All right. All right, say good morning to everyone. What a good place to be, amen. What a wonderful God we serve. Isn't he amazing? Isn't he wonderful? And I just appreciate him this morning. Thank God for all of his blessings, all of his love, all of his mercy, his grace. The baby's fine. It's okay. Don't get too caught up in the baby crying. But I'm thankful that God has so blessed us, so wonderful. And let me say just a couple things as we get started. I enjoyed the testimonies, appreciate each one of them. And brother, I promise you, it's a lot more than just four that you don't find in the presence of God. I know you know that. We're in a trying time. But throw with me in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11, in Ephesians chapter 11. We're gonna read verse one through six, and I'm not gonna, I got an outline, I got a message, I got all that, but I probably, I know without a doubt, much past the introduction this morning for different reasons, that I'm thankful that God is with us, This thing dying or something? It seems like it's fading. It sounds like it's coming and going. Is it coming and going or is it just me? All right. There. I'll stand still and we'll go with this. I don't have to worry about it then. So anyway, is that better? I guess. I don't know. It almost sounds like it's still coming and going. Is it just me? OK. Anyway. But this morning, what I want to preach to you about is faith. And just a simple title, Real Faith. We're probably going to spend the next few weeks on this. And I could easily preach you just a simple message about faith and tell you about somebody. But to actually try to define it and give you what faith is, something that is something that you can hold on to and teach you, is a little different. And it's not easy. I told Morgan this morning as I come up, I was here for Sunday school, but I felt like I needed to go study some more. I feel like I need to go study for about 10 more days, still yet. But anyway, I said, I'm going to preach one of the hardest subjects for us to preach on. He instantly said, sin. I said, well, that's a very good guess. But this is so hard to define and to describe, because faith is something we don't know much about. We really don't. And it goes beyond our comprehension a lot of times. But first, I'm sorry, Hebrews chapter 11 verse one. Let's all look up here real quick. How many can say chapter 11 verse one without looking at it? If you are a student of the Bible at all, if you've been saved for any length of time at all, you should be able to do this. Now. A few of you, that's pretty good. So chapter 11, verse one. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by it he'd been dead, yet speaketh. By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found, because God had translated him. For before his translation, he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Father, we thank you again for this time together, for this day that you've given me, God, for the opportunity that we have to call on you. Lord, you so blessed us, God, in so many ways. We thank you for your word, for everything we know about you and everything we know about us. And God, this morning, Lord, Holy Spirit, I need you to preach through me. You know the attack that's been going on this week in my life and is going on right now. And Lord, I pray that you help me, God, as I try, Lord, through your help, God, to explain this. With your help and your power and your presence, Lord, I thank you. And I pray that you speak to the hearts of each one that are here. Lord, use me as you see fit. God, I'm nothing without you. You know that. God, I can't impress you, so please help me to never try to do that. Sometimes we do, but God, we know we can't. So we just want to trust you and honor you and submit ourselves to you. In Jesus, your name we pray, amen. Now, I want to mention a couple things here in these few verses that I'm going to give you in the introduction. And part of it, I'm not so much worried about the time. I know it's getting a little bit late. That's OK. But I don't want to overload you with information. I want to give you something that you can take home, think about, and grab onto and remember and not give so much that you've got to throw stuff out. Not that I'm deep, not that I'm smart, not that I'm that good, but on this subject, again, I think it's because we have so many questions, we know so little, it's very easy to start having to pick and choose and get confused and things running together. So, what I want to tell you this morning is give you a few things about faith. Now, we look and we see, some say this is the Bible definition, some say it's just an explanation. I say it's both. In verse 1, we know that the Bible tells us this, and we read this, but I want to point out a couple things in these passages that we'll try to preach to you for just a few minutes. Now, we know that everything we believe is derived by faith, but what is faith? We must believe that God is real, God created the heavens and the universe. We believe by faith that all this come about because of God. I know of a book, I've never read it, I don't own it. I've thought about buying it, but I've already got 50 that I need to read, so if I don't need to buy 50 more that I still don't have time to read. But anyway, but the title of the book is, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. You see, you have to have faith in, whether you realize it or not, you have faith in something or someone. And usually it's both. I'm gonna give you some real simple examples and I'm gonna read you some definitions of faith. And I've got my computer is getting old. And unfortunately, it doesn't work like it used to. So I've got to use my phone this morning to try to come up with some definitions that I've got. And it's not working like I want it to because I'm not used to using it. Anyway, here we go, finally. But we see. Faith work in our lives every day. I'm gonna give you a couple simple examples. You sit down on that pew, and when you sit there, you had faith, whether you realized it or not, it was going to hold you up as you sat down. We all have seen funny videos where someone sat in a chair, they had faith it was gonna hold them, suddenly they're on the ground because the chair fell down. You had faith, most of you, in an automobile that when you went out this morning, put the key in, turned the key, it started. Rex had faith that his feet was going to carry him here this morning. And so on and so forth. But the definition of the word faith, let me give you the old man Noah Webster. He says, confidential trust in a person or thing. Now this one I have trouble with, number two definition. This is