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  THE SEED OF FAITH
  by Randy Krahn
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of faith, obedience, and
humility in our walk with God. It explores the stories of Abraham and
Naaman, highlighting the consequences of listening to God's voice versus
following our own understanding. It also touches on the dangers of
compromising integrity and seeking to justify ourselves, urging
believers to walk in faith, righteousness, and love, and to avoid
falling into self-deception and deception.

Topics: "Faith and Obedience", "Humility in God's Guidance"
Scripture References: Genesis 12:1, 2 Kings 5:1, Romans 4:3, Galatians 5:6, James 1:22, 1 John 1:9, Romans 8:14, 2 Timothy 3:5, Proverbs 3:5, Ephesians 2:8

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of faith, obedience, and humility
in our walk with God. It explores the stories of Abraham and Naaman,
highlighting the consequences of listening to God's voice versus
following our own understanding. It also touches on the dangers of
compromising integrity and seeking to justify ourselves, urging
believers to walk in faith, righteousness, and love, and to avoid
falling into self-deception and deception.

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CONTENT
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Lord, grateful that we can be together today. Lord, you're the God of
the mountain and also the God in the valley, that we would be able to
give thanks and rejoice in the midst of all of our circumstances. I pray
you would give us the ability to do that and the strength, Lord, to give
thanks in the bad times as well as in Jesus' name.

Amen. Now, we think of Abraham. Before he was Abraham, he was Abram.

And the Lord revealed himself to him as a pagan. His dad or his
grandfather, they made idols. They sold idols and they made a good
business doing that.

And you would think that God would have Abram in none of his thoughts,
but God saw something in Abram that he could work with. He saw faith.
There was a seed of faith there.

And so we can say that God called him and predestined him, but also God
knew before the foundation of the world that Abram would become Abraham,
the father of many nations. So while Abram was a long ways off from the
purpose and the call of God, God spoke to him and told him, get away
from your family, from your relatives, and I'm going to lead you to a
place where you don't know, and I'm going to establish you. And he made
some assurances to him and how he heard God speak.

It's the same way we hear God speak today. We think, oh, Abram, he knew
the voice of God because God has spoke to him from the clouds from the
holy mountain, but it doesn't say that. It says God spoke to Abram.

And we have to be willing and ready that in the day and hour and God
speaks to us that we have ears to hear. Because Jesus, he spoke not so
clearly as he spoke to Abram when he came to the earth, but he spoke in
parables. And then he said, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

We have creation that screams of the glory and the majesty of a superior
God. And to find out who this God is and what is his name. And is he
interested in me? Does he even care about me? And when we finally come
to that revelation of Jesus is the Christ and the almighty in the
heavens.

And we come to an understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit and an
outpouring of the spirit in our life. We become transformed as Abram was
transformed through covenant and became Abraham where God inserted his
name in the midst of Abram's name. And God took on Abram's name in that
he became known as the God of Abraham.

And he's not ashamed to call us his brother, Jesus said. He doesn't call
us underlings. He calls us brothers.

The promises say that we become joint heirs with Christ. We get grafted
into the vine. We become partakers of the heavenly nature, the divine
nature.

Become partakers of the heavenly calling. We become a peculiar people.
Begin to lose our identity in this world and begin to conform.

Our identity begins to conform into the image of Jesus himself. Yet
somehow when we begin in the spirit, then we try to figure out God. And
even as Abram had his struggles and he didn't hear from God so clearly,
instead of waiting on God to hear from God, he looked at his
surroundings, he looked at his circumstances, and he saw that this is a,
you know, a dry place.

This is a difficult place. There's no water here. We're gonna die if we
stay here.

Instead of waiting on God, seems as though he made an altar there at
Bethel. Instead of hearing from God what he should do, he took a
decision. Now in life, there's many times when we know God has spoken to
us and he's leading us in the way.

And then we feel like, you know, God is with us. So whatever decision we
take, God's going to be with us because he's promised he's going to
bring us to a land flowing with milk and honey. But we need him every
hour.

And we can begin being led by the Spirit through faith and find
ourselves putting God in a box. And this is a picture exactly what we
see in the Ark of the Covenant. God said, okay, I've led you this far,
you know, and they wanted to have a God they could see, didn't they? So
they broke off their earrings and they did all this.

