Joyce Meyer - How Faith Works?

TOPICS: Faith

By grace are you saved through faith. It is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. By grace through faith. Everything that we receive from God comes to us the same way, by grace through faith. Our faith in God or our faith in His promises is not what buys the blessing of God. It's only the hand that receives it. It's God's grace and His grace alone that provides His goodness in our life. None of us could ever be good enough to deserve anything that God does for us. And that doesn't need to make us feel down about ourselves. It needs to make us amazed at God's goodness. So by grace through faith.

Well, you say, "I wish I had some faith". Well, the truth is, "Unto every man is given the measure of faith," Romans chapter 12. Every man, every woman, every boy and girl has faith. You have faith. You have enough faith to do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing in life at any given time. Now, your faith may seem weak because perhaps you haven't used it much. Or maybe you're only using your faith in certain areas. For a long time, the faith that I had in God, I only exercised it in the area of having my sins forgiven and hoping to go to heaven someday. I didn't know that I could use my faith in other areas of my life. You have not because you ask not. If you ask in faith, you will receive.

And let me just say right now that you can ask God for anything and everything. You cannot ask God for too much. You say, "Well, what if I ask for the wrong thing"? Well, you won't get it. So, you know, we don't need to be concerned, "Well, what if I shouldn't be asking God for that"? Well, then He just won't give it to ya. You know, there are certain things that the Bible tells us that we can ask for, but there's a whole lot of areas in life that are just unique and specific and particular to our own life. The Bible doesn't tell you who to marry. It doesn't tell you when you can buy a new car, but it does give us wisdom. And so if we follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we follow wisdom and we always lean on God and ask Him to help us.

We can begin to have absolutely amazing lives. You see, I didn't know that I could use my faith to overcome my past. I just thought I was stuck with that, "Well, I was an abuse victim". Well, I would never call myself an abuse victim now, never. You could never get me to say that I am an abuse victim because I am not an abuse victim. I am a new creature in Christ and I'm walking in victory. And no matter what's happened to you, I want to encourage you, get rid of any kind of victim mentality that you might have. We can't still be a victim and be new creatures in Christ. So you have faith.

What we've done in this ministry, has all been done by faith. You really don't have any idea in the natural how unqualified I am to do this. It's really just almost hysterically, ridiculously funny and so therefore I know that I know that I know that I know that it's God. That's why in 1 Corinthians 1 it says that God purposely chooses the weak and the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He wants the world to look and say, "There is no way, no way. There is no way you could do that". And then He wants the world to watch it happen through you. Amen. So then only God can get the credit. Wonder how many people have ever looked at you and thought, "There is no way you could ever change. There is no way that you could ever do that". But through putting your faith in God you're doing it.

Well, I really didn't have any plans to preach a message on faith this weekend. Actually, I just put this together one day a couple weeks ago sitting in my chair because I was reading the one chapter, which is the whole book of Philemon, and I came to verse 22 and something just kind of went off in me. And then I just thought, I'm just gonna do a little message on just how faith works because there are what we might rightfully call some laws of faith. And a law is something that works that way every time.

Like gravity is called a law, the law of gravity, which means that every time, not sometimes, but every time I throw something up in the air, it's gonna come down. And so there are certain laws to faith and what I mean by that is there's certain ways that faith will work and certain ways that faith won't work. And since you're not gonna get anything from God unless you use your faith, I think it would be very good to take a little time this morning just to see if we're doing what we should be doing with our faith and if we're using that faith in a way that's actually making it productive and workable.