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You Need THIS to Produce fruit in your life.
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[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to Shifts and Ladders. Is Ryan Robinson. Excited to have you with us today. We're going to get back on the topic of faith, and we've been in the book of Hebrews for quite a bit of time, but I'm going to kind of shift a bit to a different book that actually talks about faith.
Many have quoted this.
It is one of the most commonly utilized scriptures when it comes in regarding of faith. And I want to read it.
It's in James, chapter two.
Yeah, James, chapter two, verse 14. And if you haven't yet, do me a favor, subscribe, share with somebody. I think this particular scripture is so powerful for us to get back to the topic of faith. And we talked about this In Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1, says faith, now faith. Correction. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
And essentially this is the equation of faith is substance of hope, things not seen, and that evidence of that. So it produces something.
It's a catalyst to create something.
And honestly, at the end of the day, it's not just the fact that you have faith in something. It is where have you placed your faith in or who have you placed your faith in? Our faith has. Should have the object of God at the center of it or at its aim or at the end of it.
In this case, for the Christian expression, Jesus.
Jesus should be the option and the. I won't say the option, but the object of our faith. Because by Jesus, we believe not only what he can do, but who he is and who he said he is. And the Word says that God is not a man, that he should lie. So everything that God said, everything that Jesus said, because Jesus is the earthly and physical manifestation of God and the earth being the perfect example of how we should actually be living our life.
He is the one by which we place our hope in, okay? Him alone, not just for what he does.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:02:22] Speaker A: So now once we have that foundation of faith, what does faith do?
What does it do? It doesn't just produce like we were talking about Abraham, it actually causes us to do something.
It's called works. Okay? And this is where we hear often. So let me read, and I'm gonna give a little bit of context, maybe about two or three points, and we're gonna. I'm gonna let you roll so you can start getting to work on what you learn, okay? So it says this.
James, chapter 2, verse 14 says this. What does it profit, my brothers? If a man says he has faith but has no works, can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and lacking daily food, and one of you says to them, depart in peace. Be warmed and be filled. And yet you have. And yet you give them nothing that the body needs, what does it profit?
So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
But a man may say, you have faith and I have works.
Show me your faith without works and I will show you my faith by my works.
And we'll just drop it at that, because there's a lot more after that that I want to get into. Maybe there might be a part two. We'll see. But anyway, there is a thing that happens is when you get faith and you start activating on what you believe, it actually causes you to do something.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:03:56] Speaker A: If you believe that you're able to lose weight, I don't know why I keep saying that. Maybe I'm trying to lose weight still.
But if you say, I believe I can lose weight, it doesn't mean that you done that you're losing weight. Like, just because I said I wanted to.
The actions show whether I believe in what I said or not.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Most people say they want to be financially wealthy, but they don't stop spending. Do they believe that they can do that? Probably not.
So what God is saying is, hey, if you have enough faith to believe something, you should actually be so enthralled and so impacted and so passionate about the fact that this end result will happen based on your faith.
You will start operating as if it has already been done. It's just waiting to be realized in real time.
Now, let's keep it real here. Faith is a future activate activity.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Faith. When you have faith for an outcome, the outcome isn't immediate. It is something in the future that is not manifest yet.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:05:16] Speaker A: So in order for us to properly activate on it, the faith, the thing we have faith for the person we are, God, who we have faith in, that conviction has to be so strong that it creates some level of movement. You've got to do something.
If there's a. I'm gonna use a song.
This may not move anybody, but it moves me.
Michael Jackson Dance and shout let's dance and shout Jacob out of down to the Ground.
So that song, they're just songs that you just can't help but move.
Like you just, you know, you bob your head or, you know, you do your little bounce, if you will. Like if it's Summertime by Will Smith or something like that. I know this is a Christian podcast, but listen, I.
Everybody ain't always been Saying, but what I will say this is that there is something that when you've bought into it, you start to move because you respond to it.
Faith should activate some kind of movement toward an outcome that you are believing.
So what he's saying here, the example that says, hey, if someone is naked, neat clothes.
He says, be warm.
What did he say? Hold on. What did James say? Here we go. I'm gonna run his back.
16. And one of you says to them, if someone's naked and lacking food, daily food, depart in peace, be warm and filled, and yet you give them nothing.
What does it profit?
Basically, it says, talk is cheap.
How are you going to say you have faith, but you don't have faith to do something?
There's a.
A proverb. I believe it's Proverbs 17. It says.
Oh, let me. Let me say it correctly here. It says, words mean nothing, but hard work always produces profit.
I've said, paraphrase it, but that in itself means something. Solomon says it.
Okay, let me rephrase it again. I'm sorry.
Mere words lead to poverty, but hard work always produces a profit. There we go. I had a brain fart.
Why is that? Because there has to be actions that produce and line up with your words.
And I'm going to tell you why.
When God spoke, something happened, right?
When God was creating the heavens and the earth. We start in Genesis chapter one and chapter two. God said, let there be light. And there was light.
There was an action that was. There was a response to what was said. And if we are made in the image and likeness of God, particularly those who are children of the Most High God, when we say and believe, there should be a corresponding action that happens. It's not instantaneous, but it is progressive.
So if you say you believe and you are not producing or working towards what you said, you believe, the faith is weak because there needs to be works that respond to what has been said.
God is a spirit.
So anything God can do, whatever he wants to do, he can do. An instantaneous miracle he can do, one that progresses and takes time. But what he can do is that what he cannot do is he cannot say something and it not happen.
