December 17, 2024 • 22 mins
In this inspiring episode of the Radio Coffee House, Clint Armitage explores the profound concept of faith, revealing that even non-believers possess it. Broadcasting from Solvang/Lompoc, California, Clint delves into the essence of faith, emphasizing its foundational role in both believers' and non-believers' lives. Through the lens of Hebrews 11:1, Clint defines faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, illustrating how it underpins every aspect of our existence.
Clint shares compelling biblical examples, such as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's unwavering faith in the face of death, and Abraham's trust in God's plan, highlighting how true faith requires surrendering control and trusting in divine outcomes. He elaborates on the necessity of faith in daily life, using relatable scenarios like trusting the process of filling a prescription to demonstrate how faith is an inherent part of human experience.
Clint challenges listeners to consider the difference between living with expectancy versus expectation, encouraging a mindset of openness to God's will. By letting go of personal expectations and embracing God's outcomes, believers can experience true freedom and purpose. Clint's message is a powerful call to deepen our faith, trust God fully, and witness the incredible things He can accomplish through us.
Tune in to this episode of the Radio Coffee House to discover how faith is a universal foundation, transcending beliefs and guiding us towards a life aligned with God's purpose. Learn how to build a faith that empowers you to live with confidence and joy, trusting in God's perfect plan.
-----
00:00 - Radio Coffee House Intro
02:00 - Clint discusses the importance of waiting for God's guidance
05:30 - Introduction to the topic: Faith, even non-believers have it
10:15 - The faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
15:45 - Faith in everyday life: The prescription analogy
20:30 - Living with expectancy vs. expectation
25:00 - Hebrews 11 and the Hall of Faith
30:45 - Conclusion and encouragement to live by faith
-----
🗣️ Quotes from Clint Armitage
"Faith is the foundation of life, whether you're a believer or not."
"Live your life with expectancy, but not expectation."
"True faith in God means surrendering all outcomes to Him."
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Clint Armitage (00:01):
Welcome, um, to another edition of the Radio Coffeeh House
show, where Jesus meets coffee meets talk
radio. And the next one starts right
now.
Hey, how's it going, everybody? Clint Armitage with the Radio Coffee
House. I hope you are doing
super, super fine during this, uh, wonderful
(00:23):
Christmas season. And I wanted to do another
episode here. And so if you don't know already,
I kind of do episodes only when the Lord leads. If
he doesn't lead me, then I don't do it. Because I wait
on him to give me information before I try to
pass anything on. Because I don't want it to be my wisdom,
I don't want it to be my words, I don't want it to be my
(00:44):
topics. Because that really doesn't help anybody. Right?
Because it's not transcending only the Lord and his
word and his wisdom and his ways is
transcending. That's the only way it will touch other
people's life is if God is in
it. And so that's kind of how it works around here at the Radio
Coffee House. And so if you do listen to this
podcast, you know that we haven't done an
(01:06):
episode in a couple of months here. And that's because the Lord hasn't
led me to any topic or to any type
of, uh, information for me to download
and then pass on. Well, recently
he did give me something. I was doing a
devotional, and then all of a sudden these words
came, and then I felt like, oh, my gosh, I need to do the
podcast now. And so what I'm going to be doing is
(01:29):
transferring what I did for that devotional
ono the podcast for you to listen to. So anyways,
thanks for listening and staying true to the podcast and
coming back. And all you have to do really is hit the
notification button on wherever you
listen to us, make sure that notification and that
bell and everything is clicked so that you can get
notified when we have new shows as they come out.
(01:51):
Because I will only do shows as long as the
Lord leads. And then also the other thing is, is
actually he gave me a place to go. So, like, you
know, this is the roadshow, right? Well, today I'm going to
be doing the podcast CA from Solvving, California.
Technically, I'm in Lompok, California, but I'll be
heading to Solving later today because the Lord has led me to do
something for some people in Solving during this
(02:14):
wonderful Christmas season. I know it's gonna beautiful out there and
it's gonna be great. And I don't know what the Lord's go goingna do, but I'm just
gonna follow him and do what he wants me to do as
he leads. Okay, so this episode is
called Faith Even Non
Believers have It. And so let's just
jump right into it.
(02:35):
All right, what's up, everybody? Clint Armitage, and I'm back again for
another episode. And this episode is
entitled Faith Even Non Believers
have It. So if you listen to the intro, I gave you
kind of the intel on what has been going on for the last couple of
months and how the Lord leads to do these
podcasts and where I'm going to do them and how I'm going to do
(02:55):
them, and the topic and what I'm going to say. And this
came along from a devotional I had mentioned in the intro. It came
along from a devotional, and I felt like the Lord said, hey, do a
podcast with it. So he brought me to Solane,
California, or Lomp Pot, California to do this
episode. And so we're going to get right into it. And it's called
Faith. Even non Believers have it. So
(03:15):
faith is this. It's believing when I don't
see and obeying when I don't agree
or understand. Faith is also this.
It's having a surety and a hope in
God, even though you can't quite
tangibly grasp it, right? Because you can't see that far
ahead. You can't tangibly hold it, you can't measure
(03:35):
it. And so that's what faith is.
Okay? Hebrews 11, verse one says this. It
says, now, faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen. And that's exactly
what it is, the substance for things hoped for.
Because we hope in God, we hope
that his plan comes to fruition. The things that he's
(03:58):
told us to do and the things that he told us that
will happen, we have to hope for
in that. That's the substance. And then
there's evidence that we cannot see, right?
