Well, good evening. And I'm so encouraged that by the third service with me, we have rows one, two, three, four, five, and six full of people. So that builds my spirit up. And so awesome. Welcome. So good to be with you. And how many people took a great Pentecostal rainy day nap and then called it Abiding with Jesus this afternoon, based off of this morning's sermon. Yeah, I did too. My wife called and she said, What are you doing? I said, I'm just abiding with Jesus. And she knows me well enough to say you're snoozing, aren't you? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, I am. It was a beautiful day for that. So, well, before I get started tonight, I just want to pray one more time. And I just want to pray probably one of the oldest prayers ever prayed. Something that the early church fathers often prayed and declared. And it's simply this come, Holy Spirit. And I truly believe that tonight God is going to meet people in a fresh way. And I'm just believing that tonight people are going to experience miracles, science, wonders. I'm a little bit crazy enough to believe that God still heals the sick. And that miracles are for today. So once again, we just say, Come, Holy Spirit. Have your way in this place. We welcome you to do what only you can do in these moments. Beyond my ability to communicate, beyond my ability to articulate, Holy Spirit, come and illuminate our hearts and our minds that we might receive from you here tonight. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Last night, if you weren't here, we started off a week-long series that I'm titling What Does It Mean to Be the People of God? And I was sharing a bit about that verse in Romans 8, one of my favorite verses where the Apostle Paul says that all of creation is groaning. They're anticipating the revelation of the sons and daughters of God. But our world is waiting for the church to arise and to truly understand what their identity is now that they are in Christ. That the systems of the world have failed them. The projects of society and modernism and postmodernism have failed them. And our own country, secularism is a failed project. And people are searching and they're wanting to find truth and they're looking for answers. And this is such a time for us to be alive as a Church of Jesus Christ in Canada. He is at work, he is moving, his spirit is being poured out. But I believe it is crucial that we understand what our identity is in Christ in this hour. And so tonight I want to talk about what does it mean to be a people of faith. What we're going to do is we're going to look at Hebrews chapter 11 and then go into Hebrews chapter 12 and really kind of draw out some things about the two facets of faith that we see in the incredible text, the roll call of all these heroes of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the faith that the writer is writing about to encourage and build up this first century group of believers that are already starting to experience hardship. They're already starting to experience persecution. And we don't know who the author of Hebrews is, but we believe that the author is trying to encourage them to simply say this message: don't let go. Don't give up. Following Jesus is not something that's easy, but following Jesus is something that will always be worth it. And so for 10 chapters, this is what the writer of Hebrews does. He just builds them up in their understanding of who Christ is, what Christ has accomplished, what Christ has fulfilled, that Jesus is the perfect revelation of who God is, where in times past they had thoughts and ideas. Jesus has now come and he has made God the Father known to us once and for all. Follow him, hold on, and endure in all things. And so it comes to this kind of climactic point in Hebrews chapter 11, where the writer goes through all these different Old Testament characters and just begins to talk about incredible men and women of faith that are believing for God to do something, and many of them experience it. And so we pick it up here in verse 1, it says, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. And by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. And so it's important to understand there are three words here that the author uses. Number one, faith, and faith is connected to this idea of choosing to trust and worship God for his goodness, no matter what they are facing. Secondly, we see this word assurance, and it actually speaks to this idea of a legal document. As we talked about last night, that there's this legal right to possess it, that by faith we can possess promises that God has laid out for us as his people. But then thirdly, there's this word hope, and it speaks to believing in something or someone or believing something will happen for good. So simply put, choosing to trust God is actually the way that we possess hope. Choosing to trust God, that he's faithful and true to his word and his promises, no matter what the season we might be facing, is actually how we possess hope. So we see it here in verse 4. It says, by faith, Abel obtain righteousness. In Hebrews 11, 5, by faith Enoch was spared from death. In verse 6, it says, without faith, it is what? It is impossible to even please God. We cannot live for God unless we are a people of faith. Verse 7, by faith, Noah and his family were saved from the flood. Verse 8, by faith, Abraham received an inheritance. Verse 11, by faith, Sarah received her promised son. In verses 23 through 29, it says, by faith, Moses was spared his life as a baby, led the children of Israel out of Egyptian captivity through