The Way of Faith - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, January 14th. Moses is a great example of someone who chose to follow the Lord despite enormous obstacles. Stay with us to learn the benefits of walking the way of faith. If someone should ask you to list your assets, what would you list? Your house, your cars, your cash, your jewelry, maybe your clothes, or some of the properties that you have, or stocks or bonds.

If those are the things you listed, you would have left out the most important asset you have. But the most important asset you have is your faith. Listen to what Jesus said. As you believe, so be it unto you. Your faith has made you whole. If you have the faith of a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, be removed, and it shall move. Jesus knew that our greatest asset was our faith. And as we exercise our faith, so our life moves.

You see, all of us are the products of the way we've been thinking all of these years of our life. And the way we've been thinking involves our faith. I doubt or I believe.

I'm trusting Him or I'm not trusting Him. So that oftentimes when we complain about our circumstances, our circumstances are the result of what we have been willing to believe God for or what we have doubted Him about. And so when He says, as your faith is, so be it unto you, our greatest asset is our faith. Now this is one in a series of messages entitled, Forward by Faith. The title of this message is The Way of Faith. Now the very title implies there's another way. If there's a way of faith, then there must be another way.

And what is that? So I want to distinguish these two before we come to the Scripture. The way of faith has an opposite, and that is the way of the flesh. That is the way of the flesh is the natural way. That's the way of sight.

That's the way of feeling. That's the way of human wisdom and human strength. The way of faith is the supernatural way. That's the way of trusting, of obeying and relying wholly upon God.

So all of us have one of two ways to respond to life. The natural way, which is reason, sight, feelings and human strength, human wisdom. The way of faith is the way, the supernatural way. Trusting God, obeying God, relying wholly upon God. The supernatural power of God and the wisdom of God belong to those who are willing to walk the way of faith. Now, in each of these messages, what we have done is to take a biblical character and illustrate some principle of faith by His light.

And I want to remind you of something. These were not supernatural men and women. You know what they were? They were just normal people like you and me. And if you'll think about what they were, shepherds and so forth, and how God called them and how He spoke to them and how oftentimes they failed, they were just common folks just like us. The only difference was this. The difference was that those men and women who were willing to walk the way of faith, God did some supernatural things in their life. Those who refused to walk the way of faith and chose the way of the flesh, the natural way, God did not. The principle is the same.

The offer is the same. And listen carefully, the results can be the same in your life and my life on the basis of our environment, the time in which we live and the things that God has called us to do. Now, let's look, if you will, in Hebrews chapter 11. Because in this message, I want to take the life of Moses to illustrate this principle of the way of faith. And many of us know many things about him. And the writer of Hebrews sort of capsuled much of his life, main events in the 23rd through the 29th verses.

So let's read those together. The writer of Hebrews says in verse 23, By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king or Pharaoh's eating. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, a perfect description of sin. Verse 26, Considering the reproach of Christ's greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward, By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king or Pharaoh, for he endured as seeing him who is unseen, a very important phrase. Verse 28, By faith he kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn might not touch them.

By faith they passed through the Red Sea, as though they were passing through dry land, and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned. Now the life of Moses is a colorful life, but a life full filled with the great principles of Scripture. The way of faith is the way God intends all of us to live. He said to his apostles so many times, in many ways, simply trust me, have faith in me. And in the New Testament, as the apostle Paul wrote, he talked about walking by faith and living by faith. The way of faith is the way of the supernatural, not the natural. It is the way of trusting God. It is the way of obeying God. It talks about and it involves relying wholly and totally upon God, not ourselves.

The opposite of that is the natural way. My feelings, my reasoning, my wisdom, my sight, and my strength. And all of us have the privilege of making a choice, and your choice and my choice is going to determine, listen carefully, is going to determine how life treats you in every single aspect of your life, no exception. Because, you see, the way of faith leads me one way or the natural way is going to lead me the other way.

One is going to position me for God's best and the other is going to leave me straggling for myself. So what I would like to do in this message is to describe to you and to describe with you what is this way of faith. And I want to begin by simply saying the way of faith is God's way. It has always been God's way from the very beginning. And the whole Bible shows us the way of faith is God's way. That's what He said in the very beginning and He said it all the way through the Scriptures.

You could go all the way through the Bible, one miracle after the other or one great feat, one great accomplishment after the other. And the book of the Hebrews says that these men and women conquered kingdoms by their faith. That's always been God's way. Well, think about Moses for a moment. Remember that he was born in slavery. And his parents put him in a little basket, sent him down the Nile. His sister watched him, ended up in Pharaoh's household, sent back to his mother for about three years and she kept him until he was ready to be sent back to Pharaoh's daughter. And then the Bible says in the seventh chapter of the book of Acts, as Stephen is preaching his great message there, talks about the kind of man Moses was, that he was a handsome man and a man who had the learning of Egypt and a man of power and position and probably could have become maybe, possibly the next Pharaoh in Egypt. But the Bible says that he chose otherwise and one day then he went out and he saw his Hebrew brothers being mistreated and he killed an Egyptian soldier. He ended up on the backside of the desert for 40 long years, stripped of everything he had.

No more power, no more prominence, no more position, no more potential, no more anything. The only thing he had was the smelly clothes of a shepherd and a shepherd's stick. Now, you see, God's way isn't the way of force.

It never has been. And what Moses did is he responded to a situation in the natural. We'll fight against these Egyptians. No, that wasn't God's way. So God sent him over there. When he brought him back 40 years later, now he's about 80 years of age, he comes back armed, listen to this, armed not with anything that looks like any part of the arsenal of Egypt, the finest of chariots, the sharpest of javelins, the sharpest of swords, the best of armor. But Moses comes back in a shepherd's garb with one weapon, the most simple form of a weapon, threatening nothing and no one, nothing but a shepherd's stick. That's all he had.

