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How To Measure Your Faith, Part One | Nancy Dufresne | Jesus the Healer Broadcast
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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message.
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Turn with me, if you would, tonight. Jude chapter. Of course, there's just one chapter, but we'll start there. And know this, that the Word will turn you sound and balanced. Anytime a Christian becomes unsound or unbalanced, they're off the word, because the Word will make you sound not unsound. It'll make you balanced, not unbalanced. And we want a faith that is sound. We want a faith that is balanced. Because a sound faith always gets results. Faith on the word, listen to me, always works. Always. There's no such thing. I've heard of a phrase of faith failure. There's no such thing as a faith failure, because faith in the Word always works. If there's a failure, someone veered from faith at some point. Amen. And we should be getting results every time, every time. And not be okay when we don't get the results that faith should be getting. And there is no risk to a life of faith. God has authored us. He's authored for us. The just shall live by faith. It's the way we live. We have to become skillful with this faith life that we're to live. And there is no risk to walking by faith, living by faith. The risk is when you get off of faith. You live by doubt, you live by worry, you live by feelings. You don't know where you're going to end up, but when you live by faith, you always know where you're going to end up. You're going to end up at victory every single time. Every single time. Amen. And so God gave us a measure of his faith. He did not go outside of himself when he put faith in us. He took up his own faith. It's what Jesus said in Mark 11:22, have the faith of God. It's his own faith that he has put in every single one of us. And it is our privilege to become skillful with that faith so that we get results every time. And I know, and Having pastored for 25 years, I know where people can miss it with faith, because people endeavoring to walk by faith, I've seen where things have been missed. And it was people not correctly understanding the flow of faith, the work of faith, and not skillful with faith. So thank God we can become skillful with faith. And when we do, it pleases Jesus. I said it pleases Him. Why? Because all things are possible. To who? Him that believes all Things aren't possible to everybody. They're only possible to the one that believes. This is why faith pleases Jesus, because we move out of the realm of impossibility into the possibility realm, and that's God's realm. Everything is possible in God's realm. Amen. So we have to realize that you can know the will of God, but if you don't know the ways of God, you don't get it. We not only have to know his will, we have to know his ways of arriving at receiving his will. For example, people can know, they can hear that Jesus wants them healed. But if they don't know the ways of healing, the ways of faith that bring you into healing, they can know the will and not have the ways. It's like a starving man standing in front of a baker's window. He can see what's there, but he can't access it. So what is the ways? Faith is the way of receiving everything that is God's will. So here in Jude, I want you to see this and we'll just read a portion of the verse. Jude, verse three. It says this. Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Not the faith that's watered down, the faith that was once delivered. The original version of faith, that raw faith, that raw faith, that spirit of faith. And you can hear when somebody has the spirit of faith, it sounds different. And he says, earnestly contend for the faith. Which faith? The kind that was delivered to the early, to early believers. Amen. The original version of faith. Not the watered down stuff to accommodate people who, who aren't skillful and who just want to visit church but not. Not make it their life.
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Amen.
