Faith Builders!

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You can learn more about First Baptist Church of Mandeville, Louisiana here: www.fbcmandeville.org

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Transcript

Welcome And A Familiar Pattern

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in the Word. I'm Ronnie Cooksy. Well, we've all had that experience where we take a child to do something special, maybe take him to an amusement park or buy them some special foods and things like this. And then on the way home, something doesn't go right in their eyes and they begin to complain. And it zaps the joy from the car or from the family. Well, we adults do the same kinds of things, even though maybe in a more sophisticated manner, certainly in our hearts.

Israel At The Promised Land Edge

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Well, in today's passage, here we find the people of Israel at the end of Numbers chapter 13 and going into chapter 14. God has led a few million people out of slavery from the most powerful nation at that time on the earth. He parted the Red Sea for them, he led them across the desert, he dropped manna from the sky daily to provide food for them, he provided water miraculously from a rock, and on and on and

Two Reports Faith Versus Fear

SPEAKER_00 1:03

on. He leads them to the edge of the promised land, and they send the twelve spies in to see what it's like. Well, they bring the report back, and unfortunately, instead of one report, it's two. One of the reports was given by Caleb and Joshua, the report of faith in God. The other report given by the other ten, and earlier they're listed, but we've come to know them as the ten spies, the negative report. In verse thirty of chapter thirteen, it says, Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will certainly prevail over it. In whom was Caleb placing his faith? In Israel? No, in Israel's God. But in verse thirty-one, the men who had gone up with him, the other ten, said, We're not able to go up against the people because they are too strong for us. So they brought a bad report, and they go on to tell about the giants in the land and all the reasons that they cannot succeed, because they are trusting in what they can see and in their own strength.

Grumbling Spreads And Joy Dies

SPEAKER_00 2:06

And so, as we go into chapter fourteen, all the congregation raised their voices and cried out, and the people wept that night, and all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. And the entire congregation said to them, If only we had died in the land of Egypt. Wow, well, we wish we could say we're not like them, but we really are sometimes. You know, I'd like to say that God eats problems for breakfast, but the truth is he doesn't even have to eat them. He looks at them and they flee away. The ten spies could only see the problems. Caleb and Joshua could only see

Building Faith Without Being Naive

SPEAKER_00 2:43

God. Well, what about today in my life and in your life? Start with you. Do you focus on the problems only or do you focus on what God will do? I love the song that says, I don't know what you're doing, but I know what you've done. Now there are problems in our life and they're reality, and it's okay to admit that, but to take them to God and say, God, I really can't see how this ends, but I want to trust that you can and you are at work and you will accomplish your will if I'll stay close to you and keep following after you. What about relating to others? In church with other believers, sometimes we want to focus on the impossibilities, but instead we could focus on God. God, what are you doing here? God, we want to look to you so that we'll see miraculous things as you work your way and work your power in this situation. You can zap the trust that people have in God, just zap it right away, and it leads to grumbling and complaining. But instead, we could be those people who build faith. It's not uh crazy, blind faith that just gets people to do crazy things, thinking they're gonna just say God's gonna do this or God's gonna do that. No, we seek his will. We seek to discover in his word and through prayer what God wants to do, and then we trust him when things don't seem to be going the way we thought they would, because God accomplishes his will in his way, in his timing, and often it doesn't look the way we thought it was going to look.

God Is Bigger Than Problems

SPEAKER_00 4:19

I remember many times playing softball or baseball or wiffle ball with some of my kids, and just to be fun, you set the game up to where dad's losing and there's two outs in the last inning, and you set the situation up so that dad can hit a home run and make it fun and end in a really fun way. God's not intimidated by our problems. He wants us to place our faith in him, to wait for him, to spread hope and faith so that we can watch God do the miraculous. I hope that today God has shown you some ways that you could trust in him in your life, and you could encourage others to do the same. God bless you, and I'll see you back here next time.