Journey from Powerless to Powerful

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Alright today, the sermon title is “From powerless to powerful. The journey of faith”. As what Pastor Jason shared just now, that two weeks later, that means next year, and my team, my core team, my wife and I, we are going to start a new Chinese church. And that's the reason I chose this topic. We are going to embark another milestone of our journey. We're going to step out of our comfort zone and to see how God's going to work through us and in us.

And in our life, we will face many mountains. In our faith journey, we will face many struggles and obstacles. And today, we want to learn how can we move from powerless and to powerful. We know that is this is not a sinless perfection as what PJ preached before. Is not sinless perfection, but I hope that is a sincere progression for all of us. And when we face challenges, we face mountains, how can we, how can we put the faith in the right object? And how can we move from powerless to powerful?

As you know, I was a missionary in China before. And eight months before I moved to China, I was praying about God's will. And I went to China for a survey trip. And after the trip, I came back. I told my wife, May, that we are not going to China. China is not for us. So May was surprised. “What happened? What happened to your survey trip?” I said when I went there, I attended their service. I met the local church, and I realized that they are, they seem like they are far spiritual than me. They can recite the Scripture. They pray with tears, passion. They are serious about God's Word. They always ask, “What is God’s will?” They want to be obedient to God's Word. And at the moment, we are praying to go to China to teach them Bible. We have this theme “China equip us and to learn about Bible”. And I hope that we can teach Bible to the local church members there. And after the survey trip, I was discouraged and lost, and I thought, “I'm going but seems like the door was closed.” So I told May, “No, it's not for us.” And in fact, I think I was looking at myself, looking at my ability, looking at my…what knowledge I have? And that's the reason I was discouraged. So likewise, in our life, we will face different, different mountains and today we want to learn. So when we face those mountains, how can we move from powerless to powerful?

The Journey of Faith

Talk about faith, a journey of faith. When our faith journey begin? Any idea? When the moment we trust our Lord Savior as our Lord and Savior. And when the moment we are born again, that's where our faith journey begin. How about when our journey ends? When we finish our race on the earth, on this earth, or when Jesus returns, right? So when we meet Jesus, that is the time that our journeys end. So along this faith journey, what God wants to see is your faith, because

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. (Hebrews 11:6)

So we want to learn. How can we? How can we have this faith in Him to walk our journey on earth? Let's learn together. And today's scripture is from Matthew, but I want to bring you to Mark first, because Mark have different details that you cannot find in Matthew. So in order to have complete picture, let's look at Mark first. So Mark 9:14 says that this is the moment Jesus with John, James, Peter in the Mount of Transfiguration. So they came down from the Mount and met up with the rest of the disciples.

And when they approached the disciples and they saw that there's a great crowd around the disciples. (Mark 9:14a)

And the scribe was there as well.

The scribes were there as well, arguing with them.(Mark 9:14b)

So Jesus was wondering what happened, went over and what happened?

And a man came to Jesus and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son. He's suffering terribly. He has these seizures, severe seizures, and he suffered badly”. (Matthew 17:15)

In Mark also, we were told that this boy was possessed by a demon, a spirit, and the demon actually muted the boy, so the boy cannot speak, and the demon also attacked the boy, and then have these severe seizures. And sometimes fall into the fire, sometimes fall into the water, and has this terrible life. And Mark also told us that this boy had this demon possessed since young. So this have been many years. The boy has been suffering, suffered many years. And seems like this is a very stubborn, very aggressive and fierce demon that possessed this boy. And when we look at this demon, we think that, “Wow, this could be a very powerful and different level kind of demon”. So the man continued to tell Jesus that,

“I brought this, my son, to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” (Matthew 17:16)

They could not heal him. I guess that’s the reason why the scribes were arguing with the disciples, because they probably questioning, “Where's your authority? Why can't you cast out the demons?” They probably questioning about Jesus’s identity. So they were arguing because the disciples couldn't heal the boy.

