Ep. 26 - Why your faith doesn’t last

All right, what's going on? Welcome to episode 26 of Jesus Wins podcast. Uh, it is officially summer and I'm officially home for the summer. Uh, I recently got a uh an internship at my church at Bay Area Christian Church and uh yeah, that's what I'm that's what I'm doing for this summer.

I'm uh you know, something that was really on my on my heart for past few months uh while I was at school. Just wanted to do something where I could just serve um people, serve God, and kind of see the behind the scenes of um what's going on um or I guess like in a life of ministry, what that would look like and if it's something I really want to pursue and in the future, you know, especially if baseball doesn't work out. And uh you know, I realized in my life that uh two things give me purpose and that's or I have passion. I say I only one thing gives me purpose. I have passion for two things in my life and that's baseball and Jesus and uh lowkey golf too. That's starting to get passion for golf but obviously only one thing gives me purpose in life and that's serving uh Jesus and uh his kingdom.

So today we're going to be the or the title of this episode is uh why your faith doesn't last. And the reason why I wanted to do an episode about this is because um at the student ministry uh where I'm working at or have an internship at this summer. Uh the high school is talking is uh the main theme for the high school this summer is a building of faith that lasts beyond high school and into our everyday lives. So I thought you know this can not only you know just apply to high school kids or young kids um but it can can apply to anybody, especially if you're new in your faith if if you've just discovered the Lord. Um, and you're, you know, you want to build a faith that lasts just beyond this this phase where you're on fire for God because, you know, it it's obviously we want to be on fire for God, but it's not super realistic, you know, that we're just going to be on fire. We're going to wake up every day just feeling amazing. You know, cuz there's going to be some days that you wake up and you're poor and you're feeling poor in spirit. And that's when uh you know that firm foundation that you built in your relationship with Jesus kicks in because now you know like I have to have self-control. I have to have discipline and you know your discipline pushes you to spend time with Jesus no matter what even when uh you your flesh doesn't feel like it.

So let let's start let's give some context and let's just dive right into it. So uh starting off with a verse in Judges. This is Judges chapter 2:10. And it says, "And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel." Now this was not a a generation who lived uh hundreds of years after Moses in Joshua, excuse me. These were actually like this isn't like generation after generation. This is actually like their children and grandchildren who did know Jesus. Oh, that scared me. That's my It's my dog Roco. He's trying He hears me talking. He's trying to get in this room. Um, yeah. So, you know, their children and grandchildren grew up hearing stories about, you know, Moses and Joshua leading leading them into the promised land and, you know, and walking through uh the desert for 40 years and Moses parting the Red Sea by the power of God. You know, they hear these stories. This isn't just um or you know, they they knew people who who lived in these times. you know, this isn't like this, you know, folk tale that they tell like generation after generation down the line. So, they were not very far off from this. Um, yet somehow within just a single generation, uh, the knowledge of God had largely faded away. And let's talk about how this happens. Like, how does this happen when all these miracles just happen only one generation before them, right?

So to start, let's give historical context of Judges. And to understand Judges chapter 2, we first need to understand where Israel is at in this time and place in history. So let's consider what this generation had just witnessed. We have four thing four things. Uh the Jordan River stopped or stopping so Israel could cross on dry ground. The walls of Jericho collapsing without traditional warfare. I know we all know that story where they walk around seven times and the walls of Jericho collapse. Major military victories against stronger enemies. And then lastly, the fulfillment of promises God made God had made centuries earlier to Abraham. Um, in Joshua 24:31 tells us that Israel served the Lord throughout Joshua's life and the lives of the elders who had witnessed God's works. Yet, shortly afterwards, Judges records a tragic spiritual decline. Why? Why? What does did not know the Lord mean? What does that exactly mean?

