This tape contains the fifth teaching in the series entitled, Empowered for Ministry. The speaker is the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. The fifth teaching is titled, The Gift of Faith, Part 2. The scripture reference is Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Mark. 

Listed in the list of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 is the gift of faith. And we started to think about that together last week. I suggested that the gift of faith is not the same thing as saving faith, although that too, in a broader sense, is a gift.

All of it is a gift. It's all of grace. But saving faith, a matter of trusting God for our salvation itself, is one thing.

I believe that the gift of faith, as mentioned in that particular list, is something a little bit different. I defined it last week as a sudden, supernatural surge of confidence that God is about to do something. He gives us a confidence before the fact.

It's a fact settled in the heavens, but we haven't seen it worked out yet here. And he gives us the gift of faith to believe him for what he's about to do. It may be positive or it may be negative.

It may be a destructive thing that he's about to do. But he gives the gift of faith, and I would add to that tonight that without the gift of faith, it usually doesn't happen. Faith is operating somewhere in the equation.

Somewhere in the equation of the miraculous is the gift of faith. It may be in the one ministering, or it may be in the one being ministered unto, but very, very seldom, I suspect in fact never, we don't always know what's going on, but I suspect that virtually never is God involved in the miraculous apart from the gift of faith being exercised somewhere. You remember that it says even Jesus, when he went to his own hometown, could do no mighty works there, just a few healings.

We'd be content with that, wouldn't we? Because of the lack of faith, because of their unbelief, that in a way, I don't understand that, but that the Son of God himself, in his anointed ministry, was somehow hindered from doing all that he wanted to do because the faith was limited in that situation. When God does mighty things, I'm submitting to you that the gift of faith is operating somewhere in the equation.

I think that it was Francis McNutt who told me the story. I'm not sure who it was. I think it was Francis, who told me the story of a clergyman who was very skeptical of healing today.

And he was a chaplain of a school, and so he decided he was going to put this thing to rest forevermore by preaching a mock sermon. Have you heard this? Preach this sermon, you know, just like you hear on some of the faith teachers on television, you know, telling them, if you need healing, just I'm going to pray for you and you're going to be healed.

No, he didn't believe a word of it, okay? But the congregation did. And he went and he prayed for people and they got healed.

And he said, it really messed up the sermon. So the whole point was going to be that that ended with the death of the last apostle, you see. But there was a gift of faith.

Totally bypassed this skeptical clergyman. And yet, like that woman that said, I'm going to lay hold of his garment. You know, people laid hold of the healings that they needed.

Somewhere faith is operating. I also mentioned last time, and I just remind us tonight, that it is not a matter of how much faith, but what we do with what we have. The book of Romans says that God has given a measure of faith to each of us.

And Jesus himself said on at least two different occasions that if you had the faith of a grain of mustard seed, you could move mountains. it's not much faith it's what you do with it it's not oh lord give me more faith but it's helped me to do the right thing with the faith you've given me how do you get that kind of faith how do you develop that how do you use that in a way that becomes mountain moving I want to turn to Mark's gospel and the end of chapter four starting with verse 35. On that day when evening had come, Jesus said to them, to the disciples, let us go across to the other side.

And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. By the way, that's the only way he ever goes. You may think you may fashion him in the way you wish, but he goes just as he is.

And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.

And they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care if we perish? And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

And he said to them, Why are you afraid? Have you no faith? And they were filled with awe and said to one another, Who then is this that even the wind and sea obey him?

I suspect that we usually read that. Why are you afraid? Have you no faith in me that I could handle this thing?

Why can't you be as nonchalant about it as I am? Here I am asleep in the midst of this hurricane. I don't think that's what Jesus meant.

I don't think he meant, have you no faith in me that I can handle this? I think when we read this in context, the question is much more provocative. Why are you afraid?

Have you no faith that you could have handled it? If you look back at verse 33, you'll see that he's been teaching. And in fact, we're going to go right back to the beginning in just a second.

He's been teaching all day long here. And that's why he's exhausted and falls asleep. He's been teaching in parables, parable after parable.

It says, with many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He didn't speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. So you get the sense that there's a public teaching going on and then also some private commentary.

And if you go back and you read the thing from the beginning of the chapter, you'll see that the thread that ties all of this particular set of parables together is that they all have to do with the subject of faith. That's what he's been teaching on all day to the point of exhaustion. Now they're going home and he throws a little pop quiz.

