Holy Spirit Gift Of Great Faith (325)

0:01 Welcome to the Quality Christian Living podcast. Once again I am your host David Friend. We're continuing our series on the Holy Spirit and today's topic is Holy Spirit gift of great faith. So we're gonna really get into this and I believe the Lord's got something special for us today. How do we receive the gift of great faith and which scriptures will help us to best understand how to have great faith or even just faith? Does the Holy Spirit decide who receives a gift of faith? And from this I believe we will better understand the difference between feelings and faith. A very important topic, so let's get into it. But first, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you once again for your love, your goodness, your kindness, your faithfulness, your mercy.

0:45 I thank you for my salvation. I pray you would bless those who are listening in today. I invite the Holy Spirit to come in and take complete control. I yield everything I've done to you. Holy Spirit, guide us and direct us. Teach us what you would have us to. get into and what we should avoid. Thank you for that now. I pray you would bless it and I pray that all those who are listening in would receive exactly what they're looking for. Father, I thank you again for your touch, your hand upon us, and I thank you for this Holy Spirit series that's being received so well. I give you praise for it and thank you for it now and give you all the glory for what's about to take place in Jesus name I pray, Amen. Well, we're going to get right into this today because we've got a lot to cover and I try my best to stay below the 30 minute maximum. That seems to be the amount of time that people show the most interest and you can keep their attention. So I hope that you'll be blessed by this. To get started on today's podcast, we must read a scripture. I believe that will help us build a foundation for great faith. and it's found in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 11 in the New Living Translation. It is the one and only Holy Spirit, the word says, who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. Now, there's something that I could have read before that, but I chose not to because I felt that I wanted to make that statement jump out because it's the Holy Spirit who decides. He distributes the gifts, all the gifts, including the gift of great faith. So this particular scripture is referring to the gifts of the Spirit that we read about in 1 Corinthians

2:17 chapter 12, verses 7 through 10, and it includes all these things. I won't read all those verses, but basically, Basically it includes the gifts of advice or wisdom and knowledge and gift of great faith, gift of healing and performing of miracles and prophecy and discerning of the spirits and tongues and interpretation of tongues and all of these gifts we'll be talking about in upcoming podcasts. But today's particular podcast is going to deal with understanding great faith and understanding that the Holy Spirit is the one who decides who receives that and who does not receive that. So let's get ready. to help us with that. We're going to focus on the gift of great faith because so many people Desire faith they want greater faith. They want more more powerful faith. They want to have consistent faith. They want to have faith. That's unshakable They won't have faith that's just filled with power and I believe that that's available to us But we've got to understand exactly how the Holy Spirit operates and how we can receive this this gift of greater faith We all receive a certain amount of faith when we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior It comes upon us because of faith and then we're given a measure of faith So we'll get into that maybe a little bit in this podcast but definitely in podcasts to come.

3:31 Matter of fact I did a podcast here a few weeks ago entitled dealing with unshakable faith. That's kind of faith that we all want to have faith that doesn't waver in the midst of trials and challenges and difficult you know things that we're facing in our lives so we want to understand all of that but today let's focus on great faith. Now it doesn't the scriptures say just faith. You know the Apostle Paul was talking about great faith. The Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to refer to great faith not just faith. I believe this passage promises us that we have faith. It's up to us to believe for faith and that faith carries us through any challenge that we will ever face in our life. Faith to Christ. for physical or mental healings I know I've been fighting a lot of battles over the years with physical health issues and had to have my faith increase and had to have the strength of the Lord to carry me through these things and praise the Lord he's healed me in every situation that I received three different times in my life where my health was so bad that it was probably going to take my life but praise to our living God he delivered me from all those illnesses I give him all glory and praise now the Holy Spirit is the one who gives the gift of great faith he's the only one that's what the scripture told us in first Corinthians chapter 12 verse 11 we read it quickly again it is the one and only spirit who distributes all these gifts he alone decides which gift each person should have so we have to go to the Holy Spirit for this so we must ask him for great