And magically, somehow, Aaron told Moses, this calf just came out of the
fire. Well, no, he fashioned that thing with the tool. And he presented
it to the children of Israel, and they had a big celebration there, and
lots of sin happened there, because they wanted a God they could see.

So God says, well, I'm the God you can't see, but I'm going to give you
an image of the tabernacle now. So you can see it because you like to
see. You know, you don't like walking by faith so much, you want a God
you can see.

And so you're not going to see me, but I'm going to give you a coffin,
so to speak. And I'm going to give you, you're supposed to fashion it in
such and such a way, you're supposed to carry it on poles, and I'm going
to make a tent, and I'm going to show you what it's going to look like.
This is a pattern of what it looks like.

And they were very happy, because they were able to see that God was
among them. You know, and there were times when they wanted to do stuff,
and God says, you know what, because of their unbelief, because of their
sinning, I'm not going with them. I'll send an angel, but I'm not going
with them.

And Moses had the, he had the insight, the knowledge, and enough fear of
God to say, if you're not going with us, I'm not going. I don't, I'm not
going with an angel. If you're not coming, I'm not coming.

But many times, we don't get direction like that. So we try different
doors, and we see how it works out. But just because a door opens,
doesn't mean it's a door from the Lord.

And just because you have the means to get there, it doesn't mean that
God has led you there. So Abram looked around, and he saw this is a
terrible place. God is leading me to a place flowing with milk and
honey.

And what do we have here? A famine in the land. And we're going to die
if we stay here. So I've heard faith comes by what? Hearing.

But just because you heard something, does it mean that you should put
your faith in it? Oh, I heard if we invest in such and such stock, we're
going to be millionaires, we'll retire. Oh, let's take loans out and
make it happen. Just because you've heard that there's a good
opportunity, it doesn't mean it's from the Lord.

But he had heard that there was bread in Egypt. So what does Abram do?
God knows exactly what he's going to do. Why hadn't God spoken to him?
Why didn't God stop him? Because it had to be this way so that Abram
could learn something about taking decisions on his own.

Abram is a man of God. Abram is the father of many nations, the father
of faith. Those who are of faith as Abraham was are of the seed of
Abraham through Isaac through faith.

And the scripture says in Romans nine, it's not the natural children
that are the children of God, because he speaks of his brothers to those
who pertain the covenant, the promises, and the giving of the law and
all these things. But he says, it's not all Israel who are of Israel,
neither are they descendants, because they are of the seed of Abraham,
because Abram had two sons, one of the bond woman, which is Hagar, and
one of the free woman, which is Sarah, we haven't got to that part in
the story. But he picks Hagar up in Egypt, and that's where we're headed
now.

So Abram takes his caravan, and he's going to where there's bread.
Fantastic opportunity. And so he finds himself in Egypt.

And when he's there, the first thing that cripples him is something that
cripples all of us when we get in the flesh, fear. Abram gets crippled
by fear. And when you get crippled by fear, you start making bad
decisions.

Panic, you buy a stock, you think it's going to do this and that, and
all of a sudden you realize the bottom is falling out, and then you
panic sell. For some of us, we just believe the lie, and we just ride
the wave right to zero. I've done that.

That's why I purpose myself, I'm not a stocks guy. I don't invest in
stocks, because I've invested in stocks, and I've lost. And that's no
way to live.

Wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is check your stocks. But
that's a topic for a different situation. Abram, he put his stock in
Egypt, and he went to Egypt.

And when he got there, he saw that they were eyeing up his wife. And she
was very beautiful. And so he decided to make up a partial truth and a
partial lie.

And you can easily begin to justify yourself in Egypt, because you're
clinging to partial truth, but you bought also a partial lie. And so he
said, if anyone asks, especially because I hear that, you know, there's
a chance that, you know, the Herod here or whatever is going to take
you, tell him you're my sister, so that he doesn't kill me. We'll begin
to see when we're in the flesh, and we start getting crippled by fear,
we go into self preservation.

We try to seek to save our own life. Abram, this man of faith begins to
self-preserve. He wants to save his life in case they say, hey, that's
that man's wife.

