"FROM FEAR TO FAITH"
MF Blume MARCH
28, 1999 am
Gene 11:31 - 12:3 And Terah took Abram
his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter
in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of
the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran,
and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years:
and Terah died in Haran. Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out
of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto
a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and
I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee:
and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Notice in 12:1 that we read, "Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get
thee out of thy country."
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This is saying that God already spoke to him at the start, before 11:31
occurred.
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(It looks as though God did not speak to Abram until after Terah died in
Haran.)
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The reason we know this is because Acts 7 tells us:
Acts 7:2-4 And he said, Men, brethren,
and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham,
when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, And said unto him,
Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land
which I shall shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldaeans,
and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed
him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.
1 John gives us a progressive list of three stages of Christian growth.
1Joh 2:12-14 I write unto you, little children,
because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. I write unto you,
fathers, because ye have known him [that is] from the beginning. I write
unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto
you, little children, because ye have known the Father. I have written
unto you, fathers, because ye have known him [that is] from the beginning.
I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word
of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.
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We begin as LITTLE CHILDREN
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Then on to YOUNG MEN
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Finally, FATHERS
Abram experienced these three stages.
And, we read:
Gala 3:8 And the scripture, foreseeing
that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel
unto Abraham,...
The GOSPEL was preached to Abram.
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The Old Testament stories are physical pictures depicting and symbolizing
the spiritual walk that we must make to our goal that God has laid out
for us.
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These stories are true stories and actually occurred, but are said to be
examples for us on our spiritual journeys to God's perfect will for our
lives.
These three stages that John mentions are also seen in the command to Abram:
Acts 7:3 And said unto him, (1)
Get thee out of thy country, (2) and from thy kindred, (3) and come into
the land which I shall shew thee.
Abram was told to leave his country
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This is comparative to our understanding of leaving the world.
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The world is the society around us that is without God.
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We must come out from among them and be separate.
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The Church is the group of God's people who have come out of the world.
But this is only the "little children" level of maturity.
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Abram was in this level as he followed his father TERAH after God told
him to leave his kinfolk.
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Little children cannot leave their daddies.
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Adam said that a man will leave his father and mother an be joined to his
wife, and indicated taking some steps of maturity.
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When a person is able to marry one should also be mature enough to make
decisions and stand on one's own two feet.
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Otherwise one is not mature enough to get married.
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Terah, his father, was his kinfolk!
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Abram was to leave kinfolk, but Terah led Abram.
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Growing older means stepping into fearsome situations at first and dealing
with them head on.
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Stomach in, chin up, and walk into it and deal with it.
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It is as though we say, "I am to go to a place God wants me," and we fear
since we always lived by seeing things before we sold out and went for
them.
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God simply told him to leave and come to a place He would show Abram.
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We are not mature enough so we do not take the responsibility of walking
by faith.
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We are too afraid.
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"Walking by our sight" in the phrase, "We walk not by sight but by faith,"
means we are still childlike in our walk, and are too scared to truly walk
by faith for ourselves.
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So many people are scared of walking by faith that they forever walk by
sight because that is easy.
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It is as easy as letting daddy always take care of the decisions in your
life.
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Having daddy take lead is not being the man and woman you have to be to
leave mother and father and learn to walk after the Spirit for yourself.
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Leaving the kinfolk means that we are to mature and leave home.
When I first went to school at such a young age, I was terrified.
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Away from mother.
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Then from each class to the other I was uneasy.
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New kids.
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And into High School was even scarier at first.
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Then finding a job and starting it.
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My first job!
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But I had to do it!
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I had to tackle it, strangeness and all!
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Leaving home for Bible School, and never returning home again to stay was
a huge step in my life.
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Getting married was quite a deal, next.
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Going to pastor my first church was quite a step.
We are always afraid to a degree of the unknown.
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Even in the Kingdom of God.
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It was scary when I first went to the altar.
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It was scary when I first stepped out and began praising God openly.
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But I was missing God's will again and again, and God told me to smarten
up and leave childishness and grow a bit.
We are all "little children" in our first stages of growth.
Abram should not have followed Terah, for he was supposed to leave Terah.
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This is exactly what new Christians do.
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It was not until Terah died in Haran, that we read The Lord Appeared to
Abram.
Terah died in Haran (Gen. 11:32)
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And Abram left Haran and went into Canaan...
Gene 12:4-7 So Abram departed, as the
LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram [was] seventy
and five years old when he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarai
his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they
had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went
forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain
of Moreh. And the Canaanite [was] then in the land. And the LORD appeared
unto Abram...
Abram finally came to the land of Canaan AFTER Terah died.
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It was wasted time in Haran.
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It was lost time in Haran.
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Terah took Abram there, and Abram was not supposed to stay with Terah,
let alone let Terah lead him.
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So instead of arriving in the Land that God wanted to show Abram, he landed
in Haran, and stayed until Terah died (some say 6-7 years stayed there).
Following after Terah represents taking our journeys and going in the wrong
manner and not in full faith.
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Terah's name means DELAY.
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Abram's journey was only delayed while he followed Terah.
