Let's jump into Romans chapter 12, and we're gonna continue talking about faith today, as Dane already lets you know. And I am so looking forward to next weekend with our special guests, Robert and Evelyn Morales. Make the time, people. Make the time to be here Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning. This is not your average weekend. These are of the like men and women of God of the highest caliber who walk in the anointing, who walk in revelation, who walk in gifts that this body needs. Amen. Amen. And I would just stress again what we've mentioned once or twice that when we felt uh as we were praying to reach out to them to come for this conference, uh, it's always such a beautiful thing when you hear on the other side of the phone, you know what? I've just been praying about Canada and saying, Lord, what's your timing? Where am I supposed to go? Why are you putting Canada on my heart? And that's exactly what we came out of Pastor Robert's mouth when we got on the phone with him. So I know God has something amazing in store for next weekend. Amen. Well, Father, we give you today once more, we give you these words that we're about to hear and dig into. It's your word, Lord God. And we don't want our thoughts, our clever schemes. We want truth that works, truth that is alive, truth, Lord, that cuts through, as you say in Hebrews, your word is like a sword that cuts, it divides, it lays open the intentions of the heart. So, Father, we ask you to do your work, your work through your word today. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I love Romans chapter 12, and I hope you do too. It starts out uh, first of all, talking about putting our lives out there for God. So let's not really the essence of the message today, but it's important to kind of set the stage because Paul is really shifting years at this juncture in the letter to the Romans. Up until this point, the letter to the Romans has been one of the deepest, you know, theological discussions that we find in all of the Bible. It takes a lot to unravel and to realize what's going on. But Paul has untangled, he has set the stage, and he comes to chapter 12, and you can kind of feel like he's saying, Now I can really talk about what I wanted to talk about. Because sometimes you gotta set some records straight, deal with some burning issues before you can just dive into, and this is what it looks like to live for God together. So Romans chapter 12 is diving off that springboard. This is life together. And he says in verse 1, I appeal to you. Say it this way, I'm begging ya. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Notice this is a whole body, full contact sport. This is all that we are, spirit, soul, and body, first and greatest command: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Strength, this is all that we are, is supposed to be presented to God as a sacrifice. And in verse 2 it continues saying, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may, by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. How many of you know that if you do not purposely submit yourself to God, having your mind renewed by his word that comes from a laying yourself down as a sacrifice before him, then what will progressively happen is we will be conformed to the world. One is an active pursuit, our pursuit of holiness, our pursuit of serving God with all that we are. That takes energy, that's an active pursuit. It's a faith pursuit. The other one is a passive reality that happens simply because you're alive, breathing in this world. There are pressures on us to conform constantly, constantly, to not say certain things, to join in with certain things we shouldn't join in with, and to not do the things that we know the Spirit of God is calling us to do. But what I really want to get into here is the following verses, because we get these amazing words from Paul about what it looks like to live by faith, but not just a life of faith about me, about my family, about my calling, about who I am and what God can do in my life, but what faith looks like lived together. Can you say together? This is better together. We Canadians are not always great at the together aspect. One of the things that our culture conforms us to is individuality, independence. We are our own person. We carve out our own destiny, you know, and in the age of social media and all of these things, we're constantly creating and projecting a persona to the world. We're editing who we are, what we look like, you know, the way that we present ourselves, but we're called to live a life of faith in community as a body. And as we talk about faith, we continue to talk about faith. How many of you know that your faith matters to the person sitting next to you? That your faith matters for the destiny of this church. And I hope I've already been getting that across to you as we've been talking these last few weeks. But it says in verse 3, for the by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. Now, hopefully we're familiar enough with this to realize that God is not saying that you shouldn't think well of yourself. You know, Christianity is not beating yourself over the back, and you know, you are a child of God. You are a child of the king of kings. You are born again into the family of God. You