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We are in John chapter 4. So if you have a Bible, I'd encourage you to get it out. John chapter 4. It's the last week in John chapter 4. Today is also the first official Sunday of Advent. How many of you guys are doing something for Advent? Anyone doing a few of you? Yep. So Advent's been around for a long time, and it's a way that we can prepare our hearts to celebrate Christ's first coming, his arrival on the scene so many years ago. And it's good for my heart because if you've been around church a long time, or if you've been around Christian Christendom a long time, you can kind of just get sort of numb or indifferent. Oh yeah, here's another Christmas. Oh yeah, we're celebrating this. And you can kind of almost get even lost in the culture's view of Christmas. And so Advent is a great way to just remember what we are celebrating and why we are celebrating and how it changes everything. But as we do that, we're going to continue our study through John, so we're not doing a special Christmas series. I will talk about some Christmas applications, some applications to this Advent season. But I'd encourage you just as a family, even if it's once a week, to take some time to really sit down and think about what Christmas means for us and how the person of Jesus, with him coming on the scene, changes everything for our good. So, that being said, I want to read this section of text to you guys from John chapter 4. We're going to begin in verse 43, and we'll read through 54, which is the end of the chapter. If you don't have a Bible, there's some under the chairs, but also the scriptures on the screen above me. Here we go. After two days he left there for Galilee. Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. When they entered Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen everything he did in Jerusalem during the festival, for they also had gone to the festival. Then he went again to Cana of Galilee, where he had turned water into wine. There was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and pleaded with him to come down and to heal his son, for he was about to die. Jesus told him, Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe. Sir, the official said to him, Come down before my boy dies. Go, Jesus told him, Your son will live. The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed. While he was still going down, his slaves met him, saying that his boy was alive. He asked them at what time he got better. Yesterday at seven in the morning, the fever left him, they answered. The father realized this was the very hour at which Jesus had told him, Your son will live. Then he himself believed along with his whole household. This, therefore, was the second sign Jesus performed after he came from Judea to Galilee. I remember as a little boy, one of my favorite things to do was to uh listen to my grandfather tell stories about uh his life growing up, and then he became uh a veteran in the war. He served in the army, he was a tank commander, and I used to sit around during holidays uh when we were there with my family, and I would listen to him tell these amazing stories about how God had worked uh while he was in a very terrible situation in the war in northern Africa. And one story in particular that stands out in my mind was this story where he and some of the other tanks, he was a tank commander, so he had a squadron of tanks or whatever you want to call it. He had a group of tanks he was responsible for, and he came up over a hill with his group one day, and on the other side of the hill was this German tank, uh, which, if you know anything about World War II and you know about the technology that the Germans had, they were very superior to our American technology at the time, and and so their tanks were very much so a danger and threat to our uh machinery. And so my grandfather began to uh turn around as fast as he could and take off the other direction to try to get away from this German panzer tank. And as he did, he began to pray a prayer, and this was his prayer. God, if you will get me out of this, I will give my life to you. Now, as he prayed that prayer, probably more than once, uh the rest of the story goes that pretty much every tank in his squadron was destroyed. Miraculously, somehow, he was able to survive that situation and he was able to escape. Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear that, um, I think about uh times in my life where I have prayed something similar. I mean, all the way back to grade school. God, if you will help me pass this test, I will obey you more, right? God, if you will help me do this, fill in the blank, or if you will do this for me, then I will follow you. I will trust you. Now, the reason I bring that up this morning is because in this story where John is writing a whole narrative, a whole book on helping us believe in God, we find a story of a man who had heard about the goodness of God, that he did these great things, this Jesus who did miracles, and he's asking Jesus to perform a miracle on his behalf. And as he asks Jesus to perform this miracle, he doesn't actually believe in who Jesus really is. But he wants what Jesus has to offer. Now, I