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Your Lack of Faith Disturbs Me from Refreshing Hope Ministries on Vimeo.

Transcript: 

I want to share a word with you that is on my heart today and it may be too honest for some, but is this thing real to us, or are we just playing “Church.” Jesus taught His disciples for about three years, then He ascended to heaven. There was a beginning, and there was an end, so I hope they paid attention to what He said.

Jesus told His disciples in Luke 6:46:

Luke 6:46–49 (NKJV) — 46 “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say? 47 Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: 48 He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. 49 But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.”

Jesus said he that hears the word and does nothing is like a man that built a house on sand without a foundation, unstable. James told us: James 1:23–24 (NKJV) — 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

If you hear the word but don’t do it, then it does nothing for you. In fact, it can be negative: Jesus told us: Luke 12:47–48 (NKJV) — 47 And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. 48 But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few.

You would be better off to not know, than to know and not do. At Refreshing Hope, we want to teach you to go to God for yourself, to have no middle man between you and Jesus. I want to teach you to pray and hear God for yourself, to build that personal relationship with Him. For the last several several months, I have been teaching this group weekly and have covered much of the foundations of Christian doctrine. I am trying to be your coach, to encourage you to try harder, to press in, to know God personally, and I only ask you to do things that I actually practice myself. I preach from my own life.

Now it is hard to measure spiritual things and to know if someone prays, or to measure their relationship with God, but one tangible way to test their sincerity is that He told us to be givers, and that can be measured. Jesus said “Give and it will be given to you.” Now in the past I have brought a detailed hour long message on giving, and explained how that it would release you from financial curses, and yet 40 out of the 50 people that attend the online services here have never given a single penny to support Refreshing Hope, so for your sake, I can only hope that you are tithing somewhere else. There are only 2 people in this group that actually tithe to RHM. But in Malachi 3, God said to test Him in this:

Malachi 3:8–11 (NKJV) — 8 “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, For you have robbed Me, Even this whole nation. 10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,” Says the LORD of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it. 11 “And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,” Says the LORD of hosts;

You will find the “Do this and I will do that” type of promises all through the Bible, but this is the only place where God challenges us to test Him. We pray every week for people with the devourer eating up their life and finances when no amount of words spoken by us will change it. See when you tithe, God Himself promises to rebuke the devourer off your life. We do not have the power to rebuke the devourer when God is the One that allowed him to come visit you.

Then Jesus told us this: Luke 16:10–11 (NKJV) — 10 He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. 11 Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon (Money), who will commit to your trust the true riches?

If you will not trust God with your money, then He will not trust you with the true riches of His kingdom. Giving is a simple test of your faith, but you will not get great things from God until you learn to trust Him with your finances, which brings me to the core of this message. The tithe is intended to be the first 10% of your increase, Jericho was the first city they came to in the promised land and they had to put all of the loot into the treasury of the Lord. It was the first city, the first fruits, 1/10nth. When Achan stole some it, then Israel lost the next battle at Ai. They could not move on until they dealt with the stealing. Many believe they cannot afford to tithe but it is because they put God last in their priorities, instead of first. Don't give God your leftovers. If you paid your tithes first, then you would always be able to afford it.

In Numbers chapter 14, God had brought the Israelites up out of Egypt. He had performed miracle after miracle for them. They had watched Him turn the Nile River to blood and rain hail stones down on Egypt. They had walked through the red sea on dry ground after God parted the waters for them. They had seen God rain mana from heaven, bring them water from rocks, and cover the land around them knee deep in quail.

Then they came to the Jordan river and sent spies into the promised land to scout it out. Ten of the spies came back saying that it was a land of giants and that they felt like grasshoppers among them. The people became terrified and decided to stone Moses, appoint a new leader, and then return to Egypt, to the land of slavery that God was working to bring them out of.

One thing that I want you to understand is this: the people followed God until they had to do something themselves, and then they turned their back on Him and preferred to return to slavery instead. Though God had done miracle after miracle for them, when they had to go take the land, they gave up instantly with: “Oh He is trying to kill us!” They let their fear control them instead of their faith. So how did God respond to them?

Numbers 14:26–29 (NKJV) — 26 And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 27 “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who complain against Me? I have heard the complaints which the children of Israel make against Me. 28 Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the LORD, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you.

You could say that God was disturbed by their lack of Faith. When it came down to them actually doing something, they did not really trust Him. When Jesus visited His own hometown, He marveled at their lack of faith: Mark 6:4–6 (NKJV) — 4 But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” 5 Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He marveled because of their unbelief.

They amazed Jesus with their unbelief. Isn’t that amazing? Let’s not be like them. Let’s not just play church. Let’s get serious about our faith.