Faith do we have it?

Julie said that I had to blog something, so here is my sermon from Sunday: 

A cold march wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news. That afternoon of March 10, 1991 complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks into her pregnancy, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver the couple’s new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs. “I don’t think she’s going to make it.” He said, as kindly as he could. “There’s only a 10% chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a cruel one” Numb with disbelief, David and Dianna listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to mental retardation, and on and on. “No! No!” was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5 year old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter and become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away. But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially ‘raw’, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chest to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.      There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and a ounce of strength there. At last, when Dana was 2 months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the first time. And 2 months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living a normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted. Five years latter, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and a unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But this is not the end of her story.  One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother’s lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her Brother Dustin’s baseball team was practicing. As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, “Do you smell that?” Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, “Yes, it smells like rain.” Dana closed her eyes and again asked, “Do you smell that?” Once again, her mother replied, “Yes, I think we’re about to get wet it smells like rain.”  Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with small hands and loudly announced “No it smells like Him.  It smells like God when you lay your head on his chest.” Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Dana hopped down to play with the other children.  Before the rains came, her daughter’s words confirmed Diana and her family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of the first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding her on His chest and it His loving scent that she remembers so well.

Webster defines faith this way…A belief in something not seen… relying on trust… Now let’s look at how the bible defines it in Hebrews 11:1-2.   Now faith is the sbubstance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.

In verse 1 of chapter 11 it says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.”  Dana’s family had the faith that when they asked, God would hold their little girl close to Him and make her well, even though it was against all the odds.            The questions we have to ask ourselves is this:  Where are we in our walk with God?  Where does our faith lay?  Are we telling God that we rely on Him daily to meet our needs or do we try to handle it on our own, because He has so many other things to do?  Do you catch yourself saying, “Lord, I will handle this today, because I know that you are busy, and this is just a small issue, but when the big one comes, then I’ll need your help.”?  To many people today do this, but how can we change this and allow God to walk with us?                  God has two ways in which men can come to know Him today. First is, that you can come to Him by works. Yes, if you can present perfection in your works, God will accept you-but so far nobody as been able to make it. Adam did not make it and no one since as been able to do it. Not Abraham, not David, not Daniel, none of them made it by being perfect. Therefore this is not a satisfactory way to come to God.                The only other way, the Bible tells us, to come to God is, to come by faith.                 Faith…the substance of things hoped for. The Greek word for substance is Hupostasis (hup-o-stay-sis). It is a scientific term, the opposite of hypothesis or theory. It is that which rests upon facts. We have become a society that looks at the facts.  So where are the facts?? They are right here my friend in the Word of God. If your faith does not rest upon the Word of God, it is not biblical faith at all. It has to rest upon what God says. It actually means to believe in God.                 In verse 2, “For by it the elders.” Who are the elders? The elders could be one of 3 different groups. 1.           A group of old people. 2.       It could refer to the office of elder in the New Testament church.     3.     Or finally the Old Testament saints.               For these Old Testament saints, faith was not a leap into the dark. Their faith rested upon evidence.  Noah built the ark, and did it by faith.What kind of faith? Was it just some dream he had? No. God gave him an abundance of evidence because Noah had walked with God for many years.                Let’s look at Abraham.  He had faith in God, so much so, that when God told him to offer up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice unto the Lord, Abraham did it.  He took Isaac up unto the high place, bound him, and laid him upon the altar.  And as he was about to give him back to the Lord, an angel of the Lord said unto him from Heaven, “Abraham, do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”  Now that is faith in action.      The problem with many of us today is, that when a crisis comes to us and we ought to have faith in God to take care of it, we don’t.  We are not able to do so, because we have not been doing it all along. However, if you learn to trust God when the sun is shining, it is easier to trust Him on the day when the sky is cold and dark and you are in the middle of one of life’s storms.                God wants us to not only be saved by faith, but to walk in faith every day.  Not in just the crisis’ that come, but in the little things in our day to day life. God wants to enjoy every moment of every day with us.  Because, we are to walk by faith and not by sight. That is how He wants us to live each and every day that He gives on this earth.                Remember the strengthening of faith comes through staying with it in the hour of trial and tribulation, just as Abraham did.                What I would like to ask today is do you have the courage to step out on faith and let God have control in your life? Can you walk in faith everyday? Even on the dark and cloudy days as well as the sunny ones? All you have to do is ask and He will be there holding you and helping you just as he did for little Dana Blessings.