Speaker 1: Lift your bibles up and wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad, and just make this confession say heavenly Father, I'm glad to be watching by live stream and I have ears to hear what the spirit is saying to me tonight.
Speaker 1: Indeed, revelation, knowledge, trump's sense knowledge and all the world's wisdom that every expert can utter is based on nothing but sense knowledge.
Speaker 1: But my faith is built on revelation in Jesus name.
Speaker 1: Amen, all right.
Speaker 1: Hebrews, chapter 12, please, and we're going to look at the first couple of verses here.
Speaker 1: Hebrews 12, one, wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset us and let us run with patience.
Speaker 1: Some versions say endurance.
Speaker 1: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Speaker 1: And so tonight I just wanted to share a message entitled removing roadblocks.
Speaker 1: Our race that we have is a race run by faith, and it's not a speed race.
Speaker 1: It's, you know, I think, about Jesus talking to his disciples and said if you continue in my truth, then are you my disciples, indeed, in the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Speaker 1: And so that's only for those who continue or who run their race.
Speaker 1: See, the race is again, it's not how you start, it's not how fast you hit the turn, it's whether you finish.
Speaker 1: And it's an endurance race, it's a patience race, and Jesus is the initiator and the developer of our faith.
Speaker 1: And so we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, and what, of course, jesus we know, is the word.
Speaker 1: We need to keep our eyes on the word and we need to get it on our eyes and our heart, on our lips.
Speaker 1: You know, romans 1 17 says the just shall live by faith.
Speaker 1: So faith is not just something we do and have when we need something, but it's a lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Been stressing that, and we preached for a number of weeks on lock out the doubt, doubt will sink you, doubt will cause you to fall short of receiving God's best in your life.
Speaker 1: And so, in like fashion, roadblocks in our race and our journey.
Speaker 1: It's a continuum.
Speaker 1: I mean we start when we get saved.
Speaker 1: We walk by faith, not by sight, one day at a time 2 Corinthians, 5, 7.
Speaker 1: But as we walk there can be roadblocks, and that's what I want to talk about, roadblocks on faith highway, you know, and when ignored, these hindrances can cause lengthy delays and sometimes serious consequences when they're ignored or they're missed, and you know these kind of delays.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about my Gladys' brother and his wife.
Speaker 1: They're in heaven now, but they we used to go to East Texas for Thanksgiving to visit all of Gladys' family, and so most of her family would be there and they would always make an effort to come and they would drive from Connecticut.
Speaker 1: They live in Connecticut, they drive all the way down because they preferred, they didn't like flying because, number one, it was expensive.
Speaker 1: Number two, when they got here they were kind of at the mercy of whoever could, you know, take them around.
Speaker 1: So they liked it, they liked to drive, but invariably they would have on that long trip.
Speaker 1: It's three days when you drive pretty steady and four days if you have any detours or any roadblocks, and there was.
Speaker 1: It seemed like there was always something going on, and at one time they almost missed Thanksgiving, they were so late getting here.
Speaker 1: And so you know, tonight again, god has a race for each of us.
Speaker 1: We're not running each other's race, we're not running against each other, but we are running our race and it takes endurance.
Speaker 1: So let's look at some of these common roadblocks in the faith race.
Speaker 1: The first one I want to talk about is number one failure to walk in love.
Speaker 1: That's a roadblock that will stop your faith, because Bible says in Galatians 5-6 that faith works by love.
Speaker 1: So when we're not walking in love, our faith isn't working and everything that we receive from God is by faith, everything.
Speaker 1: When faith is hindered, then our life begins to stop, it grinds to a halt.
Speaker 1: And so in 1 Corinthians 13-3, it says faith without love profits nothing, profits nothing.
Speaker 1: You can have faith without love and it profits nothing.
Speaker 1: And so when we talk about walking in love, well, you know Matthew 11-25, jesus tells us that we need to forgive.