the Red Sea and ultimately through the wilderness. Verse 30, by faith, Joshua saw the walls of Jericho fall. In verse 31, by faith, Rahab was spared her life. Now, this is an incredible roll call that the author has given. Like if they're in the modern church today, I could just imagine a Hammond B3 organ just singing at the top of his lungs as he's singing. By faith, all these incredible men and women experienced a breakthrough in their life. And so for 30-something verses, the author builds this case about the first facet of faith, and it's simply this it's the faith to receive. Anybody ever experienced a miracle before? You prayed for something and God showed up. My wife and I, in our journey of ministry, we have seen this happen so many times in our lives where it seemed like an impossible situation in the natural, but then we responded with a prayer of faith, and God came through in a supernatural way, and we experienced this first facet of faith, the faith to receive. Next slide here. I'll never forget years ago when I was in about my third year of lead pastoral ministry. I'm sitting on my reading chair by the fireplace in my 3,300 square foot home in southern Indiana that I bought for $200,000. And I'm sitting there reading the book. And the guy on the screen here by the name of John Schofield, a great family friend and the kids' friends with my kids, calls me up Wednesday night. And the second I pick up the phone call, I recognize something is wrong. Something is happening. This man is an engineer. He works at Crane Naval Base. He's a strong, well-put together man, and his voice is tremoring on the other side of the line. And so I say, John, what's going on? I usually don't answer my phone, but you're also not the type of guy that would call this late at night. And he says, Pastor Tamb, I don't know what's happening, but our 13-year-old daughter at the time, Brooklyn, has been sick all week. We just took her to Jasper Hospital. They ran some blood work, and her white cell blood count is about 270,000 right now. If you know anything about this, anything over 50,000 is detrimental to the person. He said, Right now, Brooklyn and her mom are on a helicopter being flown to Indianapolis Sick Kids Hospital. I said, John, I'm going to start praying, but do you want me to meet you at the hospital? He said, No, if you could come in the morning, that would be great. So my wife and I, we prayed that night. We didn't know what was happening. The next morning, I got up, I showed up to the hospital, and I showed up just as the doctor was coming into the room to break the news to these two parents that they were about to hear the worst thing they had ever heard in their parental experience up to this point, where the doctor said, I hate to tell you this, but your 13-year-old daughter has stage four leukaemia. And it is crucial hour by hour that we start treatment right now. And I watched in that room as this strong engineer, crane naval base, military background, literally crumbled to the floor, him and his wife. These guys were incredible Christians. They loved the Lord. They were some of the healthiest people I knew. Like we went camping together and they they ate all the weird stuff. And they were so, and yet now they're hearing this horrific news. So I learned years ago as a pastor, sometimes just learn to shut up and not to say too much. And so I just went to the floor and I just wept with them. And I helped them. Christy, the wife, got up and she went out and she went and met with her mother, and John sat there in my arms and said, Pastor Tim, this is not fair. What have we ever done to deserve this? I didn't know what to say in the moment, but I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me and say, John, you're right. This is not fair. But Jesus understands what not fair is all about. And so that moment the doctors put Brooklyn on an oscillator machine, her face swelled up to look like an alien. And they were saying, if we can get this now, we can start a process, but it's important that we start the process now with a treatment, otherwise, she won't make it through the night. And so that afternoon, after spending hours with them, I called back to my prayer team at the church and I said, hey guys, we need to pray. We have some terrible news about a family in our church, and we need to start contending and believing for a miracle for Brooklyn Schofield. Now, this was on a Thursday. At that time, our church was experiencing an incredible move of God amongst university students. We had just gone from one service to two services, hundreds of college students showing up every single week. And I remember sitting there on that Thursday saying, What do I do this Sunday? Pastor Philly, have you ever had those moments where you're like, I don't know what to do this week? Because we have our plan, we have our schedule, but it just felt like the Holy Spirit was leading us to do something differently. And so we sent an email out, we said, hey, there's a little bit of change up, but we just found out some tragic news with a family in our church. And so we're going to have one service. We're going to break fire code. Everyone's going to show up. We're going to worship. I'm going to share a couple things. And then as a church body, we're just going to begin to pray. So I call up all my intercessors and my prayer warriors, and I said, I need you to help us out on Sunday. So that Sunday morning, that's what we did. Hundreds of college students in a place like this, about this many people. And I said, I know many of you do not know this family, but they've