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PTH Ministries

Cultivating Faith

Dwayne Lemon

Are We Convinced?

Father in heaven, we thank you for your amazing grace that actually kept us throughout the night and the miracle of us rising this morning.

It's a miracle, Lord, because we are not aware of the warfare that takes place while our bodies rest.

In the same way that Satan wanted to block Jesus from even raising Moses up from the dead, from his sleep, So it is that Satan every night tries to block us from awakening from our sleep.

And it's only because of the victorious power of your love and your angels that we woke up this morning.

Truly it is a miracle and it is a blessing.

We praise you and thank you for the privilege to study your Word.

We thank you for another opportunity to hear heaven speak to our heart.

And Lord, we just ask you, please forgive us of our sins.

Help us to be convinced of what you want to share with us today.

It's our prayer that we ask in Jesus' name.

The Bible presents to us a very startling truth, a very startling reality to all of us as human beings.

God makes a statement through the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans chapter 3 that we need to talk about it a little bit.

I want you to go with me to the book of Romans the third chapter.

When you study the book of Romans it is difficult to not see that Paul's emphasis in the book of Romans is a desire that we might know God and his righteousness which we received by faith.

His burden was for his brothers especially those from the stock of Israel because he was seeing Gentiles because he was sent to the Gentiles he was seeing Gentiles that were receiving the blessings of heaven he was literally seeing people who lived a heathenistic lifestyle and yet they heard the message of Christ, their righteousness, and they received it by faith, and hence they received the blessings that came with that message.

But when Paul would look to his own brethren, those who had the oracles of God, those who had that beautiful heritage, the wonderful stories of the victories coming out of Egypt into the Canaan land, when Paul would press against this point with his brethren, they were still stuck in believing that they could obtain righteousness, but it was going to be by the works of the law rather than by faith.

And so it was that all throughout the book of Romans, you see it over and over and over again.

Romans 1, Paul talks about how they were inconsistent.

They were individuals who would go ahead and claim that they know God, but at the same time they would turn away from God and they would begin to worship the creation rather than the Creator.

And as Paul began to unfold this in Romans 2, he begins to talk to his brethren.

He says, Thou art an inexcusable old man who judges another because the very things you judge your Gentile brothers for, you're guilty of the same sins.

But in Romans 3, he unfolds it even more.

And Paul makes a startling point, I believe not only to those of his day, but it applies to even God's people today.

The Bible says in the book of Romans chapter 3, and if you're there please let me know by saying amen, the Bible says in verse 10, it says, as it is written There is how many?

It says there is none righteous, no, not even 1.

There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

This was a very appropriate statement for the Apostle Paul to give to his Jewish brothers.

It's a very appropriate statement because again, they were bent on the idea that the works of the law, by us doing the works of the law, we shall be known as the righteous children of God.

And Paul wanted them to understand, listen, there's a place for good words, no question about it.

There's a place for all sorts of manifestations.

I read in Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, It says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

It says, For therein, in the righteous, in the gospel, it says, For therein is the righteousness of God.

Does anybody know what that next word is?

In the gospel is the righteousness of God, and it will be revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

There is no question that God wants the gospel that we have received to be revealed in our day to day living there's no question about that So if we truly are in Christ, it will be manifested in good works.

But my brothers and sisters, we must be careful not to make the old Jewish mistake, which is to think that our intellectual understanding of truth, to think that our various external deeds can make us right and make us good before God.

You see, God wants to get the point across to us there's nothing that we could ever do to make ourselves righteous.

Can you imagine he's saying this to a group of people who actually are there thinking they're righteous?

If it were more direct, he was saying, all of you who think you're righteous, none of you are righteous.

All of you who think you're doing good, none of you do good.

And that is deep because somebody could say, well, wait, hold up, bro, I wrote a check.

But what we forget sometimes is 1 Chronicles 29.

You see, sometimes we think that we're doing God favors.

And I tell you the truth, 1 of these days I'm going to do it too.

There is an education that donors really need because even to date, many of us who donate money act and behave like we are doing God a favor and like we are helping God out.

And I'm like, man, we need to go back to 1 Chronicles 29.

In 1 Chronicles 29, notice what the Bible says.

I mean, the Lord just put that in my mind so I'm going to go ahead and give it.

I pray every donor in this room, may we please, because I donate too, may we all really get what God is saying in this verse.

The Bible says in 1 Chronicles 29, right there in verse 14, what does it say?

What is my people that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort?

For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.

I didn't read anything in that verse that said 10%.

Every penny that you and I have came from God.

And all that we do when we donate is we're giving back to God what He already gave us, which means we could have never given it if God didn't give it first.

And so we got to get out of this attitude that there are many ways that we check the preacher by saying, excuse me, what do you mean there's none good?

We don't understand my brothers and sisters.

You know how we study astronomy and we study the constellations and we learn science and we learn that God was so gracious, so wonderful that he positioned the earth and he positioned the sun and he positioned the moon and all these different planets, he positioned them perfectly.