Speaker 1: If we have all against any when we stand praying forgive, because if we don't forgive, then God won't forgive us and then the implication is, our prayer won't be answered.
Speaker 1: So unforgiveness is not walking in love.
Speaker 1: Envy James 3-16, envy.
Speaker 1: The world is filled with envy, right now especially.
Speaker 1: I mean there's all this class warfare, the haves and the have nots, and there's all of this competition and what's in the world tends to leak into the church.
Speaker 1: The pressure of it comes into the church because you know, we are spirit beings and we live in a body and that flesh can be tempted with envy, it can be tempted to covet what somebody else has, and so you have to watch that.
Speaker 1: And also, colossians 319 talks about a strife, and in fact it's worth looking at that verse, colossians 319, it says husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them.
Speaker 1: And then when you look at 1 Peter 3-7, peter says that husbands and wives are heirs together in the grace of God.
Speaker 1: And husbands, treat your wives right, otherwise your prayers are hindered.
Speaker 1: I've known men that mistreated their wives and that fell into all kinds of terrible things.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't that God punished them.
Speaker 1: It's because they opened the door to Satan when they stumbled over love.
Speaker 1: I mean, love starts at home.
Speaker 1: You've got to walk in love toward each other.
Speaker 1: And so strife, arguing, angry discourse, all of those things open the door to the enemy to steal, kill and destroy their roadblocks in your faith race.
Speaker 1: I've seen things get so bad.
Speaker 1: I've seen God called ministries.
Speaker 1: Their marriages disappear and just dissolve and divorce comes and in some cases a God called minister gets off track and gets out of the will of God because of the sins of the flesh.
Speaker 1: This is just a sin of the flesh, and yet the consequences many times are that a God called man or woman of God is taken out of his race and never do they accomplish what God really intended for them to accomplish.
Speaker 1: So in that case it wasn't just something that slowed them down, it's something that completely hindered them and altered their reason for being here.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying they went to hell, I'm just saying they didn't get to do what God called them to do.
Speaker 1: So some of these roadblocks can be quite significant and I'll tell you, walking in love is a great commandment.
Speaker 1: So let's always check.
Speaker 1: If things start slowing down, things don't work.
Speaker 1: In the first place, I'd look Is my love?
Speaker 1: Am I walking in love toward people?
Speaker 1: Am I forgiving?
Speaker 1: Am I easy to get along with, easy to be entreated, full of mercy?
Speaker 1: Amen, all right.
Speaker 1: And so the second roadblock is kin to that.
Speaker 1: It's disobedience.
Speaker 1: Of course we're not walking in love as disobedience.
Speaker 1: You're disobedient to the commandment of love.
Speaker 1: But this number two disobedience is by omission or by commission?
Speaker 1: I'll ask the question what is the last thing that God told you to do?
Speaker 1: Did you do it?
Speaker 1: Or what's the last thing God told you not to do and did you do it anyway?
Speaker 1: So disobedience can be by omission or by commission.
Speaker 1: In other words, another thing is not so much about going against God's voice, but sometimes we go against the inward witness.
Speaker 1: The inward witness is on the inside of us and it's that knowing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we know to do something and we resist.
Speaker 1: And every time we do that, when we go against what God is putting in our heart to do, when we go against it, that's disobedience, let's call it what it is.
Speaker 1: And when we delay, we put God off.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, god, I'll get to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd say delay to your disobedience.
Speaker 1: When you do that, you're opening the door to Satan to kill, steal and destroy, and so I've told this testimony many times.
Speaker 1: I've been delivered from the sorrow of it, but it was tough at the time.
Speaker 1: But I was a businessman, I was a home builder and I had worked my inventory down to one house.
Speaker 1: It was finished and that was all I had.
Speaker 1: I had one finished home.
Speaker 1: It was for sale.
Speaker 1: It's a nice house and I had no other obligations.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any other debts except on my home, might have had a car loan.