5:03 faith. Now I believe there's nothing wrong with asking the Holy Spirit for great faith. We go to the Father. The Bible tells us Jesus taught us how to pray. We go to the Father in the name of Jesus. So we can go to the Father and say, Heavenly Father, I pray in the name of Jesus that I would receive greater faith. And I ask the Holy Spirit to give me greater faith, more powerful faith, more consistent faith, faith that takes me beyond my ability, the realm of my understanding, takes me to a new level of faith and trust and confidence and belief that God's Word will bring me through and that I will receive this faith to be able to pray for a great miracle and we can do that and pray for that and I would encourage you to do that. Now the gift of faith comes to us as we hear and believe and accept God's Word because that's where the beginning of faith is. Faith comes from hearing and hearing the Word of God and we've got to understand that we've got to hear and got to believe. Hearing is one thing actually hearing it but we've got to hear it to believe it. You know when the pastor preaches a sermon we hear it but do we really Do we hear it? I mean, do we really receive it? Do we take it in? Do we allow it to become part of us, to become part of our thought process, our minds, our heart, what we think about, how we think, and how we act? That's what faith is all about. Faith is there, and everyone knows it's there. We all have faith. I mean, just as simple as me sitting in this chair. I have faith this chair is going to hold me up, right? I also have faith that this microphone is going to record this, and I have faith that this recording will go out, and I have faith to believe that people will listen to it, people be touched that the Holy Spirit will help them and bless them and touch

6:34 them and that people receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior that they'll listen to these podcasts and they'll commit their lives to the Lord and have a close walk with God or they'll stay with me to learn various topics we're talking about that they all require a certain amount of faith but in order to have a deeper faith a greater faith we've got to rely totally upon the Word of God we got to believe it to hear it and accept it we must read God's Word we must know God intimately, we must ask for faith. It's only then that the Holy Spirit decides who receives great faith. Now, if I was in a classroom right now, and I used to teach community college, junior college level for a number of years, and when I did that, I would ask for a show of hands for people, you know, did they understand what I was talking about? Or when I was preaching, I would ask people, as a pastor, I would ask people, how many people understand what I said or agree with what I said or believe what I'm saying?

7:27 Raise your hand, just let me see that hand. And when you do that, I'm asking for confirmation. On a podcast, I don't get that. I don't have any way of knowing or hearing, so I have to have faith and trust in God to believe that he is going to use this podcast to reach out to people. And I thank God for it because now in nearly just under four years of doing this podcast, we've been blessed to see it go throughout many countries around the world, and I just thank God for that. He is the one who's received all glory and honor for that. Now the gift of great faith is supernatural and comes only from the Holy Spirit. The gift of faith is our source of hope. and the gift of greater faith is our source of hope and strength. The gift of great faith is proof of God's power through the Holy Spirit that can influence the world. I believe that. I truly believe that. When you walk around with faith, strong faith, great faith, people look at you and they say, I don't know how they've got that or how they receive that or I want to receive what they've got. And it's not that you have anything to boast in, but it's just simply that it's something that will draw people to us. If we confess that we believe in Jesus Christ and someone hears that, they're going to want to know why. It's because of our faith in Jesus Christ and receiving Him as our Lord and Savior and our faith to believe we're going to spend eternity in heaven with Him that draws people to us. So having a gift of faith and having that faith operating in our lives, it impacts others.

