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Dufresne Ministries Podcast
Developing Your Faith, Part One | Nancy Dufresne | Jesus The Healer Broadcast
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Hi, I'm Grant Dufresne and welcome to Dufresne Ministries podcast channel. We believe that as you listen to this message, your faith will be stirred and you will be encouraged in whatever you are believing God for today. Stay tuned at the end of this message to find out more information about our ministry.
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Turn with me, if you would, this morning and let's go to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4. And we're going to start reading in verse 11. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11. And it reads, and Jesus gave some apostles, some prophets, and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. Why did he give us those gifts? For the perfecting of the saints. Meaning this. The word perfecting means for the maturing of the saints to bring us out of babyhood stage, out of a young stage, into a full grown adulthood. Spiritually, how many of you know people will say, well, Jesus is all I need. Well, for your redemption, Jesus is all you need. But for your spiritual growth and development, you're going to need the gifts. Healing. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. In other words, he gives us men that know him to help us know him better. And if Jesus was all we needed for our total spiritual development, then why would he give gifts? He knows that it's easier for us to learn with somebody standing in front of us that we can see and we can hear, that can share His Word with us. And so, yes, you can't develop any way other spiritually apart from the Word. The Word is the only thing that will do that. But God helps us by giving us someone to feed us that Word and to help explain and teach us that Word. So we need these ministry gifts that Jesus gave us so that we can develop properly. People say, well, I can be just as good a Christian as you and stay home from church. No, you can't. You can't be Christlike by staying home and not having a local church to attend. You want to know why? Because Jesus went to church. Luke 4:18. As was his custom, he stood up and read in the synagogue. It was his custom that meant that was his habit, his spiritual habit. Jesus was a congregation member. Jesus was part of his congregation. Why? Because he needed to be taught. When he was born into the earth, he was not born with all the knowledge that he ended up with. The Bible says he had emptied himself. When he came to this earth, he had to learn the Word, just like you and me. And he went as a young child. He grew up in the synagogue. And so he's showing us that we can be Christians and not go to church, but we can't be Christlike. Because to be like Christ, you go to church. Why? Because you need to see, sit under someone who will help you mature and develop spiritually. Amen. And thank God he gives us pastors that make appointments with us every Sunday or in our midweek service. That's an appointed time to meet with your gift. Amen. Your gift is your pastor. Treat that office like a gift and honor it and you'll receive the most from it. The reason many don't receive that much from their pastor is because the way they approach it, the way they look at that gift, that gift is a gift from Jesus. It matters how we handle that gift. Amen. Thank God for that. He loves us enough to give us someone that will show up at an appointed time and teach us His Word. Amen. So he gave us these ministry offices, these five fold ministry gifts. And it says so that for the perfecting or the maturing and the developing of the saints. Why? So that they can do the work of the ministry. The saints can do the work of the ministry. And for the edifying of the body of Christ. So it builds up the body. The word edify means to build up. And so it builds up the body when people in the body are developing and maturing spiritually. And if people are not developing, then the body's not built as it ought to be built. Amen. And then it says, till we all come in the unity of the faith. Now notice this, it doesn't say the unity of doctrines because there will be the way some people process the word. There might be a slight difference here and there, but that doesn't mean that we have to be disagreeable. I might not agree with everybody on every little thing, but I can still walk in love and I can still be agreeable toward them. But we all do need to come into the unity of faith. Unity is where God can manifest disharmony and discord. He cannot manifest. So you have to be taught and you have to grow up and mature so that you'll fit with one another as you ought. So that you'll become unified and not fuss and fight and become divisive and have strife. Because Jesus cannot bless strife. He cannot bless division. And that's why if there's strife and division in a church family, people can't receive their healings there. People can't receive their answers and miracles there. Because God can't manifest where there's an atmosphere that's against his flow. Amen so as we grow up, we come into greater unity. No one's trying to hold, to win in their own way. Amen. We come into the knowledge of the Word and we all come into the same flow together. Amen. So unity is important. You have to be taught and developed so that you and develop spiritually so that you grow into a flow of unity as a local church and as the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. So this is a way that God can help our thinking. We have right knowledge. We have right thinking about the Word is when we're taught the Word by one of these, one of these offices, who God has given as a gift. Amen. Then notice this. He says, until we come unto a perfect man, and a perfect man doesn't mean a man without flaw. It means a fully matured man, fully matured in the things of God, fully matured in their faith, fully matured in the Word. Their spirits are maturing, not