Show Notes
Listen, we've all been there.
You're having a tough time.
Your faith is feeling a little easier to break.
Let's talk about it.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Have you ever believed in God with your mouth, but on the other side, you're wondering how he's going to get it done. You are praying, but you're panicking.
[00:00:13] You're worried and you're worshiping.
[00:00:17] And I don't know about you, but I am in a personal season, and many of you. And we've been in seasons like this where we say we believe God, we get in his word, but we find out that we have a lot of angst and don't know how God will be working things out, but we believe that he is. That doesn't mean we don't trust him, but we're worried. This episode today is for the real ones.
[00:00:44] The real ones that don't pretend that you're 100% faith, that everything is going to be hunky dory. Now, this is for people that struggle, like me, that says, lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. I'm Ryan. Welcome to Shifts and Ladders. We're just going to jump right into it. We've been talking a lot about faith, and we're going to deviate a little bit from Hebrews chapter 11, where we have the hall of Faith. And we've been talking about Abraham. But I've been doing these little interludes in the middle where we've been talking about.
[00:01:18] And what we're going to talk about is when we struggle with faith, when faith meets fear, and when faith just has to fight in the middle of all the stuff that we have going on in our life. And our anchor scripture is going to be Matthew, chapter 9, verses 20, verse 23 through 25. Let me provide some context first before we get into this. So Jesus is coming down. His coming come down from the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John. So they got to see Jesus in his full glory. He's talking to Elijah and Moses, and there's a whole bunch of great things that happen. So they come down from this mountain and Jesus comes and is basically interrupted by this man who says, listen, I have a son who has been possessed. And what ends up happening here is that were trying to get this spirit cast out of him. I brought him to your people, all the ones that were left, the nine that were left. And he said they couldn't do it, so you need to do something.
[00:02:25] So Jesus has a little moment where he's like, look how long I got to be with y'? All?
[00:02:31] I've taught you guys, I've trained you guys.
[00:02:34] All right, where's the boy and Then he says, how long has he been like this? So he's getting his. He's getting information, right?
[00:02:41] But then this part comes here and he has to basically make sure he understood, hey, this is the source of. He's been like this since his childhood.
[00:02:52] He will throw himself into the fire and then the water, and he keeps going back and forth. So I don't know what to do, but I need you to do something, Jesus. And in verse 23, he says this. Jesus said, if you can believe, all things are possible.
[00:03:05] To him that believes, he's asking for help and compassion. Then immediately the father of the child cried out with tears, lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying, you mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more.
[00:03:29] Then says, the spirit cried out and convulsed him greatly.
[00:03:34] It came out of him, and he has. And he was as he was dead. So many said that the boy was dead, but Jesus took him by the hand, lifted him up, and he arose. I added a couple of scriptures in there for bonus. So.
[00:03:46] So just in case you don't get to the scripture, I want you to at least have it.
[00:03:50] There's a part in here that I need you to understand.
[00:03:56] This man gives us an incredible example of what faith actually looks like.
[00:04:04] I know faith almost looks like, hey, we're always told to have faith in an outcome and faith in the fact that things will work out.
[00:04:13] Objects. I touched on this before, but sometimes the problem that we have is that we have faith in a thing, not faith in someone.
[00:04:22] I'm going to say that again. Sometimes we have faith in a thing thing instead of having faith in someone.
[00:04:29] So what we're looking for is an outcome and never a someone. So when we place our faith in an outcome or in a thing, something material, and it doesn't shape out or pan out the way we want to, we get disappointed. Because at that point we think that our faith doesn't work.
[00:04:49] God doesn't say, have faith in the news, have faith that the weather is going to be what it needs to be, or the weatherman says the truth. He doesn't say that if you don't put your faith in someone, you will be disappointed, especially if it is a human being, if it is a noun, if it is a person, place or thing that is on this earth, you will find out that it could disappoint you. You always have to be ready for that.
[00:05:18] But what ends up happening is there has to be faith.
[00:05:22] And Jesus says to. Says to this man, if you can believe, all things are possible.
