Just before He was crucified, Jesus told His somewhat frightened disciples that they should be of good cheer, because He’d overcome this world. Then the Romans nailed Him to a cross. Doesn’t sound very cheery to me. Doesn’t sound too much about “overcoming” to me.

Well, over these last couple of weeks we've been chatting about faith, the sort of faith that the Bible talks about, the sort of faith that overcomes the trials and the temptations that this world seems to throw at us.

Faith is an amazing thing as Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1 tells us:

It’s the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things we can't see.

If there was no God this life would be completely and utterly meaningless, you and I would just be an advanced life form on this planet, none of our laws really at the end of the day would mean anything.

No human life really would be worth anything and since our lives here on this earth are, in the scheme of things, but a fleeting instant in history eternity wouldn't mean anything and yet God creates us and He allocates the borders and the territories and He puts us here on this earth so that we might seek Him and find Him and know Him and love Him and be loved by Him.

The person who has faith has all things, the one who knows beyond any shadow of a doubt in their hearts that Jesus, the Son of God, came into this world to die to pay for their sins and to rise again to give them a new eternal life has all things though they may be poor by the world's standards.

The weak become strong; the poor become rich because the one who has Jesus has all in all. And we lay hold of Jesus, we embrace Him, we know Him by faith. Indeed without faith it's completely impossible to please God.

So what use is faith to you and me in practical terms? Well, often times we hope that our faith in God will help us overcome difficult circumstances. Often we hope that if someone is against us our faith will mean that we'll end up winning and they'll end up losing.

Do we see something of that in the Bible? Of course we do, we often see Gods people in the Old Testament turn to God in times of distress and God goes out and fights the battle for them and gives them victory over their enemies.

Sometimes that's what the Lord does in our lives, when we just feel to get out there amongst it and the forces of hell are unleashed against us, there is absolutely nothing wrong with praying in faith for victory so that the Lords will can prevail.

There's been many a time in my life when I've been up against it, when it seemed that people came against this ministry of Christianityworks and our mission to share the good news of Jesus with many, many people around the world. When our finances have been so difficult that we couldn't really see how we could possibly go on. When people that we'd relied on failed us and left us in a difficult spot.

Please don't ever think that just because here I am on the radio proclaiming the good news of Jesus that none of those things happen to us, they do and the more we preach Christ the more the enemy unleashes his armies against us. That's par for the course.

So when we're in a tough place should we turn to God as our first resort instead of our last? Should we rely on God’s faithfulness to overcome the obstacles and opposition that we face? Absolutely we should, He's our God and yet that's not always what He has in mind.

Sometimes His victories are so different to what we're expecting. There's something that Jesus said to His disciples in those final days before His crucifixion that must have seemed outrageous and plainly wrong to them as they heard it and as they lived through the next few days after He said it. Here it is, have a listen, John chapter 16, verses 32 and 33:

Jesus said to his disciples, 'The hour is coming indeed it has come when you'll be scattered each one to his home and you'll leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because of the Father.

I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace for in this world you will face persecution but be of good cheer, I've overcome the world’.

The very first verse speaks of the coming fear and trials that the disciples were going to face. You'll be scattered, you'll flee to your homes, you'll leave me alone. (Man if Jesus was saying that to me I would not have been impressed.) You will face persecution. Well, zippity do da, thank you for that Jesus. And yet, in the very next breathe He's saying, but I'm telling you all these things so that in me you might have peace, have courage because I have overcome, I have conquered the world.

Well you know, words are cheap. Not so long after that they see Him arrested, tried, beaten to within an inch of His life, bloodied, the flesh hanging in strips off His back where He had been whipped, lugging a cross up to Golgotha where He's nailed to it and He dies.

And yet this miracle man Jesus had said to them, "Take good courage, be of good cheer for I have overcome the world, I've conquered it." Let me ask you this, when He was hanging there on that Cross did He look much like a conqueror to you? Much of an overcomer in the eyes of His frightened disillusioned disciples who'd fled and left Him alone in His darkest hour just as He'd predicted?

Not likely and yet just a few days later to their absolute disbelief, even though He'd been telling them that this would happen, the one who'd they had seen dead and lifeless was alive again. He truly had conquered the grave, He'd conquered death, he had overcome the very worst outcome that there is – dying.

Do you see how the immediate circumstances of His trial and crucifixion shrouded the ultimate victory from His disciples gaze? And so my friend it often is with us. So often we're focused on a short term victory in this or that, a victory that all too often involves saving our own skins lets be honest, when all along our Father in heaven is working out His ultimate victory in our lives and in order to realise that ultimate victory for a time we may have to suffer and our faith has a huge role to play in realising that ultimate victory.

Listen to what the Apostle John wrote, 1 John chapter 5, verse 4:

For whatever is born of God conquers the world and this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Ultimately it's the one who believes in Jesus who He says will conquer this world because in Jesus Christ you and I have victory over death, victory over the grave, victory over this world.

As we're travelling through the short term pain of this lifetime that's what keeps us pressing on to the end, the truth that in Christ Jesus we have eternal life. 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 6:

In this you rejoice even if now for a little while you've had to suffer various trials so that the genuineness of your faith be more precious than gold though perishable, is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus is revealed.

To that you and I cry Hallelujah. Through Him we have victory over the grave. There are going to be times in this life when you and I feel like losers but in those moments God is faithful, His love is faithful, His promises are true and we have all that we need to make it through.

For me to be able to serve you with the truth today is such a privilege. Take this truth, hold it close to your heart because through your faith in Jesus Christ, as weak and as tenuous as it may feel on some days, you have overcome this world. I have said these things to you so that in Him you may have peace.

When God calls us into something that’s really hard, scary, tough, radical … He does that sometimes, have you noticed – what we need is unwavering faith. Yeah, right!  Where do you get that, pray tell?!

You know what I think is absolutely the most difficult thing about faith, it's that sometimes when I believe God for something He doesn't give me the answer I was believing for. Sometimes when I trust God to do something, something that's really good, something that's really powerful, something that would glorify His name, either He doesn't do it or He delays in doing it or He does it in a completely different way.

See when it comes to faith I want it to be simple, I decide what needs doing, I ask God to do it, I believe in Him to do it and He does it. You see, that's simple enough so how come God doesn't get it sometimes? How come He heads off on some tangent when I can see as plain as day what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and how it needs to be done?

Have you ever had that sort of a reaction to God when you've believed in Him for something and He hasn't done it? Yeah, me too and sure our point of view is simple enough but could you imagine what an incredible mess this world would be in if God spent His time dancing to your tune and to mine?

So over these last few weeks we've been chatting about having world-conquering faith. Great, that's in the Bible, we should talk about it but if we're going to talk about faith then we need to talk about what happens when our faith is apparently misplaced, do you think?

We've been working our way through Hebrews chapter 11 over these past few weeks which is all about faith and what we've focused on so far are the parts of that chapter that sees faith getting the sorts of results that we really want. Faith that pleases God, faith that puts our lives into context, radical faith that gets radical results, faith that overcomes our natural aversion to discomfort and inconvenience in following God, the faith that helps us to make the sacrifice that put God in His rightful place as Lord of our lives, faith that conquers the world.

