What Is Your Foundation?

 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.”