Good morning, my name is Fred Lodge. It's my joy to be pastor emeritus here and to serve yet again, my second stint here with you. It's been a grand— and thank you, Jamie, again for the opportunity of sharing your Holy Word. Take your Bible, if you will please, or on your device, find Acts chapter 16.

We're going to be there in verse 30 and 31 in just a moment. We're continuing this emphasis that the Lord has placed on our pastor's heart that he's calling explicit discipleship, things that are very clear in the Word of God where God is saying, "This is my command. This is what I want for you." I often over my career and continue today have people ask from time to time, "Brother Fred, how do I know what God's will is for my life?" And that's a very important question. And I want you to know whatever it is, he has an answer for that, okay? Most of the time people ask that, they're concerned about maybe who they may marry or what occupation they take, where they want to go to college, all kinds of different decisions that need to be made.

Listen to me very carefully. God has a strong opinion about that. He has something he wants you to know. He has a very specific will for you in every situation of life. There's a however here.

That's not where you start. That's where you want to end up, but you got to have a starting place to where you can get to the finish line. And the starting place is simply this: are you doing what God in his word clearly says, "This is my will for you. This is my command for you." You see, when you're doing that, when you're doing those things, then you're in that place to where you can receive what God is trying to tell you about this in this specific situation. Here's what I want you to do, or here's where I want you to go, or here's what I want you to say.

So the first thing is the first thing. So Pastor shared with us a couple weeks ago that we begin just where Jesus began in his preaching, and that first word out of his mouth as he was preaching was the word repent. Repent means turnaround. It means a change, a change of direction, a change of a mind. Actually, it is a change of mind that results in a change of direction.

And he did a marvelous job about helping us understand what it meant to repent, to turn from our doing things our own way towards doing things God's way. So I want to add on that now, because what Jesus did, that wasn't all of his sentence. His sermon was repent and believe. Repent and believe. Specifically believing the gospel.

When we are consistently doing the things that God told us clearly, "This is my will for you," we're in the best place to receive that fine-tuning will that he wants us to have. This is the, the clarity that we want to bring before you today, the simple commands. And today, think in terms of belief, turning from requires you to turn to. And in turning to, that requires a certain amount of trust, a certain amount of belief, a certain amount of faith. And that's the focus of our, of our attention today.

Consider for a moment that you find yourself in this precarious, life-altering situation. You're caught in a raging river that's going to go over a set of falls. You're swimming as hard as you can, but you can't swim against that current, you can't get yourself out. You look to the bank and here's the fellow over here with the rope and a lifesaver ring and he says, "Catch, you know, catch the ring, grab the rope and I can pull you in." And so he throws it out into the water towards you. Now if it doesn't hit you on the noggin, what are you going to do?

Well, if you want to get out of that life-threatening situation, you have to work your way over to the ring, towards the rope, because that's your hope, that's your desire, that's— you want to get out of this thing alive. And so here is that lifeline that is thrown to you, but before you will start swimming in that direction, something is happening inside you that you are deciding, "I want to trust that rope. I want to trust that fellow on the shore that he can pull me out of here." You see, you see the, the need and you can see the possibility of salvation, but there's something that you have to do in the process of that. And the word we're going to look at today is faith, believe, trust. You're exercising a belief in this possibility that you can be saved.

So that's what we're going to focus on here just today. 3 things I feel the Lord wanted me to lead to your attention. How about that? But it all revolves around the passage that I want you to read with me from Acts chapter 16. And this is a passage, many of you know the story about Paul and Silas being in prison and how God enabled them to, the shackles to just fall away and such.

Well, the jailer came to them to be sure that, you know, he was sure that they had escaped. But then he asked this question in verse 30. He said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Now he wasn't talking about being saved physically, though there was a threat to him because of what had happened, but he was talking about the gospel he'd heard them preach and that he heard them singing about and praying about. And look at their response. So they said in verse 31, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household." So what should I do?

How can I be saved? What's God's first thing that he wants me to do? Believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Let's pray together. Holy Spirit, thank you for this written word that embodies the living word.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, that you hovered around all of these writers and that you chose the very words from their vocabulary that would be eternal words for us to have today. And then you have spent hundreds of years protecting this word and bringing it to us today to where now it's fresh and new and is aimed right at our heart and where we're living. So we ask you, Lord, speak to us. We're eager to hear and we're desirous to obey. So in your name we pray.

