Stop Treating God Like a Crucifix: Faith Begins With One Decision

Sermon outline

A life of faith starts with a decision, and it grows out of the realm of the senses into sonship, where you come to God as His child in His own house, free of sin consciousness and fear, rather than as a victim staring at a crucifix.

1. Everything in life starts with a decision

   We all want to spend time in the word, in prayer and in church, and then comes the infamous but: I don't have time, I can't wake up, life is busy. Waking up, going to work, loving the unlovable in your own house, training your children, evangelising, even calling Uber Eats: everything is a decision, and a life of faith is too. Do something hard long enough and it becomes easy; you master it, because you live by a code, and the Christian's code is the word of God.

   Illustration: He smoked two packs a day for years and cannot say why. The day he told the Lord, even if it kills me, I am not touching that anymore, he was set free; more than twenty five years later he has never touched it again, with no shakes and lungs healed. The deliverance came with the decision, not with a nicotine patch.

   “Everything in life starts with a decision. So in order for us to live a life of faith, a decision is required.”

   • Romans 7:8-25

2. From the law to sonship

   God gave the law to show the nakedness of man, that no one is truly good without Christ and the Holy Spirit. Discipline under rules is necessary for a season, especially for those who came in wild, but once you are self-disciplined you move into sonship. A slave in the church is still a slave; a son treats the house of God as home and enters God's presence righteous and confident.

   Illustration: Even as a grown man who had not lived at home for years, he would walk into his parents' house, ask Mom what there was to eat and open the fridge. No child pleads for permission to open the fridge in his father's house.

   “Do I treat God as my Father, or do I treat God as the crucifix?”

3. Body, soul and spirit: faith comes down, not up

   Natural faith lives in the five senses and treats symptoms, coming to God only in crisis for a quick fix. The soul, our intellect, will and emotions, needs washing by the word every day, and sense reasoning must be cast down, because the supernatural will not always make sense. The human spirit, the inward man born again at salvation, is quickened by the Holy Spirit, who is available to every believer at once. Our faith rests on the Holy Spirit coming down, not on our ability to work it up.

   Illustration: His father used to say you know it in your knower: the sense that makes you wait ten minutes before leaving the house, or wakes a parent in the night to check on a child.

   “Our faith is based on the Holy Spirit coming down, not our ability to work up.”

   • Romans 12:2
   • 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
   • John 16:7

4. God will take you beyond your reasoning

   Anything within your reach and reasoning is you; anything impossible for you is God, so He gets the glory. Gideon was called a mighty man of valour and looked around to ask who was being addressed, and still needed to overhear a dream in the enemy camp. Abraham went out with nothing but a word from the Lord, no title deed and no witnesses, and we are here because one man made a decision. One person in a house deciding can bless five generations. He that believes will not make haste, and the just shall live by faith, not by the bank balance.

   Illustration: When he tells young parents it is time for another child, the first answer is, you don't know how expensive school fees are, Pastor.

   “Everything that's impossible for you right now is already God.”

   • Judges 6:12
   • Judges 7:13-15
   • Genesis 12:1
   • Isaiah 28:16
   • Habakkuk 2:4
   • Romans 4:18-21

5. Sin consciousness and fear choke faith

   Righteousness is standing before the Father without guilt, condemnation or inferiority, made righteous by the blood, not by your surname. People stay in natural faith because they are sin conscious, believing God will never forgive what they did, or because they fear the past, the present, the economy or what the relatives will say. Be anxious for nothing; a double-minded man receives nothing, but a man of faith abounds. Speak to your children about who you see them becoming, not about how bad they were.

   Illustration: His parents hated it when people retold the naughty things he did as a child, pulling down curtains and nearly drowning in someone's pool. When I was a child I thought as a child; now he is a son of the Most High God.

   “Faith cannot breathe into the atmosphere of condemnation.”

   • Philippians 4:6-7
   • James 1:7-8
   • 1 John 4:4
   • 1 Corinthians 13:11

6. Pray as a son, not as a victim

   Believe in your heart and tell others with your mouth, because we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. He reminds them of his TRAIN pattern of prayer, thanksgiving, repentance, affirmation, intercession and needs, while natural faith skips straight to needs and desperation. The God-minded believer prays for what matters to God: vision for the family, the leaders, the salvation of souls and the cells multiplying, as the early church did from house to house.

   Illustration: Over forty years in the wilderness, he says, there was not one feeble person among them, fed daily with bread from heaven and quail.

   “Your faith is for you doing what God has called you in the Earth to do.”

   • Romans 10:9-10
   • Revelation 12:11
   • Acts 2:46-47
   • Matthew 6:33

In this message