Crisis of Faith

What's the opposite of faith? People many times believe faith is just belief, so the opposite of faith would be unbelief, right? Disbelief. But we also look at the Scripture, we know that faith is more than belief. Faith, when you get down to its core of what it really is, it's trust in God. So that means the opposite of faith is a lack of trust. Now every Christian, sometime in our lives, and usually more than once, because as we live through life, more and more challenges are given to us. Every Christian has times in their lives when they have crises of faith. We don't like to admit it, we don't like to talk about it, but everybody has had a crisis of faith at some point.

Where something has happened, where you don't understand what God is doing, or why he's allowing something, or maybe God just feels so far off that you can't even connect to it, or you feel abandoned, you think God doesn't care, or nothing makes sense.

We have these crises of faith where we're not sure how to trust God. And of course we don't want to talk about that, we don't want to say, well I've never had moments of doubt. If you've never had a moment of, or have a crisis of faith, you just haven't lived long enough. That's all. Because they will come. They come with health issues, they come with the death of someone, sometimes the loss of something, sometimes you can just get so involved in everyday living and get so far from God, that you just sort of feel like he abandoned you, because you've just, it's not like God moved, you moved.

And you just feel abandoned. Why is it that sometimes we have difficulty trusting God? I mean, when you think about it logically, it shouldn't be a problem, right? It shouldn't be a problem. And yet, there are times when, and usually we're in a panic state, when we're not sure what to do in terms of trusting God. I'm going to talk about some ways today that, why we struggle.

Why do we sometimes start to think about the problems that we're facing? Why do we sometimes struggle with trusting God? And then we're going to look at sort of the simple solutions of that, not simple. They're simple in one way. They're actually hard to do. But there are things we do to strengthen our faith. To strengthen our faith. And I ended up with lots and lots and lots of examples, and lots and lots of points. But I brought it down to just a few points today. So for the first part, I'm going to talk about Abraham.

You know, we always go to Abraham when we talk about faith, right? Because he is the father of the faithful. And we look at the Scripture and we see these incredible stories. Here's a man who is willing to sacrifice his son because God asked him to. We know from the New Testament that's because he believed he was going to resurrect him. Because he had made promises.

Your son will have children. He hasn't had children yet. So if I slay him, God is going to bring him back to life so he can have children. What incredible faith! You know, the Bible also tells us stories where Abraham stumbled in his faith. Let's go to Genesis 20. Genesis chapter 20. This is after God had made a covenant with him. This is after God had called him out and he had shown faith by leaving where he lived and following God.

This is after God had said, be circumcised and circumcise all the males in your family and all your servants. And he did. You know, these great acts of faith that we see. And yet here we see a very interesting thing that happens here. Let's start in verse 1. To get the story. Now Abraham journeyed from there to the south and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur and stayed in Gerar. Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister, and a biblic king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. Now, it's sort of some truth here. It's his half-sister. But he lies.

And this lie gets him in trouble. The lie gets him in trouble because she's a beautiful woman and the local king says, oh, she doesn't have a husband. And, you know, I said some troops said, I would like you to come visit me. Now how are you going to stop that, right? I want you to come visit me. She shows up and he says, now I want you to become part of my harem. And Abraham has, because of this lie, has set this up and he's trapped in it.

What's he going to do? Go tell the king, oh, I lied to you. And so he's stuck. Now, we're going to see why he did it in a moment. Let's look at how God intervened in here. But God came to Abimelech. Now this is interesting.

He doesn't come to Abraham. Abraham's the one who's having the crisis of faith. Not Abimelech. Bimelech is oblivious to what's going on. It's Abraham who has lied because of a lack of faith. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, indeed you are a dead man because of the woman you have taken, for she is a man's wife. But Abimelech had not come near her and said, Lord will you slay a righteous nation also?

Did he not say to me she is my sister? And she, even she herself, said he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart and innocence on my hands I have done this. And he says, I know that.

God tells him, I know you did this in ignorance. You did this integrity and you were having integrity. You thought what you were doing was an accordance to the law. It wasn't immoral. But what you have to do now is go to Abraham and get it fixed. Basically you have to go to apologize to Abraham. Who's the one who lied here? But you have to go to Abraham and you have to take her back and you have to ask him for forgiveness.

