Becoming a Man of Unwavering Faith (13 page)

As men of faith, Jesus commanded us to take this news all over the world. Everybody has a right to hear this message, and we must do our part to deliver it. The fact is that one day every knee shall bow to Jesus and every tongue will confess that He is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). God has ordained that Jesus will judge the living and dead. Every man, woman, and child will stand before Jesus.

Jesus said, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself” (John 12:32). We tend to misinterpret this scripture. We say, “Well, if we just lift up Jesus, people will come to Him.” Yes, that’s true in a sense, but that isn’t what Jesus meant. He was saying, “If I go ahead and obey the Father, and I die on that cross; if I bear their sins and their sicknesses; if I take their judgment and pay the price and go down into hell; and if I rise again, I will draw every human being before Me.”

Now Jesus is saying to us as men of faith, “What did you do with what I did for you? What did you do with Me? What attitude did you take about what I did?”

With every beat of your heart and every tick of the clock, you’re getting closer to the time when you, your loved ones, and your neighbors will stand before Jesus, who is the Judge of the living and the dead. No man can remit your sins or their sins but Jesus. “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43
KJV
). Whoever will believe on Jesus will receive not just forgiveness of sins but a remission of sins.
Remission
means that it’s stamped “paid in full”!

What a glorious Gospel you can share with and live out before your family and neighbors. Go out and tell them that God is a good God.

J
ESUS IS SAYING TO US AS MEN OF FAITH
,

“What did you do with what I did for you?”

S
ooner or later, even as men of faith, we all come into a place where we are tempted to say, “It just does not look as though anything is going to work.”

There is a touching situation in the Bible where nothing seemed to work when a needy man approached Jesus’ disciples for help.

“And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.’ Then Jesus answered and said, ‘O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.’ And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour. Then the
disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you’ ” (Matthew 17:14–20).

Here is a father with a tremendous need. His son has severe seizures and suicidal actions. He brought his son to the best deliverance evangelists of that day—the ones who were directly trained under the ministry of Jesus. Yet after the disciples did everything they knew to do, every one of them failed.

There are times when nothing seems to work.

Let me tell you, there is always hope when you are in trouble. The psalmist David said, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills—from whence comes my help?” (Psalm 121:1).

When that father lifted his eyes and looked, there was Jesus coming down the mountain! His face was still shining from His Transfiguration as He comes (Matthew 17:1–13). When He comes on the scene, every failure, every sickness, and every demon leaves.

All we need to do is get Jesus on the scene.

Jesus is the Living Word. There is the written Word,
and Jesus is that Word personified. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). If we can activate the Word of God in the midst of our failures, we can find help from God.

Jesus came down into this valley and asked the man what he was seeking from the disciples. The man told Him about his son, adding that the disciples had not been able to help his son. Jesus told the man to bring the boy to Him. “And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour” (Matthew 17:18).

This father found his answer in the Lord Jesus. He brought the Living Word to his situation.

Jesus is wonderful! We need to preach Jesus. This generation needs to see Jesus. If we can just give suffering, sighing, crying, dying humanity a glimpse of Jesus, Who is ever the same and Who has the power to perform whatever we need, people will run to Him. They will run to Him because He is still the marvelous Son of God as pictured in the Bible.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He is with you wherever you go. He said, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”
(Matthew 28:20). And He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).

As men of unwavering faith, we need to know what to do when we find ourselves in the valley and nothing is working. People pray and seek God for success, healing, and deliverance. They seek to move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and for doors of ministry to open. They pray and pray and pray. They try every formula they have heard of, yet nothing seems to work.

We need Jesus in our valley. He will reveal the way, because He is the Way! He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Years ago, I had a new car, one of the best, and I was so proud of it. But one day as I was approaching the highway, it abruptly stopped. The engine in my brand-new car would not even turn over. I was so disappointed, and I could have just walked off and left it there, concluding that it wouldn’t work for me. But I knew this car was built to run, so I called my mechanic, who came and found that a little wire had gotten disconnected. Once the wire was connected, it started right away, and I went merrily on down the road.

You may get some wonderful teaching and truth from one of God’s anointed teachers. You may jump at the opportunity to try it. You say, “It is so wonderful.” All
goes well as you drive it down the road, until you hit a problem. When you try to apply what you have learned, the whole operation fails. Then you say, “He said it would work, but I turned the key and nothing happened. It is in the Bible, but it is not working for me.”