8:55 It influences other people's lives. Now a scripture that helps us to have great faith is one that is just so powerful. But before I read it, I want you to think about this. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal what this scripture is saying to us and what it means. Have you ever done that? Go to read a scripture and you start to read it and then stop. Say, Holy Spirit. Can you explain this to me? Can you reveal to me what this is speaking to me, what it's saying to me? I think that's what we should do when we approach reading the Word of God. So when I give you a scripture, and I give you something I believe that's going to be helpful and powerful, I need to stop and say, Holy Spirit, is this the one that I should use? And then I need to ask you, listening in, to ask the Holy Spirit to help you receive what the scripture's saying. Because remember, all scriptures are inspired, they were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Some people say, well, Paul wrote this and Paul wrote that. John wrote this and Peter wrote that and all that, and that's all good and well, but it was the Holy Spirit who really wrote it. It was the Holy Spirit who gave them what went into the Word of God. And so, Holy Spirit -inspired scriptures can come to us, and then the Holy Spirit can inspire us to receive His Word spoken through someone else to meet a need that we have. and those words were spoken, some of them, thousands of years ago. And in the case of Jesus Christ and the Apostles, just over 2 ,000 years ago, these words were spoken and they're powerful and they're lasting and they never let up. All right, now I'm ready to read the scripture. It's a pretty basic one, Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 1. Now

10:27 faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Now, if you're a non -believer, then that's confusing, because how in the world can faith, which is something you can't see, assures us of anything, things that we hope for, and that is the conviction of things that we can't see. But when you're a follower of Jesus Christ, faith... You can't explain your faith in Jesus necessarily. It's hard to explain it to people. But when you have something that's in your heart, in your mind, and it's all that you are, it's who you are, it's how you think, and how you act, and how you react, it's only brought upon because of our faith and our trust in God's Word, and our faith and our trust in the Holy Spirit, and our faith and our trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that He's going to take us through everything in life, and we've got to rely upon that. So faith then becomes unassured. God's word is assurance. The New King James Version also has a little different way of translating Hebrews chapter 11 to 1. It says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for. And then the evidence of things not seen. Now, I did a series of podcasts here back, I'm not sure, probably a year or so ago, I'll tell you how to pull those up later on in the podcast, but I did a series of podcasts dealing with faith and hope. Matter of fact, it inspired me so much I wrote a book on it entitled, Faith for Miracles. I wrote another book entitled, another faith book entitled, How to Receive Everything from What we call nothing and that's basically believing for something

11:57 that we can't see that it really is and it's going to happen it's called calling forth those things that are not as though that they are well this is all faith and it's all inspired by the Holy Spirit because without the Holy Spirit we wouldn't have we wouldn't be saved we wouldn't have the power of faith in our life we wouldn't have any opportunity to receive great faith in the Holy Spirit a comment I probably should say right now that I hadn't plan to say this, but I believe the Holy Spirit wants me to share this, is that great faith can come and go in our life. We can have really great faith at one moment, the Holy Spirit's operating in that, giving us that, and then we lose, we pull back and we don't have the trust and the faith or the confidence because we're going through something, and maybe we'll have a little lesser faith than what we had before. So remember, the gift of great faith comes from the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't mean that the faith that we have isn't vital, isn't important, and if it's not great faith, it's still faith, and it's still good. Now, what does it mean when we say the Holy Spirit decides who receives the gift of great faith? Now, some people might say, well, that's not fair. He's favoritism. Well, it's not favoritism. The Holy Spirit is drawn to people who are drawn to Him.

13:08 And if you want great faith, then we need to rely upon the Holy Spirit's direction and guidance. I believe we're more likely to receive the gift of great faith if we're seeking God, if we're seeking a closer walk with God. a closer day -to -day, minute -to -minute experience with the Holy Spirit. Now, some people say, well, you can't live minute -to -minute with the Holy Spirit. I have to say, yes, you can. Yes, you can. That doesn't mean you're perfect. That doesn't mean that you're speaking about Him constantly and not doing anything else. I mean, we have to go to work and do our jobs. You know, we have to do certain things with people and we're not always involved in it. But we can have a day -to -day, minute -to -minute experience with the Holy Spirit because He lives and dwells inside of us. And because He dwells in us, He's always available. to us and we're always available to hear from Him. And He's many, many times wanting to speak to us when we're in the middle of other things and getting distracted and losing our focus on the things of the Lord or something spiritual in our mind and heart that the Holy Spirit will then try and help bring us back in.

