Functional Faith
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Let's work together today on this. Mark chapter 3 verse 1. And the scripture I want to read kind of sets up a theme that I want to talk to you about for the next few weeks. So the Bible says, Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. And Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand,

So he looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out and his hand was completely broken.

I want to speak to you today and possibly over the next few weeks on the subject of functional faith. Functional faith. And so, Lord, I pray that your word would do its work in our hearts and that we would respond in order. In Jesus' name, amen. Now you may be seated. On your way to your seat, tell somebody we've got some work to do.

Mark's gospel gives us five different accounts within two chapters of Jesus in confrontational situations. Typically we think of Jesus' ministry as being a ministry of comfort, but it was also a ministry of confrontation. Comfort and confrontation are both functions of the Spirit of God. The same Spirit of God that will comfort you in your trials will also confront you in your dysfunction in order to change you and conform you to the image of Christ.

And so the earthly ministry of Jesus was no different in that he was a reliable source of comfort for those who mourn and a source of confrontation for those who had become complacent. We see Jesus here in one of five situations with the religious ruling group of his day, and the central issue around these confrontations is Jesus' relationship with and approach to the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a gift that was given by God to people

But as people so often do, we pervert a good gift and use it for the wrong purpose. And the very thing that was meant to be creative and restorative in nature becomes destructive when it's abused. That is, to be used for a purpose different than what it was designed to accomplish. So as we teach a little bit today on the subject of functional faith, and we look at this one particular story, we see here an image and an illustration of a system that is not working.

A system that has become dysfunctional. A system that is no longer fulfilling its intended purpose. Jesus arrives and the temple system by which the people were approaching God has become dysfunctional or if you want to say unfit. It was unfit for the purpose that it was designed to serve.

How many of you as summer approaches are setting some goals to maybe get in shape for the summer? Maybe you're gonna get a little bit fit for the summer. Gonna...some crunches. No? Some Nestle crunches. How many of you bought a Fitbit? Some Lululemon? You're gonna do it this summer.

Well, go for it. I wish you all the best. I think fitness is something that is unique to each individual because fitness is relative.

You can go to certain places and feel very fit in comparison to other people then go other places and and feel like you've never exercised a day in your life and Me and Holly were on a cruise ship recently and I told her I said this this place makes me feel better about my body image you know just like all the buffets this is helpful and Me at me and chunks come up here chunks We went to Planet Fitness a while back to we were on vacation and we joined this gym in

to get a workout for a week and Chunks is a fitness snob. He likes to make fun of people who don't know how to work out. He's very judgmental. He's a Pharisee of sorts. A fitness Pharisee he is. And he likes to walk around the gym and tell me how other people aren't doing the exercises right.

So if you ever see him looking at you in a gym, he is not admiring your form, okay? He's making fun of you. At Planet Fitness, that's a funny gym. I like that place. Have you ever been to this place? They have the lunk alarm on the wall because they call it a judgment-free zone. They say, we want you to be able to come work out here without guys like this investigating your movements and

And so they have, it's kind of funny, they have a lunk alarm on the wall. They call it a lunk. Somebody who walks in, you know, the guys that walk in with a gallon jug of water and a belt and the gloves. You know, guys like chunks. They don't want those kind of guys in Planet Fitness. Also, by the way, they offer, when we were joining, the girl told us, she said, come back Monday. They have, on Monday, we serve pizza.

Monday at the fitness club Which is remarkable. I told chunks we got to start giving out cocaine at the Sunday night service at church But chunks is great. He's really helped me understand fitness he used to be a physical therapist and that's part of why so arrogant about the human body and Him and buck you should come to buck. How many want chunks and buck on stage at the same time? I

These guys are both strong men, and they're both very stubborn, so sometimes I like to watch them argue. I'll often start an argument. I'll just throw the two of them together in the cage and watch them go. I'll sometimes instigate arguments between them. They're both very fit, but there are different philosophies to fitness. Sometimes I'll be doing a workout with Chunks, and they'll say, "What did Buck have you do yesterday?" I'll tell him, and he'll kind of roll his eyes. "Oh, that sounds like Buck."

