Today on real life radio. God wants to speak to you. He doesn't want to tickle you, He wants to talk to you. If it was tickling, then he wouldn't have sent his word. He would have sent the big feather.
He wants to talk.
Now do you Do you and can you get a tickle? Sure, but don't base your experience with God on the tickle. This is real life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible.
Hey everybody, we got our first time ever actually devotional. We have a 40-day devotional called Watching Waiting. 40 days of walking you through biblical passages that excite you and prepare you for the soon coming of Jesus Christ. Watching Waiting is a 40-day devotional that's all tied to biblical prophecy. Watching Waiting.
It is our featured resource for this month and it's available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com/slash real radio. Jackhibbs.com/slash real radio. On today's edition of Real Life Radio. Pastor Jack continues with his series called First Samuel. and a message titled Church Growth 101 Part 3.
Now, Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel, and he was the first of its prophets.
So here now in chapter 16, we'll continue to focus on spiritual maturity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how they relate to each other when it comes to church growth. You see, David was chosen by God to be the new king of Israel, not for his outward appearance, but for his heart. When leaders are chosen for their inner qualities, like David's boldness and courage, the right kind of church growth will happen.
So today, Pastor Jack teaches that God speaks to us through prayer and through his word. Our faith, that's not built on feelings, but on trusting that God will reveal his will for our lives.
Now, with his message called Church Growth 101, Part 3, here's Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for tonight. We thank you that you've allowed us to get together. Lord, in a world that is so crazy.
It is good that we are here. Lord, we have to confess with Peter. Let us build.
Some tents. That we can abide with you. And yet, Lord, when we're all done here tonight and we pack up and go on our way, Lord, you are with us. And Father, we pray that this evening, as we just gather round your table, to look at the wonderful things that you have for us, Lord, that we might be touched by you. Lord, we're not asking that you might touch us just that we might get a goose bump up the back or a tingle down the spine or a.
A vision of this or a or a sight of the other. Lord, we want to be ministered to by you that we might reflect you. That's the bottom line, Jesus, that we might. be living examples of who and what you are. We pray, Father, if there's anything in our lives that would hinder us from.
loving doctrine from Living Lord, your wonderful will We ask you, Father, that you would just search our hearts, try us, O God. And Lord, that you might make us genuine, true believers in these last days. Father, we pray now for your touch as we just enjoy you. We love you and we thank you. In Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen.
Why don't you grab your Bibles this evening and turn, if you would, to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. 1 Corinthians Corinthian. 1st Corinthians chapter 12. Verses 1 through 9, and we'll just stop at the gift that we're going to be speaking about this evening in the first portion of chapter 9. 1 Corinthians 12, 1 through 9.
Paul says, concerning spiritual gifts, technically in the Greek it's concerning spirituals. Brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. And you know that you were Gentiles. carried away to these dumb idols.
However, or wherever you were led. Therefore I make known to you That no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed. And no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by The Holy Spirit. And by the way, you might say, well, Jack, I know somebody who doesn't even know God. And they mentioned the word Lord or they said Jesus is Lord.
But Paul is implying that you have to mean it, that that's a doctrine of your life. That Jesus is Lord. Verse 4. There are diversities of gifts. But the same Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit.
There are differences of ministries. Isn't that great? But the same Lord. And there are diversities of action, activity, energies. But it is the same God who works all in all.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit. To another, the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, again the Holy Spirit. In verse 9, Our gift for this evening to study to another faith by the same Spirit. Faith.
What kind of faith? What kind of faith is Paul talking about?
Well, it's interesting. The word in the Greek is the word that appears for faith, and that is any kind of faith. But we know by virtue of the context of the study. And what Paul is saying is that it is a gift of the Spirit. These are special gifts, it's not just wisdom.
It is God's wisdom that is imputed. Wisdom that would not naturally be known. God's. Knowledge. different than what is human.
When he speaks here about faith, Though faith in God is an extremely beautiful, wonderful, and awesome thing, he is not talking about salvation faith. He's not talking about, and please don't get offended by me saying it this way, it's the last thing I mean, but by us understanding tonight, all of us enjoy our common faith. It is the faith that you and I experience as believers in the body of Christ. Uh We share this common Belief. We share this common faith.