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We are delayed when we fear and do not step out in real faith.
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Israel was delayed because they were too afraid of entering Canaan and
trusting God to defeat the giants.
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We know that the nation of Israel could have enjoyed Canaan 40 years earlier
had they not feared, because they spent forty years waiting for the fearful
part of them, the older generation, to die.
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When Joshua was ready to lead we read:
Josh 1:5-7 There shall not any man be
able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses,
[so] I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong
and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance
the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong
and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the
law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it [to] the right
hand or [to] the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.
After God saves us, he desires to lead us to a specific place in the Spirit.
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Canaan was Abram's destination.
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The land of Promise.
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It takes courage to step out and learn to walk in the Spirit for yourself
and really believe God will see you through!
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It is easier to simply give in to fear and stay weak and immature and not
tackle the situation.
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Our destination is the fullness of Christ.
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The Rest.
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Entering into that place where we are manifesting the very nature of God
in our lives.
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FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN.
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We are so comfortable in the places we already know about.
Small-town folk, who hardly ever ventured away into different towns and
larger cities, and metropolis super-cities, are afraid to venture out and
stay at home all their lives.
Recall that John said the little children's sins are forgiven.
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That is all they understand.
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You do not understand much when you are a little child.
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You are learning how to walk at this time, and little children are so afraid
to step out.
Moses and Abram were both supposed to go to Canaan - the promised land.
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They were going to have to learn to hear from God themselves.
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They were going to have to learn to call upon God and see miracles instead
of hearing about other people doing this.
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So let us bring Moses into the picture, for we see the same points as with
Abram in his life.
Moses found out that Israel was supposed to leave Egypt, but he did not
understand the proper way that would occur.
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He saw an Egyptian soldier beating a Hebrew and went out and killed the
man.
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He thought that was how Israel should be delivered.
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He thought he was to take things into his own hands and free Israel.
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His flesh was familiar to him, and doing things in human energy with reasoning
was all he was comfortable with.
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But God was to deliver Israel.
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Moses was somebody God would work through.
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And stepping out in faith for God to start working was scary to him.
Abram had the same mistake.
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He let Terah lead him.
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Daddy.
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But God was supposed to lead him.
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Abram let the part of him that was from the old life he left, lead him.
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The part of you that is from the old life you left is the FLESH.
Romans 8:1 ...walk not after the flesh, but
after the Spirit.
But its so easy since we lived in since after the flesh all our lives.
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Now that we are saved we want to walk after the flesh to live this life.
All that Moses could show for his attempts to deliver Israel and defeat
the kingdom of Egypt was a resume that said, "ONE EGYPTIAN DEAD."
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And Moses fled Egypt instead of defeating it.
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The reason he failed so poorly was because he let his flesh lead.
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He was too afraid to let God take over.
People who are comfortable in doing what they always did, feel uneasy when
they turn the steering wheel over to someone else.
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They were comfortable having things in their own hands.
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But to trust someone else is different.
Forty long years later....
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Such a long time!!!
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Moses long abandoned the thoughts that he could deliver Israel!
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And he comes upon a burning bush that does not burn itself out.
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He was in a sense forced to trust God now.
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And God speaks to him and says that God will deliver Israel.
Exod 3:11-12 And Moses said unto God,
Who [am] I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth
the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with
thee;
It is like God is saying, "Do not be afraid to do what I say."
He saw a burning bush that doesn't burn up, and God says God will deliver
Israel.
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The task was the same as it was forty years earlier.
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But the information is finally learned that Moses would be used deliver
Israel, but not as he formerly thought.
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He felt is easy to do it himself and in his own strength.
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But the bush represents the man Moses, sure enough.
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But the fire that burned upon the bush and did not burn up the bush, speaks
of God using Moses, and Moses not experiencing the BURN-OUT OF EXHAUSTING
HIS HUMAN ENERGY and failing.
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Continuing to burn and not burn out with fear.
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God would deliver Israel THROUGH MOSES.
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Moses heard INSTRUCTION FROM GOD at this point.
Exod 3:8 And I am come down to
deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them
up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with
milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and
the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
God does the delivering.
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It takes a little growing up spiritually to be able to pray to God for
your needs and to be patient and TRUST GOD.
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It is spiritually childish to be afraid and so impatient with things that
you cannot TRUST IN GOD AND WAIT UPON THE LORD.
And the 40 years that passed until Moses received this instruction represent
a GENERATION.
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40 years was a generation in Hebrew culture.
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So 40 years passing until Moses finally came to be properly involved in
the Exodus represents a person who goes as far as they can go in their
own strength, and fully knows that they cannot do the work necessary, SO
THAT GOD CAN DO THE WORK.
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Moses got in God's way, and had to get out of the way before God could
use him properly.
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And all of us begin this walk by thinking incorrectly.
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We think that we must make ourselves be the best Christians we can be,
and we fail and fail and fail, until we finally realize we cannot do it
in our own strength.
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And it is THEN that we have gotten out of the way finally.
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And it is then that we are willing to hear teaching, for we know we must
have missed something.
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And God can teach us that HE DOES THE WORK.