just their bodies, not just the mind being educated, but the Spirit being educated and maturing. Amen. So he gives us these fivefold offices till we all come. And I want to focus on this. Unto a perfect or mature man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So that last phrase is defining what a mature man looks like until we're at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Well, what does that mean? It just means this. Till our lives look like Jesus life, till we walk as he walked, till we produce in our lives what his life produced. And God says, that's the measuring stick for your maturity. Other people in your church aren't your measuring stick. Jesus is our measuring stick. Other people may do things and they may be okay with doing it. But if we're reaching for Jesus as our maturity, as our measure of what true Spirit spiritual maturity looks like, then I'm not measuring myself to you, I'm measuring myself to him. Well, others do this. It doesn't matter what others do. It matters what is Jesus flow, What pleases him? How did he walk? That's my measuring stick. Amen. So in this thing of God wanting to bring us into not just growing up, but growing up till our lives look like Jesus. If we're going to do that. Also, part of a huge part, of course, that comprised Jesus development and spiritual life was his faith life. So one way that our lives are to look like Jesus life is in our faith life. So that our faith is to grow our Faith is to develop because we can't walk as Jesus walked without faith, he walked by faith. We can't produce what Jesus produced without faith because the things that were produced through his life and ministry were produced because of faith. Amen. So God wants us to live and operate the kind of faith that Jesus demonstrated. Jesus was not that example so that we could see what we couldn't be and what we weren't. Jesus was that example so that we could know where we're headed and where we're to arrive at. Amen. Amen. The way for you to develop anything spiritually, in the natural anyway, in any arena of life, the way for you to develop is you have to practice. You have to every day, practice your faith. If you wait till times of emergencies to practice your faith, your faith will be unscathed. The only way to be skillful in faith is you have to practice it every single day. Practice it. If you want to be highly effective, then you will do it every day. When I was growing up, I took piano lessons. And a lot of the kids that I went to school with, they would take a piano lesson and they would practice maybe half an hour a week. Every time I came in from school, my mother met me at the door and and said, get on the piano. And I had to practice an hour every day. She didn't even let me do my homework until that was practiced. I didn't get to hang out with friends. I didn't do anything until I was on the piano an hour every day. Because of that, I bypassed my friends. Because of that, I excelled. What is it that made the difference? Is it talent? I don't know about that, but I do know it was practice. That's good. Amen. You don't even have to be the most knowledgeable person. But if you'll practice what you know, practice what you know. The Bible calls it being a doer of the word. The way that your faith is going to look like Jesus. Faith is if you practice it every day. When something shows up that is not the flow of God, exercise your faith against that thing. When God offers you something, then exercise your faith for that thing every day. Every day. Well, how do you practice your faith? Through the words you say. Amen, Father, I thank you. The peace of God is in me. It's a fruit of the spirit that came in me at the new birth. And I yield to that peace. Today I'm not yielding to worry. Today I'm not yielding to fear. Today I'm yielding to peace. I draw on that how do you yield to it? You respond to it. That's an example of what it means to practice spiritual things. Well, even so, with faith, when something comes along and says, you're not going to have the money you need, talk back to it. Put your faith on the assignment. Draw on the faith that is in you. There is faith. If you're born again, the faith of God is in you. Because Romans 12 tells us that God gave to every man a measure of faith or the measure of faith. What measure is it? My guess is it's the size of a seed. Because a seed will grow if it's watered, if it's tended to, if it is given the right attention, it will grow. And so many Christians are going around with faith in them. But it's only in seed form. Feed it, develop it, water it, practice it, Cause it to be developed. Cause it to grow. God's the one that put your faith in you, but it's up to you to develop it. He's not the developer of it. You are by what you do with the word. Amen. Hallelujah. If your faith is developing, then your spiritual life is developing. If your faith isn't developing, then your spiritual life is not developing or not growing. Amen. And God is going to put a demand on your faith. Why? Because he's going to help you cause it to grow. He will put something in front of you that he offers you, that only faith can lay hold of. And if you want this, get your faith going. Amen. Everything we receive from God, we receive by faith. Amen. So he has laid our inheritance in Christ out before us and says, it's all yours. Now come claim it. How do you claim it? With faith. By faith. Amen. So God is going to put a demand on our faith. Why? Because he wants it to grow. Why? Because he's working to bring us into that measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And he's going to direct us and lead us based on what is best for our faith. Now, that's a huge thing for you to understand. God is going to lead you, and he's going to direct you based on what's best for your faith, not based on what's easiest for your faith, based on what is best for your faith. It's not best for someone to not put a demand or an expectation on them. Whenever there were four kids in our family and whenever we went somewhere, my