Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast and I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.
Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving.
In your life. Enjoy the message. Let's work together today on this.
In Mark chapter three, verse one, and the scripture I want to read kind of sets up a theme that I want to talk to you about for the next few weeks. So the Bible says another time Jesus went into the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.
And Jesus said.
To the man with the shriveled hand, stand up in front of everyone, and then Jesus asked them which is lawful on the sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life.
Or to kill? But they remained silent.
So he looked around at them in and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, stretch out your hand, and he stretched it out and his hand was completely restored. I want to speak to you today and possibly over the next few weeks on the subject of functional faith, functional faith, and so Lord, I pray that your word would do its work in our hearts and that we would respond in order in Jesus name.
Amen, and I may be seated.
On your way to your seat, Tell somebody we got some.
Work to do. Mark's Gospel gives us five.
Different accounts within two chapters of Jesus in confrontational situations.
Typically we think of jesus.
Ministry as being a ministry of comfort, but it was also a ministry of co confrontation. Comfort and confrontation are both functions of the spirit of God. The same spirit of God that will comfort you and your trials will also confront you in your dysfunction in order to change you and conform you to the image of Christ. And so the earthly ministry of Jesus was no different in that he was a reliable source of comfort for those who mourn and a source of confrontation for those who
had become complacent. We see Jesus here in one of five situations with the religious ruling group of his day, and the central issue around these confrontations is jesus relationship with and approach to the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a gift that was given by God to people, but as people so often.
Do, we pervert a good gift and use it for the wrong purpose.
And the very thing that was meant to be creative and restorative in nature becomes destructive when it's abused, that is, to be used for a purpose different than what it was designed to accomplish. So, as we teach a little bit today on the subject of functional faith, and we look at this one particular story, we see here an image and an illustration of a system that is not working, a system that has become dysfunctional, a system that is
no longer fulfilling its intended purpose. Jesus arrives and the temple system by which the people were approaching God has become dysfunctional or if you want to say, unfit, it was unfit for the purpose that it was designed to serve. How many of you, as summer approaches, are setting some goals to.
Maybe get in shape for the summer.
Maybe you're gonna get a little bit fit for the summer, gonna some crunches, No, some nasty crunches. How many of you bought a fit bit some Lululemon' you're gonna do it this summer, Well, go for it. I wish you all the best. I think fitness is something that is unique to each individual, because fitness is relative, right, you can go to certain places and feel very fit in comparison to other people, then go other places and feel like you've never exercised a.
Day in your life.
And me and Holly were on a cruise ship recently and I told her, I said, this place makes me feel better about my body image, you know, just like all the buffets.
This is helpful.
And me and Chunks come up here.
Chunks, we went to Planet Fitness.
A while back to we were on vacation and we joined this gym to get a workout for a week.
And Chunks is, he's a fitness snob.
He likes to make fun of people who don't know how to work out. He's very judgmental. It's a pharisee of sorts, a fitness pharisee he is. And he likes to walk around the gym and tell me how other people aren't doing the exercises right. So if you ever see him looking at you in a gym, he is not admiring your form, Okay, he's making fun of you. At Planet Fitness, that's a funny gym.
I liked that place they had. Have you ever been to this place? They have the lunk Alarm on.
The wall because they call it a judgment free zone.
They say, we want you to be able.
To come work out here without guys like this investigating your movements, and and so they have it's kind of funny.
They have a lunk alarm on the on the wall.
They call it a lunk somebody who walks in, you know, the guys that walk in with a gallon jug of water and the belt and the gloves. You know, guys like Chunks. They don't want those kind of guys in Planet Fitness. Also, by the way they offer. When we were joining, the girl told us she said, come back Monday. They have on Monday we serve pizza of Monday at the fitness club, which is are remarkable. I told Chunks we got to start giving out cocaine at the Sunday night service at.
Well.
But Chunks is great. He's really helped me understand fitness. He used to be a physical therapist, and that's part of why so arrogant about the human body. And him and Buck. You should come to Buck. How many want Chunks and Buck on stage at the same time. These guys are These guys are both strong men, and they're both very stubborn. So sometimes I like to watch them argue, and I'll often start an argument. I'll just I'll just throw the two of them together in the cage and
watch them go. I'll sometimes instigate arguments between them. But they're both very fit, but there are different philosophies to fitness, you know. So sometimes I'll be doing a workout with Chunks and they say, what did Buck have you do yesterday? And I'll tell him and he kind of roll his eyes. Oh, that sounds like Buck. Buck's fitness routine. He's more of a punisher. He has more punishment, a binge and pun mentality toward fitness, and Chunk says more beach muscles.
