The Journey of Faith Part 2 - Unbelief - 3.2.25

Joshua Boyd

We are on a journey of faith – both in our Christian walk and in our current series.  The start of our journey must be salvation.  We believed the word to be born again.  We had to pray and ask Jesus to come and save us.  We had to call on Him.  That was the first act of obedience by faith and it sealed the deal for our salvation. 

The rest of our journey works the same way: we hear, believe, then act.  Our first act of obedience is calling on the name of the Lord in response to hearing the good news of what happens when we do.  In this part two of our series, let’s focus on what can hinder our journey: unbelief.  How can a born-again Christian experience unbelief?  Let’s find out.

Israel was “saved”.  Their coming out of Egypt is a type of us coming out of the world into God’s Kingdom – salvation.  They saw with their own eyes the repeated miracles of God, yet they struggled over and over with believing God and obeying Him. It got to the point that their hearts became hard toward God.

Our journey of faith begins with believing the good news of salvation.  Step after step in our journey is only progressed by believing the Word and acting on it by faith, keeping your conscience clear, and your obedience on the ready. That takes work.  It is labor, it is a fight—the good fight. And it is a constant improvement or growth of your faith.  We go from faith to faith, glory to glory.  

Transcript

Joshua Boyd 0:00

Well, I'm excited about today because we're continuing our discussion on the journey of faith. You know, we've talked about the fact that faith is not just a one-time event, it's a journey. And it's both in our, you know, in our Christian walk, it's something that all of us are, I should say all of us have the opportunity to do. And that's what we're going to talk about today, because just because we say we're a Christian doesn't mean we're on a journey of faith. So we need to make sure that we kickstart that, get it started, get it going. The first part of it, what we talked about last time, is salvation. We hear the good news, we believe it, we act on it, we call on God, say, God, come into my life, come in, you know, come into my heart right now. And that is our first act of what we do after believing the word of the good news, and then that yields to salvation. And salvation is our is the start of us on our journey, or the opportunity to start on our journey. And we we talked about last time that the rest of our journey works exactly the same way. We hear, we believe, and then we act. The first act of obedience is calling on the name of the Lord in response to hearing the good news. Now, in part two, we're going to focus on something that can actually hinder us on our journey, unbelief. How can a born-again Christian experience unbelief? And the answer is every day. It comes into play all the time. In the New Testament, there are two different words for the for um two different words in the Greek language for believe and faith. They're not, they're they're sometimes used interchangeably, but they really do have a difference. You know, and Hebrews talks about the fact that we need to rightly divide the word of God. We need to rightly look at it. And we're gonna that's kind of what we're gonna do. We're gonna kind of get into there with a sharper knife and start dividing in what are what are what are what is what is the scripture talking about when it says believe versus when it says we need to have faith. Um the word believe is you know, don't need to write this down, but it's pistuo, it's the Greek word pistuo, whereas the word faith is pistis. So again, very similar origin of words. Believe, though, has more the connotation of to think to be true, a mere acknowledgement of a fact or event. In other words, yeah, I believe today is Sunday. You know, I believe that tomorrow is gonna be, you know, sunny and 62, because that's what the weatherman said. Now, do I say I have faith in that? No. It's not, you know, because I'll all it's not, I'm not super con I'm not as 100% confident that the weatherman's gonna be 100% true, because they never are. They're doing their best guess, best effort, but I believe enough to maybe dress differently or act accordingly. Faith, though, is really more of a conviction of the truth. It is a, it is, there's the the ideas, the connotations are the word trust and confidence. You know, do I have confidence that I'll be going to work tomorrow? Yeah. Do I, you know, do I have confidence that tomorrow's Monday? Very much so. Um, but so there's belief is it there's a need for belief. There's a need for believing. But that's kind of like that initial first step. Faith is something that can actually grow. Um so, and here's some verses that kind of differentiate, or at least use both words at the same time. Uh Galatians 2, 16, it says, Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Christ Jesus, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Jesus Christ, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law, for no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law. The key part of their second sentence, and we have believed in Jesus Christ. We kind of, okay, we believe that what he's saying is true. Now, the next step, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith. So we, there's an initial kind of believing, and