Faith You Can Hold

Faith can sound like a church word until you’re staring down something you can’t control, and you need more than optimism. We take Hebrews 11 seriously and talk about faith as “substance” and “evidence” something you can actually grab hold of when you pray, even when you can’t yet see results. If you’ve ever wondered why your prayers feel stuck, or why God’s answer doesn’t match the plan in your head, this conversation is for you. 

We walk through the hall of faith in Hebrews 11: Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets, pulling out the common thread: trust in God’s word over what looks logical in the moment. Noah obeys a warning about “rain” before rain is even part of human experience. Abraham believes God’s promise while still wrestling with impatience and misunderstanding how the promise will unfold. Moses chooses purpose over comfort, betting his life on the invisible presence of God. These are not polished heroes; they are people who move forward because God speaks. 

Then we go deep on Cain and Abel, because it exposes a modern problem: transactional worship. Cain brings something he’s worked for and quietly expects God to repay him. Abel brings the first and best with humility, acknowledging the need for atonement and trusting God for tomorrow. That shift takes us straight into grace, salvation, and why Jesus’ blood “speaks a better word” than judgement. We finish with sacrifice, perspective, and a practical challenge to build the measure of faith you’ve been given from mustard seed into something strong. 

If this helped you, subscribe for the next part of the series, share it with a mate who’s rebuilding their faith, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one area where you need to trust God without seeing the outcome yet?

Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.

Transcript

Why Faith Still Matters

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Now, today we will be speaking on faith. Now, I know what you're going to say. I've done this before. But until the Lord tells me not to do it anymore, I will continue to honor his wishes and to do what he's talking about. But we're going to do things a little differently. We're going to go through the hall of faith. Now, if you read through Hebrews 11, this famously outlines the historical figures who demonstrated profound trust in God. Their stories serve as models for believers, and they highlight that faith is the assurance of things hoped for for the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 and in the King James Version or the New King James Version, it says, you know, faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not yet seen, which implies that faith is literally something you can grab hold of. It's not like it's out there. You know you can't see the wind, but you can feel it, you can see its results on different things like trees and the ocean and all of that sort of stuff. But can you actually physically steer the wind? Well, people will some people say yes from a scientific perspective, but others will say no. But faith is the substance. Substance means that it has body, it has texture. So faith is something

Faith As Substance And Evidence

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you can hold on to. There's other places throughout the Bible which says hold on to your faith because it is tangible. So you've got to know that when you're spending time in prayer and you are going to the throne room of the Lord, faith in hand, okay? Because you know that you can tangibly say that you've got hold of that faith. And we're going to have a close look at a few people throughout uh Hebrews 11, because that's basically the faith chapter in Hebrews. Now we have Abel, he offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, demonstrating that God honors worship given in faith. And you'll find that in Hebrews 11:4. We're also going to look at Noah. Noah built an ark to the saving of his household because he trusted God's warning about unseen events in Hebrews 11:7. Now, just a little side note on this. If you look at Noah, for instance, he was told it was gonna rain. Now, the word rain was something that uh the people of the earth had not yet heard, because like in the Garden of Eden, okay, the moisture used to come up through the ground and to water everything else. And then if you needed water, you went to lakes and streams and places like that. But to actually tell Noah to build an ark in the middle of Una Whoop Whoop, so to speak, and with faith, he knew that he had to build that and to follow God's instructions because he was going to flood the earth. A little bit more on him later. Now, Abraham, whose name used to be Abram, but God changed his name, and you'll see throughout the scripture, especially with the disciples, God chose to change people's name to have a biblical, godly principle underlying that name. But that's for another story as well. Abraham left his homeland without knowing where he was going, trusting God's covenant, and even offered Isaac, believing God could raise the dead in Hebrews 11:8 through the 17. Now, once again, a little side note on this. Abraham, now, this is this is one thing I'm hoping you'll actually understand. That when you read about um you know great faith giants in the Bible, and you look at your own faith, you've got to realize that when you pray in faith for something to take place,