If we kill this guy, then we can take the wife for ourselves. So what
happens is the Herod takes Sarai, his wife, and the end result is,
because Herod thinks that Abram's her brother, and he was half brother,
the guy gets blessed. How guilty do you feel? You know, your wife is
gone from you, and you're getting gifts from the Herod who's got your
wife, like it's like a total mess, like it's like heaping coals on your
head.

You know, your enemy's hungry, you feed him, you give him gifts, you
lavish on him. And God has pity on him. He pities him.

And so he causes a plague to come on Pharaoh, and on his household, and
it somehow becomes manifest and known that this is this man's wife. So
he kicks him out of Egypt. He sends him with all his gifts and
everything, and also with Hagar, the servant girl who now is Sarah's
maid.

And he goes back to that place where he made a wrong turn. He goes back
to that place where he built an altar to the Lord. I think it's about
that.

And there he inquires of the Lord again, and the Lord begins to speak to
him. There's times when we get out of the way, and we start in faith,
and then we go about what makes good sense. And then we seek no other
sense, except to go headlong after the flesh, until we find out that
there's a total chaos that we've caused.

And we go back to the place where we knew we heard from God the last
time. And so we ask, we wait there until the Lord speaks to us and gives
us clear instruction. It says they that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength.

They shall mount up with wings as eagles. In other words, they will be
in the spirit. They shall run and not grow weary.

They shall walk and not faint. It's good to wait on the Lord until you
get a word. And if you don't get a word, then we shouldn't be moving.

We can be content where God has us. Until God opens a way for us. But
many times, you know, we go and we have this form of godliness.

I mean, God is with us, right? We got the box with us. We got the Ark of
the Covenant. We got the tent.

And we got the clouds moving and everything. But there was a process in
time where this Ark had ended up under the tutelage of Eli. And Eli had
wicked sons.

And Eli never rebuked his sons. He never disciplined his house. And so
God raised up Samuel and he was going to replace Eli.

In the process of time, all he said to his sons when they were taking
the best portions for sacrifice rather than giving to the Lord, and when
they were committing sexual sin there, that he said, sons, what you're
doing is not good. Because it says Eli really enjoyed the barbecues that
his sons would make. And a lot of times our loyalty is to family.

Our loyalty is to old relationships and friends. And we maybe would say,
you know, you need to change your lifestyle, but we really enjoy the
benefits of getting the financial blessing that comes from some of their
devious activities. And they share it with us, seemingly making friends
by unrighteous manner.

And so in the process of time that God said that he was going to cause a
judgment to come, Eli said it is from the Lord. He knew that the Lord
was going to judge them. But yet somehow nothing changed in the way that
they conducted themselves.

There was no tearing of the robes. There was no deep repentance. And so
the Philistines began to attack.

And what happened is Israel started taking losses. And so they decided
that they were going to roll that box out there and say, God is with us.
And they pushed that box out there.

You know, you can put God in a box. And you can think God is with you.
And you can have every eye dotted and T's crossed and have a form of
godliness.

And you know what, the Philistines will come against you and you'll have
no power. That's exactly what happened. And one day, Hophni and
Phinehas, or whatever their names were, they passed away.

They got killed in the battle. When they rolled out the Ark of the They
never inquired to the Lord about that. And there was a great defeat.

A lot of people died. Because the children of God took a decision in the
flesh to roll their God out there and make their God come along with
their battle when God had not said. And many times we go into a battle
or we go into a situation or we find a way to sneak in a crack when we
think the Lord's opened the door, we justify ourselves.

And then what happens is it ends in a catastrophe, it ends in a
calamity. And then we say, well, you know what, God, you don't like me,
God, you don't care about me, God this and God that, we blame God. We
don't blame God for all the global warming.

We don't blame God for anything anymore. But we blame God for when he
doesn't bless us. When I take a decision and I go in the flesh and I do
stuff and God hasn't spoken, and then it goes all sideways.

Then I get bitter at the Lord. We have to be careful, we don't get
bitter at the Lord. If God before us, who can be against us? But if you
get bitter with the Lord, then what hope do we have? We need to repent.

So Abram heads on and God makes covenant with him. And like I said, he
goes from Abram to Abraham. But in the process of time, he heeded the
voice of his wife.

You know what, sometimes you heed the voice of your wife and it's a very
bad thing. I think of Adam and Eve in the garden. Eve had listened to
the voice of the serpent.