God, do you know what I mean by beach muscles. He's gonna bench press.
And he's gonna do his triceps and all that, all the stuff that you can see. Like a lot of Christians we want to have knowledge to show off when we pose.
He's a great god.
And so Buck, bring out those kettlebells. Have you guys seen some these kettlebells? Do any of you this kettlebelt? There's a trend in fitness. The term is trendy right now, called functional fitness. Notice how he gave chunks the smaller one just by instinct.
Guy was judging you. They said that.
One's fifty three pounds GTA twenty four kilograms, and that one's thirty five pounds or sixteen for the rest of the world that uses the metric system.
So Buck says that functional fitness when you say you subscribe mostly to.
Functional fitness, and functional fitness is two things, adaptability and application. So it's like, is this something that would help you in real life? You know, like, is this movement that you're doing in exercising something that's going to translate into real life because a lot of stuff you do exercising doesn't really resemble real life. And functional fitness it's a trendy term, but the essential definition of it in the spirit that is intended is like, show them a kettlebell swing, Buck,
just a simple kettle bell swing. You can do a lot of different moves with this one piece of equipment.
You can do a kettlebell swing.
What else can you do with the kettlebelly creases?
That shown the Turkish get up?
Now, by the way, any exercise that starts with the name of an Eastern European country you should rebel against. This is a Turkish get up. A Turkish get up. He's gonna show you how many different things you can do with this one piece of Equipment's amazing. Well, come on, folks, us fifty three pounds. That man just lifted a weight joy over his head and stood up with one arm. Can you do that the same thing?
Give a shot, just one time? Turkish get up? No Turkish get up?
How many believe in chunks the lump? Come on, give him some love.
And ye.
Well done. Come on, let's give it up for both of them. Thank you, guys.
I remember, I remember, I remember when Buck said, yeah, yeah, you're good for now. I remember when Buck first told me just leave those right there. I remember when Buck first told me he said, I can give you a whole work out. He said, people think you need a whole gym. All this stands the equipment he said, I can make you hate your life with this one piece of equipment. You just got to know what to do
with it. And see, sometimes we think we need all this fancy special knowledge to grow in our faith, and we think we need all of this equipment and all of this training and all of this background. But I got good news for you one Bible verse.
If you apply it to your life, I.
Said, if you put it to work, touts or neighbors say it's time to work, It's time to work the word.
So we want to talk over the next few weeks.
And this is just an introductory seminar unfunctional faith. Functional faith, the kind of faith that doesn't just give you knowledge in your head, but gives you strength in your heart. The kind of faith that resembles real life. That is the greatest compliment you can ever pay me as a preacher. By the way, if you ever want to make me feel good and we run into each other, tell me that something I said helped you in your life, that it made a difference.
In your home.
Business owners occasionally tell me, in an apologetic way, I rip your stuff off. I take what you preach, and I preach it to my employees. You don't ever have to apologize to me for that. That's what I preach it for, so you can use it. You don't even have to cite me. Well, the first time you rip me off, quote me, say my pastor says, and then the second time you do it, just say it's been said. And then the third time you do it, say I've always said. That's how you do it. Touch somebody say
plagiar eyes. I love it if I can find out that the sermon I preached on Sunday made it into your Monday, I love that, or that it visited you on Tuesday, that it came back to you when you needed it on Wednesday.
And that's what I preached for.
And I was thinking, if we had a new mission statement for our church, I'd probably make it bringing faith to life, because I hear people tell me so often that faith was always a part of my life, but it wasn't central to my life. And now I'm learning how God's word actually applies to me. Adaptability and application.
Functional faith.
Jesus is instigating a functional faith in a dysfunctional religious system. Mark Chapter three is about much more than a man's hand being healed. It is about the heart of a sissystem that has become dysfunctional. It's about a it's about a people who have misappropriated faith. I've heard so many different definitions of faith. It's come to mean so much that maybe it's now almost meaningless because when we say faith, we use.