want you to hold on to that because as we go through this text today, I want to tell you on the front end that faith for us as people is a process. It's a journey. Faith is a process, it's a journey that we are working on through our lives. And there's probably been moments when you were in a critical situation that you knew your only hope was that God did a miracle. And you asked for God to do a miracle. And for some of you, he answered you and he did that miracle. But there's some of you probably sitting here where he did not do the miracle that he asked you to do, that you asked him to do. And your faith was shaken. I don't know where you are today in your journey of faith, but I want to tell you that faith has these three parts to it. This is a high-level view that all of us are gonna have to work through over the course of our lives, okay? Now, the first part of this is that faith begins with reason. Faith begins with thinking. Um, when you hear the words faith and reason in the same sentence, we're kind of trained, conditioned in our culture to think that those are not compatible. That in fact, faith and reason are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. You either live by faith or you live by reason. And I would argue with you this morning, I would encourage you this morning, that actually faith is the highest level of reason. That in actuality, when you look at the world and you try to figure it out, you will find that it requires faith. That no one in this world lives without faith. That as you think through life, you're gonna hit some snags, you're gonna come to some places where you realize that your thinking falls short. But you are supposed to, because God made you, he created you with a brain to think, and you're supposed to use it and to evaluate life and to think through what you're seeing, what you're experiencing, what you're enduring. And it's okay, in fact, if you needed this permission this morning, that as a Christian, it is okay to think. It's okay to reason, it's okay to evaluate what you believe. I have people sometimes who say, Well, I can't become a Christian because I just can't get there intellectually. I hope you know that no one becomes a Christian just purely intellectually. They don't. I can't argue or reason anyone into the kingdom of God. But I would say to you that if you spend enough time thinking about God, considering his ways, considering who he is, considering what he's done, that your reason will actually lead you to faith. I believe that. Now, that being said, faith is a supernatural work, it is a supernatural process. So even in that, don't think that I'm saying, well, if you can get all these details, then it'll just lead to faith, and you'll just have faith. I believe, and I, it's a mystery, I'll be honest. It's a mystery that God gifts us faith to believe. But faith is not the opposite of reason, okay? Faith is actually a process of coming to that realization that we don't know everything. We can't control everything, we can't understand or comprehend everything, we can't get our brains around who God is and what he has done. Uh, the the process of faith, when you start, you are confronted with a reality, a truth, a proposition, an idea. In our story, uh, just backing up last week, we found that when Jesus was in Samaria, he was in Sakar, and he was working with these Samaritans because this woman he meets at the well, she has a crisis where uh Jesus calls her out on her sinful behavior. She's an adulterous woman who's had five husbands and she's working on the sixth, and she's lived in sin and she's lived in rebellion to God, even though uh she would say she understands some dynamics of uh religion because she speaks to it even when she's talking to Jesus. But she's walked in this disobedience, she's walked in this rebellion to God, and Jesus calls her out, she has a crisis. But do you notice what happens when she actually sees who Jesus is, she starts to understand who Jesus is, she goes back to her village and she says, You've got to meet this man who's told me everything about myself. And these people believe her testimony, and they follow her out of the city to the well, and they begin to understand a little bit more about who Jesus is. And at the end of the passage from last week, I won't reread it to you, but at the end of the passage last week, the people literally say, At first we believed because of your testimony, but now we believe because of what? Jesus' words. So they were confronted with the truth about who Jesus was, and they demonstrated faith and they came to believe in Jesus. Now, I don't know about you. I don't know when you first encountered Jesus, who he is, what he's done. Uh for me, and this is where some of you guys might have a different story than me, for me, uh, I joke about the fact that I was hearing sermons nine months before I was born, okay? That I was in the womb and already I'm hearing about this Jesus, about God, about the Bible. I come out of the womb, it just continues. Uh so from a very early age, like I really didn't wrestle with is God real? Is Jesus real? I mean, I just took it for what it was worth. Some people call that, I mean, the culture would say I was brainwashed, right? That's