And each of the examples so far that we've spoken about have focused on this successful outcomes of having faith in God, yippee, but the Bible is nothing if it's not realistic and Hebrews chapter 11 talks about those times when God doesn't seem to deliver on our prayers that we've prayed in faith.

Have a listen. This first passage follows on from the Abraham story. God had promised Abraham many descendants when he and his wife Sarah were old and way beyond child-bearing age and He promised Abraham a land of his own, the Promised Land in which his descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the beach.

Question: How much of that promise did Abraham actually get to see? Only two small parts! Firstly God gave him a son, Isaac, miraculously to be sure but only one, not this multitude that God had told him about and secondly, God fleetingly let him pass through the Promised Land but only as an alien.

So what does the Bible have to say about this unfulfilled promise? Here it is. Hebrews chapter11 beginning at verse 11:

By faith he received the power of procreation even though he was too old and Sarah herself was barren because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person and this one as good as dead descendants were born as many as the stars in heaven and as innumerable as the grains of the sand by the sea shore.

All of these died in faith without having received the promises but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on this earth, people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind they would have had the opportunity to return but as it is they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, indeed he has prepared a city for them.

So Abraham didn't see the full outcome of his faith. All bar two of the Israelites that left slavery in Egypt perished in the wilderness and they never saw the Promised Land, only their children and their grand children did and yet God commends them for their faith.

God’s plan, God’s promises span centuries right down to the birth of Jesus. Gods promise of many descendants is what gave Jesus to us and you and I today are blessed because Abraham trusted in God because Israel trusted in God albeit imperfectly, you and I are blessed in Jesus who came through God’s promise to Abraham. God’s plan spanned millennia, way beyond Abraham’s life. Abraham’s life was only just one small piece in the over all jigsaw puzzle and God commends him for his faith. That's the big picture, that's the truth.

You and I, our lives are but one small part in the over all scheme of things, in God’s whole plan for the human race and sometimes from our narrow perspective we can't see the whole picture.

In fact I suggest that our perspective is inheritantly way too narrow, ever fully to comprehend Gods total big picture and so often God makes promises and we step out in faith into those promises and things don't quite work the way we planned and yet those apparent failures can be critical in the over all plan of God.

Again listen to what Hebrews has to say further on this very thing. Having regaled us with all the successes of faith of the various leaders and kings, the writer of Hebrews under the hand of God turns his attention now to the apparent failures of faith. Hebrews chapter 11 beginning at verse 35:

Some women received their dead by resurrection but others were tortured, refusing to accept release in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, even chains and imprisonment.

They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goat, destitute, persecuted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.

They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and in holes in the ground yet all these though they were commended for their faith did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

You read that and it seems to me that having faith in God is more important to God than the outcome of the faith. Stepping into the firing line with the distinct possibility of getting shot, trusting God is more important to God than whether or not we get shot. That's what the Scripture is telling us and it's true.

What we're interested in is a narrow form of success, success in our little bit but sometimes our apparent failure or what the world would call failure is a critical part of the jigsaw in God’s overall plan.

The prime example of that is the cross. The cross was a worldly defeat. The disciples were devastated, the miracle man Jesus was dead. They didn't get it at the time that He was dying to save us from our sin. The cross was the greatest victory in human history because it was followed by the empty tomb, the risen Jesus, to give you and me a new life, a resurrection life where we can be born again.

What if Jesus had been saved from the cross? Where would we be now? But I tell you something, I bet you the disciples were praying to God in those final hours that He would be saved, that He would be spared and I bet you had we been one of those disciples that's exactly what we'd have been praying too.

It's not always about winning each battle, sometimes God has a bigger picture and what pleases Him, what He commends us for is a faith that stands, unfailing faith despite the outcomes. By faith.

Faith is an awesome thing – it’s a gift from God and one of the reasons God gives us faith and then takes us through trials to grow our faith is so that we can conquer the things of this world. That’s what the Bible teaches us. Problem is that when we’re in the middle of the conquering bit – well, that can get a bit scary.

There are times in our lives when we have to overcome obstacles. Not every obstacle is for overcoming let me say, sometimes we're meant to be there, at least for a while and sometimes we're meant to be there for a long while.

I don't know if you recall the Apostle Paul’s prayer to God about the thorn in his flesh that was hindering him, but three times he asked God to take it away and God’s answer was "no", because that thorn in Paul's flesh was there to keep him humble. Even adversity sometimes, especially adversity, plays an important part in God’s plan for our lives but sometimes its God’s plan for us to overcome obstacles in our lives, to be conquerors of things out there that are holding us back.

Sometimes we need to be more than conquerors over our circumstances in order to achieve the things that God has called us to achieve and when that's the case, when we have to conquer an obstacle that's way beyond our power and our wisdom and our strength then we need to have faith in the One who does have the power and the wisdom and the strength to make those things happen.

We need that sort of power that conquers the world and that's the sort of power that we're going to chat about today on the program, world conquering faith.

But before we get rolling I just want to explain that the reason I began with this word of caution, that not all obstacles are meant to be crashed through and torn down, is because more often than not it's not the obstacles out there that need conquering, it's the obstacles within us that need conquering.

Take the idea of strongholds. We tend to think of a stronghold as being, I don't know, some dark spiritual force or place out there somewhere that we need to overcome but the only time that that word is used in the New Testament it's actually talking about the proud thoughts inside the hearts of believers. Have a listen, 2 Corinthians chapter 10 beginning at verse 3:

Indeed we live as human beings but we do not wage war according to human standards for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

I want to argue that often it's the strongholds in our hearts that are the hardest obstacles to overcome, seriously. A stronghold is something that, well we hold on to so strong that try as we might we can't let go of it and lay hold of the good things, the blessings that God has planned for us.

So our strongholds set themselves up against our knowledge of God, that's why Paul calls us to take every thought captive to obey Christ. But whatever the obstacles there are times when we need the sort of faith that's going to conquer them. So let’s go back to Hebrews chapter 11 and see what God has to say today about world conquering faith. Hebrews 11 beginning at verse 29:

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days.

By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had received the spies of Israel in peace. And what more can I say for time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.

Hey, isn't that the most amazing passage? I mean I get courage in my heart just reading that passage. So what's God saying to us today through His Word? When the nation of Israel fled from their centuries of slavery in Egypt and after they had wandered for forty years in the wilderness God finally led them into the land that He'd promised them through Abraham many centuries before.

Now you'd think wouldn't you, if this was the land that God had chosen and the land that God had provided and the land that God had promised and ordained for them, wouldn't you think that they'd just, I don't know, kind of waltz inside and settle down and take it over? But that wasn't Gods plan. The land was occupied by many nations and kings and tribes and the Israelites had to take the Promised Land battle by battle by battle and that's often Gods way.

That's why so often life as a Christian seems to be battle after battle. That's why sometimes we think to ourselves, "Why is following Jesus so hard? Why doesn't it all just fall into place? Come on, what about the promises of God?"