And that faith that you and I share is what brings us into the body of Jesus Christ, the faith that we're trusting in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and we are saved. That common faith, though I do not mean Uh run of the mill. or anything less than great. But common in that we have it together, that is, we experience and enjoy salvation. That is not the faith that Paul is talking about here as a gift.
He's talking about For the lack of a better term, Special faith. We'll talk about that as we go on. But this salvation faith that Is not being mentioned here, but is common to us all. It is the believing in Jesus, the putting our faith into Him. It is the faith that is required for you and I to experience salvation in the Lord.
Hebrews 11:6 mentions the salvation faith. And that is stating 11, 6, Hebrews, but without faith, it is impossible to please God. That is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, not based upon experience.
Now, Christian, listen. Do experiences come? Yes. Do we love them? Sure.
We enjoy them. We're glad for them. But our faith is not founded upon those feelings, nor are we. Looking for them. If you've come in here tonight and you're saying, Lord, do you love me or do you want me to go right or go left?
If you're going to talk to me, God, give me a feeling. You know what? With all due respect, You need to get over that. You need to grow through that. Because you know what?
It's by faith that we walk in this life, not by feeling. Feeling is going to lead you astray. Be very, very careful about that. God wants to speak to you. He doesn't want to tickle you.
He wants to talk to you. If it was tickling, then he wouldn't have sent his word. He would have sent a big feather. He wants to talk.
Do you and can you get a tickle? Sure. But don't base your experience with God on the tickle. There's times when I don't get a tickle. There's times when I get a tickle, there's times when I don't get a tickle.
Here's what I've learned. I don't trust in the tickle. Feeling or no feeling? I trust in the Lord. I want to do that.
And it's a safe place to be. This common faith. It's the common faith that Paul told us about in Romans 10, 17, where the Bible says there that, so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. It is not this special faith, the gift, that is our common faith. Luke 17, 5, and the apostles said to the Lord, increase our faith.
That's our common faith. Salvation faith. The faith that we grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Mark 9, 24. The Bible there says, immediately the father of the young child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe.
Help my unbelief. That is that cry, God, I have faith in you, but I need to have more faith. Can we not all agree that every one of us, we all need and want more faith? It is the cry of our heart.
So tonight we're going to look at several things, I think five total. Regarding this special faith that is something altogether different than our common faith. And the special faith being is what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 12:9. It is a gift. Given by God.
It is a faith that we'll call special because it is very, very unique. It is not given to all people. Not all of us have all the gifts. because that would cause us to be independent from the body. Many of you have, I'm looking around here and I know some of you have many, many gifts.
But this gift of special faith, all of us do not have. Do I want it? Yes, I do. Do I think, as I evaluated my own life in light of this gift, do I think? Can I look back and wonder if I've ever exercised?
Has God ever given me this special faith? I'm not sure. There's one time I think maybe you heard about this before. I just remembered I was filled with boldness. I was filled with a supernatural.
boldness for the moment, but come to find out it was it was o it was It didn't happen. It was a weird thing. I got on a flight in Orlando. Do you remember the story? And um I happen to have been at a A campus crusade Uh fast and prayer that week.
And uh we got done and That's the week that I turned around and I hit Hank Kenegraff, who's standing behind me, and I poured water all over the poor man. baptized him and he didn't want to be baptized. But I nailed him. He was covered in water. It was very embarrassing.
Um I got on a plane. And um Well, before I got on the plane, the night I went to bed, and the next morning I was getting on the flight to come home. And in my dream that I had that night, which I never dream, but I had that dream that night, and it was in color. I got on this Delta flight. And over the Gulf of Mexico, the aircraft had a huge explosion.
and the plane rolled inverted And as it began to plunge into the Gulf of Mexico, I began to preach the gospel to the airplane. Not to the airplane, to the people in the airplane. And it was a very, very, very powerful dream. It was so powerful that I called my wife. And I said, listen, I'm getting ready to get on the airplane.
I think I need to tell you the dream I had last night. And here it is. And I told her, and I said, tell the girls I love them, I love you. Here's the amazing thing: I never thought twice about getting on the airplane. I just I knew I had to get on the airplane.
And so I said goodbye to my wife. I told her to give the kids a hug. And if this is totally from Satan, Uh then I'll see you in LA. And so I got on the airplane. And we took off and we're about an hour into that flight.
