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How Faith and Perseverance Shape Our Stories | Living Like Never Before (Part 3) | Stephen Feith · The Madison Church Podcast

• 0:00
  Stephen Feith: Well, welcome to our online audience. My name is Steven faith lead pastor Madison church. And I want to tell you today that many of you know probably if you're watching listening online regularly, you know that I have two sons.
• 0:10
  Stephen Feith: They're four, and they're six years old. And as such as you could probably guess, my house is full of Marvel comic puzzles, toys, books, drawings, costumes, T shirts, even underwear. We have Marvel superhero, everything. There was actually a six month period last year, my son Elijah wore his captain america costume everywhere. I've got a little picture. It's like 100 degrees out when he was wearing that thing. And you could tell it's not a light costume. That's I mean, that's it's got the fake muscles and everything but big, big fan of Captain America. If you were to ask him if you saw him running in the hallways after our gathering today, who's your favorite superhero? He would simply tell you cap or Captain like he's one of the guys, you know, like he knows Steve Rogers personally well enough to just call on cap. Now, if you were to ask him, No, Elijah, why is he your favorite? He would probably tell you something as simple as I like his shield. I like the colors of his costume. I think that that's really it. Because when I've asked him why he's the favorite, that's usually the answer I get is the shield big fan of the shield. Now. If I were to ask you who your heroes are, or who your heroes were, you probably wouldn't respond cap or the Avengers. That's my son's answer. Because in his life, everything is superheroes but it doesn't mean you don't have heroes in your life. If I asked you who your heroes were, you have an answer may be for you. It's a parent who's one of your heroes, a partner, a mentor someone in your life, that you really look up to somebody in your life that's helped you, you define that person as a hero, and you define him as a hero, not because they can sling a web to get around the city more efficiently to fight crime here in Madison, but it's because they've helped you that there's someone that you look up to.
• 1:57
  Stephen Feith: There's someone that you love that you respect, somebody who's invested time into our personal real life heroes might not have saved the world from the threat of fantasy, an alien invading from another planet. And your heroes may not dress up in insect themed costumes, but they often have changed our lives for the better. Who comes quickly to your mind as one of your heroes?
• 2:27
  Stephen Feith: When I think of my heroes, I think one of my heroes think my grandpa he passed away a few years ago. He was definitely the best grandpa a grandkid could have asked for we get to visit him every summer in Iowa. He lived out in the middle of nowhere had a big yard and my grandpa was one of those Grandpas that like anything went we stayed up late. We ate way too much candy, we didn't drink any water. It was all Mountain Dew. We would go shopping every day for more candy, more toys, we would go fishing. He would let me drive his car around. I'm like eight years old, and he would like put me on his lap and we would go driving around his little town and I'd be steering and it was a small town. Don't worry, it was a very small town.
• 3:05
  Stephen Feith: But the literally the best best grandpa anyone could have asked for. And those are memories that I hopefully will always have.
• 3:13
  Stephen Feith: But my grandpa wasn't always that person. So I did find him.
• 3:16
  Stephen Feith: He's he's one of my heroes. He was a great grandpa. But other people wouldn't define him the way that I did. Because for a significant part of his life.
• 3:22
  Stephen Feith: Before I was born, my grandpa was an alcoholic and he was kind of a mean or an abusive, alcoholic. A little bit about my grandpa at a young age, he was 15 Or so he actually ran away from home. And he joined the army at 15. This was back in the early 50s. He served in Germany during the Reconstruction World War Two young man teenager serving over there after World War Two. And then he was sent to fight in the Korean War. And so I didn't ever get around to really asking my grandpa about alcoholism and addiction and war. Those were just topics that he didn't bring up so I wasn't necessarily going to bring it up with him too. But I imagine that alcohol was easy for him to turn to once he got back in the US.
• 4:05
  Stephen Feith: It was easy for him to turn to because as a kid, he decided at some point that he would rather fight a war overseas than stay at home and face whatever battles he was facing at home.
• 4:18
  Stephen Feith: When he passed away, I got the honor really the honor to officiate his funeral. And there were several people who knew my grandpa longer than I've been alive. And in my talk, my focus was in life. It's not how you begin. It's how you end and that was very relevant for me to talk about my great my grandpa who was great, versus maybe the friend that you knew, or the person that you used to know in this very small town who was kind of mean, and many people knew him as I did as a great grandpa, a nice old guy. Some people knew him only as he was as a mean guy. And very few though knew him as both and they could attest to what I was saying. Which was that the true estimation in his life was just completely 180. And a big part of that it wasn't that he had a big religious experience. It wasn't that he found God found faith. It was his family. It was when this grandkids started coming into his life, and he decided he wanted to be a better grandpa than he was a dad. And so he stepped up in those ways.