Buck's fitness routine, he's more of a punisher. He has more punishment, a binge and punish mentality toward fitness. Chunk's more beach muscles guy. Do you know what I mean by beach muscles? He's going to bench press, and he's going to do his triceps and all that, all the stuff that you can see. Like a lot of Christians, we want to have knowledge to show off when we pose. He's a great guy.

But bring out those kettlebells. Have you guys seen some these kettlebells do any of you this kettlebell? There's a trend in fitness. The term is trendy right now called functional fitness notice how he gave chunks the smaller one just by by instinct guy was judging you they said that one's 53 pounds GTA 24 kilograms and that one's 35 pounds or 16 for the rest of the world that uses the metric system and

Buck says that functional fitness… When you say you subscribe mostly to functional fitness… Functional fitness is two things: adaptability and application. It's like, "Is this something that would help you in real life?"

You know, like, is this movement that you're doing in exercising something that's going to translate into real life? Because a lot of stuff you do exercising doesn't really resemble real life. And functional fitness, it's a trendy term, but the essential definition of it in the spirit that it's intended is like, show them a kettlebell swing, Buck. Just a simple kettlebell swing. You can do a lot of different moves with this one piece of equipment. You can do a kettlebell swing. What else can you do with the kettlebell swing?

Show them that. Show them the Turkish get-up. Now, by the way, any exercise that starts with the name of an Eastern European country you should rebel against. This is a Turkish get-up. A Turkish get-up. He's going to show you. You know how many different things you can do with this one piece of equipment? It's amazing. Well, come on, folks. That's 53 pounds. That man just lifted a weight joy over his head and stood up with one arm.

Can you do that? The same thing? Give it a shot, just one time. Turkish get up. Oh, no. No Turkish get up. How many believe in chunks? The lump. Come on. Give him some love.

Well done. Come on, let's give it up for both of them. Thank you, guys. I remember when Buck first told me, just leave those right there. I remember when Buck first told me, he said, I can give you a whole workout. He said, people think you need a whole gym, all this fancy equipment. He said, I can make you hate your life with this one piece of equipment. You just got to know what to do.

Do with it. And see, sometimes we think we need all this fancy special knowledge to grow in our faith, and we think we need all of this equipment and all of this training and all of this background, but I've got good news for you. One Bible verse, if you apply it to your life,

I said if you put it to work, touch your neighbor and say, "It's time to work." It's time to work the Word. So we want to talk over the next few weeks, and this is just an introductory seminar, on functional faith. Functional faith. The kind of faith that doesn't just give you knowledge in your head but gives you strength in your heart.

The kind of faith that resembles real life. That is the greatest compliment you can ever pay me as a preacher, by the way, if you ever want to make me feel good and we run into each other. Tell me that something I said helped you in your life, that it made a difference in your home. Business owners occasionally tell me in an apologetic way, "I rip your stuff off. I take what you preach and I preach it to my employees." You don't ever have to apologize.

to me for that. That's what I preach it for, so you can use it. You don't even have to cite me. Well, the first time you rip me off, quote me. Say, "My pastor says…" Then the second time you do it, just say, "It's been said." Then the third time you do it, say, "I've always said…" That's how you do it. Touch somebody and say, "Plagiarized." I love it if I can find out that the sermon I preached on Sunday made it into your Monday. I love that.

or that it visited you on Tuesday, that it came back to you when you needed it on Wednesday. That's what I preach for. I was thinking if we had a new mission statement for our church, I'd probably make it "Bringing Faith to Life" because I hear people tell me so often that faith was always a part of my life, but it wasn't central to my life. Now I'm learning how God's Word actually applies to me

adaptability and application, functional faith. Jesus is instigating a functional faith in a dysfunctional religious system. Mark chapter 3 is about much more than a man's hand being healed. It is about the heart of a system that has become dysfunctional. It's about a people who have misappropriated faith.

