Let’s talk today on the topic of feeding your faith.

Feeding your faith. Let me just begin by telling you that one day early in the morning years ago, I was sitting in my office before sunrise. Hadn’t been able to sleep. Got up early. I was feeling discouraged about our church. I was disappointed by circumstances. I was I felt depleted, exhausted, and I was asking God to help me have faith to move forward.

And without actually thinking about what I was doing, I wrote the word faith vertically down the left side of the paper. Just grabbed a piece of paper and I wrote it like scribble and wasn’t really anticipating or thinking, but there it was, the word faith. And then the next thing I found myself doing was that within a few brief minutes I wrote what I have since then called the faith acronym.

I felt God’s presence and I felt God’s strength as I started to read what I had written.

It was like God instructed me just to do these five things. And here’s what those five things are.

Focus on the positive. Affirm yourself.

How many of you know sometimes there’s nobody else to encourage you? You have to encourage yourself.

Imagine God doing something good.

Trust God in everything and hope for the best.

Since that time, I’ve taught this to our church ever since that day.

I’ve taught it in conferences and events around the world. It appears in not just one, but several of my books. It’s a repetitious practice. Not too long ago, my daughter Jodie referred to it and spoke on it here on our platform.

And some of you may not understand this, but there are some things when you’re leading people in a in a way that you really want to help people. You’re not just you’re not just doing a sermon. You’re you just want to help equip people.

There are some things that come along that never get old and have to often be repeated to ourselves. You know, you don’t you don’t find somebody who’s a bodybuilder who You go to the gym and and they they’re they’re not doing exercises that they did 10 years ago. They’re still doing exercises that they did then.

They’re still they’re still pumping weights or they’re still running or they’re they just do it day after day.

That’s how you get strong and that’s how you get in shape. That’s how you stay in shape is repetition. And so something that I want to say to you today before we go into this teaching is that I became aware on that morning that faith doesn’t grow accidentally. Faith grows intentionally.

And every day you and I scroll through feeds, through news feeds, social feeds, video feeds, information feeds, but have you ever thought about a faith feed?

And so my question to you today is, are you feeding your faith?

I mean, you feed your body, you feed your children, pet owners feed your pets, your fish, your birds, your plants. Whatever you feed grows.

You feed everything that’s alive that you want to stay alive. Yes.

And the same is true of our inner being, of our inner person. Whatever you feed grows.

Fear grows when you feed it. Doubt grows when you feed it.

Anxiety grows when you feed it.

And faith grows when you feed it.

So again, faith doesn’t grow accidentally. Faith grows intentionally.

And I’m talking to some of you today who your your faith hasn’t grown.

Your faith has been stuck, stagnant, right where it is.

And I’m going to ask you to not underrate what I’m going to share with you today as a practice, something to put into practice into your own life.

And and watch how when you practice this, when you do this, watch how your faith will begin to grow. Your faith is like a muscle.

You don’t you don’t work it, you don’t exercise it, you don’t fuel it, it weakens.

But when you feed it, and you exercise it, it grows. Are you with me?

I believe some of your lives are going to be changed today. Now, I know many of you know this well. Many of you who have been in our church a long time, you have this memorized. You have the faith acronym memorized.

But let’s just believe today that this will refresh these truths over the next few minutes. Is that okay?

Will you just like open your heart and say, “Come on, bring it on. Remind me, God.”

Others of you who are here today have never heard this before. Others have heard it but haven’t utilized it. So if it’s your first time or you know or you’ve you’ve heard this and said it maybe memorized it, let’s just dive into it together and and and I’ll tell you what’s going to happen over the next few minutes as I even talk about it. Faith is going to grow in the room.

That’s how this works. Okay? When I use these verb this verbiage and I talk about it, faith will grow in the heart of every receptive person. But the beauty is is that I’m handing you a tool and you don’t have to hear me say it every day. You can use this in in your own life. So, are you ready? The first one is F. F stands for focus on the positive. Say it with me. Focus on the positive. Say it again. Focus on the positive. Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things.