• 5:18
  Stephen Feith: And he didn't save the world. I can't imagine him wearing a costume like spider man or anything like that. But he changed my world. He changed my life. And so he's one of my heroes. So going back to this question, who are your heroes?
• 5:33
  Stephen Feith: And when you think about the heroes, have you ever thought that perhaps that you are someone's hero? Have you thought of that we have heroes? But have you thought that maybe in another room somewhere else, if someone was asking this question, somebody might be thinking about you, just like you're thinking of someone else right now. And we might say, There's no way, I'm super normal. But my grandpa would probably say that about himself.
• 6:01
  Stephen Feith: And the person that you're thinking of would probably say that about themselves. So there seems to be this commonality. I would imagine that for most of us, if we were to talk to our heroes, or someone who were to say that we were their heroes, we would say there's nothing super about us at all. We're just normal people. That's not just true of you and me today.
• 6:18
  Stephen Feith: It's not that we're not special.
• 6:18
  Stephen Feith: But even in the old, the New Testaments, those people would have defined themselves people that we think as biblical heroes, they would have not have defined themselves as biblical heroes, they wouldn't have considered themselves spiritual giants, they would have considered themselves the super examples of people of faith, if you would have asked them, they're just normal people trying to follow Jesus trying to follow God and do what was right. And they did not always do what was right. They sometimes made the wrong choices and their lives were immensely blessed, despite it. Despite the many, many mistakes that they made, their lives were blessed, we can sometimes completely overlook or ignore how many of them didn't do the right thing, even when it was seemingly obvious. For example, Moses, who we often talk about as leading the people, to the slavers, the slaves out of Egypt and walking over the Red Sea and into the wilderness and doing all of these amazing things. We forget that at the beginning of Moses, his life, he committed a double homicide. He killed two people, and he ran away.
• 7:26
  Stephen Feith: Like we forget that part, we think of all of the good things that Moses didn't like, ah, could never be like Moses. Well, if you haven't killed anyone, I guess that's true. You haven't been quite like Moses, and I'm not encouraging you. That's not the application for today. Okay?
• 7:37
  Stephen Feith: Not the opposite. But what I'm pointing out is that Moses wouldn't have defined himself as some spiritual giant, the way that maybe you and I, the way that that certainly the author of Hebrews is going to today.
• 7:52
  Stephen Feith: Now, there were consequences to the decisions that the major says there's consequences to decisions that you and I make.
• 7:58
  Stephen Feith: Moses never got to see the promised land, but it wasn't because that he had murdered people is because of other things that have gone on in the community. So it's not to say that while we don't need to be striving toward discipleship, right, much of Hebrews has been talking about discipleship and following Jesus. So that does matter. But it's not to say that you got to be perfect. To Be A Hero is not to say that you've got to be super to be a spiritual giant. It's not to say that you can't mentor help other people follow Jesus in your life, because you don't have it all figured out. It doesn't mean you can't help someone read the Bible, even if you haven't read it cover to cover doesn't mean that you can't help someone begin to pray, even if you're not, you know, praying 40 5060 hours a week, it doesn't mean that. And I think that sometimes what we do is we get in our heads, we think that if we're going to be a hero, we have to be super. The fact is you don't The fact is that you don't. But there's that lie that get we kind of believe. And so what do we do? Well, we don't help people read the Bible. We don't help people pray, we don't help people on their spiritual journeys. We don't help people follow Jesus. Why? Because I'm inadequate. Because I'm not super, because I'm not the pastor. And I'm not credentialed because I didn't go to seminary.
• 9:04
  Stephen Feith: And we come up with all of these reasons why I can't help people.
• 9:07
  Stephen Feith: And they're just not true. And what we're gonna reach today and Hebrews is that you don't have to be super to be a hero, you can be a completely normal person, and you're still charged with the responsibility of being a hero, and you are a hero. And how we will do that is by overcoming misconceptions of faith. We have a lot of misconceptions of faith, a lot of that's cultural, a lot of its societal, some of that you were brought up in and your family or your religious tradition and background, but we have a lot of misconceptions of faith. I cannot solve them all today. But we're going to talk about three of the primary big ones. As we go through our text, we have to recognize that faith is very complex and a lot of different ways. If we were just to take a test right now and I would ask you to write down what is faith to you just define it in one sentence in one tweet, 140 characters or less, we would all have pretty different answers.