then as our the faith kind of gives us that more and more confidence. Also in Galatians 3.22, New King James says, but the scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Christ Jesus might be given to those who believe. So there's a promise by faith, it's a promise that's going to come down, you know, keep coming as we continue to have that confidence and that trust, but it comes from starting from believing, that starting point of believing. So the way I thought I started thinking about it is belief starts the car, but faith is the accelerator. Faith is the gas pedal. Because I can start the car and leave it in the driveway, and I ain't on a journey. I'm sitting in my car, I'm in something that can get me places, but until I start putting it in drive and pressing the gas pedal, I'm not doing anything. But it starts with belief. Because I can press the gas pedal all I want, I can put it in drive all I want. But if the car isn't started, or I guess I should use a you know, these these days, we we don't we don't turn keys hardly anymore, it's a push button. Um or you know, remote. But you know, well, so then the car I can't go anywhere without the car being started. So I can't even start talking about faith until at least I've said I believe. Belief opens the door, faith explores the house. Belief puts I'll say these again. Belief puts your foot on the next step. Okay, I believe, I believe this step is here, but it's faith that's the muscle that actually propels me up and gets me higher. So belief says, okay, I believe I think there's something, some, I think there's a new place I can go. But faith is like, do I have the exercise, do I have the energy, do I have the the the will to actually propel myself up through that by by believing, by putting my full weight in there? Believing is a switch. Off and on. Chick-chick. Coding language, boolean, you know, it's it's either yes or no. It's it's it's it's only two choices. Binary, right. It's not, I, you know, your your belief doesn't grow. Your faith does. So belief is a switch. Faith is organic. Faith has to grow like a muscle. That's why I use that example of muscles all the time with it. Um and like a gas pedal. I can I can barely push my gas pedal and I can go 10 miles an hour, or I can go, hey, let's see what this thing can do, and push it down and go, now we're going. Now we're getting somewhere. Now, please hear me, I'm not diminishing belief. I mean, we're we're we're looking at both of these as very important because according to the Bible, even believing is super powerful. Jesus said in Mark 9, 23, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. And I in studying this, I never really started looking at the differences in this. It didn't say you need to have really great faith to have all things possible for you. He said, you just need to believe. Flip that switch on. You don't need to have big muscles, you don't need to have a fast car, you don't need to have, you don't need to have all that experience and time to get your faith built up. Just that belief will get you all things as possible all things are possible. And immediately, this is when that father, you know, immediately the father of the child cried out with tears, said, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. He was flipping that switch off and on. He's like, I think I believe, I'm not sure if I believe. I think I believe, I'm not sure if I believe. I mean, that kind of he was at that point where he was just about to say, okay, I think I'm ready to keep this thing on. And of course, he got his result. So I'll go through going through those differences again. Belief starts the car, faith is the gas pedal, belief opens the door, faith explores the house. Belief puts your foot on the next step, faith is a muscle that propels you up. Believing is a switch, but faith is organic. If you look at the church worldwide, church global, I hear people refer to it as the Capital C church, the body of believers. Sadly, there's a lot of Christians out there who started the car and are just sitting in the driveway. They they have said, I'm saved. And if you ask them, can God do this for you? Well, yes, he's able. Well, knowing he's able is just like me saying, Yeah, there's a step there. But is that the step for me to go on? Or does God not want that step for me? I don't know yet. They've got that belief off for something for them. They believe fully that they're going to heaven. They believe fully that they're saved. They've got that first step, and yes, they are going to heaven. But the journey of faith, the Christian walk, is much more than just getting into the door, just much more than starting the car. When we hear a truth in the word, that God can save you, that God can heal you, that God can deliver, that God can protect, we do have a first, the first choice is do I flip that switch on? And I think of it as like a panel of switches. I've got the faith of salvation. I got I believe I believe in salvation. Do I really believe in the deliverance and the meeting my needs and the and the providing healing for me? I know God can. I know he's able to. But the believing that we're talking about, the believing that the Bible says, and the believing that Jesus referred to in this verse, that all things are all things are possible to him who believes, is the one who says, I believe that for me. A lot of people can