14:09 Lately the Holy Spirit's told me, I really feel He's led me to pray that every single day that He convicts me that I need to have a closer walk with Him, that He impresses me that I need to have a closer walk with him and that I will feel his presence more and more as I make decisions as I talk to people as I'm driving across the city whatever it might be that I'm doing I want the Holy Spirit to guide and direct me and I believe that's really what the Holy Spirit wants in order to give us a stronger dose of faith if you will so what does it mean when we say that the Holy Spirit decides who receives the gift of great faith well first we must understand I believe that because the Holy Spirit decides who gets this gift that we've got to put our trust in Him to do what only He can do. Not everyone will receive this gift of great faith. That's what the Bible says. It's not for everyone. But I believe there can be a humongous, a huge amount of people who can receive great faith. Maybe it's only for a moment. Maybe it's for a day.

15:11 It may be for a lifetime. But we must pray. That's how the Holy Spirit decides who to give that prayer to. I believe that. Who to give that gift of great faith to. We must pray and ask for stronger faith. Now everyone who becomes a Christian receives the gift of the Holy Spirit and a measure of faith. Now I'm not going to get into that right now because that will take me off in a different direction but everyone who's a follower of Jesus Christ receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. When you say Father I'm sorry for my sins I ask you to forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness I promise to serve you all the days of my life I confess you as my Lord and Savior I receive you come into my heart give me life filled with your guidance and direction and your joy and peace for I receive you and I walk in you in Jesus name I pray amen when we pray that And we mean that, and it's real in our life. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell inside of us. And then we're given a measure of faith. It's a portion of faith. To some, it's larger than other people.

16:12 And it's interesting we understand that because there are various levels of faith that each and every one of us has. So the gift of great faith, or any faith, is a supernatural anointing to trust God. Really, small faith, big faith, it's still, there's a certain level of faith there. And it's It's enduring trust. It's enduring trust and evidence in God's promises. It's unwavering faith. whether it be great faith or little faith. Romans 10, 17 says this, faith comes from hearing the message of Jesus. Now, I'm not sure what translation that is, but what they're saying is we get faith from hearing the message of Jesus, so when we share Jesus with other people, they can receive enough faith to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and their walk with God begins. It's interesting to note, I've preached on this before, I've written articles on it, I've commented about it in the books that I've written on faith, and that is that Jesus calls faith faith great, and he calls faith small.

17:11 You know, he looked at his disciples once and he says, I've never seen such little faith. Oh, ye of little faith, he says. He just was irritated with them. And yet he saw a centurion who told him, if you could just heal my servant, you don't need to go to my house. You need to go there at all. I believe I have faith to believe that you can heal my servant. And Jesus said, I've not seen such great faith in all of Israel. He referred to this man. who was a centurion in the army, if you will, and this man stood up and had great faith to know that Jesus didn't have to go and lay hands on his servant, that Jesus could just speak the word. And so Jesus said that your servant's healed. And so there's levels of faith, and so don't beat yourself up if you feel your faith is weak. But on the other hand, if your faith is weak... then we've got to analyze and find out why is it? Are we trusting in God's Word? Are we praying daily? Are we seeking God daily? Are we reading at least some of the Word of God daily? And I'm not saying hours and hours and hours of it, but a portion of our day.

18:07 I think one of the best things that we can do to walk in the presence of the Holy Spirit and have greater faith is to have a daily devotional of some kind. It might be getting up and praying over a list of people to pray for. It might be reading a devotional that somebody's written. I personally read one. every day I've done that for many many years it just kind of gets me off track gets me on track I should say in the in the right direction and when I'm reading that devotional it's kind of set me up for having greater faith for that day and there's scriptures in my devotional and I read some comments and then I pray over people and it just kind of gets me going how long does that take sometimes it takes 20 minutes sometimes it takes an hour it just depends on what it's what it's going to be for that day but I feel like that helps me to stay in line and helps me to walk in the Spirit.