Meet The Hall Of Faith

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if it lines up with scripture, okay, it makes its way into the throne room of grace. But the thing is, your understanding of how that um prayer will be answered could be totally different to God. It will end up giving you the same thing, but the way that he does it may be different because that's the way that he wants to do it. Because sometimes, or I'd say probably 80% of the time, myself included, what we do is that when we we go to the throne room or we go to our our prayer room or our place where we can sit silently with God and we give up to Him the desires of our heart, we already have a preconceived idea or ideology of how God's gonna fulfill that. But God won't necessarily do it the way that you did, and this is a classic example. See, Abram knew that he'd been promised a son through uh his wife Sarah, who was barren, but as we all do, he got a little bit impatient and decided to sleep with the uh the servant, and we all know the story about what happened there. But when God told Abraham to take Isaac up onto the mountain, he was under the impression that he was going to actually raise him back from the dead after Abraham had done what he had been told to do, which was to kill his son and offer as him a sacrifice. But that wasn't how God was thinking, that's how man thinks, because man's interpreter, I've got to do this because this is what God's told me to do. Even though he knew in the back of his mind, he might have got there and he goes, Okay, well, I'm gonna kill my son, but I know that God's gonna bring him back to life because he'd already made him a promise about Isaac and how he would be the father of many nations and all this sort of stuff, right? And it was going to be the direct bloodline to Jesus. So that's what he was thinking. But at the last minute, for those that aren't aware of the of what actually happened here, Abraham had him on the altar, had him tied up, and built the fire, ready to do this, and he raised up the knife ready to strike him in the heart, and then God revealed a perfect little lamb for Abraham to sacrifice. So he still wanted the sacrifice, but he just was testing Abraham's faith. All right, and we'll go more into detail with these because I know that there's different people at different levels in their Christian walk, and sometimes you need to, you know, I mean, a lot of people do it, in myself included, and you know, you mention a scripture and you go, Oh, you all know this scripture, you know, John 3.16, or Hebrews 11:1, or Luke 4, 18 and 19. But the reality of the fact is, but a lot of you may not know that scripture, or you may have heard it in uh a sermon, but it could have been a long time ago. So I'll try to make sure that I do that. But what I'd like you to do uh is that when I bring up scriptures, I may or may not tell you the content of that scripture. But what I'm hoping and believing is that if you're listening to this podcast, you are gonna write these scriptures down and then later on go do your own research, look it up, and go, oh yeah, Pastor Phil was right. This is what happened. Hopefully, that's the answer, anyway. Okay, let's go on. Otherwise, we're never gonna get through this. Now, we next we go on to Moses. Moses chose to suffer affliction

Abraham And Misreading God’s Plan

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with his people of God rather than enjoying the temporary pleasures of Egypt, relying on God's invisible presence. Okay, Hebrews eleven twenty-four to twenty-seven. Now, you gotta remember, see, Moses was brought up by Pharaoh's daughter. Excuse me, and uh so he was in the in the house of the Pharaoh, and he rose to uh a level of you know prestige in the family equivalent to Pharaoh's own son, and but when God spoke to him, he said, now it's time for you to you know get with the program, so to speak. You go to Pharaoh and you tell him that he's to let you and all of my people go. And Moses could have said, Oh, forget that, I'm not doing that, I'm just going to stay here, keep my head down, and enjoy the luxuries that I have here. I don't really want to be responsible for like three million people. But no, he didn't do that, he knew that there was a purpose behind his life, and so there goes the story. Now we have David, and we also have several of the prophets. Now, this is one thing to remember. See, a lot of the prophets, I mean, back then in the Old Testament, a lot of the prophets didn't, you know, prophesize good tidings, great things were gonna happen, the world was all good according to God. No, sometimes they had to bring bad news, or they had to prophesy through God and tell people that things were going to go bad, you know, like you're gonna have seven days, seven, sorry, seven days, that'd be great. Seven years of prosperity, and then you're gonna have seven years of drought. So the thing is, he had to always be prepared, and so sometimes he would actually get there and he would actually say, Well, this is not great news, but I need to tell you this. See, but through faith they conquered kingdoms. David, in particular, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of the lions from opening up when he was thrown into the the den of lions, and we know that is in Hebrews 11, 32 to 33. That's the main faith giants that we're going to talk about. And I know with the exception of the prophets, that was all Old Testament, but you've got to understand that we now have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Jesus is with us 24/7. Back then, they didn't have that luxury, you know. So let's start with Abel, poor old Abel, right? Because we're gonna go through