It to mean everything. You know, blind faith.
That's almost a way of saying, you're an idiot, just did it.
With blind faith.
We say that an organization is a faith based organization.
We might say that someone came to faith. We might say someone.
Lost their faith, or we encourage somebody to keep the faith. We might tell somebody to have faith, or we say that somebody had.
Great faith or or little faith.
We we even call someone a person of faith, as if it's an ethnicity.
Are you are you black? White? Faith? Like? What are your Republican Democrat? Faith?
But faith is meant to be more than a formality. Can I preach this faith? This meant to be more than a feeling faith, This meant to be more than a formula. In fact, if you can reduce it to a formula and make sense out of it, it ain't faith. If you can explain it, it ain't faith. You don't need faith for what you can explain. You need faith for what your eyes can't perceive. You need faith for what you don't understand. Richard Rore has a definition of faith.
He says that faith is patience with mystery. Faith is the willingness to abide in a place that you don't fully understand. The ramifications of faith is patience with mystery.
What is faith?
Hebrews eleven one says that faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen. Faith the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seeing.
Let's play a game. What's the opposite of good?
What's the opposite of light? What's the opposite of faith? I heard doubt? I heard fear. I want to suggest a third option. What if faith is not.
What?
What if faith? You know?
You tend to think sometimes that if you have doubts, you don't have faith, that the presence of doubt indicates the absence of faith. But one priest said, the opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. Let that sink can that the opposite of faith is when you've figured every thing out, when you put your life in such a position that you don't attempt anything
that requires God. You don't stretch yourself into a territory that enables the faith that you need for the challenges that you face. So that means you can have a lot of doubts but still operate in faith. Because faith is not certainty, and faith is not a feeling. I don't have to feel faith to have faith. I don't have to feel a goosebump to believe God. I don't even have to feel happy to be grateful for what God is doing in my life. Somebody shout, I got faith.
I got faith in the middle of a storm. My faith doesn't mean it's not gonna rain. My faith means I'm gonna make it to the other side through whatever waves I have to crossover. I got a faith that works. It works in the face of the wind and the waves. It works in the face of doubt and disappointment.
My faith is a faith that were So what is faith? And maybe a better question is what is faith? For?
Faith is the substance of things hoped for? What is faith for? In other words, what is the objective of faith? I'll put these in four subheadings so that you can take notes and remember this and review this. Faith has an objective. Faith always has an objective. If you're gonna get fit, the first thing a good trainer will ask you is what are your goals or what do you
want to get fit for? Are you just getting fit for your honeymoon so you can look good for a week, or are you getting fit so that you can Is this a lifestyle thing?
Faith is a lifestyle thing. The objective of faith.
Now, in the passage that we read, there are three different groups or characters represented. You've got the Pharisees, the lunks. Bible says that they came to planet fitness that day to look at everybody else's form and to see what Jesus would do. I can't understand people who come to church just to find fault with the place that they invested their time in. Going to stay home for God's sake,
wash your car, run a mile, I'm serious. The Pharisees that says that Jesus went into the synagogue, he went to heal, the man went with a withered hand, possibly to be heal, and the Pharisees went to watch says that some of.
Them like how Mark doesn't actually call him out.
He says, some of y'all, some of y'all were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus. Jesus was looking for an opportunity to heal. They were looking for an offense. What are you looking for when you come to church? I will never understand people who come on my Instagram feed just to tell me how much they hate me.
Why are you on my feed?
I'm serious, you know you're a false teacher. They'll come on there and say, I don't understand anything you say.
It's algibbraius.
I got a simple solution that's going to make all of our lives a little better from here on. Now get off my feed and you won't have to deal with my teaching.
Nobody made you come on my Facebook tout.
Your neighbors say, get off my feed. Pharisees are all up in Jesus' feed.
I don't understand it.
Why would you come if the only thing if the only thing you wanted to find was fault? But see, some people have a false objective for their faith.
It is the objective of faith.
That is exclusive rather than inclusional. It is when the church becomes or about judging how God should do it than being a part of what he's doing. It is a misappropriation of faith in the highest form. When a church isn't working. You can tell when a church isn't working because instead of reaching out, there's a man with a shriveled hand. He can't reach out. But he's in a synagogue full of people.