Let's skip down to verse 10. Because she goes to Abraham and he says, why did you do this? I love verse 10 the way it's translated. And a bimelik said to Abraham, what did you have in view when you have done this thing? I mean, come on, man, what was going on in your brain? Why would you do this? It makes no sense. And Abraham said, because I thought surely the fear of God is not in this place and it will kill me on account of my wife.

But indeed, she truly is my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother. And she became my wife. And it came to pass that when God caused me to wonder from my father's house that I said to her, this is your kindness that you should do for me. And every place, wherever we go, you simply say, you know, this is my brother.

Now, interesting enough, Abraham admits I did this because I didn't have the faith that God would protect me when people would kill me for her. I'm just a traveling nomad here. And I'm coming up to walled cities. And if someone wants to come take all my sheep and my wife and make slaves out of my family, they can come do that. I can't fight some of these people. So this is the way I protected myself. And he says this is the way we've sort of always done it.

We've always just told people she's my sister because it's not really a lie. Now, this is interesting. It's not really a lie. It's only half a lie. But that half a lie got him in a whole lot of trouble, didn't it? It got him in a whole lot of trouble. We skip down to verse 17 because a biblic now has to go ask Abraham to pray for him. So Abraham prayed to God, and God healed the biblic. God had actually made him sick because he had Sarah. Healed the biblic, his wife and his female servants.

God made his entire family sick. Then they bore children for the Lord had closed up all the rooms of the house of a biblic because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. God had made it where they could not have children. Why is he punishing the innocent here? Understand something, and here's what we have done.

We look at these pictures and we miss what God is actually doing. What we have here is a man and his family suffering some temporary consequences. He was going to heal them. He was going to take care of them. He was going to permanently make them where they couldn't have children. He was going to permanently do this. But why was he doing it? Because Abraham had to grow in faith. You see, Sarah was supposed to have a child, and she hadn't had it yet.

It's like Abraham you still don't have the strength of faith that you need. So what I'm going to do is let you put yourself in a problem you can't fix, and then I'm going to come fix it. That's interesting, isn't it? I'm going to let you lie. You want to lie? Go ahead. I'm going to let you sin. I'm going to let you get yourself in a situation you can't fix.

I can imagine Abraham sitting alone in his tent, praying to God, what have I done and how do I get out of it? What have I done and how do I get out of it? And God doesn't come talk to Abraham. He just lets him suffer. And he goes to a bimalek and says, you're in real trouble here. You know, a bimalek, his family has a sickness on him, it seems terrible, it seems unfair.

And then a bimalek goes to Abraham and says, why did you do this to God? Why did you do this to me? And God heals a bimalek and his family and Abraham has learned something really important. He's learned something real important about faith. Sometimes we don't learn aspects of faith until we fail and then we realize how much we need God. Here's the thing about Abraham here that's so important. Abraham was absolutely humble before God. You don't see him ever blame God for anything. You don't see him angry at God for things. You see him make his mistakes. And this one was because of fear.

He had fear and that fear drove him. And that fear drove him to actually sin and his faith couldn't be strengthened. And what happened was God let him put himself in a situation he couldn't get out of. And then he came along and fixed it to show him. And the core of it and this is what's so important about real faith, at the heart and core of real faith is absolute humility before God.

Faith is only as strong as what you have faith in. Now you've heard me say that numerous times. It's only as strong as what you have faith in. If I have faith in science, I'm in real trouble. Now I'm not saying all science is bad. I'm just saying that's where my faith is. I'm in trouble. What is our faith in? That's the great problem when you hear people say, you just have to have faith. What does that mean? Let's get another situation in the New Testament where the same point is brought out. Mark chapter 9.

Sometimes it's when we failed that God takes us and teaches us and strengthens us because we don't realize it till we fail how weak we are. God doesn't save us from all failure. He didn't save Abraham from his failure. He did later. I mean, he went in. But after it became absolutely unsolvable, there was no solution to the problem. And then he stepped in. Mark 9 and verse 14. I'm going to go through this whole passage because there's some subtleties here we need to look at. Talk about Jesus here.