I've heard so many different definitions of faith. It's come to mean so much that maybe it's now almost meaningless. Because when we say faith, we use it to mean everything. You know, blind faith. That's almost a way of saying you're an idiot. I just did it with blind faith. We say that an organization is a faith-based organization. We might say that someone came to faith. We might say someone lost their faith. Or we encourage somebody, keep the faith.

We might tell somebody to have faith or we say that somebody had great faith or or little faith We we even call someone a person of faith as if it's an ethnicity You know, are you are you black white faith? Like what are you Republican Democrat faith? But faith is meant to be more than a formality. Can I preach this? Faith is meant to be more than a feeling a

Faith is meant to be more than a formula. In fact, if you can reduce it to a formula and make sense out of it, it ain't faith. If you can explain it, it ain't faith. You don't need faith for what you can explain. You need faith for what your eyes can't perceive. You need faith for what you don't understand. Richard Rohr has a definition of faith. He says that faith is patience with mystery.

Faith is the willingness to abide in a place that you don't fully understand the ramifications of. Faith is patience with mystery. What is faith? Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Let's play a game. What's the opposite of good?

What's the opposite of light? What's the opposite of faith? I heard doubt. I heard fear. I want to suggest a third option. What if faith is not… You tend to think sometimes that if you have doubts, you don't have faith, that the presence of doubt indicates the absence of faith.

But one priest said, "The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty." Let that sink in. That the opposite of faith is when you've figured everything out, when you've put your life in such a position that you don't attempt anything that requires God.

You don't stretch yourself into a territory that enables the faith that you need for the challenges that you face. So that means you can have a lot of doubts but still operate in faith, because faith is not certainty and faith is not a feeling. I don't have to feel faith to have faith. I don't have to feel a goose bump to believe God. I don't even have to feel happy to be grateful for what God is doing in my life. Somebody shout, "I got faith."

I got faith in the middle of a storm. My faith doesn't mean it's not going to rain. My faith means I'm going to make it to the other side through whatever waves I have to cross over. I got a faith that works. It works in the face of the wind and the waves. It works in the face of doubt and disappointment. My faith is a faith that works. So what is faith? And maybe a better question is, what is faith for?

If faith is the substance of things hoped for, what is faith for? In other words, what is the objective of faith? I'll put these in four subheadings so that you can take notes and remember this and review this. Faith has an objective. Faith always has an objective. If you're going to get fit, the first thing a good trainer will ask you is, "What are your goals?" or "What do you want to get fit for?" Are you just getting fit for your honeymoon so you can look good for a week?

Or are you getting fit so that you can… Is this a lifestyle thing? Faith is a lifestyle thing. The objective of faith. Now, in the passage we read, there are three different groups or characters represented. You have the Pharisees, the "Lunks." The Bible says they came to Planet Fitness that day.

To look at everybody else's form and to see what Jesus would do. I can't understand people who come to church just to find fault with the place that they invested their time and go into. Stay home, for God's sake, wash your car, run a mile. I'm serious. The Pharisees, it says that Jesus went into the synagogue, he went to heal. The man went with a withered hand, possibly to be healed, and the Pharisees went to watch.

It says that some of them, like how Mark doesn't actually call them out, he says, "Some of y'all, some of y'all were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus. Jesus was looking for an opportunity to heal. They were looking for an offense." What are you looking for when you come to church? I will never understand people who come on my Instagram feed just to tell me how much they hate me. Why are you on my feed?

I'm serious. You're a false teacher. They'll come on there and say, "I don't understand anything you say. It's all gibberish." I have a simple solution that's going to make all of our lives a little better from here on out. Get off my feed, and you won't have to deal with my teaching. Nobody made you come on my Facebook.

Pharisees are all up in Jesus' feet. I don't understand it. Why would you come if the only thing you wanted to find was fault? But see, some people have a false objective for their faith. It is the objective of faith that is exclusive rather than inclusional. It is when the church becomes more about judging how God should do it than being a part of what he's doing.