And when Jesus knew that and Jesus was frustrated because from what he said here, you can sense that Jesus was frustrated.

He said, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?”(Matthew 17:17)

So he was frustrated. He said,“You are faithless and twisted generation. You have been with me for so long.” Alright, Jesus may refer to the generation during his time, but I think specifically he's referring to his disciples, because later on he rebuked the disciples for their lacking of faith. So Jesus had been with me for so long, and you witnessed the miracles I had performed. And why? Why can't you cast out this demon, you faithless and twisted generation? And Jesus said, “Bring the boy to me.” And they brought the boy to Him, and He healed the boy instantly.

He rebuked the demon and healed the boy instantly. (Matthew 17:18)

And the disciples were amazed. Wow, Jesus can just do that. In fact, the man has this great faith as well. He know that Jesus can heal. He has to bring the problems to Jesus. So he brings the boy to Jesus. When he saw Jesus, “Have mercy on my boy.” So they bring the boy to Him and he has the faith that Jesus can heal the boy.

And the disciples quietly, privately, came to Jesus and asked, “Why could we not cast it out?” (Matthew 17:19)

They asked Jesus, “Why could we not cast it out?” They asked this question with some expectation. They expect they should be able to do it. They expect that they should be able to cast the demon out because they were given the authority before. In Matthew 10 say that

Gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out. (Matthew 10:1)

They were given the authority before and Mark 6 also said that

They cast out many demons. (Mark 6:13)

So they asked, “Why couldn't we cast it out?” With expectation, I should be able to do it. Why can't we do it? And the answer that Jesus gave to them was

Because of your little faith. (Matthew 17:20) ESV

Because of your little faith. In King James, little faith is

Because of your unbelief. (Matthew 17:20) KJV

Now, it's not that they don't believe, they didn't believe Jesus was the Son of God. They believe Jesus. They are following Jesus.

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But at that moment, at that situation, they believe in themselves. Believe that “I already cast out so many demons before. I have done that before. I shouldn't have any issues. It shouldn't be any problem for me to do it again.” So instead of putting their faith in Jesus in that situation, believe in Jesus the power, they believe in themselves. That's why Jesus said that you are unbelief, you little faith. Then after that, Jesus made a very bold statement.

He said, “ For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,“ Move from here to there,” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20)

I guess the disciples probably would think that, “Wow, this demon different level. This mountain is so huge, I need stronger faith. I need more faith to move this mountain, to cast out this demon.” But instead, Jesus said, “You just need a faith like a grain of mustard seed.” Mustard seed, very tiny, tiny mustard seed. So you just need this tiny faith, you can move the mountain. So this is, this is like, totally upside down, turning the disciples upside down. “Oh, I thought I need to have strong faith, but yet you told me that I need just ‘a grain of mustard seed’ faith to move the mountain.”

And Jesus said, “Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20b)

So let's look at today's this story that what we can learn from this story? How can we move from powerless to powerful in the journey on this journey of faith? Three points. First, the problems of unbelief, the person to believe, and the power to believe. These three points that we're going to learn, and prayerfully, that when we embark on our own journey, we will learn that how can we put our faith in the right place, in the right object and to have this powerful journey of faith.

The Problems of Unbelief

Let's look at the first point - the problems of unbelief. We can tell from the story that the disciples, they are powerless when it comes to casting out this demon. They are powerless. They said, “Why could we not cast it out?” In our faith journey, I guess I believe sometimes we think we feel powerless when we face a struggle, challenges in our life. Powerless. It could be the struggle you have, could be addiction, pornography. You're addicted to pornography, gambling, games. The addiction is so much that you spend most of your time into it, and you have the wrong priority in your life. And deep inside you, you know that this is not right, this is not pleasing God, I need to get rid of this. You try, you try. Sometimes you make it. Then you feel that, “Wow, I have the power”. But some, many times, you fail again and again and again. You are so powerless to overcome this mountain in your life. And it could be forgiveness. Someone that you have bitterness over, that you want to forgive the person. You know that this is not right. You know that this is not pleasing God. You want you have to forgive the person because we are Christian. We have Holy Spirit in us that convict us, but you try and try and you just can't overcome this mountain.