• 9:57
  Stephen Feith: We'll all have pretty different answers. That's it. mean that you're not like, right? It doesn't mean that you're wrong.
• 10:03
  Stephen Feith: It just means that faith is one of these really, really big topics. Now, some of us we would define faith as something like, well, if I have a lot of faith, and I'm good at my faith, or if I follow Jesus, I don't make a lot of mistakes. I'm going to be healthy and wealthy for the rest of my life. Possible, I guess, possible, for sure, it could be just luck could be God's favor, but it's not promised. And so what do we do with that? When we think like, well, if I'm faithful, God's gonna bless me, and then we're faithful. And then God doesn't bless me. What do we do with that? And today, we're going to look at the entire 11th chapter of Hebrews to answer these questions that we're bringing up today.
• 10:38
  Stephen Feith: Hebrews, chapter 11, has often been called in Christian circles as the Hall of Faith, like a play on Hall of Fame, we're going to talk about over a dozen different people from the Old Testament from the Hebrew Scriptures that had faith. And a lot of these guys we're going to see, were just normal. They weren't super. And yet they make the Bible's Hall of Faith.
• 11:00
  Stephen Feith: They're examples of people who have done great things because of their faith. And so we're going to read the entire 11th Chapter, over the course of our time together won't be in one full reading. And if you can, if you so if you want to follow along, Hebrews chapter 11, house Bibles words on the screen, you can use your phone for the Bible if you choose. But if you recall, for the past few weeks, the author of Hebrews shared about the importance of perseverance that was the topic of the last two weeks was Persevere, persevere. And here's how you persevere, you need a community who's going to encourage you motivate you stand by you. And then the flip side of that was last week, like if you don't persevere, here's what the potential is going to happen. But again, if you do, this is the great reward. So now we're kind of getting really close to the end of Hebrews here, we've talked about finding our faith and why Christianity is different, but why it wasn't a new religion, we talked about the things that we needed to give up from the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, and the new one. And now we're getting into sort of the ending here where the author of Hebrews said, Hey, you have all of this practical knowledge, let's put it into practice now. And that's the emphasis is that our faith gets put in to action. And like, we know, there were people a part of the original audience who weren't persevere. And there are people in the part of the original audience who were bailing and leaving their church community. And so in this passage, the author of Hebrews is going to give a ton of examples they write in verse one, a passage that you might have read before maybe even have it highlighted already. Faith shows the reality of what we hope for. It is the evidence of things we cannot see, through their faith. The people in days of old earned a good reputation by faith, we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command, that what we see did not come from anything that can be seen. And so Misconception Number One of faith, and we're gonna address today Is that Biblical faith is a blind leap. That's the first misconception is that if I have to have faith, it's really just a blind leap. Or it's like optimism. It's me ignoring the realities of my situation, that is not true. Actually, faith is a confident belief in God, what he has said and what he has done, what he will do, based on what he has already done. Faith is the confident belief that God will continue to do what he says he's going to do, because we can open up our Bible Old and New Testaments, and see how God has always kept his word. Now, some of the realities we cannot see, because they're spiritual, because they don't exist, yet God may have made a promise to you, with your family, God, you have this thing that you're really believing for. And just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it won't happen.
• 13:30
  Stephen Feith: Yet. We keep believing in God, we keep having that faith, that confident faith because God keeps His word God continues to work in and through and around us. Even if we can't see, after all the author contents, look around at everything. It came from, essentially nothing that you and I can see today. Now, that seems like a really simple argument. But think about it this way. If you are an atheist, non believer, then truthfully, without a shadow of a doubt, you do not know where all of this stuff came from. And I'm not picking on atheists. I'll talk to the Christians in a minute.
• 14:02
  Stephen Feith: But if you're a non believer in the room, look at all of this something in the room, where did it come from? You might say, well, there was a big bang.
• 14:09
  Stephen Feith: Awesome. Where did the stuff for the Big Bang come from? Because we have stuff now, does that mean stuff always existed and the stuff always existed? Well, that doesn't quite work. Right?
• 14:18
  Stephen Feith: So where did all of this stuff come from? Well, we can't see it. We can speculate and we can have theories. And if you're a theist in the room, or listening online, you do you do have theories. I'm not saying those are dumb theories, or stupid theories. I'm just saying, there's nothing that we can point to in the room and hold it up and say, Hey, this is this is what we know. If you're a Christian in the room, you there's no way you can wrap your mind around this idea that God always existed. God always existed. Where did everything come from? Well, God, Well, where did God come from?