say that. They know God, they've seen his power. But the devils aren't getting healed, the devils aren't getting saved. So the believing we're talking about, the flipping the switch on, is me saying, okay, there's a step here. God wants to provide for all of my needs according to his riches. Okay, I'm gonna start believing that. I'm gonna believe that for me. But the for until we actually start taking that step fully and put our weight on it, that's when we have the faith for it. And that's when we are saying, Lord, I'm putting my confidence in you, I'm putting my full trust in you that you're gonna do it. We've got to do that first step, but we also have to start putting our weight on the step, otherwise we don't get anywhere. So I want to talking about the journey of faith, I'm gonna talk, I'm gonna use a really good example in the Bible, and that's the the children of Israel. But we're gonna read kind of a condensed summary of their journey in Hebrews, because we we do have to read pretty much all of Exodus and Numbers to get through their entire journey. It's a lot of back and forth, as many of us know. So we're gonna read from Hebrews 3. I'll start with verse 5. This is New Living. Moses was certainly faithful in God's house as a servant. His work was an illustration of the truths that God would reveal later. But Christ as the Son is in charge of God's entire house, and we are God's house if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in Christ. That is why the Holy Spirit says, Today, when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts, as Israel did when they rebelled, when they tested me in the wilderness. There your ancestors tested and tried my patience, even though they saw my miracles for forty years. So I was angry with them, and I said, Their hearts always turn away from me. They refused to do what I tell them. In my anger I took an oath, they will never enter my place of rest. Be careful, then, dear brothers and sisters, make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You must warn each other every day, while it is still called today, so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ. Remember what it says, today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled. Even when you read that passage, you see some, he repeats it, harden your heart. Israel rebelled. They had an opportunity. And that kind of summarizes the 40 years of the children of Israel in the wilderness. God prophesied to Abraham back in Genesis 15, I think it is, when God told Abraham he was going to have many kids, and Abraham would say, Well, how will I know this is true? Basically, you know, what's how will I know this will come to pass? You know the sign that God told him? He said, Your descendants will live in slavery for 400 years, and then they'll be redeemed. That was God's saying, This is how you'll know. I mean, so Abraham never got to see that sign. But that was what the Lord said in response to him, how will I know? He said, Your descendants are going to live in being taken, they'll be slaves for 400 years. That's exactly how many years they were slaves in Egypt. And then God delivered, you know, God brought Moses in, brought him out with a mighty hand, brought him out. The Bible says they spoiled the Egyptians, they took the wealth of Egypt with them. God gave them favor, they literally took their riches and their possessions with them into a desert where they couldn't spend it. You know, so they had all this stuff. And immediately within a few days, they're like, You brought us out here to kill us, Moses. Let's go back. Or they you know, they hit the they hit the Red Sea and they're like, You're all gonna die here. And they said that, and we talked about this in Bible study uh Wednesday night too. They said that so many times that we're gonna die out here in the wilderness, we're gonna die out here in the wilderness. Finally, the Lord said, Okay, what you have what you say, you're gonna die out here in the wilderness. Because he tried to work and work, and they were seeing literal miracles, a cloud of, I mean, daily, a cloud by day that protected them from the sun in the desert, a fire at night that kept them warm, water coming out of rocks, a sea parting and going across on dry ground. I mean, you would think the kind of things that you know people are always asking for signs, they saw signs daily, and yet still like, I don't know. I I don't know about this God. I'm not sure about, I don't know. Let's in fact, you know what? Let's go ahead and make a little golden calf, and let's that that's the God who brought us out of Egypt. This little thing we just made with our the gold we just brought out of Egypt. Let's make a little idol. It doesn't, you know, man is so ignorant when we turn away from God. It's so idiotic that it doesn't make sense. They had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to trust God, and they didn't do it. And God says, summarizing here in Hebrews, every time they did that, their heart was getting a little bit harder. It was starting to calcify and starting to really get to the point where God's like, okay, there's you're you're you can't you're not gonna change. And he knew their heart, not they're not at that point, they're not gonna change. He's like, okay, so anybody 20 years and up, you got what you said. My word's still gonna come true. I'm still gonna bring the