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Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11.1 Lord, when you give me a promise, I choose to believe I will see the full manifestation of what's hoped for. I will see the full manifestation of that hoped-for promise. My faith assures me it will happen, even though I have no evidence of it right now. By faith, I believe in Jesus. By faith, I trust in your word.
By faith I believe what you say to me by your spirit. My faith is what the enemy attacks, because faith is my confidence and trust in you. If the enemy can weaken that confidence, I am rendered powerless against him. I trust in you, Lord, your word and your promises. I have not seen heaven, but I hope I will see you there by my faith in you. Amen. Thank you for listening to today's daily prayer.
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Welcome to High Impact Living with Pastor Rick McDaniel. Inflation, gas prices, crime, division in our country. It's caused many to be anxious and afraid. If you need an encouraging word in these challenging times, if you want a sermon that will bless you, if you desire an increase in your faith, this message is for you.
Now here's Pastor Rick preaching today's message, I Believe It, from the church he founded and pastored for 27 years in Richmond, Virginia. 2 Kings chapter 7, verses 1 and 2. Elisha answered, I have a message for you. The Lord promises that tomorrow here in Samaria, you will be able to buy a large sack of flour or two large sacks of barley for almost nothing.
The chief officer there with the king replied, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Let me give you the background real quick on what's going on here. The Syrian army has come and they have completely set a siege and surrounded this city. And so as time goes by, food is going away and they've entered into a famine. There's no more food. These people are extremely desperate. There are four lepers,
And these four lepers say, we're going to die because we're going to starve to death. So why don't we just go out to the army and see if they'll feed us? If they don't feed us and kill us, we die. If we stay here, we die. Either way, we die. Very motivational group. So they go out.
But here's what God does. When these four lepers start coming, God makes it sound like a huge army is coming so that the Syrians think this is what they think. The king of Israel has gotten the Egyptian army and the Hittite army to join forces along with his army, and they're coming to get us, and they're going to destroy us. And they're so afraid that they say, just drop everything and run.
Don't take anything with you. Just run. And they run. They retreat. When the lepers get there, they're like, oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. There's nothing but food and food and food and food. No one's even here. It's marvelous. So they start eating and doing all this stuff. Then one of them goes, I think we better tell other people that this has happened. We better not just tell, you keep it to ourselves. So they go back, they tell the king, the king's like, I don't believe it. I don't believe it.
We'll send a few people and a few special forces, a couple special operators that go out and we'll see if this is really the case. They go, they find out it's the case, and everybody, I mean the news hits the city and everybody just goes, goes, and everybody starts getting all the food that they could ever want so that a large sack of flour or two large sacks of barley cost almost nothing.
Because supply and demand, if there's plenty of supply, there's not any demand. By the way, I didn't read the part where the guy who says, I don't believe it. Elisha says to him, you're never going to see this happen. On the way out of the city and everyone is going crazy because they're starving to death to get to the food. He gets trampled over and dies. Wow. That's the background of this story.
Now let's move, oh, I don't know, maybe 2,700 years to today. What's going on today? Many people fearful, anxious, inflation, gas prices, division in our country, unemployment, not bad now, but if the Fed keeps raising rates and then filled with anxiety and fear, and that is not the place that God wants us to be.
Have you ever thought about this? What is it about fear and faith that's the same? You say, well, they both start with the letter F, Patrick. Well, that is true. They do. But here's the thing about faith and fear. They both believe in a future that hasn't happened yet.
Faith believes in a future that hasn't happened yet. Fear believes in a future that hasn't happened yet. And the question for you today is this, which future are you going to believe? Are you going to believe in a negative fear-filled future or a positive faith-filled future? And that's the choice today, to choose to believe, to believe. Don't believe in the fear and don't believe in the hype. Believe in what God can do.
Way back in the 50s at Harvard, they did a study with rats, domesticated and wild rats. They dropped them all in water, and they wanted to see how long they could swim around before they gave up. The domesticated rats would swim 40 to 60 hours before they gave up. The wild rats, 15 minutes, they were done. So they did another study just with the wild rats.