18:53 I don't have all the answers, but I certainly know the one who has them, and I'm going to read his word and seek his word to get the answers that I'm looking for. Now here's an area I promised to cover when I introduced this podcast. What is the difference between feelings and faith? Feelings are emotional and can be easily impacted due to our circumstances. It's very important to understand that. Faith is a strong reliance on God's Word and His promises. Faith is, as we know, as we read about in the Word of God, it's substance. It's an assurance. It's a conviction of things hoped for. Feelings are things that we're thinking about or that we'd like to see happen, but we don't have a plan of attack. We don't really have the Holy Spirit helping us.

19:34 Feelings are things that typically our body is trying to handle. I feel good one day. I feel bad the next day. But having Hope and trust and confidence in God to have greater faith will carry us through every day. Faith will keep us above the circumstances we're going through. Now I've used this comment before but I got to use it again and that is look at the Apostle Paul. Some of the greatest things that he wrote was in the middle of his greatest trials in prison. When he wrote the epistles and wrote Philippians and Galatians and Ephesians, when he wrote these words, he was in prison for some of these and he was facing horrendous trials. In prison, he said, I learned to be anxious for nothing. but everything through prayer, petitions, with thanksgiving I made my request made known to God and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard my heart and guard my mind in Christ Jesus. That is great faith. That is great faith in the midst of circumstances and I'm really praying and believing that God is going to help all of you who are listening in to have that kind of great faith in the midst of any trial that you might have.

20:35 The Holy Spirit can help us to focus on our faith and not rely on our feelings. Now I got to start wrapping this up. There have been several key events that have helped me to experience greater faith. I believe the Holy Spirit gave me a gift of great faith on several situations, many, many times over the years, in many situations for other people in my own life. My first experience was when I was diagnosed with kidney failure. I was only 25 years old, a brand new Christian, and the doctor said, this is going to take your life, and the Holy Spirit told me. pray, drink a lot of water, but pray and pray and pray and trust God and believe. And I was healed and I was restored from that. And then later on in life, I came down to making the decision to stay in business, to go into full -time ministry.

21:19 And my wife and I needed a touch of greater faith to be able to step out in faith, to close our business down, stop our source of income and go to work for the church for free. And God blessed that and has prospered it. And now that we've been operating in that church now for some 28 years, the senior pastors for almost 18 years and then a total of 28 years being involved in being a pastor in that church. A third time was when I had cancer issues, and a fourth time I had cancer issues. I was told that my life would only have six months to go, diagnosed with multiple myeloma bone marrow cancer, an incurable disease. They say to this day it's incurable, but God touched me, and I believe by God's grace and His mercy, I've been healed in Jesus' name. So these are things that happened in my life. I just want you to understand that. I don't go around saying, well, nothing bad ever happened.

22:06 to me. No, I struggle with things. The Bible tells us that rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. So I'm going to have to wrap this up. My time is running out. We'll continue speaking in this vein in this direction as we continue on. Our next podcast is called, I believe it's going to be, The Holy Spirit Teaches Us Faith. But in closing, I want to pray for you. So let's do that right now. Heavenly Father, for those who are listening in, I know many of them have come and listened to this because they want greater faith, and that's wonderful, that's honorable, it's just awesome. And I just pray now, Lord, that these things we've taught about being led by the Spirit of God will help them to have the greater faith they need, to be faithful to the Word of God and faithful to prayer and seeking the Holy Spirit daily and asking for His guidance and direction literally to take care of us and lead us every moment of our life. So I pray you would bless them and that you would... Bless them with greater faith and understanding of that faith that will believe for it. anything because with great faith nothing is impossible.