Evidence of things that are not
seen. That is faith. And
so faith is also this. It's a foundational
truth of living for
(04:20):
everyone in life. Believer or a nonbe believer.
Oay. For a believer, it's faith in
God and trusting God's plan, God's ways,
God's wisdom and God's power and
authority and his love for us, that
things will happen as he says it's going to happen, whether it's in the
Bible or He told us personally, we have
faith in it. And you know what comes to mind
(04:42):
of real faith for Believers, anyway, is the
faith of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And if you
remember in the book of Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar, the
king built this whole statue to himself, this 30
foot statue to himself. And he said, hey, everybody in land's gonna bow
to it. And then three guys didn't bow. And it was the
Jewish captives. And now they're not teenagers anymore.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abediggo. But they don't bow
(05:05):
down to the statue. And of course they get ratted out. And they say,
hey, King, look, these guys didn't bow down. So he brings them up and he says,
hey, you guys, you need to bow down. I'm gonna give you one more chance. If
you don't, you'renna get thrown in the fire. They
responded in a way that shows
true faith of a believer because they
couldn't tangibly grasp that they were going to get out
of getting thrown into the fire of dying in a few
(05:28):
minutes, like it looked like they were going toa die. The king had the power
to kill them, and his plan was to throw them in the
furnace. They were to burn to death, this horrible
death. But they had faith. They had real faith.
And they said, hey, look, King, we're not gonna, we're not gonna bow down
to you. We know that our God's gonna save us. And
this is where the real faith comes in. Because they say, after that, after
(05:48):
they say, hey, God's gonna save us, they said this. But
even if he doesn't, we're notnna bow down to
you see, Meaning they had faith.
No matter if God protected them from the fire
or allowed them to be burned, they still had
the faith that God was a supreme and they were
never going to bow down to anyone else but
(06:09):
God, that we were not going to worship anyone else but
God. That is faith. That is real
faith. When it's tested, when it's tested to the point of
death. That's the kind of faith we need to have as believers. That's
the foundational, concrete faith that
we need to live by. That is living
life to the fullest in terms of having
faith in God, no matter what the outcome. Because you
(06:31):
trust God with the outcome, not yourself, not your own
power, not your strength. You don't trust in anybody else.
You only trust in God. That's what real faith
is. So that got brought to my mind when I was putting
this together. And then again, that's for believers, even
during struggles and trials and
these heartaches and these Times where it looks like,
oh my gosh, we're gonna die because of our faith. Now
(06:54):
that is real faith. Because they'they put
it all in God's hands. They let go of
control.
Now when we're talking about faith in general, and even for
non believers, everybody has faith. You have to
have faith. You can't live as a human being, a life
on earth without having faith. And then
atheists will say, well, no, not really. You can live without faith. I don't
(07:15):
have faith in anything. What they don't realize is, yes
you do. Even if you're a non believer, you have faith. You
have faith in something. You put faith in
somebody, someone, something, some
idea. If you're a, um, non believer, you do have faith. Um,
non believers still have faith. They
just have faith in the wrong things or they don't understand where
(07:35):
they should be putting their faith. Because if they put their faith
in God, the strength of their faith would be unbelievable. And
then they would see God open up to them because of
their faith. It all starts with faith. That's the
foundation. Because think about it. For non believers, achievements and
goals cannot be accomplished without first
believing it can happen. You would never apply for a job if
(07:55):
you didn't think there's a possibility of receiving that
job. The only way you would apply for that job is if you
believe you had faith, some type of faith, even a
mustard seed of faith, a little bit of faith to
make you believe, hey, I can get that job. That's the only reason
why you'd apply. That would d be the foundation of your application.
You would not apply if you knew, hey, I'm not going to get it. So
(08:15):
achievements and goals cannot be accomplished without
first believing. It can happen. So the concept of
faith is foundational. It's literally
foundation for life, you know, contrary to what the world
believes. Like I said, people think like, oh, uh, I don't have
faith. But if you think about it, it's opposite of
what people think. So people think, hey, I have to
see to believe. But really the foundation
(08:38):
really is believing without seeing. Like I said, you can't
achieve anything. You can't have any goals without believing
first before you see it. Because before it becomes
a reality, you have to believe it's going to happen. Otherwise you
won't move towards it. You have to believe it first in order to
achieve and to have a goal. And non believeverss have
achievements and they have goals that they think
(08:58):
about that they want to do. So they believe it can happen.
And that right there is Called faith. You
can't live without faith. It's impossible. It's literally
impossible. So we're going to talk about a couple things here
to show you in real life how it can
happen and how faith is involved in everything, the
foundation of everything for believers and non
(09:19):
believers.
Okay? So let's say you have a
prescription. You have to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy because your
doctor gave you a prescription for some type of ailment or
anything. Think about this. It's the first time you've ever taken
this pill. It's the first time you've gotten this prescription and you've
never taken it before. Well, if you think about how much
faith it takes in order to take a pill that
(09:39):
you've never had before, that your body has never
tested before, that takes a lot of faith,
okay? A tremendous amount of faith. Because first you
have to believe that the doctor knows what they're doing, okay? That's the first
thing you, you got to know that it's a good doctor. You believe in them. You
have faith in them that they went to medical school, that they
know what they're talking about, okay? That's the faith that you
initially have to have right there. Then you have to have
(10:02):
faith that the doctor prescribed the correct
medication. What if they didn't? Well, you don't
really test that out, do you? No, you actually have faith
that the doctor knows what they're doing and prescribe the correct
medication. Then you have to have faith that they wrote it
down correctly. Right? They have to write it down
correctly in order for it to move on in the
process. Okay? So you have to have faith that they wrote it down correctly.