Over the Gulf, And uh boom! This big explosion on the airplane and I took my seat belt off. and I got ready to preach the gospel. And as I turned around and I looked at everybody, and people screamed and everything, what had happened was all the kids that had gone to Disney World. had gotten on the plane with their metal Mickey Mouse balloons.
The metallic balloons? They put them in the overhead compartments, hundreds of them. And when the aircraft reached a certain pressure of altitude inside, they all exploded in the entire compartment of the airplane at the same time. And everybody's screaming, I thought the end of the world had come, this is it. I take my belt off, and I'm getting ready to preach the gospel.
Is the strangest thing. People ask me, what do you think dreams mean? I don't have a clue. That was the weirdest thing. And I don't know what that was about to this day.
I don't get it. But I was ready. And I had faith to preach the gospel in that moment. I was not afraid. I knew that I was getting on there, and I'm going to die.
And this is what God, this one, He wants me to do. And it's just a weird, one of those moments, you know? And I'm wondering, could that have been special faith? Probably not, but I'm fishing for something that might have been. You're listening to real life with Pastor Jack Hibbs.
You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And for now, let's get back to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor Jack. We want to ask the question tonight: what is the gift of special faith?
What is this gift of faith that Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 12, 9? We'll understand this in our question: what is the gift of special faith? The gift of special faith is a divine ability. That promotes the believer to take unnatural action that would otherwise. would not be taken.
It is a supernatural push of the Holy Spirit of God that causes a Christian to act upon something in a miraculous way. That is a wonderful quote from Donald G. Donald G., if you ever find any book by Donald G., buy it. He's hard to find. He's, in my opinion, the only really decent theologian that the Pentecostal movement has ever created.
He's a very, very wonderful man, balanced, and a godly man. Great, great quote: What is the gift of special faith? Special faith manifests. And special boldness. That's the first face.
Of special faith. It will act, it will move, it will respond in an unnatural way to a situation. More on that in a moment. Jot this verse down. We have a great example in Acts chapter 3, verses 1 through 6.
Special faith and action.
Now, Peter and John went up together to the temple. At the hour of prayer, The ninth hour. And a certain man, lame from his mother's womb, was carried, whom they had laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful, to ask alms from those who enter the temple, who seeing Peter, and John about to go into the temple, ask them for money. And fixing his eyes on him with John, Peter said, Look at us.
So he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them, and that is by money or an apple or an orange, something. to appease his poverty. Then Peter said to him, Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. How in the world could Peter have done that? Did Peter always walk around like that?
The answer is no, he did not. How is it that he did it here? How is it that the book of Acts shows us these incredible scenes over and over again? You should always remember that the book of Acts, and I don't care what your Bible says by the way of introduction, that's not Bible. God didn't write the title, that's above verse 1.
Because you know verse 1 usually says the book of Acts.
Some of your Bibles say that the Acts of the Apostles. That's getting closer. But the book of Acts should really be the Acts. Or the Acts of the Holy Spirit. I've seen one Bible entitled, The Acts of the Holy Spirit.
Through the lives of the apostles. That's a good title, isn't it? That's a good one. We just call it the book of Acts. Why do we call it the book of Acts?
Because it is the book recording Acts. And interestingly enough, for every chapter of the book of Acts, there's one recorded miracle per chapter in the book. We think the apostles just walked around doing miracles every half an hour.
Well The book of Acts covers a time span of nearly 30 years. Keep that in mind. Of course, there were more miracles done than that. But it's the acts of the Holy Spirit. And here Peter is experiencing this gift.
faith. He boldly pronounces, how did he know That God was going to raise this crippled man up. Let me ask you this. Have you ever been somewhere? in the market, maybe at the Mall or at the beach or whatever, and you see someone who's lame or injured or handicapped.
Have you ever had this? Uh Where you've seen people handicapped before or hurting. But this particular person, you're moved. With compassion. Do you know what I'm saying?
Your heart is grieved with their state.
Somebody nod their head. Just lie to me, will ya? Yeah. Have you ever had that? It's just like, oh.
And you'd almost give your leg for for their lake, to have them better. It's uh it's not normal. Here's the deal. The next time you sense that Unnatural, supernatural push. In that area.
Try stepping out. And walking up to that person. and saying, Excuse me, Do you mind if I pray for you? Just try it and see what happens.
