“The Measure of Faith”

Romans 12:1-5

1) I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

2) And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

3) For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

4) For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:

5) So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

Introduction

F

aith is God’s way of telling us what we need to do. Since salvation is outside of Man’s ability to reason or understand, the only way that he can be successful init is to trust God; have faith in Him.

The Bible is called “holy” because it is spiritual, and because what is “holy” is neither intellectual nor intuitive, in order for us to be holy, we must receive the message of the scripture through faith.

Main Thought

It can be strange when one talks to others about believing God and their response is that “I don’t have that type of faith.” If nothing else, one must believe that he has faith in the Word of God.

The Word teaches us that God does not live in time, but rather, in eternity. Therefore, what He has decreed has already been done, but in order for it to manifest itself to us, we must accept it. Because Man largely does not accept this, he misses his blessing, for he is constantly thinking that there is something that he must do. This, in turn, simply keeps him from following the Word of God.

Without a doubt, God has given to every man a “measure” of faith. This is what the Word says. However, if that “measure” is ever to grown into anything more, one must exercises his faith in the same manner that he exercises his muscles!

The advantage of faith is that it eliminates the need for one to understand everything. If one will believe in and accept God’s process, He will, in turn, prove Himself. All of this is designed to eliminate all excuses.

If one will just try God, believing Him, following His word and doing what He says—it will work! Because of this, we need never fear that anything that God asks of us is more than we can “handle,” for before anything adverse ever comes to us, the Lord has already provided a solution for it. However, for that solution to be effective, one must walk in it!

The reason that we give our lives to the Lord is so that He might have full access to us. No matter whether one actually experiences the Lord through the infilling of the Holy Spirit (through speaking in other tongues) and baptism in his name, or simply recites the sinner’s prayer, it is rare that man actually gives himself to the Lord.

Contrary to what Man has wanted to believe, the only thing with which God is pleased is that which is spiritual. Now, in the state in which we are born, we are decidedly not spiritual. Since we must be in order to please Him, what is our recourse? After all, we already know that what already exists, cannot be changed.

However, in that we serve the Maker of Heaven and Earth, we do have recourse. That recourse is to allow the Lord to put us to death with Him. This is the only way for us to live in victory and though not many know this, the victory that we should be seeking is victory over our flesh.

From this victory comes all of the other triumphs of our spiritual lives. For you see, though we are held “captive,” we can be “held captive” only if we have an interest in something outside of the Lord. When the scripture speaks to us and reminds us that because of who we were (flesh and blood creation) and because we had been given to Him by God, Jesus’ responsibility to us was to take on the same (flesh and blood), that in becoming as we were, when He died, that which was our “impediment” would die with Him. This opened a door of freedom for us that we might be able to walk away from the one who was able, all of our lives, to convince us that we had to be fearful of death. What he (the enemy) never wanted us to find out was that the “death” that we feared was not what we thought that it was. We thought that we had an aversion to physical death, when the entire time subconsciously, we feared the “giving up of ourselves” and being unwilling to do this, we remained bound to our flesh.

All of these things took place in us without our being aware, and because of this, are understandable. What is neither “understandable” nor “excusable” is that now that we know, we remained bound to our flesh.

We have been given every “tool” necessary to be able to stand in faith. The Lord has also made it abundantly clear that if we will just do this, we will be victorious. “The measure of faith” that has been given to each of us is all that is needed to accomplish the specific purpose that God has set for us as individuals. Everyone’s purpose is not the same, but every purpose is important, unavoidable, and essential to the plan of God.

Who amongst us wants to be the one who denies God to His face, accusing Him of not having done enough, soon enough? All that it takes to change your “corner of the world” is the “power of one”—that one individual who will walk in his “measure of faith,” believe God, and advance His kingdom.