Well the promises are there just like the Promised Land was there for Israel but they have to be taken battle by battle by battle. And those battles my friend require faith and faith pleases God. And so those battles are our opportunity to grow in our faith as we rely on God’s promises to take us through and when we do that that's pleasing to God.

So Israel took Jericho by faith. And Rahab, the prostitute who'd harboured the Israeli spies before the battle, she was saved by faith. And then the writer goes on in this list of many situations and circumstances in the history of Israel, battle after battle after battle after battle that had been won as Israel and Gods people stepped into the breach and put their faith in God.

My friend that's what the Christian life is meant to look like, that's what we're meant to do and after each battle, after each trial, after each beating, after each victory you know what happens? Our faith grows stronger.

We don't just become mighty men and women of faith by sitting in our lounge rooms watching television, we become mighty men and women of faith by using our faith, by exercising our faith so that it grows stronger and stronger with each battle. And one day we wake up and we're able to face even bigger battles for Jesus because now we have the faith we need to do it.

Let me finish off by sharing a letter with you I received a while back from Elsie, an elderly woman who used to support Christianityworks by sending in some stamps every few months. Listen to the world conquering faith of this frail old woman.

Although I'm only a very aged pensioner (Those are her words) I have been kept by Gods grace through many years. In the last eighteen months I have had both flood waters and burning tree embers over my verandah but God has protected me through it all. Only last night the bush fires threatened my home again and I went to bed knowing that only our Creator could keep me safe.

Berni I am sending you these stamps in the name of our miracle working God who fed thousands with five small loaves and two fish, burst open prison doors, calmed tempests, split rocks and provided water, conquered death and defeated satan and who is coming again to take us to His eternal home in glory. May these stamps help others to enter His peace.

And so they did. We used them in our very next mailing to our supporters and in response to that I received a letter from another woman who lived just three kilometres from Elsie who had been at the point of committing suicide when she received our letter, yet God used that letter to save her life. She wrote thank you for saving my life.

I believe with all my heart that that miracle was born out of Elsie's world conquering faith. I rang Elsie, told her all about it and she wept with joy. What an awesome God we serve that this self described aged pensioner can be filled with world conquering faith and as you receive God’s Word today may you be filled with a passion to travel through the battles, through the fires, through the floods of your walk with Jesus so that day after day you'll grow in you the sort of faith that conquers this world.

You and I would be entirely happy in following after Jesus, if it was always convenient. You know – it suits our agenda. Fits in with our plans. Doesn’t ever get uncomfortable. Yeah right! So when God calls us to do something that’s … inconvenient, well, that takes some faith.

One of the things I dislike intensely in life is being inconvenienced. I guess it's my western upbringing combined with my outcome orientated personality type. But when I have a plan I have a plan and I find it so annoying when someone gets in my road and delays me from getting out there and doing it or even upsets my apple cart and what they do ends up ruining my planning and I have to go and do something completely different.

I'm driving along in my car, there's a traffic light ahead, it's green but I know it's about to turn amber and then red and the car in front of me is travelling just far enough under the speed limit for no good reason so that he gets through the light but I'm caught by the red light. I just don't get that you know. How could he slow me down like that? How could he waste my time like that?

You see that's me, I don't get it. I know it's a trivial example but sometimes that inconvenience factor is much bigger. A break down on the freeway so I miss an international flight, a change in the global economy so this asset you were thinking of selling is now worth a fraction of what it was worth when you started thinking of selling it and the list goes on.

The number of things in this world that can conspire together to inconvenience us, well, man the list is endless but what if it's God? What if God is in the business of inconveniencing you with His ideas and His plans, His take on how things should turn out, then what do we do?

I don't think I've heard a message or a sermon on what to do when God inconveniences us, have you? Well it happens so that's what we're going to be talking about today on the program.

In fact, you'll find it in the Bible actually so because it's there we're going to take a look at it and not just because it's there, fantastic though that is but also because if you're someone whose plan is to follow after Jesus then one of the things you're going to discover is that Gods plan is not always going to be convenient and even though we're all different none of us are too pleased about being inconvenienced even by God.

Over the past couple of weeks we've been spending some time in Hebrews chapter 11, interesting chapter that, it's all about faith, it starts out with a very simple, very clear definition of what faith is in verse 1:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

It then tells us that faith is absolutely vital in pleasing God, verse 2:

Indeed by faith our ancestors received approval.

Verse 6:

And without faith it's impossible to please God. For whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

And then it sets out giving us a whole bunch of examples of different situations and circumstances in which we need faith and that's what we've been looking at on the program day after day, if you've missed any of those I'll tell you a little bit later how you can listen to them again online.

And one of those circumstance in which we need faith is when God is apparently in the business of inconveniencing us. Well, maybe that's a little unfair, let's put it another way. When doing the right thing, when following after what we know is right is just going to become downright inconvenient and so the choice becomes between going for the lesser thing, the lower option which is convenient from our perspective or going for the greater thing, the higher option, the God thing even though it's intensely inconvenient.

So here's what Hebrews chapter 11 has to say about this faith choice, Hebrews 11 beginning at verse 24:

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaohs daughter choosing rather to share the ill treatment of the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered it abuse suffered for Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt for he was looking ahead to the reward. By faith he left Egypt unafraid of the king’s anger for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible.

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood so that the destroyer of the first born would not touch the first born of Israel.

Now, I love this passage because you know what it tells me, it tells me that the faith that Moses had in his heart completely trumped the inconvenience factor. Let me say it again, the faith that Moses had in his heart completely trumped the inconvenience factor.

How often have you struggled with the inconvenience of getting about Gods business? Going and helping that difficult friend again who just can't seem to get their act together. Honouring a marriage partner, a husband or a wife, that given the way they're acting up right now simply don't deserve your honour. Supporting an arrogant or incompetent boss in your work place even though it's not fair that he's taking the credit for all your work. Walking away from the lunch table at work to the sneers of your colleagues when they start telling dirty jokes. Going the extra mile, turning the other cheek, laying down your life for other people.

You see my friend, those are inconvenient things to do. Moses could have chosen the comfort of Pharaohs palace, instead by striking down an Egyptian who was abusing one of his fellow Hebrews he found himself out beyond the wilderness tending his father in law's sheep and then having to confront Pharaoh when he was eighty years old, lead God’s people out of their slavery through the Red Sea and then contend with and lead this grumbling Israelite nation for forty years on their journey through the wilderness.

Look again what it says about Moses.

By faith Moses refused to stay in the comfort of Pharaohs house, by faith he considered suffering to be greater than comfort looking forward to his reward, by faith he left Egypt unafraid of the kings anger and by faith he participated in Gods miracle by keeping the Passover.

How did Moses overcome the inconvenience factor? Well, simple ... by faith. It seems to me that faith is our pro active tool for overcoming the lethargy we feel towards doing inconvenient things. Faith is like the thing that changes our hearts, to get out there and be about Gods business inconvenient though that may be.