children of Israel, the people of Israel, into the promised land, like I said I would. But this whole population won't be a part of it. So when he's saying it to us here in Hebrews, he's saying, make sure, remind each other daily, do it while it's called today. When is it called today? Today, every day. Do this regularly. Remind yourself, don't harden your heart. Don't ignore the word of the Lord. Don't just go, I'm seeing, I think there's a God who can deliver us, but I'm not sure if I believe that. That's where it connects to what we're talking about today. They were seeing literal signs of God doing things in their lives, and yet they still did not believe. How much more do we need to force, you know, really push ourselves and push each other, encourage each other when we don't have a fire warming us at night and a cloud, you know, an angel of God has a cloud by day and manna showing up every morning on our doorsteps. We still have to believe that God moves, God acts, and not just that he can, but that he will. And as we do that, then we start believing. And every time we say we believe, we're softening our heart. We're not hardening our heart. We're keeping our heart tender toward God, as the Bible says. We're keeping an honest heart, as the Bible says. The Bible talks a lot about a heart. This is the heart we don't want. We don't want a hardened heart. We want a heart that's that's always for God. You know, there's a number of examples, this is one of them, where there were people in the Bible who had an op who messed up and had an opportunity to repent and turn around, and they didn't, and they kept defending themselves. There's one of them, I didn't plan on talking about this too long, but Saul did that. Saul was the first king of Israel, appointed by God, but and prayed, you know, Samuel came and anointed him. But it came to a certain point where he was given something to do. He didn't do it all. Samuel came and confronted him. And he kept defending himself. He kept saying, blaming other people. He kept trying to excuse himself rather than repent. All he had to do was repent, and he would have been right back into favor with God. But he kept, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I'm gonna get my I'm I'm right, I'm doing my way, I'm doing my way. And he kept getting further and further, hardening, hardening, hardening his heart. And finally God said, Man, I'm I'm I repent. The King James says that I made him king, because his heart's not after me. And he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna appoint, anoint somebody whose heart is after me. It's literally what he said. So he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna appoint the next king, it's gonna have a different heart. And it was David. God wants our heart, and our heart stays soft and tender because we continually go, Lord, I believe. I flipped that switch. I believe you can heal me, I believe you can you can protect my kids, I believe you can deliver me in this situation. I believe that you have salvation for my life and my family's life and my work life everywhere, every way. And we when we start keeping those keeping those steps, keeping that switch turned on of believing, the further we walk, the more our faith starts growing because we see God move, the more we see, and the more we can believe for. Okay, Lord, you met my need for a$10 need. You know, now it's a$100 need, now it's a$1,000 need, now it's a$10,000 need. Now, you know, and we so it's not just a believing that God can provide, it's that God can provide that next level, that next step. And that's where the that's why it's a journey. And that's why we can't just stay in the driveway because there's so much more that God wants to do for you. Just like the children of Israel. He's like, I've got all this prepared for you, I've got this land, but you gotta believe me. And they were and they, you know, twice they needed water. The first time God brought it from a rock through Moses, the second time they had the same complaint, not even going, oh whoa, yeah, okay, God did this last time, we know he'll do it again. They're like, no, we're gonna die again. And you know, Jesus had the same problem with the disciples because they he rebuked them many times for their unbelief. And if you think about the disciples, here are a group of people who are literally touching shoulders with the Son of God. I mean, if we said, we we always say, you know, I'd love to, Lord, I'd love to, you know, to see a vision of you, to meet you in person, and we think that would answer all of our unbelief problems. It doesn't. They were literally touching him, eating bread with him, walking the streets with him. And yet when things happened in their life, just like it does in ours, they're like, we're gonna die, you know, just in the boat. Like, don't you care that we're gonna perish, Lord? You know, people were, and he said, Where's your where's your faith? Where why can't you believe why aren't you believing? So for us to continue to keep our hearts softened, for us to keep taking that next step of believing, first of all, we have to just make that choice that I'm gonna believe that God can do this because he said he would. And then we do it for the small things, it starts getting better and better and bigger and bigger as we go. There's other examples. I I didn't want to get spend the time on