He said to him, greeted him, and he asked the scribes, what are you discussing with him? This is interesting. What are you talking about? One of the crowd answered and said, Teacher, I brought you my son who is a mute spirit. And whatever it sees as him, it throws him down. He foams at the mouth and gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples that they could cast it out and they could not. So here we have literally a demon-possessed child. And the disciples commanded for it to leave and it did not.

And Jesus answered him and said, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me. Now this is... He's saying this to the crowd, to the scribes, and to his disciples.

You have so little faith. Now they didn't know that. Think about the crisis the disciples are going through. They had seen Jesus cast out demons. He told them they would have power over demons. They did what they were supposed to do and nothing happened. So they're having a major crisis of faith. And he's going to have to work through and tell them what the issue is here.

Because there's been a major failure in the preaching of the Gospel because why? Nobody has seen his disciples now perform this miracle. And so they bring the child to him. Then they brought him to him, verse 20. And when he saw him, immediately the spirit convulsed and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. And he asked his father, how long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood. And often he has thrown himself both into the fire, into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. So if you can do something, can you do something? Is God working in you? It's a big if there.

And then Jesus says to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. So if you believe I can do this, it can happen. And the man's answer is very important in this story. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord I believe, help my unbelief. He immediately said, and he's crying, the absolute humility before God and says, yes, but my faith only goes so far. And there's a realization in life where you will come every once in a while to say, my faith only goes so far.

That's it. That's all the father can go. God, you must do something in me. There's been a great failure here, just like Abraham had had a great failure, right? Great failure. And God's using that to teach his disciples something very important about faith. And the man here, when he says, he starts crying and says, I believe, help my unbelief, he hits the core of the problem. All of us only have so much strength. And God has to give us what we do not have. That includes the strengthening of our faith.

Then Jesus saw the people came running together and he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying, deafened, dumb spirit, I command you out of him and enter him no more. And the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead. And someone said, he's dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. Now, the next verse, two verses, is really important here because the disciples had failed like Abraham had failed.

And now they want to know why we failed. And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, this kind comes out by nothing but prayer and fasting. In other words, faith is developed in us the closer we are to God. When we're close to God, we have more faith.

When we drift from God, we have less faith. He said to enter into this situation, you would have had to have been praying and fasting and being drawn close to God because it is God who cast out the demon, not you. Right? They didn't have the power to do it. Only God could do it. And they thought somehow, oh, I could do this. I'll see the right words that will happen. Only God could do it.

And they failed. And Jesus said, the reason you didn't is you were not close enough to God. And that happens by prayer and fasting. And this is our first lesson of the lessons we're going to go through today. God uses life situations and many times even our failures to help us grow in trusting Him. And this is only possible if you were humble before God. Otherwise, we end up in conflict with God.

And humility requires that you and I must spend time drawing close to God in prayer and fasting. Prayer and fasting must be something we're doing regularly or we will be not strengthened in our faith. We will not be receiving the strength from God. And so, crisis will leave us in crisis. Crisis will leave us in chaos. Crisis will leave us in worry and anxiety. We all have worry and anxiety, but we can't be trapped in it.

What will happen is because we've drifted from God, that's where the strength comes from. It comes from God. And the disciples said, why can't we do this? They said, no, why God can do this. You failed. Why did Abraham fail? I found a solution to the problem.

And God said, that's no solution to the problem. Sarah's supposed to bear the son of promise and you just gave her away to another man. How's that going to work, Abraham? How's that working out for you? And there were these failures that were happening. And so we understand from these situations that sometimes it's in our failures that we actually understand, I don't have the power to do this. I don't have the power to do this. Only God can do that.

So I have to pray and fast. Which brings us back to the absolute need for us to be praying and on a regular basis, fast. To be drawn close to God. Because that's where the power comes from. Our second lesson we're going to look at is in Deuteronomy chapter 1. Deuteronomy chapter 1.