It could be finances. It could be your anxiety, your job stress, and these are the things that you in our journey, that we have to learn how to put our faith to overcome this mountain. It may be you're sharing gospel with your loved ones. You want to pray for your loved ones’ salvation, your parents, your siblings, your children, and you just feel that I don't think I can make it. I've tried many times and and just cannot. It could be that you want to, you want to draw near to God, and you say that, okay, I want to have personal quiet time with God. I want to set the time every morning from seven to eight or seven to seven-thirty. This is the time, is my quiet time with God. I want that personal devotion worship. Yeah, you do it one week, one month, and then slowly, because of busyness, because of a lot of distraction and you give up.

So these are the mountains. And you also like the disciples say that, “Why couldn't I do it? Why couldn't I do it?” And the answer is because of your little faith, because of unbelief. You are depending on yourself, trying to overcome the mountains in your life. You are trying to use your own strength and think that, “Okay, I can do it.” You forgot that actually you can put your faith in Jesus to do it. So this is the reason why we cannot overcome those mountains, those struggles in our lives.

And when we have this self dependence, there are two manifestation of self dependence. First, you will have fear and doubt because you're looking at yourself. And when you look at yourself and look at the problems. “Wow, this is huge. No, not me. I cannot do it.” Just like my survey trip. After my survey trip in China, I came back, I told my wife. “Wow, this is huge. I cannot do it.” And normally, when you have this fear and doubt, you will hide yourself in your comfort zone. I better don't do because if I do it, what happened? You cannot make it. What happened? People don't trust me. What happened if I got hurt and oh, it's best to be here. Don't move, don't do anything. There's new ministry calling me. No, I don't think I can do it. Maybe I have not enough knowledge to do it. I don't have the power, the ability to do it. Oh, I better stay. Oh, I just be the usher. I'm not saying usher is not right, not good. Don't get me wrong. I'm trying to say that I just stay where we are, where I am, I just stay where I am. And don’t move. Just stay, stay. And after ten years, I'm still same, usher. Twenty years the same and do the same thing over and over again. Don't move. Don't move. And then I thought that,“ Oh yeah, I just stay where I am, and I will not, I don't need to face mountains anymore.” Is that true? Seems like true. I just don't step out of my comfort zone. I don't have to face mountain anymore. I just be in the comfort zone and I'm happy.

On the contrary, when you are in your comfort zone, you're actually depending on yourself. It's actually a self dependence because of the fear and doubt that force you to stay in your comfort zone. And in a comfort zone, you don't need God, right? Especially in today's day and age, anything is on your handphone. You want. You don't have to go out to order to buy food. They're sent to your doorstep. There are a lot of things you can you don't need God. You maybe sick. Two days ago, I just had my teleconsult with the polyclinic doctor. I don't even have to go to polyclinic to see doctor. Teleconsult and one to one attention and I can ask a lot of question and I can write down. So we can, we don't need God if in your comfort zone. And you are depending on yourself, and you will feel, you'll find that in fact, you're not growing, you still stay where you are.

On the other spectrum, you overestimate yourself. You think that I've done that before. I should be able to do it, just like the disciples. The disciples, they cast out many demons before. So this is another one. “No problem. I can do it”. So this is also another form of self dependence. They are depending on themselves, on their ability. They are depending on their resources, their knowledge, experience.

