Charles Stanley - The Stages of Our Faith
It's very clear in scripture that Jesus always honored faith. And so He does today. And if somebody asked you, Well, how much faith do you have? You really couldn't answer that. The only way you know how much faith you have is when you get it tested and it's tried. There are storms in your life and difficulty and hardship and need and then you respond in a certain way. Well, it's very evident in scripture that God honors faith, because it honors Him. Not to believe Him is to dishonor Him.
And you know it's interesting that Jesus said to His disciples in different ways, Have faith in God. And they in turn responded, Well, you know, how do we increase our faith? In other words, give us faith. They didn't even understand really all that was going on in their lives when He was talking about faith. And so it's interesting how very important faith was in Jesus' mind because if you turn to the sixteenth chapter of Mark, and in the sixteenth chapter, of course He'd already been resurrected. And the scripture says in the fourteenth verse, "Afterwards He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen".
In other words, His heart was broken and He was saying, What is this with you all? This is not one of those little, Well, I hope y'all understand. No, He was coming down hard on them because He'd tried to teach them faith. That was one of His primary objectives, as we've seen in the first two messages. For them to learn to believe that He will do what He says, that God is who He says He is and He can be trusted. And now, even after the resurrection they still didn't believe, one of the strongest things. And if you'll think about this, the reason I think Jesus was so strong about it, was because the truth is that every single aspect of our life is affected by our faith. Your prayer is affected by your faith. Your giving is affected by your faith. The truth is your health and your healing is affected by your faith. Your relationships are affected by your faith. In fact, every single aspect of our life, our faith is involved.
And think about when it all began. It all began when you were a little child. You didn't even know what was going on. Doesn't take a child very long to realize that once he can do something, he has faith, or she has faith to do it again and again and again. Faith is an absolute vital part of your life, no matter what the object of your faith is. So the purpose for this whole message and this whole series is, is that you and I advance in faith. That we find out where we are in our faith. And so what I want to talk about today are the stages of our faith. And I want to say this two or three times so you won't forget it. Number one, I'm not saying that you go through all of these stages every time you're challenged to do something. Or, that you must finally get to the place where you reach one stage and that's where you are, because that's not the way it is.
All of us will face situations and circumstances in which we come to this first stage of faith and we have to deal with it. But the issue is this. Am I hanging in there at the lowest stage or am I growing in my faith? Am I, instead of starting with stage one in this situation, now can I move straight to stage two because I'm growing in my faith and it's stronger than it was before? And what I'm going to do is give you a description of each of these stages and then illustrate it in the scripture. I want you to think about, what was going on in that particular area. So stage number one is little faith. Little faith is restless faith. Little faith says this, I know He can, at least I think He can. I know He could; I'm not sure He will; I hope He will, might be; but I'm just not certain about it. In other words, little faith says, I'm not certain about the facts. Little stray, little faith is struggling. Little faith is trying to believe. I would not say that little faith is not sincere. Little faith can be very sincere. But the particular situation is such that the person says, Well, you know, I'd like to believe that, but I just don't have any assurance and I don't have any peace about it.
There's one word I want you to remember. And you'll find these in each one of these illustrations I'm going to give you. The key word in faith is "focus". Write it down, F-O-C-U-S. The key word in faith is focus. Where is my focus? And only a believer, listen, only a believer whose focus is on God can have peace in some storms of life, there's no question about that. But whenever you start doubting and you find yourself struggling in your faith, you ask yourself the question, Where is my focus? What am I thinking about? Am I thinking about how tough this is? Am I thinking about the God who promised to meet all of my needs no matter what.
Then I want you to turn if you will to Mark chapter nine. Mark chapter nine and, this is another example of struggling faith, of little faith, and here's what's happening in verse seventeen, "One of the crowd answered Him, 'Teacher, I brought you my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; And whenever it seizes him, it slams him in the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.' And He answered them and said, 'O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!'"
So they brought him to Jesus and they watched what was happening and so verse twenty-one says, "And He asked the father, 'How long has this been happening to him?' And he said, 'From childhood. It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him.'" Now watch these next two verses, "'But if You can, if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!' And Jesus said to him, 'If You can?'" Now don't read that just if you can. If you can? What do you mean "if you can"? Listen to this. He says, "But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us"! So here's struggling faith, if you can. "And Jesus said, 'If You can? All things are possible to him who believes.' Immediately the boy's father cried out and said, 'I do believe; help my unbelief.'" Now all of us have probably been there at some point, where one part of us says, "I believe".
