SPEAKER_01: You're listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight, I want to talk about, we've talked about different spirits, we've talked about an outlook that leads to breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: But tonight, I want to discuss this whole idea of an impossible situation.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do, and we all have this from time to time in our life, when we come across something that is maybe health-wise or financially or relationally impossible.
SPEAKER_00: You just don't see a way to get through this thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to call it the way of impossible breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: The way of impossible breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: That there's actually a way all through Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, through impossible situations that God wants to show up on, and as a matter of fact, he majors in it.
SPEAKER_00: You could say that a thesis of the life of God in a man or a woman's life is how to help you break through impossible situations.
SPEAKER_00: So last night we talked about the nevertheless spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And the nevertheless spirit is a little God with giant problems.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's a breakthrough spirit, which is a big God with pygmy problems.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that there aren't giant problems for the person who has a breakthrough spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that their God is bigger than that problem.
SPEAKER_00: And it and it kind of shrink, you know, who shrunk the kids?
SPEAKER_00: Remember that movie who shrunk the kids?
SPEAKER_00: Who shrunk the problem?
SPEAKER_00: God did.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: He shrinks problems.
SPEAKER_00: So today, I was with a person who was sharing his story of shame, of brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: And in our discussion, he began to share about this thing that at times comes over him that's so despairing that it seems like the only way out is to commit suicide.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that depressive, it's that heavy.
SPEAKER_00: And immediately I could relate to that because back in the 90s, I went through a period of panic attacks and anxiety attacks that would just come over me.
SPEAKER_00: And in one particular situation, it was really bad.
SPEAKER_00: Liz was with me, and we were in Southern California, and I literally balled up into a fetal position and wept for three or four hours straight.
SPEAKER_00: I was just overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_00: And then I could feel it coming in the years that followed.
SPEAKER_00: And it took about three more years before I was finally set free from this scene.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today he and I were relating because I could relate so much to what he was saying.
SPEAKER_00: His was way worse than mine, so I didn't want to overly empathize like I had, oh yeah, I know what that's like, because I don't know what that level of attack and maybe even demonic presence is like, but I knew a little bit of what it was like.
SPEAKER_00: But today I had, I've got a new term.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know, it's probably not even the term.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make it up.
SPEAKER_00: It's a Steve Holt term now.
SPEAKER_00: It was a shame attack.
SPEAKER_00: So I've never heard anybody say call something a shame attack, but it was a shame attack.
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean is it's, and you guys, everybody here, I think you're gonna know what I'm talking about, where you get diminished uh momentarily.
SPEAKER_00: You're just going through your day and you're doing just fine.
SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly something happens and you feel like, man, I'm a loser.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm just I'm such a shmo.
SPEAKER_00: Um I can't believe that happened to me.
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I let that happen.
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe that that this person said this, but yeah, it's true about me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way I am, and that's a shame attack.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly you just start spinning into kind of emotionally and psychologically and spiritually out of control, and nobody notices but you probably but you.
SPEAKER_00: But before you know it, you were happy, you were joyful, and then the shame attack comes, and you're just beating yourself up.
SPEAKER_00: You're not thin enough, you're not good looking enough, you're a failure.
SPEAKER_00: How could you be that?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how could a person, how could you be, what do you think?
SPEAKER_00: You call yourself a Christian and you did that?
SPEAKER_00: I call that a shame attack.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to know something.
SPEAKER_00: That today I said to myself, I said, I'm a I'm a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a disciple, I'm a wholehearted disciple.
SPEAKER_00: I'm called to be a pastor, I'm called to be a leader, I'm called to be a good dad, I'm called to be a good husband, I'm called to make a difference, I'm called to make an impact, I'm called to change people's lives.
SPEAKER_00: I belong.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm right where God wants me to be, and I'm gonna press in, and I'm gonna reach in, and I'm gonna discover the power of the Spirit right now and lift it.