It is a misappropriation of faith in the highest form. When a church isn't working… You can tell when a church isn't working, because instead of reaching out… There's a man with a shriveled hand. He can't reach out, but he's in a synagogue full of people who won't reach out. I don't know which one is worse, the ones who won't reach out or the ones…

the one who can't." Jesus walks in and says, "This isn't working." He confronts the system by identifying the objective. What's your objective? What is your reason for wanting to have faith? Some of us only have faith for the things that directly benefit us. We only pray for our job. We only pray for our healing. We only pray for our kids.

We only pray for our promotion. When's the last time that you came before God and asked him for something that would actually make your life less convenient if he did it? I'll never forget at Cheesecake Factory one night.

when God struck me with conviction. God will confront your dysfunction. I was complaining to Holly that we were on a date and people kept coming up to the table. And this was years ago because I have really improved my attitude since then. But at the time I was immature in my faith. And the Lord spoke to my heart. If you've ever had God speak to you, it's not a voice out loud. It's louder than that. It's louder than that. And it was as if the Lord said to me, I can fix this.

You don't like people coming up to you and telling you that they enjoy your church? I can empty your church so fast you can eat a Cheesecake Factory naked if you want to and nobody will come up to you. I'll make you so unknown and so irrelevant so fast you can go anywhere you want and nobody will bother you. I said, no thank you, Lord. I think I'll...

eat my cheesecake and shake some hands and you know really change my perspective and now I enjoy meeting people unless they're crazy I mean good god how long you gonna stand there but it's you know you know you know what I'm saying it just let me see are you praying that your church would grow for your ego or do you really want to help people for it what is your objective what is your faith for what'd you come to church for where are you at the synagogue so you can judge the way that Jesus healed the hand on wasn't his best sermon I don't know I don't know

I was hoping the other guy would be leading worship, the tall guy. "What do you come for? What is your objective of faith?"

Your objective matters a lot. Your objective. All of this controversy was around the occasion, if you write that down, occasion of the Sabbath, which was Saturday for the Jewish people, which was to be set aside as a day of rest, a day where you were to do no work. The intention of the Sabbath was to be a blessing, but since they had objectified the Sabbath...

and depersonalize the nature of God, Jesus had to remind them that any occasion is a fitting occasion to be a blessing and to bring healing. Jesus asked them, verse 4, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent. You know that Jesus is picking a fight because he could have waited until the next day to perform this miracle. This was not a critical situation.

A missing hand isn't a life-threatening event, and the man had been in this condition for a long time. Jesus did it on this day, the day where they were supposed to do no work, because he wanted to show them that what they were doing wasn't working. Jesus is using this situation to confront a system. Jesus is using the isolated incident to show them a deeper issue of the heart.

Since we have such a situational view of God, most of our life is spent trying to fix situations. And that's how I used to lead our church. When something would go wrong, I would address the situation because you can do that when the church is small.

If the sound guy makes an error and forgets to turn a microphone on at one location and you only have one location, you can walk up to the sound guy and say, "Hey, why didn't you change the battery? From now on, you need to change the batteries." So you could just fix it at the level of the situation when it was one location. But then when it became two and three and four, I had to stop addressing situations and start addressing systems.

God is bringing you into the place in your life right now where he doesn't want you to just play whack-a-mole with situations anymore, where by the time you can get this situation under control, here comes another one, and here comes another one. No. He wants to fix the dysfunction that is breaking the system that is creating the situation.

Jesus shows up on the Sabbath and he said I'm gonna work on the day where you're not supposed to work so the people can see that what they're doing isn't working and I'm gonna fix this man's hand that isn't working on the day that you're not supposed to do any work so we can fix the system special occasion This is this is not the day for healing. This is not that they had it figured out They had their faith compartmentalized. Do you know what I mean a compartmentalized faith? Well, my faith is a private matter

My faith is private. I'm not so sure it is. I think your faith affects everything about how you treat people. Even if you don't speak of it, your life is a reflection of it. My faith. I have faith. I have faith. I have faith. I grew up in church. Not so sure that faith is supposed to be an heirloom. Function. Functional faith. What has your faith done for you lately?

In our house, we have all kinds of silverware and all kinds of plates. We have these special plates that go up in the cabinet. They're expensive, the china that we got when we got married. We've been married almost 14 years. I think I've seen those china plates four times in 14 years. They're pretty. They're in storage, and we break them out for special occasions. Is your faith like that?

