From Fear to Faith [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. If you have a little faith, just a little faith, it's real faith.

And therefore, anything is possible. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Life of Peter, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire broadcast, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you this special offer available today. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org.

Or call 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news?

Yes. If you have a little faith, just a little faith, it's real faith. And therefore, anything is possible. I want to turn you to a beautiful story, story that I have this week fallen in love with more than ever in my life for seeing it in a new way. It's in Matthew, chapter 14, verse 22. It comes after the famous story of the feeding of the 5,000 with the loaves and fishes. And as we continue in this study of the life of Peter, this man who is such an enigma, such a mixture, at times just seems so strong and at times so unstable. He is one who is like shifting sand, but Jesus calls him a rock.

And there may be no other story that typifies this strange mixture in who Peter is. And in fact, no matter how most of us are, then this story in Matthew, chapter 14, verse 22. Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.

When evening came, he was there alone. But the boat by this time was a long way away, long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against him. And in the fourth watch of the night, it was so probably 3, 4, 5 a.m., he came to them walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, It is a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, Take heart.

It is I. Do not be afraid. And Peter answered him, Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water. And he said, Come. So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and began and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, Truly, you're the Son of God.

So here's the question about this story. What do you think of Peter? Is it a story in which you read it and you say, Look at Peter.

He's such a failure. He immediately started doubting, started sinking down the water. And how do you hear Jesus talking to him?

Is Jesus saying, Oh, Peter, tisk, tisk, shame on you. You got so little faith. Why did you have to doubt?

Ah, everywhere I turn, people are doubting. And Peter hangs his head in shame and comes back to the boat. Or do you read the story as more on the positive side, like, Whoa, this dude walked on the water for a few steps. None of the other disciples did. In fact, we don't know of anybody else in history other than Jesus who walked on the water for at least a little bit.

This is pretty amazing. And I think that Jesus was probably fairly impressed with this, even though Peter's faith grew small and he sank. Look at him.

He's still walked on the water. It's hard to know how to read this story. I think people read it in different ways. It's hard to understand how it is that Jesus is really responding to Peter. And so this story has troubled me for a lot of years because we're in a series on the life of Peter in which we're emphasizing how when Peter confessed Christ as the Son of the living God, that Jesus told this unstable man, You're a rock and on this rock, I'm going to build my church. And we talk so much about the importance and the power of blessing.

Because in the beginning, God blessed Adam and Eve and he said, Be fruitful and multiply. He blessed them before they were productive. And he called Abraham, who was an old man, childless, old man, beyond his wife, beyond childbearing years.

And he called him a father of a nation before he ever had a child. He called David, an anointed king, while he was just a shepherd in the fields of Bethlehem. And Jesus, when he came, he blessed the little children and he taught about blessing and he blessed Peter.

And this is where you see a positive vision over someone's life and you speak over their life, not what they are in that limited frame of mind or place of life where they are right now, but you see what they can be and you call it out over their lives. That's the way Jesus is. And so this story sort of troubled me because like, why is Jesus saying these things? That doesn't feel like a blessing at all. Your little faith, why did you doubt?

Doesn't seem encouraging. It doesn't seem very Christ-like. I want to show you today a whole new way of looking at this story and what caused it to change in my thinking was a great sermon from a man who was called Prince of Preachers in the 19th century, Charles Spurgeon, who wrote a sermon, preached it in about 1860.

It was called History of Little Faith and it was so good. I was half inclined to just preach it in today's language, but instead I just let my soul be impacted by the message and I bring you this message with much indebted to the insight of Charles Spurgeon. Okay, first thing to say about this text is that it's very important to know that when Jesus says, oh you of little faith, and this isn't the only place, sometimes he says it in the plural to his disciples, but here he says it to Peter. You want you to understand in the Greek language it's one word. It's one word here and it literally should be translated little faith one.

In fact, more pointedly, it's really like a name. It's like he calls him little faith. Okay, so that's what it really says, little faith. And in fact, Jesus would sometimes use this like a pet term for Peter or for his disciples. Sometimes it was Peter, you're little faith, and a few other times it just calls disciples little faiths.

And that's an odd thing for him to say because at first it sounds like it's some epithet, you know, some derogatory nickname that is given to them. But I want to try to encourage you to look at this from a different angle today as we go forward. And sometimes there's a phrase like this that actually has in it affection. And I think you have to see it this way.

And that's what I hope to prove to you today from this text. So before Christmas, back in December, we'd done a conference in Alabama. We were coming back through. My wife and Abbie were coming back through Atlanta.

We spent the night and went shopping in Atlanta at the beginning towards the first week of December. And we're in the Macy's at Lenox Mall. And I've been up in the men's shoe section, which was right next to the men's underwear section. And I actually was, I had to take a phone call.

So I'm standing there in between the shoe section and the underwear section. And I see a man come in who looks oddly familiar to me. And I'm talking on the phone and I'm starting to lose concentration because I'm looking at this man saying, I think that might be the guy I grew up next door to on Pine Top Road in Greensboro.