SPEAKER_00: The reason I say that is because sometimes those kind of situations are the impossible situations that we face that some of you, including myself, it gets the best of us and it drives us down.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have enough, if you string out enough of those, you can live in a state of despair.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to say that it's possible to have shame resilience and shame anointing to break through that, but you have to renew your mind.
SPEAKER_00: You have to say stuff to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to say it and say it and say it until the spirits leave.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to look at a situation in Scripture, Mark chapter 9, which by anybody's estimation is an impossible situation, and Jesus comes through with a breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we can see here this way of impossible breakthrough through the life of Christ, and he did this often, but this one's unique in what he teaches us about breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: Because 90% of believers never experience impossible breakthrough because we give up too early.
SPEAKER_00: It gets tough for us, and we kind of have that o serah serah sovereignty thinking.
SPEAKER_00: O serah, serah, sovereignty thinking is, well, it must have been God's will.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so sick of hearing that.
SPEAKER_00: And I guess if you put me on a scale of reformed, Calvinistic, Armenian free will, I lean more toward being a Calvinist.
SPEAKER_00: So I believe in the sovereignty of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm probably a four-point, not a five-point, it might be 3.7%, you know, on the five scale of the tulip.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality, most of you don't know what I'm talking about, so don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna teach systematic theology sometime, and you'll, oh, I know what he was talking about when he said that.
SPEAKER_00: But for now, it's this laxadaisical kind of lazy attitude toward things that are gonna take a fighter to get through, and we just say, well, it just must have been God's will.
SPEAKER_00: When God's saying, No, I want you to fight through that thing.
SPEAKER_00: We can break through this thing, but we just would rather, you know, watch our TV than fight in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And so, and so we don't experience breakthrough in the impossible because it's so much easier not to.
SPEAKER_00: So in Mark chapter 9, we have a boy that or a young man that's mute.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is off doing something else.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's separated from his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples have cast out demons before and been successful.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're trying to cast out this spirit, this mute spirit out of this young man, and they cannot do it.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus comes upon the scene.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: And when he came to the disciples, he saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them.
SPEAKER_00: Immediately, when they saw him, all the people were greatly amazed, and running to him greeted him, and he asked the scribes, What are you discussing with them?
SPEAKER_00: Then one of the crowd answered and said, Teacher, I I brought you my son who has a mute spirit, and wherever it seizes him, it throws him down, he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid.
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty impossible, it's a pretty severe case.
SPEAKER_00: So I spoke to your disciples and they that they should cast it out.
SPEAKER_00: So I think the disciples thought they could, because they had.
SPEAKER_00: They had a track record of success on this.
SPEAKER_00: But they could not.
SPEAKER_00: He answered him and said, Oh, faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?
SPEAKER_00: How long shall I bear with you?
SPEAKER_00: Bring him to me.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus identifies faithlessness as the issue.
SPEAKER_00: And it seems like he's actually kind of exasperated by it.
SPEAKER_00: Then they brought him to him, and when he saw him immediately, the spirit convulsed him and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.
SPEAKER_00: It's not getting better.
SPEAKER_00: So he asked his father, How long has this been happening to him?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, From childhood.
SPEAKER_00: So this has been a long time.
SPEAKER_00: And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water, destroy him.
SPEAKER_00: But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.
SPEAKER_00: The operable word here is, but if you can do anything.
SPEAKER_00: So pretty impossible situation.
SPEAKER_00: We've got, and this is the problem with demonization, is it's sometimes hard to know where demons end and mental illness begins.
SPEAKER_00: Where does mental illness end and demonization begin?
SPEAKER_00: And I just think it's all true.
SPEAKER_00: It's all there because we're so closely tied up mentally, emotionally, uh, psychologically, and spiritually that it's hard to know.
SPEAKER_00: And so this spirit has enough control over the young man that wherever he goes, it could just happen to him haphazard.
SPEAKER_00: But there's probably, I mean, there's probably some real trauma in this young man's life that created an avenue and an opportunity for this spirit to come upon him when he was a young man.
SPEAKER_00: When we were living in Okinawa, Japan, we came across this couple who, the Waita, Waeta-San family, who had a child who had spina bifida.
