Let Not Faith Die

"Let Not Faith Die" – Mark 11:24 As the seasons pass, and the days, the years, and the decades, it is very easy to become ordinary and common again; that is easier than being a believer who increases from glory to glory. God wants to give out, but God cannot give to anyone with a lukewarm heart, nor to anyone whose attention is on other things than the Lord. What has kept us going and what lets us stand today is faith; there is nothing else. It is easy, once we walk out the doors, to return to the old ways; what is hard is to remain in faith. That is why this message is titled: let not faith die.

I. What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them (Mark 11:24).

A. Our existence is made up of our faith.

1. What was Abraham but a man of faith? What was Isaac? What was Jacob? All were meek men, equipped in faith; none greater than another in spiritual rank.

2. What is faith? The evidence of what is not seen; it is what will never be seen by nature, and there is an effort on our part.

3. If you let faith die, the trouble is that we stop growing spiritually; for to grow and to know God directly is through faith.

4. And it is not hard for faith to die: it is easy. You say, I still come to church, and the trouble is that faith, instead of increasing, is dwindling.

5. For that reason things are left undone: you stop praying, you stop reading the Word, you stop singing with zeal and lifting your hands in thanksgiving.

6. And little by little it dims, because we grow more attached to the cares of the earth; and the earth has much to be anxious about.

B. If faith dies, defeat comes.

1. What is defeat? A being overcome. If you miss a service and it troubles you not at all, you have been overcome; and in defeat the failures begin in everything.

2. Today you still see hope; but I cannot promise you will have it in three years, if today you have set your heart on what leads you to the defeat of faith. When the storm comes, it tears up by the roots.

3. When we see that we are dealing more with the world than with the saints, there is a defeat, because faith has grown scarce.

4. In military terms, a defeated army is left in disorder and annihilation follows; and if those soldiers stand for a country, that country comes to ruin and the nation where they live is destroyed.

5. When one lets Satan take much ground, the great defeat comes; for to give Satan ground is to have the angels withdraw, and our soldiers are angels.

6. If the angels see that you are not stationed in a place of war, they draw back; for the Father says: I have nothing to do with the lukewarm.

II. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

A. Faith is not vanity nor fantasy.

1. Perhaps you have ambitious goals; that is not faith, that is vanity. Faith is not vain nor does it put on airs.

2. I want to study this and I pray God gives it to me: do you not see that is so as to boast afterward? That is merely a need, so that one may feel settled.

3. Faith is the mysteries we cannot reach with a common mind; it is everything supernatural that comes from heaven for our lives.

4. When your faith has fallen asleep, it is because you let it sleep. When one is without faith, it is because one has gone to sleep spiritually.

5. Faith is for crossing over to what we cannot reach. Does it worry you that someone is not growing spiritually? If you are a person of faith, you pray that God be the one to act, and you wait for what you prayed.

6. With the little God does, our faith will keep growing. For you will believe plenty; and what you believe is always negative, sunken, defeated.

B. The endurance of faith.

1. When we are converted we have passion and strength; and time passes, and afterward we begin again to see the vanity and what the world offers.

2. Where did you set your eyes? Where you set your eyes you set your heart; for that reason the heart loses faith, and the whole system loses faith.

3. Abraham could not have children; Isaac was long in having children. It was all fought through faith: believing God where there was a well to water his animals and his servants.

4. You open the tap and there is water; everything has been arranged so conveniently that it seems unnecessary to exercise faith. But when the evil day comes, you did not exercise it and you are drowning.

5. To those men it was common to know faith, because they needed a miracle for water. And us? This brand of water is a bit bitter, open another bottle. In what have we drowned? In trifles.

6. Faith makes the realities we hope for as real to us as if we already possessed them; it brings the future into the present and makes the unseen seen.

III. Faith is confidence in the reliability of God, and God tests it in the crucible.

A. The conviction that what God says is true.

1. It is the persuasion that what God promises will be fulfilled. Let us seek Him in spirit and in truth, for this is not asking for a whim.