Amen. So what I want us to, to do today is just 3 questions about this concept of trusting, believing faith and how that energizes salvation in our lives. First of all, why are we commanded to believe? If you picked up one of the listening sheets, You see some little fill-in-the-blanks there. I'm going to give all of those to you as you go.

I found that's good to be able to take something home with you and look about this a little later. And also the scriptures that I'm going to, uh, quote or read, they're right there in your notes so you can follow up on those a little later as well. Why are we commanded to believe? Why is that the thing that is so important? Several things here.

First of all, faith is the action of placing your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. Placing your trust in Jesus Christ. Look this way a minute. Don't let anybody tell you to put your faith and trust in a body of doctrine, or put your faith and trust in a particular church, or put your faith and trust in a particular pastor, or whether it's being baptized or, or taking communion or whatever. That's not what saves you, folks, okay?

The only thing that will save your eternal soul is putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. All those other things are important. I teach doctrine, I believe in baptism, all of those kind of things, they are really, really, really important. But we're talking about basics. We're talking about explicit commands, those clear things that really lead to faith and obedience and all of these other things.

Faith is that action. Of putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and him alone. I just simply fell in love with Jesus. I didn't have the wonderful opportunity that many of you have had to grow up in a Christian home, to grow up in a church like Ebenezer, to where the gospel is taught from the tiniest ones that we're rocking in our arms all the way up to our senior adults. Everywhere you go in our church, everything that you'll be engaged in, any Bible study, any singing, whatever the case may be, It's all about Jesus.

And I like that because I simply fell in love with him. When I did not grow up in church, but I did get the opportunity to go to church when I was up in my teens. I say the opportunity, I was being punished.

I opened my big profane mouth at the wrong time, embarrassed my grandmother, and so I had to go to church with my cousin that next day. Now some of you are here, that's not the kind of evangelism I recommend, but it worked. Hallelujah! Okay? So here I am in church.

I don't understand what's going on, the words that are being said, standing up, sitting down, all the rest of this kind of stuff. And the pastor got up and began to preach. And he was a remarkable man. He really was. Not like highly educated or anything, but he spoke from the heart.

And he began to talk about what God did when he became a man in Jesus Christ. And that he was a sinless Son of God and that he chose to take my sins and yours upon himself, on himself. And when he died on the cross, it was to take our punishment, our eternal punishment, on himself. And when he rose again 3 days later, it was to give us his very life, give us the life of God, eternal life flowing through through us. And I'm standing there saying, "Huh?" I mean, I didn't grow up with this, you know.

Some of you have heard that from the time that you were, you know, teeny-niny, you know, but it wasn't me. It was fresh to me.

And when I heard that someone loved me enough to literally, not symbolically or not just a promise, but he did die that I could live.

My heart opened to that. I want to know more about this. I want to know more about this man and what it means for him to be my Lord and my Savior. I just simply fell in love with Jesus. I didn't fall in love with that church.

I didn't fall in love with their doctrine. I didn't know what doctrine was. I didn't know the teachings or anything like that. I didn't know anything about the Bible. The very next week when I went to church, the pastor said, "Come here an hour earlier next week," and I said, "Yes, sir," 'cause I grew up in the military.

You give an order, you do that. I showed up an hour earlier the next week, went to this room he told me to go to, and there was a man down there who was going to teach a class for boys, and he was writing on the board, and he wrote the two words, "Born again," and I thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen, and I told him so.

I said, "Wait, what do you mean?" You know, and he said, "Fred, that's what happened to you last week right here at the altar." "Really?" He said, "Yes, that's right. You're a new person in Jesus Christ because you fell in love with him and gave him your life." I mean, I'm talking about green as a gourd. I was past that, okay?

But I just simply knew that my heart had been deeply, deeply moved by the gospel of Jesus Christ. And me saying, taking the dare, I dare to believe that this is true. I'd never read the Bible. I didn't own a Bible. Thank you, Pastor, for that offer that we can give away Bibles.

I love that. My pastor gave me a Bible. It was a little orange New Testament. I guess he didn't want me to lose it anywhere, you know? But, you know, he said, "Put this in your pocket and, you know, read it every day and such." And you know, the pastor said it, so I did it, okay?

I didn't know like you do that you're not supposed to obey your pastor. I thought, you know, when he says something, you're supposed to do that. And I couldn't get enough of it. Couldn't get enough of that word. Couldn't get enough of the stories about Jesus.