Speaker 1: But I mean, we were in pretty good shape, we'd sold a bunch of houses, had money in the bank and yet a builder I mean, that's what do they do?
Speaker 1: They build houses.
Speaker 1: And I got impatient.
Speaker 1: You know, let's run with patience the race that is set before us.
Speaker 1: I got impatient and I got a call from a subdivision sales office and I said, oh, mr Griner, we've got five prime lots.
Speaker 1: We'd like to make an offer and sell them to you.
Speaker 1: And they were like half price, they were just real cheap.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I haven't heard from God about this, and you know, and I kind of prayed, you know, but I didn't really wait around to hear.
Speaker 1: I was moved by the price.
Speaker 1: And so they prepared the paperwork and I went over to their office and I was sitting in that office and they had this big contract for five lots and and I knew, of course that's to buy those lots, but then I have to borrow the money to buy the lots and then I have to borrow the money to build the houses on the lot.
Speaker 1: So we're you're talking about a lot of money that I'm about to borrow on five lots.
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about in excess of that at that time, of excess of a half million dollars in debt that I'm, that I'm signing my name to, not right then, but eventually.
Speaker 1: And so, as I, they were just talking it up, talking it up oh, have you seen them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen them.
Speaker 1: Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1: They were still putting the hard sell on me and I'm sitting there with a pen in my hand and I have, I have this sick Feeling in my stomach.
Speaker 1: I have the witness, I have, I have a bread light.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything in me does not want to sign that thing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to walk out of that office and I knew if I did they would think I Was kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: And so the fear of man took over and I overrode the witness that I had not to do it and I signed those papers.
Speaker 1: And you talk about.
Speaker 1: It's not disobedience.
Speaker 1: See, I overrode, god didn't tell me in so many words.
Speaker 1: It's just that I disobeyed the inward witness.
Speaker 1: And you talk about a roadblock.
Speaker 1: Well, roadblock it doesn't mean that you just stop, it means that you detour, and for me that detour was ten years when I look back on that decision, it, it, it started a chain of events that lasted ten years and, of course, when you get off course and you're over here on an orbit or on a on a detour, you can have the chance to miss and have another detour on the detour, which is what happened to me.
Speaker 1: So it took me ten years to get back around into the perfect will of God, which is Glorious way, church.
Speaker 1: That's the perfect will of God.
Speaker 1: I finally made it back, thank God, god brought me back.
Speaker 1: But a disobedience is a is a roadblock.
Speaker 1: Let's, let's, let's always be quick till bay.
Speaker 1: All right, so Then the third one is I've already mentioned it the lack of patience.
Speaker 1: You know I was impatient, wasn't I lack of patience?
Speaker 1: Hebrew 612 faith and patience inherits the promises, you know.
Speaker 1: And of course, hebrews 12, to which we read earlier, you know You'd run with patience the race that is set before us.
Speaker 1: See, it's not the race set before somebody else.
Speaker 1: It's not the race set before your, your father or your or your parents or your or anyone else.
Speaker 1: It's your race and so you have to be have patience.
Speaker 1: You know, in Mark 427 says the whole kingdom of God is as if a man should cast seed into the ground and he would sleep and rise night and day and the seed should spring up, he knoweth not how.
Speaker 1: First the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear, and after that he, when the, when the fruit is ripe, immediately he puts in the sickle.
Speaker 1: So that implies that there is a time, there's a seed time.
Speaker 1: I Mean when we begin to do anything in life.
Speaker 1: There might be some Short-term goals or might be some long-term goals, but everything takes time.
Speaker 1: In the kingdom of God, nothing's instant, nothing.
Speaker 1: And then we live in an instant society.
Speaker 1: We get aggravated at Waterburger when we're asked to pull up to the next lane and wait there until they bring the order out.
Speaker 1: See, we're sitting there looking at our watch, looking at you know, trying to figure out what.
Speaker 1: How long is it gonna Take?
Speaker 1: Why didn't they have my water burger ready for me?