They put the rats in, and just when they were ready to give up, they took them out of the water. They dried them off. They sang a lullaby to them. They might not have done that, but they gave them a chance to rest. They put them back in the water. How long did the wild rats end up staying in the water that time? 40 to 60 hours, just like the domesticated ones. And the researchers came to this conclusion that
The rats believed that they would be rescued so they could keep on swimming. Do you believe?
If you're a person of faith today, if you've accepted Christ into your life, you stepped out in faith, do you believe? And by the way, if you're unchurched today, if you're seeking today, and you have yet to decide to become a follower of Christ, faith is the starting point. So it's a good thing to listen today about the nature of faith. Here's what I know. Belief causes us to rise up, to live with purpose, to press on. Faith is what moves us forward.
But so many people, when they hear faith, they think, oh, this is mystical. It's mystical. How can you understand it? But here's what's exciting. Faith is definable. It's not mystical, actually. It's definable. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1. Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, assurance of what we do not see.
confidence in what we hope for, assurance in what we do not see. That's what faith is. You don't have to wonder about what it is. You can know what it is. It's confidence in what you hope for. To have faith, to believe, is to have confidence that what you hope is going to happen will happen. To have an assurance that whatever
you don't see will in fact be seen. An assurance and a confidence. And so faith becomes a choice. We choose to believe. We make a conscious choice. I choose to believe that God will rescue me, that God will care for me. I choose to believe that.
I make a conscious decision. You believe when it's difficult. You believe when it doesn't make sense. You believe when it's easy to doubt. You choose to believe. I don't believe it. Yes, you say, I do believe it. You don't end up like this chief officer. I don't believe it. Even the king, I don't know if that really happened. Let's send some people to find out. You choose to believe.
God does miracles. God works in the supernatural. God takes his super and puts it on your natural. And it's amazing what happens. Most of us know one, I think one of the most amazing miracles in the Bible, the parting of the Red Sea, but I don't know if we fully understand it.
Because many of us have seen the Ten Commandments, and so we think, oh, they were looking at water up over here and water up over there, and they just walked through. But that's not what happened. In the Army, one of the branches of the Army is the Quartermaster. In fact, they're headquartered right down the road here at Fort Lee. The Quartermaster General of the Army did a little study.
Here's what he determined. Well, let me back up and tell you. In the Bible, it says there were 600,000 men. That is in the Bible. But we know, of course, that there were also women and children. So the scholars estimate about 2.5 million people. So 2.5 million people had to make their way out of Egypt. And the quartermaster determined that in order for 2.5 million people to cross in one day...
would mean that the span of opening between the two walls of water would be three miles. Three miles. It's two miles from here to the Interstate 295 exit. It's another mile to get to three miles. That's how wide it was.
5,000 people shoulder to shoulder walking all day long for two and a half million people to walk on dry land. How's that for a miracle? Pretty good, God. Yeah, pretty good. And oh, by the way, he also said how much food they would need. Three million pounds of food a day and 11 million gallons of water. And God did it.
The same God who did that is still working today. Yeah, inflation, 40-year high. Don't deny it. Sure, gas prices crazy high. Yes, it's true. Housing, mortgage rates, on and on it goes. Not to mention what's happening in your life. Because you could be facing a health problem right now. You could be facing an issue in your family or your marriage.
We're all going to face all these things, and faith is what is going to make the difference. Friends, faith doesn't make it easy. It makes it possible. Faith doesn't make it easy. It makes it possible. And if you want to be in the possibility, you have to exercise faith. Instead of focusing on the problem, focus on your faith.
The confidence. The confidence. I have confidence in what I hope for. I have an assurance about what I don't see. But in the eyes of faith, I see it. You know, the greatest definition of vision that I've ever heard is seeing the invisible. Not normal vision. Go to your eye doctor. He says, what do you see? I see the invisible. You might have a problem.
But in the world of, you know, ministry and leadership, what is vision? It's seeing the invisible. Do you have the vision? Do you have the vision? Faith is definable. And listen, friends, faith is indispensable. Here's why. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6. And without faith, it is impossible to please God.