Well, when I was praying to start my new church last year, and I was thinking about, is it possible to do it? Asking myself, can I do it or not? I have a lot of mountains actually, my age. I'm really 62 next year. Then start new, something new. And the day I start, probably I need to look for a successor already. I already 62. And I start thinking, yeah, then Chinese church in this Singapore, the Chinese language is not the popular or not the common, or not the language for young people, they are they're more English speaking, and is it? So I start thinking, but after that I think, “Hey, shouldn't be an issue, because compared to the year that I uprooted my whole family and moved to China to start a new church, it's nothing.” I told myself that it's nothing. I should be able to do it, because I've done that before. I should be able to do it because that is even bigger challenge. My whole family, my girls were only eight years old and nine years old. Oh, okay lah, can lah. I fall into the second form of self dependence. I realize, actually I think my mindset is, yeah, I can depend on my own experience, my resources, my connection, my ability.

Praise the Lord. I realize this is not right. You need to pray for me. I know suddenly we easily move too. This is actually a spiritual pride also. Oh, I have done that before. So these are two manifestation of self dependence. So where do the mountains come from in our lives? And why are they there? First it can it could be. It can be from Satan, the temptation from Satan. And it also can be trials from God. So these are the mountains God allows Satan to place in your journey of faith, and God Himself also want to test your faith by giving you trials. So by understanding this, we have a right perspective about what is mountain. And mountains are things that can help us to exercise our faith, to depend on God to move it. Satan wants to use the mountain to tear you down, but God wants to use the mountain to build you up. So must have the right perspective. What's this? What's this mountain? And why is it there? Because God wants to use it to build your faith in Him. So understanding this, we also want to ask, “Who is the object? Where should we put our faith?” So we know that it's not about the strength of your faith, but the object of your faith.

The Right Object of Faith

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So you have to put your faith in the right object. Of course, here we know the object, the person. The person is Jesus, that we should put our faith in. And if you put your faith in the right object, even mustard seed faith in a great God is sufficient. So we need to put our faith in the right object, who is Jesus. And is Jesus who moved the mountain. Is not us or not even, not even our faith. Is Jesus, is God who moved the mountain. So when we put our faith in Jesus, God will move the mountain. So that is the first point - the problems but link to our next point - the right object, God. So the person to believe. We need to know who is this person that we are believing in. Jesus said, “Bring the boy to me.” So we need to bring our problems, our struggles, our mountain to Jesus. We need to bring to Jesus because He is the one who moved the mountains. We need to have faith that Jesus can heal. Have faith that Jesus can move our mountains. So bring the boy to me. We bring our problem to Jesus. In Hebrews 12, verse 2 say that

Jesus is the founder and perfecter of our faith. (Hebrews 12:2)

Before this verse, verse 1 say that

We are running our race with endurance that set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

So we are, in this world we are running this faith journey. We are on this faith journey that we need to look to Jesus. We need to put our 100% focus on Jesus when we are running this race and when we are on this faith journey. Lately we heard a lot of pastors, seems godly, good pastors, healthy church, and they fall into immorality sin. And to me, it's very sad, very sad to see a pastor fall into this kind of sin.

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I guess the problem also because they did not put 100% focus on Jesus and looking to Jesus and we can run this race with endurance. It’s important to finish well. It’s important. So this journey of faith is important that we want to finish it well so when we see Jesus, (he will say),“He's a good and faithful servant.” I can't imagine if one day, when I finished my race, is when my spiritual was so low. I faced all the mountains. I was defeated by all the mountains. And when I see Jesus, I don't know how can I face our Lord Jesus Christ? I don't want to name the pastor. That’s one of the pastor, pastors. We only discover his immorality sin when he passed on. It’s too late. It's too late. He cannot get right again and hope that can finish well. So I hope we can fix our eyes on Jesus to run our race with endurance.

And here says, “Jesus is the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Founder. He initiated this salvation plan through His life, death and resurrection. Through Him, we have this salvation. Through Him, we can have the reconciliation with God. And through Him, we can have this peace and joy. He is the founder of our faith. And here also say that He is also our Perfecter. Our Perfecter that means He is our great, high priest. He's our mediator. Right now He's on the right hand, He seated at the right hand of the throne of God, interceding for us. Nothing can separate the love of Christ from us. And in John 14, Jesus told the disciple,

I go to prepare the place for you, and I'll come back again to bring you with me. ( John 14:3)

This is His promise. He's the Way, the Truth and the Life. Only through Him we can go to the Father. So He is also the perfecter of our faith, and He is the one who endured the cross for us, bear the shame, bear our sin. Today, through Jesus Christ, He is the person that we can believe, we can put our faith in, our salvation and also the work that He entrusted us.