are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus, you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and you are destined to rule and reign with Jesus. That is not the status or the personality of something low and unimportant. But when we start to think about only ourselves, we have a tendency to start to think of others as less than ourselves, and that's what Paul is putting his finger on. Amen. Again, we're in this together. And God gives you faith and grace and a calling and an anointing and all of those wonderful things and an identity so that you can function by faith, by grace, under the anointing of God for the benefit of all. We're not going to get there today, but 1 Corinthians chapters 12 through 14, you know, talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, again, we read them in our independent North American culture, like we can somehow be superheroes doing all of these miraculous feats. But Paul says right there when he's talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that they're given, they're spread throughout the body for the benefit of all. Your gift, your calling is for someone else's benefit. My gift and my calling is for your benefit. Right? And that's not to think more of myself than anyone else. We just are to operate in these gifts. So he says here, not to think more highly than we ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Now I find that interesting, and I've tried to dig into it different ways, different times, and it doesn't fully explain what that looks like. But how many of you know we all have a measure of faith? So that's actually a nice thing, a reassuring thing. Now you might feel like, well, my faith's little, my faith isn't what I'd like it to be, but you have faith. I think you're in this room this morning because you have faith. And that's an amazing thing. And again, part of the beauty of this is, you know, your faith might not measure up to some great warrior, giant of the faith, veteran of the faith, but they're in this too with you, and their gifting calling is for your benefit. Come on. So I find it interesting that that word is put in there, a measure of faith. I don't think that that is put in there to say, you've been allotted so much faith, and that's it. So help me God. That's God's will for my life. I have enough faith to be saved. You know, Jesus died for me, I received him, he forgave me, but I don't have faith for healing, and I don't have faith to prosper, and I don't have faith, you know, to be bold and to step out and to be a witness. No, God gives you a measure of faith, but I mean, time and time again, through Jesus' teaching, I see that the Father gives things to people expecting those things to grow and multiply. So whatever you feel your measure of faith is at the moment, it is not to remain the same a year from now. It's not to remain the same five years, ten years from now. Whatever God gives is for kingdom growth. Unfortunately, the reality of the parable that we're probably all thinking about, the parable of the talents, is some people are like, I've only been given so much. What is our natural tendency? What did the guy in the parable do with his? He buried it in the ground. God help us that we wouldn't bury it in the ground. Each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though we are many, are one body in Christ, individually members of one another. I love how that's phrased. We are members of one another. I think we're we're pretty good as Christians of thinking I'm part of the body of Christ. So, you know, I have a place in Jesus and the picture uh, you know, kind of generally, but he makes it very specific that we are part of one another. As much as you are part of Christ, you are part of the body one another. This is why, by the way, uh church is a non-negotiable in the Christian life. I'm sorry, I might have stepped on. Well, you're all in the building. You're probably not stepping on your toes this morning. But there are a lot of, you know, lovely people that I know in the faith that really struggle with the importance of church. I don't know how you have a relationship with a decapitated head. Not a very comfortable situation, right? You don't just have a relationship with the head, you have a relationship with the whole person. Jesus has a body, that body is his church. If I have a personal relationship with Jesus, that involves his body. Okay. I thought I was talking about faith, but hey. So we're in verse 5 there. So we, though are many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. Let us use them. If you have a gift, it's not to put on a business card, it's not to put out there on your, you know, social media, whatever page. I was gonna say website. Who has a personal website? I mean, uh, we all have all these different places that we put out there who we are, though. What is your gift for? It's to be used. Am I using my gift? Stepping out to use your gift, by the way, is where most of the faith growth is going to happen. Put yourself into a position that feels beyond your capacity and watch your faith grow. Step into a place where that you don't feel you have the stature, you don't feel you have the skill, you don't feel you have the boldness, you don't feel you have just the wherewithal to do. And all of a sudden, you've got