these, but there's there's other examples even in the New Testament where they were following God and then somehow got their hard heart hardened to a point where even God Paul Paul has some examples. Um, actually, no, I do have this verse in here. Um look at 1 Timothy. This is 1 Timothy 1 19. Cling to your faith in Christ and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences, as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked. What does that mean? Okay, I've switched on my my switch of believing for salvation. And I hear in the word that God can God can provide for my needs. You know, my kids need daycare, my my my rent bill is due, my house payments due, I need a new car. But uh, you know what? I don't I just don't know if I can believe that for me right now. I'm just not at that place. So I'm gonna start, I'm just gonna go and do what I need to do. I'm gonna get that extra job, I'm gonna go start uh you know doing other things in the flesh to try to get that to happen, to try to get that to come to pass, because I'm not sure, I mean I I hear it, but I'm not sure I can believe that God can do that for me. That just seems too impossible. And we it's it's violating our conscience because our conscience is saying, this is this is right. What God is saying is true. Read the word, look, you know, I've seen this happen. Our conscience is saying, trust God, our conscience being our spirit within us. And we're going, I just can't right now. I'm not at that place. I'm gonna have to do this on my own. And we've we've all done it. We've all done the the Abraham and Ishmael. You know, let's go ahead and get, let's go ahead and, you know, God's giving me a word, it's not really happening as fast as I thought it would. I'm not really sure this is gonna happen. So I'm just gonna step out and start trying to produce this result myself. That's what Paul is saying here. Cling, keep that faith, keep that, keep your faith in Christ with a good grasp on it, but keep your conscience clear. And he says in verse 20 here, he named two people, Himanius and Alexander, are two examples. I threw them out, handed them over to Satan so they might learn not to blaspheme God. I'm not gonna get into all that, throw out the Satan part, but he's giving an example of two people who violated their conscience so much that he basically had to say, out of the church. You've hardened your heart to the point that we can't work with you, that either Satan's gonna have to take you, or there's gonna have to be a repentance. He did the same thing. Paul said the same words. I've given him over to Satan with the person in Corinthians who was in adultery. You know, he in 1 Corinthians he he's like, hey, you guys got somebody who's sleeping with his mother-in-law, uh uh stepmom, um, and you're not even doing anything about it. Throw him out, get rid of, you know, get him out of the church because it's affecting you. Don't, you know, don't put your arms around them, don't pray for him, kick him out, give them over to Satan is what he said, same words. 2 Corinthians, the guy repents, comes back, and now Paul's telling him, love him, embrace him as a brother, because he repented. He softened his heart. Now we don't know what happened to Hymeneus and Alexander here, but the point is, people can get to a point, Saul, these two examples, children of Israel, that their heart gets hardened over time, and God says, I can't do anything more with you. And either it's the shock of God saying, Okay, you're done, that hopefully repentance comes eventually, like the man in Corinthians. But more examples in the word are that never happens. Saul became so hardened against God that he started trying to kill David. He tried to come against the men of God. He never spoke to Samuel again after that moment. He never had a relationship with him anymore. He never had his priest, his prophet available to him anymore. And he started seeing witches, literally. And those kind of actions and activities happened because time after time he hardened his heart against God. He didn't believe the word. That's how important belief is. That's how important it is to keep unbelief out of our lives. Because we can say that we're a Christian and yes, we're going to heaven. But if we get to heaven and God said, I had all these other things planned for you. I could have helped you there, helped you there. Why didn't you let me? And we're like, that was me stopping that? Not you not wanting to do it. We don't want to be in that position. We don't want to be in the spot that we look back and go, oh, that was my fault. Um when we're talking about the journey of faith, we God has given us so much grace. He's done so much for us. And yes, he can do anything. He has he has he is a great big God. But any anything is possible to him who believes. Anything is possible to him who flips that switch and says, Thank you, Lord, that you can heal me. Thank you, Lord, that you can deliver me. Thank you, Lord, that in a situation that seems impossible at work, and I've had a few of them in the past year, that it felt like it was an impossible situation with a person who felt it seemed like it was just a person resisting something that was going on. And I finally stopped focusing on the person and went to God about it. And one, the situation cleared up back in the fall, and now that person's not even there at the company. And