Knowing Jesus and Overcoming Unbelief

So how do we overcome unbelief? So we ask, “How can we overcome the unbelief and how can I have faith in Jesus?” You need to know
Him. You want to put your faith in something, the object. You need to know the object in order to put your faith in that object,

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especially now we are talking about, I'm putting my life, my eternal life in Jesus. I need to know who is Jesus, right? So you need to know Him in the deeper sense.

There's a story told like this. A couple stayed by the lake, and it was winter and the wife was very sick. The husband need to get the medicine for the wife and he know the doctor. To get the medicine, if you go around the lake, it will take two days. But if you walk across the lake, probably two, three hours. But the winter, the lake is frozen, but he not sure whether the lake can, the lake can sustain his weight. But because of the urgency, so he has to take the risk. So he went down to the lake and walked very carefully and step see whether is it okay? And while walking, walking, and suddenly he feel the whole leg was shaking. And he quickly lay down on the lake and he saw four horses carry a cart passed by him. ‘Vroom’. Do you think this husband will continue to tap and still walk slowly? He will not, right? He stand up and jump and run. Why? Because he has the deeper knowledge of these ice can sustain his weight. He has the dependence, stronger dependence on the ice. Not like before, because you're not sure about how thick is the ice. He has to try and walk slowly and tap, tap, tap. But now, because of the knowledge of these ice, he can have a stronger dependence on the ice.

Likewise, you want to put your faith in Jesus and get rid of your unbelief, you need to know Jesus well. How to know Him? You need to spend time with Him. Spend time with Him means your personal worship, your prayer life, your devotion. Let me ask you, how's your prayer life? Let me ask you, how's your personal worship? So you need to know in order to have this dependence, you need to know Him and that's how you can have this personal relationship with Him. Our church mission statement is “Leading generation into life changing relationship with Jesus Christ.” We need to have this personal relationship, life changing relationship, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, John 15 tells us that,

Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Whoever abides in Jesus, and He will abide in us. (John 15:5a)

So this “abides in Jesus, abide in us” is this talking about this intimate relationship with one another. We need to have this kind of intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, and this verse further say that.

That you can bear much fruits. (John 15:5b)

That's how we bear fruits. It's not the trees. When the vine want to grow the grapes, is not by their own power. I want to grow, I want to grow fruits. No, it's abide in Jesus, that's how we can draw the strength, how we can that allowed Jesus to work in us and through us. That's how we can bear fruits. So know Him, build relationship with Him. That's how you can have this strong dependence on Him. Let’s move to our third point.

The Power of Faith in God

After knowing our problems of our unbelief, we realize that we need to have to put our faith in the right object, and we also know the right object is the Person of Jesus Christ. We need to put our faith in Him. He is the founder, the perfecter of our faith. We can depend on Him. Now, after we put our faith in Jesus, what kind of power that we can have? Back to this verse 20.

Jesus said, “You have faith like grain of mustard seed, you can move mountain and nothing will be impossible for you.”(Matthew 17:20)

In fact, this verse is a favorite verse for “Word of Faith” preacher, those false preacher. Favorite verse for prosperity gospel or favorite verse even for some of us. When we want to get something, we want to have a bigger house, bigger car. I want to have Ferrari. I want to stay in bungalow. I want to. I want to have things of this world that attracted me. So I come to this verse and say, “Oh, I must have this faith. And if my faith strong enough, I can move the mountain. I can get what I want.” That’s what everyone says the same thing. You have to visualize it, believe it, and it comes to existence. It will happen. You claim it. But this is not the right teaching. The power is not about our faith. They are teaching you to put your faith in your faith. It's wrong. The person who moved the mountain is God. It's not your faith. In fact, James says that

if you ask, you ask, you do not receive, because you ask wrongly and spend it on your passions.( James 4:3)