Then she came and gave the fruit to Adam and said, here, take this. And
it doesn't say how much time Adam thought on it, but it says that he
made a decision. Eve was deceived, Adam made a decision.

The decision Adam took was to listen to his wife. And that thing went
south on them very fast. And when he ate of the fruit, he knew that he
was naked.

And the woman knew that she was naked. And when the very one that can
bless you and help you and cause his face to shine upon you and be
gracious to you, lift his countenance upon you and give you peace,
you're hiding from him. Well, then you're in a bad way.

That's what sin does. It robs you of your confidence. You no longer have
any assurance.

You find yourself with shame. And you're hiding in darkness. You don't
want to be around the brothers who are walking in the light.

And therefore fellowship breaks down. And you're in a bad way in your
spiritual walk. So God is looking for his friend.

He comes looking for his friend, Adam, where are you? Well, we're over
here. We're hiding. Why are you hiding? Well, we're naked.

Who told you you're naked? Did you eat from the fruit? Ah, the woman,
the woman gave it to me. The woman blames the serpent. The serpent told
me.

And this is how we can listen to the voice of our wife, when it's not
from the Holy Spirit, and it can go ill. And that's what happened to
Abram. Abram listened to the voice of his wife because she could not
conceive and have a child.

And so she went one step further and said, listen, you take Hagar for
another wife. And then she will conceive. And I'll take that child and
we will raise that child together.

And it will be a fantastic family. And Abram, before he had a chance to
think and pray, took a decision by listening to the voice of his wife.
And he went and he took that woman, he married that woman.

And it happened they had a son. His name was Ishmael. Now, how many of
you heard of the war going on in Israel now? You know, the descendants
of Abraham are in a battle in the natural.

The natural descendants of Isaac and the natural descendants of Ishmael,
they are at war. And it's manifested for thousands and thousands of
years. And so it was the consequence of Abram's decision to listen to
the voice of his wife.

But he loved Ishmael. But then in the process of time, God said to
Abram, I'm going to bless you. You're going to have descendants of the
stars and the sand of the seashore.

I'm going to bless you with a son. Abram said, well, I have a son. No,
he says, I'm going to give you a son by Sarah.

Well, she's old and I'm old. He said, nothing is impossible with God.
This time next year, he told them both, Sarah laughed.

And God brought forth Isaac through faith. When it was not possible. It
was outside of the box.

Walking by faith is always outside of the box. Walking under the law is
always looking to the box, trying to find out what, what, what, what,
how to figure it out, how to play by what rules to keep everything, you
know, right. But in keeping everything right, seeking to obtain
righteousness by keeping everything right, you can miss Christ.

Now, the midwives in the days when Moses came, they were instructed to
kill the babies when they were born to the Hebrew women. And then what
happened was they went against what the Pharaoh said, and they preserved
the life because it's better to preserve life, especially of the people
of God. And then the Pharaoh came and he sent for them and he said,
what's going on? All these babies still around here.

And they, they said, well, you know, these Hebrew women are very more
exceedingly vigorous than the Egyptian woman. And they have their babies
before we get there. What a lie, but they were justified because they
were walking in love.

Love is the fulfillment of the law. We need to learn what this means. We
can live by the letter, which kills, or we can walk in love, which
brings life.

The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the
law of sin and death. And the law of sin and death is manifested by the
Levitical law, the law of do's and don'ts, so that we might know that
we're exceedingly sinful because we can't keep it. So if you seek to be
justified by some of the points of the law, then you better be justified
by all of it, because whoever breaks one of them is guilty of all of
them.

That's what it says. The law is not written there for us to, to make us
holy. The law is written there for us to see that we are unholy and that
we have need of Christ.

And when the spirit of God comes into us, we begin in the spirit, we
walk by faith and we walk in love, and he will lead us to walk in
righteousness. And the law shows us what righteousness looks like, but
sometimes it's out of the box. As I just shared, sometimes you're
outside of the box.

It's a good thing that God fulfilled his promise to Abraham. He made him
a covenant. He changed his name.

He became Abraham. And here we see his conversion, so to speak, an Old
Testament guy who was not under law because law had not been given. He
was in faith, a righteousness which comes by faith.