He told me, he says, "These little books right here, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, that's all about Jesus. Just stay in them for a little while." And I couldn't get out of them. This— I just simply fell in love with Jesus. How does that happen? You hear something called the gospel, and that's the story of Jesus.

It's what he's done for us. It's the good news of God's love being embodied in his Son Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life, died to take our sins upon himself, rose again from the grave to ensure for us eternal life. That's That's the gospel. You know, you can flesh it out, tell a lot more details to it, but that's basically it. And the Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

Okay, that's not hard to grasp, is it? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So this is what I'm compelled to do. This is what we're encouraging everyone to do. Just simply tell the story.

Of the gospel. You know, you don't have to prove anything. This is not an argument that you need to do. You just simply tell, "Here is what Jesus did for us." Now, we're going to teach you how to add to that your own story about coming to faith in Christ, but the main thing is to know what the gospel is. What is the good news we're talking about?

Because faith comes by hearing, and people have got to hear what the Word of God is. Especially that wonderful verse, you saw it animated a few moments ago in our video, that "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever would believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life." So that's the first thing there in that first blank. The second is this: faith is the essence of being saved. It's that first step of faith. We are We are saved by Jesus' promise.

When he said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved," if that's what the Bible says, then you know, that's what we do. We dare to believe, we put faith, we put trust that this is how we begin this love relationship with Jesus Christ. And it's because it's his promise. I love something Pastor teaches us all the time, that when you ask, you know, why, how do you know that you're saved? Well, it's not because I'm living a great life, it's not because I'm a member of a church, it's not because I've been It's not because I'm giving my money or whatever.

I'm saved because Jesus promised. And he shared before, you know, if he is in that situation, he stands before the pearly gates and Saint Peter says, you know, "Why should I let you in?" That, you know, he said, "Jesus promised." That's childlike faith. Not childish faith, now that's something else. You don't want that. But that's just childlike faith.

That's saying, "I choose to believe." that what Jesus promised, Jesus can accomplish. That's, that's it. That's the essence of being saved, trusting Jesus can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Secondly, faith is the initial evidence that Jesus has come into your life. It's kind of like that first fruit.

It's the first thing that kind of pops up is faith becomes very evident. And Jesus said this in John 6:29, '"This is the work of God," okay, is this where God's at work? "'This is the work of God, that you believe in him who he sent.'" So that's evidence God's working. So when you hear that gospel and you say, "Mm, everything within me wants to embrace that," that desire is actually God's work within you. Some of you are there right now.

You're sensing that desire within your heart to say, "You know, this almost sounds too good to be true, but I want to buy into this. I want to get me some of that." You know, that, that's God doing his work within you. That's Holy Spirit tugging at your heart and moving you into the direction to where you can receive him as Savior and Lord. I'll be honest with you, it's a wonder that I ever placed my trust in Jesus Christ because trust in my life had been so absolutely broken. I'm not going to get into all of my story here this morning, I don't need to, but I was abandoned by my father, later abandoned by my mother.

I had responsibility for a I had a 4-year-old brother and a 2-year-old sister, and I was on my own. And it was after that that I heard the gospel. And so people that I should have been able to trust, people I should have been able to depend on, people that should have been there for me had already told me and showed me, demonstrated to me I could not depend on them. It's a wonder I ever trusted anybody or anything again. But as the pastor was preaching that day, there was a cross behind him, like there's a cross behind me right now.

And he talked about how Jesus demonstrated his love. God demonstrated his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, still in the worst of it, the yuckiest of it, Christ died for us. Amen. And I thought, I've had people say they love me before, but I've never had somebody demonstrate it by not saying they would die for me, but dying for me, doing it.

And here's the man that loves me that much and that broke the wall, that broke the fear. Can I really trust this person? Let me tell you something. Yeah, you can. You can trust, you can have faith, you can dare to believe in the promises of my Lord Jesus Christ.

The next thing, faith then becomes the lifestyle or pardon me, yeah, the lifestyle of obedience to the Lord. Hebrews 11 says, "Without faith it's impossible to please Him, and he who comes to the Lord must believe that He is, and He's the rewarder of those who diligently seek after Him." Nobody had to tell me that I needed— that I was doing things that are wrong. You know, in my early days, you know, you never had to convince anybody they were sinners. You know, nowadays you do. Because the worldview that's so strong out there now says, you know, everything's okay.