Who won't reach out.
And I don't know which one's worse, the ones who won't reach out or the one who can't.
And Jesus walks in and says, this isn't working.
He confronts the system by identifying the objective. What's your objective? What is your reason for wanting to have faith? Some of us only have faith for the things that directly benefit us.
We only pray for our.
Job, We only pray for our healing, We only pray for our kids, We only pray for our promotion.
When's the last.
Time that you came before God and asked him for something that would actually make your life less convenient if he did it, I'll never forget at cheesecake factory one night when God struck me with conviction, God will confront your dysfunction.
I was complaining to Holly.
That we were on a date and people kept coming.
Up to the table. And this was years.
Ago, because I have really improved my attitude since then, But at the time, I was immature in my faith, and the Lord spoke to my heart. If you've ever had God speak to you, it's not a voice out loud. It's louder than that. It's louder than that. And it was as if the Lord said to me, I can fix this. You don't like people coming up to you and telling you that they enjoy your church. I can empty your church so fast. You can eat a cheesecake factory naked if you want to, and nobody will come.
Up to you.
I'll make you so unknown and so irrelevant, so fast you can go in where you want.
Nobody will bother you. I said, no, thank you, Lord.
I think I'll eat my cheesecake and shake some hands.
And you don't really change my perspective.
And now I enjoy meaning people unless they're crazy. I mean, good God, how long you understand her?
But it's you know, you know, you know what I'm saying. It Just let me see.
Are you praying that your church would grow for your ego or do you really want to help people verdict. What is your objective? What is your faith for? What did you come to church for? Where are you at the synagogue? So you can judge the way that Jesus healed the hand and wasn't his best sermon.
I don't know, I don't know. I was kind of hoping the other guy would be leading worship. Tall guy, what you come for? What is your objective of faith?
Your objective matters a lot. Your objective and all of this controversy was around the occasion, if you write that down a case of the Sabbath, which was Saturday for the Jewish people, which was to be set aside as a day of rest, a day where you were to do no work.
The intention of the Sabbath was to be a blessing.
But since they had objectified the Sabbath and depersonalized the nature of God, Jesus had to remind them that any occasion is a fitting occasion to be a blessing and to bring healing. Jesus asked them verse four, which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?
But they remain silent. You know that.
Jesus is picking a fight because he could have waited until the next day to perform this miracle.
This was not a critical situation.
A missing hand isn't a life threatening event, and the man had been in this condition for a long time. Jesus did it on this day, the day where they were supposed to do no work, because he wanted to show them that what they.
Were doing wasn't working.
Jesus is using this situation to confront a system. Jesus is using the isolated incident to show them a deeper issue of the heart. Since we have such a situational view of God, most of our life is spent trying to fix situations.
And that's how I used to lead our church.
When something would go wrong, I would address the situation because you can do that when the church is small.
If the sound guy makes.
An error and forgets to turn a microphone on at one location and you only have one location, you can walk up to the sound guy and say, hey, why didn't you change the battery. From now on, you need to change the batteries. So you could just fix it at the level of the situation when it was one location, but then when it became two and three and four, I had to stop addressing situations and start addressing systems.
God is bringing you into the place in your life right now where he doesn't want you to just play whack the mole with situations anymore, where by the time you can get this situation under control, here comes another one, and here comes another one.
No, he wants to fix the dysfunction.
That is breaking the system that is creating the situation. So Jesus, Jesus shows up on the Sabbath and he said, I'm gonna work on the day where you're not supposed to work, so the people can see that what they're doing isn't working. And I'm gonna fix this man's hand that isn't working on the day that you're not supposed to do any work, so we can fix the system. Special occasion, this is this is not the day for healing. This is not that they had it figured out. They
had their faith compartmentalized. Do you know what I mean a compartmentalized faith.
Well, my faith is a private matter. My faith is private. I'm not so sure it is.
I think your faith affects everything about how you treat people, even.
If you don't speak of it. Your life is a reflection of it my faith. I have faith. I have faith. I have faith. I grew up in church.
I'm not so sure that faith is supposed to be an heirloom, functional, functional faith.
What has your faith done for you lately?
Because like in our house, we have all kinds of silverware and all kinds of plates, and we had these special plates that go up in the hot in the cabinet and they're expensive china that we got.
