Jentezen Franklin - Faith In The Father's House
1 Peter 1. That's in the New Testament. Verse 6, "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you may have been grieved by various trials," everybody say a little while, "that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ," I love that Verse 7 that your faith, He said, is much more precious than gold, and I wanna talk to you for a few moments today about something. I'll give you the title in just a few minutes when I figure it out. Amen. But I do know what I'm preaching on. I just want you to lean in and listen a minute, but I was thinking about this. That Verse just came alive in my heart that my faith is more precious than gold. Than gold. I mean, our faith is more precious than our home, our car, our bank account, everything that we possess.
I'm telling you there's nothing more important than your faith. I believe that sometimes we have to go through things to remind us that what really matters is not the gold, it's not material things, but what really matters is our faith. What really matters in greater than passing down an inheritance of gold or financial blessing to our children and our children's children. Our faith. Our faith is more precious than gold. Say amen, somebody. I think that when I read about the heroes of faith in this book, they had faith that was so great they did not have 401k's. They did not have safety nets financially. They did not have healthcare plans, and I think we ought to have all of those things, but I want you to know that their faith was more precious to them, when you read of the heroes of this book, than all of the gold in the world.
The word faith can be defined this way. I'm gonna give you my definition of it, a daily dependence upon God, to have a daily dependence upon God, to never lose the daily dependence upon God because what we are striving for is independence. I wanna be independently wealthy, we say. I want this and I want that and that will make me independent, and I won't have to worry about anything, and God has geared this thing to where we will never be independent and blessed enough that we won't need Him because you can have all the gold in the world and if you don't have faith, you don't having nothing. Faith is having a daily dependence upon God.
Now, I want you to give yourself a faith check right now. Do you daily depend on Him? Do you daily say without you I can do nothing, daily I need you to lead me, daily I need you to guide me, daily I need you to fill my mind with your thoughts because that's what true faith is, and it's more precious Thank God for a job, but my job is not my God. Thank God for money and a paycheck, but that is not my God. If you take my faith from me, then my gold is over. If you take my gold from me and me keep my faith, I'll be just fine. I'll have a comeback every time because faith is the substance to everything that we need. Faith is the currency of heaven. Faith is how God transacts with human beings. Without faith, and faith is the substance of something hoped for but not seen, but when you put your faith in God and say in a little while the circumstances are going to change and God will show Himself alive.
I believe that. It's my faith that causes me to prosper, not my prosperity that Trials come. They get you to turn in and lose your faith for gold, trade it in, trade it in, but my faith is more Famine time is a time that God will use to take you to the next level if you'll let him. Some people go into a famine down and come out up, and some people go into a famine up and come out down. There's a shift that takes place. Abraham, in the Book of Genesis, it says he entered into the land and a famine came, but he went in it down, but he came out up. God actually used the famine and when he came out of it, God called him the Father of Faith. His son Isaac went into the famine pretty bad, but the Bible said he sowed in Genesis 26 in the time of famine, and he reaped a hundredfold the same year. He went in low, and the famine lifted him high.
Joseph went, it was actually the famine that promoted him from the dungeon to the palace. He was promoted because of bad times in his nation. He was prosperous and raised to a height that he could have never gotten had the nation of Egypt not gone into a massive famine, but in Luke 15 it's the story of the Prodigal Son, and the Bible said that the Prodigal Son was in the father's house, and a famine was on the way, and he was in the father's house. Everybody say the father's house. Aren't you glad you're in the father's house this morning? And that's where you need to be when the famine is on the way. And the Prodigal Son is about to experience that famine because he didn't stay connected to the father's house.
See, but here's a powerful think to understand. Even though that boy went to his father and demanded the inheritance and took that and left it and went out and started living wicked and wild, you know what the Bible said? It said that I've never seen the righteous forsaken, listen to this, or his seed. His seed is his children begging for bread. The seed was connected to the paternal blessing, and even though the boy was acting crazy and going berserk, the Bible said there was still a blessing on him because of the paternal blessing of the father. There was a father and a mother who were in covenant with God, and the Scripture said I've never seen the righteous. The father in that house was righteous.
