Faith: The Transformative Power of Belief

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Sermon Summary

Bible Study Guide

Sermon Clips

### Quotes for Outreach

1. "You know, if you really recognize who God is and you believe what He said and you believe what He promises, even things like cleaning up after a service, this is real stuff. I mean, I can remember in my early days, Craig and I painting signs at Pilgrim's Heritage up in Michigan. I can remember coming here and being involved in church plants and, you know, having a work party and being the only one to show up and mowing the lawn and just recognizing there is a God. There is a Christ. There is salvation. It's all real. We're trying to send the Gospel forth here. And you know what? Mowing a lawn actually has a part to do and a place to play in all that." [46:28]( | | )

2. "And I'm going to behold Him as He is. Brethren, when that's real and it grips you, it changes your life. And that's what He's doing here. He's setting these people before us because He wants to see us how it is when it really grips somebody's life. It isn't just something you come along and say, oh yeah, I believe in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, you will turn your back on the riches of this world. That's what He's showing. When you truly believe what is real and unseen and promised in the future, it will grip... Look, it's so fantastic. It's so... It's so much. It's so great that when you look around here, you just laugh." [38:10]( | | )

3. "if you don't see these things, if you don't see through to the other side, that doesn't mean that it's not there any more than it means that the sky isn't there if you can't see, or that birds don't sing if you can't hear it. If you've got a problem with your ear, it's there. Listen, I know some of you here, you have never seen the preciousness of Christ, the cross, the power of God demonstrated in this Gospel in the way some others here have. But don't walk out the door and go back to your sin just because you haven't seen it. The reality is it's there. And if you will seek the Lord while He may be found, He promises you He will open this veil to you as well. You call upon Him. He's there. Just because you don't perceive it, you can't see it yet, you don't want to throw this in. It's life and death. Remember that. Life and death." [27:46]( | | )

4. "I mean, what I was seeing of Christ, it gripped me. It changed my life. Everything about the way I lived was impacted by what I saw. But I'm all of a sudden being confronted by family members, by friends, by co-workers, and I'm looking at them and they're saying they're Christian. They're saying they have faith, but then I'm looking at their life and it's not impacting them anywhere like this is impacting me. And I suspected there's something not right here. There's something fearfully not right here." [11:52]( | | )

5. "I mean, in the same way that an eye can take in the sunset, faith is that sense that has the ability to see through the veil and perceive what is invisible in a way that actually brings evidence and proof and conviction back to our minds. Ephesians 2, we're told that faith... I mean, if you're wondering, well, how does all this work? Ephesians 2, we're told that faith is a gift of God, right? God gives faith." [26:05]( | | )

### Quotes for Members

1. "Faith is, jump to the second thing it says, the conviction of things not seen. Now, the word conviction, it has a range of meaning here. I mean, different words could be used here. Evidence. Proof. Argument. It's the idea that faith is an argument. It's a proof. That is speaking about the mind. Faith appeals to the mind. It gives proof to the mind. There's something real about this. But notice what it gives us a conviction or evidence of. Things that are not seen. Which goes hand in hand with the first thing, right? God is. But God is an unseen God. Christ is now an unseen Christ. We love Him, but we have not seen Him, Peter says. He's unseen. The Kingdom is not seen. These patriarchs that we're going to get to. There was a city. There was a country. But it was unseen." [23:12]( | | )

2. "Don't shrink back from that. That's what he's saying. But of those who have faith and preserve their souls. Soul preserving faith. I might have called my message that. Soul preserving faith. There is a faith that preserves the soul. There is a way to destruction. There is a way to soul preservation. He's telling us about this. It depends on faith. It's a life and death issue. This is serious stuff. If there's anything that's basic and essential to Christianity and to your well-being and my well-being it's faith. Would you agree? If it's the difference between self-preservation the preservation of my soul and destruction. That has to do with my well-being." [07:05]( | | )

3. "You know what? Faith is literally like a sixth sense. With your eyeball you can see a beautiful mountain scenery. With your ears, we hear. With my fingers, I can touch. I can feel the grain. Probably artificial wood. But I can feel there is actually a grain there. We have an organ or a member that is capable of this. I can smell a rose and you know what it is? You know, if somebody said, how do you know that portion of fatties is yellow? I can say because my eyeballs have seen it and it's delivered proof. It's delivered an argument to my brain. But in the same way, faith is an organ and it's real. God gives it to people and suddenly, just like some of these people that Jesus healed of blindness, suddenly, they have an ability that they didn't have before. They can see where they couldn't before. Their eyes have been opened." [25:00]( | | )

4. "It's just like I experienced when I first got saved. He wants us to see it. When you're gripped by this kind of reality, when you can see the unseen, and you can believe the promises and the reward of God, He says it frees you from a preoccupation with this world. Do you not read what it says? They had opportunity to go back, but they didn't, because they desired a better country. Because they, look, they had seen that country with these eyes, but they saw that country with the organ of faith that God had given to them. And it was stronger. And they knew it was real. And Moses, he's like, I will not identify with Egypt and with its riches the reproach of Christ. Because that reward is better. And that's what it does to people." [35:46]( | | )

5. "Faith is the firm assurance and conviction that the invisible God is who He says He is and will do what He has promised to do. That's my definition based on these four verses. Faith is the firm assurance and conviction you see both those words in verse 1 that the invisible God is who He says He is. The invisible is from verse 1. God says that God is who He says He is. God is. That comes from verse 6. And will do what He has promised to do. He'll give the reward He has promised to give. That comes from the hope of verse 1 and the rewarder of verse 6." [33:02]( | | )

6. "And you know, this has everything to do with what he said in chapter 10. He said, you do not want to be exposed to the truth and go on in your sin. He said, rather do what you used to do. You see, when they were so worked up that they said, we don't care if our stuff gets plundered. We're going to identify with the people of God because Christ is real. And because these are His little ones. And He's real. And as much as we do it to them, we do it to Him. And we love Him. We love the unseen Christ. And it's gripped us. And so we're going to the prison and we're going to visit them even if the soldiers come and pillage all of our stuff." [36:51]( | | )

7. "And I see His word. And I bank my soul, my life, my all on this reality. That He is going to reward me. He's going to do what He has promised. He's going to fulfill these things. If we took these and we combined them all together and we come up with a definition, it might be like this. Obviously there could be other ways, but faith is the firm assurance and conviction that the invisible God is who He says He is and will do what He has promised to do." [33:02]( | | )

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