Speaker 1: Amen, I know I'm the only one that's like that.
Speaker 1: You're not like that, your patient, I know you are.
Speaker 1: But faith and patience, so patience.
Speaker 1: There's a time between the amen and there it is, and that's when we can get Eager, like that day I was eager to do something.
Speaker 1: See, I felt like, oh, I don't have any cash flow.
Speaker 1: I didn't need cash flow right then.
Speaker 1: I had plenty of money in the bank to live on.
Speaker 1: I needed to wait to hear the next thing from God.
Speaker 1: I needed to find out what his plan was.
Speaker 1: Instead, I wanted him to bless my plan.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And Luke 815 says that that you bring forth fruit with patience.
Speaker 1: With patience, I mean you don't plan an apple tree and get apples anytime soon.
Speaker 1: It takes a long time, you know.
Speaker 1: You plan it, plan an apple seed.
Speaker 1: You better get you pack a lunch.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take a while.
Speaker 1: So, and you know another verse that that I love, his first Corinthians three nine.
Speaker 1: It says, in fact, it's worth looking at first Corinthians three nine.
Speaker 1: It says For we are laborers together with God.
Speaker 1: See, that's the problem with impatience.
Speaker 1: When you get ahead of God, he's no longer laboring with him, you're laboring on your own.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna, you're not gonna succeed very well.
Speaker 1: No, we're laborers together with God.
Speaker 1: You are God's husbandry, you are God's building, and so the husbandry there means tillage.
Speaker 1: It really means a garden.
Speaker 1: You're God's garden.
Speaker 1: Did you ever plant a garden?
Speaker 1: I mean you don't just snap your fingers and have a crop.
Speaker 1: I mean again, it's seed time and harvest.
Speaker 1: It takes time to grow a garden and God has got plans for each of us and those plans have a measure of time associated with them and so, and then of course that we're God's building.
Speaker 1: And I was meditating on these verses you know I was thinking about as a home builder for 25 years.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of people don't realize what it takes to build a home.
Speaker 1: I didn't physically build a home, I was a contractor, so I used a telephone, a lot, to assemble my subcontractors.
Speaker 1: But I would drive up to a lot and this lot would be full of trees.
Speaker 1: It would have four red flags on it which would tell you where the corners of the lot were, and if you started your watch at that moment now I own this piece of property it's raw until I start building the house.
Speaker 1: How long is it?
Speaker 1: It'll just take a week or two.
Speaker 1: Well, no, it takes a long time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes 60, 90.
Speaker 1: In some cases, in the rainy times of the year, it might even take 120 days before I have anything on that lot taller than about two feet.
Speaker 1: I could go back to that same place in 90 days and all I would have on that whole lot would be a slab that sticks up above the ground, and yet that slab represents somewhere around 30% of my construction percentage.
Speaker 1: So you see, it took a lot of time just to get the thing up to where you could even see anything.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about having any walls.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about having a roof.
Speaker 1: None of that was on there yet.
Speaker 1: No lumber, just concrete.
Speaker 1: And so God is building you in it.
Speaker 1: You're not finished and he's not finished.
Speaker 1: You're working together, we're laborers, together with God, and so we can't get ahead of God.
Speaker 1: I mean, I tell you, all preparation is good, is good preparation.
Speaker 1: You know we're talking about race.
Speaker 1: I mean it's all kind of races.
Speaker 1: I know my daughter has run marathons.
Speaker 1: We've got several people in the church that have run marathons and they didn't just go out there show up one early Sunday morning.
Speaker 1: Usually they're on the Houston marathons on Sunday morning, so she had to skip church to go.
Speaker 1: But you don't show up there and just start running 26.2 miles.
Speaker 1: You have already prepared.
Speaker 1: You have already, you've prepared yourself, you have gone and you have done training.