There's no— you can't morally say this is right, this is wrong. You know, you got to say, well, this is right for you. It may not be right for me, but this is right for me even though it might not be right for you. And let me give you a good old Hebrew word for that: hogwash.

Truth is absolute. For all time, for all people, for all creatures, and Jesus said, "I am the truth." My word is truth, and you can trust in the truth. It's not something that's wiggly wobbly and is changing all the time. That's what the world wants to tell us. You know, "I have my truth, you have your truth, and everybody be happy with one another's truth." Hogwash!

Here's the truth. God loves you too much to leave you in your sin. He came in Jesus Christ to bear that sin upon himself, to heal the breach between man and him, and allow us to experience his very life. That's truth. Here's where truth lives.

It lives in the pages of this wonderful, wonderful book. It is. But nobody had to tell me that I— my life was a wreck. My hurts My habits, my hangups was literally destroying my life, and I was, you know, I wasn't that smart. I wasn't the sharpest, you know, tool in the shed, but I was enough to realize that if I continue with this way of life, I'm going to end up in prison or dead.

And I heard good news, and that good news was I don't have to be enslaved by this lifestyle that I've been a part of. I can be free. And then Holy Spirit, as he came within me, he said, "Okay, Fred, we got a mess here, but we're going to start cleaning it up today." And can I give you a little clue? That was over 5 decades ago, getting close to 6 decades ago. He's still working on me.

I mean, some things he did just like that. Heal me of habits that was killing me, a lot of other things. But you know, there's a lot of things he said, Fred, this is something that your obedience to me and walking and trusting with me over a lifestyle, this, that, that's how healing is going to come into your life for that. And so he's continuing that process. This is what faith is.

Why is faith so important? This is why. But what is it that we're told to believe in? Okay. Believe this.

Okay, believe what? Well, Jesus made that clear. He said, "Repent and believe the gospel." Gospel, that Greek word euangelion, it means good news. Good news. And there's many ways to share the gospel.

I've done it 3 different ways while I've been up here this morning. But if you want to get the whole picture together, you know, just kind of keep a few things in your mind to where you can know how you can kind of tell the story. We were talking this past Wednesday night about that sharing your faith, sharing the gospel is basically storytelling. And so you just, you know, we all do storytelling all the time. Our middle son Michael is with us and we sat around the table for about 4 hours this week at one point just swapping stories of how God's working in our lives and in my grandkids and all the rest of these kind of things.

And none of those stories had to be rehearsed. None of those had to be written down and read. Because we know the stories of what all we've lived. Well, we just want to so know the gospel here at Ebenezer that we can just move that into any conversation that we have because we know it. Now, here's a way, it's one that I like, but there's many different ways, it's not necessarily the best way, but my way to remember the basic aspects of the gospel.

I like to start with the heart of God. We start up here, I raise my hand up high, It's because it starts in the heart of God. It starts in the will of God. Here's what the Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:9, "God is not slow to fulfill his promises, as some people count slowness, but he's patient towards you, not willing," okay, this is not his will, "not willing that any should perish, but willing," wanting, "that all come to faith." in him. You know what God's is?

God's will is? Man, there it is. You know, there it is in black and white. Here's my will for you. I don't want you to perish.

I don't want you to continue this destructive lifestyle that you're in. I don't want you to lose out on the joy of knowing my love and my grace and my mercy and my presence in your life. I want you to have all of this.

That's my will for you. So you want to know what God's will is for your life? Let's start where it begins. He wants you to believe that it starts with his very heart. God loves you.

You say, "Wait a minute, I've been hurt so bad. If God loved me, he wouldn't let this happen. He wouldn't let that happen. He wouldn't let the other happen." Hey, don't give me that. Done been there and done that.

Get over it, folks. Get over trying to blame somebody else for what's going on in your heart. Own it and deal with it. Amen! Let us help you, okay?

We've all experienced horrible hurts, stupid decisions, habits that we can't break, and hang-ups that we can't get away from. Welcome to Ebenezer, okay? We ain't walking the perfect line, but let me tell you what, we're walking towards Jesus just as hard as we can go. We stumble along the way, We pick one another up and we keep on the journey. That's what the people of God looks like.

That's who we are and that's what we do. So that's how it's God's heart. God wants us to come to him to know his grace, know his love, know his mercy, love everything about him, have that inner love relationship with him. But man's got a problem. I reach my hand down here.