just received the worst news that they've ever experienced in their life. And we need to pray. And so we got the family on the cell phone. And as we were praying one by one, our prayer team, and then myself, on the other line, the mom of Brooklyn was putting the phone up to Brooklyn's ears, even though she was in an induced tacoma at this time. And so as we're praying, the nurse said to the mom and said, What is going on? What's going on on the phone? And she said, That's our church. And they're on the other line, and the whole church this Sunday morning is praying and believing for a miracle. And the nurses said to the mom, they said, We don't know what's happening, but all our signals of what we're reading here are saying she wants to come out of the sarcoma right now by herself. We found out later that the doctors came in that afternoon and they started to look at all the stuff, and I don't have medical terminology to understand all this, but they said something's shifted in her body in the last couple of hours, and she's actually ready to come out of the sarcoma, and this is a good sign that we can now start treatment. And it started that Sunday morning. Now, listen, today that young lady is 21 years old, and she is completely cancer free. What a miracle. What a miracle that we in that moment responded in obedience, and as a collective body, we prayed and we contended and we believed and we received a miracle. I love the first facet of faith as we read Hebrews 11. But the problem is, many times we stop with the first facet. And if I can be really transparent, sometimes as Pentecostals and spirit-filled charismatics, we can be the worst. That we love the stories of the miracle and the breakthrough. But when you read on, you begin to read about another facet of faith. You see, in verses 36 through 38, it says, and then there were there were other people that were also righteous people who believed by faith and yet they suffered greatly. In fact, the writer says they didn't experience the breakthrough. They didn't get what they were hoping for. But the writer does not lessen their level of faith at all. He goes to the roll call and he says, there were many that by faith received the breakthrough and the miracle, and he goes into this other part and begins to name others that were also great men and women of faith, and yet they suffered. And what we see here in the text is that there's a second facet of faith, and it's simply this it's the faith to endure. You see, we love the first facet of faith, and I believe in it. I'm fourth generation Pentecostal. I have seen miracles, signs, and wonders happen. We've seen incredible things and breakthrough happen. But what about that second aspect where people full of faith need a different component of faith that charges them to be a people that endure in the midst of all things? Because the reality is the writer of Hebrews understands I'm writing to a group of people that some of them will see God break through on their behalf, but others will be martyred for their faith. And are any of them less in their faith because they don't experience the same facet of faith? When I was a youth pastor many years ago, there was a family in our church, and the mother of this family by the name of Meg Ashwell was one of these women in our churches who was like really charismatic, really um prophetic type of person, exuberant worshiper. Um I always thought she was out of order. She drove me nuts at times in her worship. And I remember sometimes she would come to the front and she was one of these like uh dancers, right? Like spontaneous dancers, but they're usually the people that don't know how to dance, but they're spontaneous prophetic dancers. And she would get up there and worship, and I'd be sitting there, I was working with my father at the time, and I'd be like, Oh, why is she doing this? This is so annoying, it's distracting. And I remember one time I was talking to my dad after the service, I'm like, Dad, just shut her down. Like, enough is enough, right? Just shut her down. And he said to me, he said, Tim, if you knew her story, you would never judge her worship. You see, I didn't know her story. I didn't know all the things that she had endured and gone through. In her mid-40s, her husband had a sporadic heart attack and died on the spot and left her to be the widow of six children. A couple of those children were in my youth ministry. One of them was a young guy by the name of Elijah Ashba. And Elijah, after his father died, struggled with his faith. He became an addict, he disappeared, he wandered from the age of about 18 to about 22. He was gone, and no one had any clue where he was. And I remember his mother many times praying and believing that one day her prodigal son was going to come home. Like she contended for this. She believed the prayer of faith. And guess what? One day he came home. He showed up at her house. We got him plugged into a Christian rehabilitation program. He got completely substance-free, and he got active in our church and became an incredible component of our church community. I can still vividly remember the times of Meg sitting there with her son and just feeling so proud of the miracle that he was, that he was gone, and he was wandering, he was an addict, and she prayed, and then he came home. He ended up getting a job on the on the pipeline, and he was doing a contract in Pennsylvania. And he was there for several months, and then he got a switch to go to the Dakotas to work on a pipeline there. And he came home for about a two-week period. And here he is, a former addict, all