That could be Freddie Simon. He was my middle brother's, one of his dearest friends. But I hung out with him too. I often played with my brother's friends too.

I was always often the guy that was like that. And I love Freddie. And I hadn't seen him in a long, long time. And I'm looking at him, I'm going, man, that guy's got gray hair.

I mean, he looks like too old to be that, I mean, have the eyes. But anyway, I'm just sitting there going, so finally, and later in later reflection, I thought this probably wasn't the best way to do this. You probably don't go up to a man in the underwear section at Macy's in Atlanta and say this. But I went out and said, you look familiar to me. Later, I thought that that was probably not what I should have said at that moment. Thankfully, he just looked right at me and he said, well, I'm Freddie Simon. And I said, Freddie, look real closely at me and see, do you recognize me? And he leaned in and he said, little Al? I said, yeah, Freddie. He said, Alan Wright. I said, what are you doing in Atlanta?

Big hug. We started talking to the next thing. We spent 45 minutes talking about playing kick the can and all the old stories and riding in his old wild cat that would break town every time you get in it. And, and then he's like, he's like, man, I cannot believe this. I can't wait to tell people.

I saw little Al down here in the Macy's in the underwear section. I called my wife and Abby, they come up and I said, Freddie, Simon's here. And her daughter come and meet Freddie.

She's never met him before. And we just like, we just, we just reminisce of these old, old times. And when he said little Al, it wasn't, it wasn't a negative. It was, it was a reminded me of my childhood when I spent so much time playing with my two older brothers who were always bigger and all their friends who were always bigger. And, and, and so when he said that there was a lot of affection in that.

Right. And it just, it just brought all that back. Wonder if Jesus is speaking to Peter more like that. And he's like, little faith. And he grabs them and picks them up out of the water.

That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Ever feel like the pressure's always on?

Do you find it hard to say no, worried that you'll disappoint someone? The Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship in paradise. They were naked and felt no shame. But as soon as sin entered the world, they became anxious, plagued with a gnawing question. What must I do to be accepted? There is only one solution, the grace of God that lifts our shame. In a new six week video masterclass, Pastor Alan exposes the dynamics of shame and shows the path to freedom. Whether as an individual or in a small group, the video series is sure to bring healing and hope. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we'll send you the digital masterclass videos and study guides as our way of saying thanks for your partnership in a world so quick to say shame on you.

It's time to let God's grace take the shame off you. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. There is something here in Jesus's calling him a little faith one that is oddly affirming because in the first place he's acknowledging that there is faith that's there. We talk often about the contrast of fear and faith because fear is the perversion of faith and faith is, according to Hebrews 11, the substance of things hoped for, the conviction, the evidence of things not seen. So faith is not merely an assent to truth with your mind, but it is an expression of action that demonstrates quite spontaneously in many cases what you actually believe. If you step into a room and you turn the light switch on, you don't stop and think that was an act of faith, but it was because all of these things you had to believe, believed electricity actually exists even though you can't see it and that light switches can activate it and the light bulb can turn on. You just don't think about it.

You just do it. It's an act of faith. You believe in something that you, a positive thing to happen, and so you act upon it. Fear is the perversion of faith.

It is also a form of belief, but it believes in a negative outcome. So the Scripture says in Romans that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. So faith is born out of the word of Christ. And in this case, you see it vividly, Peter has begun to learn, as we saw in last week's message, that if you really want a miracle, what you need from God is a word. And in every command of Christ is the promise of Christ.

Christ. So if Christ says to a man with an arthritic condition in his hand, stretch forth your hand, then there's healing that's going to come. And if he says to Lazarus in his tomb, come out, then the dead man comes to life. And so Peter here says to Jesus, as he's walking in the midst of this great storm on the water, tell me to come. And Jesus, when he says come, there is the birth of Peter's faith to come. He wouldn't have had any faith to go to Jesus, except Jesus had said come.

And so it is that you see it vividly. The word gives birth to faith. And when you act on something that is a word of Christ, then it's going to come to pass. But what faith is not is you dreaming up your own word and acting according to your own word.

If someone were to go up to the 10th floor and go out on the balcony, and a man stand there and say, I believe I can fly, I believe I can fly, I can believe I can fly, and he really believed it, and he jumped off the balcony, it would be a tragedy. And we wouldn't call that faith, we'd call it foolishness. Because though he believed it, it wasn't the word of Christ, right? There's all kinds of foolishness that goes on in the so-called name of Christ, it wasn't ever a word of Christ.

You could probably go this morning and find somewhere in a remote part of the Appalachian Mountains, some church where people are dancing into a frenzy and at some point picking up copperheads or rattlesnakes. And they think they're demonstrating their faith. But in fact and matter, some of those people are going to be bitten, and some of these people have died because there was no word of Christ telling them to go to church and pick up rattlesnakes. Oh, there's a text that talks about treading on scorpions and serpents, but it's a picture of our spiritual authority in the spiritual battle. And we have authority over the demonic, but there's no word from the Lord about picking up rattlesnakes.