what they would say. I was just around it, I was exposed to it at a young age, and it wasn't actually until my teen years when I started to really struggle with rebellion against God and sin that I had to come to sort of a moment of crisis of faith and say, do I actually believe this stuff? I mean, I was five years old when I walked down to the front of a church and said, Jesus, I want to follow you, I want to obey you. And at five, I mean, you don't really know a lot. You don't really get it. You don't understand the depth of depravity, the rebellion in your own heart, and how desperately you need Jesus, right? But at 14 and 15, you start to get a handle on that a little bit. You start to realize I am messed up, I'm broken, hopefully. And you start to say, okay, is what I said I believe about Jesus in God, is that actually true? And even as you get into college, there's some college students in this room today, we interact with college students on a regular basis, and you leave your home and you get out of your safety net, and you are in a world of people who don't believe the Bible is true and Jesus is real, and salvation is through faith in Christ, and that there's no way there could only be one way to heaven, even if there is a heaven or if there is a God, like you have a crisis of faith, right? And in that moment, you need to know there are facts that help inform your faith. I remember reading books like Evidence that demands a verdict from a guy named Josh McDowell. I read Case for Faith, Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. And even as a church brat, a kid who had grown up in church, I wanted to be able to talk to people who didn't have that context, who didn't understand some of these basic things or hadn't just adopted them at an early age, and be able to talk with them through the facts of our faith. In fact, I would encourage you, if you're a reader, one of the best books out there today is a book called A Reason for God by a guy named Tim Keller. He's out of New York City. He's dealing with a lot of people who believe that reason and faith are on the opposite end of the spectrum and they're not compatible. And he's written an excellent book, and it was so helpful for me as I read that. But what I'm telling you is that Christianity is not a check your brain at the door kind of thing. We should dive into the questions and the doubts and the fears and the concerns that we have about is our faith legitimate? Is the Bible real? Is it true? And I would tell you that as you enter into that process, if you will enter it with an open heart, an open mind, and a willingness to say, God, I'll go with what you teach me, I believe that you will see that there's incredible evidence for our faith, but also that God will meet you in that. He will meet you in that. The problem is that we're so arrogant, so much of the time, as a people, we are so arrogant, we won't really come to the God open-handed. We have to put conditions around how we come to God. Are you know what I'm talking about? We put conditions, we're like, again, God, well, if it fits into my categories, if I can understand it, if I can explain it, if I can fit it into how I see the world through this lens or this lens, then I'll follow you. But we are we already are coming to God so much of the time with these presuppositions and ideas, and rather than saying, God, maybe you're bigger than all of my concepts. Maybe you're bigger and more awesome and outside of my reasoning in one sense. But at the same time, we have to come to this. And by the way, just one side note here. No one, I said no one actually comes to faith purely by an intellectual argument. I would also add to that, um, no one disconnects from God, rejects God just based on an intellectual argument. Uh, some of you may know that, like Stephen Hawking is one of the guys, I don't know how many of y'all have read any of his things, even if you just read or heard about him in the news. Uh, he's he's really one of the faces of atheism in the world today, modern atheism, and so many people quote him and talk about him. But if you dig under the surface of Stephen Hawking's life, what you will find is a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of hardship. And it's not just an intellectual argument for him, but he wrestles with the fact that there could possibly be a being that would allow these kind of evil things to happen. What am I telling you is that we as human beings, again, are not just thinkers, intellectual. We're beings that feel, we think, we we struggle with experiences in this life. But I would say to you that faith begins when we are confronted with a truth or an idea, just like this man. He hears about Jesus, he hears that he's a miracle worker, he hears that he is doing miraculous things. And so then he has to make a decision what he's gonna do with that. Um, Martin Luther, uh, the way he wrote about this, and some of you guys know he was the great reformer, 500 years ago, nails these 95 thesis on the door, the Catholic Church, and says something's got to change because, you know, there's there's there's so many things he was trying to address in those, but primarily that our salvation is not based on works, it's based on