Creflo Dollar - Understanding the Trials of Faith - Part 6
Saint John 9:1 and 2, that whole attitude about suffering and persecution and goin' through stuff, that stuff's got to change. We're gon' miss out on somethin' that God's tryin' to do in our lives. And now watch this: "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth". The guy was born blind. Now notice this: "And his disciples asked him, saying", notice the question they asked: "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind"? Do you see the bigger picture here? You saw what they just said? "He was born blind. Somebody had to cause this. He was born blind. Somebody had to sin in order for this to happen".
This same attitude has come to where we are today: so you get corona, you get cancer, you lose your job, you do this. Christian people'll say, "You must be sinnin'. You must be sinnin' because this happened to you". Just like they said, "Who's sinned 'cause he was born blind? The reason why he's born blind, there had to be some sin". You know how much bondage that puts people in? We don't get to see the glory of God's grace because, there is so much bondage, they're actually afraid to share what they're goin' through because people see it as sin. "You must be sinnin'". "Oh, well, I lost my job". "What sin did you commit to lose your job"?
You never thought that God had to get you off that job because he had a better one planned for you, but you wouldn't move. But, every day, you thank the Lord for your new job. "Thank you for my new job. Thanks for my new job". He's like, "How I'mma give you the new job? You won't move". Afraid to tell people if you get the flu. " Hachoo". "What's goin' on"? "Oh, nothin'. Hallelujah, praise God". Why you lyin'? I see that snot comin' down your nose, all on your mustache. You talkin' about ain't nothin' wrong. I understand you're tryin' to speak faith. I get that, but a lot of it is fear-based. You're tryin' to speak faith because you're afraid that somebody will ask, "Did you sin in order for this flu to come on you"? Oh, and now don't talk about the coronavirus, oh, no. "I ain't tellin' nobody I had nothin' 'cause people gon' judge me". "You must've sinned if God is your healer, and if you're Psalms 91-equipped, then why you get the Rona if you're Psalms 91-equipped? You must've sinned to stop God from doin' that".
That is doctrinally not sound. The issue is not what you get. The issue is, after you get it, you went through a trial, and somehow you came out with the praise and the glory and the honor. You came out, dependin' more on God than you've ever depended on God 'cause, honey, there are some things that I have gone through, and when I came out, I depended on God more than ever before. I realized I couldn't trust man. I realized I couldn't trust money, and when I came out of that, the impurity of the dependence upon self had been burnt out, and my faith had been purified where all I know is Jesus did that. Kind of like that other man. He says, "I was blind, but now I see". And they said, "Well, did he do it on Sunday? Did he do it"? He said, "Look here, all I know, all I know... I don't know nothin' about y'all religion. I don't know what y'all are tryin' to say about this man. All I know is that I was blind, but I can see now".
But we do stuff like that, and then we create the atmosphere of phoniness. We have perfected phoniness in the church so much, it's just crazy. You have to be phony in order to appear faithful, and what I'm tryin' to get you to see is God is faithful. God is the one that's faithful, and I'm gonna have faith in his faithfulness. He's never gonna let me down. I am gonna depend on him when I ain't got nothin'. I'm gonna depend on him when I got somethin'. I'm gon' depend on him when I'm on top of the ditch. I'm gon' depend on him when I'm in the ditch. I'm gon' depend on him when I got provision. I'm gon' depend on him when I don't have provision. I can never turn the attention on myself and give myself the glory. I have to give God the glory for everything. Why? 'Cause I'm dependent on him. I've got to burn away my dependence on myself.
Well, I started to tell you, say, "Amen" or "Oh, me". And then look what he says. He says, "His disciples asked him," verse 2, "saying, 'Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?'" And what did Jesus say? Verse 3, check it out. He said, "Neither". "Jesus answered, 'Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.'" He said, "Nobody sinned". He said, "This is an opportunity for me to show out. It's a opportunity for his mama and daddy to depend on me and for me to show out". Won't you give God an opportunity to show out in your life? I don't know about you, but I wanna give God opportunities to show out in my life, and when he does it, I don't wanna turn, you know, Benedict Arnold on him. I wanna say, "This is the Lord's doin'". Well, how you do that, huh? "Well, you know, first of all, here's my recipe," heh-heh-heh.
People look for every reason to brag on themselves, and when grace came, God said, "You're saved by grace, not of yourself so that no man can boast". He says, "You didn't do nothin'. It was me. I'm the reason why you're able to get saved". But men still love lookin' for opportunities to boast, amen. All right, let's get started here. Luke 22, in verse 42, and let's read it in the NLT. Here is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and through intense suffering in Gethsemane, Jesus's unfailing dependence on the Father was expressed in these words, "Not my will. Let thy will be done". His unfailing dependence on the Father, "not my will".