And as we're going to see on another program down the track faith isn't something that we conjure up, it's not a feeling that you and I whip up through emotionalism, the Bible tells us that faith is a gift from God.

Can I tell you the number of times I haven't had what it takes to get out there and do what God was calling me to do? Hey even Moses had that problem, you can read about his argument with God in Exodus chapter 3.

So where do we go to get that faith? How do we get the courage to step out into those incredibly inconvenient places? I only know one way. In my study with the door closed and the Bible open and completely alone when everyone else is still asleep, I go and ask God to give me the faith, I go and pray:

Dear Holy Spirit, I sense that this is where you're calling me but I'm not sure I have the faith to make it happen yet, I'm not even sure I have the faith I need to take the first step.

And this is what happens, He's never failed me. He gives me just enough faith to get started, to take the first step, a mustard seed size of faith, the tiniest amount it seems, nowhere near enough to get the job done it seems but then the last time I checked Jesus said all I needed was a mustard seed of faith to move mountains, with a mustard seed of faith nothing will be impossible for you, nothing, by faith.

Sometimes God calls us to make sacrifices – real sacrifices – on our journey in following Jesus. Sacrifices hurt. Sacrifices can be scary – and that’s why they take faith, and help grow our faith.

Christians talk a lot about faith, our faith walk, faith this, faith that but faith isn't something we just talk about, faith is something you live and living it as anyone who's tried it will tell you, often times is a whole bunch more difficult than talking about it.

Today, we're going to take a look at the faith that it takes to give up something that we really love, something that we really want. People want to call Jesus Lord, right? You hear them praying, dear Lord, thank you Lord. Lord is a term too that we bandy around but to call someone lord is an act of submission.

Back in the days when the Bible was written someone called lord often had the power of life and death over you. "Lord" means that we accept that we have to do things his way and not ours and sometimes, not surprisingly, the priorities of our lord are quite different to our own.

And when we really, really, really want the thing that we want which is the thing that Jesus is asking us, apparently to give up in order to be about doing His will and living out His priorities for our life, then you know something, that is going to take some faith.

That's the sort of faith we're going to be looking at today on the program because for anyone who's heart is set on following Jesus this clash of priorities between what we want and what He wants for our lives is anything but a theory lesson.

The more we set our hearts on following Jesus the more this clash of priorities is going to confront us and not just a clash between the bad things we want to do and the good things that Jesus wants us to do but in fact very often it can be a clash between the good things we want to do and the good things but different things that Jesus wants us to do.

I want to tell you about a man today whom I know quite well. He is the head of a ministry organisation and whilst for many years he led that organisation and performed his work with great skill there came a time when it was obvious to everyone and sundry that God had taken His anointing off the man.

God was ready to appoint a new leader and it was time for this faithful servant to move on. The world had moved on, he hadn't changed with the environment and so his ministry was no longer being effective. That's not a criticism; it's just the way it happens sometimes.

Sometimes the Lord will have us in a place doing marvellous things for Him but it's only for a time and when that time is over, when God is ready to move us on for His plans and His purposes, you know it doesn't matter how much of a blessing that time has been, it doesn't matter how much fruit there was out of that person in that time, when God is finished with it He's finished with it.

Now the man didn't move on, he clung to the leadership of that organisation and so this healthy, vibrant ministry, a very large ministry, a ministry that was having a huge impact around the world, went into decline.

It found itself in massive debt and after many decades of being used powerfully of God because this man didn't move on it started to lose its relevance, its supporter base and its impact. That's what happens when we hang on to something beyond the time that God has set.

So you see it's difficult to let go of even the good things we're doing for God because it's easy for them to become more important than God. We begin to do what the Bible says, we begin to worship the works of our own hands, we begin to put even the ministry of God and our role and position in it ahead of God and His will.

Does that make sense? Here at the ministry of Christianityworks producing these radio programs and sharing the Good News of Jesus with millions of people each week around the world, can I tell you, I absolutely love doing what God has me doing?

It's such a joy and such a delight to see the reach and the impact of the ministry grow, to read the letters and the emails from people whose lives have been touched and transformed as they've received the Word of God.

There's absolutely nothing I'd rather be doing with my life right now but a prayer that I regularly pray is:

Lord, when you're done with me, when my time in this place is over, please make it clear to me because at that time I want to move on and at that time I want to hand it over to the next person and go and do what you want me to do Lord.

Even when that time comes, I have to tell you, having poured my heart and soul into this ministry, that's not going to be easy. When that time comes I know it's going to take faith to let it go, to lay it down and to move on to the next thing that the Lord has for me if that's the way He's thinking.

So let’s now meet a different man, Abraham, who had exactly this problem. At age seventy five God called him out of his comfortable ancestral home with a promise of many descendants. Abraham and his wife Sarah were childless. And at this age, well you'd have to say that there was really no prospect of them ever having children and with the promise also of a new land, the Promised Land.

So at aged seventy five Abraham and Sarah headed off on a journey which took them over hill and dale for over a quarter of a century but eventually, when they were just over a hundred years old, God fulfilled His promise and Sarah bore a son to Abraham and they named him Isaac.

Can you imagine how they doted on this boy? Obviously too much because God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to Him on an alter. Man how could the Lord our God do that? And so Abraham went and did that, you can read the original version back in the Book of Genesis but here's how the New Testament author of the Book of Hebrews puts it a couple of thousand years later, Hebrews chapter 11 beginning at verse 17.

By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son of whom he had been told 'it is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you'. He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead and figuratively speaking he did receive him back.

Now the chances are that you probably know this story. Abraham put Isaac on the altar, was about to kill him and at the last minute an angel of the Lord appeared and stopped the sacrifice. God didn't want the child dead, God wanted to deal with what had happened in Abraham's heart.

The Lord wanted to make sure that Isaac hadn't supplanted Him as the Lord of Abrahams life. And here's the key phrase in the passage we just read, here's the crux of what I'm rabbiting on about today.

By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac.

Isaac was Abraham's miracle child, born as the very promise of God when Abraham was already a hundred years old and yet even this good, wonderful, fulfilment of Gods promise, young Isaac, Abraham laid down by faith at Gods feet.

And my friend that's the sort of faith God is looking for in us, the faith to make Him Lord of our lives, the faith to put Him ahead of everyone and everything else in our lives, even the good things, even the things God blesses our socks off with, everything.

And so calling Jesus Lord, well, that's easy, living out the Lordship and the Kingship and the reign and the rule of God in our lives, placing Him above everything else, that's hard. It was hard for Abraham back then, it's still hard for you and me right now.

That's why it takes faith to call Jesus Christ Lord, sacrificial faith to put Him first in our lives.

Most of us want to be safe and comfortable. In fact, some people make that the central purpose of their lives. But you know what I’ve noticed? Whenever God calls me to do something for Him, my safety and my comfort seem to be the last thing on His mind.

Hey, it's great to be with you again on this Friday. Almost the weekend. We've been chatting this week about faith, not in a theoretical sense but in a "rubber hits the road" sense because faith is that thing that we need to get through the things that we, on our own, can't handle.