faith. It's through grace that we receive salvation. That's really one of the most critical pieces of what he said. And what we would find is Martin Luther says that faith is the process of information, assent, and commitment. Information, assent, and commitment. He uses Latin words. I won't use those this morning because I don't speak Latin well. But um, that's how he's trying to talk about this journey that we're on. So all of you in this room at some point have come to had to come to face with the person of work of Jesus, hopefully. And then you need to think through that, and you need to wrestle through that. Uh people who are quick to convert are quick to desert. Right? People who just take things quickly and they're like, Yeah, just give it to me. I would just want, yeah, yeah, yeah, take it. Whenever hardships come, guess what? You're like, well, maybe it doesn't work. I'm gone. I would say wrestle with your faith. And if you're a believer, just continue to wrestle with your faith. And trust that God will meet you in that and work through that. Don't check your brain at the door. Second thing, not only does faith begin with reason, faith grows through commitment. Faith grows through commitment. Now, this man comes to Jesus, and by doing that, he's actually committing himself to take a step towards who Jesus is, right? He could have just stayed a person in the crowd, a face in the crowd, but he hears that Jesus does miracles. He's heard about Jesus showing up on the scene and turning water to wine and Cana. And so he now commits himself by actually coming to Jesus and asking for help. That's a step of faith, isn't it? It's a step of faith. It's risky. He's a royal official, probably of Herod Antipas, one of his officials. He's got a high position, and we know that in that culture, in that day, um, you know, he didn't have to talk to these Jewish people. He didn't have to talk to these guys. And he comes to this rabbi, Jesus, and he engages him, and he asked for help. Because he's desperate, right? His son's dying. And so he gets over, maybe he swallows his pride, he gets over some of that, and he comes to Jesus. And notice what happens when I want to give you just a couple things real fast before I get to the specific response that he has as he engages, because did you notice in the text when I read something really odd about what uh what is written in the first few verses? It says that Jesus goes to Galilee after two successful days of ministry in Samaria, and he gives them a proverb. He says, A prophet does not have honor in his hometown, doesn't have honor there. Well, what is he talking about? Well, I think at a base level, and we won't get into all of the details of it, I think at a base level, Jesus grew up in Galilee, and because he grew up there, uh, he was known as Jesus Mary and Joseph's son, who happens to be, you know, working with his dad as a carpenter's apprentice, okay? Uh and so they knew him and they were very familiar with him, and so for them, they probably had a very difficult time embracing him as the son of God, the Messiah. Because in their minds, what? It's just Jesus. We just watched him grow up here. He can't possibly be God's son. It's Mary and Joseph's son, for crying out loud. And so it was hard for him when he would go back there, I'm sure, to actually be viewed as the Savior of the world, the son of God. And when his official ministry begins, which we know it did kind of at Cana when he performs his first miracle, they're like, whoa, he can do these cool things. He's magic, he's a magical dude. He's he can do these tricks. This is awesome. So, which really helps us understand the next verse, which is where it says that even though he's not honored there, they welcome him back. They're like, Yes, Jesus, you're back. Come on, buddy, you're our you're our hometown hero now. Well, why is that? Well, because he'd gone to Jerusalem, he'd cleaned the temple, uh, he had he'd had this successful ministry, he'd already turned water to wine. So they're not accepting him back as the Son of God. They're accepting him back as you're one of our own and you're doing these awesome things, and we want to be a part of that. We want to see some of that, in fact. Come on, Jesus, do some tricks for us. Come on, do a little dance for us, right? Come on, do these things. Jesus, we want to see it. Now, there's a couple of just applications here. One is we can get so familiar with Jesus we forget who he is. We get so familiar with Jesus that we forget he is the king. Right? That he's not just the baby who came in swaddling clothes in a manger that we sing away in a manger about, but he is the king of kings, he is the lord of lords, and our lives are to be submitted and surrendered to him. Okay, that's a good application there. And these people got familiar with him, and so they they missed his lordship because they wanted him just to do miracles for them. But secondly, we also notice that when they welcomed him there, their hearts were all about themselves and not about him, right? From what we understand, this welcome was again more of a what can you do for us, Jesus? rather than, oh, Jesus, we see you as the Messiah, we bow down, we submit, what do you want us to do