Faith is not meant to function like fine china where you break it out on Easter and Christmas. Faith is not meant only to be accessed in a crisis. Faith is sent only for the time when you get a report from the doctor that we need to do more tests. I don't want that kind of faith. You know what kind of faith I want? I want a paper plate faith. Do you know what I'm saying? I want a faith that has everyday use.

I want a faith that makes it to Monday. I want a faith that can stand the test of Tuesday. I want a faith that goes to work with me on Wednesday. I want a faith that can get me through Thursday. I want a faith that can fight on Friday. I want a faith that can stand on Saturday. I want a durable faith.

I want a faith I can eat off of when nothing's going right, a faith I can use in traffic, a faith I can use in the everyday ups and downs of life. I want a faith that functions. I don't want faith to be my special occasion. I want faith to be my full-time job. It's my job to believe God. It's my job to trust him. Faith that functions. A functional faith.

A faith that you can access in the small things of life. And a faith that is not held hostage to the outcome. Can we talk about the outcome? Because in this story there are two outcomes. One outcome is that the man's hand got healed. The other outcome is in

verse 6 of the passage, it says that after Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath, the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. Now, there was one event, a healing, and there were two outcomes. One for the man, one for the Pharisees. And you know, if your faith is dependent upon an outcome, it's just a matter of time before you lose it. Right, Lance? If you need a certain outcome to validate your faith...

It's just a matter of time when you have to go back to the hospital after you've only been home for a week. It's only a matter of time before you give up on your faith. Let me ask you a question, Lance. As much as you've been hurting and as much uncertainty as you've got in your life right now, and as much as you don't know whether you're going to get on the liver transplant list or not and you're waiting to find out what's next for your life, I want to ask you a question. Why are you in church?

Why would you come here when the outcome is still uncertain? Why would you have the audacity to praise God in a wheelchair and your faith hasn't given you the ability to walk? You must have a different kind of faith. You must have a functional faith, a faith that works even when your body doesn't work, a faith that works even when your situation…

isn't cooperating, a faith that works even when you don't know what's next. That's the kind of faith Jesus is looking for. That's the kind of faith that stretched his arms on the cross. That's the kind of faith that turns the darkness of Friday into the resurrection of Sunday.

That kind of faith. That kind of faith. A faith that works. A faith that wages war. A faith that won't give up. A faith that just won't quit. A faith that presses on. A faith in prison that will not be confined. Does anybody have faith? Real faith. Solid faith. Stable faith. Unshakable faith. The outcome isn't faith. My faith doesn't wait on an outcome.

My faith is not based in outcome. My faith is in outlook. Watch me preach. My faith can look at a situation a different way than I would look at it without my faith. Now, my faith doesn't guarantee the outcome. Sometimes I have faith, and I still stay sick. Sometimes I have faith, and the job still doesn't go my way, doesn't come to me. Sometimes I have faith, and my…

My daughter still doesn't act more respectful. Sometimes I have faith, and my marriage still looks the same as it did before I exercised my faith. But my faith is not hostage to the outcome. My faith enables me to see any outcome, whatever it is. Come hell or high water, I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor demons nor principalities nor any other thing…

Because I have faith. My faith is an outlook. My faith enables me to see an opportunity for forgiveness where others only see a fence, because my faith is a way of seeing the world so I can look at what I was looking at but look at it differently, because I don't walk by sight; I walk by faith.

No matter how this turns out, I just want to make an announcement in advance. God, I praise you no matter what the outcome is. God, I give you glory no matter how it turns out. I lift my eyes to the hills. My help comes from the Lord.

Would you touch seven people and tell them, "Look out. Look out. Look out. Get out your tent, Abraham, and count the stars if indeed you're able to number them. You've been so busy looking at this tent. You've missed the stars. You've missed the potential. You've been so busy looking at your pain. You've been so busy looking at your problem, but faith is going to enable you to see there's

I got faith. Show your neighbors. Say, where's your faith? Where's your faith? Because faith is the substance. Faith isn't a frame of mind.

