Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us here today on Power Walk. "The Impossible" is the name of our current series brought to you by Pastor Paul Cannings, founder and president of Power Walk Ministries. Throughout Scripture, we find people, even God's own, crying out to him when things get tough, and yet moving away from him when problems subsided. Can you relate to that?

But how can we stay committed to and love God through the good times and the hard times? Pastor Cannings takes us to Luke chapter 17 today where Christ is teaching his disciples about living by faith. Let's listen to today's message: "It Must Be Faith."

Dr. Paul Cannings: Years ago, I was in a playoff game in college. I remember soccer—football for those other people around the world. I played that in college and really was excited to be a part of the team. I remember playing this game and it was intense. We had to travel to play, and we intended to win. We knew that we were the underdogs.

I remember getting up to head this ball and I busted my eye open. It required 14 stitches. I had to be taken off the field and rushed to the hospital. I could not finish the game. We lost the game, and that made it worse. Driving home, I got home and I realized that my right hand that I write with is sprained, I have bruised ribs, and I have these 14 stitches across my eye. I have class at the end of the day.

My glasses are broken and I don't know how I'm going to do this. I'll never forget deciding that I have to see. So I went to this place called TSO here in Texas. I went there and I said to the man, "Listen, I'm a college student here at Austin College. I played soccer and I busted my glasses. I'm going to have a headache at the end of the day."

I was praying and saying, "God, I don't know what to do. I don't have the money to get the glasses fixed. The coaches are not going to pay for it, and I've got to get it fixed. The only thing I can do, God, is to go ask this person to let me take whatever little I've got and see if they will let me pay them per month or something like that." That's all I had.

I went to this place and I asked the guy, "Listen, sir, I don't have any money. I'll leave you whatever you want me to leave you—my license, everything—because I intend to pay you, but I've got to see. I'm a college student and I've got to work." I'll never forget the guy staring at me. Back then, I was 19 or 20. The guy had never met me and didn't know me.

He looks at me and he goes, "Are you serious? Are you saying that I just fit you up, get you these fresh glasses, and you owe me, and you walk out of here today?" I said, "Sir, listen, I'm a broke college student. I'm going to have a headache. I've still got to do my work. That's the only thing I could do is to promise you that and give you my driver's license."

He looked at me and he started laughing. Then he said, "Okay, listen. You promise to pay me?" I said, "Yes, sir. I'll pay you your money. I've got a job and when I get paid, I'll pay you everything I've got so we get this done as quickly as possible." The man laughs for a minute and he says, "Sit down."

I'll never forget what that taught me as a young student. It taught me that many times situations may seem impossible. But what are we going to believe God for depends on how we end up being blessed or how we end up being successful or productive. The person could have said no, and I still would have believed in God. That wouldn't have changed anything.

But the fact that that happened, I remember going back to campus thinking, "He said yes. I have a chance to be able to be productive and get my work done." I'll never forget what that taught me: that situations can seem impossible, but it's not that it's impossible when we're doing things that God expects of us. It's whether or not we are committed to get up, pray, put into action what we believe God will answer the prayer for, and stay pressing until He follows through.

Whatever timetable that may be, that's what we're dealing with in the book of Luke chapter 17 today. We continue this week on: do we believe God for the impossible? Do we really believe him for it? When you have all these things against you and people tearing at Christ, and He's saying, "What? Seventy times seven? You're going to go into this temple and keep working with these Pharisees who keep offending you and calling you Beelzebub?"

Yeah, I'll keep going back because He told me to go to church and I have a zeal for God to worship God. So I've got to go because He said go to the temple. I'm going to go no matter how offensive it is. I'm going to go because He told me to go. They think this is crazy. Could you imagine the disciples sitting there listening to Christ? It sounds crazy to them. There's no vengeance you can take. What are you talking about? Christ says the disciples responded with a classic request: "Increase our faith."

We know we're close to this, so increase our faith. Look at what He says here in verse six. He says, "And the Lord said, 'If ye had faith as a grain of a mustard seed, ye might say to the sycamine tree, be thou plucked up by the root and be thou planted in the sea, and it would obey you.'" This is totally impossible. A sycamine tree is a tree that has roots that are spread out so far and so deep you can't pluck it up. They know what He's saying is impossible.

What is He talking about? Because a mustard seed is a very small seed. So He's not talking about a whole lot of faith here. The first thing we have to do is define faith because we tend to claim faith rather than define faith and stay within the parameters of what faith is saying faith is. Let's define faith first before we say what kind of seed it needs to be.

What is faith? The Bible clearly defines faith as: faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. He's making sure it doesn't come by hearing from a preacher or from somebody who convinces us—a mother, a grandmother, or the best friend. Not that kind of thing. It's defined by the word of God. It is concrete. It is truth.