kinds of money and time. And he relapsed. And in his relapse, he overdosed. I was coming home from basketball practice one night, and my phone call my phone rings, and it's Meg on the other line, and I can tell she's she's just hysterical in the moment. And she said, Pastor, you gotta get here. He's dead, he's dead, he's dead. You gotta get here. Who's dead? Elijah's dead. And so I was only about five minutes away, and I pulled off the interstate, and I went to the neighborhood and went to the house, and I came in, and the paramedics weren't there. Uh, ambulance had not shown up yet. And she, as I come to the door, just starts beating on my chest. Now I'm in like my second year of ministry at the time, lead ministry. She's beating on my chest. And I said, Meg, where is he? She said, He's downstairs. I go downstairs, and there's the young man. I'll never forget it. It's imprinted into my memory, laying there, overdose, and rigomortis had already said it. So I go upstairs, and at this time the paramedics have arrived. And so they go downstairs and they start doing their thing where they're going to go check on the body and do some analysis. Is there any foul play and all this stuff? And police show up. And I just felt this like stir in my heart to say, don't settle for this, go pray for him to be raised from the dead. Now, I'm not one of those types of people. I've met people like that, and I'm always really blown away by their faith, but I'm more of a rational type of thinker. And I just felt my spirit saying, Go pray for him to be raised from the dead. And so I walk downstairs, the paramedics are there, and I just start praying in the spirit. And I put my hand on him, they're like, What are you doing? I'm just praying for him to come back. And like, okay. And no, I'm just believing it. And I pray and I pray and I pray, and listen, nothing happens. They carry him out of the house in that body bag. The family receives the news, and then all of a sudden the kids who are in other states begin to show up to be present with mom, and I have to lead the funeral for this tragic death. So I just for the next several days tried to lean in and just be present with the family as they're experiencing once again this deep, deep heartache. So I remember I get to the funeral and I'm leading the service. And I have this tradition that during the time of singing a hymn or a worship song, I say, if you would stand, but for the family, if you want to remain seated and be seated for this, that's fine as well. So I say that, and guess who comes up and comes right to the front of the altar and starts worshiping and dancing. The mom. And she began to just let out her voice in praise and adoration at the funeral. Of her son, who had just overdosed several days before. I was shook to my core. I remember going up to her afterwards. I said, Meg, I don't know how you did that here today. If anyone has a right to be angry at God, to be grieving, to be wrestling, to sit down, it's you. And she said, Pastor Tim, I was born a worshiper. I wandered for so many years, and then Jesus found me and set me free from so much sin. I was born a worshiper and I will die a worshiper, and I won't stop worshiping my Lord until the day that I see him, and then in that moment, I will worship him for all of eternity. No matter what comes my way, I will not stop worshiping. Now let me ask you the question here: who has more faith? Pastor Tim, who prayed for Brooklyn Schofield to be healed and she was healed? Or my sister, who had the faith to endure some of the most horrific moments of her life. That yes, we believe and we contend for miracles, but when they don't happen, how do we respond? What is our go-to? Do we pray and believe that God, no matter what comes our way, I want to be faithful, I want to be steadfast, and I want to endure to the end, whether you answer all my prayers or not. So as you read on Hebrews 11, it gets into the next chapter in the original manuscripts. There's no chapter divisions and verse divisions. And so the author just kind of transitions into this next part and begins to lay out what it means to actually be a people that grow in their faith. And he says here in verse 1, he says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which so uh which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. And he says in verse 2, looking to Jesus. I love this, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, what? Endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. Then in verse 4, he says, And in your struggle against sin, you have not resisted to the point of shedding your own blood. How do we grow in faith? The author says here in chapter 12, number one, we turn towards Jesus. See the imagery of laying aside every weight and sin, it literally speaks of throwing off or ridding ourselves from the things that hinder us from truly seeing Jesus for who he is. We're living in a moment where we are so obsessed with modern therapeutic language, and I'm not anti-therapy. I think God works through it, but we're so obsessed with the language that we have an excuse for every sin that we wrestle with. And we love titles and we love categories and we love labels because then it gives us permission to dismiss things that Jesus is actually calling us to lay down and set aside. And it's hindering us, it's holding us back. And so the author says, Listen, some of you you'll experience a miracle, but others you'll need a faith to endure. And if you're going to last till the end, you've got to number one, turn towards Jesus and throw off the things that are hindering your