And I don't know if you ever read these teachings where sometimes if the earth were to move just a little bit over to the right or move just a little bit over to the left, 1 way will burn up and be singed.

If we move another way, we will freeze and we will die.

God perfectly aligned everything in our galaxy, in our universe, in space, etc.

In other words, as God governs and guides all of these planets and everything else, do you really think your heart beats every day just because it beats?

My brothers and sisters, your heart is literally going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right now because there's someone who is supervising it.

Whenever you take a step and that bone marrow begins to produce more blood platelets, more red blood cells, more white blood cells, that's why exercise is so important.

Every time we exercise, we're helping our body and our bone marrow to produce more platelets, more red blood cells, more white blood cells that keeps the body functioning and keeps us in a great state of health.

Father in heaven, we are grateful to go through a very, very important study.

I'm asking you to enable me to articulate what your thoughts are so clearly that your people might be blessed.

And Father, I just pray that while you're blessing everyone, don't pass me by.

I ask for a revival in my own heart as we press together and study together.

Grant us the presence of your Spirit, Lord, and truly open our eyes and help us behold wondrous things out of your word we ask all these things in Jesus name Amen I'd like to invite you to turn your Bibles to the book of Proverbs 23 we go into Proverbs 23rd chapter And I want you to see what the Bible says in Proverbs 23.

And we're going to consider verse 26 because we learned last night that what God wants is very clearly expressed in Proverbs 23 in verse 26.

When you get there, just let me know by saying Amen.

The Bible says in Proverbs 23 in verse 26, My son, give me what?

And the truth of the matter is, is that when the Bible says, my son, give me thine heart, don't get confused on that.

What God wants is not for us to actually give him our hearts.

The word heart means mind and we really can't give God our mind.

But what we can do is do something very important.

Let me show you the process of how God gets access to our minds.

This morning, we looked at what the Bible says as it relates to a very terrible condition that God's people are in in these last moments in Earth's history and that condition was what is generally called the Laodicean condition, a lukewarm condition.

And as bad as it is, I'm thankful that God has a remedy.

The remedy is found in verse 18 of Revelation 3.

And it says in Revelation 3, 18, God says, I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich and white-ramed, that thou mayest be clothed, and the shame of thy nakedness do not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

And then he says, if any man will let me come in, then I will sup with Him and He with me.

Jesus is knocking at your heart's door and my heart's door.

So when somebody knocks at your door, you do need to give them something.

What you need to do is give them permission to come in.

When somebody knocks at our physical door, we need to give them permission, come in.

Jesus says in Proverbs 23 and verse 26, he says, my son, give me thine heart.

What he's not asking you to do is to take your mind and say here because we can't do that.

But what we can do is give him permission to take it.

Christ is knocking at our hearts door and he wants permission to come in and when he comes in he's going to do something wonderful.

Notice what the Bible says in the book of Ezekiel the 36th chapter.

Look at the wonderful thing that God does when we let him in.

The Bible says in Ezekiel, the 36th chapter, Notice when we give Jesus permission, He's knocking at our hearts door.

He wants us to give Him permission to do something.

There was a man who was literally God's anointed.

Wang, God skilled and blessed and enabled to do what paperwork said was impossible.

Wong could not have performed the surgery on my heart without me giving him permission.

The great physician, he wants to do something with our heart.

And it's a whole lot deeper than what the earthly surgeons can do.

What Jesus wants to do is found in Ezekiel 36, right there in verse 26.

It says, a new heart also will I give you.

But in order for Him to put the new heart, what does He have to do with the old?

It says, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.

So when God says, my son, give me thine heart and let thine eyes observe my ways, he's saying, give me permission that I can now perform the surgery that only Jesus can perform.

That he can take away the original heart condition.

And he can put a brand new heart inside of each and every 1 of us.

In Proverbs 23, same book, why is it that he wants to give us a new heart?

The reason why he says, give me this heart, give me permission that I can take away this heart and I can put a new heart, a new mind.

The first portion of Proverbs 23, but now I want you to look at verse 7.

The Bible says in Proverbs 23 right there in verse 7.

For as a man thinketh in his heart, So is He.

God wants my heart, because God knows that when He gets our heart, we will become like Him.

This is the central point in the great controversy between Christ and Satan over man.

Satan says, I want your heart, I want your mind.

And there's a great cosmic battle going on over the human mind right now.

Every time you drive down the streets of Los Angeles, you see billboards that are saying give me your heart.

I want your thoughts to be fixed on what we're promoting.

This is why parents, this is why adults, this is why children, we have to get to that precious place that when we drive down the road, we need to shine our shoes well and make it look attractive because often we will have to stare at our feet.

Sometimes when you go on airplanes, I had to fly here, I definitely didn't drive.

The only screen I was looking at on that airplane was my computer.

But sometimes you can see things in your peripheral.

If you have somebody next to you or sitting in front of you and they are watching that which is called ungodly.