How many of you are righteous because of the Blood of Jesus? And what I'm preaching to you is it doesn't matter what your seed gets into. When you understand He Elisha did not get a double portion from Elijah until he recognized Elijah as his father. He said my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof, and when he said my father there was a double portion blessing that came on his life because it matters if you're connected to the father's house, and it matters when there's somebody in the father's house on behalf of your house who's standing in the covenant and even when the seed isn't living it, you have a covenant that is so strong that I've never seen the righteous forsaken or their seed even though the enemy wants to kill him there's protection over them because of that covenant. Clap your hands and say amen.
The father has a house. The father's house. There are certain things that a father provides. A father provides ultimately a house, and notice that during a famine the father didn't He had hired servants, kept on hiring. In the middle of everything going haywire out in the world there was blessing in the father's house. There was increase in the father's house. There was hiring. The house, the house was blessed. The house and whoever yoked together with that house, the hired servants, were eating plenty of bread, the text said, and had room to spare, had food to spare. Everybody else is starving to death, but anybody who got yoked up and connected to the house, the father has a house. The father and anointing is needed in the Body of Christ today.
You don't have just a young, little rooster preacher up here. I'm becoming an old man, and I am a spiritual father whether you want me to be or not, and that's why sometimes I get all up in your business, all up in your grill because you need a spiritual father in times like these, and a father builds a house, and a father anointing, Paul put it like this. He said, "Though you have 10.000 teachers," see, y'all, and that's fine. Go on the internet. You listen to a lot of people. Listen to them all. I hope you listen to somebody all the time, but you have not many fathers because there's certain people that the Holy Spirit connects you to spiritually, and there's a house that He wants to connect you to spiritually and to unplug from that is to not stay connected to the blessing. I'm not making this up. During a famine in the father's house there was no lack. They're in there dancing. The Bible talked about they had robes. They had shoes, Gucci's, and they had bling-bling. The Bible said they put the rings on. Read the book. Read the book. They had fatted calves in the middle of a famine.
The house of the Lord was pressed down, shaken together, running over, and anybody who was connected to it. They weren't getting laid off and the hired servants went into recession, and they got laid off. They weren't getting laid off. What are you saying? I'm saying that when you move into the Lord in troubled times, he that dwells in the secret place of the Most High God shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord He is my refuge and my strength. In the father's house there's bread, there's hired servants, there's fatted calves. There's clothes, nice robes, rings, shoes. The father has something to impart, and the evidence of a fathering anointing, he has the capacity to build a house. Secondly, he has hired servants. It means he's taking care of more than himself. Hired servants.
Some of you have a fathering anointing. God has blessed you in business and so on, and you build a house under the anointing of God, a house of work and employment, and you have hired servants that help you and people who you hire who help you. That's a sign of a fathering anointing. You're taking care And then the Scripture said that there was an inheritance that those who were in the house received that speaks of impartation that when you get under a fathering anointing there will be impartation. Impartation of dreams. Impartation of purpose. Impartation of anointing. Impartation of worship. Impartation.
If every people needed spiritual fathers, it's in this time. Famine is here, famine is coming, but we're not the people who tremble in fear. We're the people who run into the house of the Lord and there is not lack and there is no want and there is no need because He supplies all of our needs according to His But let me finish. The father, if he'd stayed in the house, would've told him how to manage his money. The father would have told him how to abound You've gotta learn how to, sometimes you need to go into survival mode. Sometimes you need to tighten up and cut back.