In other words, it isn't, yeah, Pastor Rick, you came here today to inspire us and fire us up to have faith. No. Well, I mean, yes, but you have to have faith because otherwise you can't please God. Another way to translate the word impossible, the original language Greek, would be unable. Without faith, you're unable. You are not able to please God unless you exercise faith.
If you are a follower of Christ today, you stepped over the line of faith, meaning you said, I choose to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he was born of the Virgin Mary, that he lived a sinless life, that he died on the cross, that he rose from the grave over the cross, and that someday he will come back again. That's what you choose to believe. Amen? Amen?
If you're a follower of Christ. If you've yet to follow Christ, this is what it means to follow Christ. It says, I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and that by faith in believing in his work on the cross, I am saved. My soul is saved for eternity. That's what it means to have faith. But my question today, for those of you that chosen to follow is, so you started in faith and now?
The gas prices, the inflation, the division is now what? Greater than the faith? Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Doubt causes us to shrink back, to live in fear, to give up hope. That's what doubt does. We're not here to shrink back or to live in fear or to give up hope.
Faith means this. I believe things are gonna get better. I believe things are going to improve. I believe it. I believe it. I choose to believe it. Faith, the indispensable nature of faith. About four years ago,
I've been writing for Fox for a number of years. I've written like 40 articles, but this one article, bam, the editor calls me, says, hey, I just got to tell you, this article is completely taken off. 1.7 million people have read it. Like, wow, I've been ministering to people for years. I have a broadcast. I got all this stuff going on. I never reached a million point, 1.7 million people. That got me going, thinking, writing other things,
And ultimately led me to believe a few years later that God wanted me to transition out of pastoring the church to try to reach more people. But that was a huge step of faith. So the pray people contacted me and they said, hey, we'd like you to have this daily devotion show. Great. And we want to take one of your messages.
and put it on our Sunday service. The Sunday service on Pray, on the Pray app or Pray.com, is one message that runs all day long. It's not like on at 11 or, you know, it's on all day. I said, great. The next day they contacted me and they said, listen, we just want you to know, yesterday, 1.7 million people listened to your message. You see how God confirms?
To the number 1.7 million read it. Okay, maybe I should start doing this. 1.7 million people listen to it. This is how God confirms. God will show himself to be faithful to you if you will have faith. Now faith isn't faith if it's not tested.
I used to say for years, those of you who've heard me many times, you know, you know, those of you who are on the staff know, you know, if it was easy, everybody would do it. If it was easy, everybody would do it. It's not easy. It's not always easy to have faith. So we have to choose to believe. We choose to believe. Your faith gets tested. You choose to continue to have faith.
You say to yourself, I am going to please God by how I exercise my faith. I will please God. People say, how could I please God? By exercising your faith. It's impossible to please God if you don't exercise your faith, if you don't choose to believe.
If you don't say, I believe it. I believe it. I have confidence in what I hope for. I have assurance of what I do not see. Some of the old translations say certainty. I am certain of what I don't see. I'm assured of what I don't see. I have confidence in what I hope for, that it is going to come to pass, that it is going to happen, that God is going to do it. That's what faith is. And that's what God is asking of us today.
in this challenging season is to choose to have faith, to choose to believe. It is indispensable if we are going to walk with the Lord. And it is the only way that miracles happen. What God did when he parted three miles, you'll never forget that, will you? Next time you watch Ten Commandments, you'd be like, that is not historically accurate.
Pastor Rick said it's not me. The quartermaster, he said, quartermaster general said, three miles, three miles. I mean, just imagine the massiveness of that. 11 million gallons of water, 3 million pounds of food. And of course, we could go on and on and talk about all the many amazing miracles, including the greatest miracle of all, which is that Jesus died on a cross, was buried and rose up from the grave. He was dead and he was alive. That's the God we serve.
That's the God we serve, and a God like that can certainly help us with our inflationary issues that we're in today. Amen? Faith is also scalable.
Faith can scale. Here's in the business world, they talk it like, oh, we have this one location and it's been successful. So let's scale up to 10 locations and then from 10 locations to 100 locations. In the educational world, they'll say, this program is working in this school. Let's put it in all the schools and the whole entire school district. And then, oh, it's working. Let's put it throughout the state and everyone who uses this program. It is able, it has the potential to scale.