Faith is what we need to move that great big obstacle that's blocking our way, when it's way too big for us to climb over or crash through or get around. Faith is what we need to overcome that one nagging sin in our lives that keeps on coming back to rob us of the joy and the peace that Jesus came to give us.

And faith is what we need to go and do the difficult things that God sometimes calls us to do, the inconvenient things, the uncomfortable things, the things we'd just rather not do thank you very much Lord.

Well that's the sort of faith we're going to chat about today, uncomfortable faith because no one ever had an impact in this world by playing it safe right? When Jesus calls us into a place to make a difference in someone's life it's so often because that persons life is in a bit of a mess and it's going to hurt us to have to be in that place with that person.

When Jesus calls us out of our nice, safe, comfortable existence to go and do something for Him I can guarantee you it's not always going to be convenient and it's not always going to feel comfortable, that requires faith. People sometimes ask me, "Berni why is it that even though I believe in Jesus, I don't know, somehow it doesn't feel real? There's no passion, there's no fire, there's no excitement." And my response is always the same. I ask them two questions.

Question one: How much time do you spend quietly each day alone with Jesus with the door closed and your Bible opened? And question two: What are you doing with your faith? How are you living it out?

Now question one is really important because, unless we're spending time alone with Jesus each day, growing in a dynamic relationship with Him, well, shazam, shazam, there's not going to be a relationship. But today, I want to take a moment to focus on the second question, what are you doing with your faith?

And when I meet someone who has that vague unsettled feeling about their faith, this sense that there should be something more, there should be power, there should be impact, I can almost guarantee you that in effect they're a spiritual couch potato.

And by that I mean they're not really living out their faith, they're not getting out there and making a difference in this world, taking risks, putting it all on the line for Jesus and just like someone who spends their whole life sitting on the sofa channel surfing cable TV, drinking sweet soft drinks and eating chips, that person's going to end up feeling lethargic.

Well, the Christian who isn't exercising their faith is going to feel precisely the same. You don't believe me? That's exactly what the Bible tells us, James chapter 2, verse 26:

For just as the body without the spirit is dead so faith without works is also dead.

So as we come to look at faith again today we're going to do that from a different perspective, from the perspective of Abraham. A man who was called out of the comfort of his ancestral home in Ur which is around about where modern day Baghdad is today, have a listen, Hebrews chapter 11 beginning at verse 8:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance and he set out not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land that he'd been promised as in a foreign land living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

By faith he received the power of procreation even though he was too old and Sarah herself was barren because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person and this one as good as dead descendants were born, as many as the stars of heaven, as innumerable as the grains of sand by the sea shore.

Now maybe you remember the story, Abraham is the father of the nation of Israel. He and his wife Sarah were in their mid seventies and childless, a source of great anguish and shame because they equated God's blessing with having lots of children and having your own land to live on.

And so what's God's solution? To promise Abraham and Sarah many, many, many descendants if only they'll leave their ancestral home behind and go out on a journey through the wilderness, through all sorts of strange and weird and wonderful places, only God knows where.

A familiar story I suppose and yet what we often miss is the context. Let me say that again, by definition God's blessing in that time and in that culture, in fact, you see it over and over and over again in the Old Testament, is that blessing equals:

1. Lots and lots of children 2. Your own land.

If you had both of those then you were considered to be blessed by God. The more children you had and the more land you had the more, quite obviously, God was in the business of blessing you. But if you didn't have them then you were considered to be cursed of God, obviously you'd done something wrong, obviously you must have been a bad person. That was the thinking.

Now Abraham was a wealthy man, he had lots of flocks of animals which meant he had lots of land. So when God called him out of that onto his journey with a promise of a new land, a promised land and lots of children, do you see what God was asking him to do?

God was in fact asking Abraham to give up the one half of the blessing that he already had in the can. The one half of the blessing that he already had which was the land in order to get some new land somewhere he didn't know and also a lot of descendants.

And what made this so crazy was that he and his wife, Sarah, were in their seventies. I mean Sarah was way past her child bearing age. Abraham and Sarah had to let go of the bit of the blessing that they had in order to step out in faith in order to receive the next blessing.

My friend that is so often how God works. So long as we think our lives are about being comfortable and safe. No risk, no need for faith, no need to rely on God for food or shelter or provision or protection and so long as we make our comfort and our safety the priority, friend our faith is going to be dead.

God’s main aim isn't to make you and me comfortable, His main aim is to grow our character by making us part of His plan to touch a lost and hurting world with His love.

Gods plan isn't that we have some huge superannuation or pension fund so that we can spend our retirement indulging in our senses in food and travel and luxury. His plan is to use us to reach out to our neighbour with His grace and His mercy.

And so the solution for the spiritual couch potato, the answer to get rid of that lethargy and bring in a new vigour and anticipation to our faith, it's always the same.

The one who would live a vibrant exciting faith, a life where there's power, when the power of God is manifested before their very eyes is the one who goes to God and please Lord show me where you want me to go and what you want me to do, what sacrifices you want me to make, what risks you want me to take so that the name of Jesus would be lifted up in this world?

O Lord wherever you call me, whatever it costs me I want to go. Give me the courage, fill me with your Spirit, show me where and how and when I can lose my life for you dear Jesus in order that I might find it.

Start praying prayers like that my friend and I guarantee God won't take long to answer you, I guarantee that before you know it you'll be in a place where you see Gods power in your life because frankly without it you'll be in trouble.

Every now and then, God calls us to do something that’s totally counterintuitive. Something we wouldn’t do, if we weren’t listening to God. In fact, the more we listen to Him, the more we hear Him calling us to do things that are, frankly, downright risky and scary sometimes.

Hey, have you ever felt God asking you to do something that's so radical, so counter intuitive that you think you're going mad? Hey, I have on more than one occasion and as I speak with great men and women of God, as I interview them, as I get to know some of the giants of the faith that I go to Church with, I work with, here's what I've discovered listening to their stories.

The more open we are to God, the more time we spend in prayer, the more we take God’s Word to heart as though it's true and as though it's actually meant for us the more God asks us to do crazy things. I have a friend who against every personal desire and aspiration that he had for himself and his family moved sheer across to the other side of the world to take on a job for four years that God had called him to do.

Now most days were a struggle, most days he was homesick, most days he didn't really understand why God had called him to be in that place. But four years on as he was heading back home again, can I tell you the impact that his presence and his skills and his wisdom and his insight and his energy and his persona has had, not just on the organisation that he worked with but in the lives of thousands and thousands of people the organisation ministers to, it's been enormous.

The more we listen to God the more we're finding Him asking us to do crazy things, radical things, things we wouldn't consider doing if it was left up to us and that's exactly what happened to Noah. We're looking today again at faith in this series that I've called, "By Faith". That's a phrase that you find a lot throughout the Bible and nowhere more so than in the New Testament Book of Hebrews chapter 11.