Only they didn't do too well. Do you know that you can learn it with your head? and then it doesn't go anywhere?

Somebody just had a word about that a minute ago. We need to be unlike the disciples at this point. Jesus has been teaching them on the very subject of faith and then I think that with poignancy, he says, didn't you get it?

Didn't you get it what we've been talking about all day so that you could have handled this storm? Let's go back to the beginning of the chapter and we're just going to move very, very quickly There are three major teachings in this chapter on faith. The first is the parable of the seed.

Began to teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into the boat and sat in on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea, and he taught them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them, Listen, a sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. other seed fell on rocky ground where it had not much soil and immediately it sprang up but since it had no depth of soil when the sun rose it was scorched and since it had no root it withered away other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it and it yielded no grain and other seeds fell into the good soil and brought forth grain growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold. He said, He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

When they were alone, his disciples said, You better explain that one to us. He said to them, To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn again and be forgiven. And he said to them, do you not understand this parable?

Notice this. This is absolutely foundational. Notice what he says.

Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? If you don't get this one, you're not going to get any of them.

This is the absolutely basic teaching. And then he explains it. The sower sows the word.

And these are the ones along the path where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan himself immediately comes and takes away the word which is sown in them. Those in like manner are the ones sown upon rocky ground, who when they hear the word immediately receive it with joy.

They have no root in themselves but endure for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. Others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word but the cares of the world, the delight in riches, the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. The seed is the word. The soil is our life, our life, our lives, and God's goal is the word would multiply in us and be fruitful.

I'm interested that though we're talking about the gift of faith, consistently Jesus seems to imply that at least with regard to this particular gift, we can do something about it. He rebukes people for their lack of faith. He becomes incensed with the lack of faith on the part of his hand-picked disciples.

He grieves over the lack of faith. Now he's telling us that we can do something about it, And what we can do about it is prepare the soil. The Word is going to be scattered.

What's your soil like? And he says in brief that there are three major contenders against the Word of God taking root in the soil of our lives in a way that will produce the fruit of faith. Number one is that Satan himself swoops down like a hungry bird and snatches it away.

How many of you had your quiet time today? How many of you remember what you studied? Did you see that?

Did you see that? Do it again. Be honest.

How many of you had your quiet time today? How many of you remember what you studied? You're lying.

You got all embarrassed. 90% of the hands came down. Satan swoops down and snatches it away.

And how about all those that didn't raise their hand that you even had your quiet time? Snatches. Have you noticed that?

You can schedule everything else. But the first thing to go is time alone with God in his word. Satan himself is very active.

And what he wants to snatch away from us is the word of God. The second contender against it is tribulation. We cave in.

Little tiny bit of opposition. Little bit of resistance. some snide remark and we cave into it. We want people to think well of us.

Some of you were here on New Year's Eve and heard Tom Skinner say that it's like the football player that comes breathlessly back to the bench and he says, Coach, I'd score a whole lot more goals if those 11 guys would get out of the way. But that's the name of the game. We're against opposition here.

And Jesus says the second thing that's going to snatch away the Word of God is if you cave in to a little bit of persecution, a little bit of tribulation. I mean, you and I haven't even, we don't know what that is. You know, somebody at our job makes a snide remark about us, that is persecution.

Brothers and sisters giving their lives for this gospel, being imprisoned for years, being tortured, having their families taken away. And the third is materialism, self-indulgence, love of luxury, love of the things of this world. The world, the flesh, and the devil are united against us and in particular against the word of God doing its thing in my life and in yours.

How do you get mountain-moving faith? The first answer is by cultivating the soil of your life so that the Word of God can bear fruit in it. You know there's a promise?

My Word will not return to me empty. It will accomplish the things for which I purpose it if it takes proper root in your life. But if it doesn't even get started, if it doesn't germinate, if it's snatched away, if it's choked out, if it falls on rocky ground, if it withers in the heat of the day, how's it going to be fruitful?

Do you see what Jesus is saying here? That faith is the byproduct of the Word of God having its effect. That's exactly what Paul says to the Romans.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the preaching of the Word. Got it? Okay, so it is the gift of God, and yet there is something that we can do about that.

we cultivate the soil of our lives. It's not too late to make a New Year's resolution. Maybe you ought not to, because you'll probably break it.