Faith is something that can scale. It starts small. Listen, Matthew chapter 17, verses 20 and 21. Truly I tell you, this is Jesus, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
If you have faith, as small as a mustard seed. You know how small a mustard seed is? No, I do not, Pastor Rick. Well, you can look up on the screen and you can see it for yourself. The tiny little seeds in the palm of someone's hand. They are minuscule, tiny little seeds. And everyone that Jesus was talking to knew. Everyone understood those tiny little mustard seeds.
They knew that is as small as it gets. And then Jesus said, you can say, he pointed to Mount Hermon. He said, you can say to that mountain, move and it'll move. They knew that Jesus didn't mean the actual physical mountain would move because for the Hebrew people, mountain was a metaphor for difficulty or problem. So what Jesus was saying is you can say to that problem, move to solution, right?
You can say to that difficulty, move to done. That's what faith can do. Small little faith. You say, I don't have a lot of faith, Pastor Rick. Do you have a faith as small as the mustard seed? The teeny little bit of faith? Yes, you have that much faith.
I'll answer for you. Yes, you do. You have that much faith. You have faith that small, that tiny little. Now, what does Jesus say? Nothing will be impossible for you. Impossible. I just heard that word. Yes, without faith, it's impossible to please God. With faith, nothing is impossible.
In other words, everything is impossible without faith. Nothing is impossible with faith. That is a tweetable statement. Everything, everything is impossible without faith. Nothing is impossible with faith. Jesus said it. So the difference here is enormous, enormous difference between choosing, choosing faith
To believe and to practice faith opens up the door. Okay, scaling. So in this book, The Voltage Effect, this guy John List writes this book to help businesses scale, to scale up. But listen to this statement that he makes. 50 to 90% of programs lose voltage at scale, meaning as people try to scale their business or their program, it doesn't scale.
It doesn't scale. It loses voltage. It loses power. Guess what doesn't lose power at scale but gains power at scale? Say it with me. Faith. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7. Walk by faith and not by sight. So now we're scaling. We're going from little mustard seed, tiny little faith, and we're moving up to walk by faith and not by sight.
Well, I saw this on TV and I saw this online and that doesn't sound good. And this looks really bad. And oh my gosh, what is going to happen? Walk by faith, not by sight. So your faith scales. It begins to grow. It gets bigger. It gets stronger as you scale up your faith. It can be done. Good news, you can start with a tiny little bit of faith. That's all you need.
Better news, your faith can grow. Your faith can increase. It scales upward. Here's another step up in the scaling of faith. One of my favorite stories in the whole Bible. This army officer comes to Jesus and he says, and this is in Matthew chapter eight, verse 20. He comes to Jesus and he says, my servant is sick. He's gonna die, but I know you can heal him.
And Jesus, I'm not asking you to come to my house. Lay your hand on him and pray for him to be healed. Because I'm an officer. So I understand authority. And I know you have authority. And if you say right now that my servant is healed, then I believe he's healed. What was Jesus' response to that? Here's what it says in verse 20. It says, Jesus was amazed.
or marveled. Jesus was amazed. Jesus marveled at his great faith. He was so excited. Jesus said, finally, somebody gets it. The faith thing works. And if you believe, miraculous things happen. Now, here's where it really gets interesting.
There's one other place in the entire Bible where the word amazed is used regarding Jesus. There's only two places in the whole Bible. This place, Matthew 8, 20, Jesus was amazed, marveled at their faith. Mark 6, 6. What's Mark 6, 6 say? Jesus was in his hometown and he was amazed at their lack of faith.
Two times. Jesus is amazed. Jesus is marveled. And they both involve faith. Lack of faith, great faith. Now I've been meditating on this this week. It's really blessed me. Maybe it'll bless you. Just think about this. Almighty God, Jesus Christ could be amazed by something puny little me could do. Exercising great faith.
That, does it like blow your mind? Like will you think, oh, I could do something to amaze Jesus. I could do nothing to amaze Jesus. Nothing. Well, according to the Bible, you actually could. If you would look at what's going on today and you would choose to have great faith instead of anxiety and fear, you would amaze Jesus. He will be marveled by your faith. Somebody say amen to that. Wow. Wow. Wow.