Speaker 1: You started off with small amounts and then you got up to five miles and you got up to 10 miles and you did all this pacing and you learned how to pace yourself and so forth and so on, and it's a very rigorous preparation in order to run and to finish that race.
Speaker 1: Lots of people In fact.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the percentage is all, but I wouldn't be surprised if most people that start the race don't finish.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because of incomplete preparation, and preparation is not wasted time.
Speaker 1: Don't get ahead of God.
Speaker 1: Let God prepare you.
Speaker 1: Let God plant everything that needs to be planted.
Speaker 1: Let God add to your construction project everything it takes for you to be able to withstand the storms of life, because the storms of life come to all.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know who I'm encouraging tonight, but don't get ahead of God.
Speaker 1: As one I can testify it's not profitable to get ahead of God.
Speaker 1: It really isn't.
Speaker 1: And so, praise God, come on, let's just lift our hands and thank God for God's mercy.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about all the mistakes.
Speaker 1: You know I made so many mistakes.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that God redeems those mistakes, I don't beat myself up, I just preach out of them.
Speaker 1: You know I love Brother Osteen, brother Hagin, you know even Brother Copeland.
Speaker 1: I mean, they preach out their mistakes, they talk about their mistakes freely.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: So that people don't have to, you know, repeat what they've done wrong.
Speaker 1: All right, so we've gotten three things here Common roadblocks in the faith, race, failure to walk in love, disobedience, a lack of patience.
Speaker 1: I've got two more here.
Speaker 1: Can you take two more?
Speaker 1: I can't hear you, no, I'm just all right.
Speaker 1: Number four lack of gratitude.
Speaker 1: A lack of gratitude.
Speaker 1: You know, in Matthew 15, 36, jesus gave thanks for the seven loaves and the few fish before he ever multiplied them.
Speaker 1: He did the same thing with the five loaves and the two fish in Matthew 14.
Speaker 1: It didn't say he gave thanks, it said he blessed.
Speaker 1: He blessed the loaves and fishes, which includes giving thanks.
Speaker 1: So Jesus gave thanks for little before it came much.
Speaker 1: This is something we've got to get a hold of right here.
Speaker 1: This might be the worth worth.
Speaker 1: The price of admission for the whole night is we need to be willing to thank God for our little before it becomes much.
Speaker 1: So we've got much in our thinking.
Speaker 1: Our faith has grabbed a hold of much.
Speaker 1: We're confessing that we believe we receive much.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side, you have to be thankful for what you've got.
Speaker 1: Right now You've got to be thankful for what is.
Speaker 1: And so our lack of gratitude is a roadblock.
Speaker 1: It will stop your faith from working.
Speaker 1: It will stop your faith from moving the mountain out of your way.
Speaker 1: You know, in Acts 16, 25, paul and Silas were on their first missionary journey together and they had prayed, you know, and as they were praying they decided okay, come on, silas, let's go into Bithynia.
Speaker 1: And somehow the spirit wouldn't allow them.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how the Holy Ghost conveyed that to them it doesn't say but it could have been just simply the witness that they felt a hesitancy as they decided and discussed about going into Bithynia, the Holy Spirit wouldn't let them go.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia Minor.
Speaker 1: Well, weren't they told to go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the general will of God.
Speaker 1: But for them, at that moment, god didn't want them to go into Asia Minor, and he doesn't always tell you why.
Speaker 1: So now they've got two places, they're not supposed to go.
Speaker 1: So what did they do?
Speaker 1: They didn't go forward, they waited.
Speaker 1: And then God gave them direction and guidance through the ministry of visions and dreams.
Speaker 1: Don't ever ask for a dream.
Speaker 1: Don't ask for visions.
Speaker 1: Just wait for God to guide you the way that he wants to guide you.
Speaker 1: But in this case, paul had a dream and he dreamed that a Macedonian man in the dream said come over and help us.
Speaker 1: And so that's when they gathered up their camping equipment and they moved out to go to Macedonia.