When we got married.
And we've been married, We've been married almost fourteen years, and I think I've seen that those china that those china plates four times in fourteen years. They're pretty. They're in storage and we break them out for special occasions. Is your faith like that? Faith is not meant to function like find china where you break it out on Eastern Christmas. And faith is not meant only to be accessed in a crisis. Faith is in only for the time when you get a report from the doctor that
we need to do more tests. I don't want that kind of faith, you know, kind of faith I want. I want a paper plate faith, do you know what I'm saying. I want a faith that has everyday use. I want a faith that makes it to Monday. I want a faith that can stand the test of Tuesday. I want to faith that goes to work with me on Wednesday. I want to faith that can get me through Thursday. I want a faith that can fight on Friday. I want a faith that can stand on Saturday. I
want I want a durable faith. I want a faith I can eat off of it when when nothing's going right.
A faith I can use in traffic, A faith I can use in the every day ups and downs of life.
I want a faith that functions. I don't want faith to be my special occasion. I want faith to be my full time job. It's my job to believe God. It's my job to trust them.
Faith that functions, a functional faith, a.
Faith, a faith that you can access in the in the small things of life, and a faith that has not held hostage.
To the outcome.
Can we talk about the outcome, because in this story there are two outcomes. One outcome is that the man's hand got healed. The other outcome is in verse six of the passage. It says that after Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath, the pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. Now, there was one event, a healing, and there were two outcomes,
one for the man, one for the Pharisees. And you know, if your faith is dependent upon an outcome, it's just a matter of time before you lose it, right.
Lance, If you need a certain.
Outcome to validate your faith, it's just a matter of time. When you have to go back to the hospital after you've only been home for a week, it's only a matter of time before you.
Give up on your faith. Let me ask you a question, Lance.
As much as you've been hurting, and as much uncertainty as you've got in your life right now, and as much as you don't know whether you're gonna get on the liver transplant list or not, and you're waiting to find out what's next for your.
Life, I want to ask you a question. Why are you in church?
Why would you come here when the outcome is still uncertain? Why would you have the audacity to praise God in a wheelchair and your faith hasn't given you the ability to walk. You must have a different kind of faith. You must have a functional faith, a faith that works even when your body doesn't work. A faith that works even when your situation is a cooperator. A faith that works even when you don't know what's next. That's the kind of faith Jesus is looking for.
That's the kind of faith that stretched his arms on the cross.
That's the kind of faith that turns the darkness of Friday into the resurrection of Sunday. That kind of faith, that kind of faith, A faith that works, a faith that wages war, a faith that won't, a faith that just won't quit, a faith that presses on. A faith in prison that will not be confined. Does anybody have faith? Real faith, silent faith, stable faith, unshakable faith.
The outcome is in faith.
My faith doesn't wait on an outcome. My faith is not based in outcome. My faith is an outlook. Watch me preach. My faith can look at a situation a different way than I would look at it without my faith. Now, my faith doesn't guarantee the outcome. Sometimes I have faith and I still stay sick. Sometimes I have faith and the job.
Still doesn't go. My way doesn't come to me.
Sometimes I have faith and my daughter still doesn't.
Act more respectful.
Sometimes I have faith and my marriage still looks the same as it did before I exercise my faith. But my faith is not hostage to the outcome. My faith enables me to see any outcome, whatever it is, come hell or high water.
I'm convinced that neither tent nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nor principalities, nor any other thing because.
I got faith. Because I got faith, my faith is an outlook. My faith enables me to see an opportunity for forgiveness where others only see offense. Because my faith is a way of seeing the world, so I can look at what I was looking at, but look at it differently.
Because I don't walk by sight. I walk by faith.
And no matter how this turns out, I just want to make an announcement in advance.
God, I praise you, no matter what the outcome is.
God, I give you glory. No matter how it turns out. I lift my eyes to the hills.
My health comes from the Lord.
When you touch seven people and tell them look out, look out, look out, look out, Get out your tent, Abraham, and count the stars. If indeeds are able to number them. You've been so busy looking at this tent, you've.
Missed the stars. You've missed the potential.
You've been so busy looking at your pain. You've been so busy looking at your problem. But faith is going to enable you to see.
There's a cloud the size of a man's hand.