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Earnestly contend for the faith. Notice the activity of these words around this word faith. Earnestly contend, meaning this. You're going to arrive at faith on purpose. You will never float into faith. You have to take very definite steps to make sure your faith life is growing, to make sure you're skillful in faith, and you have to earnestly contend. Why is that? Because there's enemies to faith. All these enemies are trying to shove you out and push you out of being skillful with faith. Amen. Well, what are some of the enemies of faith? Well, fear, doubt, just lack of knowing who you are in Christ. Trying to walk by feelings. What about this? Trying to believe God with your mind. There's no faith in your mind. Know this. There is no faith in your mind. You can't believe God with your mind. And how do you know if you're trying to believe God with your mind, you feel overwhelmed, you're grasping, you're frustrated. That's because we're trying to believe God with our mind. There's no faith in your mind. The thing your faith is built for is to get renewed and agree with the faith that's in your heart. When your mind is renewed, your mind agrees with the faith in your heart instead of arguing with the faith in your heart. And you have to earnestly contend to get past wrong thinking. How do you get past wrong thinking? Renew your mind with the Word and you have to earnestly contend. So this is an aggressive approach to faith. We never come into great faith until unless we earnestly contended to get there on purpose. Amen. Not floating in on pastors faith. Thank God their faith can encourage us. But it's not ours. Their faith is not our faith. And I want you to know, kids, your parents, faith is not your faith. And one day we, there's going to come a ticket calling for your faith. And you have to have your own faith. Amen. The Word tells us whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. What's that mean? Your victory is waiting for one thing, for your faith to show up. When your faith shows up, your victory goes into operation. Amen. Now go with me now. I'm going to kind of get to the point of where I'm headed tonight. Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12 says this in verse 3. And I'm not going to read the first two verses because I'll get stuck on those and start preaching those, those things are loaded and I'm trying to. And being a teacher, I'll just wonder, you know, if I hit on it. Brother, we're there for the night. So I'm going to skip over verses one and two and I'm going to refer to verse three that God has dealt to every man the measure of faith. If I could say this, when you got born again, if this, this measure right here, this, the width of this book was the measure of faith. When you got born again. God put that measure in you, put that measure in you, put that measure in you. Every one of God's children got the measure of faith. What is it? It's the beginning measure. The Bible doesn't tell us what that measure is, but my guess, it's the measure of a seed if you have faith the size of a mustard seed. Right? So God gives every single one of us the beginning measure of faith, of his faith, then it's up to us as to what happens to that faith. It's not God that gives us great faith. It's us that fed on God's word that produced great faith. How we treat the measure he gave us determines where we end up in faith. If we neglect that faith, that measure, measure of faith that we began with, then our faith will be weak. Our faith can be, if I could say this, even diminishing. You can know this about faith. It's never neutral. It's always increasing or diminishing. It's never in neutral. So God gave to every single one of us the beginning measure of faith. Faith doesn't come by praying. Faith doesn't come by believing for faith. I'm believing for more faith. No, that's not how it comes. It comes by feeding on the word of God. The more we hear. When you hear your pastor preach the word of God and you take that in faith comes Amen. When you listen to other preachers preaching the word, faith comes in with that. And that measure you began with begins to grow. But your faith will never be strong until you're using it. Amen. So we, every single one of us, we can't look at somebody and say, well, God gave that person more faith than me. No, that person just did more with their measure.
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Amen.
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So the measure of faith we possess because we're all at different measures, faith, it's up to us, not up to God. And when we take responsibility for the measure of faith we have, we're growing in skill. Amen. So go with me, if you would. Let's look at Hebrews chapter 11. Now, Hebrews chapter 11. Now here we see in the verse we just read that God has given to every man the measure of faith. Know this. Faith is measurable. And I'm going to teach you tonight how to measure your faith, how to know what your measure of faith is. Why? Because every one of us are at different measures depending on what we have done with the beginning measure he gave us. And this is where I've seen as a pastor, where people said, I'm believing God. But the problem was they didn't know their measure. Well, praise the Lord. This is part of skill in faith. So we see this faith is measurable because God's word said, God has dealt to every man the measure. So faith is measurable. Then Hebrews 11:1 says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So faith is a spiritual substance, and every substance is measurable. In cooking Which I have no skill. And I don't pretend to impress anyone with my kitchen skills. I think it's overwhelming