And it's so easy for the mind to look and to get caught up and so what you got to do sometimes you got to say well let's take a look at my feet here.

Sometimes you gotta do whatever it takes that you keep your eyes off of that which is distracting.

Everywhere we go, Christ is making suggestions.

You see, when we go down the streets of Los Angeles, we're seeing suggestions from the devil that are constantly letting us know, we want you to be like this.

And the devil wants to erase the image of God from humanity and he's doing it.

You know we are the only species that is confused on what we are.

Vital Necessity of Communion

Father in heaven, we thank you again Lord for the blessing to come together as a family to once again study your words of truth.

We pray that you'll make your word plain to us Lord, that we may understand what we read and know how to apply the beautiful lessons on faith that you are showing us at such a time as this.

Forgive us, we pray, of our sins, and thank you for hearing our prayer in Jesus' name.

Okay, so we left off with the first point in our lesson on faith and I think we would do well to consider it once again.

So let's go ahead and let's consider this point.

And when we looked at the story of the centurion, we saw that faith is fully trusting God's word to come to pass because he said it.

And depending only on the Word to do what God said it will do.

Now, the reason that this is important is because the most essential knowledge for us to gain is the knowledge of how to cultivate faith, how to exercise and grow in faith.

We saw some powerful lessons that came from it.

But now I want us to look at a deeper layer.

1 thing we learn is we must become more acquainted with the Word.

As we become more acquainted with the Word of God, then we better know how to depend on it and to believe it and to trust it in the various circumstances of our own lives.

The deeper layer, we're now going to look at Genesis chapter 12.

And I want you to see what Genesis 12 shows us here because this is also a very powerful lesson in dealing with faith.

And this is what I would call a deeper layer.

The first part is difficult for many of us, but nevertheless it's quite possible.

The more we know what God says we can trust know the Lord said that he will do this therefore we trust it fully and We depend it's gonna come to pass because God promised it'll come to pass.

That's pretty simple But now we're looking at Genesis chapter 12 if you're there just let me know by saying amen.

The Bible says in Genesis 12, looking at verses 1 and 2, it says in Genesis 12, 1 and 2, Now the Lord hath said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy Father's house, unto a land that I will show thee.

He says, And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.

So what did God promise that He was going to make unto Abram?

He was going to make a great nation, okay?

Now, let's get some specifications on that, Genesis 13.

So now, Genesis 13, 1 chapter over, look at verse 16.

In Genesis 13, in verse 16, we now see here that the Bible adds more into the picture.

God promised Abram, I'm going to make a great nation.

He says, I'm going to make a seed, and the seed is going to be like the dust of the earth.

Then, more specific, Genesis 21, verse 12.

This great nation is going to come through thy seed, and that seed is going to ultimately multiply like the way you see little kernels in the dust of the earth.

And in Genesis 21, notice what it says in verse 12.

In Genesis 21, verse 12, God says, and God said unto Abraham, let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad and because of thine bondwoman, and all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice, for in who Isaac shall thy seed be called.

I want you to notice that the word of the Lord is coming to Abraham.

God says, I'm going to make a great nation.

I'm gonna do it through your seed that's gonna be so spread out it's gonna be equivalent to the dust of the earth and it's gonna come through thy seed Isaac.

God makes it clear this is what I'm going to do.

So, obviously, Abraham and Sarah had a glitch in this promise, didn't they?

There was a challenge where they did not fully believe.

This is why it is so important that husbands and wives make sure that you are both growing in faith because the wife can negatively impact the husband and the husband can negatively impact the wife.

And that's why, wives, you must understand you have an individual spiritual responsibility to keep your walk with God strong.

Husbands, you have a spiritual responsibility to keep your walk with God strong because you affect your spouse.

Because Sarah said, we're going to go ahead and get my servant.

They believed the promise, but they did like a lot of us do.

They had a mingling of trust in men and trust in God.

They believed God's promise, but they didn't trust God's timing.

So while they believed God's promise, they kept watching time go by, and they're getting not younger, but older.

So hence, Sarah says, let's get my servant involved, and Abraham, go ahead and be intimate with her.

And Abraham allowed his wife's doubting to affect him.

And he went into agreement into an act of rebellion.

Do you know that the Muslim world, as we know it, would not even exist if Sarah was faithful?

It is through Ishmael that we have Islam, the same way we have the Jews through Isaac.

It's just deep when you look at it like that, these 2 brothers.

And as the Bible says, Ishmael's hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against Ishmael.

My brothers and sisters in Islam, I mean, it's still a war going on.

And so it is that as we're looking at this, we know that they fell off.

So, obviously, Abraham now, he's pleading with God, he wants a blessing for his son, Ishmael.

But that's when God had to say, Sarah, thy wife.

Now, did you notice that God did not even acknowledge the other woman?

Not that he hated her, but God made it clear, Sarah's your wife.

And it is in Isaac that your seed shall multiply and be blessed.

Series

Cultivating Faith

Vital Necessity of Communion

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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