. . . . Moses is talking to the Israelites as they're about to go into the Promised Land. And he's reminding them that forty years earlier, forty years earlier, they didn't go into the Promised Land because their fathers, their grandfathers, their grandmothers, and your mother's rebelled against God. Because these are the young people that have now grown up and they're about to go into the Promised Land. And he's reminding them of that. And he makes this really important statement in verse 21 of Deuteronomy 1. Look, the Lord your God has set up the land before you. Go up and possess it. He's telling, this is what I told those people. They were right there. Some of the people we're talking to were now old people who had been young at the time. They'd been children at the time, or teenagers. He's saying some of you remember this. And I get up and I told them this. Look, the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up and possess it. As the Lord God of your fathers has spoken to you, and do not fear, be discouraged. And every one of you came near to me and said, let us send men before us. And they did. They sent the men before them. They'd been going out and spying the place out. And you know what happened. The spies came back and 10 out of the 12 said, we can't go in there. These obstacles are too big. We've got to fight. They're all giants. They're all old cities. It's just impossible. We can't do it. It's too big.

And so he says he did it and they came back. Nevertheless, let's go down to verse 26, you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, and you complained in your tents and said, because the Lord hates us. There's a real danger in life when we begin to realize that sometimes the answer from God is wait.

And sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes you just know. Why didn't you give me an answer? I did. I said no. Well, I'll go ask somebody else. You know, kids do that all the time. Mom and dad, somebody. I remember being about six years old and I went to my mom and dad and said, hey, can we go to the dairy queen then? But it was like a dairy queen. No. I went to the... No. I went to every member of my family until I finally went to my grandfather and said, oh yeah, I'll take you and off we went.

I figured out some adult here will listen to me or take me. But we can't do that with God. There's nobody else to go talk to. But we think that can't be the answer. God's answer can't be, yes, you're going to suffer for a while. That can't be God's answer. God's answer can't be that I lose my job. God's answer can't be that my wife or my husband is sick. That can't be the answer.

And that's where we struggle so much. Because I prayed. I have faith. Where's the answer? I said, well, your faith has to be in my answer. No. I've seen some great people of faith. Pray to God and not be healed. And I've seen people that had no faith at all pray to God and get healed. And you know what? It's God's decision. And the great people of faith might have a crisis for a while, and then they always come around to boy, am I learning a lot from this.

Or this has made me be more loving towards others. They'll come to some conclusion that hey, God actually knows what he's doing. When we don't come to that conclusion, we become bitter. What's God's problem? He must not be listening. Or he must hate me. God doesn't love me. That's the problem. God does not love me. Because he wouldn't let me suffer. And I've heard people many times, we've said that and then we've had this conversation. How can God love me and let this happen? And my answer is, I know how that feels.

But it's the wrong question. It's the wrong question. Because it's not about God's love. You know, when we go to the parable of the talents, remember? Jesus gave the parable of the talents. And this man goes away, he gives all of his servants. These, actually the talents here means money. It's bits of money. And they all have different amounts of money. And they're supposed to use that money to make money for their master.

And the master comes back and the one who had 10 talents did really well, the one who had 5 did really well, and the one who had only received one didn't do anything at all. He hid his money and just lived his life and didn't do anything for his master. And then he tells him, it's because I feared you and knew you weren't fair. See, what happens when we zero in on the unfairness of life? Because it's not fair. And we think God is supposed to make everything fair, and he doesn't right now. Now, if Christ comes back, things change.

But you know, he's not going to make it fair. And when we zero in on everything has to be fair, God eventually has to be the problem. He has the power to make everything fair, and he's not. It's not fair. It's not right. We all, everybody's making their own decisions and going through life, and you know, everything's in sort of like conflict, and nobody's making the same decisions that we...that's the way life is.

And it's not fair. Sometimes, where you're born, it's not fair. Right? You and I are born in a country where we have wealth that certain parts of this world is unimaginable. And it's not fair. If you live there, you would be saying, that can't be fair. God, where are you? Why do they have that? And I have nothing. In Satan's world, it's not fair. And God's not the issue.