to start calling on God and saying, God, here I am. You know, I love that phrase Martin Luther said when he was on trial, like, here I stand, so help me God. It's like I have nothing else to stand on than just what I the conviction that I feel from God. If we want to multiply faith, we need to put ourselves in a place of service to the body of Christ. Oh, come on. You guys were having a lot more fun the last couple of weeks with me. But this is reality, right? I mean, of course, I've lived a life of ministry and I think of a lot of ministry examples, but you know, the only reason I can stand up here and speak the way I speak and share the way I share is because one day I didn't know how to put a message together, how to do anything, but there was a burning in my heart when somebody said, Did does anybody have something to share? And I was like, I know I gotta try. I've heard it said this way. This is not my original idea. I have very few of those, by the way. That's okay, neither do you. Faith is risk, faith is this is what I'm comfortable with, this is what you know I would like to do, and what I feel capable of, but I'm gonna step beyond that to use those things that I believe God has put on the inside of me. Having gifts differing according to the grace given to us, let us use them. And then he begins to break it down and give some examples, and he says, if prophecy in proportion to our faith. And again, I find this very interesting because at the beginning of all of this, it says that God has given to each a measure of faith, according to the measure of faith. And then a little bit later, he uses a slightly different word, but similar, right? This word, it's proportionate to your faith. And one of the things we need to think about as we start to grow in faith is to realize do not measure your next step of faith by anybody else's stature. Don't compare yourself with anybody else, because comparison will kill your faith. Or it will put you into a presumptuous, foolish place where you're trying to do something that you simply do not have the faith to operate. You know, if you've got thousand-dollar faith and you're trying to do a million-dollar project by faith, you're gonna get in trouble really fast. You know, I'm just using money because money is simple, hard, you know, numbers. We like numbers, right? Don't compare yourself to anyone else. Just use the faith you've been given. And it's funny because a lot of this has to do with our feelings. I feel called to do something. Uh and I don't want us to be too focused on feelings because our feelings can really bite us, our feelings can get us off track, right? But when you feel that it's time to step beyond who you are and what you're comfortable doing, if it's for the glory of the kingdom of God and for the good of the body of Christ, do it. A few weeks back as we were here, I think it was towards the end of the service. I just had that distinct picture. You know, if we were all lined up like an army in formation, what we want to do as a body, like it's gonna take leadership, I understand that, and armies function that way too. But an army only works if we step forward in unison, right? That's, you know, there's of course we love stories about supernatural heroes that can single-handedly do all sorts of things, but for the most part, an army moves forward step by step in formation. You know, I'm taking a step forward. That means this for my measure of faith, my life of faith, but you're taking a step here, and we're all moving forward. How many of you know that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of advancement and not just a kingdom of maintaining ground? Come on. There's lots we can talk about in here, but in proportion to our faith, he's talking about prophecy, but really faith plays into all of these different gifts that Paul talks about in these passages. Verse 7: if service, then in our serving. If one teaches, then in his teaching, and the one who exhorts in exhortation, and the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. So we all have different callings and giftings, but we're all called to use them in faith according to a measure that we have been given. Amen? You know, I don't even know. I I I'm like measure. What do I do with this? I I do know how to use a tape measure, don't get me wrong. I used to roof and do, you know, other construction and stuff like that, but again, you know, kids that they always want to be bigger than they are, right? How many of you in your house have like a doorway or something like that where you mark off? Off the growth, and and when they step up there, it's like they're stretching, right? They want to be as tall and just a little bit taller, especially if they see like a sibling is catching up or something like that. Uh, I have a younger brother that I I like to always make a point of calling my little brother. He is not little. But uh, you know, when he hit about grade nine and I was two years ahead of him, it was like my line would go up and his would catch up, and my line would go up and his would catch up, and then all of a sudden his line went past mine and it was done. Uh there was no hope. I am the runt of the family. Um but we all have a stature in God of faith, and that's fine. What we're called to grow. What are we doing for