The Holy Spirit came to guide us into truth. Truth is not something where you go create truth. Truth is not something that you choose to make because you believe something. Truth in the Bible is factual. It's the reality of what something means. When Jesus Christ is the truth, it means that in the Old Testament you have all this stuff said about Christ. You have these factual situations that took place in time and space.

When Christ came, what did He do? He sat on the mount and explained the law. He is working with what has already existed and explaining to us what it means in reality as they seek to live it out when they forgot about God. This is what it means. You can now fact-check it by going back to the Old Testament to see if what He's saying lines up and doesn't violate anything as He moves forward in explaining what it truly means.

Jesus Christ became flesh in the sense that Jesus Christ is saying, "I am the bread." They literally see Him pick up five loaves and two fish and make a big sandwich. You saw Him do this over and over again. He would say, "Go and get the tax from the fish's mouth." You see Peter cast a net on the wrong side of the lake at the wrong time of the day.

That means all night Peter's out on that boat trying to catch fish. Christ had already moved the fish where He's going to have Peter cast the net later on in the day at the wrong time of the day. He's showing them, "I provide the bread, you don't," because man does not live by bread alone. He's back in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter eight.

When we're looking at truth, they're reporting for us how Christ lived out the Old Testament. He fulfilled it and how that worked out in time and space factually. You could go down to Peter's house and find Christ. You go to Mary and Martha's house and He's right there. So Jesus Christ walking around on Earth was factual. You could go on the cross; it was factual.

When we're talking about faith, it's defined by the word of God. The word of God that defines it came to us and lived itself out from the Old Testament to the New Testament. That's why He says, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word is God." He is literally telling us that's what's happening. It's the same thing you would see in Hebrews chapter one, verses one through three.

When we are holding to the word of God, we are believing in something that already proved itself to be true. That's why He would go to when He's defining faith, the acts of faith. When you look at this hall of hope and you see it in Hebrews chapter 11, these things did happen. There were two million people seeing the Red Sea open up. It's no guesswork.

Even when Christ got up from the grave, He had 500 people see Him and His brother, who did not believe in Him, accepted Him and became the pastor of the New Testament church in Jerusalem. These things took place in time and space. So He's saying faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We're believing in situations that proved themselves to already be true based on how they worked out in time and space.

Therefore, faith, you should expect it. It's what you hope for. It's what you expect God to do because it's been happening. You go to work, you get a paycheck, you expect it to be there because it happened before. You expect to sit in the seat and it works because it happened before. So you expect it to bear you up, so you just rest your weight on it.

The Bible is saying I expect God to do what He says because it happened before. Even though I don't see how it will work in my circumstance and in my situation, I still am going to expect it to happen simply because it happened before. It is the evidence of things not seen because I haven't seen it work out in my life yet, but I've known it worked out in somebody else's life and it is a fact in time and space. So it could happen for me.

When we define faith today to deal with impossible situations, He's teaching them how, because all of them are going to have impossible situations. All of them are going to die brutal deaths. John is on the Isle of Patmos alone writing Revelation, eating whatever. This is not a pretty life they're going to have trying to get this information to us today that sometimes has become apathetic and complacent about this gospel message and about how we serve it, how we walk it, how we trust God in it, and how we believe God for it.

How do you get stoned to death and go back to the same city? You go back to the same city, then you leave, and you come back to the same city to make sure the folks you ministered to are going forward productively. The place that stoned you, where you laid there looking limp like you're dead. How do you do that? Impossible. We hold grudges on that. We wouldn't be able to forgive them 70 times seven. Those are the types of things.

John Mark goes off the deep end. How do you then write positive things about John Mark later on? Because John Mark did better, 70 times seven. Jesus Christ is on the cross: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." They just beat the socks off of you. What are you talking about? Oh yes, I just shed blood because for God so loved the world.

The world means a rebellious group of people that don't want to hear nothing I've got to say. I know that they hate my guts. So what they're doing right now, they really want to do it. This is why I'm dying here is to forgive them. So forgive them now, God. I paid the price. The guy mocked him on the cross, but you turned around and based on how you're defining me, you believe that I'm the Christ, the Son of the living God. You're forgiven. I'll see you in Paradise. He modeled this. So we have the facts that it works because He got up from the grave believing God to do the impossible.

It's not what we face, it's how we go about getting a mindset so that we are productive. I pray in the name of Jesus the Christ we'll develop this mindset, especially in the times we're living. Stay focused.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. Wow, what a difference forgiveness makes—not only to free us up, but also to increase our faith. Now to find our ministry resources, including this series titled "The Impossible", go to powerwalkministries.org. That's powerwalkministries.org. You're also welcome to call us at 281-260-7402. That's 281-260-7402.

And if you live in the Houston area or you're planning a visit, please join Pastor Cannings at Living Word Fellowship Church this Sunday morning. For location and service times, visit us at lwfellowshipchurch.org. And now remember to take time to think about those whom you're finding it hard to forgive. You too can ask God to increase your faith and enable you to forgive them for your good and for God's glory.