Isn't that the problem with a lot of us? We're always praying to God about our will, and when you really depend on God, you're gonna move from your will to "let your will be done. I trust you. I trust you. I trust you know what's better for me than I know for myself. Not my will". He expressed his unfailing dependence upon God. Look at this verse 42. He's in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says, "Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine". A lot of people don't realize how much Jesus suffered in that point, seeing everything he had to go through. He had just a moment there where he was in that flesh, and he said, "Lord, take this cup from me. Take this couple of suffering from me".
That's probably the prayer that most Christians would pray when they're goin' through stuff, "Take this cup of suffering from me". And when I saw this, I'm like, "Lord, so many times, I've been tryin' to get you to take the suffering from me, remove the thorn from my flesh, and I gotta trust in your wisdom that the thorn is there for a reason and that I'm goin' through this for a reason, and I don't know why, but I'm gon' trust you do". And a lot of times, you'll go through things a lot easier when you turn your trust on him and depend on him 'cause a lot of us can look back ten years ago, and we see things with much clarity now, and we realize, if certain things hadn't happened the way they happened, maybe we would not have been able to take that next step or do what we need to do.
Now, I understand self-inflicted stuff, but you know what I understand about self-inflicted? Even if it's self-inflicted, by the time that self-inflicted pain come back on you, it's still gon' be kind of changing your mind a little bit, like, "I don't think I need to do that no more". "Father, if you're willing, please take this cup of suffering from me. Yet", here's a change, "I want your will to be done". My will is to take the cup from me. Man, I had to look at this. My will is to take the cup from me. My will is "Oh, God, make 'em stop sayin' nasty stuff about me. My will is make, oh, God, make everything fine. I don't wanna have no more church trouble". Heh, heh-heh. It's like, "No, no, no, wait a minute. Uh, okay, hold up with the cup. Let your will be done. I depend on you, and I'm figuring, because I depend on you, part of my dependin' on you should be able to accept your wisdom to allow this thing to happen to me in the first place".
I realize some of the stuff that I went through prepared me for today, prepared me to preach the very message of Paul. Paul was persecuted so bad for this message, and it hadn't changed. It has not changed at all, and the fact that I'm so peaceful and cool and calm about people shuttin' me off and shuttin' me down, and "We don't wanna hear what you're sayin'," "That's just heresy," and yada, yada, yada, yada, and I'm sittin' here, I'm like, "Can't you read? It's right here". Have you ever been like that? Like, "Can't you just read, seeing"? See you wonder, "Do you really believe the Bible"? "Yeah". "Well, read. You see that? Read".
And when I first started preachin' the message of grace, and some of you remember, I would go, like, 40 Scriptures, "Read this, and go read this," 'cause I had to, first of all, prove to you it was in the Bible, and I wasn't makin' it up. Then you had to go back and reconcile in your mind, "Oh, my God, I didn't know that was in the Bible," and you gotta reconcile it with what you learned. "Not my will, God". He declared his dependence upon God with that statement, "Not my will, but let yours be done". How many of you are willing to adopt that in your life where you come to this place in your life where you say, "Not my will. Let your will be done"?
How can you brag when you pray that prayer, and then, when everything turns out right, how can you talk about how smart you are and how awesome you are when you know that it was a simple decision on your part to say, "I depend on God"? How can you do anything else but give him the glory because of what he's done? I know there's things comin' to an end. I know this world's comin' to a close. All the signs are just so right-on. You can almost, kind of, predict, kind of, when and where you see it down to a "T". And my attitude is "I still got some time to get this message out". And then you got this pandemic thing goin' on. "Well, we can't let ya in this country. We can't let you there". Thank God for technology. I'm still gettin' in there. I'm still gettin' in there. Praise God.
I looked up, after one week on those morning confessions that we're havin' daily, oh, 200-and-something-thousand people was on there. I'm like, "See, God know what he doin'". But I don't how to reach that many people. I can't, "Let your will be done. God, let your will be done". I don't know how to do that. I didn't even know how to turn on a computer until the pandemic hit, but when it comes to reaching God's people when the gospel is on the line, and people gotta get it, if somebody come back from space and tell me, "We went to Mars," and they got people on Mars, then I've got to start believing God for a space shuttle because those people, or whatever, are gon' need the gospel of grace preached to them, and we gotta figure out how to get a ministry started there on Mars.