our faith to grow? You know, I I've been studying these things and I'm kind of just bringing it down a notch today. I'll leave all the excitement for next weekend, okay? But, you know, that's not a promise. Who knows what'll happen. But I I've been looking at some of these passages for a few weeks already, and I'm like, I just need to take us there. So I want us to look at some of the passages that talk about little faith, and what does Jesus address when he looks at people of little faith? What does he put his finger on there? And again, this is not Jesus standing in condemnation over us like, oh, you people of little faith, just get out of the way already so the great people of faith can get the job done. No. Actually, I'd never really stopped and thought about it, but as I studied, you know that the only people Jesus refers to as having little faith are committed disciples. Isn't that ironic? I mean, I'm not sure how encouraging that is, because we probably all consider ourselves disciples of Jesus in this room, right? And it's just like, oh great, I'm in the category of people that get often labeled little faith. But it tells me something that if Jesus is addressing little faith in his disciples, it's because these are the ones that he's committed to, that are committed to him, that he's teaching, that he's forming. And if Jesus starts to ask us questions, putting his finger on the source of our little faith, then it's for us to snap, to wake up, to realize what's going on in our heart, in our mind, and our life, to step into greater faith. Your little faith doesn't have to remain little. Romans chapter 10, verse 17. I'm gonna say it again. Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. One of the ways that your faith can grow is what you're doing today. Listening to the word of God. And that goes for going home and reading your Bible. And I will encourage you, if you want to build faith, don't just scan the words with your eyes. Read it to yourself. Read it aloud. Let your ears hear the words that are in front of you. And don't just read it like, oh, this is, you know, storybook time like I do with my children before I put them to bed. No, this is a declaration. This is the word of God. This is God speaking to me. This is spirit breathe, and I am joining with the Spirit of God. If the Spirit breathed these words and the apostle wrote them down, now I'm breathing them out again, and I believe that they're alive, they're active, it's growing in me. And again, if we have small faith today, well, that's okay. It's for us to recognize the symptoms and to step into something new. Another way our faith can grow, and we we say this all the time around here, but Jude, there's only one chapter, and verse 20 says this. I want to read it to you. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. You want to build faith, you get praying. And not prayers that's every worry and concern that you know you want to unburden yourself with. I mean, there's a time and a place for that, but you get into the spirit of God, and that could mean praying in tongues, that could mean declaring the word of God, but you get into the spirit of God and you begin to partner with Him and pray. That will build faith. I can't tell you how many times I have come in on a Thursday night, deflated, discouraged, zero energy. I'm coming because I'm committed, but that's about it. Oh, come on, can I be real for a second here? Sometimes duty needs to be there to get your foot in the door. But then you get into the Spirit of God around people of faith, around people who are full of the Spirit, and I never, ever, ever leave prayer deflated and discouraged and empty. I mean, half the sermons I preach on Sunday come from what God starts speaking to me on Thursday night. Because you get into the presence of God, you get into the Spirit of God, all of a sudden you're not looking at all the limitations and all the challenges. You're beginning to look through God's eyes, you're beginning to hear his voice, and it's always good, it's always yes, it's always forward, it's always be strong, it's always take ground. Come on. And I will say, and I didn't make a list of these things, and you probably have your own list. There are things that you probably know in your life that if you give your eyes, your heart, your thoughts to, it builds worry, anxiety, fear, and doubt. But the enemy's really good in convincing us that we need to see and think about those things. And I'm again, I'm not talking about just being ignorant, but I'm talking about don't look at those things where they become your daily bread, where they become the diet that is building up who you are on the inside. Because it's not building you up, it's tearing you down, it's conforming you to the world, it's conforming you to the limitations of humanity, and some of it's downright demonically influenced. Come on. We want to grow our faith. In the word, in the spirit, in prayer. Look at these verses really quick. Maybe I'll just read them off my page here because number one. When you study this out, you find out that the word little faith, it's actually like one word in the Greek. You know, we have to kind of split it apart in English, but you can kind of picture that. Put a little hyphen in, little faith. It's one word in the original language. The first time Jesus puts his finger on little faith and wants his disciples to get a grasp on this, is right out of the Sermon on the Mount, and you're gonna know what I'm talking about before I even get there. Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 25, he says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for uh sorry, be anxious about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, nor about your body, nor what you will put on. Is not life more than food. I heard a deep yes over there that almost sounded like a confession. I don't know. So help me, God, here I stand, right? I mean, we all love our food, right? But look at this, and he he just talks out of nature a little bit, God's creation. It says, look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they are? You know, and and I stop and I think about this. How many things have I lost sleep over? How many things have I allowed the enemy to just roll around in my mind, in my heart when I'm like, I don't know if I can even pray with faith about this? And now that's in the past, and it's just like every bill every always got paid. You know, I'm still here, my family's still here, the church is still here. Why do we get so caught up in how's it gonna work out tomorrow? God has been faithful up until this day. And and just back to the idea of the measure of faith and talking about the anxieties of life for a moment. You know, I can remember being in Bible college, single guy, sharing an apartment, and being worked up about how am I gonna pay my rent, how am I gonna cover my expenses, how am I gonna pay for Bible college? And when I look back, it's like this is how much faith I needed to make it go, to make it work. And it was funny because at that time God spoke to me about it, and he's just like, you know, you've been a missionary for the last few years in Guatemala, and you couldn't work at all. Did you ever not eat? Did you ever not have what you needed when you were away, and you had no natural ability to provide your own anything. You know, other than the odd trip home, I could pick up some work, but and all of a sudden it's like, oh right, I actually can do more now in the natural to provide for myself than I could then, and I'm worried about if it's gonna work out. And you know, I was thinking about this. If I had shown 20-some odd-year-old Adam that, okay, now you need to believe God for a house and three kids and a wife and, you know, all of these other things that you gotta do and look after the church. How many of you think, oh, there we go. Yeah, that's about what would have happened, right? How many of you think that I back then would have had faith to be able to do all of those things? Isn't God a beautiful God who works with us, who builds our faith, who grows, allows us to grow and to be stretched and to carry more? Thank God for this church and this land and everything that God did to bring us to this place. You know, if this had been shown to people meeting in a living room 40 some odd years ago, they would have been like, No way. And they would have been presumptuous to try and just go out and make it happen tomorrow. But faith has been growing both as individuals and as a body to get us to where we are today. But we need to be cautious that because the enemy will like, we are like, you know, so quick to forget all of God's goodness and to just, you know, all of a sudden it's like it's a brand new day, and I I just God's been faithful, God's looked after us, and we don't have time to look at this whole passage, but he said he asked the question in verse 28 why are you anxious? And how many of you know that Jesus does not ask his disciples questions because he needs answers? This is not a pity me moment where Jesus, let me tell you why I'm anxious. It's like I'm gonna lie down on the couch and I'm gonna, you know, reveal all the worries in my heart, and I'm gonna, you know, you're gonna pass me a hot a cup of cocoa and a nice cookie right out of the oven and make me feel better. It's like, yeah, that's a lot of stuff. I get it. No. If you feel anxiety rising in your heart, realize there's something at work in you that is not God. Anxiety is not from God. Period, full stop. God is not a worried God, an anxious God, a fearful God. Oh, you of little faith. Here's another one. We'll just quickly go through some of these. Matthew chapter 8, verse 23. This is where Jesus is in the boat, and they're going across the lake, and Jesus is tired. He's been very busy ministering and doing different things. They get in the boat, we know the story, the storm rises up, and it's so great that the boat, the boat was being swamped by the waves. We're in verse 8, and now in verse 25, sorry, chapter 8, verse 25. And they went and woke him up. I always wonder what that would be like, right? Like, Jesus is asleep. How long did it take them to be like, somebody's gotta shake Jesus? But isn't that such an illustration of our life, though, right? It's just like we wait for things to get to a certain point before we feel like we gotta go wake God up or something. Right? We're kind of like the prophets of Baal. I love that story. You love it too, right? Back in the books of Kings, it's like they're crying out, and then Baal, and then uh Elijah's like, well, maybe you should