(10:24):
Then you have to have faith that they gave the correct
info to the nurse or the medical assistant or
whoever transferred that information to the pharmacy. Because
you know how bad, uh, doctors signatures and writing is.
When you look at a prescription, you're like, what does that even say? So
it has to be transcribed by a medical assistant or a nurse
or something before it goes to the pharmacy. And then you have to believe
(10:45):
that it was correctly transcribed by the medical
assistant or the nurse and sent over over correctly to the
pharmacy. And then from there you have to have faith because
you have to believe that the pharmacist read
the prescription correctly. They had to have read it
correctly, okay? So it takes faith that that happens.
And then next you have to have faith that the
pharmacist filled the bottle with the correct
(11:07):
prescription, because sometimes they fill it with the wrong
prescription. But you don't know that you just grab the pill
box or pill bottle and then you take it. You
take your pill. But what if in a long
chain of these events, that the, uh, pharmacist filled the
bottle with the incorrect prescription? That's damaging.
That's injurus, right? That could be deadly.
(11:27):
But you had faith that that part of the chain
was completed correctly by the pharmacist. They filled the
bottle with the correct medication. And then you have
to have faith that the bottle was labeled correctly
before you even picked it up. Right? Because it could get mislabeled and
it could be given to the wrong person. So think about all these
steps that have to happen and how much faith you have to have in
(11:47):
the system, in the process, in things that aren't
living. But it's a process you have to have faith in,
to work correctly in order for you not to be injured
and for you to feel better from your ailment while you're taking this
prescription pill. Because I guarantee most everyone who's
listening to this podcast has gotten a prescription for the first time. They have
never took out a chemistry test and tested their
(12:08):
prescription to make sure it was what the doctor had
originally prescribed in the first place. Nobody does that. Why?
Because we have faith that the system works. We have faith in
our doctors, we have faith in our pharmacists, we have faith in our nurses,
our medical assistance, the information that's transferred
and transcribed. We have faith. We have to place
faith in order for it to work correctly. And we take the
(12:28):
pill as prescribed. We don't ask the question. We just take the pill. Once
we've got the bottle in our hand, we've paid for the prescription, and
now it's time to take the medication. We take it, we don't
test it. We take it because we had faith for the whole
process. That's an incred incredible amount of faith in
something that isn't God. But if you look behind
that, it truly is God, because God made sure
(12:49):
that everything worked properly. And that's for believers,
for non believers. You've got to understand, you put faith in
something, you put faith in a process. You put. You
put faith in people, you put faith in things that you don't really
realize that you're putting faith in. But this is, this
is where you get to start to see that. That faith is a
foundation. It's a foundation to life, okay? It's
(13:09):
what turns things into
more than what they are. Because you start breaking it down. You
start looking at it going, wow, this is more than me Just
taking a pill. I had to have faith in something, faith in
something huge that I don't even know about. Look at all these things I had to have faith
in. Well, faith is a foundation, okay? And
for believers, it turns your calling
from what you think can happen into a reality.
(13:31):
Because you have faith that God has called you to it,
or you have faith that you think it can happen. You
believe it enough, even if it's a mustard seed size, you
believe it enough that it can happen, that you start moving
towards it. That's what faith is. Faith is the
beginning of it all. Once you have faith, you can have that. That's
the building block, the foundational building block that you can build
(13:51):
onto to achieve your goals and achieve your calling
and achieve these things that God has called you to do. That's for the
believer and for the non believer. You still have faith because you're still
moving towards the things that you want, the desires of your
heart. That's faith. So I want to encourage you to start
considering faith in God because then you'll start to see
your purpose. That's where your purpose comes in. That's where
(14:12):
your calling comes in. It's more than just making money or
doing these things that you like to do.
Now, once you have a purpose, once you have a direction, once you
have God on your side that you can trust him, that
his plan will, uh, always work and it will always be the best for
you, then you can start to have faith the size of
a mountain versus a mustard seed.
Tremendous faith in doing what you were called to
(14:33):
do, what you are made on this earth to do. Because that's one of the
questions. What am I on this earth for? Well, once you have
faith in God and He tells you what you're on this earth
for, then you can start living with purpose. And that's
the difference between believers and non believers. See, faith
in God requires that you surrender
the outcomes and expectations. That's right.
(14:53):
That's the big difference. When you trust God for everything and
your faith is in Him. The foundation of your faith is
in Him. You have to give up everything. It
requires you to surrender all the outcomes and
all your expectations to Him. Okay. Ah, you have to give up
total control. And that right there is the struggle.
Because even for believers, it's difficult to let go of everything.
(15:14):
We compartmentalize, we're hurt in this area, so we hold on
to it. We don't want to expose ourselves or to be vulnerable. Believers,
non believeverss, it doesn't matter. We compartmentalize things because
we're sensitive to them and we think, oh, if I let go control
of this, I'm gonna get hurt or it's not going to go my way. We have
certain expectations, and that's where faith in God
is different. It's surrendering every. It's difficult, but
(15:35):
it can be done. And when we do that, we are, uh, free.
We're literally free to just do whatever the Lord
leads, no matter what the outcome. Because we're not focused on
the outcome necessarily. We're not focused on the goal
necessarily. We're focused on being led and the Lord will
lead us. That's the faith that we have to have.