off actually the dictionary app, so it's off the internet. Belief that is not based on proof. That's wrong. That's false. My faith is based on proof. This Bible has been proven over and over and over. My faith in God has been proven over and over and over. One of the things, one of the questions you can ask an atheist if they want to debate you on whether God is real. A very wise old preacher, smarter than me and I ever will be, was going to debate Robert Ingersoll. Some of you heard of him, most of you haven't. He was a famous atheist around the turn of the century. You've probably heard of him, preacher. I know some of you probably have. But he was going to challenge an old preacher to a debate on evolution versus creation. And Robert Ingersoll got up and went first. He used a lot of big words and had a lot of good definitions and descriptions and all these things. And the old preacher got up and said, I cannot debate with you on an intellectual level. You're smarter than me. You say words that I don't even know what they are. I haven't even heard of them. and I cannot do that, but I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna challenge you in this way. He said, you go get me 10 people that your teaching, your beliefs have changed their lives for the better, and I'll bring you 100 that mine has changed. He said, better yet, you bring me one that the teaching of evolution has changed, and I'll bring you 10,000. that my doctrine, that my beliefs in God has changed our lives for the better. And that is one challenge that no evolutionist can even come close to touching you with. But here this morning, so we see that another definition, belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion. There's people in this world you have seen that has faith in a doctrinal belief. What is doctrine? I've taught you all this. Let's see how many remembers. Doctrine is? Yeah, but it's what you believe. That is doctrine. There are people that has been taught a false doctrine. You cannot convince me that a loving God would have you walk into a crowd of innocent people and blow yourself up to prove a point. That is doctrine. They obviously had faith in what they were doing or they would not have done that. People had faith. We mentioned Friday night about, and I'm not getting very far, about false teachers, David Koresh. For those of you that remember that, he was in Waco, Texas. He had all kinds of people going with him and believed in his false teaching, his false doctrine. And they followed him and they more than likely a lot of them died and went to hell because of that false teaching. So people believe in something. Now, we talk about faith a lot in church. We try to exercise it, but we really don't know much about it. And I think one of the reasons why we are so unlearned about faith is because we don't live in faith. Most of us live in a Cain world. Let me explain to you what I mean. Abel brought a blood sacrifice of a lamb that he He fed that lamb, he watered that lamb, but that is all he could do. It was an innocent lamb who stood in his place to be sacrificed. Cain brought forth of the earth. He brought forth man's work. He brought forth what man could do. Nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in the Bible is there any place where sins is ever excused or forgiven outside of blood. There's never excused, but mercy is a better word. Mercy is granted. and Cain brought what he could do. He depended on himself. You and I, whether we realize it or not, most of the time we depend on ourself and not God. If the bank account is good, everything's good and God's blessing. Well, that's just not true, folks. My grandmother one time had a cow that was dying. She said, Lord, we need that cow. I need the milk. And that cow's gotta provide for us. She went out the next day, the cow was standing eating. That's not blind faith. Well, God answered that prayer tomorrow, I cannot answer that for you. But he did that time. One of the other reasons we don't know much about faith is because we're so ignorant of what the Bible says about faith. I'm not being mean, I'm not being critical, I'm not trying to ridicule you. One of the reasons I asked who could quote that verse is that tells you how much you know about what the Bible says about faith. Not me. It kind of does me too. But if you cannot simply quote what is considered the definition of the word faith in the Bible, you probably don't know much about faith. Don't throw rotten tomatoes at me. I have not arrived by no means. We have more trust in things and people than we do God sometimes because we can see things. We can touch it, we can feel it. Do you know real faith also sees it and touches it and feels it even though you don't see it? Can we give an example? I'm not gonna get very far, but it's okay. How many of you in here are born again and believe you're going to heaven? Raise your hand. Have you ever seen heaven? Do you believe you're going there? That's called faith. You see, I've not seen heaven, but I know I'm going to it one day. And I know it's beyond anything that you and I could describe. And if we could describe it, we still couldn't comprehend it. I hope I'm making sense and not just jumbling around. God help me. So we see how faith does work in our life, but the thing about it is, is we don't get what we want sometimes, what we pray for, so then we question our faith. And sometimes your faith is the problem, but most of the time, there's a reason why. James says that if we pray for something and God does not hear us, a lot of times he says we ask for things that we consume it upon our own lust. And that is easy to do. Example. There was a pastor one time, not his wife, but a lady that went to his church. She said, pray for my husband, or an evangelist actually, that he would be saved. He said, why do you want him saved? She said, so I can have a happy home. He said, I can't pray that. He said, that's asking a miss. She said, I want a Christian home. He said, you're asking to consume it upon your own lust. He said, what about Jesus? Now that sounds harsh. But folks, I'm here to tell you, when it comes to God, there's a lot of things we want to consume upon our own lusts, and we try to put doing it for God's glory and honor, hang that on there, and the bottom line is, we're doing it for us, for our betterment. You know why I want a nice, fat bank account? Because it makes my life easier. There's three or four reasons. Number one, I don't have to lay my bills in a four and say, God, you see this stack of bills and you see that checkbook? They don't add up. And I need some prayer answering. Another reason is so I can go buy things I don't need. Amen. That's preaching, ain't