scream, shake Baal a little louder, maybe he's asleep. And they're like, good idea. Come on, Baal. But Jesus isn't like that, right? But he's asleep through the storm because he's not worried about the storm. Jesus isn't freaked out by what you're going through. I mean, he cares for you, he cares for your family, he cares for these things, but he is not worried. Not worried. Aren't you grateful that you serve a God that is never worried? And he says, Save us, Lord, for we are perishing. And he said to them, Why are you afraid, O you of little faith? So if anxiety starts to rise up in you, recognize something that is not the spirit of God is working on your soul. If fear begins to rise up on the inside of you, again, recognize that this is not the spirit of God. There is only one type of fear that is from God, and that is a reverent awe and wonder of who he is. But I doubt that that is the sort of awe and wonder that is making you fearful in the storm of life. In chapter 14, still in Matthew, and again in a storm on the lake, we all know the story. This gets even more interesting. He sent them ahead of him, and then he comes walking across the water towards them. Like if they hadn't got the point the first time around, he's in the boat, he calms the storm with a word. What, who is this that is in our midst, right? Now he's walking across the water to them, and they're freaking out. They think it's a ghost, they they don't know what's going on. And I I again, these stories for me are so ironic. It's just like one moment they're worried, maybe it's a ghost. The next moment it's like, but if you call me, I'll step out on the water. It's like, that's a big turnaround right there. I don't know about you. It's like, if I'm still like, is this a ghost? I am not stepping out the water when it says step out on the water. But obviously that's not what was going on, right? And so it's uh in verse 28 it says, and Peter answered him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And he said, Come. And so Peter got out of the boat and he walked on the water and came to Jesus. The laws of physics are not applying that day. That's the God you serve. When he calls you to do something where there is literally no substance under your feet to stand on, when you are going towards him and focused on him and not on the circumstance, not on fear and anxiety, then the laws of physics do not apply to you. The laws of finances don't apply to you. The laws of whatever natural laws, the this plus this should equal that. Grown man steps on water, equals, sinks like a rock. That was his name, after all, right? Peter the Rock, watch him sink. But faith. But we know what happens. When he saw the wind, he was afraid. There's that fear again, and began to sink. He cried out, Lord, save me. And Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying, Oh, you of little faith. And again, you might be sinking or feel like you're sinking, and you might even be corrected by the Lord that your faith is small. But it's not your faith is small, see in heaven, have a fun time at the bottom of the lake. It's your faith is small. I'm gonna put my finger on what is under is is eating away at your faith that isn't allowing you to walk with me in the things that I'm calling you to. Wake up to who I am, have faith in God, amen. What, oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? Why did you doubt? Anxiety, fear, and doubt. Those things are so close together, I don't know if I can draw a line between any of them. But I know what they all feel like. How about you? And I don't like those feelings. But sometimes your faith has to work despite your feelings. You have to step out beyond what you feel and what you think. And maybe this is where I should I brought this thing, so I better tell the story, right? And the band might as well head up because we're just about out of time. But it was funny. I was, uh you know, as I'm digging into faith and studying and reading, I'm like, I know I've taught in the Bible college on faith. I went back and I found some old notes, and you gotta love it when you put something into your own notes, and later on it's like, what is this? Like, you ever wake up in the middle of the night and scratch something down and you try and decipher it in the morning? Like, what on earth? It like in the middle of the night, it was a revelation. It was glorious, it was like, this is gonna sound so smart, and you look at it in the morning, this is not English. Like, this makes no sense. I don't understand. Well, anyway, kind of like that. I'm going through, you know, and I'm going through the slides of my faith presentation, talking about little faith, talking about all these different aspects of faith, and I start to see some pictures, and they can just put them up on the screen for me to help tell the story here. And I reworked them because it was a pretty old presentation, but I see these pictures, and the only note is story from Kamatan. Apparently, I was never gonna forget. Write your stories down, people. Because sometimes you need those testimonies of God's past miracles and faithfulness in the present to wake you up to the possibility. Available to us by faith in God. Because I'm looking at these pictures, it's like, okay, uh, something about faith, something about