Man's got a problem. God don't have a problem, but man's got a problem. What's our problem? God is holy and We're not. God is just.

We're not. God is righteous. We're not. We're none of those things. And literally, the Bible says our sin has separated us from God.

I can't reach that far, okay? Separated us from God. "What do you mean by sin, Fred? What do you mean? Kicking the cat or, you know, fussing at my wife?" No.

Sin is an attitude that is inherent in the heart of mankind that says, "I want what I want, and I don't care who I have to step on to get it, and God, I don't really care whether you like it or not." And that attitude is deeply ingrained in the DNA of who we are, and we start exhibiting it at the youngest of ages. If you don't believe it, let me take you down into our nursery right now.

I mean, how many of you taught your children to say, "Mine, mine, mine, mine," you know? Built within us, we want what we want and we want it right now, and don't you get in my way.

But that attitude that we see maybe in a child, we never outgrow.

We never outgrow. I know I'm married to this woman and we've got a good life and everything, but that woman over there sure is pretty and she's looking at me the way I'm looking back at her. I deserve that!

You following me? This is the attitude that leads to the action. The attitude of saying, "I want what I want and it doesn't care what God says or whatever about it." That attitude lives in each and every one of us. You know what the Bible says in the Old Testament and in the New Testament? All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

You know what "all" means? All. That means there's no exceptions. All of us have had this attitude and we've acted on that attitude in all these type of ways and this unholiness, this sin, Sickness that is deep within our bones has separated us from holy God. So we can't get to him.

We can't do enough good stuff. We can't clean up our act. That just don't work. We can't do that. So here's the situation.

You know, God's heart, man's problem. Now we look back up to God, God's provision. What'd he do about this? Listen to me. God loves you too much to leave you where you are right now.

He loves you too much to let you wallow in this and ruin your life. So he's going to do something desperate, okay? Now some of that desperate might even be with you. I'll tell you now from personal experience, sometimes God has to knock me down and drag me on the bottom for a while before I wake up. And he loves me enough to do that.

And you too. So some of us are really living the consequences of our own rebellion and we want to blame God. Get over it. Own it. "God, these are decisions that I have made in my own willfulness.

This is what I want to do with my life, and now I'm complaining and blaming you that it's all going to pot." Grow up. Grow up. Own it. "I am in this mess because of the decisions that I have made." but God loves me too much to leave me there. Okay?

So what does he do? He says, "Fred, that's a mess. You can't ever get yourself cleaned up from down there. You can't climb high enough to get up here to me. So I'll tell you what I'm going to do.

I'm going to come down there to you." And that's what God did in Jesus Christ. He became a man, but he became a man and lived life the way God intended it to be lived—sinless, in loving fellowship and relationship with the Father.

Our Lord Jesus never sinned. I don't understand that. I don't know how he got around that, because he was fully God as well as fully man, but that's the truth declared in the Holy Word of God. But In his sinlessness, here's what the Bible said, out of his love for us, Jesus Christ became sin for us. Now will you do something for me?

Don't raise your hand, don't say anything, alright? But I want you to think about the most heinous sin you've committed. This is not a downer, I'm going to give you good news in a minute. Think about that one thing that, "Oh, I don't want anybody to ever, ever, ever know." You got that?

Listen to me. Jesus became that for you. Amen. Whew! He became that for you.

Why? Out of his love. God demonstrated his eternal love for us. That while we were yet sinners, he died for us. So he became that sin, and then he took the rightful punishment that that deserved on himself.

So you could go scot-free and do all other kind of sin? No, no. He took it on himself to where he could give you something that you could never have—his very life.

Life. Here's what he says. He says, "Come here. Come here a minute. Bring me all your shame.

Bring me all your hurts, your habits, your hang-ups.

Here, put them right here. Put them right here. Now let me have it, and let me give you my life, my clean life, my my righteous life, my holy life. Listen to me. God's not asking you to change your life.

He's asking you to exchange your life. Say, "God, I want what you've got to offer. I want your life because mine is crap. I'm ready to receive what you want for me." And see how that goes with repentance? I've been doing my way, my way, my way, my way.

I hear the gospel. I hear about Jesus. I turn around and I say, "I want to go Your way, Your way, Your—" I can't, not in my own strength. But, God, if You come within me, You say You're going to make it possible. Come within me, and now I can be Your follower.

I can be a follower of Christ. That's what the gospel is. God's heart— man's got a problem. God makes a provision. So what's our response?