So you had to ask the right thing. You cannot. You had to. You had to. Even to get the power, you need to ask God about His will. So 1 John 5:14, also say that,

And this is the confidence that we have toward him. And if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.(1 John 5:14)

So how can we be impossible to do anything? How can it be nothing is impossible if we ask according to His will? Because He is the one who moved the mountains. He is the one who do the impossible. Is not about our faith, not even our prayer. Our faith is not in our prayer so that it can move things. Our faith is in God, and we know that once we put our faith in God, and nothing is impossible, because God is the one who moved the mountains. So back to this verse. In our faith journey, we will face different mountains like I shared just now. And when I shared the story about I went to survey the churches in China, I came back discouraged, lost. I thank God my wife May, encouraged me. Ask me to stay focused, ask me to press on, ask me not to look at myself. Look to God. And that's how I moved from my self dependence to depend on Him.

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And we moved to China, mid of 2004, and we step out of our comfort zone, and that's where we can experience Him. That's where we can exercise our faith on Him, in Him. But it doesn't mean that there will be smooth sailing. Also there's ups and downs. That's where I learn how to depend on Him more and more and more. So it's a journey. I'm thankful that I moved to China some 20 years ago, and it was indeed a milestone for my faith journey. I learned how to depend on Him. I made a lot of mistakes. By the grace of God, I have people around me to help me. I have Pastor Choo guide me. I have people like you all pray for me. So I managed to overcome mountains mountains, and learn how to depend on Him more and more. I want to encourage you to step out of your comfort zone. If you stay in your comfort zone, five years later still the same. Ten years later still the same. You're not growing, you're not bearing fruit. So you need to step out of your comfort zone. Face your fear because God will empower you if you put the faith in Him.

Embarking on a New Faith Journey

This is my core team. We are moving out two weeks later. Yeah, like the other day I said, we “she bu de” (hate to part with). We are quite sad to move out of this church because this is like I grew up in this church. Many of them, they are so happy to be in this church. But we decided to step out of our comfort zone. We decided to embark on our next phase of our faith journey.

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We know that there'll be challenges. We know that there are lot of mountains before us. That's why we need your prayer. We need you to pray for us to know how to know this group of people. This group of people, is quite foreign to most of us. We are reaching out to the Chinese speaking community, mainly immigrants outside Singapore. It's quite foreign to most of us. We may not know them well. We know we want to know them so that we can know how to love them, so that we can build the relationship with them and point them to Jesus. Pray for the souls. Pray that we can bring more souls into God's kingdom. Pray that we can truly build a gospel centered church and preach the gospel and prioritize the gospel in all our ministries. Importantly, pray that we will put our faith in our Almighty God to do
His great and mighty work. Let's pray.

Father, thank you again. Thank you for how you work in our lives, amazingly, wonderfully individually. And we also thank you for, because of your love and grace, that we can come to the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And He is the founder and perfecter of our faith that we can put our faith in. Lord, pray that you help us to have this courage to step out of our comfort zone, even though we may face trials, temptations, spiritual warfare, but we know that you are the Almighty God that we can put our faith in you and you can move mountains. And help us, help us to get rid of our unbelief. And for those who are still seeking heaven, put their faith in you for salvation. Pray that today's message, the fellowship with the saints and the songs that we sing, we can truly see your grace and your goodness. And when we are yet sinner, you send your Son to this world to die for us. That's how you show your love and your grace. We are so unworthy, yet you willing to do this for us and help those people who are still seeking and will truly have the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and they put their faith in him to have salvation and to start their journey of faith. Thank you. Thank you for your Word. Thank you for your Son. Thank you for your Spirit. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.