Moses David And The Prophets

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Hebrews and we're gonna go through Genesis, and so the faith of Abel is the premier template for true biblical faith. It teaches that God desires a heart of humble obedience, and he also requires blood atonement over religious legalization and human works. See, Abel is the first martyr in history. His legacy delivers an enduring message about salvation as well. Now, let's break this down into something, so little bite-sized pieces so we can get an idea of what's going on. Okay. Now we all know that we live in a world consumed by appearances and metrics. We assume that if we perform enough good deeds, work hard enough, and project a righteous image, we will earn God's approval. This mindset is not new, it dates back to the very first family of humanity. In Hebrews 11 4, the Holy Spirit directs us to look at the first human commended by faith, a quiet shepherd named Abel. Abel's life was very brief, ending in violent tragedy, yet his faith set a timeless precedence. Now, for those that don't know the story of Cain and Abel, okay, that's uh Adam and Eve's number one and number two children. So the very first children on the planet Earth. Now, one was uh did all the the guarding and the toiling, uh so um Cain was sowing in the fields and he was doing all the veggies and all this sort of stuff. So he was a herbivoreus, I think the word is called. Basically plant life. But Abel was the shepherd looking after the sheep, and there's a contrast between the two hearts. If you look at Genesis 4-3 to 4-5, the story centers on these two brothers coming to worship God, their choices reveal a fundamental separation in human spiritual posture. Now, Cain bought an offering from the fruit of the ground. Symbolically, Cain brought products that he had actually sweated over, labored over, and the the achievement you know that he'd actually done for God.

Abel As The Faith Template

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And his attitude was transactual. Okay. Now, the reason I'm using that word is because I'm going to relate to it later on, and when all gets said and done, everything these days, it's all about money. But look what I have built, therefore you owe me. That was his mindset. So Cain was saying, Hey, I did this, I worked really hard, you should be grateful that I'm giving it to you, but you need to look after me and pay me back. But Abel, Abel bought the firstborn of his flock and the fat portions. Abel's offering was an act of faith because it acknowledged his need for a blood sacrifice to cover his sins. He did not offer God leftovers, he gave the absolute best of his livelihood, trusting God to prove and to provide for his future. Now, see the difference between the two of them. You've got true faith obeys God's prescribed way. Now, why was Abel's sacrifice accepted while Cain's was rejected? The distinction lies in the nature of biblical faith. Now, if we go to Romans 10 17, faith requires a revelation. So Romans 10 states that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Both brothers were taught how to properly approach a holy God, likely learning from Adam and Eve after the fall. Faith is not self-styled, true faith believes what God has spoken and acts accordingly. See, Abel recognized that sin creates a certain type of separation from God. At that stage he did not really understand what that meant, but he humbly submitted to God's requirements for an innocent substitute to cover that sin. Cain's was religious and was fleshly. Cain wanted to worship God on his own terms. When God rejected his self-righteous offering, Cain's hidden pride erupted into a bitter resentment, and eventually he murdered his brother. See, the writers of Hebrew declares that through his faith, though he die, he still speaks. Abel's voice carries across millennia to deliver three crucial truths. Remember what it said in there? And he says, Oh, where is where is your where is your brother Abel? And he said, I'm not his keeper. And yet the rocks cried out because of his blood. And so already,

Cain’s Transactional Worship Exposed

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you know, Cain's in the doggy doo-doos. Now just listen to these main aspects in relation to faith. See, faith prioritizes the heart over the ritual or the act, whatever you're doing. Right? God did not look at the altar, he looked at man. Abel's sacrifice was accepted because his heart was full of faith, surrender, and humility. Now faith accepts God's declaration of righteousness. Abel was commended as righteous because he trusted God's system of grace, not his own moral compass or his moral perfections or imperfections. The blood of Jesus speaks a better word. While Abel's blood cried out from the ground, demonstrating justice and vengeance, Hebrews 12 24 reminds us that Jesus shed blood speaks of a superior word, one of total forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. I'm gonna leave a lot of this for next week, but I just want to finish up with this. Now Abel lost his earthly life, but he secured an eternal recommendation from the creator, the creator of the universe, the creator of everything. Today, his ancient Testimony poses a piercing question to every one of us Are you really approaching God through the way of Cain or of the way of Abel? You need to stop trying to present God with your resume of good work or your accomplishments and your religious performance. Instead, step into the faith of Abel. Acknowledge you need a Saviour. Lay down your self-righteousness and rest entirely in the ultimate sacrifice already paid by Jesus Christ. See, a lot of people don't understand why I go on about um the old testament a lot. The old testament it's a typing shadow of the new. You can't have the new without the old, you know? You can't have last year without being in this year, otherwise you'd still be in this year. This morning we have a chance to look at a hero of faith. This man Abel. And as I was thinking about this topic today and what's flowing from Abel's example, there's one word in particular that has floated to the top, and that's that word, the word sacrifice. So I've been meditating how on much the topic of sacrifice in a Christian lifestyle, and I was thinking about just those great moments in the Bible, those moments where you could say, I would love to, you know, have been there when that happened. I sort of on the fence about that because, you know, I look at the toilets and uh lack of air conditioning and a few other things. I said, I'm not 100% sure that I would like to be back then, but then again, I would like to be able to actually see Jesus, you know, at work. There are so many visually dramatic moments that would have been like it would have been actually being able to stand there when the walls of Jericho come tumbling down, or when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Awesome dramatic moments.