But I want to remind you of something. Moses stood alone as a shepherd with a stick and he challenged the Pharaoh of Egypt. He challenged the whole arsenal of Egypt. Moses with a shepherd's stick and faith in God brought the whole kingdom of Egypt to its knees. That's God's way. He trusted God. He obeyed God. He leaned totally upon God. That's the way of faith. That's always the way God has operated.

What is one man standing alone against Pharaoh and all of his armies? Well, humanly speaking, it is nothing. Feeling-wise, it is ridiculous. Humanly speaking, there's no wisdom in that. There's absolute, utter, definite failure in such an attempt unless you believe in God. God's way has always been the way of faith. But you see, if you look at people around you and you watch the world and listen to the world, they're going to tell you, that's not the way you should feel and that's not the way it is and that's not reasonable. And what you have to ask is this, there are two ways in life and only two. There's the way of faith and there's the way of the flesh, the natural way. Which way are you going to choose? God's way is always the way of faith. And so what we see in the life of Moses here is that God took a man and he took what was very little.

All he had was himself and the rod that God had given him as a shepherd and he challenged the whole kingdom. Let me ask you this, what are you facing in your life? What to you is like Egypt? And you're saying, God, what am I going to do? If you choose the way of faith, God will take you and your little all by yourself if necessary.

And what little God has given you, he will conquer the Egypt in your life. The way of faith is always God's way. The second thing I want you to notice here is, it is the way of trials, suffering and sacrifice.

Now, nobody likes to hear that. You look at the whole Bible, God's servants, both men and women, whom God used in such a tremendous fashion, just common, ordinary folks like us who trusted God. Their trust brought them tribulation, hardship, trial, difficulty, but we don't like that. So there's a whole segment of people today who say, just trust God, hallelujah, praise, God and everything is going to be fine.

They fall off the cliff and wonder where God is. Now listen, trusting God doesn't mean I'm not going to suffer. Trusting God doesn't mean I'm not going to have any hardship.

Trusting God doesn't mean I'm not going to have to sacrifice. You look what happened to Moses. He trusted God and God sent him back. Listen, he had to leave the quietness of the desert and go to a stormy Egypt. He had to leave the love and acceptance of his family and go to the rejection, the hostility and the murderous attitude of a Pharaoh. He left the comfort zone over the backside of the desert to walk into a war which never ceased for him. For until he died, Moses bore the burden of the nation of Israel.

Out of Egypt, into the desert, across the desert. He bore the burden of those people. That wasn't easy.

It was a continuous trial. They fought against him. They rebelled against him.

They wanted to stone him to death. The way of faith is not always easy. And you recall in the 16th chapter of Matthew at Caesarea Philippi when Jesus was just beginning to relate to his disciples. Now, my kingdom involves my suffering, my persecution and my death. And here was the Son of God. He'd walked with them. They'd seen all the things he had done. And he was simply explaining to them what was going to happen, what they could expect. Peter said to Jesus, now who is God? It will never happen to you. Now, what was that? Was that Peter being just ornery and Peter being hard to get along with?

No. The flesh, the natural within Peter said, there is no way that Jesus Christ our Savior, our Lord and our Friend, who is the Messiah and the King of Kings, who is God. There is no way they're going to do this to him. That's the natural way. That's the natural response. We're not going to let that happen to you, Jesus. And Jesus had to say to him, Peter, you're acting like the devil. That's exactly what he said to him. You see, if you're waiting for God to make it easy, if you think the way of faith is the easy way, just trusting God and everything is going to be fine. My friend, that's not the way.

And many people have misled others by saying, just trust God. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Everything is going to work.

It sure will work. In the valley, when you're bleeding, when the sandpaper is getting tougher all the time and the chisel is getting sharp and you can hear the saw coming. God working in our life, do you know why he doesn't make it easy? Because he has something bigger in mind than we have in mind. The way of faith is not easy. And you look at the life of Moses and you don't see anything easy about this man's life.

Nothing whatsoever. But look what God did with him. The way of faith also is the way of patience. Now, in an area and in a time when you and I want everything instantly, we want it now. The way of faith, my friend, is not the way of instantaneous anything.

In fact, it's probably the longest way in time. How many times have you and I said, God, where are you? Well, he's where he's always been. God, why aren't you working?

Well, he is working. The problem is that most of the time our schedules don't coincide, right? You see, the reason is usually when we come up to a problem, let's move it and move it.

Let's get on with it. But that's not God's way because God has a higher purpose in mind than that. And if you'll think about the life of Moses and how God worked in his life. You see, our goal is to achieve this, accomplish that, or to get this done or get this out of the way or to have this. God's goal in every circumstance is always larger than ours. Usually it involves more people than us. Usually it involves greater goals than our limited goal. Usually it involves greater influence than what we are concerned about. Usually what we are concerned about is what we want to accomplish. God always has a bigger picture in mind. So that the way of faith is the way of time. The way of faith is the way of patience.

Trust Him. Well, I've got to have so and so, so you go out and bear lots of money. And then even realize that somebody was about to give you something. Listen, if you'll just remember this, just when you think, I can't stand it anymore, just wait a little longer.

And you know what will happen? God will reward you every time. It's like praying and you think, I just can't get through. God, what's going on?

It's like there's a barrier. I learned long time ago, when I don't feel like praying and nothing's going on, keep hanging in there because I'm going to get through. And just when you think God's not anywhere than a thousand miles, the light dawns and God answers your prayer.

We're so quick to give up because we want it now. Why 40 years in the backside of the desert when God could have given him a burning bush over in Egypt? Why 10 plagues?

Why not one? The way of faith is sometimes the longest way and sometimes the way that it requires of us the most patience. Thank you for listening to The Way of Faith. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.