What God can do when people scale up their faith, move it from tiny faith to walking in faith to great faith. And again, the good news is it's scalable. So if you're tiny today, you know, you can go to walking and you can go to great. I mean, you can work your way up this building that you're in right now. Let me just tell you this story.
God, we started the church, 10 families in a basement. And over a 10-year period, my faith went from tiny to walking and really started to get big because I saw all the things God was doing and doing and doing, including the property, this property, 1,000 feet of frontage, four-lane road, interstate exit, million-dollar piece of property. And it was sold to us not for a million, not for three-quarters of a million, not for half a million, for one-third of a million. God gave us this property.
My faith got even bigger. Now it was time to build. First person I thought of to go as a banker was this guy, Bank of America. Sat next to him for years. Our sons played football together. He always said to me, "When you're ready, come see me." I came and saw him. I said, "I'm ready." Gave him all the numbers, gave him all the financials. Got back with him. He said, "No." I said, "Remember when you said, just, you know, when you're ready." Didn't that mean yes? Isn't that what that meant?
He didn't just say no. He said, and Rick, as your friend, I'm imploring you, don't do this. You cannot afford to do this. You should not do this. I said, well, thanks for the friendship. And I went to another bank, and guess what they said? No. And I went to another bank, and they said, net, which is a fancy word in another language for no. No, no, no. Finally...
I found a bank, doesn't even exist anymore. That doesn't mean because they loaned us money, they don't exist. They merged with another bank. They finally agreed to loan us the money. He's building the building, very, very exciting. And then the builder comes to me and says, oh, you know, have you ever heard of Scope Creep, Pastor Rick? I said, no.
Well, let me teach you about it. It means that the project tends to, the scope of it creeps and it ends up being a little more expensive. I said, what does this all mean? Well, we're not going to have enough money for your FFE, which stands for fixtures, furniture, and equipment. In other words, the building will be built, but there will be no chairs, no sound system, no lighting, no desk, no computers. I don't know about you, but I thought that was kind of a problem.
I went back to the bank. Who loaned us the money? And I said, we need just another quarter of a million to do the FFE. Guess what they said? No. Okay. I drove down to Petersburg. It's such a great story. I wish I could tell it to you. I walked out of there with a quarter million dollar check in my hand. As a matter of fact, I literally called my wife and I said, hey, you want to go to South America? She said, why? I said, we could just, I got a quarter million dollars in my hand. We could just, that didn't happen. But
Got the quarter of a million dollars. Okay, so now all the bankers say you're not gonna be able to do it. What happened? Within one year, the church almost doubled in size. We never missed a payment. In fact, not only do we never miss a payment, we kept doing that and we paid off that quarter of a million dollar loan because God can do miraculous things when we exercise faith. And there are people here today who gave money that made that faith miracle happen.
People here today who were a part of investing in that miracle that ultimately, because it's not the bank that made it happen, it's the giving that made it happen. And it all comes down to one thing, faith. Here's what I know. God will provide. God will do the impossible. Our best days are ahead. Do you believe it? Stand with me.
I'm going to say that again. And when I do, unlike the chief officer who said, I don't believe it, we're going to say, I do believe it. Amen. God will provide. God will do the impossible. Our best days are ahead. I believe it. That wasn't loud enough. I will do it one more time. God will provide.
God's going to do the impossible. Our best days are ahead. I believe it. Amen. God bless you. Great to be with you today.
We hope today's message blessed and ministered to you. You can hear more from Pastor Rick on Pray. His daily devotions with Pastor Rick McDaniel can be heard anytime. There are over 170 devotions on demand to listen to whenever you like. Make sure and visit his Pray Leader profile and learn more about him and his ministry, High Impact Living. And you can get Pastor Rick's new devotional book, Devotional.
This is Living, daily inspiration to live your faith on Amazon and be inspired and encouraged each day. Have a great week. The podcast, The Bible in a Year with Jack Graham, is a moving and inspiring biblical audio experience that will help you master wisdom from the world's greatest book. In each episode, you'll learn to apply biblical principles to everyday life.
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