And it's rising and it's heavy with rain. Come on, get God a south, getther the phrase by faith faith, I got faith. Some of your neighbors say, where's your faith? Where's your faith? Because faith is the substance. Faith isn't a frame of mind.
Frame is faith? Faith.
There's a course of action that changes your frame of mind. Finished preaching, I want to talk about the order. Because Jesus gives the man a command. It seems strange, It seems bizarre in some senses, it even sounds cruel. Touch somebody say faith, faith, faith functional faith, Faith that works, Faith that works, Faith that affects my life. Not just fate that I think about and gives me a cozy feeling.
Not faith.
Its like a warm glass of milk, not faith. This like a chocolate chip cookie.
Not faith.
It's like too tail and all I can take to make the pain go away. Know the kind of faith that will enable me to do the impossible and to believe God in ways that are irrational. The Bible says that the man got up in front of the people. That was his first step. His first step was to take a stand in front of the people who were judging him. He had to be willing to stand out in the midst of a synagogue of people who didn't
get it. He had to be willing to stand up in front of people that misunderstood him.
Do you have enough faith to take a stand?
Do you have enough faith to come out in the open and say, I'm a person of faith. I'm not ashamed to be identified with God. I'm not ashamed to be optimistic. I'm not ashamed to have an outlook. It's not ruled and regulated by the affairs of this life. Were the systems of this world. I got the faith to stand up. I think it's time for the people of God in America to take the stand and say our faith is really don't relegate.
Us, draw a voting book. We are the people of faith.
Faith. So he stood up in front of him and then watched Jesus. Jesus was looking around, tell somebody, say look around, look around, look around, And Jesus found this one man, and he stood this one man up, and the Bible says that there were two conditions in the synagogue. There was one condition. It said that the man had a shriveled hand.
But watch this.
It says that when he stood up the man, he was deeply distressed verse five at their stubborn hearts. Which one is worse, a shriveled hand or a stubborn heart. The condition of the man's hand was an image of the people's heart. The symptom was reflective of the system. And Jesus came to confront both. So he tells the man. He tells the man stand up, and then he tells him to stretch out his hand. Imaginatively speaking, perhaps the man kept his bad hand in his pocket. See, because
the Bible says he had a shriveled hand. That means the other one was working just fine. And Jesus didn't specify which hand. So you know how we like to do. We always like to stick out our good hand.
First. Hi, nice to meet you. I made cookies.
The good hand, And Jesus said, no, not that one, not the one that's working, the one that wasn't working. God didn't bring you here today so you could show off the parts of your life that are working.
He brought you here today to heal the parts of your life that aren't.
So Look at five, Look at five, he says. He says, he was deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, their shriveled hearts that had lost the ability to feel compassion, so that their only thought was not of this man. Their only thought was of their man made laws. Their only thought was of the religious requirements. Their only thought was of what was wrong. Their only thought of was what
they would could correct. And he looked around at all of that, and the Bible says he was deeply distressed, And so he restored the man's hand, and then the man stretched it out. Would be the logical reading of the text. That's not how faith works. Faith has a different order. Notice how Jesus, first of all, commands him to do what he cannot do. Faith will command you to do what you've never been.
Able to do.
Faith will command you to do what you've convinced yourself that you're unable to do.
Faith will Faith will fly counter to the narrative that has guided your entire life up to this point.
Faith will call you a conqueror when all you've ever known is to feed and then see what you're going to do about it.
Faith will tell you to stretch out a hand.
That you had hidden in your pocket, hoping nobody would notice.
See.
It's significant that he healed a man with a shriveled hand, because if the man's feet had been lame, everybody would have been able to see that from the moment that they carried him in the door on a mat.
If the man had been blind, he.
Would have had to feel his way into the room. But the thing about some dysfunctions is that they're easy to hide, and you can get by with one hand. And nobody even knows that. Nobody even knows. Nobody even knows about your temper except your wife. Nobody even knows about your spending habits except your husband, and is tearing your marriage apart. Nobody even knows about your eating disorder. Nobody even knows. It's fine, it's fine. And Jesus says,
that hand, that hand, that hand. No, No, not your good hand, not your good hand.
I saw your good hand, your other hand. I want to heal you.
On the other hand, So he he had his hand hidden, and then he took a stand before the people, and when he.
When he stretched, see.