it, Jason? But see, that's consuming upon my lust. And too much of the time, if God makes our life comfortable, we will not depend on him. Let me say a couple more things and I'll, a very short, I hope something was said introduction. We still got, I haven't even got past my first paragraph. I want to tell you some things faith is not. Okay? Faith is not saying I'm going to quit my job Monday and I'm going to devote all my time to God and I'm going to depend on God to provide for me. That's foolishness. Unless God tells me to do that, you don't do that. And not just me, you, you could do the same thing. You say, well, I just want to devote all my time to the church and I'm going to trust God to pay my bills. He said he'd provide for me, so I'm going to quit my job and God will provide for me. The Bible also talks about an infidel and not working and providing for your family. you can say, well, I went to the doctor, I'm sick, and he gave me the exact prescription with hardly no side effects, amen, that's a miracle, and he told me to take this, but I'm gonna trust God to fix me. I'm not gonna do it. That's not faith. I'm gonna step on a set of railroad tracks and this train's coming at me and I believe God. I gotta have faith that God's gonna stop that train before it gets to me. That's called suicide. Intentional or not. There's so many things that we do and we ask God that we think is faith and it's not faith. Let me give you one more. You know, let me say this. God will never operate outside of his word. Let me say this real quickly. If you do go to the doctor and you feel like God is leading you another way, then you trust him. That's happened. But let me tell you something. Anytime God tells you to do something, there's somewhere there's a verse to back up what he's telling you. or he would not be telling you. He never, ever, listen to me, God never, ever operates outside of his word. If there's not a verse to assure you what you're doing, friend, you're not doing it for God. And I doubt it's God talking to you. Real faith has an act or lifestyle to prove it. Not just a mindset, it's not a thought process. It's not a name it and claim it. It's not blind faith that I'm gonna trust God to take care of me and I'm gonna do this cause God's word says this. Let me read you a verse and then I'll let you think about that. Psalms 37 and four says, delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. What that means is if you keep your life centered around God, you focus on God, you trust him what he says, that is faith and God will give you the desires in your heart that he wants you to do for him. Not things that I desire. An act of believing God and what God says. That's faith. Let me go back to the scriptures here. And I'm gonna be done with this, because I gotta quit here. I got so much to, I need to give you, I need to know I give you something to grab onto. Notice verse four and five. Let's read them again. And I'm kind of jumping in the middle, but it's okay. By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, for which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testified of his gifts, and by it he'd been dead, yet speaketh. By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death. He was not found. In other words, they were looking for him, but they couldn't find him. Because God had translated him. For before his translation, he had this testament that he pleased God. Man, I wanna walk down there so bad. Both of these men had faith. Look at the difference. One died for his faith, one didn't even see death because of his faith. Your faith in God does not mean a bed of roses, folks. It does not mean everything's gonna work out the way you want it to. It will sometimes go the opposite of what you want it to, but that doesn't mean God's not working. That doesn't mean God's not moving. Abraham lost basically you could say a nephew, a niece-in-law, and nieces and nephews because of lack of faith in Lot and himself. God told Abraham to go. He didn't tell him to take anybody with him. He said, you leave. He should have looked at Lot and said, you stay. And Lot should have never invited himself to go. You see, Lot was consuming upon his lust. Abraham was doing it out of obedience. Abel died because of the faith he had in God that he was doing what God asked him to do. Enoch was translated because God asked him to do what he did. This morning, some of you are struggling with things in your life and you're trying to figure out how do I have faith? How do I know what's right? Let me give you this and I'm done. Faith says I will do what God's word says no matter the consequences. No matter what come what may, I'm not gonna make excuse for my sins. I'm not gonna make excuse for not doing right. I'm not gonna make excuse for God telling me what to do. I'm gonna do what God tells me to do regardless of what happens. Now let me ask you a question. Do you have faith in God this morning? Because if you do, you and me included will do what this word of God says. Consequences not come into play. You better worry more about the consequences of not doing what God says than doing what God says. Because those are a lot more severe. We raise our kids and we don't have God in our home like we should. We don't center our life and our home around God. We come to church haphazardly. We put things before church and things before God and we say we hope that our kids will serve God. We're teaching them about Jesus. Are you? Is your faith in God in every area of your life or only when you need something from God? Father, we thank you again for this time together. And God, I hope I didn't butcher this too bad. God, I tried to preach what you told me to preach. And God, I never even hardly got started. Lord, I guess you knew what I needed to say this morning, you knew what I needed to preach, nothing more, nothing less. Lord, I don't know what's on the hearts of each one that are here. I know I didn't preach anything about salvation necessarily, but Lord, you even gave us the faith that we needed to believe on you for salvation. So let everything I've got come from you, not from me. Lord, I'm asking you to touch hearts this morning, I'm asking you to deal with people as you see fit. God, it's not up to me whether they come to the altar or not. If they come to do business with you, that's between you and them. I ask people to, and I encourage them to. But Lord, in the end, it's between you and them. And God, I pray this morning that you, God, just bring us closer to you. Give us a better understanding of faith in you and what it means. And God, we thank you and we praise you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen, as we all stand, we get a song.