It says, Abraham believed God, he became Abraham, and it went on his
account for righteousness. We better have righteousness on our account.
It's not the blood of bulls and goats, which came years later through
Moses and through Aaron and through the Levitical keeping of the law,
but righteousness comes by faith in Christ.

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to those who believe. So
we want to be careful we don't get caught up with rules and regulations.
The Galatians became foolish.

Beginning in the spirit, they sought to be perfected in the flesh. They
began to observe different types of feasts and things and days, and they
got caught up with trying to discern all these things. They missed the
Holy Spirit.

And if we miss the Holy Spirit, then we're going to find ourselves
taking all kinds of decisions and finding out that doors that we thought
were open and were closed, we can get disillusioned on the journey. And
we're going to make mistakes and we're going to sin. But just because we
took a wrong turn, it says for us in Revelations that we can repent if
we leave our first love, right? Like Abram seemingly left his first love
there for the Lord and walking by faith and he found himself in Egypt.

We can repent of leaving our first love and what we can learn from Abram
is he went back to that place where he left it at Bethel. So we can make
a decision to repent and part of repentance means returning. Returning
to where we're in a good way with the Lord.

It's a journey. It's not how we start. It's how we finish.

It's a faith walk. And we need to hear. And if you walk in covenant with
the Lord and you obey convictions, you're obedient to what the Holy
Spirit begins to say as he's leading you and guiding you in all truth,
then you will know the way.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. If you're in the
spirit, you will have life because he who has the son has the life but
the one who hath not the son has no life but the wrath of God abides on
him. You feel the condemnation and you try to get it off and you try to
do this and do this and do this and you try to give more alms, make more
sacrifices, dot more i's and cross more t's and while all you're trying
to establish your own righteousness, you find out you get a letter from
your boss and he tells you that you're doing no good.

Absolutely, thoroughly disappointed. It can happen. So what is the
fulfillment of the law? Love is the fulfillment of the law.

I was reading this morning about a man who was a leper. His name was
Naaman. Naaman is his name.

And he was in Syria and he was a commander there of a king and he had
earned the respect of this king. He was a mighty valiant warrior, a
valiant man but he was a leper and while they had been doing raiding,
there was a an Israelite girl, a young girl, small girl and she said, I
know a man in Israel, the prophet in Israel. If you will go to him, he
will heal you of your leprosy.

Now that girl was not Naaman's wife but was a servant to his wife and
that servant girl probably spoke to Naaman's wife and Naaman's wife
spoke to Naaman and Naaman listened to the voice of his wife and he
asked the king of Syria if he could go to Israel because there was a
prophet there who would heal him of his leprosy. And in this occasion,
Naaman listened to his wife even as there was a point in time when
Abraham listened to his wife and it went well with him because his wife
had said, we need to get Hagar and this son Ishmael out of our house.
And what happened at that time is God backed up the words of his wife at
that time and said, listen to your wife.

So when we listen to our wife, the spirit has to bear witness with us,
this is from the Holy Spirit. Then we listen to our wife when she's
speaking from the Holy Spirit. You can't put God in a box, you can't
say, well, I'm never going to listen to my wife because I'm the head of
the home, I make the final decisions.

But if the Holy Spirit speaks to your wife, you better listen to your
wife because it'll go good for you. So Abraham listened to his wife
because God had said, cast out the bond woman or son, the son of the
bond woman cannot be heir with the son of the woman. In the same way
that the children of the flesh and the children of the spirit cannot
live together and find fellowship.

Doesn't work. Naaman has faith, mustard seed, listens to the servant
girl's testimony to his wife, probably goes to the king, the king
believes, he respects Naaman, he says, I'm going to put a letter in your
hand or whatever, I'm going to send a letter ahead to Israel. This is
what's going to happen.

I'm going to give him a heads up to the king of Israel that you're
coming and you're expecting a miracle. You're expecting a healing. These
guys had so much faith, more faith than the king of Israel, because when
the letter shows up, the king of Israel, he reads this letter, he says,
this guy's trying to pick a war with me, a fight with me.

He cares his clothes because he figures God's going to deal with him.
Obviously he had some condemnation or something. Elisha hears about it.

The king of Israel has torn his robes. The guy's humbling himself over
there. What's going on? He finds out all about the situation.