I always want God to restore before I respond. But the Order of Faith says that it's only when you respond that.
You can be restored.
It said, when the man stretched his hand, his hand got stronger. As he's stretched. God is stretching somebody today. He's stretching your faith. He's trying to get you to see that it's only when you reach out.
It's only when you make the effort. It's only when.
You'll do what you thought you couldn't do. It's only when you're willing to stand and even look like a fool. Come on, is there anybody who wants God in your life bad enough to stretch forward today?
If that's you'll do it, The man said, stand on your.
Feet and stretch your hand. Come on, stretch your hand. Stretch that hand that you weren't able to stretch before. Stretch that part of you that wasn't able to believe before. And I see respond he was restored. God wants to restore some things in your life.
One gospel writer said, when he stretched.
His hand, it was just as good as the other one. In other words, God took the part of his life that was dysfunctional. That was affecting all the other parts of his life that were functional. And there are certain ways in which you can have one part of.
Your life a hand can.
Affect everything, your ability to produce, your ability to get a good job, your ability to.
Get along with people.
But God said, I didn't bring you here to partially heal you.
I want you to stretch out to me today by faith.
The presence of the Lord is in this place. Restorative presence of the Lord is in this place. This is a restorative atmosphere. This is a restorative environment. There's no Pharisees around here looking to see what you came in with. We're not that kind of church. We got a lunk alarm in this church. Those people don't make it very law.
This is a place where you can stretch it out. Come on, you can stretch it out here. You can stretch it out.
Listen.
I preach this word with all of my heart. But this word cannot change you without your response. This word cannot heal your hand if you don't stretch your hand out. So the application to what I'm preaching today, and I hope that next week you'll come back because I want to pick up right here and move forward with this thought.
And I hope you'll join me for it. And I'm waiting for you to applaud as a sign that you're excited about that I want you to do while we're while we're waiting to get back together, Lusch, you don't need a special occasion for faiths. You don't have to wait till next week to build your faith more. What I want you to do this week is do something that you couldn't do without faith. Do something that you've been putting on. And it could be very small. Jesus
didn't tell the man to do a cart will. Jesus didn't tell the man to do an ice sculpture with his bad hand. He told him to do something simple. I wonder what simple thing you could do this week that would have great significance in your life. Some of you need to take your bad hand and call your father and seek his forgiveness and reconciliation in a relationship. One simple act like that. Some of you just need to get to work on.
Time this week. Just a simple thing.
Stretch your hand, touch somebody, say stretch it, stretch it, stretch it. Just get to if you would get to work on time every day this week.
It would send a signal.
To yourself that I'm not limited by what I always thought I could do.
Some of you just need to take every.
Day this week and say, you know, every day this week, I'm going to start my day in God's word because that's something that I wasn't doing before. And if you do something you've never done before, you'll experience something you've never experienced before.
Stretch your hand. Stretch your hand.
Simple things, just the simplest thing can make a huge difference. Stretch your hand this week, stretch it out and see what God will do.
A faith that functions. It's time to make my faith go to work.
God didn't give me this faith just so I could be complacent and comfortable with my dysfunction.
If you've got a shriveled hand.
Today, but you feel faith rising up in your heart and you would like for me to pray with you about something that's in your life, to shrivel something that you've been previously unable to do. But you're willing to stretch a little bit and say this week, I'm gonna make the move that I couldn't make. I'm gonna stretch my faith in a specific way.
And if you want me to pray for you, would you.
Just stretch your hand up right now as a sign of your faith, just as a sign of your.
Faith, and keep it up.
I'm gonna pray with everybody who's got their hands stretched. Father, We're not waiting for Restoration to give a response. We declare right now in Jesus' name that this week our faith is gonna work. We're going to have an active faith this week. We're not waiting on outcomes to judge the validity of our faith this week. We got a
new outlook this week. And so we're going into Monday, and we're moving into Tuesday, and we're going into Wednesday with a faith that works, gonna work because we're gonna work it. We declare this day wonder working God in your presence. There's nothing you can't do, there's nothing you can't heal, there's nothing.
You can for a storm.
So touch our hands, touch our hearts, touch our minds, change our habits.
We wanna be the people of faith. And we give you praise in advance.
Somebody clap your hands and give God pray.
Thank you for joining us.
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