Happy Friday, Friends!
I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day on this glorious Saturday morning in my Sweet
Home Alabama! I am sorry this is a day late…it has been an incredibly busy
week!
For this week’s “Happy
Friday” I simply want to share one of the best, most thought-provoking,
profound messages I have ever heard. I heard it this week on Focus On The
Family and it is a message from Andy Stanley titled, “Who is the author of your
faith?” I am going to share the full, unedited, transcript here…I thoroughly
enjoyed reading it after listening to the message and I want to have it
available in the future for quick access! 😊 If you would like to
listen to it instead, please go here:
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/
Choose “All Episodes” and
then scroll down to “Who Is The Author of Your Faith (Part 2 of 2) which aired on
February 9, 2022.
This is going to be long, however
it is well worth the read. I hope you enjoy it and find Andy’s message as
impactful as I did.
Please don’t hesitate to
contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will
always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.
Have a great day, a
wonderful week, please cherish your precious families, and please stay well! 😊
Kev
Now for the transcript:
“We have in history a person
who showed up and walked this earth as one of us, who has seen, who has
touched, who is love, who spoke, who performed miracles, who died on the cross
in front of all of us, who was raised from the dead and seen by over 500 people
who claimed to have a unique relationship with God, and who claims to be the
one who represents us to God. That’s who we have. And since we, right now
currently, have that, that’s why we don’t give up believing. In other words,
the foundation of our faith is a person. The foundation of our faith is not an
experience. The foundation of our faith is not an answer to prayer. The
foundation of our faith is a person, Jesus Christ the Lord. And the reason that
we believe when things are good and believe when things are bad is not because
things are good or things are bad, and not because we can make sense out of
life, and not because we can answer every question. The reason we believe is
because 2,000 years ago…And here’s the thing that sets Christianity apart from
your current philosophies and your pop religion and your pop psychology and all
the other religions of the world. 2,000 years ago, something happened, and the
foundation of Christianity is something that happened in history. We believe
because of something that happened years ago, not because of our ability to
interpret certain circumstance right now. We have a savior who is the great
high priest, Jesus Christ, who passed through Heaven and sits at the right hand
of our Heavenly Father. In other words, the foundation of your faith is not
what you can see and not what you experience. This is why every once in a
while, you b- you meet somebody, and they have extraordinary faith, and you’re
thinking, “How can you continue to believe when this happened to you, and how
can you continue to believe when it didn’t work out, and how can you continue
to believe?” And you’re looking at their circumstances saying, “How can you
continue to have that much faith,” and they would say, “It’s, well, simple.
Because I don’t have circumstantial faith.” The foundation of my faith is a
person. The foundation of my faith is something that happened in history, not
in my lifetime, but many, many years ago. You see, I, I’m like you. I like all
the, the cool stories of the quick answers to prayer. You know, we, my, you
know, my, my son, you know, he ran away from home, and I got the, the church to
pray, and we put out an email, and everybody in the country was praying. The
president was praying, the congress. Everybody was praying for my son. And we just,
you know, we stormed the gates of Heaven, and a few days later, my son came
back, and he was broken and crying and apologizing. Things are good, and it
happened in two weeks. Hey, I like… Hey, I, that’s the kind of prayers I like.
That’s what I’d like happen to me, you know? Or the doctor had told us there’s
no hope, and we had to have this surgery, and we got there, and they did a
final x-ray and they couldn’t even find the thing, and it was gone. That was
seven years ago, and she’s been he- healthy ever si- since. You know? Yay, God,
if that’s me, that’s how I want you to do it, okay? You know, I, I, I believe
all that stuff, and I think that’s great. But can you see that’s circumstantial
faith. What dwarfs me in my faith and what makes me just have to sit down and
take a deep breath, and the people that just cause me to just go, “Aw,” in
their presence are not the people that have those stories. It’s the guy who
gets totally taken advantage of at work, his ideas are stolen, they don’t give
him what he prom- they promised, and they kick him out of the company, and he
walks away and decides to just forgive them. And everybody’s saying, “Why don’t
you sue? Why don’t you sue?” And he says, “Well, I just think I’m just gonna
trust God with this.” “Well, how can you trust God with this? Look what’s not
happening. You know, look what God is not doing.” “Well, well, well, I, I’m not
trusting… My faith in God isn’t based on a job situation. My, my faith is God
is based on 2,000 years ago, he sent his son into this world to die for my sin.