God's not the problem. But God does look at those whom he calls, and he says, I give every one of you talents and gifts, you know, gifts of the Spirit, fruits of the Spirit. And you are supposed to grow in that. And the purpose of that parable that he gave isn't about the world. It's about the church. It's about those who have been called and are followers of Jesus Christ, and some people say, I knew you wouldn't be fair. Because I knew some people would get a better reward than me.

And I looked around, and you know, I've always wanted to be I've always wanted to sing. This person you gave this talent to to sing, and they get to sing in church, and they get to get up here and give special music, and I can't even carry a tune, and it's not fair. Because that's what I've always wanted to do. So I hid the other talent you gave me, because it didn't seem like much. Compared to other people, what you gave me wasn't much. And of course, the answer is, in the parable, what I gave you was good. What I gave you is exactly what if you would have done that would have made you a happy, productive person.

The person I didn't do it, because you're not fair. We compare ourselves with each other, and say what's fair and what's not fair. And God looks at each one of us and says, look what I gave you. Look what you could do if you let me work in your lives. But it's hard. We look at this, and we want no, we want everything to be fair, we want no sorrow, we want no pain, and that's not the lives you and I live.

Paul had to come to this conclusion. 2 Corinthians 12. 2 Corinthians 12. Verse 7. Now he starts this with a very important statement, because we've read this before we know where he's going. If you were reading this for the first time, you'd think, whoo, where is he going with this? And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, so that I wouldn't be too proud, so that I wouldn't be too full of myself. It seems like the more talents we have as human beings, the easier it is for us to sort of be proud of ourselves.

Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. So we don't know what this is, there's been all kind of speculation, but something probably physical in his life was debilitating at one level or another. And he says, I have this problem that bothers me every day of my life.

But God allowed me to have this problem. Why? So I could be humble. What does humility and faith, we keep going back to that, how are they tied together? Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times, he says, I pleaded. I just didn't pray. I prayed, I fasted, I went to God, I implored God, I begged God. With the Lord three times, it might depart from me.

And then he says, here's the answer I got. He actually got an answer from God. My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. No, if you get too strong, Paul, you'll get too proud, and you'll miss where the strength comes from. Paul was a great man of faith, a great man of obedience.

But where did the strength come from? And this is the point that God makes with him. Therefore, here's the result that he says, and I think, wow, what a converted man, because I'm not here yet. I can't make this statement. Therefore, most gladly, I would rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, and reproaches, and needs, and persecutions, and distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, that I am strong. He says, the weaker I am, the stronger God is in me. The weaker I am, the stronger God is in me. Therefore, he had greater and greater faith.

How does a man get stoned, you know, covered with stones, they think they killed him. Maybe they did. God may have resurrected him. He climbs back out of the stones. He's blighted, and beat, and cut all over the place. Stoning is a gruesome way to die. And what's he do? Goes right back into the village. Where's that kind of faith come from? Now, I don't know anybody that's that stubborn. God gave him the strength to go in. That's where it came from. And he realized that.

When I'm beat up and down, and bloodied, and can't hardly stand up, maybe I have a couple cracked ribs, and I want to go as far away from here as I can, how do I go there? Because God takes me there. And there's the foundation of his faith.

The foundation of his faith is that humility before God. This is our second lesson. Trusting God doesn't mean he's going to alleviate all sorrow, or struggles, or difficulties. Sometimes God's answer is wait. Sometimes it's no. And many times, in our experiences, that we learn that our weakness is when God works in us the most. It's in our weakness where God works in us the most. And then our third point. Let's go to Nehemiah chapter 1. Nehemiah chapter 1.

Originally, I had seven points, but I didn't want to talk for three hours. I cut it down to three. This is in the 400s BC. The Jews have gone into Babylonian captivity. They came out of Babylonian captivity. They went back to Judea, and they rebuilt the temple. It wasn't as grand as Solomon's but Zerubbabel built the temple. But that's all they did. They just got stuck. They did what they had to do to a point, and then they stopped obeying God. They were supposed to rebuild Jerusalem. They were supposed to build a wall around the city so it could be protected. But they built their own houses. They built the temple, and they never finished the construction that God had given them to do. Nehemiah is basically a slave. He works for the Persian king as his cupbearer. He's the one that brings him in his wine every day. Whatever he orders as a drink, he's the one that brings it to him. Some speculate it's probably true he may have been the guy who had to taste the wine to see if it was poisoned. Because the easiest way to kill the king was always to get the cupbearer to put the poison in. If that's possible, you're talking about a trusted man, you know. Here, Sire, take a sip. Nope, it's okay. He gives it to him. So this is all he is. He has no ability. He has no way to get beyond where he is. He has no power to go beyond where he is. And here's what happens. Start here in the second sentence of the first first verse of chapter one.