mountains. Well, there's mountains in faith. Um, what is that what's going on there? Okay, little girl there in a little adobe house. And what on earth? And then after those, I didn't put the picture up there, it was just a stock image of a water cooler like this with a spout on it. So I fired off these pictures to my good friend Anthony, who's in that first picture in the blue shirt. And I'm like, do you know why I would have put these pictures in a faith presentation? What happened? And he didn't remember. But the more I started to question, it came to my remembrance, and thankfully, Anthony, once I remembered, could confirm that I was remembering right. I just think this is a cool story. That we were up in the mountains, and I know these pictures make it look very green, but it was actually a very dry place to be walking around, lots of open air, the sun, and like these are the paths between people's houses, and this is what the houses are like. I call these like the national geographic level missions trips. Some missions trips are far tamer. This is like we are out there. Go tell it on the mountain, right? Like this is real deal. And so we're out there, we're we're visiting homes, we're praying for people, and we ran out of water. We always carried our own bottles, we ran out of that water. We had a water jug, not quite this big, but something to refill our bottles. All the water was gone, and we're way out there, no stores, no place to get clean water. And we're like, it's a long way back to town. We're just dying of thirst out here. And what I remembered finally was, you know, somebody had tipped the jug and tried to get the last dribbles of water out. Good thing there's no drops in there. Tried to get the last little bit out, and we're like, what are we gonna do? We didn't want anybody getting heat stroke, getting sick. And somebody, and I don't think it was me, quite honestly. And isn't that the beauty of the body of Christ? That sometimes you gotta be around people that are bold and have faith. And they say, Well, why don't we pray for the water jug? And you wanna the first reaction that comes to your thought, it's like, you're kidding, right? Doubt begins to rise. But it's just the best thing you can do when fear, anxiety, and doubt arise is to not entertain those thoughts and just immediately step out and do what you know you're supposed to do. If you allow fear to run through your mind, it'll cause chaos. So we'd never seen anybody do such a thing. We prayed for the water jug, and I don't know, I don't know who it was who was bold enough to go up to the water jug afterwards. We all filled our water bottles after that. And like, we're drinking the water, and it's like there's enough, and I couldn't, Anthony couldn't confirm this part. I'm like, I think we even started throwing water around because like after our thirst was satisfied, we're like, this is just too crazy. Like the water just keeps pouring. How many even know that's the God we serve? The same God who told Elisha, right? Go tell the widow, you know, she's got a debt, she's got a situation, but that situation doesn't have to end in defeat and poverty and slavery. I can provide, just go bring some jars, bring some things, start pouring it out. It might look like this much, but it doesn't have to end there. So I don't know why I'm sharing that story with you, other than when I ran into it. I'm like, I got to live that and I forgot. How many things has God done for us, church, that we don't even remember anymore? That like serious, legit miracles, healings, things that He has done, relationships that have been restored, and then we look at the next crisis like it's impossible. God help us to remember that you are a supernatural God. God help us to build our faith. And I'm not gonna ask anybody to pray for the water jug this morning. But I'm gonna ask you to stand to your feet. And I just want God today to put his finger on our heart, and for us to realize that wherever our faith is today, whatever the measure of faith that we feel we walk in, that he would stir a desire to step out into more, to allow that faith to grow, to allow those miracles to begin to move through us, through this body. Lord Jesus, we come to you today and we say, Lord, we believe. Help our anxiety, help our fear, help our doubt, Lord God. We lay them at your feet, Lord God, you can do all things. There is nothing too hard for you. Jesus. Put your finger on the area of our life that we allow the enemy to speak to us, to point out our limitations, our fears, our anxieties. We say no more. No more in the name of Jesus. No more, Lord God, no more, Lord God, no more, Lord God. I speak to this body, Lord God, that they are not limited to the patterns that others are trying to make them conform to, Lord God, that they're not limited by the family background that they come from, they're not limited to the level of education that they have obtained, they're not limited, Lord God, by the friends that they have had in the past that have marked them. Lord God, they're not limited by their past at all. Lord Jesus, we shake those things off today. We shake off, Lord God, the limitations of faith. We shake off, Lord God, faith grow. Faith grow. Faith grow in this body as we step forward together. Let's just take a minute to worship, amen.