relationship from Jesus. You see, salvation is not just that we're saved out of something, but salvation is that we are saved to something. And so he says, turn around, metanoia, turn towards the one, the person of Jesus, and keep your eyes fixed on him. So, secondly, we see here, how do we grow in faith? We focus on Jesus. Verse 2, the way we grow is by continually focusing on the person of Jesus. Why? Because the author says when we focus on him, he perfects the faith within us. I say this to my congregation all the time. We become like that which we behold. We behold that which we worship, and we worship that which we love. What are you beholding in your life? If you're going to be a person of faith, it is directly connected to turning towards Jesus and then fixing your eyes on Jesus. I believe one of the greatest prophetic tasks of preachers and ministers today is to continually call the people of God back to fixing their eyes on Jesus because there's a lot of other things grabbing their attention right now. And they come in week after week and they want to talk about everything under the sun, the politics, the ideologies, the globalist agendas. And I'm like, how are you beholding Jesus this week? Is he the affection of your heart? Is he the lover of your soul? Are you caught up in his wonder and his marvelous grace? Or are you distracted by everything else happening in the world? So the author says, You want to be a person of faith? Turn to Jesus and keep your eyes on him. Thirdly, he says, consider Jesus. This word in the Greek, it actually speaks about measuring up against, to think deeply about, or to calculate, or to compare. Have you considered Jesus lately? Like I don't know about you, but sometimes, if I'm honest, I can find myself having a bit of a pity party. Right? Lord, I'm a minister. I'm trying to be faithful to your call, and this is hard at times. It's difficult, and life is not easy. And I can find myself, if I'm not careful, feeling bad for myself. And whenever I have those moments, I'm a reminder of this verse where their author says, consider Jesus. Literally take your situation and measure it against the one who endured the cross and despised its shame. And when I do that, it's like, oh, I'm kind of a whiny baby, aren't I? Because the truth is, if ever there was someone who got what he did not deserve, it was not me, it was not Pastor Phil, it was not Pastor Kevin, it was Jesus. He's the only person who ever truly got what he did not deserve. And he did it so that we can get what we don't deserve: grace, mercy, forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation. So the author says, if you want to be a person of faith, turn to Jesus. Fix your eyes on Jesus. When you get distracted, you start feeling bad, consider Jesus. But then fourthly, he says, remain faithful to Jesus. See, most scholars believe that the author is saying two things here. When he says, you have not resisted to the point of shedding your own blood, he's saying some of you you're experiencing verbal persecution and you think you're ready to quit on this, it's going to get worse because there's actual bloodshed coming. And so he's trying to get them to understand like if you think this is hard, it actually gets harder. But don't give up. Don't quit. Remain faithful to the end. Because people of faith don't throw in the towel. People of faith don't quit. They keep contending, they keep believing, they keep praying. And sometimes the miracles happen in the way we hope for. But here's the truth, here's the truth. Catch this. Brooklyn Schofield experienced a miracle. But guess what? One day she will die if Jesus doesn't come back. So anytime there's a miracle on this side of eternity, it's always in part. Why? Because we live in the already, but not fully yet, of the kingdom, rule, and reign of God. It's begun, and I'm going to talk about this more tomorrow night, but it's not fully realized. And it's important that as we live in the tension of the time between the times, we as a people of faith, we pray and we believe for miracles to happen. And when they happen, our response is simply this. Stay with me for another moment here. Our response is the kingdom has come close. But when we pray and we believe, and nothing happens. Anybody ever experienced that before? It's also a reminder the kingdom is still yet to come. Because there is a day, it says in Revelation 21, when every sickness, every plague, every disease, every impalement will be done away with. And we will see Jesus for who he fully is. And in that moment, we will be made whole. So tonight, we're gonna pray for the sick. And I just believe that there's people here that need a miracle in their lives. In a moment, we're gonna have the worship team come up and we're going to give some instruction of how we're going to do this. And here's the deal if you're here and you need a miracle, I would encourage you, don't be afraid to come forward. Don't let the enemy lie to you. Don't the enemy let the enemy put doubt in your mind of don't go forward, it's a waste of time. Come forward. Let us pray for you. And I believe that there's going to be testimonies from this service tonight of people that are healed. But listen, if that happens, our response is praise the Lord, the kingdoms come close. But if it doesn't happen in the way we hope, don't make up weird doctrine about how God doesn't heal today. Maybe he imparts into you a faith to endure, to remain steadfast no matter what you go through. And it's a reminder ah, the kingdom is still yet to come. Amen. Amen. So can you stand to your feet here tonight?