2. There are convictions we know we must ask God for and must fight for; and we must show Him that we are faithful and that He is the absolute in our life.

3. Letting Him see that we always have a sword in hand, that we go forward, that we have no complaints in our mouth, and that what weighs most on us is that all be good, holy, and pure.

4. But today a little and tomorrow five steps back; and then what belongs to the earth becomes our ambition. Do not go on fighting so for the earth: become a soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ.

5. If you were handling faith in your existence, you would come through the door with thanksgiving and with songs, because here God always has living words for us, for growth and for freedom.

B. Faith begins where the possibilities end.

1. It is not a leap into the dark: faith demands the surest evidence, and the meeting place is the Word of God. If you neither pray nor read the Word, you are in ruin.

2. Today you are bound because there are things you thought would be possible and they have become impossible. Well, faith begins to act in the impossible.

3. If something is possible, there is no glory for God in it; afterward you will not say: Lord, thank you because you acted. Faith looks only to God, laughs at impossibilities, and cries: it shall be so.

C. God tests our faith in the crucible.

1. The crucible is where the pieces are made, formed of a material that withstands great heat; and that heat enters the piece, which in the end is clay.

2. Porcelain is clay under high temperature for more hours; when it does not reach that, it is ceramic. To become porcelain the mold shrinks, but it will be brighter, stronger, and harder.

3. Your whole life is put into that furnace to form you into the image and likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ: in the trials, in the weariness, in the sickness that came, in the problem. See whether porcelain comes out, or common ceramic.

4. God tests our faith in the crucible to see whether it is genuine. When we are put in that crucible we cry like children and turn cowardly; we have to bear the heat.

5. Someone said: difficulties are the food of faith. Everything one lives through only increases faith; that is why this or that no longer moves one.

6. And do you know why you are being so tested? Because your faith is scarce. If one grows in faith, you are not weak nor vulnerable, you have no face of a victim, but of a soldier ready for war.

IV. For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7); this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith (1 John 5:4).

A. Only by faith have we been able to see Him.

1. Where is He? At the right hand of the Father; we do not see Him. The disciples could walk by sight and had Him present; we have believed by faith.

2. When He walked among the multitudes it was by sight, and the miracles were there. We have had to exercise our faith to know Him and to see Him.

3. And we feel Him when we pray, when we sense His presence, when we are caught up with our hands lifted: we feel that we touch Him.

4. There is no greater beloved on this earth who loves us, who is with us while we sleep and in the day of trouble. Though we are at times so dull, He stays at our side and does not leave.

5. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering (James 1:6). Draw near to God; it costs nothing, for what God is waiting for is that you draw near.

B. Faith overcomes the world.

1. The worldly system is a monstrous contrivance, an art of temptations, always trying to draw us away from God and from what is eternal, and to occupy us with the temporal and the carnal.

2. The people of this world are wholly given to the things of time and of the senses; the human being today has become a victim of passing things.

3. To have everything, but as though not having it. When the things of this world take first place, you are already a prisoner of the world; and a prisoner of the world acts according to the world, not in faith.

4. Only the one truly born of God overcomes the world, because by faith he can rise above things and see them in their true perspective, the eternal one.

5. When you decide to give priority to what is eternal, you benefit your life: you are a warrior, everything becomes easy, and you will keep your own from being lost.

C. Watch ye, stand fast in the faith (1 Corinthians 16:13).

1. We must watch, and not one week yes and one week no; watch constantly. It is not a burden: it should be natural in us.

2. Whatever you see that is set to destroy, move faith. But watch and guard; do not let this one, nor that one, nor the trifles drown us.

3. To quit you like men is to be brave and strong. And what is it to be strong? To be firm, to be one who resists.

4. If someone comes running to strike you down, and you stand there, the one who falls is the one who struck; because you are firm, planted wholly in faith.

5. He who has faith, no one moves; he who has faith, no one can destroy. Paul knows well the danger of false teachers who look for weak and vulnerable souls. Be of faith. Amen.