The other part of us says, "I don't believe". I'm looking at reason. I'm looking, thinking about feelings. I'm thinking about sin or whatever it might be. One part says, "I can," one part says "I can't". Little faith struggles. Little faith struggles between "Yes, I believe He can;" "No, I'm not too sure He can". So all of us have been there. And I'm not saying that no matter how strong you are in the faith that there may not come something else that when it first hits you, that may be where you are for the moment. But as a mature believer, you shouldn't stay there very long at all. So there's little faith. Then of course, there is not only little faith, but there's great faith.
So what's the difference in these two? Well, great faith is maturing faith. Great faith is growing faith. And great faith is becoming stronger and great faith is standing on the truth of the Word of God. Not feelings, not other people's opinions, not the past, great faith stands on the truth of the Word of God. Here's what God is saying. And the focus is on God. Great faith is always focused on God. For example, we could take David as he faced Goliath. Here's Goliath who's much larger than he was. All this armor and shield and big sword and all the rest. And then David walks out with a sling. Well where was David's focus? It certainly was not on the giant. His focus was on God, because if you listen to, if you read that conversation; and that particular passage of scripture in the seventeenth chapter of First Samuel. When you read that event of David and Goliath, it's one of the most encouraging, challenging, exciting events in the scripture because you see, young David, who's a teenager facing this giant. And what's he talking about? He's talking about God. He said, you know, the God of Israel.
Today you're going to find out who God is. It's all about God, God, God. And the only thing he said about the giant was he's getting ready to take him down and cut off his head. So, the issue is, where was his focus? His focus was on God. And when you look at these scriptures and you think about what that means, it means simply this. That a person has great faith, here's what that person's done. It's look he or she's looked beyond what they see. They've subordinated their feelings, put them behind. And what they're doing is focusing on God, not any other things; not listening to somebody else, they're focusing on God.
Now if I could say it over and over and over again, I'd say this. If you want to deal with difficult things in your life, you've got to set your focus on God. He's the One who has all power. He's the One who loves you unconditionally. He's the One who's made promises He's going to keep. And He's the One who never changes. Great faith has focus on God and it doesn't waver. It may start to waver at moments; but great faith says, little faith says, "I know He can; I hope He will; I know He could; He might; I'm not sure". Great faith says, "Not only He can, He will". Great faith says, "He will do it, I know He will".
And so let's give you a couple of scriptures. Go back to Matthew chapter eight and look if you will in verse five. And going through these scriptures is very important because here are living examples of what we're talking about. And in this fifth verse the scripture says, of the eighth chapter of Matthew, "And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, And saying, 'Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.' Jesus said to him," watch this carefully, "Jesus said to him, 'I will come and heal him.' But the centurion said, 'Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed.'" That is great faith.
Not that I think you come to just say the word, I believe it'll be done. That's great faith. Now, but look at the rest of this because the rest of it's important too. He said, "'For I am also a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, "Go"! and he goes, and to another, "Come"! he comes and to my slave, "Do this"! and he does it.' Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to this man, those who were following, 'Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith in anyone in Israel.'"
Now, here's what I want you to notice. This man recognized that Jesus was a man under authority. He had authority, but He was under authority. He knew for himself that he could speak and all those people did exactly what he said because he had the authority to command it. He also knew that Jesus was a man under authority and He could do whatever God told Him to do. And he had the faith to believe that God would do it. He said, No, You don't even have to come to my house. All You have to do is speak the word and my servant's going to be healed. That is great faith. This is why we have to stay in the Word of God.
Reading the scriptures, you will find God speaking to you about situations and such as these and others. And what you do is you relate that to your situation. And so, what does God want you to do? He wants you to trust Him, just like the centurion did. God, if this is Your will, then I'm going to trust You. And if you're confident about His will, here's what You've told me to do. It's as, I thank You; I know it'll work. No question. Now, we could talk about all kinds of examples, but let's get to perfect faith, because it would be wonderful to wake up tomorrow morning and think about the challenges and say, Done, done, done, done, done, done, done. But that's not the way life is. We look at them one at a time; we see the obstacles and so forth. Then, watch this, I'm not saying you shouldn't look at the obstacles. But look at them with your focus on God. In other words, here's the obstacle; there's my Heavenly Father, and I'm seeing Him above everything else.