• 14:45
  Stephen Feith: Nowhere. He has always existed, how you just always existed. And that's what we believe. If you're a Christian in the room, yep, God always existed. Now, I can't come here and point you in the room and say, Hey, look at here. This is how I know But the author of Hebrews is saying, no matter where you fall on this non believer believer says, We know at some point there was there was the absence of what we're looking at. But now we look around the room. And it's not that we don't have the answer to that, that we doubt this right? Does anyone doubt the chair that you're sitting on right now the computer you're watching on? Because you don't have the answer to that first question. Like, where did we all come from? I don't know what that must be. None of this is real.
• 15:26
  Stephen Feith: Well, no, obviously, it's real.
• 15:26
  Stephen Feith: You're sitting on it right now.
• 15:29
  Stephen Feith: And that's what the author of Hebrews very kind of a complex argument right off the gate here. He says, we can have faith in God, even though it's on scene, even though it's unseen, because you do this every day.
• 15:41
  Stephen Feith: Even though you don't know where everything came from. It doesn't mean it's not real. And even though you don't see how God is answering his promises, you can continue to have a bold and confident faith in God based on what he has all ready, done. And yet not having the answers to our prayers to our questions doesn't always make, like I said, reality any less. Real.
• 16:00
  Stephen Feith: Faith involves the confident action in response to the unseen God and His promises. And this is played out in several historical ways. And so we're going to continue to read Hebrews 11, starting with verse four. It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God and Cain did.
• 16:19
  Stephen Feith: April's offering gave evidence that he was a righteous man, and God showed His approval of his gifts. Though, although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us. By His example, faith. It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying, he disappeared because God took him for before he was taken up, he was known as a person who please God, and it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists, and that He rewards those who sincerely seek him. It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God who warned him about the things that had never happened before.
• 17:00
  Stephen Feith: By his faith, Noah condemned the rest of the world and he received the righteousness that comes by faith. It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called them to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as an inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land, God promised them he lived there by faith, for he was like a foreigner living in tents, unsorted, Isaac, and Jacob who inherited the same promise. Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God.
• 17:36
  Stephen Feith: It was by faith that even Sarah was able to have a child though she was barren and was too old.
• 17:40
  Stephen Feith: She believed that God would keep His promise. And so a whole nation came from this one man who was as good as data. A nation with so many people that like the stars in the sky, and the sand on the seashore, there is no way to count them. This passage deals with Misconception Number Two about our faith, and that is that biblical faith is a statement of beliefs. That is a misconception. Our faith is not a statement of beliefs. Our faith leads us to action. Faith always leads us to action.
• 18:10
  Stephen Feith: There's a pattern in this passage, if you want it to write it down and highlight it, we can go back in the passage, you can see that because of faith, someone did something able because of faith brought gifts to God. Enoch because of faith lived a life committed to God.
• 18:28
  Stephen Feith: Faith is why no a built a giant boat. Faith is why Abraham was the only place he had ever known before. And a time when people just didn't get up and move. In a time they didn't do that. And it's also why Sarah believed that she could have a child even though she was very old, and really biologically shouldn't have been able to have children.
• 18:46
  Stephen Feith: So we see in this passage, you can highlight it Abell brought gifts because of faith. And then our faith what we do when we step out in faith that often leads God to action. Look at this. God expresses pleasure with Abel, because of April's faith. He brings an offering to God and God expresses pleasure God let Enoch escape death, God saved Noah and his family from the flood, God rewarded Abraham and Sarah with descendants. So faith leads us to action. It's not just checking a box. It's not just saying this is what I believe. And that's the end of the story. What we see is that it might begin that way checking a box, this is what I believe.
• 19:31
  Stephen Feith: But it always Biblical faith always leads us to action. And when we live out in our faith, we should expect wholeheartedly wholeheartedly that God is going to do something as a result of our faith. Now, let me point out the obvious God's responses and promises don't always happen the way that we think that they will. They certainly didn't happen for Abraham some of the people that we've already talked about picking up in verse 13.
• 20:00
  Stephen Feith: The author of Hebrews continues, all of these people died, still believe in what God had promised them.