Three Truths Abel Still Speaks

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Now we got the second coming of Christ. You know, you see all those armies of heaven and all the glory, you know, of Jesus' life and ministry, and it's recorded for us in Luke 21, and it's the moment in which Jesus is watching all of these rich people put all of their money into the coffers. Now, this is not a tithes and offerings message. I I just want to actually mention this in particular, that Jesus stood there and watched because it was a learning, it was a learning progress. It was it was there for a purpose. And what actually happened is Jesus watched it. All of these people, all of these people that were well off, got plenty of money, you know, it's like all the people of Wall Street, okay, versus, you know, um, I don't know, in America, it would be like Hell's Kitchen is the place they call it. That's where a lot of you know low socioeconomical people live. Uh uh here in Australia, there's pockets of it all over the place, uh, even in the UK. You can walk down any street and see poverty, right? But how many times do you um you know they they do a lot of advertising for compassion? We have a couple of compassion kids, uh, and they they're always talking about uh helping people, you know, overseas that are going through difficult times, and so many people are dying because of lack of food or clean drinking water. So realistically, anything that we do, even if we were living on the streets, there is ten times worse people out there dealing with things that we think are so superficial. But the one thing I notice is next time they're doing those ads, just have a look at the children. Okay, they're running around, they're laughing, they're playing football with this beat-up ball or something that resembles a ball, and they're happy because they are blessed to be alive and they're happy for what they have, irrespective of how little it is. And yet we sort of like jump on the bandwagon and start complaining because um the accounting department made a mistake

Sacrifice Perspective And What We Value

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and we're like uh ten dollars short in our pay packet. You have to put things into their right perspective, and I'm hoping over the next few weeks I'm going to be able to do that, and I'm gonna give you a basic understanding of the principles in relation to your relationship with God. We're also gonna look at Abel's faith and how he went through that, and we're gonna go on to our other leaders in the Bible, and then we're gonna look at how we can apply this, how you can put this into your life. Now, don't get me wrong, okay. I am not going on about um them and us, you know, those that have and those that don't have, and there's you know, we have white collar, blue collar, and then we have this gap in the middle, but it it's it's the same everywhere in the world. Now, if you've got money and you're financially comfortable, then great. As long as you are honoring God with your tithes and your offerings, then you know, live that life because God's provided it for you. Even though you're the one with the master's degree in in computer studies and all that sort of stuff, God's made a way where there is no way. And for those that are on the brink or they are suffering, you know, then you've got to have hope. Okay, hope builds faith, faith builds belief, and belief gets you to where you know that you know that you know that God is in your corner. Because like David, it says time and time again, David was a man after God's own heart. Right? So, in other words, yeah, and yeah, I know what you're saying is oh yeah, hang on, what about all the things that David did? Well, yeah, David messed up a lot, okay. He messed up a real lot, but the reality of the fact is that he always went back to God. Everybody, okay, the Lord is no respecter of a person. All of you have fallen short of God's grace because of your lifestyle, what you're doing, or how you live your life, or whatever. But grace is what you have to get your faith. And just remember this next time that you're in prayer, okay. Am I praying for something that I want or is it a need? There's two different things. All right, that's enough for today, and so we're gonna go on with this over the next few weeks, and hopefully, I can help you have a better understanding of how faith works in your life and how you can actually increase your faith. Because remember, it says we're all given a measure of faith, the size of a grain of mustard seed, right? And if you go in your pantry and get a packet of mustard seed out, if you got it, you will find it very, very difficult to just get one in the palm of your hand because it's so tiny. But also then go and look on, get onto Google or or Snapchat or whatever your your profiles and things are, and find a mustard seed tree, right? And compare the two. Okay, we're all given a measure of faith, but once we've got that measure of faith, it is our responsibility to build that faith, make it bigger and bigger and bigger, and so we too can become, you know, masters of faith. Alright. God bless, and we'll

Mustard Seed Faith And Next Steps

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talk to you next week. Bye for now.