He's devastated by this. Verse four.

He understood he has no power. Now he wasn't part of the... No, he hadn't had a failure here. But he understood I have no power. I have no power to fix what's happened. So what did he do? You know, I wonder how many times in life when we have these crises, how much prayer and fasting are we willing to participate in? How much prayer and fasting are we willing to do to go to God and say, draw me to you because I can't do it? Rebuild my confidence in you. Rebuild my faith in you. What we usually do is we run off with our own decisions. Here's how to fix this. And you see, I can only tell you from experience, every time I run off with my own decision, it doesn't work. Oh, I've tried. Things work because God's involved. Things work because God is involved. That's why he spent days praying and fasting. These don't come out, Jesus said, these demons that he would deal with, except my prayer and fasting. You have to be close enough to God that when you say something to do something, God works through it. He went, I have no solution, I have no power, I have nothing. So what is he doing? He's seeking God. We're back to that humility. God, what is it that we should do? Now, if you read the rest of this chapter, his prayer is very interesting. Because he literally asked for God to forgive Judah for their sins, and then he asked for God to forgive him for his sins. Now, we don't know why would he ask that. He seemed to be quite a man of God. But he didn't say God, forgive them of their sins, and I'm here to list you all their sins. He said, forgive us our sins. It's a remarkable thing. This humility before God. He actually looked at the people who weren't doing what they were supposed to do in Jerusalem and said, forgive us, because they're your people, and I'm one of your people, and forgive us. This is that humility. It's through prayer and fasting. He's seeking God's solution. And he has no solution. There is no solution. And then what happens in chapter 2 is very interesting.

He says, forgive us our sins. Give it to the king. Now, I'd never been sad in his presence before. You know, when you go before the king, you better be happy, you better be smiling, you better be kind, you don't speak until you're spoken to, and he just can't hide the stress he's under. He has no solutions. We have faith in God that he's going to do this, but there's no way to get it done.

I mean, Jesus looks at 12 guys and says, go preach the gospel to the world, and then leaves them. That's why God does things. I don't know how to do that. That's the reason they just stood there, right? What do we do? We have to draw close to him so he does it. Verse 2, therefore the king said to me, why is your face sad that you're not sick?

This is nothing but sorrow of heart. He says, okay, you're not sick. I know you. I've just never seen you down like this before, Nehemiah. Now it shows you one thing, the king had a certain trust, even friendship towards Nehemiah. He did his job. He did it right. He wasn't some big officer in the army, or some important person in the government. He was just the guy that brought the wine. Now notice what he does here. So I became dreadfully afraid.

He now stood on the cusp and had his crisis of faith. Every situation we looked at so far, someone was having a crisis of faith, right? He says, well my, I've been fasting and praying for God to give me a solution. And the most powerful king in the world just asked me a question. And I know what the answer is. But I don't want to give him the answer, because I'll be in trouble. God had answered him and it wasn't anything like he wanted.

So he says, May the king live forever. Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my father's tomb lies waste, and his gates are burned with fire? And he, you know, he could say, oh you insignificant little man, who do you think you are talking to the king like this? I can imagine there were gasps among the other people in the court that this cupbearer, this slave, would say this to the king.

Of course I'm sad. The city I grew up in is destroyed and the gates are burned and the walls are torn down, and that's why. You notice how God is involved in a way you could have never figured this out.

And the king said to me, what do you want? What do you request? And at this moment, probably Nehemiah is saying, whoa! I've been fasting and praying and fasting and praying that God would bring someone along to go over there and build the walls, and here I am before the most powerful man in the world, and guess what I get to ask? Why? Well, he was prepared. His fasting, his praying, his crisis of faith, now was clear because God took him there.