mother would say, we're going to go to such and such a store. This is what I expect out of you before we even got out of the car. She'd say, don't ask me for this, don't beg me for this. Don't cry for this. Don't throw a fit over this. Don't touch this, don't touch that. Because when we knew what was expected of us, we met it. Because if we didn't meet what was expected, she would handle us. God, he expects something of us because that's the way you put something of development in people, is you expect something of them. So God will direct you to do things that puts an expectation and a demand on your faith. And he's being good to you by doing that. He's not being bad to you. He's being good to you. Because he knows if you don't develop, you will become the devil's pray. So he doesn't want you to be in a position to where you are always under what the devil's doing. He said, he has put us on top. He's made us above, not beneath. Blessed us going in, blessed us going out. We're the head, not the tail. If you remain a spiritual baby, you will always be at the tail end of life. You'll always be underneath circumstances instead of on top of them. And he knows that it's only as you mature that you can begin to enjoy the fullness of what he's provided. Spiritual babies can only enjoy a measure of what he's provided. But maturity enjoys a fullness of what he's provided. Isn't that right? So what's God going to do? He's going to put a demand on you to cause your faith to grow. But if you don't cooperate with that demand, you. You won't mature. Amen. And he's not mean about it. He just offers it to you. He won't force it on you. All he does is says, here's my word, you can have it. And then what do you want it? How bad do you want it? How much do you want your faith to develop? That's the measure. You're practicing your faith. Now, did you get that statement? How much do you. Do you want a strong faith? Then it's up to you to develop it, practice it, feed it, exercise it. Amen. Hallelujah. Don't you handle your kids differently at different seasons of their life? When they're babies, you do everything for them. When they're toddlers, you start, honey, you go put that toy back. Honey, you go put this cup in the kitchen. What are you doing? At every season of their Natural development. You're helping them. What a crime for a parent to keep treating a teenager like they're a newborn, Feeding them, putting their clothes on for them. You wouldn't even think of doing that as a parent because you know you're going to cripple them in life if they can't do for themselves what they need to do. God's not crippling you in your spiritual life. He will not assist you and hold you in babyhood stage. He will put a demand on your spiritual development. And if he's going to demand your spiritual development, he has to put a demand on your faith. I remember so many times growing up, we would, and even just recently in going to my hometown and visiting my mother again, and we'd be out at a restaurant and we rattled a restaurant. And you know, it's a small town, so everybody knows everybody and they've known them for years. So they can see a history of your life, you know. And so we were sitting at the restaurant eating and my mother pointed over to a man and said, see that man over there? He's about in his 40s. And said, he's a cripple. And I said, what do you mean he's a cripple? It doesn't look like he's, you know, hindered physically or anything. She said, he's a cripple. Said his parents paid for everything. His parents bought him everything. His parents handed him everything. He can't even mow his own lawn. He never even learned how to mow a yard because his parents did everything for him. Now they're gone and he's left a cripple. She meant a cripple in life. That's what she meant, that they can't do anything for themselves. God's not turning his children into cripples. Parents put a demand on your children for their faith. Amen. If they're wanting something, it's not your job to say, we don't have money for that. You can't have it. That's not always your job. If your job is to train them in their faith, honey, if that's important to you and you want that, I know where we can get it. Faith can get that for us. Let's believe God. But bring them in on Thursday faith projects. Bring them in and put demands on their faith that is appropriate for their age. Amen. Because then the worst thing you can do is be raised in a Christian home. And all the kids did was live under the umbrella of their parents faith. And they never developed their Own. Amen. Well, praise the Lord. I remember that there were times when I would go through seasons of testing when I entered the ministry and my husband said to God, he said, God, let me pray for her. Let me just put my hands on her and pray for her and deal with that situation that's troubling her. He said, nope, she has to get it on her own. And let me tell you what, if I hadn't have gotten it on my own, where would I be today? Now that my husband in heaven, where would I be today? And I want you to know the books that you see that I've written, I don't know about 16 or so of them. It's because I got it on my own. If I hadn't have gotten it on my own, none of that material would be out there helping anybody else. If you don't get it on your own, what are other people robbed from? What's going to be robbed from other people that come into your life if you don't get it on your own? You should look at the examples God puts around you, but not for them to do everything for you. The pastor is not in the church to do everything for you. The pastor is there to be an example of what your life can look like. The pastor is there to be an example and an instruction of what direction to take in life. But they're not there to do the believing for you, the praying for you. Now they can pray with you, but not as a service substitute for your own faith. Amen. Hallelujah. So God will direct you in this development of your spiritual life, of your faith life. God is going to direct you