We say stuff like, let go and let God, right? But do we
(15:55):
really let go fully of certain things in our lives? Not
everything, right? There's always something we hold on to because
we're fearful or we're shamed or we
feel guilty or we fear the
outcome of things. We expect certain things to happen. And
once we lose control, we think like, oh, uh, no, it's not going to happen
the way we want it. Well, that is literally
(16:16):
losing control of things. Letting things go
so that we can allow the
Lord to fix the outcome the way he wants
it, right? And so we say stuff like,
jesus, take the wheel. But we're not really letting go of the wheel
fully. We have to let Jesus drive. We have to let go of
the wheel fully. And you can do a quick, simple
assessment just to find out where you are
(16:38):
wholeheartedly when it comes to faith. You just have to ask
yourself this question. Do you sometimes live in a state of
frustration or doubt? And for most of us, the
answer is yes. Okay, I did. I used to get
frustrated when I thought I was following God's plan. And
then the plan gets pulled out from under me like a
rug, right? It gets pulled out from under me. And then I'm stuck
going, what? I thought this was God's plan, but
(17:01):
no, it was my plan that I had injected
into, that I had merged into with God's plan.
Instead of just allowing God to do his plan. No matter what
happens, no matter the outcome, no matter what I believe was
supposed to happen, I put that aside and I let God
take it over and I totally lose control of it and give it to
God so that he has full control it. That's when
(17:22):
I started to see, like, why am I being so frustrated? Why do I
have doubt that these things are gonna happen? Because I was
inserting my plan into God's plan. Thinking was all
God's plan when it really wasn't, it was my plan
trying to lay over the top of God's plan. And that was the problem. And that's
why when the rug got pulled out from under me, I was frustrated. And
then I started to doubt God's plan. Okay?
(17:42):
And that's, you know, one of the big reasons why I have felt that
way, you know, because was it really his plan to shut it down
at that time? Whatever I was trying to work for could have been, but it
doesn't matter either way. The reason why got frustrated is
because I had an expectation. I had an expectation of
the outcome that didn't happen. And there in
lies the problem. I had an expectation.
(18:03):
And that's where the problem is going to be for you. If you're frustrated, if you have
doubt, it's because you have an expectation.
That's why we have to let go of everything. So we don't have
a specific expectation because then we're trying to play
God. How can we really play God? How can we really know
God's exact plan? The only way we get
frustrated is when our expectations don't happen.
Okay?
(18:23):
So if we truly want to live by faith, we have to
understand and accept one biblical concept. And
it's as simple as this. Live your life with
expectancy, but not expectation. And what I
mean by that is this expectation is wanting your
outcome. And I emphasize your, your outcome.
But expectancy is hoping for God's
outcome, right? It's God's outcome no matter what it
(18:46):
is. Not our outcome, but God's outcome. And we don't know
what God's outcome is all the time. So we just have to wait and
see. And that's the toughest part for us. That's the struggle.
Do you believe that God will do something and are you
willing to accept whatever it is, no matter what it
is? See, that type of mindset is what Hebrews
11:1 is all about. We always have to look
(19:06):
forward to what God is going to do. That's the
expectancy. We expect that God will do something.
And then we trust God to do something that's good for
us. We trust him. That's our faith. Our faith is in
him, not ourselves. So we look forward to what God
is going to do. And then we don't have to get frustrated when
the things happen that we didn't think we were re going to happen. Because, uh, we
(19:27):
knew, hey, it's God. God's just doing this. So I'm going with
the flow. Then we won't get so frustrated. Okay, in the
chapter in Hebrews there in chapter 11, you'll see
it's called the hall of Faith or the Heroes of Faith. It's this
one chapter and it talks about all the heroes
that God used to do great things.
And they're all through the Bible. And what it lists
(19:47):
is list King David, it lists
Moses, El, lists Abraham, all these pillars
of faith. And if you look through, you're gonna see like at
least 10 times, 10 plus times, you're going toa
see the two words starting in every one of these
paragraphs. It'll say by faith, by
faith, by faith. And then it goes
(20:07):
on to figure out who the hero is by faith. David did
this by faith. Moses did this by
faith. Abraham did this. Their pillars of
faith. Because of their faith. Not the faith in
themselves, but the faith in God is what
Abraham was credited. It was credited to him
as righteousness because of his faith. God told him,
hey, you live here. I just want you to leave. I want you to go this way. He
(20:30):
didn't tell him where he was gonna go. He didn't tell him how long he was going toa be on the
road. You know what the journey was gonna entail. All he said was,
Abraham backger things and go. And you know what Abraham did?
He went. He went because he trusted God.
He had faith in God. That's why he's a pillar of
faith, because he put his faith in God. Then God tells
him, hey, I want you to go kill your son. Abraham's like,
(20:50):
okay. And then he went. Not because he was happy about
killing his son, but because he knew that God had something
planned that was good for him. And then we find
out it wasn't at all about killing his son. You
know what it was about? It was about bringing forth
a prophecy that God would provide
his son without hesitation, just like Abraham
did, bringing him without hesitation to save
(21:13):
lives. He was playing out a prophecy. But
Abraham didn't know that. All he knew is that God
could resurrect people from the dead. God could do
anything. And so he knew because he had, uh, already
gotten the promise that Isaac was going toa be the
lineage where his all these nations come
from, right? He's the father of nations, and it's gonna come through
Isaac. And all Abraham knew was God can do
(21:35):
it. God says, go do this, and Abraham does
it. Now that is faith. And that's why he's
listed in Hebrews 11. So we have to start living
by faith. We have to start understanding that faith
in God means giving it all to God,
surrendering all, losing control and
giving it up to him so that he has total control.
