Stagger Not At The Promise Of God! - 100 Days Of Discipleship - Day 74 by Apostle Emmanuel Iren: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Two Kinds of Marveling

Scripture presents two contrasting categories of people — those with marvelous faith and those with marvelous doubt.

In Luke 7:9, Jesus marveled at a man's faith and said: "I have not found such great faith, no, not in Israel." In Mark 6:6, he marveled in the opposite direction — because of their unbelief.

Both responses produced wonder in Jesus. The difference was what they were built on.

Notice something about almost all the people Jesus commended for great faith in the Gospels: they were non-Jews. The Syrophoenician woman. The Roman centurion. People who came to God's word with no inherited religiosity, no familiarity that breeds contempt. Sometimes it is familiarity with religion that inhibits the ability to simply take God at his word.

The solution is to return to Scripture with the humility of someone encountering it for the first time. God's word can be trusted. God is who he says he is.

Don't Stagger at the Promise

Mark 11:23 — "If you say to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea, and you do not doubt in your heart, you shall have what you say."

Stop circumlocating. Stop excusing God's promises away. The questions to ask are simple:

• What has God said concerning your life?
• What has he said about your future?
• What has he promised to do through you?

Don't stagger at the promise of God.

If God is going to marvel at something in your life, let it be your faith — not your unbelief.

Practicing Faith

Faith is not passive. It must be practiced. When the propensity to doubt arises, the answer is to return to the word of God. There is a reason the Bible calls us believers. Be a believer — take God's word for what it says and act on it.

A practical exercise: write out the things that have been sources of worry, then write what the word of God says about each one. Confess those scriptures consistently. This reorients the mind from doubt to the conviction of God's word — because that is where it belongs.