Speaker 1: And then they meet this woman and she gets saved and she invites them to come and stay with her and she fixes them meals.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, they get out there and they start preaching and the crowd gets all angry and comes against them and they start beating them and they get arrested and they were beating with many stripes and thrown into the inner prison.
Speaker 1: Now, if they hadn't known by the Holy Ghosts that they were in the right place, doing the right thing, they could have doubted.
Speaker 1: They could have thought uh-oh, we missed God.
Speaker 1: I mean, we opened the door to the devil.
Speaker 1: No, they didn't miss God.
Speaker 1: They were in God's will.
Speaker 1: Wasn't God's will for them to be beaten?
Speaker 1: But I'm saying they were in God's will.
Speaker 1: So they got locked up in prison their hands and feet in stocks.
Speaker 1: And the Bible says in Acts 16, 25, at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't get much more severe.
Speaker 1: I doubt if anybody that's listening to me tonight has ever been thrown in prison, has ever been beaten with many stripes.
Speaker 1: And yet they were.
Speaker 1: And yet they founded in their heart to rejoice.
Speaker 1: And the Bible says they rejoice so loud that all the prisoners heard them.
Speaker 1: And we know the devil heard them, because the devil tried to kill them with an earthquake, but God invaded the earthquake and broke everybody out of jail and the jailer and his old family got saved.
Speaker 1: Praise God.
Speaker 1: So your joy and your praise, even when things are hard, even when things are going on, you're not praising God for the trouble.
Speaker 1: You're praising God in the midst of the trouble.
Speaker 1: You're praising God because he's your way out of the trouble.
Speaker 1: And your joy and praise lets the devil know that he can't win and he didn't win.
Speaker 1: It's your whining and complaining that lets him know that he's on the right track, so he's going to give you more of it.
Speaker 1: So let's learn to rejoice and have an attitude of gratitude all the time.
Speaker 1: Let's just make it a habit to be praising God all the time.
Speaker 1: It's so easy to be irritated.
Speaker 1: Right now there's so many irritated people.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have Trump arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 1: They're angry, they're coming unglued.
Speaker 1: Let's not let that spirit get on us.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have to turn off the television or the radio, turn it off.
Speaker 1: Don't let it affect your joy.
Speaker 1: Just lift your hands, start praising God.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: We still live in the greatest country on the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot to praise God about.
Speaker 1: Let's not forget the good stuff.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of good stuff in this country, and so let's not forget about the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's praise God.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 1: And then the last one here lack of gratitude.
Speaker 1: Now the last one is failure to move from hope to faith.
Speaker 1: So the Bible says in Hebrews 11, one that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Speaker 1: So you know, without hope, faith can't exist.
Speaker 1: You have to hope for something.
Speaker 1: Hope is in the future Hope.
Speaker 1: You're seeing something out there and you want to bring it to you and so as long as it's out there, it's not going to get to you.
Speaker 1: So what does faith do?
Speaker 1: Faith brings it to you now.
Speaker 1: Faith says I have it now.
Speaker 1: Faith believing is possessing.
Speaker 1: Believing is possessing.
Speaker 1: Faith says I have that thing.
Speaker 1: I believe I received that thing and then I shall have it.
Speaker 1: See, that shall have comes later.
Speaker 1: Right Again, that's where you have to have patience, but the shall have comes later.
Speaker 1: But you still have to say now, faith is a now.
Speaker 1: It's always in the now.
Speaker 1: You have to watch your tenses.
Speaker 1: Be careful about hope.
Speaker 1: If you don't, it's good to start off with hope, but then you've got to bring hope into faith, and the only way to do that is to be assured that what you're hoping for belongs to you.
Speaker 1: If what you're hoping for belongs to you, then you have the right to claim it and say I have it now.
Speaker 1: I believe I receive it now, then you shall have it.
Speaker 1: And so, and what happens when you hope and hope and hope and you really never really exercise faith?
Speaker 1: Well, the hope I mean you're not.