Here's what perfect faith says. Perfect faith says, I see it; that's what God has said and it's done. Now watch what I mean by that. You may go through a time of struggle, whatever the situation may be. And there are some very difficult situations in life, I do understand that. And you may struggle for a little while about it. And then you come to the place, I know God's going to do something. I'm trusting Him for it. I'm reading the scriptures. Here's the promises of God. Yes, I do believe He's going to. And then when you reach perfect faith, here's what's happened. You come to the place that you no longer ask Him because you have such perfect faith you can say in your heart and your spirit, It's done. In your mind and your heart, it's as good as already done. You say, wait a minute. That's a little, ethereal kind of stuff. No, it's not. I've lived long enough and I've had enough experiences in life to tell you, you can come to that place where big, major, major issues in your life that nobody else can answer; and you know that God has given you the faith and make it very clear to you that this is what He's going to do in your spirit, it's good as done. When it's done, here's what happens. You don't ask Him anymore. You thank Him and you just, you praise Him for what He's going to do.
Now if you're one of those persons who doesn't have any patience, not going to work. Because sometimes He's going to say, It's done. Don't have to pray about it anymore. There's a perfect peace and a perfect joy and a perfect absolute assurance when God says it's done. Now you can't just conjure that up and say, Well, I'm going home this afternoon and get on my knees and I'm going to tell God it's done. No, you're not. You don't do the talking. He does the talking. It's done. And from that moment on, it's praise and thanksgiving and expectation and, listen, anticipation, and looking for Him to do what? Just keep His Word. That's what He's doing is keeping His Word. And God doesn't want us, in other words, He knows that some things we're going to naturally struggle over at first. And then as we pray and as we seek His face and we get in the Word and begin to trust Him, what happens? Here's what happens.
Our faith builds; it matures; it becomes stronger. You can't put your fingers on it. You can't say it started here, started there, maybe. But what happens is it just matures in, with inside of you. Once you take your eyes off of Him and place it on somebody, some thing, some situation, some circumstance, then the struggle begins. Focus is the key. And when you go through the scriptures, you'll find that.
Now, let's go to Abraham, for example. And, and turn if you will to the twenty-second chapter of Genesis for a moment. You'll remember that the Lord came to Abraham and to Sarah, and said to him, said Abraham, I'm going to give you a son. Abraham was a hundred years old. And Sarah, and she was ninety. Both of them laughed at God. Now, Sarah denied that she laughed. I don't know why she thought she could laugh and think God didn't hear it. But anyway, so they had this little thing going on between them. And so, that was a real struggle for them.
Now you think about if you were a hundred years old, sir, and your wife was ninety and you woke up one morning and you thought God told you that night that you were going to have a son from a ninety-year-old woman; and you'd probably be struggling too. I think so. We have to give him something on that. But listen, Abraham was a perfect example of how he grew in his faith because when you go through all of that, and I could give you a lot more detail, but that's not important. Here's the important thing and you remember this one. Twenty-second chapter of Genesis, look at this, "It came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!,' he said, 'Here I am.' He said, 'Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac.'"
Now he had two sons, but Isaac was the one through whom the Messiah was coming. "'Your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burning offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.' So Abraham rose up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him, Isaac his son; split the wood for the burnt offering, arose up and went to the place, which God had told him. On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. Abraham said to his young men, 'Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.'"
Here's what I want you to see. Number one, God didn't test Abraham to find out what Abraham would do. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He said, I want you to sacrifice your son. This is the one that I've promised you all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed through this son. And we have been through Jesus. And so he did exactly what God told him. He must have struggled in his faith, at least to some degree. I mean, any human person would. But he did what God told him; saddled the donkey, got everything together and headed out. Then when he got there, they put the altar together; put his son on the altar, raised the dagger, the scripture says, to kill his son and God stopped him; and provided a ram in the bushes.
Now, here's the verse that tells me he had perfect faith, "Abraham said to his young men, 'Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there.'" For what reason? To kill his son, a sacrifice, "I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and we will return to you". In the Hebrew, that's exactly what it says, we will return. So what was he saying? He's saying simply this. God, You're telling me to sacrifice my son, but You've said You're going to bless all the nations of the earth. This is just a young kid. He believed God. He said, We're going over there for the sacrifice and I'm going to kill him, but we're both coming back, because You made me a promise and I'm not giving up the promise. That is perfect faith. Perfect faith.