Think about these things. Whatever is true, focus on it.

Whatever is noble, focus on it. Whatever is admirable, focus on it. Whatever is excellent, focus on it. If there is something in your life that is praiseworthy, focus on it.

Focus on the positive.

Now, you might say, “Well, it’s not possible, Pastor Kevin, for me to change, you know, the way I already think.

I I’m I’m the way I am because my dad, my uncle, I grew up around this.

The glass is always half empty.

I’m I’m always going to like go that direction.

Some of you here, you you might even take pride in it. You’re you’re prideful. You’re like, “Well, I find problems. I I find and know all the problems.” What I want to tell you today is that faith doesn’t grow in dwelling on the problems.

And research shows us that no matter what your age is, the brain is capable of changing. Now, this is just in the last 20 years that science has actually acknowledged and admitted this through the study of the human brain that there are grooves that are in our brain from things we habitually think about or think. it develops pathways. Okay. So, neurologists have now said, “Okay, but what can also happen is that you can you you can create a new pathway. You can jump off old pathways.” Isn’t that fun?

And you can create a new pathway if you will habitually remind yourself to think in a different and better way.

So when we say, “Well, I can’t,” that’s not true. You can you can redirect your thoughts and you can form new pathways in your brain that will help you to focus on the positive.

It’ll help you.

And when you do, faith has a place in your life. Faith has a space in your mind. Example in the Old Testament is when the spies were sent out to spy out the promised land. If you remember, there were there were 12 spies that went out and 10 of them saw giants and two saw God.

They saw the land that they could go possess. Yeah, they saw God’s promise and that he was big enough to take them there. And the other 10 just got stuck on adversity.

They got stuck on the problem. They got stuck on what was wrong and what how why this can’t happen.

Think about what I’m telling you. Same land, same enemies, same obstacles, different focus. Right.

The 10 that saw the giants never got to the promised land.

The two that saw God in the land and in their future, they went there and they live there and they raised their children there and they started a new legacy there. Everybody say, “Focus on the positive.” Focus on the positive. Secondly, affirm yourself.

Affirm yourself.

Psalm 103:1 the psalmist says this. He says, “Praise the Lord, oh my soul.

All my inmost being, all that is within me, praise his holy name.”

Now, I want you to look at this and I want you to hear what I’m about to tell you.

This can change this can change your ideas about about affirmation.

David is not talking to God. He’s not talking to us.

He’s talking to himself.

Bless the Lord or praise the Lord, oh my soul, everything within me. He’s talking to himself.

That’s why David was such a praiser.

He was a warring worshipper, a worshipping warrior.

He told himself, he commanded himself.

He affirmed who he was with his words and he talked to himself and said, “Do this self.

Do this.” See, everyone talks to themselves.

But unfortunately most of our our self-talk is negative in nature.

What is called our inner critic.

The negative self-talk feeds our doubts. It feeds our fears. It causes those things to grow within us.

And and affirming yourself is important for many reasons, but let me just name a couple.

You’re you’re you’re listening to yourself all day.

There’s chatter going on and you are your own audience.

The loudest voice in your life is usually your own.

And the result is that your life and your future follows your self-talk.

And I want to encourage you today, stop agreeing with your fears.

When when fear speaks, stop replace your your negative, replace your fear and start agreeing with God in your mind. When fears say this can’t be, this can’t happen, I can’t I can’t handle this. When fears start or or when when when complaining starts in your mind, flip it.

When you’re tempted to say, you know, my life is horrible. This is terrible. You don’t know what I’m going through. Flip it and say, God is so good to me.

Right up here. God is so good. And say it out of your mouth. That’ll help you like God is so good to me. I’m not going to get sucked into something that is defeating me. I’m going to affirm myself.