• 20:07
  Stephen Feith: They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcome to, they agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on Earth. Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country, they can call their own. If they had longed for the country, for the country they came from, they could have gone back, but they were looking for a better place a heavenly homeland. And that is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. The author saying let me think about Abraham, and think about his descendants, Isaac, and Jacob, they never got to the Promised Land, think of Joseph, he never got to the promised land. And he says, but until death, they all believed it was going to happen. Until death, they believed that this was going to happen because they believed in God and they trusted in God. And may I remind you that they didn't have Genesis to look at. They didn't have the biblical text, they didn't have the Old Testament. So whereas you and I, today, we have a benefit of being able to look back on the Bible. So God eventually kept his promise.
• 21:05
  Stephen Feith: Think about those people, Abraham as kids, wow, this is amazing, we should have been able to, there is a promise God's gonna lead us under another direction. And then hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years go by, before they eventually get there. And yet, even to death, they kept their faith. And it says that that is why God was not ashamed to be called their God, because they kept their faith. Here, the writer concedes, what we know to all be true, and that is in our present crisis, it is difficult to stay faithful. Whatever you're going through in life, mentally, emotionally, physically, relationally.
• 21:41
  Stephen Feith: Financially, whatever it is probably a combo of something like that, no matter what it is, I want to acknowledge as the as the writer of Hebrews, that it is difficult to main tain your faith. It is difficult. It precedes probably most optional to you, I can just deal with this later, God understands he's graceful, God's more graceful and forgiving than, than my spouse, my kids, my parents, my boss, whatever it might be, is largest. God, I'll circle back and I got you. And yet for our heroes of faith, it was being faithful to God and believing all of the promises, even when they didn't get to see their fulfillment, even to death, they still believed and you got to know Abraham, he's an old man is getting to the end of life. So we had a son wasn't supposed to have a son. And God promised me that I'm about to die. And I haven't seen this yet. And despite that, he still had faith in God. How is this possible? We read in verse 17. It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God's promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son Isaac, even though God told them Isaac is the Son through whom your descendants will be counted. Abraham reason that if Isaac died, God was able to bring it back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead. It was by faith that Isaac promised blessings for the future to his sons, Jacob and Esau. It was by faith that Jacob when he was old and dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons and bowed and worship, as he leaned on his staff. It was my faith at Joseph, when he was about to die said confidently that the people of Israel would leave Egypt even he even commanded them to take his bones with them when they he left. It was by faith that Moses his parents hid him for three months when he was born. They saw that God had given them an unusual child, and they were not afraid to disobey the king's command. It was by faith that Moses when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to share the oppression of God's people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin. He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ, than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward. It was my faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king's anger, he kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible. It was by faith, Moses commanded the people of Israel to keep the Passover, sprinkle blood on the doorposts of the Angel of Death would not kill the firstborn sons. It was by faith that the people of Israel went through right through the Red Seas, as though they were on dry ground.
• 24:17
  Stephen Feith: But when the Egyptians tried to follow, they were all drowned.
• 24:20
  Stephen Feith: It was by faith, the people of Israel marched around Jericho for seven days. And then the walls come crashing down. It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute was not destroyed with the people for city who refused to obey God, for she had been given friendly welcome to the spies for she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
• 24:43
  Stephen Feith: So again, what's the thing?
• 24:43
  Stephen Feith: What's the key? Its legacy, its generation. It's grandparents, its parents, its children, its friends, its people being Other People's Heroes. How can we keep believing in God? Well, Grandpa Abraham did so Because grandpa Abraham didn't he believes it all the way to his death.
• 25:03
  Stephen Feith: I'm struggling with it. But he believed in I'm going to bless my children. And then when their children came up, how are we going to keep believing as we were enslaved in Egypt? Well, you know, great, great grandpa Abraham and great, great grandpa Isaac and and look how we've come down to all of this. I love that part. We're talking about how Abraham reasoned that, okay, I'm going to obey God, God wants me to kill my son, Isaac. This doesn't make sense, because God also told me that Isaac was going to be the descendant. So how's that gonna work if I kill him? So he's trying to obey God while saying it doesn't make sense to what God has promised me. And I think that sometimes in our lives, I know that sometimes in our lives, we're trying to follow something God has promised us, and then he tells us something else that seems counterproductive, or seems just to be wrong. Like, wait a second, you want me to do this, but now you're asking me to do this? Well, that doesn't make any sense. Abraham was doing it. He's ties up, you know, him and Isaac, they're gonna go camping, right? So we tell Sarah, we're back in a couple days. And while they're going out camping, he's thinking to himself, how is this gonna happen, but he has such a deep faith and deep trust in God? He says, Well, I suppose the only way that this can work out and remember, faith isn't blind, right? Faith isn't blind.