Why would I doubt God’s care for me? He sent his son to die for my sin.” “Oh,
yeah. Well, there’s that. Yeah, yeah. Right, okay. But but I’m saying, but what
about your j-…” You know, that’s what I’m saying. Or it, it’s not that people
whose children and husbands and wives get healed instantly. For me, it’s the
people that, you know… I stand with them at their, their son or daughter or
their husband or wife’s funeral, and God didn’t answer the prayer, and they
lost their battle with a disease. They never recovered from the accident, and
they stand at those funerals, and they say, “You know what? God is still good.
I still trust God as my Heavenly father. Why wouldn’t I?” Well, all the
circumstantial faith people go, “Because look what happened in the vicinity of
your current reality.” They’re going, “Wait a minute. My, my faith doesn’t rest
on my ability to interpret circumstance. My faith doesn’t rest on my timeframe.
My faith rests on something that happened 2,000 years ago in history when God
sent his son into this world to die for my sins and to be raised from the dead.
That’s where I find my hope. That’s why I continue to be faithful, that’s why I
continue to walk in dependence, and that’s why I continue to walk in obedience
even though those strange things in this scripture that don’t seem to be, have
any relevance with culture. That is the foundation of my faith.” Now listen,
right now in this moment, your faith is resting against something. You need to
know what that is. And here’s my warning to you. If it is circumstantial, it
will eventually fail you, and you will have to adjust your belief system to
match current reality. And sometimes current reality isn’t all that good, but
here’s the amazing thing, here’s how much God loves you. God does not ask you
to trust him based on your ability to figure him out. God has said, “No, no.
I’ve done something far more significant than that. I’m asking you to trust me,
and I’m asking you to trust me with the details of your life, and your ethics,
and your morality, and your relationships, and your family, and your husbands,
and your wives, and your businesses, and your money. I’m asking you to trust me
not because our timeframes line up, but because 2,000 years ago, I sent my son
into history to walk as you walked, to face the same trials and temptations
that you have faced. I love you, and I don’t want you think I love you because
God answered your prayer. It’s way bigger than that. I love you because I sent
my son to die for you. Now I just want you to trust me, and to trust me, and to
trust me, and to trust me. And I want you to lean and prop your faith up
against something I did on your behalf in history, because that’s the
foundation of faith, and that’s the foundation of Christianity. And if you
don’t, eventually, the pleasures of life and the pressures of life are gonna
erode whatever it is you believe right now. The pleasures of life, because
whatever you believe right now will eventually become inconvenient to maintain
your current faith system. The pressures of life because eventually something’s
gonna happen that doesn’t make sense in the way that you see the world, and
you’ll lose confidence in whatever or whoever it is that you have your faith
in. But the great news is this. For 2,000 years, men and women who have faced
all kinds of things, all kinds of tragedy, all kinds of randomness have come
out on the other end saying, “But blessed be the name of the Lord. I still
trust. I still trust. I still believe, because my faith wasn’t fragile. My
faith wasn’t circumstantial. My faith was founded on something that happened in
history when God sent his son into this world to be the savior of the world.”
“Hebrews 4:14, here we go.
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest,” high priest is the person that
represents us to God. “Since we have a great high priest who as ascended into
Heaven, Jesus, the son of God, since that’s true, let us hold firmly to the
faith we profess.” There’s the foundation of our faith, Jesus. “For…” Now
here’s the new information. Verse 15, “For we do not have a high priest who is
unable to empathize with our weaknesses.” Now look at that again. “We,” talking
about Jesus, “We don’t have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our
weaknesses.” There’s a different between sympathize and empathize. You know
what that is? Sympathize is I have never been in that situation, but gosh, I
feel sorry for you. Empathize has been there, done that. I know exactly how
that feels. Now, I don’t know how you, you, you picture Jesus, but here’s what
the author of scripture says. He says, “Look, you need to understand when you
think Jesus, that’s not somebody in Heaven going, ‘What?’. You’re talking to
your savior who says, ‘I know. I know. I know. I know not just that it’s
happening to you, I know what that’s like. I know how that feels.’” Listen to
the rest of this. “But we have one,” talking about a mediator, somebody to
represent us to God, but we have one who has been tempted in…” what’s that
word, “… every way just as we are.” That Jesus… This is what scripture says
that Jesus was tempted in every single way as we are. Let me tell you why this
is important. When we get to these promises in just a minute, and when you
think about prayer going forward, or if you’re about to start praying, you need
to understand that the door that you’re walking through, the scripture teaches
that Jesus has felt what you have felt and has faced what you’ve faced. Let,
let me give you a couple of examples. I wrote these in my notes. Jesus spent a
night dreading the events of the following day. Jesus spent a night dreading
the events of the following day. Let me just as you, and I’ll put my hand up,
too. Anybody here ever spent a night dreading the events of the following day?