SPEAKER_00: And so they had to carry this little child everywhere and had a very deformed face and was kind of like this and would never sit up.
SPEAKER_00: And so the family would come, and even though what I was doing was a collegiate ministry, they were in their 20s, they would still come.
SPEAKER_00: They kind of became these groupies that hung out with us, and they'd always sit in the back with this child on a towel.
SPEAKER_00: And the wife got pregnant, and Wade Sign came to us one day to show us a sonogram that showed from the sonogram that this child seemingly didn't even have a nose, and it was a it looked like it was going to be a repeat of what had happened with the last child.
SPEAKER_00: About 10 years ago, we were um we were living in Black Forest, we live right now, and I'm telling you, man, you have a lot of kids, uh, you got hasselt to know this.
SPEAKER_00: You never have enough money.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're always like there they eat way too much, you know, and it's like, whoa.
SPEAKER_00: And I've been at their house when we've had a meal, and and it's like, seriously, two weeks worth of food, three weeks worth of food consumed in one night.
SPEAKER_00: So it's nothing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, for us, it's nothing but because we only had seven kids.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, there's a lot of things that can go out on you.
SPEAKER_00: Your electricity can go out, okay, light candles.
SPEAKER_00: You know, your water heater goes in, okay, cold showers.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I could go down the line.
SPEAKER_00: But there's one thing that's pretty important, and it's your septic tank.
SPEAKER_00: And when your septic tank goes out, that's not good.
SPEAKER_00: It's really not good.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, even though and we live in the woods, so we do have more options than suburban people have.
SPEAKER_00: But we ran out, our septic busted, if we found out it's like a million years old.
SPEAKER_00: It was like there was a car down there that whoever was there before used to use.
SPEAKER_00: I guess they just drained the pipes right into the, you know, the dashboard, and then it rolled down the dashboard in the front two seats, then it took up the back seats, and then there's no more.
SPEAKER_00: Um there was no more room.
SPEAKER_00: Trunk, you know, drill into the trunk, we can fill up the trunk.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, something like that.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a car, but that that's not a bad idea.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you've seen one of those things, man, I mean, a car would work great, you know, just run it out some windows and stuff into the field.
SPEAKER_00: But we had no money.
SPEAKER_00: We were we only had$1,000 and it was going to cost$5,000 to fix, and we needed to fix it.
SPEAKER_00: So we come across these situations, men and women, these impossible situations where we don't have resources to fix it.
SPEAKER_00: This father doesn't have any resources.
SPEAKER_00: He's probably tried everything, and he comes now to Jesus and he says, if you can do anything.
SPEAKER_00: And I like what Jesus says in verse 23, because it's not, the English isn't fair to what he's actually being facetious about.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says in your English Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him, if you can believe, comma, all things are possible to him who believes.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it really means in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is, are you saying to me?
SPEAKER_00: Are you saying to me, can I believe?
SPEAKER_00: Is that what you're saying to me?
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: With God, all things are possible.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine Jesus is in here and you've got a child that's got a cancer or is missing a limb or is convulsed all the time with epileptic seizures, as we would call it today, epileptic seizures, and you say to Jesus, Jesus, if you believe, you can heal him.
SPEAKER_00: Here's our first point tonight.
SPEAKER_00: To to break through faith, break through impossible situations, and number one is faith.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to have faith.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, is that, if I heard what you said to me, I can't believe you said that to me, but you must believe.
SPEAKER_00: And if you believe, I can do anything.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I do.
SPEAKER_00: That is my MO.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's two kinds of faith.
SPEAKER_00: There's salvation faith, which it took to get saved, but then it's impossible breakthrough faith that has to be developed.
SPEAKER_00: So, so salvation, faith, listen now, it's a gift of God, but but faith that breaks into the impossible is developed.
SPEAKER_00: You have the gift already, but now it has to be developed in your life.
SPEAKER_00: So turn back in Mark to Mark chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: And I think of Mark as one of the great faith, signs and wonders, faith, and possible breakthrough books of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: This is a book of anecdotes.