Our response is what I've been talking about today. Faith. Trust. Believe. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Believe that he can do this. Believe that he wants to make this exchange, that he wants to make a difference in your life that can only be described— the Son of God I think, struggled to figure out what phrase could explain the transformation that I want to make in their lives.

Born again.

Born all over again. Born fresh and new in me. That's his desire. So what we do is we have to respond to that. The Bible makes it so very, very clear.

He says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves." That's a gift of God, "not of works, lest any man should boast." To make it real simple, he just said, "If you'll confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Those words are right there. In Romans 10:8, 9, and 10. You will be saved. And it's what Jesus said in his earliest sermons: Repent and believe the gospel. So that's man's response.

So then what's God's promise? God's promise: Everyone who will call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's what the Bible says. That's those clear words. Don't have to make it hard.

You don't need a, you know, a Th.D. or a Ph.D. or XYZ or whatever. There it is. It's written in black and white, or some of your Bibles in red and white, okay? There's the simple word of God.

That's the gospel. That's what it is that Jesus said, "This is what you need to believe. Believe in the transforming work that I want to work in your life." And when that spark of faith starts, Holy Spirit is there fanning it, and then it burns brighter and brighter, and I hope it consumes you the way it's consumed me for a lifetime. So, last question is, "Well, what difference does it make what you believe?" I mean, we live in this world, and we talked about it earlier, the worldviews that we have here, you know, Believe whatever you want to. It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are— what is this word?

Tell me. Sincere. Yeah. And so the measure of truthfulness in this world is how sincere you might be. Has anybody other than me been sincerely wrong about anything in life?

I mean, well, I just pointed out quite a few of them over the years. You know, sincerity doesn't make it right. You can be sincerely wrong. But this world says, "Oh well, if you're feeling it, it's all about your emotions. If you feel it, then it's the right thing for you." I don't know about you, but I got some emotions I don't need to act on.

Some of you'd be in a hurt if I did, okay? No, emotions doesn't— to verify something. That's why there's only one truth.

The Bible says that God is God of all truth. Jesus says, "I am the truth." The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. This is the word of truth. Everything we do at our church is about discovering truth. Right here in the Word of God.

So does it make a difference? First of all, it's important the object of your faith is the imperative. Write that down. The object of your faith is the imperative.

I don't want you believing in your own ability to get your life cleaned up because I know better. I've tried that too many times myself. Pfft. Won't work. I don't want you to believe in the Baptist faith and message, "That's gonna get me saved." It won't.

I don't want you to believe in Pastor Jamie or Pastor Kevin or Pastor Randy or me. Mm-mm. Fallible, mixed-up, crazy, broken people, all right? The object of your faith is the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone, period, end of line. That's it.

He's the only one who can save and transform our lives, period. He is the He's the object of our faith. That's what you hold on to. Jesus said this, "My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, neither can anyone snatch them out of my hand." Amen. "And my Father, who is greater than I, No one can ever snatch them out of the Father's hand.

Will you hold your left hand out for me? Hold it out, come on, hold it out, left hand. All right. I want you to imagine your life is right there in the palm of your hand. Can you imagine it right there?

Now, I want you to scrunch that left hand up, make a fist. Where's your fist? All right, come on, all right, there you go, there you are. Make a fist. Jesus has got you.

Your ability to hold on to God is not based on your ability to grab on and let hold on to Him.

Our son Michael is here. He's visiting from Washington. He's the pastor of a wonderful church out there. We were walking in, I think it was Chattanooga, Michael, and busy, a lot of people all over the place, cars going around, and I had him by the hand. Well, my Michael is a squirrel, okay?

He wants to climb on everything he's ever seen, so he's up on this mailbox, he's down, he's whatever, you know what? What kept him safe was not his grip on me. He kept trying to turn loose. What kept him safe was my grip on him. He wasn't getting out of that grip, not in that city he wasn't, you see?

Jesus got you in his grip. Now, now take your right hand, put it over your left hand. Now this is the Father's got his hand over the hand of his Son, and he's saying to the old devil, "You ain't gonna get him!" He's mine, and there's nothing in hell or on earth that'll change that. Anybody feel insecure today? I feel pretty secure today.

Why? Because that's the Word of God. But the object of my faith is not holding on to Him.

Thank you, God, I'm in your grip. Anybody want to pray that prayer with me? Thank you, God, I am in your grip. Not my ability to hold on to you, but your ability to hold on to me. Second, it's not faith in yourself.