Friends, I pray. I pray for strength. I pray for
(21:58):
courage. I pray for faith. That the faith of
Abraham, the faith of Moses, that type of faith
is the faith you have in God and that you can allow God
to work in your life to do some amazing things that you
never even had an idea was possible because you were
putting it in your own strength and it was your own goal and your own
achievements. But now let's put faith in God and put the
(22:18):
foundation in him and let's see the wonderful things
he'snna do and he's gonna bring forth from
your faith.
Until next time, my name is Clint Armitage. This is the Radio
Coffeeh House. Thanks for coming back and don't forget your
notifications. Put those notifications on to hear our
next one. In Jesus name, amen.
(22:44):
Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Radio Coffee
House show where we're all about Jesus, coffee
and radio. We'll see you next time.
Welcome, um, to another edition of the Radio Coffeeh House
show, where Jesus meets coffee meets talk
radio. And the next one starts right
now.
Hey, how's it going, everybody? Clint Armitage with the Radio Coffee
House. I hope you are doing
super, super fine during this, uh, wonderful
(00:23):
Christmas season. And I wanted to do another
episode here. And so if you don't know already,
I kind of do episodes only when the Lord leads. If
he doesn't lead me, then I don't do it. Because I wait
on him to give me information before I try to
pass anything on. Because I don't want it to be my wisdom,
I don't want it to be my words, I don't want it to be my
(00:44):
topics. Because that really doesn't help anybody. Right?
Because it's not transcending only the Lord and his
word and his wisdom and his ways is
transcending. That's the only way it will touch other
people's life is if God is in
it. And so that's kind of how it works around here at the Radio
Coffee House. And so if you do listen to this
podcast, you know that we haven't done an
(01:06):
episode in a couple of months here. And that's because the Lord hasn't
led me to any topic or to any type
of, uh, information for me to download
and then pass on. Well, recently
he did give me something. I was doing a
devotional, and then all of a sudden these words
came, and then I felt like, oh, my gosh, I need to do the
podcast now. And so what I'm going to be doing is
(01:29):
transferring what I did for that devotional
ono the podcast for you to listen to. So anyways,
thanks for listening and staying true to the podcast and
coming back. And all you have to do really is hit the
notification button on wherever you
listen to us, make sure that notification and that
bell and everything is clicked so that you can get
notified when we have new shows as they come out.
(01:51):
Because I will only do shows as long as the
Lord leads. And then also the other thing is, is
actually he gave me a place to go. So, like, you
know, this is the roadshow, right? Well, today I'm going to
be doing the podcast CA from Solvving, California.
Technically, I'm in Lompok, California, but I'll be
heading to Solving later today because the Lord has led me to do
something for some people in Solving during this
(02:14):
wonderful Christmas season. I know it's gonna beautiful out there and
it's gonna be great. And I don't know what the Lord's go goingna do, but I'm just
gonna follow him and do what he wants me to do as
he leads. Okay, so this episode is
called Faith Even Non
Believers have It. And so let's just
jump right into it.
(02:35):
All right, what's up, everybody? Clint Armitage, and I'm back again for
another episode. And this episode is
entitled Faith Even Non Believers
have It. So if you listen to the intro, I gave you
kind of the intel on what has been going on for the last couple of
months and how the Lord leads to do these
podcasts and where I'm going to do them and how I'm going to do
(02:55):
them, and the topic and what I'm going to say. And this
came along from a devotional I had mentioned in the intro. It came
along from a devotional, and I felt like the Lord said, hey, do a
podcast with it. So he brought me to Solane,
California, or Lomp Pot, California to do this
episode. And so we're going to get right into it. And it's called
Faith. Even non Believers have it. So
(03:15):
faith is this. It's believing when I don't
see and obeying when I don't agree
or understand. Faith is also this.
It's having a surety and a hope in
God, even though you can't quite
tangibly grasp it, right? Because you can't see that far
ahead. You can't tangibly hold it, you can't measure
(03:35):
it. And so that's what faith is.
Okay? Hebrews 11, verse one says this. It
says, now, faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen. And that's exactly
what it is, the substance for things hoped for.
Because we hope in God, we hope
that his plan comes to fruition. The things that he's
(03:58):
told us to do and the things that he told us that
will happen, we have to hope for
in that. That's the substance. And then
there's evidence that we cannot see, right?
Evidence of things that are not
seen. That is faith. And
so faith is also this. It's a foundational
truth of living for
(04:20):
everyone in life. Believer or a nonbe believer.
Oay. For a believer, it's faith in
God and trusting God's plan, God's ways,
God's wisdom and God's power and
authority and his love for us, that
things will happen as he says it's going to happen, whether it's in the
Bible or He told us personally, we have
faith in it. And you know what comes to mind
(04:42):
of real faith for Believers, anyway, is the
faith of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And if you
remember in the book of Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar, the
king built this whole statue to himself, this 30
foot statue to himself. And he said, hey, everybody in land's gonna bow
to it. And then three guys didn't bow. And it was the
Jewish captives. And now they're not teenagers anymore.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abediggo. But they don't bow
(05:05):
down to the statue. And of course they get ratted out. And they say,
hey, King, look, these guys didn't bow down. So he brings them up and he says,
hey, you guys, you need to bow down. I'm gonna give you one more chance. If
you don't, you'renna get thrown in the fire. They
responded in a way that shows
true faith of a believer because they
couldn't tangibly grasp that they were going to get out
of getting thrown into the fire of dying in a few
(05:28):
minutes, like it looked like they were going toa die. The king had the power
to kill them, and his plan was to throw them in the
furnace. They were to burn to death, this horrible
death. But they had faith. They had real faith.