It's a chapter that talks all about faith, the sort of faith we need to make it through the trials and the temptations of life. The sort of faith we need to see the big picture, to get life into perspective. The sort of faith we need to please God because without faith, without the assurance of things hoped for and the rock solid evidence of faith in our hearts of things we can't see it's completely impossible to please God.

Now, I want you to put yourself for a minute in Noah's shoes. You're living a happy life, okay the world around you is corrupt but hey there's nothing new or surprising about that.

You, your wife, your family, living a great little life and God says to you, "Hey Noah, I know you live miles and miles and miles away from the nearest ocean or lake but I want you to build a honking great big boat, a big sucker, we're going to call it an ark because I am going to flood the world, I'm going to kill everyone and you and your family and two of every species of animal are going to be the only ones that survive. So get to it, start to build the boat.

Now, you and I know what happened, we know how the story turns out but Noah, poor old Noah had none of the benefits of 20/20 hindsight that you and I have. He didn't even have a Bible that he could believe through, he'd never heard of Jesus. All he knew is that God came along and told him to build a boat in the middle of nowhere. I mean talk about feeling stupid.

Imagine going home to the little missus that night, she asks you, "Hey Noah, how was work? Well, I was chatting with God and we've come up with this great plan. We are going to build a boat, a big one, an ark." And she says, "Are you crazy? A boat?"

And not just the little missus imagine what the neighbours had to say. "Hey, have you seen what Noah's up to, he's really flipped his lid this time, he's building – wait for this – an ark." Nah, not even Noah's that crazy. Yeah really, he's building an ark three hundred cubits long. The laughter, the ridicule that must have gone down at the local pub each night as Noah and his sons built that ark.

What does God tell us in Hebrews 11 about this? What's Gods summation of Noah's craziness in verse 7 of Hebrews 11?

By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen respected the warning and built an ark to save his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.

What Noah needed to do, this extreme thing, was extreme faith and it yielded extreme results.

I've had times in my life when Gods called me to do the craziest things, Berni leave your secure, high paying consulting job and get involved in this media ministry that stopped doing what it's meant to be doing, it's almost broke and it's ready to shut it's doors. Berni go and start broadcasting your Australian programs in Africa where there was only one guy I ever knew in Africa.

"Berni, go and hire a man in India to start broadcasting your programs there even though there isn't a single door open to start doing what I'm calling you to do. Berni ..." Yeah okay.

Today, there's a thousand radio stations airing these programs, today it's millions of listeners each week, today ... it kind of seems obvious to have done the things we did but each time God called me to do something crazy it was just that, it was dead set crazy. Maybe not quite as crazy as Noah's gig but that didn't help me at the time. So when was the last time God called you to do something crazy? Something happens in that place that I can't quite explain.

There are many times when I've listened to the sage advice from mature men and women around me and that's been the right thing to do, I mean plans fail because of lack of counsel but at those major turning points, the truly crazy ones, there's been a pull in my heart from God that was as scary as it was unmistakable.

And at those turning points, the Noah points as I call them, I've pretty much had to ignore the sage advice I was getting from the people I trusted and just go and do the thing that God was calling me in my heart to do.

Those times it's been scary and at those times I've made some mistakes. Not everything always worked out the way I'd planned in my head. We didn't always get everything right first time, things didn't always happen as quickly as I wanted them to happen.

You know it was eight years from when I felt the call to go and tell people about Jesus until I took on the role that I'm doing now. It was almost three years between when we hired that wonderful man in India and when God finally opened the door to a weekly radio audience on a major secular network of thirty million people and it never felt much like faith at the time.

It was uncertain, it was murky, it was unclear but off we went with this dream in our hearts and with a certain reality that we'd rather look like idiots, that we'd rather fall flat on our faces and fail than miss out on what God was doing.

Have you ever had that feeling? It's unsettling, it's scary. At times I'm prepared to admit to the people around me I look like an idiot but then again so did Noah, so did Noah's sons, so did Noah's wife and the God that Noah served, the God that I serve and the God that you serve never ever chastises us for having too much faith, have you noticed that? You never see Jesus say to His disciples, you've got too much faith.

Sometimes, not every day but sometimes faith is doing the scary, crazy, counter intuitive things that God calls us to do.

By faith Noah, warned by God about events yet unseen respected the warning and built an ark to save his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir to righteousness that is in accordance with faith.

Sometimes you and I are going to have Noah moments, sometimes God's going to call us to that place so what are you going to do?

To some extent, we all like pleasing other people. It’s nice. Of course you can take that too far and become a people pleasing door mat, but there’s a good side to pleasing others. So … how do we set about pleasing God? What does that look like? What do we have to do?

I have a wonderful daughter who has just turned 21, her name's Melissa. Now Mel is blessed to have hit her gig in life, her shtick in life, she's discovered that she's a gifted beauty therapist. She loves giving people facials and beauty treatments that make them feel a million bucks.

Now, there are two parts to Melissa's gifting. One is that she has it when it comes to the ability to give a brilliant facial or to paint a woman’s nails perfectly, it's a hand eye co ordination thing. I don't know, anyhow she's got the knack of that.

But the second part is she's hard wired to please people. Her personality type is that she loves to make other people happy and so combine the two, the physical ability to do the job and the heart to do it well, to please her clients and hey, you're on a winner. Not only is she one of the top performers in the salon where she works but she really, really loves doing what she does.

Now we all relate to this idea of pleasing people, some more, some less, it's great to be able to bring joy to someone else’s heart but there's a down side to being a people pleaser and maybe we can talk about that another day but you'll agree with me that there is something good about wanting to please someone else.

So here's the question, how do you please God? That's what we're going to chat about today on the program.

There's a huge part of me that just wants to please God, with everything I think and feel and say and do. I really, really, really want to please God. I mean really I do but some days it seems all I have to do to blow that is to wake up and get out of bed in the morning. Does that make sense?

You want to do what's right, you know what's right, with all your heart you want to please God but you just can't seem to be able to do it sometimes. It's like there's a war going on inside you, you want to do what's right but every time you want to do what's right evil intentions are lurking there, right over your shoulder whispering into your ear.

Well it's not just me, it's not just you. The Apostle Paul who wrote almost half the Books in the New Testament had exactly the same problem. You can read about it Romans chapter 7. So how do we please God?

Let's go back towards the end of the New Testament in the Book of Hebrews chapter 11 which is where we've been spending some time together this week and lets have a look because there's an answer in there as to how you and I can please God and the answer simply isn't working harder. Hebrews chapter 11, lets start at verse 4:

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain's. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts. He died but through his faith he still speaks.

By faith Enoch was taken so that he didn't have to experience death and he wasn't found because God had taken him for it was attested before he was taken away that he had pleased God.

And without faith it's impossible to please God for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Now, isn't this really interesting? Because back there in the Book of Genesis chapter 4 where we read about Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve's two boys, we're not really given a reason why it was that Abel's offering was more acceptable to God and Cain's wasn't. There's a kind of a hint, we're told that there wasn't something quite right there in Cain's heart but that's it.