• 26:15
  Stephen Feith: Abraham's thinking, How can God keep his promises like you when I kill my son who is going to be my descendants? Well, the only logical conclusion is that God's gonna bring them back from the dead. Well, there was one more option and, and that was that God didn't have him kill Isaac at all. And it was this test of faith for him to do. But in our own lives, sometimes when we're walking through in faith, things are not going to make sense and we keep stepping into it.
• 26:38
  Stephen Feith: Anyway. Now, rhetorical question, do you feel overwhelmed by all the reading that we have done to that it's a lot of reading, right? The most I've ever read on a Sunday here.
• 26:49
  Stephen Feith: Well, the author of Hebrews was thinking about you guys 2000 years ago when he wrote or she wrote, verse 32, how much more do I need to stay say? It will take too long to recount the stories of faith of the of the faith of Gideon Barak Samson, Jeff hath David Samuel and all the prophets. By faith these people overthrew kingdoms ruled with justice and received what God had promised them they shut the mouths of lions that quench the flames of fire and they escaped death by the edge of the sword. Their weakness was turned to strength, they became strong and battle and put whole armies to flight. Women received their love, loved ones back again from death, but others were tortured.
• 27:29
  Stephen Feith: Refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They place their hope in a better life after the resurrection, somewhere jeered at and their backs were cut open with Webb's.
• 27:41
  Stephen Feith: Others were chained in prisons, some die by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world wandering over deserts and mountains hiding in caves and, and holes in the ground. All of these people are a good reputation because of their faith. Get none of them received what God had promised. God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us. And this deals with the final misconception of faith for today. And that means that is faith means good things will happen to me, or at the very least bad things. Well, that's a misconception. Because people who have faith good things happen to them. But people faith also have bad things happen to them. Sometimes they were celebrated and overthrew armies and lived these great lives. And other times they were thrown in prison, and tortured, and beaten. You see, just because you have faith doesn't mean bad things won't happen to you doesn't mean that good only good things can happen to you. We can think of people like Peter, James and John from the New Testament and, and other people, Mother Teresa, St. Francis, Corrie 10, boom, when you think of all of these people who are faithful, what we call giant spiritual heroes, and none of them had this perfect, great life. It wasn't just all trips to Disney World and having fun and never getting sick. They went through hard things. And that's part of what makes them a spiritual giant, isn't it? That they were able to go through things like the Holocaust, and keep their faith, they're able to go through experiences and watch like in Corrie 10 boons case have her sister and her entire family killed by Nazi Germany and to come out and to be able to offer forgiveness to the person, the guard, who killed her family. We say I could never do that. And to hear her talk about it, it's hard.
• 29:40
  Stephen Feith: But she's just normal. That's how she would describe herself.
• 29:42
  Stephen Feith: She's just doing what we talked about in this passage. She was just being faithful. And she knew that her faith and God didn't mean that they weren't going to be arrested by Nazi Germany didn't mean that her family wasn't going to be killed. It didn't even mean she thought she was going to be killed. It didn't mean any of that. And yet she kept her faith. And so I want to encourage you I know during the crisis As I know, during the tough times, it is hard to keep your faith. But that is part of becoming this hero. A normal hero is putting one foot in front of the others. Faith works in a variety of ways. But it always involves movement. It always involves you and I taking a step. Maybe you move to Madison, and that was your step.
• 30:22
  Stephen Feith: That was your step of faith was you're gonna move to Madison, maybe it was about maybe your step of faith is making this offering to something maybe with your time with your finances, maybe to the church, maybe not to church, there's something that you feel like God is saying, take the seven year I call man, I don't know God, you told me this. But now you're asking me to do this. Faith involves God doing miracles. And if we never put ourselves in a position to receive a miracle, we're never going to see a miracle. If we want to see God move a mountain, we have to expect the mountain to get moved, we have to put ourselves in a position where where we can see a mountain get moved. So if we want to see God show up big in our lives, let's create the space in our lives for God to do something. And remember, it may not be immediate. But ultimately, our faith will be rewarded by God. So the application today, I have two questions for you. How would you live differently? If you believed? Let's say you don't?
• 31:20
  Stephen Feith: How would you live differently?
• 31:26
  Stephen Feith: If you believed? Let's say you do believe how would you live differently if you didn't? Think about your life right now. If you if you do believe you're a follower of Jesus, how would your life be different? If you didn't believe? And if the answer is, I'm not sure. Or if the answer is it wouldn't change. Let's go back to the first question. How would you live differently if you believed