He says, when the guy comes, send him to me. And here comes Naaman
rolling up with his horses and his chariots and his entourage and all of
his servants. And he's up there right at the tent of Elisha.

Elisha doesn't come out. He sends probably Gehazi. It's probably who
came up.

And he says, I'm here for my healing. And he says, this is what my
servant Elisha said, you go down to the Jordan and you go in there seven
times, you go dip in there and the Lord will heal you of your leprosy.
Well, he's come this far by faith, doesn't he? Just like Abram, he came
so far by faith, but then when he was at a crossroads and he heard
something with his ears, he took a drastic decision and he went a wrong
direction.

Naaman is at a crossroads now. He hears something with his ears and he's
not happy with what he hears because reason starts kicking in. He says,
the waters in Damascus, they're fantastic.

And you're going to tell me that I came all the way out here to wash in
this dirty Jordan when I could have washed in, there's two rivers there
that are far better water than this. And he was exceedingly angry to the
point of rage. What we see here is flesh manifesting.

But he had some employees. He had some servants. And they had a good
response to their master, Naaman.

And they said, listen, calmed him down. And they said, listen, if the
man of God had asked you to do something great, you know, go climb this
mountain and go do this great thing, wouldn't you have done it? And why
are you so angry? Well, he says that he sent out one of his servants who
wouldn't even come meet me. And I had presumed that he would come and
wave his hand all over the place.

And he would he would do some perform a big miracle. You see, even
though he was walking by faith, he had God in a box. He had figured that
it was going to be this way he had presumed and when we presume
something about God, there's always room for disappointment and anger
and bitterness and resentment.

But God doesn't always work inside the four walls of our mind. He works
outside of that. And so they calmed him down.

And he received the counsel of underlings. In the same way, he received
the counsel of the lowest of lows, that servant girl in his in his
house. And he decided he was going to do something.

You want to know what he was going to obey? When you obey what the Holy
Spirit says, you're humbling yourself. Because it might not make any
good sense. But you're humbling yourself.

Because to obey is better than what? Sacrifice. Simple obedience. So he
went to there to the River Jordan, all his chariots and everything on
the beach, on the shore, and the entourage there and everybody's
watching.

He strips down into his trunks. And in he goes. He goes in, he dips in,
he walks out.

I don't know if anybody was laughing, but I'm probably laughing. He goes
in, he walks out. Seven times.

He dips seven times in the Jordan. You know what he had opportunity
after the first time. So you know, this is crazy.

This is stupid. I'm going home. You know what, while we're here, why
don't we just kill a bunch of them? Just because.

I mean, there's all kinds of thoughts that are rattling around, I'm sure
in and he's overcoming them. Because he's holding steadfast to his
faith. When God asks you to do something, and you don't see the result
of it, you keep being obedient to what God has asked you to until you
get an answer.

Until you get your miracle. Until you hear from God. The many times
become frustrated.

The number seven means completeness. You keep going until you get your
miracle. You keep obeying God.

Well, I've tried to stay pure. I've tried to walk this. I tried it and
it's not working out.

I'm not getting what I wanted. Then you stick with what God said. Just
because you're not getting it right away.

Wait on the Lord, because he has your best interests in mind. He's not
trying to make life miserable for you. He's trying to save you from
misery.

Abraham went and he took Hagar and he got himself a mess. And that mess
is still working its way out over there in Israel today. But praise God,
he can take a mess and turn it into a message.

That's the mercy and grace of God. So Naaman comes out the seventh time,
the leprosy falls off him and it says that his skin was like a baby's
skin. Something of leprosy is, starts as a skin irritation and becomes
where you lose feeling.

You become really hard to hear the voice of God if you start losing
feeling in your heart. Spiritually, we can become hard-hearted. The
heart can be without feeling, can be leprous.

I know brothers who've been in church for years. They don't cry, they
don't have much emotion. Why is that? Well, you know, I'm just not a
crier.

I'm just not. Jesus, he cried out with loud cries and tears to him who
could save him from death and was hurt. It's not about I'm not a crier.

Maybe you have leprosy. Maybe your heart is so hard that you keep
pushing through and you think that you're in a good way because you're
an i-daughter and a t-crosser, but you're as hard like concrete. You
need a miracle.