I’m going to be strong in the Lord in the power of his might. When you feel like you can’t win, start telling yourself, “No weapon formed against me is ever going to prosper in my life. God is with me. God is for me.” You flip the verbiage and you affirm yourself. The Apostle Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now, I would dare to believe that he wasn’t always saying that that there were other thoughts even on on the day he said that and wrote that in scripture. He might have actually thought like, “I can’t do this.” But instead of instead of talking himself weak, he said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Starts in his mind, comes out his mouth. Scripture says this. It says, “Let the weak say I’m strong.”

It doesn’t say, “Let the weak admit it.”

Right?

I have to say this stuff because I hear from people Christians all the time who they won’t embrace this. They think, “Oh, this is just new modern psycho.”

No, this is old Bible teaching out of the word of God.

This is not just some sort of fluffy thing. This is what we do as a believers to overcome doubt and fear and and negativity in our life is that the weak have to not not just some people like I’m just being honest. I’m just being honest. Well, go on with your honest negativity and watch where it puts you.

Watch where you end up.

There’s a there’s a you know the truth is that life is hard and God is good, right? So there’s nothing wrong with you and I saying life is hard as long as we’re not getting sucked into that and forgetting that God is good.

See which one are you going to focus on?

Life is hard. Everybody want to say that. Say life is hard. Life is hard.

I get it. I know it’s called. And and people who have actually gone back, if you go back historically and you look at those who have tried to capture the reality of these two truths standing by each other, it’s called the Theodicy. T H E O D I C Y. You can look it up, study it. It’s called, there’s a name for it, the Theodicy. What is the Theodicy? It is the realization by people much smarter than you and I that two truths stand side by side. One of them is life is hard. True.

True. The other one is God is good. True.

True. For everything that you found to be hard in life, if you’ll just look for it, you’ll see things that are good in life. You you’ll see blessings in your life.

You’ll see God’s goodness and things that you know have happened to you and experiences you’ve had. It’s just which one are you going to lean into?

I would encourage you today, focus on the positive and affirm yourself. Amen.

Amen. Come on. Am I helping anybody today?

Thirdly, imagine God doing something good. Imagine God doing something good.

Abraham in scripture is called the father of our faith. And he lived in a time whenever it was a huge blessing to be able to father many children.

So in that day, it equated to an incredibly blessed and prosperous future. the more children that you had.

God told Abraham that his children would be great in number, powerful in the earth.

But Abraham’s wife Sarah was barren, could not have children. So it seemed impossible.

While Sarah was barren, God sent Abraham out for a walk one night and he said, “You see the stars in the sky?” Yep. I see them, God. You see how many there are? Yep. So it will be with your children on the on the sand one day in Judea. God told him, “Look down at the sand. You see all those little grains of sand?” Yes. Yes, sir. I do. All those grains of sand that that’s your future.

Nations are going to be born from you.

Helping Abraham imagine is what he was doing.

The bigness and the greatness of his future. He was saying, “Look at the stars. Look at the sand.

And imagine, I know your wife is barren.

I I know that circumstances don’t look like this is ever going to happen for you. Trust me, I’m with you. I’m going to bless you greatly. Your name is going to be great in the nation. See, God wanted Abraham to see his story playing out differently than the circumstances.

And not only did God promise his promise come true in the natural, but if you add to that all the religions of the world who see Abraham as the father of their faith today, that number is so high that sand and stars was no exaggeration.

And my point is that God will often ask you to believe for something before he gives you something.

Amen.

And we’re all living our own stories, by the way.

And we’ve been given the opportunity to choose who we are in our stories. And I, this is a little bit of a warning, but if you imagine yourself as a victim of circumstances, you will be a victim of circumstances.

If you imagine yourself as a victor, an overcomer, a recipient of God’s grace, power, blessing, no matter what else is going on, circumstances are bad, but if you imagine yourself as an overcomer, victory, blessed. When you think of yourself like that, my future is like that, you become that.

What story are you telling yourself? What story are you telling yourself?