Faith is a course of action that changes your frame of mind. Let me finish preaching. I want to talk about the order, because Jesus gives the man a command. It seems strange. It seems bizarre. In some senses, it even sounds cruel. Touch somebody and say,

Faith. Faith. Functional faith. Faith that works. Faith that affects my life. Not just faith that I think about and gives me a cozy feeling. Not faith that's like a warm glass of milk. Not faith that's like a chocolate chip cookie. Not faith that's like two Tylenol I can take to make the pain go away. No, the kind of faith that will enable me to do the impossible and to believe God is

in ways that are irrational. The Bible says the man got up in front of the people. That was his first step. His first step was to take a stand in front of the people who were judging him. He had to be willing to stand out in the midst of a synagogue of people who didn't get it. He had to be willing to stand up in front of people who misunderstood him. Do you have enough faith to take a stand? Do you have enough faith to

come out in the open and say, "I'm a person of faith. I'm not ashamed to be identified with God. I'm not ashamed to be optimistic. I'm not ashamed to have an outlook that's not ruled and regulated by the affairs of this life or the systems of this world. I have the faith to stand up. I think it's time for the people of God in America to take a stand and say, 'Our faith is real. Don't relegate us to a voting block. We are the people of faith.'"

So he stood up in front of them, and then watch Jesus. Jesus was looking around. Somebody say, "Look around." Look around. Jesus found this one man, and he stood this one man up. The Bible says there were two conditions in the synagogue. There was one condition. It said the man had a shriveled hand. But watch this. It says when he stood up, the man was deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts. Which one is worse? A shriveled hand or a stubborn heart?

The condition of the man's hand was an image of the people's heart. The symptom was reflective of the system, and Jesus came to confront both. So he tells the man, he tells the man, "Stand up," and then he tells him to stretch out his hand. Imaginatively speaking, perhaps the man kept his bad hand in his pocket. See, because the Bible says he had a shriveled hand, that means the other one was working just fine.

Jesus didn't specify which hand so you know how we like to do we always like to stick out our good hand first Hi, nice to meet you. I made cookies the good hand Jesus said no not that one not the one that's working the one that wasn't working God didn't bring you here today, so you could show off the parts of your life that are working He brought you here today to heal the parts of your life that aren't

So look at 5. He says, "He was deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts," their shriveled hearts that had lost the ability to feel compassion, "so that their only thought was not of this man. Their only thought was of their man-made laws. Their only thought was of the religious requirements. Their only thought was of what was wrong. Their only thought was what they could correct." He looked around at all of that, and the Bible says he was deeply distressed.

And so he restored the man's hand, and then the man stretched it out. Would be the logical reading of the text. That's not how faith works. Faith has a different order. Notice how Jesus, first of all, commands him to do what he cannot do. Faith will command you to do what you've never been able to do.

Faith will command you to do what you've convinced yourself that you're unable to do. Faith will fly counter to the narrative that has guided your entire life up to this point. Faith will call you a conqueror when all you've ever known is defeat and then see what you're going to do about it. Faith will tell you to stretch out a hand that you had hidden in your pocket, hoping nobody would notice.

See, it's significant that he healed a man with a shriveled hand because if the man's feet had been lame, everybody would have been able to see that from the moment that they carried him in the door on a mat. If the man had been blind, he would have had to feel his way into the room. But the thing about some dysfunctions is that they're easy to hide. And you can get by with one hand, and nobody even knows about your temper except your wife.

Nobody even knows about your spending habits except your husband and his tearing your marriage apart Nobody even knows about your eating disorder. Nobody even knows it's fine. It's fine And Jesus says that hand that hand no, no, not your good hand. Not your good hand I saw you good hand your other hand. I want to heal you on the other hand so he he had his hand hidden and then he took a stand before the people and when he

See, I always want God to restore before I respond, but the order of faith says it's only when you respond that you can be restored. It said, "When the man stretched his hand, his hand got stronger as he stretched." God is stretching somebody today.