for you? The point being this when we are familiar with Jesus, or when we miss who he is, our commitment level will be low. Commitment flows from a re is a as a response to who God is, to seeing him rightly, to seeing Jesus rightly. In fact, you cannot see Jesus rightly and just walk away the same. You have to make a conscious decision to reject him or you worship him. That's the only response Jesus really elicits. Is one of rejection and rebellion or one of acceptance and worship that he is the Son of God. And so faith grows through commitment. Verse 50, it tells us when Jesus says to him, He says, Go, Jesus, or Jesus told him, your son will live. The man believed what Jesus had said to him and he departed. He believed. He believed a miracle is going to happen. Have you ever prayed about something? You felt like God said it, and you said, I believe you, Jesus. I believe it's going to happen, God. Well, that's what happened to this man. He believed it. But then notice what happens later in the story. 53. After the man had left and he went back to his place where he lived, it says, the father realized, this is verse 53, his servants come to him and he says, Your son was healed yesterday at seven in the morning. And the man's like, well, this royal fish is like, that's the exact time when Jesus said, Your son is healed. He's going to be okay. Your son will live. And this man says, at that moment that he gets this sort of, wow, his mind is blown. It actually happened. It says that he and his entire household believe in Jesus. And what is the point of that? Well, the point is this that at first he just believed him for a miracle, but now he believes him for what's really more important, and that is that he truly is the Messiah, the rescue of the world. Not just fixing a surface, superficial issue, which not saying that his son dying is, but it's a temporal issue in some ways. But he actually fixes the bigger issue of this man's life, which is that he needed a savior. And he and his entire household. I'm not saying that because the man followed Jesus, that his old house had to follow Jesus, but they chose to follow Jesus, right? They committed themselves to God. And we see this pattern throughout the entire New Testament. Which, by the way, just a note, men, when you follow Jesus, you will influence your house to follow Jesus. When you don't follow Jesus, you will influence your house not to follow Jesus. We men in the room, God has given you a position, a role, a responsibility, a stewardship. We men in the room are called to lead in our homes. And I would just say to you, we see this, just even statistically, we see this, that when the man follows Jesus, the family begins to flourish and follow along with them. Okay? But that's a whole other message for another day. James 2, 14 through 17, it's a passage of scripture that probably some of you guys know, where he's talking about faith and works. Commitment is when we actually say, I'm not just going to believe this and give it mental assent. Just kind of say, I know that, but I actually am going to act in line with that. And in James, where James is talking to the people in the church of Jerusalem, he says this. And by the way, James is Jesus' half-brother. You remember that familiarity issue we talked about a while ago? James had every exposure to the person of Jesus when Jesus was just this little kid growing up in Jerusalem. I mean, in uh, in Galilee and Nazareth. So the fact that James is actually now a pastor in a Christian church, like has he put his life in Jesus' hands, he's surrendered his life to Christ, tells us a lot about how he viewed Jesus, right? Which I gotta say, I mean, being Jesus' brother had to really stink at times. It had to be really rough, right? Because Mary's like, well, Jesus didn't ever do that, or Jesus did this, or Jesus did this. I'm just thinking a lot here. I'm sure that was not fun. But now James is a pastor and he says this, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily, he gives this illustration. If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, but you don't give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith, if it doesn't have works, is dead by itself. You believe that God is one? Catch this, guys. This is verse 19. You believe that God is one, you do well. The demons also believe and shudder. What am I saying? What is James saying? What is God saying through James to us? He's saying that true faith produces action, commitment. That real faith doesn't stop at just mental ascent, that it moves into behavior. It moves into taking steps forward. This is a process, isn't it? And for many of us in this room, if we're really honest, we're like toddlers. We're just fumbling forward just one step at a time. That's okay. It's a process. God will meet us in our toddler phases of our faith, growing one step at a time, one day at a time. But here's the question: will you take the first step? Will you take the first step towards Jesus? Now, do you guys know anybody in your family that they just don't have any problem like uh approaching other people or just taking steps forward, uh engaging, you know, with people. We we were just joking about this the other night. We were at a Main