that room. I am not graceful in that room. I have to read a. Read a recipe. Walk over here. You see these people that are just. They have a flow. God bless them. I am so impressed. Seriously, I am so impressed. My mother was a wonderful cook. My sister's a wonderful cook. And I'm just in the kitchen. Every. Every recipe has ingredients, and there's a measure to those. When it calls for a certain ingredient, you can't say, mmm, I'm making a cake. Let's make a cake. Because that's, like, my flow, And it says, you have. Somebody help me. Two cups of flour, maybe two eggs. That sound right? Okay, good guess. So you say, you know what? I don't have eggs. I tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna double up on the flour because I'm missing one ingredient. I'll just double up on this ingredient to make up for it. You're gonna have a mess on your hands. Because when a certain measure of faith is called for and you don't have it, you can't throw something else in as a substitute. I remember years, probably 30 years ago or so, I was struggling with something physically, and I'd gone to the doctor, and they wanted to put me on a certain medication. And, you know, I'm endeavoring to believe God. I'm young in some of these things, and I did not want to go on medicine. I just didn't want to. But not wanting to go on medicine doesn't mean you have faith to not go on medicine. Now, don't stay with me here. So I remember coming home, and my husband said, well, what did they say? I said, well, they want to put me on a certain medication, but I don't want to take it. He said, honey, it's not the withholding of medicine that pleases God. It's faith that pleases God. Well, I heard him, but, you know, I kind of ignored that because that was really my help, because I was so struggling. See, I was wanting to please God, but up here, I was endeavoring to believe God with my mind. And I was getting over overwhelmed. And then I get worked up, and then I get worried because, oh, if I don't. Do you understand the cycle? Anybody ever been to that cycle? And the more I got into this arena, the mental arena, trying to figure this out. How's this faith stuff work? This healing? How does this work? What am I going to Please, God. See, I didn't want to displease God. When you're sincere, the devil will take advantage of your sincerity and beat your brains out with you're not pleasing to God. He will do things like that. And I was struggling and I went for days and finally the Holy Spirit, I heard him say something to me. He said this. Now listen to me. He said, go on the medication. But the whole time you're on it, feed your faith. And when your faith is at the measure it needs to be, I'll tell you when to come off. The peace that came is healing God's best. Yes, but I was not at the place that certain needs call for certain measures of faith. And if you don't have that measure of faith, God will help you. He will let you borrow someone else's faith in the prayer of agreement. That's the borrowing of someone else's faith. And it has a very short shelf life. You can't borrow it long term. You can only borrow it for a moment. Then you better keep feeding your faith and bring your faith up to what you borrowed to pay that off, or you'll get back into the same situation you were in before someone agreed with you. And so the spirit of God said to me, he said, nancy, go on the medication. But the whole. Now here's the key. See, medicine doesn't offend God. As my husband said, it's not using faith, that's what displeases him. And so he said, go on the medication. And he said the whole time you're on it, feed your faith. And when your faith reaches the appropriate measure so that you can receive this need met, I'll tell you when to come off. For about three months I did that. I fed my faith every day. What was I doing? I was earnestly contending for the faith. And at the end of three months, the Holy Ghost said to me, come off. And I really, I really. Medically, they say you're supposed to come off of it gradually. But the Holy Ghost said, come off. He didn't say come off gradually. So I stopped and I never had another single symptom of that. And that was the end of it. See, God is interested in victory for you. And he will work with you at your measure to get you to where your faith is growing. And you have an exceeding growing faith. When you have an exceeding faith, that means it's going to exceed every opposition that comes against you. But that's a process to get there thirty, sixty, hundredfold. First, first the grain, then the Corn, then the full ear and the corn. It's a process, and we have to become skillful in feeding our faith and go through the process. So I want to teach you how to know where you're at so that you don't overstep. If you're wanting. If you go into a store and you're wanting an item, and let's say that item, I mean, you really want it, it's a big Item, it's a $10,000 item, you might not have that measure of money. Does that mean you can't have that item? No, you can still have it, but you're going to have to do something to accumulate that measure of money. You might say, hey, I'm going to work a second job. You might say, hey, I'm going to quit spending all my money on these little toys. I'm buying this other stuff, and I'm going to take what I've been putting in multiple places and I'm going to put it in one place, and I'm going to go back when I get this measure of money and I'm going to buy that item. It's the same thing with your faith. If you need something. For example, I needed healing, but I did not have the measure that I needed at that point. Well, what did God teach me to do? Accumulate. Grow your measure of faith. You say, well, everyone has the measure of