Speaker 1: You don't get what you hope for.
Speaker 1: You get what you say.
Speaker 1: That's what you.
Speaker 1: You have what you say.
Speaker 1: You don't have what you hope.
Speaker 1: You don't even have what you believe.
Speaker 1: You have what you say, and so you have to believe it in your heart, speak it with your mouth, then you shall have it.
Speaker 1: And so hope deferred Proverbs 13, 12,.
Speaker 1: Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
Speaker 1: I've seen people that just had these dreams.
Speaker 1: They had a hope.
Speaker 1: They never really had Bible faith over it and they spent their whole life hoping, wishing, hoping.
Speaker 1: They never knew it was theirs, it never believed it was theirs really.
Speaker 1: In their heart they were just hoping, kind of dreaming, and it makes you sour, it makes you mad at God.
Speaker 1: I had a woman that came to our church for a while and she was a good lady, a business woman, and she wanted to meet Gladys.
Speaker 1: Now, one day she was struggling with some things and I noticed her countenance was never full of joy.
Speaker 1: She was always kind of grim looking and so I.
Speaker 1: We met as many years ago and she had come from another church and another denominational church.
Speaker 1: She didn't have the kind of teaching that we have.
Speaker 1: She'd been here a while, but not long enough for this teaching to get into her spirit.
Speaker 1: And she says well, I'm just disappointed.
Speaker 1: I won't tell what age, but she's getting up in age.
Speaker 1: She's not technically past childbearing age, but getting close, and she's not married, never had been married.
Speaker 1: And she said I'm real disappointed.
Speaker 1: She said I just it looks like I'm not going to have what I've always dreamed of, always dreamed of having children.
Speaker 1: And I said well, you know you're having children.
Speaker 1: What about marriage?
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like we got to get marriage first.
Speaker 1: And I started I didn't mean to laugh, but I laughed, and so I don't think she liked that either.
Speaker 1: And so I said what's the deal?
Speaker 1: How come you haven't been married?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a successful business woman.
Speaker 1: I said what she said oh, I just had never met a Christian that I liked, and I know I shouldn't marry an unbeliever.
Speaker 1: And so right there I could tell she was picky, too picky, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's good to be, have a high standard, but come on, you're, you're getting up in age.
Speaker 1: You know if you really want a child, you better get married.
Speaker 1: And so I said well, what's the deal?
Speaker 1: What do you?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: She said well, I'm, I'll be honest, I'm just mad at God.
Speaker 1: I said, well, what did God do?
Speaker 1: Why are you believing God?
Speaker 1: For this it's you.
Speaker 1: You didn't get married, you didn't even look.
Speaker 1: And everybody that didn't meet your standards, you just asked them off.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you looked everywhere?
Speaker 1: Have you been everywhere?
Speaker 1: No, you haven't.
Speaker 1: You're busy making money, making the living.
Speaker 1: And so I kind of fussed at her about, about getting mad at.
Speaker 1: I can't stand when people tell me they're mad at God.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry it's so stupid, but anyway.
Speaker 1: So we can't get glad.
Speaker 1: Thank God gladness was there.
Speaker 1: That's the only way I'm going to meet with a woman is with gladness and me in there together.
Speaker 1: So she was ministering to her a little bit and finally I said what, why is this so strong?
Speaker 1: Why are you blaming God?
Speaker 1: She said well, I had a word one time that I would be married and have three children.
Speaker 1: I said obviously that's a false prophet.
Speaker 1: Where'd you get that prophecy?
Speaker 1: I don't remember who was it.
Speaker 1: I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I said so you have lived your whole life based on a word from somebody.
Speaker 1: You can't remember who it is and you don't even remember where it was and when it was.
Speaker 1: I said that, do you hear yourself?
Speaker 1: That's foolish and you're blaming God.
Speaker 1: You ought to blame yourself.
Speaker 1: I said, first of all, prophets don't prophesy like that in the New Testament.