Just like the man Lord, I believe, helped my unbelief. Just like Moses is saying, the problem is when your fathers were at this situation, they decided God didn't love them. That was their crisis. It's Abraham saying, well, they'll kill me. So let's just sort of tell half a lie and you can be passed off as my sister until he had absolutely messed up the plan of God. That she was not going to be married to a king.

He had absolutely messed it all up and said, okay, okay, see, you didn't ask me, you did it yourself. Come on, I'll fix it. Nehemiah, in this prayer, praying, and fasting, went to God and got an answer he never expected. Now notice what he does right now when the king asks him here in verse 4. So I pray to the God of heaven. He's still praying. God, what should I say here?

He could have just blurted out all kinds of things. What's because of you, Persians? God, help me say what needs to be said in the way you wanted said. See, this total dependence, this is where the core of faith is. It's an absolute total dependence on God. So I prayed to the God of heaven and I said to the king, if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found faith in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah to the city of my father's tombs that I may rebuild it. Now I'm sure there's some chuckles.

The slave who carries cups is going to go build a city. He prayed and that's what came out. I would guess that Nehemiah at this point is thinking who said that? What idiot just said that? The king said to me, the queen also sitting beside him, how long will you be gone? You know Nehemiah, you're important to me, so how long will this take? And when will you return? So please the king to send me, and I send him a time.

Nehemiah would go back at one point. Well, I'll send you to go rebuild the city. That needs to be done. Go ahead, but I want you back here in the palace. And he did. That's what happened. God used him and then he sent him back to be a slave. Interesting, isn't it? That's a remarkable, remarkable story because what it tells us is our third lesson. We must seek God's will in all decisions and be ready to act when he shows us his will.

But we have to know what it is first. Well, usually when we're having a crisis of faith, what do we do? We worry so much, we rush around trying to make decisions without direction. Without direction. Now, God isn't going to make every decision for us. You know that. You go through a health crisis or a crisis where maybe you lose your job, a crisis with some family member, a crisis with somebody in the church. And God doesn't give the answer to everything. God gives the attitudes.

He gives the approach. And then he guides us through it. That's why it's so easy to judge somebody else for their decisions. It's so hard to make the decisions. Sometimes God makes them for us. That's what Nehemiah found out. It's not what he expected. It's what had happened. Others like Abraham messed up, actually sinned.

And God fixed it. And all this comes down to a simple concept. That faith is based entirely on humility before God. It's based entirely on humility before God. So let's just go back through and summarize our three points. God uses life situations and even our failures to help us grow and trusting Him. This trust is only possible if we are humble before God. Humility requires that we spend time drawing close to God in prayer and fasting.

Those things have to be an integral part of our lives. Two, trusting God doesn't mean He's going to alleviate all sorrow, struggles, and difficulties in our lives. Sometimes God's answer is wait. Sometimes God's answer is no. In our experiences we learn that in our weaknesses, as we're sometimes, many times, we find God's strength. It's only when we are weak that we find the strength of God. And then the last point, we must seek God's will, and we may not be doing that through prayer and fasting.

We must seek God's will in all decisions and then be ready to act when He shows us His will. This all has to do with what we have our struggles, our difficulties, that we all go through. You know, I encourage you to share those things with each other. Share your struggles with each other. It's okay. You say, well, I'm ashamed to tell them, well, why? They have one too. You may think theirs is pretty ridiculous, but to them it wasn't. Share with each other your struggles. Share with each other when you have crisis of faith.

Talk about it. At a meal sometime, at church. Know that we're all into this in this together. And God's doing the same thing. And sometimes our crisis of faith produced a failure, didn't it? How many times in life have you looked back and said, boy, I would have handled that one better. I should have handled that one better. Yeah. I have a...you don't want my list. It's really long. That's okay. We should share those things. Because we'll know, we understand as we go through this, that we're all headed in the same direction and that is that God is developing faith in us.

And it's a struggle. But in the end, in the end, when Christ returns, we will have absolute trust in our Father.