But maybe without making it a resolution, could we purpose in our lives to be more faithful in the Word? To let that be quality time with God and allow Him to build it into our lives. That's number one.

Secondly, he said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel or under a bed and not on a stand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.

He says the same thing again. If you have ears to hear, get this, hear it. And he said to them, take heed what you hear.

The measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. for to him who has will more be given and from him who has not even what he has will be taken away hide it under a bushel no there are two reasons why you mustn't hide a light under a bushel one is you put out the light the other is you'll catch the bushel on fire be careful about trying to hide your light God won't put up with that hide it under a bushel no I'm going to let it shine. Matthew's version of this same teaching adds an interesting phrase.

He says, For nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops. Don't hide it.

Don't keep it to yourself. Don't keep it quiet. Yet what I whisper to you, shout upon the housetops.

I think this is on the same subject, friends. What God says to us, we're to say to others. If you try to bottle it up inside, once again, you may experience it withering away.

God says, speak out what I say to you. I had an interesting experience of that on a New Year's Eve. I think it was 12 years ago.

Neil was there. We're up in New Hampshire, and we had gone out. We were going to have a New Year's Eve service with a bunch of teenagers from all over New England.

And it had been raining and freezing rain and sleet all day, and a girl went out on the ice and slipped, fell, hit her head, went into convulsions. It's about 10.30 at night. Nearest hospital is at least a half an hour away under good weather conditions.

I didn't know if we could even get there at this point. Here's this girl in convulsions, 10.30 at night, New Year's Eve. Quickly exhausting all other possibilities, we prayed.

And that was the very first time in my experience that as we prayed, four or five of us were praying, I heard coming out of my mouth something very different than I intended to pray. All of a sudden, instead of, oh God, please heal her, I heard coming out of my mouth in the name of Jesus, be healed. And she was.

Instantly. Just the convulsion stopped. She was flailing about it, just stopped.

And this look of joy and peace came over her face. And she said, oh, I'm going to know him now. And I said, you mean you didn't?

And she said, no, but I'm going to now. at which point someone else came into the room and said why don't you just stay here and rest rather than going to the service and something in me sank right to the pit of my stomach God has just healed her she ought not to be laying down and denying what has just happened she ought to go down to that service and give witness to it but I didn't say that and neither did anybody else. And she took that advice.

She didn't go down to the service. She stayed there and rested. And you know what happened?

The convulsions came back. Now not, praise God, the story has a very happy ending. It was not a permanent problem and it did go away and she has continued marvelously with the Lord.

But there was a long time when she needed some medical help in that situation. And I believe we all missed something terribly important. I think there's a lot of false and confusing teaching on this subject.

The whole name it and claim it, confess it, possess it, the whole thing sounds much of the time as if this is magic and you just decide what you want God to do and then you start saying it until you get it. I don't believe that's biblical. But I do believe that there is a right application of some of that teaching, and this is it.

When God does something, you take your stand on it. When God says something, you proclaim it. And we missed it.

God did something marvelous in that girl, and she didn't confess it. She shrank back away from it, and the symptoms came back. Do you follow what I'm saying?

There is a confess it and possess it. It is not magic. It's confess what God has actually done.

Confess what God has actually said. Take your stand on that. Not on the evidence out there, but on what God has done and said.

In fact, that's what the word confess means. It means to say the same thing as. And I think that's the second key here.

The first is let the word of God come into your life and be planted deep in the soil of your life and let it germinate and produce fruit. The second is what God whispers in your ear, what he does in your life, confess boldly. Jesus says, shout it from the housetops.

Say to others what I say to you. And thirdly, he said to them, the kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground. Here's another seed parable.

And should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow. He knows not how. The earth produces of itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.

But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come. And he said, with what can we compare the kingdom of God? Or what parable shall we use for it?

It is like a grain of mustard seed. Here it is again, friends. which when sown upon the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on earth yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade how does it do that?

by being true to what God has put in it and by trusting him to bring it to pass. It doesn't happen immediately. A grain of mustard seed takes a long time to grow into a large, large plant, almost like a tree.

It takes time. It allows God to work out what he has previously placed in, and it's patient, and it trusts God for the increase. Some of you have heard me tell a story before about when we moved into our home.