it's a C-suite level, meaning it was not it, it was only God that could do things. But I went to God about it. I said, God, I need deliverance. This, you know, this project that we're on needs deliverance. And God came through. And at first I had to turn that switch on because I was just so used to not, you know, going my own route and going the you know, the whatever route. You know, first of all, the worry route, which never really solves anything. The second of all is the flesh route of, okay, I'm gonna try to build relationships and communicate and do all the buzzwords that we have at work. That only goes so far. But then I flipped on the belief switch. Lord, I believe you can deliver me from deliver, it wasn't just me, it delivered this situation. I'm a part of it, but I believe you can deliver this situation. And as soon as I did, things started happening. Something that only God can do. And he can do that for us every day. So when we heard and you know, for the word for 2025, don't fear like they fear, don't put your trust in God, fear God. That's why, because there's so much that we couldn't do anyway. So why not believe God and keep our hearts soft toward Him and keep our conscience clear. Amen? Now, you know, I say this, and some people might go, well, am I getting close to being kicked out and handed over to Satan? No. Because I see the hearts of the people that are part of our church. We have hearts that are that are toward God. You can you can tell when there's a heart. I've seen it in the past, and not here in this state, but I've seen it happen with people and seen the result of somebody that I knew in the church whose heart got so hardened that they just they started doing whack-a-doodle things, out, you know, left the church or were kicked out, and then just like they were never a Christian in the first place. I've seen it happen, but none of us are close. But that doesn't mean we need to watch out for the line. You know, if the line's over there, don't even get close to it. You know, it's not it's like our kids getting close to the highway. It's like, yeah, the curb's right here, but I don't want you standing on the curb and you know, watching a car buzz by you at you know two feet away. Stay away from the line. In fact, get further from the line, soften your heart, soften your heart, soften your heart toward God. So, how do we prevent it from happening to us? One, we do what Hebrews says, watch out for unbelief. And when you when your mind and your flesh wants to say, I don't know if I can believe that yet, let that be the little warning bulb and say, No, I need to, I need to, I need to make effort to believe this. And then two, put action to your faith. Put action to your belief. Yeah, flip that switch on once you once you have decided, I'm going to believe that, God will tell you to do something. He'll give you a word, he'll give you an action. Faith, and this is this is really where faith comes into play. Faith always has an action. There's always an action. So faith isn't just a ethereal thing that we can say we have or not. Faith always has an action. The book of James puts it this way, and this is this is the amplified, which I don't have on the screen. So the amplified says, but someone will say to you then, You say you have faith, and I have good works. Now you show me your alleged faith apart from any good works, if you can, and I, by good works of obedience, will show you my faith. Love the way it kind of fleshes out that that fra that sentence, because King James is just faith without works is dead, or I'll show you my faith by my works. You show me your alleged faith apart from any good works, because how can you have faith if you're not doing anything about it? If you can, and I, by my good works of obedience, will show you my faith. Uh sorry, that's James 2.18. James 2.18. That's amplified. You know, Jesus commended the church in the book of Revelation. There's seven churches that Jesus is talking to and sends a letter and sends a letter to. Um, and the church at Thyatira, he says, um, I'll put it on screen, I know all the things you do, I have seen your love, your faith, your service, and your patient endurance, and I can see your constant improvement in all these things. He's commending them because he didn't just say, I see your faith. There's service involved in that, there's action involved in that, there's love, there's patient endurance. There's things that are along with that that are not just, yeah, it looks like you have faith. You know, no, there's there's action that followed with it. Our journey of faith begins with believing the good news of salvation. But step after step in our journey is only progressed by believing the word and acting on it in faith, keeping your conscience clear and your obedience on the ready. That takes work. That takes labor, it takes uh it takes a fight because the devil's trying to always constantly push that unbelief, push that, don't flip that switch. You don't know what's gonna happen if you do. God's gonna call you to Africa and make you be a missionary and leave everything you have, and you know, He, you know, He's trying to not get you to flip that switch. Don't turn that car on. But once we do, then we gotta still say, okay, Lord, I'm ready to go. Where are we going? What's my next, where am I, what do I need to do to be obedient to this? That's the