When nothing seems to work, you need Jesus to show you your loose connection. It isn’t that the Bible does not work.
God’s Word works!
We must realize that if there is something wrong, it is not with God or His Word; it may be us.

When you are seeking God, and you are believing faithfully and trying to apply God’s Word to a situation, and nothing seems to work, here are some checkpoints to help you find your loose connection.

When I face adversity, the first thing I do is to turn God’s great searchlight on in my heart to check up on my own life. I want to find out if I have overlooked anything that needs to be made right. Jesus said, “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25).

If I have any envy, strife, jealousy, wrath, or anything against anyone, I want to know it. I say, “Search me, O
God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties” (Psalm 139:23).

I know that if I do not close up every gap, Satan would have an opportunity to enter in. He has no place unless we give him that place. The Bible says, “Nor give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27).

The patriarch Job had a hedge about him. The devil had to admit the truth to God in saying, “Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side?” (Job 1:10). A hedge is a wall that the devil cannot get through. But we find out God permitted Satan to trespass the hedge because Job allowed fear to come into his life. There was a gap. He said, “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me” (Job 3:25). Fear opened the door for Satan to come in and try to destroy him in the way that we see written in the Book of Job.

Check your own life. You have a hedge about you. Over you is the blood of Jesus Christ. Around you encamp the angels of the Lord. The Lord goes before you. Goodness and mercy are following you all the days of your life. Underneath are the Everlasting Arms.

That hedge about you can be broken by an unforgiving spirit, jealousy, envy, strife, stinginess, covetousness, lasciviousness, evil desire, immorality, lust, or unforgiven
sin. Many times the hedge is broken down because of unresolved anger. “ ‘Be angry, and do not sin’: do not let the sun go down on your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26).

If God’s Word is not working for you, check up on your own life first. Examine yourself (1 Corinthians 11:31).

“If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). Forgive your wife. Forgive your children. Ask them to forgive you. The Word says, “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

Keep strife out of your life. God will not work for you while you live in open rebellion against His Word.

If you do not have some definite promise from the Word of God that has been whispered to your heart and which you have embraced; if you do not have any real, definite, pointed promise that God has quickened to you in your present situation, then you have a loose connection.

Get into God’s Word. Meditate on the Scriptures until God speaks to your heart. “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

You cannot have faith for something unless you have a promise from God’s Word. Check your Promise Book!

If you are believing God for finances, check up on the verses that apply. “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).

If you are believing for healing, check up on your healing scriptures. “Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

Whatever you are believing for, check your promises!
God’s Word will never change! It will never fail!

I have a missionary friend in Mexico who picked up a hitchhiker one day and began to talk with him about the Lord. The hitchhiker pulled a gun, pointed it at him, and told him to pull off onto a country road. This convict planned to take the car and everything in it and leave my friend in a deserted place.

My friend turned to this fellow and said, “You cannot do this to me. I have more power than you have. ‘Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.’ ”

The convict said, “Drive.”

My friend kept driving, feeling the gun jabbing in his side. But he said, “You cannot do this to me. The Bible
says that I have all power over the devil, who is making you do this. You cannot do this to me.”

The convict made him drive down a deserted road and stop. Then he got out of the car.

My friend persisted. “You cannot do this to me! I have Jesus in me. In the Name of Jesus, you cannot do this to me.”

The convict directed him into a field and told him to take off his clothes. There stood my friend in his underwear…. God’s man of unwavering faith and power!

It
really
looked as though it was not working and everything had failed.

As the convict walked away to the car, my friend lifted his voice one more time and shouted, “In the Name of Jesus you cannot do this. I command you in Jesus’ Name to come back! Satan, you are defeated in Jesus’ Name!”

In just a few moments, the convict came back, handed him his clothes, and said, “Hombre, I like you!”

There is power in the Name of Jesus! It may look as though the enemy is stripping you down to nothing, but if you will check on your promises and put your whole confidence in the Word of God, you will have the victory.

When once you get the Word of God settled in you, there will be no sickness, no poverty, no disease, no defeat, and no calamities, because the Word of God is forever settled in
you!

You must settle it.

The Word of God will lift you into a higher realm of faith. “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).