Other than exams. Okay, right? For some of you, it was a court case. For some
of you, it was a deposition. For some of you, it was a trip to the hospital.
For some of you, it was to see someone you hadn’t seen in a long time, and you
knew they weren’t delivering good news. Probably every one of us in this room
has or will spend the night where we can barely sleep or can’t sleep at all
because the events of the coming day. Your savior spent the night knowing that
the next day, he would be tried, beaten and crucified. And as a young boy
growing up in Palestine, he had seen crucifixion. He knew what that was like,
and he knew that the next day, he was going to participate. He knows what it’s
like to try to go to sleep and dread the events of the coming day. How about
this one? He experienced the rejection and betrayal of his closest friends.
Some of you know what that’s like. You married her, because you were best
friends. You married him because you were best friends, and for the first few
years, you were best friends. In fact, you thought you were still best friends.
And then somebody else sat you down and said, “I, I don’t know how to tell you
this, but you need to know what’s going on.” And you know what it’s like to,
for somebody to feel like somebody’s taking a hook and grab your soul and just
rips your soul out to where you feel… You don’t even know what you feel. You
feel like you’re gonna throw up just because of news that someone you trusted,
somebody you loved, somebody you dedicated a part of your life to, and they
betrayed you. And you don’t even know how to pray. Jesus watched as his closest
friends ran away in front of him, and he listened as the guy he poured most of
his time into say to a 14-year-old girl, or however old she was, “I don’t even
know who that is.” He felt that at the most critical hour. How about this one?
He’s experienced the rejection of a family member. Some of you know what that’s
like. He saw everything he worked for and lived for crumble around him. He
knows what that feels like. And he experienced crushing, crushing, crushing
temptation. See, some of you face temptation that you give into over and over,
and you’ve tried, and you’ve prayed, and you’ve begged God. You’ve done
everything, and you think, “God, you know, are you listening?” And, and your
Heavenly father says, “I know. I know, because my son faced the most crushing
kind of temptation imaginable. I know. When you come to me, you don’t even have
to explain that part, because your savior, your mediator, your high priest, he
knows. He knows. He knows.” Now, it’s tempting just to stop there and just to
sit on that for a while, because that may radically change the way you approach
God. That may radically change the way you pray. You know what it should
change? It should change our inclination to try to talk God into stuff as if we
need to explain to God what’s going on and how we feel. And he said, “Look,
before you even begin your prayer, he’s been there and done that to the tenth
power.” And listen to how the verse
ends. “Yet, he did not sin.” The thing that Jesus has that I don’t have and
that you don’t have is he has the clarity that comes without sin, because every
time you sin and every time you respond incorrectly to the pressures and
pleasures of life, every time you just missed your life and you missed it, and
missed it, and missed, and the mist becomes a fog, and after a while, we can’t
see straight, and then we do really stupid things. A- and he says, “Yeah, but
Jesus faced all that stuff, and yet without sin.” So listen to verse 16. Now,
this, this is huge. “Let us, then,” then means in light of everything we’ve
just said, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with…” what, “…
confidence.” Say it. What is it? It’s… It doesn’t say formality. It doesn’t
say, “Let us approach God’s throne…” Remember he’s a king, “… throne of grace
with extraordinary formality.” In fact, formality is the enemy of in- intimacy.