And so people who mean well don't have a word. Faith is generated by the word of Christ. If he says to Peter, come, then there is reason for faith, and the faith comes forth. And if faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, then fear probably comes by hearing, but hearing by the word of the anti-Christ. Whatever is not Christ, whatever is not the gospel, whatever is not the word of God, whatever originates in hell, whatever deception it is that leads us into our fears.

If you want to get at your fear, I suggest you get at the lie and the deception that gave it birth in the first place. Because faith comes by hearing the word of God, and fear is the exact perversion of it, is a form of belief that is rooted not in what God has said, but what the enemy has said. And so it is that fear and faith are in this way similar, but absolutely opposite. They're also similar in this way that both fear and faith lead towards the object of their belief. That's just the way it works. That's the way God set up His world.

And it shows up not just in the profound spiritual things in life, it shows up in every arena of life. I mean, you know, we need to generate some prayer requests right now that Carolina will come out of their shooting slump. They've been in a shooting slump, and I'm sure that everybody would like to put that on their prayer list. And especially for Marcus Page, who, our point guard, has been struggling. He did a little better last game, but before that he was two of 28 from the field. And just something like that, he's been struggling.

But here's the thing, take a guy like this in a shooting slump, right? Well, you ask Coach Williams, how's he at practice? He makes everything in practice. You watch him before the game. I sat in there watching him in one of the games, watching him warm up. He's making every three-pointer he shoots.

Just make him, no problem whatsoever. Get in the game, bang, bang, bang. He started out the season one of the best shooters in the nation, and then all of a sudden this happened. So there's nothing changed in the way that he shoots the ball.

What's changed? A little thing in the head, right? And we all know that. It's like the more that he believes that he won't make it, the more likely it is he won't make it. The more you believe that he believes he will make it, the more likely he will make it. It's just a thing called confidence. We watch it in sports. We watch it in life.

We watch it in every arena of life. Fear and faith are similar in this way. They lead us towards the thing that we... And so all of this is pictured in this beautiful, beautiful story. When Jesus says to Peter, little faith, what he's saying can be seen in two ways. It can be seen as, oh, you don't have great faith.

Or it can be seen as him saying you do have some faith. One of my favorite lines in any movie was in the Pirates of the Caribbean. In one of the early scenes, Jack Sparrow, the pirate, is coming. He's going to try to steal a ship. He doesn't really have a boat.

In fact, his has gloriously sunk as he comes into the harbor. And he's standing there on the dock with a naval officer named James Northington who's looking at this rather, rather pitiful looking pirate of Jack Sparrow. And he says to Sparrow, you are without a doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of.

And Jack Sparrow said, but you have heard of me. I don't know about you, but I think Peter's kind of like that. I think Peter, I think, I think Jesus called him little faith one. And I don't think Peter went back to the boat and said, said, man, Jesus said, I got a little faith. I think Peter went back to the boat. He's like, dudes, did you see that?

I walked on water. And you hear Jesus? He said, I got some faith. I do have some faith. I really think that's the way Jesus wants you to hear that this morning. If you feel like all you got is a little faith, then it means you've got some faith.

Spurgeon put it this way. You will observe the savior did not say, oh, you of no faith or oh, you of pretended faith, but oh, you of little faith. There are times when we would give all that we have if we could only hear our master's assurance that we have even a little faith. If he does, but acknowledge that it is faith, then the root of the matter is in us.

Alan Wright and celebrate that today. It's the teaching from fear to faith in the life of Peter and stay with us. Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. Ever feel like the pressure's always on?

Do you find it hard to say no, worried that you'll disappoint someone? The Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship in paradise. They were naked and felt no shame. But as soon as sin entered the world, they became anxious, plagued with a gnawing question. What must I do to be accepted? There is only one solution, the grace of God that lifts our shame. In a new six week video masterclass, Pastor Alan exposes the dynamics of shame and shows the path to freedom, whether as an individual or in a small group, the video series is sure to bring healing and hope. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we'll send you the digital masterclass videos and study guides as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

In a world so quick to say shame on you, it's time to let God's grace take the shame off you. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, I love what you said there as you draw it from the life of Peter.

Are we celebrating some small victories here? Well, I always used to read the story of Peter's sinks down in the water and Jesus owe you a little faith. And I always feel, oh boy, yeah, that's me. I've just got no faith. Right. And Spurgeon's comments and other meditation on this text and it just ignited this whole different view of this that what if Jesus wasn't saying this in a condemning way? Yeah. What if that little seed of faith is like a mustard seed? And if you have just a mustard seed, then mountains can move. And so I guess I want to say to the listeners, maybe read this story with some fresh eyes and maybe hear God, even though you might hear him say you're a little faith one, he's saying you have some real faith. Right. And God can use that.

It's a marvelous thought. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.