in everyday life on things that are unimportant. Don't think that God will only deal with you about what's important. He doesn't want to use the important things for your training ground. He wants to use the unimportant. Because that gives you. If I could say this, it gives you. It gives you space that if you miss it, it's not detrimental to your life. I have walked in and I can think of one time in particular. Going into a store, for example, I needed a piece of furniture, I needed a new couch. I had the money for it, I knew what I wanted. And I walked in store, found what I wanted, and I got ready to bite. And on the inside of me was this. This kind of an uneasy feeling, an uneasy sense. Don't buy that. And you knew that it was coming from my spirit, not my head, but from my spirit. And I remember well, saying well, why can't I buy that? Why am I getting that? I've got the money for it, I need it. This is what I want. But I just followed that and I walked out without it. And come to find out, something else better turned up later. But what was it? God was training me on the unimportant to learn to hear and to follow him. Because that requires faith. So if you're doing something that because you can think, well, what's a couch in the scope of life? You know what it is? Nothing. A couch is absolutely nothing. But the training is everything. So if you're doing something that doesn't seem important, but yet you sense the spirit, he's directing you to not do something or to do something about something that's unimportant, you go, well, that can't be God. It certainly could, because he wants to turn the unimportant into your classroom. Then when there comes an emergency of life, you're already trained. You're already accustomed to what his leading is like. You're already accustomed to applying your faith to what you're sensing in your spirit. So don't overstep the training that will happen on the unimportant everyday things of life. Amen. And people say, well, I'm waiting for God to guide me on every little thing in life. Now that's wrong too, because he won't train. He won't use every single thing. He expects you to just walk in wisdom and walk in the light of the word. You don't have to sit back and wait and not make a decision on every little thing. But you say, well, he trained me on something that was small the other day. Yes, but that was just for training. That wasn't a pattern. He's not trying to show you not to do anything in life without that leading. Because you can just walk by wisdom. You can just walk by the light of the word. You can walk by good sense. But when the spirit of God comes and enlightens you about something different, you always walk by that instead of anything else you may know. Does that make sense? So just because he uses something small and unimportant in daily life to train you doesn't mean he's to going going to do that every day. That doesn't mean just sit in mobile and not make progress. Does that make sense? Because people misunderstand and they think, well, he means to lead me in every little thing. No, he means to train you whenever he wants to. Amen. Praise the Lord. I know this about God is He will lead you to the very front edge of your faith. He will not lead you to live on the back edge of your faith. If we could say, if your faith, and we know this, this isn't really accurate, but if we could say that your faith measure or your faith line was three feet wide, God doesn't want you at the back of that three feet. He wants you at the front of that. Why? Because he wants you always stretching, always reaching, always putting, putting a demand on your faith. What do I mean? The back edge of your faith? That people have a measure of faith and they only want to stay there. They don't want any kind of expectation, they don't want any kind of demand. They don't want any kind of responsibility. They just want to float through life. God is not bringing you into this life so you can float through it. He's bringing you into it so you can grow and develop and, and be a blessing to others and be an example to others of what a growing faith looks like. So God will tell you, I want you to buy this or buy that. And you say, I don't want that. But he will instruct you based on your faith needs. This project, for example, let's say, just for example, let's say a new piece of furniture. And in your heart the spirit of God starts digging about buying a new piece of furniture and you go, oh, I don't want that new piece of furniture. I got that. I got, I'm fine. Well, God wants to put a demand on your faith. Well, I don't have the money for it. That's why he's stirring you. He's wanting you to believe him for that money. Amen. For what he's dealing with you about. That's how he keeps you on the front edge of your faith so that you're not just relaxed and comfortable and no demand put on you, just floating through life. Because people who float through life really aren't doing much to help others. Amen. Many just want enough faith for their life and nothing else. But God wants. We are fitly joined together. He wants you to be a blessing. He wants your life to be blessed, but he wants you to be able to be a blessing to some someone else. Amen. Hallelujah. So God will lead you in the things of everyday life. Listen to him. He's bringing you into a strong, robust faith. So that means he's not going to teach you to be leaning on someone else for the rest of your life. There may be a time when you first get born again that you're leaning heavily on someone else's and that's appropriate. But as you grow and mature, then what used to be appropriate is no longer appropriate. And now you become a place where someone who is in a point of need that they can rest on you because your faith is in place to be a blessing. But then you don't let them keep resting. Teach them to put a demand on their own faith. Amen. How many of you know the faith life gives us the best life. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
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