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It is HIS STRENGTH that leads us, and not our own.
Terah's death represents the passing of a generation of Abram, and Abram
growing up.
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No more Daddy to depend upon.
There is a drive behind us to make ourselves do what we must do and stand
on our own two feet.
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Terah's death is the same thing that Moses' 40 year period represented.
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DELAY ("Terah") passes away at this point.
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We are no longer delayed from getting to where God wants us when a generation
passes away.
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...when we've come to the end of ourselves after following the flesh.
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Following the flesh was our mistake.
Abram got out of the way.
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Moses got out of the way.
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God's PROPER directions came through to both of these men at that point
in their lives.
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When they grew up, they were ready to see God.
So Moses and Abram both understood God's will to take them out of their
present dwellings and go to a promised land.
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But both do it all wrong.
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And they wind up defeated and discouraged.
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And at a certain point that only God knows about, He then gives us proper
understanding that will cause us to finally do it right and not fail.
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AND THIS IS WHERE CHRISTIANITY BECOMES SO MUCH MORE GLORIOUS TO US.
Due to our lack of understanding, we try to convince ourselves we are doing
the right thing when it simply is the wrong thing.
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And the reason we do this wrong thing is because we are too fearful and
immature to take a courageous step of putting it into God's hands to lead.
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And we make excuses and not do it.
This is the WORK OF GOD.
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Anything done in this type of work simply requires faith and a battle to
stop fearing.
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You are comfortable doing it your way.
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And when you don't know that what you are doing is wrong, then you think
it is correct.
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You would not do it if you felt it was incorrect.
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The bad thing is that because what we do in flesh and in fear is actually
wrong, it soon messes us up.
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We think we are HOPELESS AND WILL NEVER BE WHAT GOD WANTS.
God allows failure to defeat you so much until you come right to the end,
and then HE SPEAKS.
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You have to trust Him now.
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You have to take a step of boldness and courage and start BELIEVING.
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God had to allow that to occur, because while we thought we were right,
we could not listen to anybody.
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We think we are right.
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We are convinced of that.
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And we come to the mess that fear will always bring us.
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It is DO OR DIE!!!
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If God cannot do this, then why bother with anything to do with Him?
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God is God and this is His work.
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Let us go forward and walk away from childish fear and stand on God's word.
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WE KNOW WHAT HIS WILL IS FOR US.
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But we think we are simply hopeless when we cannot succeed in the manner
we think one must walk.
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And when we are at the right place of failure, God teaches us the TRUTH
of how to journey ahead and WALK BY FAITH.
And we grow up a bit more.
Those who come to this place almost give up ever trying to make it all
the way to where God wants them.
Peter started to walk on water and sank.
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A baby starts to walk and falls, and holds on to the coffee table with
white knuckles, afraid to try it again.
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Fear.
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Some quit church and some just go to Church, having lost that energy they
once had in thinking they would make it to where God wants them.
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They simply do not think they can make it now.
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But having left church, or not, God will get the message across to the
SINCERE HEART.
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God will see to it that we learn how to walk by faith.
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And hearing the truth in that kind of sad state is such a glorious, liberating
experience!!!
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We find out that we are not hopeless at all!
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We simply had a totally wrong concept of this whole thing.
And what has happened is that we have finally begun to experience a RENEWING
OF THE MIND.
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We THINK with confidence now.
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We THINK in faith now.
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Thoughts of impossibilities go through our minds, and a renewed mind reminds
itself that God is God and why be so foolish as to worry about things.
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When we do the work of God we need to stand up, no matter how hard it is
for us to do it, and have FAITH.
Roma 12:2 And be not conformed to this
world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may
prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Don't be stuck in the way the world does things.
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This is the work of God!
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Do it in faith.
You are now going to prove the perfect will of God out for yourself!
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You KNOW God's will.
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You now KNOW how to walk in it.
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So you are going to prove it now after you understand it.
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And you will find that you will prove it to be right!
Faith comes from hearing the word.
Gene 12:5-7 And Abram took Sarai
his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they
had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went
forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain
of Moreh. And the Canaanite [was] then in the land. And the LORD appeared
unto Abram,...
Abram left Haran and came to CANAAN!
As long as a man grows older and daddy is still leading, sonny-boy will
never learn to walk like a man himself!
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"Get away from home, and learn how to walk after my Spirit, Abram."
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But Abram had Daddy there to show him how to walk after God's word.
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You need to start learning how to walk after God yourself!
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Following Daddy speaks of a grown person never learning to live for God
themselves.
Hebr 11:8-9 By faith Abraham, when he
was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an
inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith
he sojourned in the land of promise, as [in] a strange country, dwelling
in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
Was he scared?
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You want to believe it!
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But he made himself step out and is called the father of the faithful.
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All of us will be afraid just like Abram was at first.
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But if we make ourselves stand up, then we walk and see that God comes
through!
After we take steps of faith it is easy to rely upon flesh again, and not
have to believe.
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Time goes by and we never take steps of faith.
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And then when it comes to do so, we took greater steps of faith than we
dare do now!
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We went backwards a bit. - go from FAITH TO FAITH!!!