SPEAKER_00: This is a book of living examples of how faith works.
SPEAKER_00: So look at Mark 5, verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: Now a certain woman had a flow of blood for twelve years, and had suffered many things for many physicians.
SPEAKER_00: She had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse.
SPEAKER_00: When she heard about Jesus, she came behind him in the crowd and touched his garment.
SPEAKER_00: For she said, If only I may touch his clothes, I shall be made well.
SPEAKER_00: Immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of this affliction, an impossible situation.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that power had gone out of him, turned around in the crowd and said, Who touched my clothes?
SPEAKER_00: But his disciples said to him, You see the multitude thronging you, and you say, Who touched me?
SPEAKER_00: And he looked around to see her, he who had done this thing.
SPEAKER_00: But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: He said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well.
SPEAKER_00: Go in peace and be healed of your affliction.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say God healed her, though God did, Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Your faith is what made this healing happen.
SPEAKER_00: Now go to chapter 6, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, speaking to those in Nazareth, said, A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.
SPEAKER_00: Now he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.
SPEAKER_00: And he marveled because of their unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in some of our houses and in some of our families and some of our lives, God cannot work in you.
SPEAKER_00: God cannot work in your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: God cannot work with your kids.
SPEAKER_00: God cannot work in your family.
SPEAKER_00: There's churches.
SPEAKER_00: God can't work in those churches because of their unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the lack of faith, God's knocking at the door.
SPEAKER_00: You realize that Revelation 3.20, behold, I stand at the door and knock.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone hears my voice and opens that door, I will come in him.
SPEAKER_00: Is written to Jesus knocking on the door of the church.
SPEAKER_00: We often use it as an evangelistic passage.
SPEAKER_00: I know I do, but that's not primarily the context.
SPEAKER_00: The context is that Jesus is knocking on the door of the church.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to get into the church.
SPEAKER_00: He's knocking on the door of your house and he wants to get into your house.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to rule over your house.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to do miracles and impossible things in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: But because of our lack of faith and because of our unbelief, he can't do any works there.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's this woman who's so desperate with this hemorrhaging, this flow of blood, that she breaks all protocol, fights her way to the front, grabs the tassels of his robe, and the power of God comes through because of that little bit of faith that she had.
SPEAKER_00: That desperation faith, that fighting faith that's within her.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the first thing faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith.
SPEAKER_00: Gotta develop faith for God to do the impossible.
SPEAKER_00: So we ask, how do we develop this kind of faith?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's two things.
SPEAKER_00: There's probably ten, but I'll give you two.
SPEAKER_00: One is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: We develop faith by reading and reading and reading and meditating and studying God's word, being in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, be in God's word as much as you can every day.
SPEAKER_00: Got problems at work?
SPEAKER_00: Be in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Got problems in your marriage?
SPEAKER_00: Be in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Got problems in your dating relationships?
SPEAKER_00: Be in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Got problems with your finances?
SPEAKER_00: Be in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: The pre-incarnate Christ coming in the form of a soldier, in the form of a general, with a sword and probably a shield, looking awesome, comes before Joshua before he's going to go into the promised land at Jericho and commands him to bow down before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is the guy he says, this book of the law, Joshua 1.8, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it.
SPEAKER_00: For then you will make your ways prosperous, and then you will have good success.
SPEAKER_00: Success comes from God's word.
SPEAKER_00: God builds up your faith.
SPEAKER_00: God builds up your confidence in Christ as you spend time in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: It's the most important thing we can do is to pray God's word, is to read God's word.
SPEAKER_00: To read a passage like we read tonight with this woman with the hemorrhage.
SPEAKER_00: It says, verse 34 again in chapter 5, he says, Your faith has made you well.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, would you give me the faith to be made well?
SPEAKER_00: That's praying God's word.
SPEAKER_00: You read the passage, you pray it back to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You don't just read and go, wow, that's an amazing lady.
SPEAKER_00: But you say, I want that.