23:03 The Word of God tells us that, that faith comes to carry us through the challenges that we face in each and every day. So Father bless them Father, may your face be upon them and shine upon them Father. And I pray Lord that people would start even right now to start let these scriptures sink into them and receive the fullness of your blessings that faith comes from hearing the message of Jesus and that faith is the assurance of things hoped for in the Well, I hope this has been a blessing. My goodness, this has gone fast. I don't remember doing a podcast that flowed smoother and quicker and went through it. I'm just so thankful to the Lord for that and helping us.

23:54 So I pray that if you... have questions about this that you continue listening to our podcast series on the Holy Spirit and when you're talking about the Holy Spirit you're going to be talking a lot about having faith. If you'd like to know more about the Quality Christian Living podcast you can go to davidcfriendauthor .com and when you go to there right on the front page there'll be a link to the podcast we've done. This is podcast number 325 so there's a obviously a lot of them that we've done in nearly four years and if you Scroll down on that list of podcasts, then you'll see teachings on faith, teachings on finances, teaching on what it means to experience miracles in your life and how you can have faith for miracles. I've talked about how to get out of debt. I've got books there to help people understand how to help veterans going through challenges in their life, because I was obviously, many of you have listened before and heard that I was a veteran in the Vietnam War. And so bottom line, there's a lot there that's available and that you'll get to know more about quality Christian living. to my podcast you can do that by going to see PNShows .com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Well, I truly believe that this has been blessed and led by the Holy Spirit and I pray that you will tune in to our next podcast coming up when we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit teaches us faith. We're going to get into trying to understand exactly where in the Word of God does it show us that we're being instructed how to have greater faith. Where does the Holy Spirit show us exactly how people of weak faith can have stronger faith and get into

25:25 examples of great faith that came out of people who quite frankly had very little faith to start with. So I believe it's going to be blessed to the Lord and I hope that you'll let your family and friends know that we're continuing on our series on the Holy Spirit and we're going to hang in there for a little bit and how faith and the Holy Spirit work together. I want to close this out with just a couple of questions that people have sent in and asked to get information on. So for example, what does it mean to be led by the Holy Spirit? in our daily lives. Well, let's just kind of look at that for a second. You know, the bottom line is we've got to deny our flesh and deny our thoughts and yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit to take us through the things that we are faced with each and every day. Here's another question. How can someone recognize when the Holy Spirit is speaking to them? Well, I like to think about that, that when I have peace in my life, I know that I'm not hearing from the devil. I know that peace comes from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit comes to give us and peace. So to identify when I believe the Holy Spirit is leading me and guiding me, it's going to be something encouraging, something positive, something that's lifting up. Good advice for people, or it's correcting my own life, things that I need to do differently, and that type of thing. But to recognize the Holy Spirit basically is that when you have peace... from what you're hearing, then you know it's from the Holy Spirit.

26:42 Remember what Jesus said in John chapter 10 and verse 10. He says that the devil, well, he called him the thief, but he's referring to him obviously as the devil. The thief comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. He says, but I've come to give people life and give it to them more abundantly. So I want to close this with a blessing. I just want to thank you so much for listening in to the Quality Christian Living podcast. Lord, I pray that you would bless these folks that are listening in and keep them and that your face would shine upon them. I pray that you would be gracious to them, Lord, that you would give them peace. I pray, Lord, that they would Prosper and be in good health even as their soul prospers and for ask that in Jesus name So until next time I pray that God will richly bless you I pray that you will receive faith beyond your wildest Imaginations and I pray that you would continue to seek each and every day a greater stronger relationship with the Holy Spirit Remember Jesus sent him to be our counselor give us comfort to be our backup He's got our back and the Holy Spirit is there to help us. He's right there inside of us If you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you can go directly to Him anytime.

27:48 If you don't know Him, then receive Him as Lord and Savior. Ask for forgiveness of your sins and receive Him this day. And I know that He'll come into your heart and change your life. Thank you once again for listening to Quality Christian Living. I am your host David Friend. May God richly bless you.