God, the Word says that God's words will not return unto him void, but will go out and accomplish everything for which he has sent it.
So because of that position, there has to be some kind of response, okay?
So if you choose to say it, be prepared to move on it, because your faith moves you.
It is like a.
It's like a rope that if You've tied.
If you're. You're. You're.
I'm thinking cowboys for some reason. But say you've caught something by your lasso and you're pulling it in.
You're not pulling it in just because you need to pull it in. There is something at the end. There's an objective that in roping in the pig or whatever it is, you're going to have some bacon.
So, yeah, there might be some struggle, but at the end of it, you are putting in the effort to pull that thing. Thing that you need and that you're believing for. You don't quit.
You do not give up.
You do not.
You may take a break, but if you. But you don't let go of the rope.
There is this struggle between what I'm saying and what I'm pursuing and what we have to do, people of God, is we have to decide, do we believe strong enough in the things that we say?
Because honestly, if you don't believe it, you won't say it.
Okay, I.
I will say I'm just telling myself here, the. It's been so hard at times to podcasts from time to time, right?
And I got a lot of personal things going on in my life. I'm in a pivot professionally.
My kids are getting older.
We are, you know, I'm getting closer to 40.
So you start having these thoughts and ruminations of, like, man, what has my life been so far? I'm getting into this new decade of life. What has the latter. Has the previous half of my life. And again, I'm. I'm. I'm in my late 30s, so I'm like, I'm not old, I'm not ancient.
My kneecaps might hurt a little bit.
But you start to think about, has my faith been activated? You're hearing my daughter right now actually singing. If you can hear in the microphone, they're upstairs playing.
But I've struggled understanding, like, what do you have faith for in this season? But evaluating. What did I have faith for in the previous season?
And did the faith that I had in the past, am I still active on it?
Is what I was believing God for come to pass?
And if it hadn't, why did I quit?
Did I lose hope?
Did I think that it didn't happen sooner than I thought it would?
And why did I stop pursuing what happened? Did I lose faith? Did I sink into the ocean? Did I lose focus on Jesus like Peter did when he was walking on water, when he was walking on top of the thing that he should have been drowning in.
Just because he had his focus on Jesus, he stayed on top of turbulent waters.
But when I find that when I've lost my focus on Jesus, I am drowning in those turbulent waters.
So sometimes you just take a moment, you look back, and you're like, man, what did I do? What did I mess up? How did I. How did I. How did I get here?
And a lot of times you will find that either you've lost faith in the middle of a very stressful and challenging season, which, by the way, the book of James is rooted in, because during this time they were getting persecuted.
So faith doesn't always work going up the stairs to promotion and to new new positions and elevation and building bigger house, newer cars, better clothes, all that kind of stuff. No, it doesn't just work going up.
It also works going down.
When you are struggling, when you lose a job, when you've lost a spouse, when you've gotten a divorce, when you don't know who you are, when you have lost the passion that you once had for the thing that you loved, faith also works for there.
Are you going to quit or are you going to continue the good fight of the faith?
There's both sides, y'. All. God can promote and he can keep.
And most people just want the good things that faith brings, not just the bad, too.
How can you receive from the Lord just the good and not the bad, as Joe would say?
And if God is as good as he says that he is, would all of these things that are happening to us not work out for our good anyway?
Bible. The Bible says that the Lord chastises those who he loves. If you are a kid of the most high God and a prince of the God of the universe, he is going to, like a loving father or a loving parent, discipline you so that you are more and more like his son, Jesus.
For he knows what you need.
And that's why we have to have faith, y'. All. A lot of this stuff doesn't make sense. It's perplexing. It's perplexing. I don't know why the things in the world happen the way that they do.
You could easily lose faith, y', all, because stuff just don't make no sense.
It don't make no sense.
But if we believe that God can, we can still operate and walk in the fact that God is in control of all these circumstances.
We have free will, of course, but if we release it to God and have faith in him, at least we can stay the course and hang on and thrive. In fact, I will say this and I'm going to close.
It's easy for us to celebrate. God promoted me. Promotion comes from the north. It comes from the Father who is the good things come from the Father who loves us and he's going to bless us all that, that's all cool and all, but most people are watching you in your faith when you get bad news and how you handle some difficult situations.
That is the proof of your faith that when things aren't going well and you are losing, it seems like you're losing. Let me say that.
Do you still believe God?
And most people ask you say, where is your faith at now?
I got asked this the other day.
I'm going through a tough season. As I said before.
Someone asked me, said, this is an opportunity for you to lean on your faith because it goes, it works going up the same way when you're going down.
God is a keeper.
Don't forget it.
So if you don't have any works and you say you are hurting, you're struggling, your faith to hold on, to see what the end is going to be is a testament not just to you and not just to the faithfulness of God, but an example to those around you who do not know how to handle something that would typically break, destroy, lead someone to a bottle, lead someone to shoot up drugs in their arm.
They would go to everything else except to God.
But you just never know what your struggle could be communicating about the God of the universe to other people. Okay, so I'm going to say this one last time. Faith without works is dead.
Don't quit.
Receive the blessing of promotion, but also believe in the God that is redemptive in seasons of lack.
Because God works in all of those seasons for you. All right, listen again. If you've been blessed by this, share this with somebody. We're on YouTube.
Subscribe Share on YouTube. We're on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I truly believe that God wants to utilize this particular message. If you are going through a tough and rough season, you've been beat up real good.
God has not forgotten about you and he's actually closer to you right now than you ever, ever thought.
Be encouraged and we'll check you in the next one.
Peace.