SPEAKER_00: Daughter, your faith has made you well.
SPEAKER_00: God, I ask that you would give me this kind of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Would you download this kind of faith into me that I would be made well, that my wife would be made well, that my husband would be made well, that my son and my daughter would be made well, that my son that's at college and my daughter that's in her new job, God, that they would walk in wellness and health, body, soul, and spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Give me faith to pray that way.
SPEAKER_00: That's praying God's word.
SPEAKER_00: And then the passage says, Go in peace and be healed of your affliction.
SPEAKER_00: God, I need peace right now.
SPEAKER_00: Would you give me that kind of peace that I could walk in peace and break through affliction in my life?
SPEAKER_00: Man, men and women, we start praying that, and you know, I mean, nobody does it every day.
SPEAKER_00: But if you do that almost every day, you think God's not gonna start to build up your faith and strengthen your faith with that kind of prayer?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna start being faced with situations where you're gonna break through and you'll just be, ah, can't, I did that?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, your faith did that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing, the second thing that builds up faith is experience.
SPEAKER_00: Putting yourself in situations where you don't quit.
SPEAKER_00: You don't give up, but you push through.
SPEAKER_00: Finances are low, and you don't quit.
SPEAKER_00: You don't give up, you push through.
SPEAKER_00: Got some conflicts in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You work it out, you press in, you fight for it.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's only through these small victories that we start being allowed by God and elevated in the school of faith to bigger things.
SPEAKER_00: I remember learning to raise support as a missionary, and and the first time I went to Newport Beach, California with Campus Crusade, and I needed$800.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, and then and then raised$800.
SPEAKER_00: And then later it was uh it was an opportunity to um to go into Eastern Europe and smuggle Bibles, and I needed$3,000, and we raised$3,000.
SPEAKER_00: And I could go on into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
SPEAKER_00: And and I've probably raised over a million dollars over the years financially, but it started with that first$800, just starting there, you know, asking people if they'd be willing to support us to go do this mission and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and same with our jobs.
SPEAKER_00: There's situations where we have fear about a certain kind of job, but but you know, God's called you to that.
SPEAKER_00: So you press in.
SPEAKER_00: You ask God to give you courage to overcome that fear in your life.
SPEAKER_00: So it's experience.
SPEAKER_00: And too many of us cut and run.
SPEAKER_00: Don't cut and run.
SPEAKER_00: Press in.
SPEAKER_00: And like I said that first night, we need bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_00: We need some men, like David had in that valley, the valley of breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: He had men with him.
SPEAKER_00: He couldn't have done it alone.
SPEAKER_00: And so, men, you need some men.
SPEAKER_00: Women, you need some women in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Who are not quitters.
SPEAKER_00: They'll press in.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You know what, we'll do this together.
SPEAKER_00: We'll pray about this together.
SPEAKER_00: So, faith.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is faith.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus presses in.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24 of Mark 9.
SPEAKER_00: Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a really loving father.
SPEAKER_00: He really cares about his son, and he really wants to believe.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, Deaf and dumb spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that it's talked about a mute spirit, but then he calls out a deaf and dumb spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I find that interesting.
SPEAKER_00: I command you come out of him and enter him no more.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, they do say that it's pretty hard to speak if you haven't heard anything.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if he was misdiagnosed or if Mark just doesn't put that in, the deaf and dumb spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Then the spirit cried out, so now we know it's a demon.
SPEAKER_00: And it convulsed him greatly and came out of him, and he became as one dead, so that many said, He is dead.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus took him by his hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could we not cast it out?
SPEAKER_00: And so he said to them, This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Here's our second point tonight.
SPEAKER_00: That the second way of impossible breakthrough is faith through prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Or another way we could say it is faith through asking.
SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon was the one who said, whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: If you may have everything by asking in his name, and not listen, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is.
SPEAKER_00: So everything comes through asking.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing happens without asking.