It certainly had nothing to do physically with what he did, both Cain and Abel brought an offering to God, they were different but they were still offerings. Cain's was rejected while Abel's was acceptable to God and as a result out of envy Cain murders his brother Abel.

So what was the difference between the two? Faith.

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain's. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts. He died but through his faith he still speaks.

Abel gave his offering to God in faith and as God showed through His response to Cain an offering without faith isn't pleasing to God at all. It's not just the physical act of making a sacrifice, that sacrifice has to come with faith and again we read that Enoch had been blessed by God because he pleased God how? Because of his faith.

Executive summary, bottom line, what is God really saying to us here? He's saying without faith it's impossible to please Him.

For whoever would approach Him has to believe He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.

And it's not just here in the Book of Hebrews that we discover the importance of faith in pleasing God, Jesus told people the exact same thing. When someone asked Him, "Lord what do I have to do to be saved? What do I have to do?" He answered quite simply, "Just believe in me, believe in the One whom God sent."

How often have you and I worked so hard at pleasing God as though anything we can do can possibly add to what Gods already done and what He's planning to do. Sometimes I think we behave as though, as though God's totally and completely and utterly depending on you and depending on me to fulfil His plans. As though without us God’s plan for this world is going to fall completely in a screaming heap, God’s going to stand there and go oh no, I don't know what to do now that Berni hasn't delivered.

And so we work hard and we work hard and we bring in the offering and the sacrifice and we see all the problems facing us and so we work harder and we bring in another offering from the field like Cain with little or no faith in our hearts because all we can see is the problem. We go, oh man I've just got to keep going through these rituals and delivering and working.

Well guess what? Without faith it's impossible to please God. Would you please note that word impossible? What it doesn't say is that without faith you won't please God quite as much through your labours as you may have done had you put a bit of faith in the mix. That's not what it says; it says that without faith it is impossible to please God.

The Greek word used there for "impossible" means literally "to be completely without strength, to be impotent, powerless, weak, disabled, that it's not able to be done." Why? Because God's God and He's put us here in this physical world that’s removed from His spiritual dimension yet the spiritual dimension, the God dimension, the presence of God is as real and as present as the nose on my face.

Our act of love, our act of pleasing God is to honour Him by believing that He is, that He does exist, that He is in the business of blessing and rewarding those who seek Him. Why does He do things that way? Well, think about it, God has a bit of a problem when it comes to eliciting a free love response from you and me. If we could see God for what He is, if we could see Him face to face in all His power and all His glory there'd be no free will.

In the face of that power every knee would bow, every tongue would confess that Jesus is Lord. So He removes us from His presence, He puts us in a place where we lay hold of Him through a layer of adversity we call life, through a cloud of unknowing, never quite seeing Him clearly in this life and we lay hold of Him, we honour Him, we love Him by faith.

And that's what faith is all about and that why without faith it's impossible to please God. Ask Cain, ask Abel, they'll tell you all about it because by faith that story is still being told today.

So the next time you feel the need to work your backside off so that you'll please God, remember this, your work isn't so much the thing that pleases God, it's not about the sacrifice alone, it's about you, it's about me, it's about our faith.

When we do what we do and do it in faith that's what pleases God. That's an awesome message, it's a message that means you don't have to work harder to please God, we just have to trust in Him and somehow, you know when we trust in Him it changes our heart and that's what makes things happen. By faith.

In the busyness of our lives, it’s really easy to lose sight of the big picture. Why am I here, where am I headed, what’s it all about? So often it’s when we’ve been working so hard at life and one day we lift up our head and start asking those questions, that people have what they call their midlife crisis.

Are you familiar with that term, that saying that "someone’s lost the plot"? What it means is that we've lost sight of where we're going, we've lost sight of the objective, we've managed to get things completely out of kilter, out of balance or out of whack as we Australians like to say.

"Oh man ... hasn't he lost the plot?" I don't know about you but there are times in my life where I've lost the plot. Come on, there are times in your life too when you've lost the plot. And often it happens because we've become so focused on just one thing in our lives, maybe it's a single relationship or a single thing that's not quite right.

When we're hurting we focus just on that one thing that's hurting. Sometimes we lose the plot when we're so focused on making ourselves happy that we forget about everyone and everything else and somehow the more we try to make ourselves happy the more empty we feel. It seems to me that the one sure way of feeling depressed is trying really hard to make yourself happy.

Why? Because we don't live in a perfect world that all clicks into place around us to make us happy, we don't live in a world where everyone and everything bows down at our feet and says, 'Hey here I am, I want to make you happy, what can I do for you?' And so we try so hard to make ourselves happy that we simply lose the plot.

A good friend of mine in the UK, Derek Stringer, has a radio program called, "Finding The Plot", it's probably not such a bad name when you think about it. I think the reason we lose the plot is that we lose sight of the big picture.

We're so busy working hard in life, pedalling harder, working faster, especially when the storm strikes, especially when there's a head wind slowing us down, it's the easiest thing in the world to lose sight of the big picture, the context, the sense of meaning and purpose and direction that maybe once seemed so clear. We had it for our lives and now the harder we go at it the murkier it appears to be.

Once it was clear when we were young, now it seems blurry. Sometimes it's like living our lives in a fog, you know what I'm on about here right? And then one day you wake up and you think to yourself, hang on, I've lost the plot and that right there is a scary place to be.

I found myself in that situation when I'm busy, working hard, even when I'm doing things for God. None of us is immune here. I don't get some exemption ticket from this stuff just because I work in a Christian ministry. This is real life, this is real stuff.

What we're talking about this week on the program and in fact over the next few weeks is faith. There's a phrase, two simple words, "By Faith …" that appear over and over again in the Bible especially in the eleventh chapter of the New Testament Book of Hebrews.

Now we need faith for all sorts of things, we need faith in Jesus to be forgiven by God and to be set free to live an eternal life in His presence. We need faith to make it through trials and difficult situations and to get through to the other side and as it turns out we need faith to get a sense of the big picture, to get a balanced sense of perspective over our lives so that we don't lose the plot or so that when we do lose the plot we can pick it up again.

Now have a listen to this, it comes from Hebrews chapter 11 beginning at verse 3:

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

In other words, by faith we know that everything that was created was created by Jesus; He is the Word of God that's being referred to here. The worlds, the cosmos, the universe, the little ant that crawls across the floor, everything, the worlds were created by Jesus, God spoke them into existence.

"Let there be light”, He said and there was light, 'Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear' and it was so. And God called the dry land earth and the waters that were gathered together He called seas and God saw it and it was good ..."

And on and on ...

He spoke the whole world into existence, the entire universe, a universe that with all our brilliant technology we can only see part of and the part that we can see with our radio telescopes is so big, it's so vast that light would take, travelling of course at the speed of light, a hundred and eighty six thousand miles or three hundred thousand kilometres per second, light would take fifteen billion years to travel from one end of the known universe to the other.

Now I don't know if you've had a chance to visit the NASA website lately and look at the magnificent images of galaxies and super nova's and all that stuff captured through the Hubble telescope, I mean they're totally astounding and they are huge. I mean just think about this, even the nearest star to the earth after the sun it's called Proxima Centauri is about four point six light years away. Now that doesn't sound too far does it?