fight. That's the good fight. That's why the Bible calls it a fight of faith, but more specifically, the good fight of faith. Because when we win that, we win that fight and we have all the goodness of God, God has given us all grace as abounding toward us that we having all sufficiency, having everything we need, may abound to every good work. So God's ready to say, Oh, you turn that switch on, here's everything you need to go on your journey. But he's waiting for us to go, I believe. He's waiting for us to go take that step and go, Lord, I believe not only that you can do it, but you're gonna do it for me. And then he's gonna go, here's my here's the end, here's the end, here's the here's everything you need for your journey. Hebrews concludes the summary of the children of Israel's wilderness journey by giving us a command. So that we aim for the same kind of rest. The Hebrews calls it, they entered into their rest, because that was the rest, was they're done. They're in their promised land. They have made the journey, they have fought the battles, they have overcome the cities and the and the enemies, and now they're finally eating crops they didn't sow, they're living in houses they didn't build. They did, they're doing the things that God promised them so many years before. That was their rest from the fight, from the journey. But Hebrews 4, 11 tells us to do the same thing. Let us labor, let us work out, let us fight to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. In other words, the two choices are we either keep fighting to go forward and go into that rest, or we may end up falling into that, our heart keeps getting hardened because we're not flipping those switches on. We're saying, nope, I'm not sure I believe that. And there are, well, this is our challenge and encouragement for today, because this is something that takes, like Hebrews earlier said, encourage each other daily. Encourage each other every time to say, no, we can do this. Husbands and wives, you have the advantage of encouraging each other when one's not feeling like it's time to flip the switch yet, and you've already done yours, it's like, oh no, let's let's come to the Lord, let's look at what the word says, let's do this together, let's fight in this together. Call, you know, you have friends to call, you have people to call that you can encourage. And if you're as a couple experiencing something that you both are going, not quite sure yet. Are we ready to, as a couple, to believe this for our family, for our kids, then call somebody else, talk to somebody, get that encouraging word to say, yeah, got look at look at. God's done for us, He can do it. Catherine and I were just talking the other day. We were just being grateful for our house when we got it, you know, right before you know everything, interest rates and everything went up, and uh the timing of everything. Um because we were uh there's something we were doing with um paperwork and all, we're just being very thankful for it. And you know, I said, look back to 2020, at the beginning of beginning in like February of 2020, we had we had already bought this new house, and we still own two other houses. Um and we were gonna get ready to sell both of them, but you know, and we we knew the even back then the market was pretty hot. Okay, we're gonna sell these two other houses. We each had one both in our own name. Um, and then COVID hit, and then everything shut down, you know, and then showings weren't happening anymore, and then it's like, what are we what's gonna happen? And how it's like all of a sudden we've got three mortgage payments, and how are we gonna do all this? And you know, my I was not in the role that I'm in now, making a whole lot less than I was now. We're like, what uh what are we gonna do? And I just said, we've got to keep that, and I obviously didn't use the same terminology, but keep that switch up. No, um but I we we kept going back to okay, God's gonna God's gonna take care of this. Because there's nothing we can do. I mean, I can take on three other jobs and it still wouldn't really handle everything, then I wouldn't have time to fix the house that we need to sell. So, you know, you just get into those impossible situations of your reason and your logic can only go so far, and your time and your flesh can only handle so much anyway. But God took care of it. We look back and go, I don't even remember all the details of how it happened, but we didn't get into any more debt. We sold the two houses, we got everything done, and God took care of it. And I got a promotion that year. I mean, of all the what? God took care of all of that. And so we can use stories like that with each other to say, God will take care of it for you. Here's what he did for us. This isn't just a story, the stories in the Bible are good, but when it comes down to today, that's why he says, encourage each other while it's called today. Hey, God, this this is this is now, this is today, God can do this for you. Amen. I flipped that switch, I've seen it happen. Come with me on the journey. We'll walk together for a little bit. I'll encourage you, I'll get you, you know, and then next time I might need you. It's not a one person leading everybody, it's we're we're in this journey together, and sometimes our steps are different, our paths are different, and we're helping each other in different areas. Amen.