So what was he saying? He said, It's done. I'm going to sacrifice him. Whatever it takes, but it's done. You're going to bless all the nations of the earth through Isaac. Now, you probably won't have a lot of those perfect faith's too soon. We all grow and we all mature; and the tragedy is when a person does not mature in their faith, here's what it does. It limits God's use of you. It limits God's answer to your prayers. It limits your joy, your peace, your happiness. It, listen, it limits every aspect of your life. When, listen, when you come to a situation, a difficult situation in your life and God is challenging your faith, remember that the key is to keep your focus on God. The reason he could say, We're going over there and we're coming back, He had his focus on God who had the power to resurrect him from the dead if necessary. But he knew God would keep his promise.
So I would ask you, Would you say on a given daily basis as you look at your faith, is your faith little faith, struggling faith; you struggle over a lot of things? Or would you say that you are at least touching the hem of the garment of great faith? That there are a lot of things used to trouble you, don't trouble you any more. You don't, you don't even ask God about that any more because you know He's going to take care of that. Is there something in your life today that you'd like to say, Oh God, if I could just have perfect faith about that.
Well, if you get in the Word and begin to read; and you make sure your heart's clean; and you surrender your life totally and completely to Him; and you know it's the will of God, He'll give you perfect faith. Which means you can begin to thank Him and praise Him and rejoice over Him. You don't have to ask Him any more. Listen. The devil will tell you, Oh, you just think so. Mm-mm-mm, thank You, Father. You've already, You've already settled that issue. I'm walking in perfect faith that You'll keep Your Word. It can happen to you, I can tell you. I've lived long enough to watch it happen. And there's nothing more rejoicing in the heart when you know that your Heavenly Father has said to you, You don't see it; you can't feel it; you can't touch it, but take My word for it, it's a done deal! I love it! It's a done deal. In other words, when He makes, when He gives you that assurance, it's a done deal. Because the Father has the power to make it happen. Amen?
Well you may not be a Christian and you're saying, Well, what does that have to do with me? Put it this way. You are lost; you're separated from God and there's not only, there's only one thing you can do for that to change. To trust, to put your faith in Almighty God, that through His Son, Jesus Christ, when He went to the cross, He died for your sins. You can't feel it, you can't touch it, you can't see it. It happened two thousand years ago, but you must trust Him.
And the fact that you're willing to ask Him to forgive you of your sins, and to surrender your life to Him; that He, who died two thousand years ago, will forgive your sins, because He's alive in the heart, in the life of every single one of us who is a follower of Jesus. He lives within us. He will come to live within you. He will change your whole life. He'll write your name in the Lamb's Book of Life. He gives you the gift of eternal life. Everything's going to change. You can trust Him to do it. And there are millions and millions of people in the world who'll tell you, Yes, that's what happened to me. You can be saved. You can be forgiven, cleansed, a brand new life; born again as the Bible says, if you're willing to ask Him and confess and repent of your sins, and surrender your life to Him. It'll happen just like that, because He's made a promise.
Here's what He said. If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is the Lord of your life, Savior, Lord of your life, your sins will be forgiven. And you've heard this verse many times. For God so loved the world, including you, that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. To believe in Him is to place your trust in Him. That is a specific, distinct act, that you're placing your trust in Him, that He will do what He says by saving you, when you confess and repent of your sins and surrender your life to Him. Salvation can be yours if you'll ask Him.
Father, how grateful we are. We thank you for all these examples in your Word. just undergird, establish within us strong faith, trusting You when oftentimes we can't see our way clear. You never promised we would, You just said You'd be there to see us through. I pray for somebody here this morning who's wondered about whether You could save them or not because of their past. Would You just show them that their past has nothing to do with what You can do? That the blood of Jesus has the power to forgive any and every thing, for ever so long as it may have been. Instantaneously that forgiveness can come, and a whole brand new life by trusting Jesus Christ as savior. Pray that you'd give them the desire this morning to be saved, which comes from You, the will to make that decision, and the faith to believe that You will. I pray for anyone else who's struggling over something that really has them bowed down, would you remind them, change the focus from the problem to the Father, and watch You work. In Jesus' name, amen.