faith they need. Is that right? What about in Jesus, hometown of Nazareth? He went there intending, intending to work miracles, intending to bless the people with healing power, but because they doubted, because they dishonored him, they were in unbelief. And it said there he could there do no mighty work, except he laid his hands on a few sick folk. And the original says, with minor ailments. Why? Because different needs require different measures of faith. And all they had the measure of faith for was something minor. They didn't have a measure to raise anybody from the dead. Nobody in that community. There were people dying there. None of them were raised up off their deathbed there. Why? The measure of faith wasn't present in anyone in that community. And he needs our cooperation with our faith. Praise the Lord. Now just stay with me. I'm a faith person. Stay with me. So if you find out that you need, if you're struggling in receiving something, you don't have to live in that place. Just start acquiring, accumulating more faith. Earnestly start building up, developing, feeding your faith, and you can come to the point where you have a robust faith. Now, faith is not a bottomless pit, you understand? The pastor received the offering for the church earlier. I opened up my wallet, I took out some money. When I took that money out, more money did not magically appear. I've got to replenish, put more in there. It's the same thing with faith. When you spend faith, faith won't magically reappear. You're going to have to go do something to replenish that faith. That's how come we have to feed on the word continually. Why? Because faith is not a bottomless pit. It will run out if we spend it and don't replenish it by feeding and hearing the word Amen. Then another thing. You can spread your faith too thin. You've got your measure of faith on 14 different things. And let's say you need a certain measure to accomplish, to receive something from God, but you've got it spread out on a bunch of different things. I remember when God told me years ago, he said, I have another house for you. I found that house. And so my husband was in agreement. And I said to him, I said, this is the house. This is the house God has for us. And he said, honey, I've got my faith on so many things for the ministry. I don't have any more faith left to put on this house. If you want the house, it's on your faith. Now, see, that's called skill. He knew, I've got my faith on buildings. I've got my faith on other stuff. And he knew, you cannot take the one measure you have and throw it to multiple things and have enough to accomplish sometimes the answer for one thing that's needed, sometimes you're spreading your faith too thin. You got it on this, you got it on that. Instead of. Instead of, let's say this, let's say you've got four credit cards and you're wanting to believe God. Get them off of all four. Get your faith on one credit card. Let's get this one paid for, then. Let's get this one, then. Let's get this one. Then what happens? You gain skill and you start getting encouraged in your faith. And I tell you what, you start really flourishing because you see success with the measure you have. And so my husband realized, he said, I've got my faith on too many other things. I don't have enough faith to now put it on this house. And so I said, okay, my faith can take the lead on this. He said, now, I'll agree with you, but it's going to be your faith. And we got It. Amen, ladies. God will give you faith for your homes. He'll give you faith for your home. And my husband got to live in a home he didn't believe for, But I got to be blessed by the things he believed for. Dad Hagin talked about how years ago, See, Dad Hagin understood this. That's why his faith was sound. They when they were pastoring mom and dad Hagin for years, and then they went out on the road for a traveling ministry. And so being out on the road and not having a local church that supported them, now they had to pay for the rent. They didn't get a home handed to them, you know, a parsonage. They had to pay for all their food. No congregations were bringing them food on Sundays anymore. They had to pay. They had to pay to furnish the home. He had to now buy a car because he's a traveling ministry. He's got to drive. So all these added expenses. And so right after he went on the road, traveling, at one point, they had bought a house, and Mom Hagin came to him and said, ken said, we need drapes. He said, honey, I'm believing for a car payment. I'm believing for a house. I'm believing for furniture. I'm believing for the offerings to come in for the ministry. He said, if you throw drapes on me, he said, my faith is stretched as tight as a rubber band. And if you throw faith on, if you throw drapes on that rubber band, it's going to pop and everything's going to fall. What did he understood. He understood there's a measure. And he knew that his faith was already allotted to certain projects. And he could not add another thing. That's how come he was so sound in getting results, because he had this understanding, this skill. You think, well, I can believe for anything. Yes, you can. But not all at once. Sometimes it depends. It depends on what your measure of faith is and how the spirit leads you. How the spirit leads you. Now, know this. You ever heard carpenters make this phrase, measure twice, cut once, instead of this measure once, have to cut twice because I mis. Measured. Carpenter's statement, measure twice, cut once, and you got no waste because your measurement determined how accurate your cut was. And I say to us, as faith people, measure twice, get your. Get your result every time.
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