SPEAKER_00: So the kingdom belongs to the violent.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom belongs to the passionate.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom belongs to the bold, who want all of God's blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said it this way: if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
SPEAKER_00: By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Ask and it will be given to you.
SPEAKER_00: Seek and you will find.
SPEAKER_00: Knock and it will be open to you.
SPEAKER_00: For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be open.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 33, 3 is considered the phone number of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know.
SPEAKER_00: Mark 11, 24.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, I believe that you receive them and you will have them.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 21, 22, whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.
SPEAKER_00: Let me encourage you with your journals, start a list of asking God for stuff.
SPEAKER_00: What do you want from God?
SPEAKER_00: John R.
SPEAKER_00: Rice was one of the great old-time radio preachers back in the 20s and 30s.
SPEAKER_00: And I came across a book called Prayer, Asking and Receiving.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, it's out of print now.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember last time I checked on like Amazon, which was like five or six years ago, I found three copies in the United States, and I got them.
SPEAKER_00: And they're really old.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, they're from the 1940s.
SPEAKER_00: So they're like vintage.
SPEAKER_00: But I love that book because every chapter, it's this thick, is all about asking and receiving from God.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, that's what prayer is.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is asking.
SPEAKER_00: It's funny.
SPEAKER_00: I was putting in, I was trying to find another good quote on asking from God today.
SPEAKER_00: And you know how when you put in like quotes and stuff, you'll get these images.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Where it's got it like people made posters out of them.
SPEAKER_00: And I saw this one that said, prayer is never asking.
SPEAKER_00: And da-da-da-da.
SPEAKER_00: And like, who said that?
SPEAKER_00: And it was Gandhi.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so okay, so the Hindus say, don't ask.
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, you're supposed to ask.
SPEAKER_00: You ask for what God.
SPEAKER_00: You go to God and you ask for stuff, and do not be shy about it.
SPEAKER_00: But cry out to God for your finances.
SPEAKER_00: Cry out to God for your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Ask, ask, ask.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: So then he says, thirdly, third way of impossible breakthrough is faith through prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for many of you in this room, this seems impossible.
SPEAKER_00: How in the world could you ever even miss a meal?
SPEAKER_00: I hate fasting.
SPEAKER_00: But I discovered fasting back in 1978.
SPEAKER_00: In 1978, on the gymnastics team with athletes in action, I was training with them.
SPEAKER_00: Several of them were Olympians.
SPEAKER_00: They introduced me to fasting.
SPEAKER_00: They were using it more from the perspective of a physical training and gymnastics and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But then later, over time, began to discover the spiritual value of fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus fasted and prayed.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples fasted and prayed.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament saints fasted and prayed.
SPEAKER_00: The early church fasted and prayed.
SPEAKER_00: It is a formula for breaking through impossible situations.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Do not ask me how it works.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a clue how it works.
SPEAKER_00: I remember being around a bunch of Koreans years ago and they fast and pray about everything.
SPEAKER_00: And I met some people that were like 80 and 90 years old that were, it just finished 40-day fasts and uh and beaming, just happy as a June bug in spring.
SPEAKER_00: They were just so happy.
SPEAKER_00: And they were praying for relatives to get saved.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Koreans are just, Koreans are just animals for the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: They really are.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember they used to put me under the pile all the time on my team in Japan because they were always fasting about something.
SPEAKER_00: I see, well, we'd be having all this food, you know, at staff meetings, and my Koreans aren't eating.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what are you guys fasting about now?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just, I'm fasting for uh Yuko to get saved.
SPEAKER_00: And okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the next week, you know, it's that that Kazu would get saved.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I feel like such a bloated, you know, soft American.
SPEAKER_00: And these these Koreans, they're they're getting everybody saved left and right.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but fasting and prayer, there's something powerful about it.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's um, I don't know, it's the key of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this family, and they've got this this baby who's got spina bifida.
SPEAKER_00: They've just uh they come up and they show us, Liz and I, the uh the sonogram that shows it looks like they don't have a nose or anything.
SPEAKER_00: So would you pray?