Street Bethlehem out in Burnett. Uh great way to really kick off Advent season for us and reflect on uh the birth of Christ. And uh one of my sons, he just has no problem in engaging anybody. And if you've been around my family very long, you you probably know which one it is. And we were walking through the parking lot, you know, and and the the parking attendant's out there, and he's got this wand in his hand, and he's waving it around, and my son just walks over to him and says, What's that? Okay, can I have it? Can I use it? Can I play with it? You know, I mean that's just how he is. He doesn't have any reservations about engaging people. And I got other kids who are like, don't talk to people, you know. It's like, but he that's who he is. That's a lot like Peter. Like when you look at the story of Peter walking on water, look at what happens in the story. It's recorded in Matthew, where we find Jesus coming to the disciples. He's walking on water, they're in the boat, and as he gets near, Jesus says, Peace to you. It's just me. Don't freak out. Okay? I'm not a ghost. It's me. And what does Peter say? Peter says, Well, if it's you, then tell me to come out of the boat. Now, how many of you would have said that? Anybody? I mean, his response was awesome. Instead of just saying, Oh, great, awesome, great, we can we can not freak out now. He says, Well, if it's you, let's get out. Let me call me out. And Jesus says, Come on. And what does he do? He gets out of the boat. It says that he steps out of the boat and he walks on water. How awesome is that? Now, the next verse says that he doubted and he started sinking. There we are, toddler again, right? Step forward, step back. But the bottom line is that he didn't just say he believed, he stepped out in that belief. And if we want to grow in our faith, we have to actually move towards Jesus. Not just learn more about him, but to obey him. Not just to hear more teaching about him, because we in America are masters at knowing information about Jesus. The question is, is can we obey him? Will we obey him? Are we obeying him? If you want your faith to grow, you have to commit and obey. You're not just going to grow through filling your head with more knowledge about Jesus. There's a big difference between believing about someone and believing on someone. The question is, do we believe on Jesus? This man originally believed about Jesus, and when his son was healed, he believed on Jesus, and his whole household was saved. Some of you just believe about Jesus. But God is saying, Will you believe on Jesus? Will you put your faith and trust in the Son of God, Jesus, for salvation? You know about him, you've heard the details about him, maybe from the time you were born, you've read the Bible scriptures, you heard people tell us stories about Jesus, you have no problem telling us what the basics of the gospel are, but have you ever actually surrendered and submitted your life to Jesus? And there's some very smart Christians who are not saved. Can I say that again? There's some very intelligent people who know a lot about the Bible, who know a lot about Jesus, who have a lot of information up here, but their hearts are not converted. They've never actually surrendered and submitted their life to Christ. Because it's not a knowledge issue, it's a commitment issue. Now, in the church, how many of you guys have ever done the trust fall? If you've been in church, you've probably done it about 4,250 times, right? Because it's one of the best ways we know how to try to explain what faith is like. And so you have somebody stand, you know, and put a blindfold on sometimes or just close their eyes, and then their goal is just like just to fall back and hope somebody catches them, right? The reason it's a good illustration, though, and the reason it gets used so much is because when you fall back, you are trusting, not just it up here, but actually in your action, you're falling, that you're gonna get caught. Now, I think recently I heard some student ministry, they dropped the girl and it wouldn't go so good. But she will never trust them again, right? So don't do that, Alex. But here's the thing. When you say you believe in Jesus, the question is, okay, are you actually obeying him? Are you actually following him? Are you submitting? Are you moving not just your mouth, but your feet and your hands and your life? Sadly, if I can be honest about myself and my own journey, maybe some of you in this room feel this as well. Many Christians are living like Christian atheists. We say we believe in Jesus, but we have the same level of anxiety, fear, doubt, materialism, hopelessness as anybody else. Now, I get we're all in process, and that's what I'm trying to say to us this morning that it's a process, it's a journey. But to say, Jesus, I believe you can save me, but you can't fix my circumstances. Or Jesus, I know that you're good intellectually, I know you're good, but you can't actually resolve this problem for me, so I'll fix that. Or Jesus, I'll follow you on Sunday, but the rest of the week it's mine. Or Jesus, um, I'll give my bank account to you, but not my work. Or my work, but not my bank account. Or God, I'll give to you. You see what I'm saying? We