[00:05:29] To him who believes, he's basically kind of covering both places. Like, hey, for him who believes, all things can happen to them, who believe.
[00:05:39] So you can believe and not believe in a particular thing.
[00:05:46] Okay, so let me tell you why this man says this. Lord, I believe.
[00:05:51] I believe in you, but help my unbelief.
[00:05:55] There's an area you don't call someone Lord if you don't believe in who they are, right? If you believe that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, hey, that you're there.
[00:06:08] But there's aspects of God that we struggle with. And saying, God, can you do something with that thing?
[00:06:18] You might know that God is a healer, but you may not know that he is a provider.
[00:06:23] Help my unbelief there.
[00:06:25] God, I know you're the God of the universe, that you put the stars in the sky, the sun and the moon up in the curtain of the sky. And honestly, I know what you can do, but I don't know how you can do it over here.
[00:06:41] I don't know how you can help my marriage.
[00:06:45] I don't know how you could help my friendship.
[00:06:48] I don't know how you can heal elderly parents or sick relatives or help me with this business thing. I've seen you do things in other places, but I don't know how you're going to do that here.
[00:07:05] And that is a very honest place to be.
[00:07:11] People, we really think that sometimes we've got to be a hundred percent faith all the way around.
[00:07:20] It don't work like that, y'. All.
[00:07:23] Sometimes we are 51, 49, we have enough to just call the game a W.
[00:07:33] Nobody ever asks the score.
[00:07:37] When it comes to football games, basketball games, whatever. The thing that determines whether someone wins or if they're. If they lose is the number.
[00:07:50] If it's one point or if it's 35 points. No matter how bad someone gets beat or how close someone wins, a W is a W.
[00:08:00] And faith, I believe, works like that. It gives you the opportunity to understand, like, hey, I don't have to have it all together.
[00:08:09] And in fact, I think Jesus really gets excited at the fact that, you know, this is where I'm at. God, I need you to show up in a way that I've never seen you show up and at that point, your hands are off of the outcome and God gets all the glory.
[00:08:31] If you planned it, if you had an idea, who says, like, I Knew God was going to work it out.
[00:08:36] Okay, yeah. You didn't know how he was going to. You just knew he was going to work it out. And honestly, you can't even say he's going to work it out for your good. It might not be the best outcome, it might be a better outcome for you. But at the end of the day, God will work it out some way, shape or form. But you can't predict how, how he's going to do it because he's God.
[00:08:58] God wants us to put our hands off the situation.
[00:09:02] So I'm going to put it in, in, in three, three things here, and I'm going let you go.
[00:09:13] The first one was speak it.
[00:09:15] The man said, I believe, Lord, but help my unbelief. He spoke in anyway. He said, I don't know what you're going to do. I'm at the last ditch effort. Your guys, they didn't do what I thought they could do. I'm bringing my son to you.
[00:09:30] I don't know. I don't have anything to lose because at the end of the day, my son would still be where he is.
[00:09:37] But I'm coming to you because I don't know what to do. I believe someone can do something. I believe you can do something. But help my unbelief. Because. Because God, I need some help. And then that does the other part. Help my unbelief. So we got the first one says, speak it anyway. Two, surrender the gap. Help my unbelief. Usually what happens is there is a gap between what we believe and what we have experienced. And if there is an experience that we have not had before, that is the gap that God has to fill.
[00:10:12] All right?
[00:10:13] We believe that God is a God that can do anything.
[00:10:17] He can do anything.
[00:10:20] We just haven't experienced him doing anything like that for us here.
[00:10:26] I have seen personally, I have seen individuals healed.
[00:10:31] I have seen hearts healed. I have seen people who've had injured legs by the grace of God, start walking, completely healed.
[00:10:41] Okay? There's. I mean, there's plenty of stories of miraculous healings taking place.
[00:10:48] Don't know how I'm just attributed to God just being who he is.
[00:10:55] Okay?
[00:10:56] But there are areas in our lives that we have not experienced God's glory yet.