Ask the Lord to show you the Jordan and go humble yourself seven times
until your heart softens before the Lord and you get your miracle. Well,
he came out. He got his miracle.

He was thoroughly cleansed tip to toe and he went to the man of God and
the man of God comes to him and he's offering him gifts. He's offering
him presents and he's trying to bless him. And you know what? I've been
in the same situation myself.

I did the same thing to the man of God when I went and I found healing
from my leprosy. And that man of God had pockets open and he took
everything that was being offered and he bulged his pockets right out.
And I learned something early on in my walk that like Elisha said, now
is not the time to be taking gifts or vineyards or blessings.

There's a time for everything. And when someone gets born again and
someone gets cleansed of their hard heartedness, someone gets, becomes a
new creation, someone gets a healing from the Lord, someone gets a
prophetic word and it's a blessing in their life. That's not the time to
take gifts.

Otherwise what will happen is you'll use the gift that God gives you for
merchandise. This is a sin. And the fruit of it was that Gehazi thought
of his master, you know, this doesn't make any sense.

Look at you don't even have nothing here. The man's offering it for us
and God's opened a door for us. God's blessing us here.

And so he went secretly behind Elisha's back. He saw an open door. He
saw an opportunity and he took it.

He went away from what the spirit was saying. He did his own thing. And
the result was that Gehazi lied and said there were two young prophets
who came.

You think, oh well that'll work out just like it did for the midwives in
Egypt, won't it? No, no it won't. Because the midwives risked their life
to save life. Gehazi was seeking to save his life because he had lost
his life and wasn't happy with what his outcome was.

He wanted more out of it. And so he went and he said I'll give, he said
just one talent and two changes of clothes, just something small. You
know, just something, small blessing, you know.

And he said well I'll give you two talents. And he took that thing and
he hid it in his tent. You know that happened also at Jericho.

When they plundered Jericho, there was a man, Achan, he hid things in
his tent. And it went ill for the people of God on account of Achan. And
it would have gone ill for Elisha if like Eli, he would have just kept
his mouth shut and would have enjoyed maybe wearing that suit once in a
while for weddings and funerals.

That change of clothes. Sure he could have used one. Or that talent of
silver to go do the Lord's work.

I mean we can justify everything. But Elijah confronted it right away
when the Lord revealed it to him. And he dealt with it the way that God
told him to deal with it.

He said the leprosy that left Naaman will cling not only to you Naaman,
but to all your children after you forever. Because you did this thing.
He lied.

He lied once to Naaman and he lied again to his master when he said
where did you go? And he said no I didn't go anywhere. You know that's
what'll happen when you start compromising. You'll start lying to
justify yourself.

May the Lord help us not to have it all figured out. To continue to be
of the seed of Abraham through faith. And Isaac your seed shall be
blessed.

Whether you're a Jew or a Gentile. Whether you're a male or a female.
Whether you're a slave or whether you're free.

We are one in Christ. And if we're in Christ then we're Abraham's seed
through faith. And if we're in faith then we are partakers of the divine
nature.

Because we're in covenant. The blood is applied. When the blood is
applied we're whiter than snow.

A righteousness which comes by faith. Christ is the end of the law to
everyone who believes. He fulfilled it.

We didn't fulfill it. He fulfilled it. And now those of us who are led
by the spirit of God then we walk in the fulfillment of the finished
work of Christ.

May the Lord help us to walk worthy of that calling and not find another
way to seek to justify ourselves. Nor when we find ourselves lacking
when the Lord tests us that we wouldn't become discouraged but that we
would repent and humble ourselves so that times of refreshing can come
for the Lord. May the Lord help us to be men and women of faith.

To walk in a manner pleasing to the Lord. To seek first his kingdom and
his righteousness. Not to be lovers of money.

Boastful, proud, haughty, unthankful, disobedient to parents, unholy,
unloving. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Having a form of
godliness but denying the power of the Holy Spirit.

From such it says we should steer away. There's no fellowship there. We
all see in part and we speak these things in part.

The Lord knows everything perfectly. But we want to be careful to guard
our hearts so we don't find ourselves in the last days deceiving
ourselves and being deceived. In Jesus name, Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/IIlOYIWSBNs.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/randy-krahn/the-seed-of-faith/
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