play these games because we are struggling with faith to believe that God is good and that everything that is in our life, He has truth, He has wisdom, He has guidance, He has power, supply. And Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 says this we should trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding, and in all our ways acknowledge him, and he will make our path straight. That's a process. That's a process of trusting Him with our lives. When he tell you, one of the primary reasons that a lot of people don't ever share the gospel with anybody, they never tell anybody about Jesus, they never share the good news with Christ because they don't really trust that Jesus will work in them. They don't really trust that Jesus will provide the words to say when they encounter somebody. They don't trust. Anyway, we could continue on the conversation this morning because our hearts desperately need. So faith begins with reason, it grows through commitment, a stepping out of the boat, a stepping out of our comfort zone. And we desperately need God to help us with that, but it matures through hardship. Faith matures through hardship. Some of us don't want to hear this this morning. I'll be honest. I don't exactly love the verse that I'm about to give you. James 1, verse 2. It says, Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. I like to tell other people that verse. I don't like people to tell me that verse. If I'm just really honest. I would rather get to give somebody else that counsel than have somebody have to give me that counsel. It's one of those verses that I'm like, oh, that's good. Ooh, I don't like that. Because the fact is, is that did you notice the context of this story in John today? What's going on? This man's son is about to die. We don't know how long his sickness was. We don't know exactly what sickness he has, but we know he's about to die. And it's through the pressure cooker of suffering that he is driven to a place where he knows he needs something greater than himself. How many times have I looked at some people's, a person's life that I've known and said, God, man, I want faith like they have. But if I'm really honest, I want their faith, not their story. God, I want their faith, but I don't want to have to go through cancer. God, I want their faith, but I don't want to have to go through that hardship of losing a job or not having enough food to eat, or whatever it is that's caused them to grow in their faith, whatever that situation, that circumstance is. And what I'm telling you today is that in the mystery of how God works, God uses our suffering, he uses hardship to draw us to himself and to mature our faith. So if you pray this prayer, and maybe some of you probably won't, but it'll come anyway because God loves us, you say, God, help me to grow and mature in my faith, you probably should prepare yourself that you're going to face some hardship. Not because God doesn't love us, but as C.S. Lewis says, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. When we get indifferent to God, when we get indifferent to life, when we get lost, God uses pain to get our attention, doesn't he? And thankfully, by God's grace, he can use whatever pain we're going through to grow us, to mature us, and ultimately for our good and his glory. It's easier to say, God, I believe in you, you are good, than to stay faithful and bless him when he doesn't protect us from every struggle or provide for every need we have. It's easy to say it when it's when eggs are good, right? It's in the crucible of suffering and hardship, the crucible of sickness, of relational struggle, marriage, when kids rebel when they don't follow the lead that we have tried to guide them in, the way that we've tried to guide them in, when life is falling apart, when the job that we wanted, we don't get. It's in those moments that we're tested. It's when you're in a tank, trying to get away from a German tank, that you pray prayers like, God, just save me and I'll follow you. Just let me get out of this mess. It's in the hardship, it's in the heat of the battle. And I want you to know that if you're in the valley right now, if you're in the hardship, you're in suffering, God can use it for your good. He can. And I want to be very careful. The first thing that should come out of my mouth when I'm engaging someone who's suffering and going through something hard is not, hey, God can work together for your good. I'm not saying that they we don't need to hear that. We do. Sometimes the best thing I can do as a brother in Christ is just sit and pray and weep. Mourn. Be present. Same for you when people are struggling. But if you're in the hardship right now, if you're in the difficulty, if you're going through it, know that God is growing your faith. He's maturing it. Even if you don't like it right now, he can use that for your good. He can also heal you and ultimately he will heal you. Now, this story turned out really good. This guy's son got healed. This guy thought, by the way, that Jesus had to come to his house to do it. And Jesus says, He's healed. Done. So even from a distance, Jesus was able just to speak it and it happened. But not every time do we see this kind of result. And