[00:11:05] It could be in your money, it could be in your marriage. It could be personal traumas that you've gone through, it goes through. It could be a mental health. It could be so many things.
[00:11:19] So that gap exists. But sometimes God knows there's a gap but do you know that there's a gap? Can you. Do you feel vulnerable enough, transparent enough to tell the God of the universe that. I want to see how you can work this out here.
[00:11:35] I know you can, but will you help my unbelief? Because I need to. I don't know.
[00:11:43] And you can help somebody that says, I don't know.
[00:11:47] Think about it. If you got a kid that says, I know, like my daughter says, it's like, hey, you know, next time, don't. Don't close the refrigerator when you get Daddy. I know.
[00:12:00] Yeah, we all know. You've done it. I've done it. Your kids are doing it, your parents did it. We all say we know, but why don't we do what we know all the time?
[00:12:14] Jesus has to say, has to remind us a lot of what we need to do. But when it comes to our faith, we also have to believe and acknowledge that there are areas that we struggle in.
[00:12:27] And that is okay.
[00:12:31] Now this is the other part too, because he brought this thing to.
[00:12:39] Brought his son to God or to Jesus. Excuse me.
[00:12:46] He had the speak it anyway. He said, I believe. I have my own belief. He surrendered the gap and said, hey, I don't know what I'm doing. So here, here's my son. And he brought what was broken to the God of the universe, who puts.
[00:13:02] Who put the universe and everything together.
[00:13:08] He brought what was broken to him.
[00:13:13] Not only his faith in this area, but his son as well.
[00:13:19] The part that we struggle with, that we need to do, that makes our faith fragile, is that we are not willing to bring to God the thing that we struggle with and the thing that is broken, the thing that actually needs healed, the thing that we said, you know, Lord, I thought I had it together, but I don't.
[00:13:35] I can't even see how this could work out. So here, surrender this outcome to you.
[00:13:45] And then Jesus does what Jesus does.
[00:13:49] He heals the boy.
[00:13:51] And there's a whole bunch of other stuff that happens. Obviously, you see that in here.
[00:13:58] I'm going to provide you a challenge.
[00:14:02] And by the way, before we do that, this podcast has been brought to you by Declutter your Soul.
[00:14:10] If you have been struggling to find margin and space in your life, I encourage you to to go to ryanrobinson.com and check out the free ebook of Declutter your Soul. We're going to have a free online event here coming soon. But why is this important? The most prosperous and profitable people, businesses, families, cultures, whatever you name it, have a culture and are lean.
[00:14:39] They literally have everything that they need for the journey. So I want to help you be able to not just get your time back, but get the right things in place so that you can live a life that is full and is also filled with opportunity and space for God to do what he can do only in your life. So go to ryanrobinson.com there's a free ebook for declutter your soul. Sign up for the wait list for declutter your soul webinar and we'll be getting that to you soon. So. All right, getting back to this, to the podcast, rest of the pod here. I want to send you guys a challenge here this week, okay?
[00:15:18] So what I want you to do is instead of hiding your doubt from God, because most. Oh, I shouldn't doubt God? No.
[00:15:29] Why don't you honor God with your honesty?
[00:15:33] Why don't you tell him, I don't know how you're going to do this, or I'm scared.
[00:15:38] This is the thing. God knows your heart, and it's not like he doesn't know us.
[00:15:43] But what would it look like if you honored God with your honesty instead of hiding your doubt from him?
[00:15:52] I think it's powerful to do that this week. All right, so I encourage you this week that even though your faith may have some gaps and your faith may be shaky from time to time, get in a space where you can be honest with God and tell him, lord, I believe in you, but help my unbelief, because God knows I need you to do something.
[00:16:22] Okay? All right, that is the end of today. If you were blessed by this, share this podcast with someone, find us on Apple Podcasts Spotify. I think you know we're all on them places.
[00:16:35] But keep it locked here for the next episode of Shifts and Ladders. And until then, be blessed and we'll talk soon.
[00:16:42] Peace.