That's where I am. I'm goin' a hundred miles with my hair on fire 'cause I don't know when he gon' break through the cloud, but when he breaks through the cloud, I wanna be able to say, "I gave it all I had in dependin' on you," and I wanna hear him say, "My good and faithful servant". Ha-ha-ha, faithful servant. A lot of people forgot about that. A lot of people don't think it's gon' happen. "Faithful servant, well done". I asked the Lord, I said, you know, I thought I was ready to just get out of here 'cause I was looking' around at the world, and I'm like, "These people done lost their mind. They're crazy. Come quickly, Lord Jesus". And then I thought, "Man, they need the gospel preached on".
I've seen stuff that I have never seen before. I've gotten close to some of these revelations, but not to precision of knowing, whole Bible, declaration of independence from God; declaration of dependence on God. Hah, now go back and read your whole Bible, and you see it everywhere, who depend on him, and who didn't, and then Jesus showed up as the perfect illustration of how to live life dependent on God, where he declared, "I can't do nothin' without him". So could it be that suffering is God's method under grace for perfecting and purifying faith? For perfecting and purifying faith. By the faith of Jesus Christ, we live by the faith of Jesus Christ. So, by the faith of Jesus Christ, I have faith that I'm healed. By the faith of Jesus Christ, I have faith that I'm delivered. By the faith of Jesus Christ, I have faith that I'm the righteousness of God, but I rest in the faith of Jesus Christ, and my rest is my faith that I believe what he believes, amen?
Now, let's look at somethin'. We're gonna talk about the three trials, obviously not today. We're gonna talk about the trial of Peter, the trial of Paul, and we're gonna talk about Abraham. The trial of Peter, Peter's trial of faith, Paul's trial of faith, and Abraham's trial of faith, and you're gonna see how, in each one of those cases, God was perfecting them. Now, here's where all this is comin' from, and this will really sell it. 1 Peter chapter 1:6-7, let's go in the King James and the NLT. It is the trial of faith. It's the trial of faith that will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus is revealed to the whole world. That day is about to come. Don't you just sense you're living in the last days? It's just weird. It's just weird stuff, right? I remember, years ago, havin' a dream that the dome was empty, and I didn't know what it was. I woke up and said, "What happened"? And it was the pandemic, and for a year, I preached to empty seats. And then, you know, we came back, and, you know, the church is doin' real well.
Now watch this: "Wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a season if need be", "Wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ". Now let's look at that in the NLT, "So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must, you must, you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine". Mm, "It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold, though your faith is far more precious than the mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise. It'll bring you glory. It'll bring honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world".
Now, what is he saying here? It is the trial of faith, not of works nor of accomplishments for him that will bring you much praise. The trial of faith is gonna bring you much praise and glory and honor, not your works. Your works are not gonna bring you praise, glory, and honor. Your accomplishments for God is not gonna bring you praise, glory, and honor, but it's gonna be the trial of your faith, the trial of faith that gets rid of the impurities of having confidence in yourself, that will bring forth praise, glory, and honor when Jesus is revealed. We've got this warped idea about works, and all we're lookin' to do is to accumulate a bunch of works that were saved so we can go to heaven and think we can say, "Look at everything I did". That's not right.
Let me show you somethin' that was mind-blowing. Look at John chapter 8. Saint John chapter 6, verse 28 and 29, in the NLT. Saint John chapter 6, verse 28 and 29, in the NLT. I thank God that, by the Spirit of God, he leads and guides us into doin' great things for people, and I thank God that we do a lot of great works, so, certainly, there's nothin' wrong with doin' good works and sharing, but look at what the Scripture said. These two guys, or that the Bible is referring to, they had just come from the miracle of the loaves and the fish, and they saw it multiply and saw everybody being fed, and so they came to look for Jesus, and he was gone, and they decided to, just, "Let's go find him". And he's talked to 'em, and then they said, "They replied, 'We wanna perform God's works, too. We saw what happened with the bread and the fish. We want to perform God's works too.'" That's a pretty true statement, right?
Oh, I can remember, in my ministry, "I wanna perform God's works too. I wanna do miracles too". Look at how Jesus replied to this. "Jesus told them, 'This is the only work God wants from you'", so he's gettin' ready to tell you, "The only work that God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent". That blew my mind. That's a work? Oh, you better believe it. He said, "This is the only", he said, "This is the only work I want from you". And we still have belittled believing in exchange for performing: "I gotta do somethin', I gotta do somethin', I gotta do somethin'". You know, your belief in Jesus is, you're gonna obviously be doin' somethin' as the Spirit of God leads you, but you're seeking performance over believin', and he said, "This is the only work I want from you: Believe in the one he has sent". Believe in Jesus.