life, it may take every ounce of faith you have to do that one thing, whatever it is.

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Whereas for someone else in their unique relationship with God, it may require something different to grow their faith.

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We're all unique. We're all different. God can use us all in different ways, hence the spiritual gifts.

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But the common consistency among all of us is that he needs each and every one of us to have a faith that is growing so that we can live our unique lives, serve each other in unique ways, love each other in unique ways.

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And that's the whole essence of spiritual gifts. That's the whole essence of a culture of ministry.

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Part of growing our faith is going on, or part of growing our faith is being prepared for the storms before they come by praying and asking for power.

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You can call it power. You can call it dunamis if you want to. I like, I'm learning more about Greek every day, so if you want to pray and use the word dunamis, by all means, go ahead.

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It means miraculous power, divine enabling power. It's actually where we get our word dynamite from in English.

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It's an interesting thing there. You don't see many cries for that today.

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Christians today seem to want pleasure, entertain me, don't stir the waters around my boat.

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Lord knows don't even ask me to get out of the boat. My plea and my concern and what

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I hope for today is that we can have Christians praying and crying out for God to change their world, change their life, and grow their faith.