And they said, hey, look, King, we're not gonna, we're not gonna bow down
to you. We know that our God's gonna save us. And
this is where the real faith comes in. Because they say, after that, after
(05:48):
they say, hey, God's gonna save us, they said this. But
even if he doesn't, we're notnna bow down to
you see, Meaning they had faith.
No matter if God protected them from the fire
or allowed them to be burned, they still had
the faith that God was a supreme and they were
never going to bow down to anyone else but
(06:09):
God, that we were not going to worship anyone else but
God. That is faith. That is real
faith. When it's tested, when it's tested to the point of
death. That's the kind of faith we need to have as believers. That's
the foundational, concrete faith that
we need to live by. That is living
life to the fullest in terms of having
faith in God, no matter what the outcome. Because you
(06:31):
trust God with the outcome, not yourself, not your own
power, not your strength. You don't trust in anybody else.
You only trust in God. That's what real faith
is. So that got brought to my mind when I was putting
this together. And then again, that's for believers, even
during struggles and trials and
these heartaches and these Times where it looks like,
oh my gosh, we're gonna die because of our faith. Now
(06:54):
that is real faith. Because they'they put
it all in God's hands. They let go of
control.
Now when we're talking about faith in general, and even for
non believers, everybody has faith. You have to
have faith. You can't live as a human being, a life
on earth without having faith. And then
atheists will say, well, no, not really. You can live without faith. I don't
(07:15):
have faith in anything. What they don't realize is, yes
you do. Even if you're a non believer, you have faith. You
have faith in something. You put faith in
somebody, someone, something, some
idea. If you're a, um, non believer, you do have faith. Um,
non believers still have faith. They
just have faith in the wrong things or they don't understand where
(07:35):
they should be putting their faith. Because if they put their faith
in God, the strength of their faith would be unbelievable. And
then they would see God open up to them because of
their faith. It all starts with faith. That's the
foundation. Because think about it. For non believers, achievements and
goals cannot be accomplished without first
believing it can happen. You would never apply for a job if
(07:55):
you didn't think there's a possibility of receiving that
job. The only way you would apply for that job is if you
believe you had faith, some type of faith, even a
mustard seed of faith, a little bit of faith to
make you believe, hey, I can get that job. That's the only reason
why you'd apply. That would d be the foundation of your application.
You would not apply if you knew, hey, I'm not going to get it. So
(08:15):
achievements and goals cannot be accomplished without
first believing. It can happen. So the concept of
faith is foundational. It's literally
foundation for life, you know, contrary to what the world
believes. Like I said, people think like, oh, uh, I don't have
faith. But if you think about it, it's opposite of
what people think. So people think, hey, I have to
see to believe. But really the foundation
(08:38):
really is believing without seeing. Like I said, you can't
achieve anything. You can't have any goals without believing
first before you see it. Because before it becomes
a reality, you have to believe it's going to happen. Otherwise you
won't move towards it. You have to believe it first in order to
achieve and to have a goal. And non believeverss have
achievements and they have goals that they think
(08:58):
about that they want to do. So they believe it can happen.
And that right there is Called faith. You
can't live without faith. It's impossible. It's literally
impossible. So we're going to talk about a couple things here
to show you in real life how it can
happen and how faith is involved in everything, the
foundation of everything for believers and non
(09:19):
believers.
Okay? So let's say you have a
prescription. You have to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy because your
doctor gave you a prescription for some type of ailment or
anything. Think about this. It's the first time you've ever taken
this pill. It's the first time you've gotten this prescription and you've
never taken it before. Well, if you think about how much
faith it takes in order to take a pill that
(09:39):
you've never had before, that your body has never
tested before, that takes a lot of faith,
okay? A tremendous amount of faith. Because first you
have to believe that the doctor knows what they're doing, okay? That's the first
thing you, you got to know that it's a good doctor. You believe in them. You
have faith in them that they went to medical school, that they
know what they're talking about, okay? That's the faith that you
initially have to have right there. Then you have to have
(10:02):
faith that the doctor prescribed the correct
medication. What if they didn't? Well, you don't
really test that out, do you? No, you actually have faith
that the doctor knows what they're doing and prescribe the correct
medication. Then you have to have faith that they wrote it
down correctly. Right? They have to write it down
correctly in order for it to move on in the
process. Okay? So you have to have faith that they wrote it down correctly.
(10:24):
Then you have to have faith that they gave the correct
info to the nurse or the medical assistant or
whoever transferred that information to the pharmacy. Because
you know how bad, uh, doctors signatures and writing is.
When you look at a prescription, you're like, what does that even say? So
it has to be transcribed by a medical assistant or a nurse
or something before it goes to the pharmacy. And then you have to believe
(10:45):
that it was correctly transcribed by the medical
assistant or the nurse and sent over over correctly to the
pharmacy. And then from there you have to have faith because
you have to believe that the pharmacist read
the prescription correctly. They had to have read it
correctly, okay? So it takes faith that that happens.