Speaker 1: That's not, that's not legitimate.
Speaker 1: And I said you have to act.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you believe something like that, you never did act on it.
Speaker 1: So it's your, that one that's responsible, not God.
Speaker 1: And so you know.
Speaker 1: I think we made some headway and she stayed with us another few years and eventually she left, like a lot of people do.
Speaker 1: I don't think she was offended, but there is a situation where she was hoping and wishing, wishing and hoping, hoping and listening.
Speaker 1: You've got to move into faith and you've got to know that that belongs to you.
Speaker 1: You got to have something besides some man prophesying, something You've got to have.
Speaker 1: You've got to have a relationship with God, personal enough for him to let you know what his will is for your life.
Speaker 1: He's not going to use some third party.
Speaker 1: That's Old Testament, that's not New Testament.
Speaker 1: And so another time I had a young man, 18 years old, and I don't remember how we met, but he went with us on a full gospel businessmen retreat for the weekend.
Speaker 1: We were going up to Kerville, mo Ranch, beautiful place on the Guadalupe River, and he had been diagnosed with cancer, 18.
Speaker 1: And it was terminal and he looked good.
Speaker 1: He was healthy still, but he had this terminal disease and he said, oh, I know the Lord's going to heal me.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, when I'm hearing that I'm, I'm, I'm knowing, uh, oh, we've been administered to him.
Speaker 1: He went to a denominational church and it was not aware of word of faith teaching.
Speaker 1: So we spent the whole way up out to Kerville six hour drive preaching to him, getting him built up, helping him confess the word right, and we'd get him speaking right, you know.
Speaker 1: And then we'd relax and drink a Coke and kind of talk about something else.
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, I know God's going to heal me, so you can undo somebody's habit that they've grown up with all their born days.
Speaker 1: And and so we got there, minister to him and the main speaker heard about him the next day and he spent the whole afternoon with him and he was worn out.
Speaker 1: He was a doctor himself, he was the main speaker of the Saturday night session.
Speaker 1: And he came back to our cab and he said, man, I've just worked so hard but I can't seem to make any headway.
Speaker 1: He just still.
Speaker 1: Just, he keeps putting it off to the future.
Speaker 1: He keeps saying God's going to heal him, god's going to Jesus going to heal him.
Speaker 1: Gonna, gonna, gonna, gonna.
Speaker 1: And we could not get or get over to the I mean had he even read it in the Word himself bear our sicknesses and took past tense our infirmities.
Speaker 1: I mean, is that present tense, future tense?
Speaker 1: You know the whole, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It was a stronghold.
Speaker 1: It's a roadblock hope, hope.
Speaker 1: If you can't get hope into faith, it's a roadblock.
Speaker 1: And so we, we parted company at the end of the weekend with not having made any progress with him.
Speaker 1: And I got a call a few months later and a friend was up there with him in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And so I went to him and I leaned over his bed.
Speaker 1: He was just wasting away 80 pounds and very near death.
Speaker 1: He couldn't talk out loud.
Speaker 1: I've been over the bed.
Speaker 1: He said I'm still believing Jesus is going to heal me.
Speaker 1: And I just pat him on the head and smiled at him.
Speaker 1: He was gone in a few hours.
Speaker 1: He went to heaven.
Speaker 1: Praise God, he went to heaven.
Speaker 1: I mean, he, he, he busted into heaven, you know.
Speaker 1: But he didn't get what God's best because he never could convert his faith from being hope roadblocks.
Speaker 1: And so let's determine to remove the roadblocks on our faith highway and then we won't have any detours.
Speaker 1: Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight Hallelujah, thank God.
Speaker 1: Well, that was kind of a downer to finish it, but it's not a downer when people go to heaven.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, just because people don't grab a hold of what we teach, you can grab a hold of what we teach you can.
Speaker 1: You can make it work for you and, uh, and many people do praise God.
Speaker 1: God is so good.