it's in that moment we have to say, okay, did we believe Jesus conditioned upon how he obeyed and did what we asked him to do? Or because Jesus came and suffered and died on the cross so that we could have eternal life. And if we put our trust in him, we can have forever life, redemption, salvation. Now, Christmas is a great season for us to reflect on how God is trustworthy, right? And I would just give you a statement this morning that you can cling to if you're in the trial or if you're headed into a trial, because I think you guys know this, but all of us are either coming out of something, in something, or getting ready to go back into something. I know that's very encouraging this morning, isn't it? Because that's the way life works. It's not all good. It's messed up. Thankfully, one day it will get fixed. Thankfully, this pain and struggle and suffering will end. But know this. God can be trusted. He will do what he says he will do, he will do what he says he will do. And how do we know that? Well, first off, I would say name a promise that God made in his word that he hasn't kept. God is not slow in keeping his promises. That's what the scripture says. God is faithful. He will ultimately restore and reconcile and fix all of the issues in this world. And when we think about Christmas and we head into this Christmas season, we can have real hope in God's promises that he's trustworthy. That Jesus coming on the scene 2,000 years ago was a promise that Jesus had made all the way back in the Garden of Eden when he said, I'm going to fix this. You guys messed it up in your rebellion, but I'm going to crush Satan. And we're going to fix this problem. And Jesus did exactly that. And some of you need to be reminded today that you can trust God with your life. You can trust him with all of your life. You can trust him with every situation and circumstance. You can trust him with your fears and your doubts and your worries and your anxieties and your wants. You can trust him. He loves you. He is for you. You can trust him. Just a few questions. Do you trust God? Do you trust him? How can you tell if you trust him? Well, are you trying to do life with God or without God? What conditions have you put on God? God, if you do this, then I'll follow you. God, if you fix this, then I'll trust you. Then I'll obey you. God, if you do these things for me. Guys, I hope you know this. Jesus is not a Santa Claus in the sky. He's not a genie. He is the Son of God, the Savior of the world. And we don't command him. He directs and guides us. So what can you do? Well, we can pray and we can surrender. We can pray and we can surrender. If you're not a Christ follower, if you've never put your trust in Jesus Christ, you've never put your hope in him for salvation, my encouragement to you this morning is just to ask God to show you who he is, reveal himself to you. And I think he'll meet you in that. If you are a Christ follower and you're struggling today with faith, know that it's a process, that you're on a journey, but you have to submit yourself to him daily and step it out in obedience. And he'll meet you in that. And I'm going to pray for us even now that for some of you you feel like God's been silent, you feel like God's been absent, you feel like he's not there, that even in this moment today, as we sit here, he'll remind you he hears, he knows, and he is with you. Because some of you just need to be reminded of that today. He's not blind, he's not unaware, he knows and he loves you. Let me pray for us. God, I pray for just all of our hearts. God, I see this story of this man who was going through a difficult situation. His son was sick and about to die, and he needed hope, and he looked to you to solve that problem, and you graciously solved it. And I'm thankful that you gave us his story. I also know that there's some people in this room today, when they hear that story, they feel like, yeah, you did that for them, but you can't do that for me, or you won't do that for me, or you didn't do that for me. And I just pray that today every person in this room would know that you love them, that you are for them, that you are with them, and that despite what our circumstances and our experiences tell us, that the Bible teaches us truth about who you are, what you have done, what you will do, and that your promises are faithful. And that we can put our hope in your promises and be confident. Be filled with faith. God, I feel like that there's some people sitting in this room right now that they're going through some relational hardship, some feeling lonely, isolated, feeling rejected, feeling stressed, anxious, worried. And God, that right now you just want to remind them that your Holy Spirit, your presence, is here and is working. And I pray that you would do that for them today. I thank you that you have given us a brain to think and to process and to evaluate, but thank you also that you gift us faith to believe what we cannot see. And as one person once wrote, When we can't see your hand, we trust your heart. Help us to do that today. We love you. We thank you for loving us, and we thank you for this Christmas season where we get to be reminded of just how much you love us. Praise your name. Amen.