But if you and I were to hop into a car, drive at say a hundred kilometres an hour and travel that distance of four point six light years how long would it take us? Only about seven and a quarter billion years and that's without toilet breaks. That's the nearest star after the sun and the rest of them are all much, much further away.

Why is this so important? Here's why. We live on this earth as though this is all there is, we know that there's a sun up there and we know it's really big and hot and it's about ninety three million miles or a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres away, we know that there's a universe out there and we know that it's huge but come on, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, don't we live our lives as though they don't exist?

We live life as though the only thing that exists is my own "here and now", this instant, what I'm working at, what I'm doing, what I'm trying to achieve, what I'm feeling, what I'm struggling through, what I'm ... do you see my point?

We completely lose sight of the big picture. I see it all around me. Can I tell you? Every time I travel from Australia to India, I came back with a fresh realisation that the narrow privileged lives that we lead here in this affluent blessed country we call Australia is completely atypical, completely abnormal in the big picture of the rest of the world.

And yet, every Australian seems to live their life as though, hey this is normal, this is the centre of the universe when we're really, population wise, just a tiny narrow fraction of the world’s population and when our condition is totally atypical of what most people on this planet are living through.

And it's in this narrowness that we lose our way. It's in this narrowness that we lose the plot. Let's look again at that verse on faith that I just read out before.

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

Faith gives us the context we need, faith is about knowing in our hearts that there's a God out there who made it all. He is so big and so powerful and so intelligent and so loving that He created the whole cosmos, even the bits beyond what human science can see and He placed you and me here on this earth in perhaps the only inhabitable place in the cosmos.

That's the picture and so instead of telling our God how big our problems are we need to start telling our problems how big our God is. Instead of obsessing about this problem or that disappointment, instead of sweating over the little things in our lives we can stand back and we can see the big picture, the God picture, the faith picture, the picture through the eyes of the God who created this awesome universe.

By faith we understand that God made it all, by faith we can rest in this God who loves us so much that He sent Jesus His Son to die for us. By faith.

Faith. Christians talk a lot about it. They talk about their faith walk. Faith this. Faith that. But what exactly is it? Why do we need it, when do we need it and how do we get it?

Hey, it's great to be with you again at the start of yet another week; they do slip by pretty quickly don't they? Because what we're kicking off today on the program is a series that I've called quite simply, “By Faith …” Those two words, by faith, appear over and over again in the Bible and in fact if we go to the New Testament Book of Hebrews chapter 11 we'll see that's pretty much the place where they're most densely packed together, by faith, and can I tell you something?

In the days and weeks leading up to this series of messages on faith, I've been studying and learning and preparing, as I've been doing that I've learned so much about this thing that we call faith and that's after already having written a book on the subject.

Faith, it's something that we Christians talk a lot about, it's something that Jesus talks a lot about but let me ask you this, do we really understand what faith is? Do we really know what the outcome of faith is meant to look like in our lives? They're the questions we're going to be pondering, exploring, journeying through together over these next few weeks on the program starting with today.

Okay then, so what exactly is faith? Well I suppose many of the people listening today, perhaps you're one of them, would point me to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1 to answer that question. It says:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

Well and good, that's the most concise definition of faith in the Bible, that's the stock standard answer, tickety-boo who needs a series on faith? We know what it is, it's:

The assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

But as much as we Christians quote that verse and it is one of the most quoted verses of the Bible, do you really understand the context in which it was written? Look at it again, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

So what's that word now doing at the front of the verse? What's that all about? Well it's called a conjunctive. In other words it ties this verse back to what's just come immediately before. So this verse doesn't stand on its own, there's a context, there's something that comes before this that we need to get in order really to understand this verse.

So what comes before? Well here it is, the previous chapter, Hebrews chapter 10 and we'll start back at verse 26. Listen carefully because we're going to unpack this in a moment. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26:

For if we wilfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin but a fearful prospect of judgement and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has violated the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses, how much worse punishment do you think would be deserved by those who've spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace?

For we know the one who said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay' and again, 'The Lord will judge his people'. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God but recall those earlier days when after you'd been enlightened you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution and sometimes partners with those so treated.

For you had compassion for those who were imprisoned and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions knowing that you yourselves possess something better and more lasting.

Do not therefore abandon that confidence of yours, it brings a great reward. For you need endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while the one who is coming will come and will not delay but my righteous one will live by faith.

My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back but we are not amongst those who shrink back and so are lost but among those who have faith and so are saved.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen."

You see the context? The context is two things, the punishment that will surely come if we reject God's grace and mercy and continue on in sin and the second part is about the extreme trials that we're bound to face in life. In fact the Hebrew believers, the people who were reading this particular letter, were facing incredible trials at the time.

They were being persecuted like you wouldn't believe and so the writer of this letter is saying, guys you know something, you're going to struggle with sin in your life and you're going to face incredible trials and so what you need, both those cases, what you really need is faith.

Can I tell you the truth? If you put it like that frankly I'd rather be in a situation where I don't need any faith because faith is what we need when we're battling sin; faith is what we need when we're in a dangerous uncertain place; faith is what we need to be saved from something that we can't save ourselves from; to persevere through situations and ordeals and trials and persecution; to make it out to the other side of something that we'd rather not be in the middle of.

Hey wouldn't it be so much better from where you and I sit, if we didn't end up in places where we actually needed faith because faith is the assurance of something that we hope for which by definition means that what we hope for we don't have right at this moment and we wish we did.

And faith is the evidence of that thing that we can't see yet because all we can see is the circumstances we're not hoping so much more for and yet as we're going to see in the coming days that's exactly how God set things up.

You have sin in your life, I have sin in my life that in and of ourselves we simply can't get rid of it, not only can we not get rid of the sin we can't get rid of the consequences. We've struggled with it for years, we couldn't do anything about it until we started putting our faith in Jesus.

We couldn't overcome the sin or set things right until we started to trust in Jesus and the same is true of the many obstacles we face in life. Perhaps you're someone who's been listening to this program for a while and you're thinking to yourself, "That Berni guy, man he seems to have it all sorted out, what an easy life he has, he gets to just sit there on the radio and talk with us and tells us how it all works."

But you wouldn't believe the challenges and the trials involved in getting out there and doing what Gods called us to do here at Christianityworks. The attacks that come against the ministry because Satan doesn't want people to hear about Jesus, he doesn't want us doing what we're doing.

The trials when people fail, when finances are tight, when ... well, you name it. It's either happened or it's going to happen and just in the same way you face trials and temptations, you have mountains that get in your road and stop you from doing things God's called you to do. You have sickness and struggles and people come against you and financial issues and my friend that's what faith is for.

Faith is the assurance of the things we hope for and the evidence of things we can't see. You and I, we need faith, that's why we're going to be talking about it over these coming days and weeks. Faith moves mountains; faith gets us through things we'd rather not be in. You and I have some things in our lives that we can't tackle, that's why we need faith.