And formality is the enemy of what he’s getting at here, because the writers of
the New Testament say, “When you come to God, you come boldly. You come
confidently. You come with extreme emotion.” Why? Because he knows what you’re
carrying. Come boldly to the throne of Grace. Well, let us then approach God’s
throne of grace with confidence. And then listen to this next phrase. “So
that…” You ready? “So that we may receive.” Pause. “So that we may receive.”
Now he- here it is. Ready? That when you come to God, you’re gonna receive
something every single time. When you come to God honestly, when you come to
God with all the emotion, with all the passion, with all the hope, with all the
desire, with all the hurt, with all the story, however you come, if you come
boldly and if you come without all the formality that religious systems tend to
hang on the relationship with God, if you’ll come boldly, every single time,
you’re gonna receive something from God. You can trust, you can believe, you
can know that this is gonna happen every single time.”
“Here’s the first thing
you’ll receive, mercy, mercy, mercy. Mercy is the fact that God’s gonna take
your issue seriously not because it’s a serious issue, but because it’s your
issue. Mercy is that I take my children’s request and complaints seriously not
because they’re serious complaints but because they’re my children’s
complaints. Mercy is that God is gonna lean in your direction, say, “I know. I
know. I know. And not I know it happened, I know because I know how that feels.”
Mercy. And I’m telling you, the older you get and the more mature you’ve become
as a Christian, the fact that God knows more and more and more becomes enough
and will become enough for you. Sometimes mercy is tangible. Sometimes it’s,
“God, I just don’t think I can take it anymore,” and the phone rings, and
somebody says, “Let’s go to lunch,” and you go, “Oh, wow.” Tangible mercy.
Sometimes it’s that mercy that just, it’s just the peace of God. Nothing
changes, and you pour out your heart, and you come bold, and you say, “God, I’m
so lonely,” or “God, I can’t I can’t get ahead,” or “God, it seems everybody
gets a break from me,” or, “God,” whatever it is, and you just pour out your
heart to God. And at the end, nothing’s changed, but you, you kinda sense that
maybe you’ve changed. Mercy. But every time you come to God boldly, he says,
“Let me tell you what you can count on. You can hold my feet to the fire, you
can trust me.” This is a faith thing. “I’m promising. I promise, I promise, I
promise.” Mercy. Mercy is Jesus standing outside the tomb of Lazarus, and he
already knows what he’s gonna do, and he already knows he’s gonna raise Lazarus
from the dead, and he knows he’s gonna be the star of the show, and
everything’s gonna work out. And Jesus walks up to the tomb of Lazarus, and
before he does his big deal and his big miracle, before he intervenes the way
they want him to intervene… This is so huge. Jesus pauses outside of the tomb
of Lazarus, and the Bible says in John 11 that he wept. And everybody watching
him says, “Look how much he loved Lazarus.” Now, why did he pause and weep? I
think it’s in a microcosm of a message that reflects and this sort of echoes
through ages that your savior understands, and he’s not too big and busy to
feel what you feel. Mercy is, “I know, and I’m not angry with you for feeling
it, and I’m not put off with you for feeling it, and you just keep bringing it
every single time to me. And my front-line response to you, every time, I
promise, is gonna be mercy. And sometimes it’s gonna be tangible mercy.
Sometimes it’s gonna be mercy that takes the pressure off, and sometimes it’s
gonna just be that intangible thing that comes with knowing that my Heavenly
father knows.” And there’s a second thing you get every single time and find
grace to help us in our time of need. Grace to help us in our time of need.