What role are you picking up and identifying with because this is powerful stuff and you can’t feed your faith if you are imagining the worst and imagining bad things and you’re imagining yourself to be something that God says you’re not.

Am I helping you?

See, fear uses imagination like you know like what if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if the doctor’s right? What if things get worse?

Faith also imagines God at work in all things to heal, to restore.

Turn to your neighbor and tell them, “Feed your faith. Feed your faith.

Feed your faith.” Come on, tell somebody, “Feed your faith.” Feed your faith.

Point to yourself. Say, “Feed your faith.” Feed your faith.

Okay. T stands for trust God in everything. Amen.

Bible says in Proverbs 3, “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart.

Lean not on your own understanding.” And in all of your ways acknowledge.

Anybody want to grow your faith today?

Come on. Anybody want to increase in faith today? Some Some of you might be going through a really tough time today.

And this word is for you. You might be walking through a valley of discouragement right now. Something like I was dealing with on that morning long ago.

I don’t know where you’re at. I don’t know what you’re going through. But I just want to encourage you that trusting God, trusting God will never take you down the wrong path. Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

This is what faith is all about.

Allowing God to be your guide.

And and to do that, you got to trust him. God can’t lead where you won’t follow.

Giving your tithe and your offering doesn’t make sense in the natural.

giving it and expecting blessing I should say doesn’t make sense because to us when you give something away you have less but in God’s economy when you give it comes back to you give and it shall be given unto you good measure pressed down shaken together run do you trust God that’s the that’s the real question not about tithing it’s about trusting God amen Amen.

And H stands for hope for the best.

Scripture says in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.”

The word hope in scripture simply means the expectation of good.

And the reason I like to point that out is because in the modern world that we live in today uh the the the word hope it is more equated to wishful thinking.

So hope scripturally is not about wishful thinking. It’s about expectation.

And you might say, well, what’s the difference? Well, the difference.

Think of a couple who are saying, “We’re hoping to have a baby.” versus a couple who would say, “We’re expecting to have a baby.” When you’re expecting to have a baby, you go out and you buy baby beds.

And you get rooms ready. Amen. Because there’s an expectation that we’re expecting to get pregnant. We’re expecting to have children.

There’s so many great scriptures in the word that we can God’s word that we can just take and utilize.

Jeremiah 29:11 is an example of that. I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.

Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.

Plans to give you a hope and a future.

I want to encourage you today. Feed your faith by expecting words like that to be true in your life.

Like feed your faith by expecting the best in your life and in your future.

Amen. Get on the faith train. Don’t get on the fear train.

Don’t get on the complaining train. Get on the faith train.

Life is a whole lot better when you walk by faith and not by sight.

Feed your faith. Come on, sir. Feed your faith.

Come on, ma’am. Feed your faith.

All who are in a valley right now, look up. Look up. Feed your faith.

Anticipate and imagine walking out of that valley.

Imagine yourself like experiencing new and better things and blessed things in your life.

If life has been hard and rough, you can either dwell on that and think about that and rehearse it and nurse it and curse it or you can start expecting, I’m coming out of this place. It’s been a dark season. And I’ve learned some things. But God is good. He’s always good. He will forever be good. Life is hard, but God is good.

Feed your faith. Come on. Feed your faith.

A man, a woman, a young person, young adult, if you don’t know this, I’m challenging everybody again today. If you don’t know this acronym, will you memorize it? Will you write it down right now? Will you take it home? Will you start right now? Focus on the positive. Affirm yourself. Imagine God doing something good. Trust God in everything. Hope for the best. Focus on the P. Now, a lot of people you get hung up on the order that it comes in. But we we all know it’s faith. Like sometimes I just I have to I just have to rush down to Imagine God doing something good right now, Kevin. Imagine God doing something good right now. This doesn’t look good, but imagine God doing something good. God’s gonna do something good. God’s gonna do something good.

This happened to me. This happened to me this week. Like there’s an area of my life where I was, you know, just walking by faith and trusting God and imagining God’s got this. God’s doing good. And I got word this week like that swung me right back back into the reality that what I’ve imagined is coming to pass.