He's stretching your faith. He's trying to get you to see that it's only when you reach out, it's only when you make the effort, it's only when you'll do what you thought you couldn't do, it's only when you're willing to stand and even look like a fool. Come on, is there anybody who wants God in your life bad enough to stretch for it today? If that's you, do what the man did. Stand on your feet and stretch your hand. Come on, stretch your hand.

Stretch that hand that you weren't able to stretch before. Stretch that part of you that wasn't able to believe before. As he responded, he was saved.

God wants to restore some things in your life. One gospel writer said, "When he stretched his hand, it was just as good as the other one." In other words, God took the part of his life that was dysfunctional, that was affecting all the other parts of his life that were functional, and there are certain ways in which you can have one part of your life…

A hand can affect everything: your ability to produce, your ability to get a good job, your ability to get along with people. But God said, "I didn't bring you here to partially heal you. I want you to stretch out to me today by faith." The presence of the Lord is in this place. The restorative presence of the Lord is in this place. This is a restorative atmosphere. This is a restorative environment.

There are no Pharisees around here looking to see what you came in with. We're not that kind of church. We have a lunk alarm in this church. Those people don't make it very long. This is a place where you can stretch it out. Come on. You can stretch it out here. You can stretch it out. Listen. I preach this word with all of my heart, but this word cannot change you without your response. This word cannot heal your hand if you don't stretch your hand out.

So the application to what I'm preaching today, and I hope that next week you'll come back because I want to pick up right here and move forward with this thought. And I hope you'll join me for it. And I'm waiting for you to applaud as a sign that you're excited about that. But what I want you to do while we're waiting to get back together, watch. You don't need a special occasion for faiths. You don't have to wait until next week to build your faith more. What I want you to do this week is do something that you couldn't do without faith.

Do something that you've been putting on and it could be very small. Jesus didn't tell the man to do a cartwheel Jesus didn't tell the man to to do an ice sculpture with his bad hand. He told him to do something simple I wonder what simple thing you could do this week that would have great significance in your life Some of you need to take your bad hand and call your father and seek his forgiveness and reconciliation in a relationship One one simple act like that

Some of you just need to get get to work on time this week Just a simple thing stretch your hand touch somebody say stretch it stretch it stretch it Just get them if you would get to work on time or every day this week. It would send a signal to yourself that

That I'm not limited by what I always thought I could do. Some of you just need to take every day this week and say, you know what? Every day this week, I'm going to start my day in God's word because that's something that I wasn't doing before. And if you do something you've never done before, you'll experience something you've never experienced before. Stretch your hand. Stretch your hand. Simple things. Just the simplest thing can make a huge difference. Stretch your hand this week. Stretch it out and see what God will do.

a faith that functions. It's time to make my faith go to work. God didn't give me this faith just so I could be complacent and comfortable with my dysfunction. If you have a shriveled hand today, but you feel faith rising up in your heart and you would like for me to pray with you about something that's in your life that's shriveled, something you've been previously unable to do,

but you're willing to stretch a little bit and say, "This week, I'm going to make the move that I couldn't make. I'm going to stretch my faith in a specific way." If you want me to pray for you, would you just stretch your hand up right now as a sign of your faith? Just as a sign of your faith and keep it up. I'm going to pray with everybody who has their hands stretched.

Father, we're not waiting for restoration to give a response. We declare right now in Jesus' name that this week our faith is going to work. We're going to have an active faith this week.

We're not waiting on outcomes to judge the validity of our faith this week. We have a new outlook this week. We're going into Monday, and we're moving into Tuesday, and we're going into Wednesday with a faith that works. It's going to work, because we're going to work it. We declare this day, "Wonder-working God in your presence. There's nothing you can't do. There's nothing you can't heal. There's nothing you can't restore.

So touch our hands, touch our hearts, touch our minds, change our habits. We want to be the people of faith, and we give you praise in advance. Somebody clap your hands and give God praise.

Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry. It's because of you that this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to give now or visit elevationchurch.org slash podcast for more information. And if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You can share it with your friends. You can click the share button, take a screenshot and share it on your social stories and tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God bless you.

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