Not faith in yourself.

If you haven't got to the place in your own life that you've admitted that you're a miserable failure, please come and talk to me, and I'll convince you that you are.

We can't do this spiritual stuff on our own. Let's go ahead and admit that we're, like Pastor says, morally bankrupt. Declare bankruptcy and let the righteousness of God come in, alright? And finally, I'm not talking about faith in faith. There is a movement rolling across our world that faith is in faith.

You know, if my faith is just strong enough, if I believe this, then God is somehow required to give me what I want. Well, there's that Hebrew word again I want you to know— hogwash. All right?

God wants our faith to grow. He wants our faith to grow more and more and more every day, but it's never the measure of our faith. It's the object of our faith, the Lord Jesus. That's where the power is. I mean, some people have the opinion that they can twist the arm of God by just believing enough.

That's not in your Bible anywhere.

I had an experience as a young pastor, still in seminary at the time, and George and Bonnie Sullivan, I love them dearly, they were senior adults even then, and Bonnie had cancer, and in my tenure there she got worse and worse and worse, and she was finally in the hospital on her deathbed, and George and I would hold hands with her and pray over her all the time for God's will to be done, and for for her to be healed and so on. But she had a sister that was very much into this movement, you know, name it, claim it, you know, if you believe it, God's got to give it, that kind of stuff. And so one day I was going to visit Bonnie and I got off the elevator on this end of the hall, George got off the elevator on this end of the hall, and we met in the middle to go back to Bonnie's room. And her sister was back there and was praying and we stood at the door, you know, That's just the right thing to do, stood at the door and waited for her to finish. But she was actually waxing more and more eloquent in her prayers, and she said, "God, I believe this, that my sister's going to rise up off this bed.

I believe that she is going to walk again. I believe she's going to be free of this cancer, and so I command you to heal her." I wanted to find a place to hide. I was waiting for the lightning bolt to strike.

And George, he acted before I did. He went in there, took her by the arm, escorted her all the way to the elevator, and told her not to come back.

"Who do you think you are to command Almighty God anything?

You ain't big enough for that, son.

You go to Almighty God and say, 'You are my Father, and I will crawl up in your lap, And I will weep for those prayers. But it's in your will and in your heart, and when it's your way and if it is your will, more miracles are going to happen. He wants your faith to grow, but don't you ever think that gives you a right to push him around.

And just hearing me say that, you know that.

Grow up, wake up, that's the way you got to live. It's not faith in faith alone. Finally, it's faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. That's the last thing on your notes. It's faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Like our pastor said, he promised it, he's capable to delivering it, and so on that day when I stand before him, it's not going to be about me, not going to be about my pedigree, Not going to be the sizes of my churches, or the numbers of people I've led to the Lord. Ain't going to be about any of that. It's going to be about what He's done to take somebody like me and do anything good with it.

Will you just simply put your hand in the hand of the Lord who loves you more than any person on planet Earth?

And dare to believe he can do with you more than you could ever do yourself. Time to do business with God. Would you bow your heads with me, please?

Father God, it's been the desire of my heart and the prayer of my lips that this is not about Fred Loge today, it's about the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I want to thank you That as an ignorant, rebellious, vile human being, somebody loved me enough to share the gospel with me. And you shot a faith arrow into my soul.

And you have grown me to be the man of God I am today. Not perfect. But Lord, I love you. You know I love you. With all my heart, I love you.

It's not the perfect love you have for me, but it's a love that you're perfecting every day in my life. So this morning, there may be some people here that have never made that step of faith, and they know, they feel that tugging in your heart that you're, you're saying, come, just He says, "Trust me like a child. Let me get you in my grip. Let my blood wash away your sins and transform your life. Come, exchange your life for mine." Lord, if anybody here would like to make that prayer, will you give them the freedom just to come to this altar and pray?

Or Kevin and Randy and Pastor and I, we'll be right here. We can talk them through it, but it's time to do business with you. And some, Lord, may say, you know, Father, I've been putting faith in my attendance at church or in my membership or in my baptism or in my this or in my that. God, forgive me. I need to just put my faith in you, and that's all, just you and your power and your grace and your mercy to save.

Forgive me for putting anything else in front of you. I just want to believe in you. Lord, if anybody's here and they just want to, they just want to share their burden, we're here. We do life together and we pray together now in Jesus' name. Amen.