Grace in this context is the strength and the energy to endure. That’s what it
means. It’s the strength or the ability or the energy to endure. God says, “You
know what?” And this, you know, quoting a guy that died a long time ago, he had
this great quote. He says, “God hasn’t promised to deliver us from our
circumstance, but God has promised to deliver us through them.” And many of you
today listening to this message can stand up and tell your story of how you
begged God and you leaned hard on God, and nothing changed. But looking back,
God just gave you the energy, gave you the strength and gave you the endurance
to just, to press through. And some of you would say, “As bad as I hated those
circumstances, if I had to do it all over again, I’m not sure I would opt for
easier circumstances, because what I experienced and what I learned about
that,” and here’s the word you would use, “the grace of God, the enduring power
of God, the strength of God is a lesson you’ll never, ever forget.” And God
says, “Let me tell you what, sometimes I’m gonna take the pressure off, and
sometimes I’m gonna intervene in your circumstances, but I promise every single
time to give you the grace, the strength, the power to endure. And your husband
may not come back, but I’m gonna give you the grace to endure that. And your
prodigal daughter may not call for a year, but I’m gonna give the grace to
endure that. And you may not get the job, the deal that you wanted, but I’m
gonna give you the grace to endure that. And she may never give you the time of
day, I’m gonna give the grace to endure that. And you na- may never be where
you wanna be financially or with your company, but you know what, if instead of
getting frustrated and abandoning me because I didn’t show up in your
circumstance, if instead you will learn to lean hard on me, I promise every
single time, grace and mercy in your time of need, mercy and grace that helps
in your time of need. And sometimes I’ll deliver you from, but every time I
promise to deliver you through if you’ll come to me and not give up on me
because you couldn’t find me in the circumstances of life.” Now, I’ll be
honest. That is not a very emotionally satisfying answer. This is what we…
Honestly. This is what we want, and I’m with you. Okay, this is what we want.
We want God to give us a can of intervention, okay? Heavenly father, I pray
that he would break up with her so that she would pay attention to me. This
right there, I want you to get, I want you to work right there, okay? And God,
at work, you know, my boss, you know, they’re thinking of moving him to
Detroit. Anyway, I just want you to move him to Detroit. I just want a little
bit of intervention there. And then the third floor, the whole third floor.
Just take out the whole third floor over there. Right? That’s what we really
want. We want God, we, we just wanna be able to… And he’s just gonna let us
intervene. You know what we don’t want? You know what you’ve never prayed? God,
I am such a problem. God, the problems me. God, please, please deliver my wife
from me. Right? See, I don’t really want justice coming my way. I want justice
going your way. I want grace and mercy coming my way. Right? We just want
little spot intervention, but here’s what the scripture teaches. Listen, we
live in the age of mercy and grace. This is the age where God doesn’t bring
about justice. This is the age where God extends grace and mercy to you who
trust and lean on Him and to those of you who don’t. In fact, some of you been
a Christian for about a year, and you look at the circumstances that led you to
the place of brokenness and led you to the place of faith, and you would look
back and say, “You know what? God extended grace and mercy to me even when I
was running from him.” Why? Because this the age of grace and mercy. And if you
come to him as a believer, you get grace and mercy. And if you come to him as
an unbeliever, you get grace and mercy. This is the age in which God says, “I
know. I know about the consequences of sin. I understand your sorrow, and I
mourn when there’s death, but I’m not removing any of those three. But in this
age of sin, sorrow and death, I will extend grace and mercy every single time
you come to me.” And when it’s the age of intervention, it’s not gonna be
little itl- itty bitty intervention. It’s gonna be big intervention. It’ll be
the end of the world as you know it. And the Bible teaches that there is gonna
be a day and age when you get what you want, but it’s bigger than your little
life and your little job and whose sitting on the end of the front row, and who
drives the cool car. It’s gonna be way bigger than that. It’s gonna be a day
and age when Jesus says, it’s gonna be the end of sin, the end of sorrow and
the end of death. It’s gonna be huge intervention. But in that day and age is
the end of God’s extension of grace and mercy. It happens all at one time. And
for those of us who became Christians later in life, we’re so grateful that the
end didn’t come before we had an opportunity to respond to the grace and the
mercy of our Heavenly father. This is the age of grace and mercy, and every
once in a while, God intervenes. And every once in a while, it’s like he breaks
his own rules, and he allows us to miss and dodge the consequences of our own
sin. And every once in a while, there’s a miraculous healing. And every once in
a while, God just does the unusual thing. And we just say, “Thank you, thank
you, thank you, because you didn’t have do that. You didn’t do that because I
had great faith. You did that because you’re a merciful Heavenly father.” But
you know what? I know it I can’t expect that every time. I’ll just celebrate
when it happens. And when I don’t get my way, I still trust you, because the
foundation of my faith isn’t this. The foundation of my faith is Jesus,
history, what you did 2,000 years ago that echoes and has been echoing ever
since.”