So Jack, what are you saying? Try it and see what happens. Move based upon the nudge of the Holy Spirit. What if the guy's not healed? I've done this.
and sometimes people are not healed. But you know what? I've learned something. Do it. It's much easier to sleep that night.
If you do it. Because if you don't do it, you're going to wonder for the rest of your life, should I have? Should I have? I wonder what would have happened. I wonder if Try it.
Say, Jack, are you kidding? I'm not kidding. Peter, now granted, Peter had seen a lot of things going on in his life concerning the Lord. He had been primed to act in faith, special faith. He felt the push.
You don't see him balking. You don't see him say, Well, gosh, I don't know. John, do you think God's in this? It was a supernatural affair. He was moved by the Holy Spirit.
Christian, I want to suggest to you that God wants us to begin to discern and to understand and to sense what it's like to be moved or compelled by the Holy Spirit. I think if we begin to nurture our walk with him, we may very well find out. You may very well find out. That in that moment, God will bestow upon you this special faith. It's a very amazing gift.
Example: I have the gift of teaching. That gift can be employed Constantly 24-7 at the drop of a hat. It is one of the verbal gifts that God gives that's always on. Are you with me? It's always on.
It's a switch that's on. The gift of Special faith is not like that. You just don't walk around glowing with this special faith, and you kind of, you know. It's not that way. It doesn't happen like that.
It is an amazing Manifestation of the Holy Spirit. And it will Or the Spirit, it being the gift, the Spirit of God will bestow or manifest that gift in your life for the crisis or the ministry opportunity that is present. He will not give you the gift of faith for what's going to happen next week. It's amazing. If you study the gift of faith through scripture and study Pentecostal theology, When I say Pentecostal, the study of the gifts of the Spirit and the life of the believer, I'm not talking about the Pentecostal denomination.
Talking about the Pentecost experience of the believer in the book of Acts. When you study what has been the manifestation of the Spirit of God and the life of the believer in this book or in this gift of faith, special faith, you will see that they often were timid people. They were people that were not naturally, you know, one that you would say, well, boy, he's got faith like a mountain that guy, send him. It wasn't like that. The Spirit of God manifested the faith for the moment or for the crisis that the ministry opportunity might bring honor and glory to God.
And listen, when that situation passes, That Gift does not leave you per se, that gift then recedes. You don't walk around like that. It's not like one of the other gifts, as I said, like the gift of teaching, that's always on. A person who has the gift of tongues, they don't walk around town, you know, Spouting off They don't do that. The Spirit of God won't do that.
But there's a time and there's a place, there's a situation, there's a moment. Interestingly enough, in the wisdom of God, the verbal gifts that lead someone either to salvation via evangelism, preaching, or teaching, which builds somebody up, those gifts are always on. Why? Because there's always a need for somebody to get saved. And there's always a need for someone to be instructed.
You understand? It's very wise of God to have done it that way.
Okay, so The Old Testament example, by the way. Of the Spirit of the Lord bringing this special faith. You can study later, and it's a blast. Oh, read it to your kids. They love this story at night.
It's 1 Kings 18. I mean, our kids love this stuff. 1 Kings 18, you've got 450 prophets of Baal, you've got 400 prophets of Azeroth, there's a lot of false prophets there. Then you've got the Lone Ranger. Elijah's all by himself.
And they're making fun and they're goofing off, and Elijah says, All right, that's it. And he is given special faith. He says, hey, let's build an altar.
Okay. Let's see which God rules.
Now that's bold. Uh Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hubes. Here on Real Life Radio, and his message called Church Growth 101, Part 3. Thanks for being with us today. We really do appreciate it.
You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called 1 Samuel, a series that highlights the prophet Samuel who was called by God during one of Israel's darkest times to bring the people back to a heart of true worship. and will continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. Yeah. Your week is packed. You're running on empty.
And sometimes Sunday already feels like a distant memory by Wednesday. That's exactly why real-life devotions exist. Each week, Pastor Jack Hibbs brings you a short but powerful moment in God's Word. Designed to encourage, equip, and refocus your heart. It's not another podcast or a long sermon.
It's a few meaningful minutes that meet you right where you are. Whether you're on a commute, going for a walk, or you just need a reset in the middle of your day, real life devotions are ready when you are. Fresh encouragement. straight from the scripture. And it's all just one click away.
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Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