I was a youngster in Connecticut, and the backyard was all overgrown with weeds, and my father and I went out to start to clear it, and we came upon this little shoot growing up out of this huge boulder, one of the boulders they tell me that came down in the ice age in a glacier, and there it was in the middle of our backyard, and this little hairline crack and this little tiny green shoot coming out of it, and I was about to lop it off with a weed whacker, and my father said, Don't. That's an oak. I don't know how in the world that acorn got into that tiny crack but there it was, this little tiny oak beginning to push its way up do you know that 30 years later that is a mighty tree gnarled, twisted as few trees you've ever seen but the boulder is pulverized into dust do you see that an acorn moved not quite a mountain but a mighty boulder just by trusting God for him to do his thing over a period of time trusted him for the increase plant the word of God in the soil of your life confess boldly what he said to you and trust him to bring it to pass and don't try to run before you've learned to walk or even crawl listen if this is the year of evangelism which it is we proclaim it that we gladly proclaim it that for the nation's capital and in particular for Truro if you can believe God for the conversion of everybody in the district great if you really can but it might be more prudent to believe God for the conversion of one or two friends start small and maybe as you see one or two friends come to Christ, maybe then you trust him for four or five. Hmm?

See what I'm saying? If you can't believe God for someone's cancer, believe him for sniffles. If you begin to see him heal sniffles, maybe we'll move up to some more difficult things.

Use what God plants in your life to the extent that you're able and trust that he will multiply that in his own good time. A couple of marvelous examples of the gift of faith operating. Some of you know about George Mueller started orphanages all over England, and the interesting thing about that ministry was George Mueller determined that he was never going to ask any human being, never in fact let anybody know what the needs of the orphanages were, Anybody except God.

And many, many was the time when they would sit down with literally hundreds of kids having nothing in the cupboard, nothing to feed them, and they'd give thanks over empty plates. And instance after instance is recorded that before they got done giving thanks, sometimes the prayers were fairly long, mind you, people were arriving at the door with food and milk, and never once did they go hungry. I believe that's a gift of faith and let me tell you it took time for George Mueller to get to that point the word of God was planted in the soil of his life and he began to confess it and eventually that became the basis for a tremendous faith ministry I have a friend some of you met a couple of years ago who's been on the mission fields for about 23 years he was the best man at our wedding and he told us the story of being on the mission field and someone became desperately ill.

There was a doctor around that said, this person needs such and such a medicine, but I don't have it. They said, can we give him any natural remedy? They said the only other thing that would help would be an egg.

I don't know what is in an egg, but whatever it is he needs. There was no eggs around. They knelt down around the bed, began to pray for this person, you may not believe it.

I'm not sure I would believe it if I didn't know Stu, but my best man told me. He knelt down around the bed, and a hen came into the room, jumped up on the bed, laid an egg, and went out again. The person praying was not praying, oh God, please send us an egg.

It was, thank you, God, that you're about to do something marvelous. Mother Teresa was here last spring and shared with us that she was holding a little infant in her arms. And his child was desperately ill.

They were praying for the child. Again, faith began to operate. God could have healed that child like that instantly, miraculously, but you know what he did in that particular case?

as they were praying for the child somebody arrived at the door with a box full of medicines they had gone out and collected medicines from people you know prescriptions that had been half used and were sitting around and on the top of the box was the medicine needed for that particular child's disease God could have done it with an instantaneous healing but he did it by supplying the medicine in that particular case I love this one Bud Sickler is an Elam missionary in Tanzania he told the story of having this tremendous open air Easter service in a little village and as hundreds of people are gathering for the service a lioness enraged lioness comes roaring out of the jungle right into the midst of the crowd. And one of the little native pastors shouted out, don't be afraid, the God who spared Daniel in the den of lions is with us. And he pointed his finger at the lioness and he said, Lion, I curse you in the name of Jesus Christ.

And Sickler says, a bolt of lightning struck the lion dead. start small but use what God gives you exercise your faith to the extent that you're able what God whispers in your ear shout it from the housetops cultivate your soil so that he can plant more of his word into your life and let him bring forth the increase let's bow our heads together Father God so often you say to us those simple words be not faithless but believing And Lord, there is certainly a level at which we want to say and we do say gladly that we trust that you are able to handle the storms that sweep through our lives. But Lord, it would be our desire to learn these lessons of seed faith that we might come to that point in which we too can handle those storms.

That we too can rebuke the raging lion or the raging wind. That we too can believe you for healing and provision. That we too can be those who see you doing mighty things because we've been faithful.

for Jesus' sake. Amen. Amen.