3. BELIEVING GOD CAN DO WHAT HE SAYS HE CAN DO

3. BELIEVING GOD CAN DO WHAT HE SAYS HE CAN DO

1 & 2 - You know God can do what He says he can do. He is the God of His Word.

Psalm 77:12-14 – God is capable, He is huge, and performs miracles. You cannot take the miraculous away from Him, and Him still be the God of the Word. I am one miracle. Satan may have meant the internet for evil, but I’m going to come and grab that thing for glory. We should have a blast with God and His Word.

PART 1:

What is coming to us through our religious culture? Cessationism – all miracles have ceased. Sensationalism – it’s all about miracles. Neither one of these extremes are what God is looking for in the culture of His believers today.

a. Cessationism – unbelieving and perverse generation. Sensationalism – wicked and adulterous generation. They were craving something for themselves and the manifestation of God more than God Himself.

b. Idolatry of self. We go after Him to get the Most High from God. He can become where we want the drug of the High. We are looking for the Most High of God rather than the God who is the Most High.

c. We cannot even imagine what we have missed, that God would have been willing to do, over unbelief. Believe God for this! When people take away our permission to believe God, there is no estimating what is cheated in the life of that believer.

Hebrews 11:1; 1 Peter 1:21; Romans 4:18 –Have faith against all hope.

1 Corinthians 13;13 – Faith cannot be separated from hope, and when we do not give the permission to believers in Christ to believe God; to believe that He can, we have knocked the hope right out from under the feet of them. Faith and hope are always associated together. Do not believe the doctrines of men over the doctrines of God. Never, ever forget Mark 9:23 – present active participle believing God. We have the right to hope.

d. God desires for His church to have a revival of true faith. We believe based on what we have not seen. We cannot base our theology on what we see with our eyes, because very likely the lack of so much that we are seeing, the lack of so many wonders of God; may very likely be that we are living in a generation that is a non-believing generation.

Most of what we see out there is a stronghold of unbelief.

Judges 6:12-13 – The people of Israel were so oppressed they were living in complete defeat. Why is there such a gap between our theology and our reality?

Psalms 74:9 – Lord, is something wrong?

Habakkuk 3:2 – We have need for the wonders of God. We are not short on need; we are short on belief. Why don’t we see more of a New Testament reality? Because we are trying to live the faith without faith.

PART 2:

a. We have to rightly divide the Word of truth with understanding.

b. God is looking at our heart. We can always ask. If it’s truly humble and our heart is right we can ask anything. There is a difference between what we can ask and what we can claim.

Exodus 33 – Show me your glory! We have got to discern what God has obligated Himself to us about out of His own good will and good Name.

c -Luke 22:20 – New Covenant in my blood.

Hebrews 9:19-22 – Blood of the covenant.

God is the same God, but there are some differences.

d. When we seek and so desperately need the supernatural intervention of God; when we need a miracle, we will get one. It may be different than what we were asking for, or it may come in a different form. Believe God to be huge. He knows what the best miracle is to work in your life. We have to take those Old Covenant promises and sift them through our New Covenant, not to know what we can pray.

Hebrews 10:13-18 – the word “in.” Hebrews 8:8 – New Covenant

Old Covenant – Laws on tablets of stone. New Covenant – Laws in their hearts.

2 Corinthians 3:6; 4:7 – The word “in.”

The New Covenant began to prioritize the internal work over the external work. It was God’s work moving inside of man. What God wants us to understand is that the work has moved inside (Ephesians 3:20).

Old Covenant – Animal sacrifices - New Covenant – Living Sacrifices.

Old Covenant – Physical prosperity – New Covenant – Lives bearing fruit.

Old Covenant – Rebellion for resisting truth; went into physical captivity – New Covenant – Spiritual captivity.

Old Covenant – No weapon formed against you shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17) – New Covenant – We wrestle against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this age, spiritual hosts of wickedness, in the heavenly places.

e. 2 Corinthians 3:9 – The Spirit of God under our covenant moved inside of us (Jeremiah 32:17; Mark 9:23).

CONCLUSION:

Knowing truth always sets us free. It sets us free from the very bondage that keeps us from believing God. If we are full of belief we cannot lose. Use the Sword of the Spirit and the Shield of Faith. The no’s to our prayers will become the exceptions, and the yes’s will become more of what we will see as a rule (John 15). The more I seek the mind of Christ, and the more His Word abides in me, I’m going to believe Him.

1. Start learning to think like Him by letting His Word abide in you.

2. Start raising that shield of faith and use it with everything you’ve got.

Mark 9:14-24 – This incident happened right where Jesus was on the mountain with the three, and the nine were left down below. Self thing going – failure of faith. They had argued with the Pharisees and teachers of the law until they had purely talked them out of their faith. Do not argue matters of faith with them, because you will lose. We will start talking intellectualism and rational kind of thinking, and we will overlook the wonders of God.

If I err, let me err on the side of faith.