SPEAKER_00: And so we decided to fast and pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: So the whole ministry began to fast and pray for the the Weda-San family.
SPEAKER_00: And the day came for that baby to be born, and that baby was totally healthy in every way.
SPEAKER_00: And Waita San tal, when that baby came out, they started weeping.
SPEAKER_00: The doctor started weeping.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody could believe what had happened.
SPEAKER_00: The power of fasting and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, we just went ballistic.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody was so excited to see God's miracle working power.
SPEAKER_00: So, no septic.
SPEAKER_00: Not good.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come to get the family together, we fast and pray.
SPEAKER_00: We need$4,000.
SPEAKER_00: We're fasting, we're praying, we're calling out to God, and one day, I think third or fourth day, a knock at our door, we go to the door, and it's one of our neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: She's a believer.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, I don't know how to say this, but God just told me to give you some money.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like I don't know if you need$4,000, but here's$4,000.
SPEAKER_00: And we're like, Yeah, that's nice.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Why have a job?
SPEAKER_00: Just call out the God and I get money.
SPEAKER_00: Falls from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Um we were in Okinawa one time and we were praying, and we had been there for about um nine months, and I don't think we had seen any of the young people on Okinawa get saved.
SPEAKER_00: And we began to fast and pray, and I brought in this evangelist guy to come and speak, and I picked him up at the airport in Naha.
SPEAKER_00: We were driving back.
SPEAKER_00: The guy who was with him just happened to be Korean, and he was sick as a dog.
SPEAKER_00: This guy was so sick, and he was sniffly and everything.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, great.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're bringing him to our house.
SPEAKER_00: And he walks in to our house, and we had been fasting and praying for 21 days.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a 21-day fast.
SPEAKER_00: And when he crossed over the threshold of our house, he goes, What is that?
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
SPEAKER_00: And I went, What?
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, he didn't say, I want to say dude, because that's what we say now, you know, dude.
SPEAKER_00: He said, dude, in the 80s.
SPEAKER_00: Um he said, I'm look, I'm just better, man.
SPEAKER_00: I've been sick for a week.
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as I walked into your house, I got healed.
SPEAKER_00: I felt it come on me, and I just got healed.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, nice.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's great.
SPEAKER_00: And over the next 21 days, 50 Japanese came to know Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Just crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And when we started, you know, we when we started this church and we went over and um we were uh 40 nights here and the and we and we fasted and prayed intermittently, but God spoke to us during that time, didn't he?
SPEAKER_00: For you that were part of that.
SPEAKER_00: So there's something about fasting and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: It's a tool of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're facing an impossible situation, if you're facing something that's really entrenched, I mean, it's a really entrenched thing, and and you can't break it off.
SPEAKER_00: I challenge you to consider asking God, Lord, what would you have me do?
SPEAKER_00: How many days would you have me fast and pray?
SPEAKER_00: But when but when you do it, instead of eating, you take that time to pray.
SPEAKER_00: You take that time to get into God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like God, when He sees us willing to sacrifice the very basics of our of our of the needs of our life, which is food and water, um, or food and drink.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying fast and water, but but food and drink, it's like it gets God's attention and he moves.
SPEAKER_00: So, folks, it's a great truth.
SPEAKER_00: It really works.
SPEAKER_00: It really works in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So, Father, we just thank you for tonight, and we thank you, Lord, for the fact that you want us to walk with a faith that works through prayer and fasting, and that we can see breakthrough in impossible situations with this tool of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So, Father, I pray for faith right now to be released in this room, faith over this congregation, that they would begin to believe you that they can see impossible breakthroughs in their life through fasting and prayer, through building up their faith in Christ, through reading God's word, spending time in God's word, praying God's word.
SPEAKER_00: God, for some here, there's some situations that you're gonna speak to them about tonight that is going to release faith and belief into their hearts to fast and pray until they get that thing that they're asking for.
SPEAKER_00: So we bless this congregation, we bless us tonight, sons of the kingdom, daughters of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Jesus, amen.
SPEAKER_01: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
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