And then next you have to have faith that the
pharmacist filled the bottle with the correct
(11:07):
prescription, because sometimes they fill it with the wrong
prescription. But you don't know that you just grab the pill
box or pill bottle and then you take it. You
take your pill. But what if in a long
chain of these events, that the, uh, pharmacist filled the
bottle with the incorrect prescription? That's damaging.
That's injurus, right? That could be deadly.
(11:27):
But you had faith that that part of the chain
was completed correctly by the pharmacist. They filled the
bottle with the correct medication. And then you have
to have faith that the bottle was labeled correctly
before you even picked it up. Right? Because it could get mislabeled and
it could be given to the wrong person. So think about all these
steps that have to happen and how much faith you have to have in
(11:47):
the system, in the process, in things that aren't
living. But it's a process you have to have faith in,
to work correctly in order for you not to be injured
and for you to feel better from your ailment while you're taking this
prescription pill. Because I guarantee most everyone who's
listening to this podcast has gotten a prescription for the first time. They have
never took out a chemistry test and tested their
(12:08):
prescription to make sure it was what the doctor had
originally prescribed in the first place. Nobody does that. Why?
Because we have faith that the system works. We have faith in
our doctors, we have faith in our pharmacists, we have faith in our nurses,
our medical assistance, the information that's transferred
and transcribed. We have faith. We have to place
faith in order for it to work correctly. And we take the
(12:28):
pill as prescribed. We don't ask the question. We just take the pill. Once
we've got the bottle in our hand, we've paid for the prescription, and
now it's time to take the medication. We take it, we don't
test it. We take it because we had faith for the whole
process. That's an incred incredible amount of faith in
something that isn't God. But if you look behind
that, it truly is God, because God made sure
(12:49):
that everything worked properly. And that's for believers,
for non believers. You've got to understand, you put faith in
something, you put faith in a process. You put. You
put faith in people, you put faith in things that you don't really
realize that you're putting faith in. But this is, this
is where you get to start to see that. That faith is a
foundation. It's a foundation to life, okay? It's
(13:09):
what turns things into
more than what they are. Because you start breaking it down. You
start looking at it going, wow, this is more than me Just
taking a pill. I had to have faith in something, faith in
something huge that I don't even know about. Look at all these things I had to have faith
in. Well, faith is a foundation, okay? And
for believers, it turns your calling
from what you think can happen into a reality.
(13:31):
Because you have faith that God has called you to it,
or you have faith that you think it can happen. You
believe it enough, even if it's a mustard seed size, you
believe it enough that it can happen, that you start moving
towards it. That's what faith is. Faith is the
beginning of it all. Once you have faith, you can have that. That's
the building block, the foundational building block that you can build
(13:51):
onto to achieve your goals and achieve your calling
and achieve these things that God has called you to do. That's for the
believer and for the non believer. You still have faith because you're still
moving towards the things that you want, the desires of your
heart. That's faith. So I want to encourage you to start
considering faith in God because then you'll start to see
your purpose. That's where your purpose comes in. That's where
(14:12):
your calling comes in. It's more than just making money or
doing these things that you like to do.
Now, once you have a purpose, once you have a direction, once you
have God on your side that you can trust him, that
his plan will, uh, always work and it will always be the best for
you, then you can start to have faith the size of
a mountain versus a mustard seed.
Tremendous faith in doing what you were called to
(14:33):
do, what you are made on this earth to do. Because that's one of the
questions. What am I on this earth for? Well, once you have
faith in God and He tells you what you're on this earth
for, then you can start living with purpose. And that's
the difference between believers and non believers. See, faith
in God requires that you surrender
the outcomes and expectations. That's right.
(14:53):
That's the big difference. When you trust God for everything and
your faith is in Him. The foundation of your faith is
in Him. You have to give up everything. It
requires you to surrender all the outcomes and
all your expectations to Him. Okay. Ah, you have to give up
total control. And that right there is the struggle.
Because even for believers, it's difficult to let go of everything.
(15:14):
We compartmentalize, we're hurt in this area, so we hold on
to it. We don't want to expose ourselves or to be vulnerable. Believers,
non believeverss, it doesn't matter. We compartmentalize things because
we're sensitive to them and we think, oh, if I let go control
of this, I'm gonna get hurt or it's not going to go my way. We have
certain expectations, and that's where faith in God
is different. It's surrendering every. It's difficult, but
(15:35):
it can be done. And when we do that, we are, uh, free.
We're literally free to just do whatever the Lord
leads, no matter what the outcome. Because we're not focused on
the outcome necessarily. We're not focused on the goal
necessarily. We're focused on being led and the Lord will
lead us. That's the faith that we have to have.
We say stuff like, let go and let God, right? But do we
(15:55):
really let go fully of certain things in our lives? Not
everything, right? There's always something we hold on to because
we're fearful or we're shamed or we
feel guilty or we fear the
outcome of things. We expect certain things to happen. And
once we lose control, we think like, oh, uh, no, it's not going to happen
the way we want it. Well, that is literally
(16:16):
losing control of things. Letting things go
so that we can allow the
Lord to fix the outcome the way he wants
it, right? And so we say stuff like,
jesus, take the wheel. But we're not really letting go of the wheel
fully. We have to let Jesus drive. We have to let go of
the wheel fully. And you can do a quick, simple
assessment just to find out where you are
(16:38):
wholeheartedly when it comes to faith. You just have to ask
yourself this question. Do you sometimes live in a state of
frustration or doubt? And for most of us, the
answer is yes. Okay, I did. I used to get
frustrated when I thought I was following God's plan. And
then the plan gets pulled out from under me like a
rug, right? It gets pulled out from under me. And then I'm stuck
going, what? I thought this was God's plan, but
(17:01):
no, it was my plan that I had injected
into, that I had merged into with God's plan.