God doing a new thing. and God doing something good in this area of our life.

I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been trusting God. Amen.

Focus on If your marriage is in trouble today, this will help you.

I said this will help you. You get down into the weeds with each other. You get down into the weeds about each other.

You’re like picking on one another and talking negative to one another and you’re focused on the negativity. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Focus on the positive. Affirm yourself. Imagine God doing something good. Trust God in everything. And come on. Hope for the best. Feed your faith today. I said feed your faith today.

Come on. I said, “Feed your faith today.

Feed your faith.” Come on, man of God. Feed your faith.

Come on, young adults. Feed your faith.

Let’s be champions of faith. Let’s be people of faith. Amen.

You know, in a day like, just keep standing. If you’re not standing at other locations, please stand with us.

And uh I know we all face different scenarios and and I like to sometimes just think about you know we got marriage challenges going on, we got financial challenges going on. We’ve got young adults. You don’t have direction for your life. You’re all like trying to figure out like what what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What’s the will of God for my life? And and what what am I going to do? Like sometimes we get so tense about stuff like where how am I going to find a job? and we just get down in that hole. I remember my daughter, she was she had several offers, Jody did for uh play basketball at different universities, scholarships across the country, and she was, you know, trying to decide which one. And coaches were calling and getting her on the phone and telling them why the other school would not be good for her, but their school would be good for her. One night, like one night I she was down in our kitchen and it was later at night and I walked in and and uh she’s like she’s like, “Dad, just like I wish God would just tell me what the will of God is. What the will what is the will of God for for me? Like what where do I go?

I don’t know. I want God to tell.” And and sometimes we just get anxiety. Come on. You know what I’m saying? We get anxiety about things. And I I looked over at her uh in the kitchen and I said, “Thus sayeth the Lord, thou shalt not wander far from thy father’s house.

Stay close to him.”

Now she slammed her hand down, you know, and come on, Dad. I’m serious. I said, “I am, too. Lighten up. The Lord is with us. God is guiding us. God is for us.

Come on. Don’t be so filled with anxiety. Come on. The Lord is ordering our steps. He’s making a way.

He’s opening up a door.

And that’s what happened for her. That’s what happened for us. I got to see most of her games up at Western Washington University. Praise God.

And that schooling was paid for. Praise God.

I’m thankful to this day. Come on. The Lord is good. Let’s celebrate him one more time. Clap our hands. Amen.

Amen. Heads bowed, eyes closed. I want to invite you today if you are at one of our locations or watching us online and you have not yet given your life to the Lord. You’ve not yet crossed over into that place where you say, “Jesus, I want you to be the Lord. I want you to be the leader of my life.” I want to give you an opportunity today.

This is the the best decision, best decision, the best choice that you can ever make this side of heaven. And I know there are people today, you’re not here by accident. You need a new beginning. You need a fresh start in your life. You want to come back to God.

Whatever it might be, will you raise your hand around the rooms that you’re in today? We’ve been praying for you this week. We’ve been asking God for this moment of surrender for people. We don’t we don’t even know your name, but God knows who you are. Good. God bless you. Just raise your hand. Today is my day for a new beginning. Today is my day. I want to pray with you. Good. Hands are going up here.

Amen. In this room and around the room and God sees every hand that’s up. Let’s all say this together. Pray it out loud.

Say, “Lord Jesus, Jesus, welcome to my world. Welcome to my world. Forgive me of all my sin. Come into my heart.

Come into my life. And make me a new person. I receive you today.

I receive as the leader as the leader and the Lord.

And the Lord of my life. Thank you for my salvation.

Thank you for Come on, say it again. Thank you for my salvation.

Thank you for my Thank you for forgiveness.

Thank you for Thank you for a new beginning. Thank you for I receive it today.

I receive it in Jesus name.

And let’s celebrate salvations in the house today.