See, this generation needs to hear it and stuff. I know it's so simple, but sometimes you need to really, really tighten up. I feel like something's coming on our Nation, and we're just kind of, hmm, let's be real careful here. And the Bible said the famine came. The boy took the money, got out from the house, got out of church, got out of the father's house, got away from the father in anointing where there was plenty, where there was blessing, where there was overflow, and he goes out into the world, and listen to this Verse in Luke 15, "and not many days afterward". Not many days. Woo! I'm having a good time. Party, party, party, and then all of a sudden not many days afterward. He begins to spend all that he had on riotous living. We're in a season of riotous living in America. We get money, and we don't know what to do with it. When we have money, when you see...
I read an article not too long ago about people who were taking their pet to a psychiatrist. They were hiring pet psychiatrists. When I read that, my mind said you've Not you laying on the couch. I understand that, but I'm talking about when your cat is laying on the couch, and you're paying several hundred dollars an hour for Fifi. The pride of the prodigal made him start looking like he's something that he's not. I could see him in my mind. He was buying all the drinks, running with a new crowd, wearing stuff that he couldn't afford just trying to keep up an image and shooting Instagram. "And when he had spent all," the text said, Luke 15, "and when he had spent all," notice this, "there arose a famine".
The famine didn't put him in a broke position. The famine came when he was broke and at the moment he could least afford it. This is how the devil does it. At the moment you can least afford it, he makes sure you're good and broke, And when the economy shifted, the pride of the prodigal instead of turning and going home to the father, going home where there was no famine, hiring servants, help wanted, increase here, and check that robe out, look at those, look, look, there's plenty. And I'm not talking about material things. I'm talking about something that's more precious than gold, the father's house and all the spiritual things that...
And the Bible said that he joined himself a citizen to that foreign country. He joined himself. "I've got new friends. I don't want Christian friends. They get on my nerves. They're all hypocrites anyhow. You know how we get, especially somebody who's off. They get real crazy. And joined himself a citizen of that country". And watch what they did. When he got out there and spent all and the famine came, so-called friends, I wrote down in my notes, "Hammer Time". He's a great guy, by the way. I've met him before, but he had to go through something to learn something, and I remember reading the article, one of the greatest artists, one of the greatest dancers, one of the greatest performers, and an iconic person, but you know what they said? They said he had 90 people on his payroll at one time and not like they worked or they did this.
Some of them were dancers, and I'm not saying that's not work, but I'm just saying that's all that they, and everywhere he went he had an entourage. He had to, everywhere he went 90 people and most of them from high school, and you know what they were? Leeches. Just draining the resources. And when he had spent all and no man could help him, where's the people? You know who's gonna be there when you hit that spot? The church and a family that loves you. All those people. All those people. We're tight. You don't understand. That boyfriend, that girlfriend, that user, that leech, that person. Yeah, do it. Yeah, snort it. Yeah, do it with me. Do it with me. And when you have lost it all, none of them will be there. Where are those people in this story? But I tell you who you will find. You'll find the Father who will open the door, and He's got binoculars looking, and the moment, you don't even have to have it together.
If you'll just start moving in the right direction, He'll come running. "Let's restore you. Crank up the band because my son was lost, and now he's found". Here's the point of the whole sermon. Here it is, and I'm done. The path back to prosperity for America, real prosperity is to find in John, "I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health". Get this nasty virus out of here. "I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health even as your soul, your spirit man prospers". The path back to prosperity for America is to return to the Father's house. The moment that boy got up from the mud and started moving back toward the father's house, and here's a word from the Lord.
If you want to see the prosperity and healing and blessing of God back on your life, get on the pathway back to God's house. Come back to the Father's house. If you can't come and you've got health issues or you're a health person that keeps people that could get something, I totally respect, honor that. Keep watching online. I'm talking to families who the enemy through the pandemic has pulled you away from the House of God, and the Lord said to tell you the pathway to prosperity begins when you start making your way back to the Father's house. I'm not saying it for a crowd. We're doing just fine, but I'm telling you, everything your family needs is in the house of God, and our faith is more precious than gold. Stand to your feet and give the Lord a mighty hand clap for praise if you believe it.