Instead of just allowing God to do his plan. No matter what
happens, no matter the outcome, no matter what I believe was
supposed to happen, I put that aside and I let God
take it over and I totally lose control of it and give it to
God so that he has full control it. That's when
(17:22):
I started to see, like, why am I being so frustrated? Why do I
have doubt that these things are gonna happen? Because I was
inserting my plan into God's plan. Thinking was all
God's plan when it really wasn't, it was my plan
trying to lay over the top of God's plan. And that was the problem. And that's
why when the rug got pulled out from under me, I was frustrated. And
then I started to doubt God's plan. Okay?
(17:42):
And that's, you know, one of the big reasons why I have felt that
way, you know, because was it really his plan to shut it down
at that time? Whatever I was trying to work for could have been, but it
doesn't matter either way. The reason why got frustrated is
because I had an expectation. I had an expectation of
the outcome that didn't happen. And there in
lies the problem. I had an expectation.
(18:03):
And that's where the problem is going to be for you. If you're frustrated, if you have
doubt, it's because you have an expectation.
That's why we have to let go of everything. So we don't have
a specific expectation because then we're trying to play
God. How can we really play God? How can we really know
God's exact plan? The only way we get
frustrated is when our expectations don't happen.
Okay?
(18:23):
So if we truly want to live by faith, we have to
understand and accept one biblical concept. And
it's as simple as this. Live your life with
expectancy, but not expectation. And what I
mean by that is this expectation is wanting your
outcome. And I emphasize your, your outcome.
But expectancy is hoping for God's
outcome, right? It's God's outcome no matter what it
(18:46):
is. Not our outcome, but God's outcome. And we don't know
what God's outcome is all the time. So we just have to wait and
see. And that's the toughest part for us. That's the struggle.
Do you believe that God will do something and are you
willing to accept whatever it is, no matter what it
is? See, that type of mindset is what Hebrews
11:1 is all about. We always have to look
(19:06):
forward to what God is going to do. That's the
expectancy. We expect that God will do something.
And then we trust God to do something that's good for
us. We trust him. That's our faith. Our faith is in
him, not ourselves. So we look forward to what God
is going to do. And then we don't have to get frustrated when
the things happen that we didn't think we were re going to happen. Because, uh, we
(19:27):
knew, hey, it's God. God's just doing this. So I'm going with
the flow. Then we won't get so frustrated. Okay, in the
chapter in Hebrews there in chapter 11, you'll see
it's called the hall of Faith or the Heroes of Faith. It's this
one chapter and it talks about all the heroes
that God used to do great things.
And they're all through the Bible. And what it lists
(19:47):
is list King David, it lists
Moses, El, lists Abraham, all these pillars
of faith. And if you look through, you're gonna see like at
least 10 times, 10 plus times, you're going toa
see the two words starting in every one of these
paragraphs. It'll say by faith, by
faith, by faith. And then it goes
(20:07):
on to figure out who the hero is by faith. David did
this by faith. Moses did this by
faith. Abraham did this. Their pillars of
faith. Because of their faith. Not the faith in
themselves, but the faith in God is what
Abraham was credited. It was credited to him
as righteousness because of his faith. God told him,
hey, you live here. I just want you to leave. I want you to go this way. He
(20:30):
didn't tell him where he was gonna go. He didn't tell him how long he was going toa be on the
road. You know what the journey was gonna entail. All he said was,
Abraham backger things and go. And you know what Abraham did?
He went. He went because he trusted God.
He had faith in God. That's why he's a pillar of
faith, because he put his faith in God. Then God tells
him, hey, I want you to go kill your son. Abraham's like,
(20:50):
okay. And then he went. Not because he was happy about
killing his son, but because he knew that God had something
planned that was good for him. And then we find
out it wasn't at all about killing his son. You
know what it was about? It was about bringing forth
a prophecy that God would provide
his son without hesitation, just like Abraham
did, bringing him without hesitation to save
(21:13):
lives. He was playing out a prophecy. But
Abraham didn't know that. All he knew is that God
could resurrect people from the dead. God could do
anything. And so he knew because he had, uh, already
gotten the promise that Isaac was going toa be the
lineage where his all these nations come
from, right? He's the father of nations, and it's gonna come through
Isaac. And all Abraham knew was God can do
(21:35):
it. God says, go do this, and Abraham does
it. Now that is faith. And that's why he's
listed in Hebrews 11. So we have to start living
by faith. We have to start understanding that faith
in God means giving it all to God,
surrendering all, losing control and
giving it up to him so that he has total control.
Friends, I pray. I pray for strength. I pray for
(21:58):
courage. I pray for faith. That the faith of
Abraham, the faith of Moses, that type of faith
is the faith you have in God and that you can allow God
to work in your life to do some amazing things that you
never even had an idea was possible because you were
putting it in your own strength and it was your own goal and your own
achievements. But now let's put faith in God and put the
(22:18):
foundation in him and let's see the wonderful things
he'snna do and he's gonna bring forth from
your faith.
Until next time, my name is Clint Armitage. This is the Radio
Coffeeh House. Thanks for coming back and don't forget your
notifications. Put those notifications on to hear our
next one. In Jesus name, amen.
(22:44):
Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Radio Coffee
House show where we're all about Jesus, coffee
and radio. We'll see you next time.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com