[upbeat music]
In touch with Dr. Charles Stanley
Reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ
through sound biblical teaching
Next on In Touch,
Levels of Faith in the Life of the believer
When you face difficulties and trials
and hardships in life,
how do you respond? Do you respond
with doubt and fear and anxiety and fretting
or do you respond by faith?
And if you respond by faith, what level of faith?
You say what do you mean by "What level of faith?"
That's right, what level of faith?
You say, "Well, how do you know what these levels are?"
Well we're going to talk about it.
How do you distinguish one from the other?
What does it mean in my life?
How does it affect my life?
Speaking of levels of faith, well we all operate
on one of three levels of faith.
And the older we are the more faith we ought to have
That's how we ought to go in our faith.
But some people will stay all of their lives on the lowest level because
Number one, maybe they don't even know that there are levels of faith.
Secondly, too afraid to launch out. Too
fearful to trust God. And so what happens is
you go through life and you miss His best
because you never grow in your faith.
And that's what I am going to talk about in this message, and that is the
levels of faith in the life of the believer.
And it is very evident in scripture that faith is very, very important
in the eyes of God, and that He sees
faith as very important in our life.
And so, what we want to talk about in this message
is this: How to raise your faith level.
How to get in a position, where you and your relationship to God, or
the way you trust Him will position you, listen, to be blessed to the maximum
of your potential because
the way you trust Him determines the way the blessings come.
You don't trust Him? You don't get blessed.
You trust Him? You get blessed.
And the more you trust Him, and the way that you are able
walk in these levels of faith,
the greater the blessings that come in your way.
Think about how absolutely essential and important faith is.
And let's think about it in this light:
If you look at the life of Jesus, look at His ministry,
here is what you discover. You discover
that the theme of faith permeated the whole ministry
of Jesus. No matter what.
And I want to give you a few verses of scripture ...
Now, I won't have you turn to all of these because
I have enough of them for you to turn to.
But I want you to think about some of these verses for example,
you find in the scriptures concerning
His healing ministry. Listen to what
He is continually saying, when He's confronting people,
whether they are paralyzed, whether they are blind,
or whatever the situation may be.
Listen, for example, in Matthew 9
He says to this lady, "Daughter, your faith has made you well."
Then in Matthew 15, "O woman, your faith is great;
be it done unto you as you wish."
And in the second chapter of Mark. When these fellas are
tearing up the roof of this man's house and letting
their friend down by ropes,
so they could finally get to Jesus and be healed,
Jesus said to them seeing their faith,
"Son, your sins are forgiven.
Then he says in Mark 10 to the blind beggar,
"Go your way, your faith has made you whole."
And again He says, your faith has saved you. Receive
your sight. Your faith has made you well.
Be it done unto you according to your faith.
All through the gospels, Matthew, Mark,
and Luke especially, what you find
is Jesus- the theme of his relationship
to this people, this needy people,
who have a health problem, whatever it might be
it's always, listen, based on their faith.
Remember he said on one occasion?
He couldn't do any miracles in a particular place because of their unbelief.
They didn't have any faith. They wouldn't trust Him.
And often times, you and I miss out on God's best blessings
because we won't trust Him.
We don't believe that He loves us.
We don't believe that he will provide our needs. We don't
believe that He will heal us. We don't believe
that He cares that much for us.
But if you look at His ministry, what was he continually saying?
It was, listen, it was trust Him. Faith, faith, faith, faith, faith.
So if that's true in His ministry in His day,
if it was so important that he magnified the subject of faith,
nothing's changed. Because, you see, in our lifestyle
in our life times, in the culture in which we live,
It makes no difference in what generation or what culture
Faith permeates every aspect of our life.