So when scripture says that this generation did not know the Lord, uh it doesn't mean that they, you know, they never heard of God or who he is. They obviously have because they heard all these stories from the previous generation before them. You know, they knew the stories, they knew the history. Um, and they knew the traditions, right? Uh, but the thing is the problem the problem right here, it was it was way deeper than just um, you know, just didn't didn't know God. Um, when we look at scripture and throughout scripture knowing God often refers to personal relationship rather than you know just straight information I guess. Um, the diff here's the difference. The difference is between knowing facts about God, knowing God's character, trusting God personally, putting your faith in God personally, and walking with God daily, spending time with him daily, spending time in prayer with him daily. I'm guilty of it sometime. You know, I've been feeling convicted actually the past 2 weeks. Um, I feel like, you know, I haven't been spending a ton of intentional time with God. And it's just so important because you can really feel it after like a week. You know, you're so longing for that time with with our father, right? Uh, God wants to spend time with us. He wants to hear from us how we're feeling. You know, he already knows, but he wants to hear from us personally. Uh, and actually, you know, this generation, you know, after Moses and Joshua not knowing God and and seeing the spiritual decline in scripture in Deuteronomy chapter 6, Moses actually saw this coming and he warned Israel that they would eventually enjoy blessings that they did not earn. Uh, they would inherit houses they did not build, wells they didn't dig, uh vineyards they didn't plant, and cities they did not establish like the promised land. Um, this this what Moses warned and quote, "Take care lest you forget the Lord." Sometimes the greatest threat to faith is not hardship but comfort. Uh, typically, you know, actually a lot of the time, hardship pushes us closer to Jesus, right? But when we get comfortable in our faith, we think, uh, well, you know, man, I'm around a lot of Christian Christian friends. I'm around a Christian environment. You know, God won't care if I miss church this Sunday. I'm I'm just going to sleep in. I'm feeling tired. Uh, you know, my flesh my flesh is kind of pulling me away. I'm way I woke up this morning. I feel poor in spirit. Uh, I think that I think that's why comfort is a lot of the times or at least in my opinion I think it's far more dangerous than you know whenever we go through trials and challenges in our life because you know we have nothing or we're stripped of everything we have God right. It's most of the time I would say pushes us closer to Jesus and calling on him for for strength but when we're comfortable we come and we become complacent in our faith. That's where temptation and and and danger creeps into our lives.

So, Israel needed God desperately in the wilderness, right? Uh when they're walking through the wilderness trying to find that promised land, they desperately needed God, right? Uh once they entered the land, the promised land, it became easier to enjoy God's blessings while forgetting the God who, you know, pulled them out of Egypt and who provided all of this these amazing things out of his goodness to them.

Now, we can look at the pattern of spiritual drift. How does it happen? I actually spoke about you know drifting away and compromising with sin uh in the previous episode in episode 25 but let's look at it here in this instance. So the book of Judges introduces a cycle that appears repeated repeatedly excuse me throughout Israel's history. Uh have you know let's look at these examples right God blesses his people. The people become comfortable. Comfort produces complacency, right? When we become comfortable and we stop spending time with with Jesus, we just become complacent and okay with being lukewarm. And then that lukewarmness and that complacency leads to compromise. We start compromising with sin. We start like, all right, that's sin, but you know, just a little bit. So, you know, I'll tolerate it. And then that sin becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. Happens in all of our lives. Happens in my life, too. And that compromise results in rebellion. Now, we're starting to rebel against God. When we know what we're doing is wrong, then the consequences of rebelling against God drive the people back to God ultimately. And that's the pattern. Same thing happens over and over in Israel. Israel's constantly in rebellion to God. Then they realize, man, what are we doing? We need to go back to God. They go to God. They're on fire for the Lord. And then they become complacent in their faith. And it's a constant cycle. And we can look at it. We can honestly compare that to our lives. And that happens a lot for us, too. We become on fire for God. All right, I'm good with God. I'm at peace with God. You know, I'm I'm okay now. I'm going to be comfortable. And then we start tolerating a little bit of sin. We start compromising with that sin. And then that sin results in us willingly starting to rebel uh against God. You know, I see myself a lot in Israel. So, it's very uh sobering for me. Like I said, actually in the previous episode, uh people, you know, they don't just abandon God overnight. It's uh it's constant compromise with sin that pulls us away from God. And that's what that's where our drift starts.

So now let's talk about why some faith some faith lasts and others don't. Let's let's look um let's look go back in scripture and let's look at Daniel, right? The story of Daniel. He was taken from his homeland as a teenager and forced into Babylonian culture. We all know uh the wickedness of Babylon, right? Yet he remained faithful. Daniel didn't have a a youth group, a Christian community, um Christian friends who surrounded him, right? He was in Babylonian culture. Uh, you know, that culture was extremely far from God and extremely wicked and deceitful. Uh, so why was Daniel able to remain faithful? It's because Daniel had or yeah, Daniel had a genuine relationship with God. His faith was rooted in his convictions, right? Rather than um, you know, just you know, convenience.

Now, what's the deeper spiritual meaning of all this? So let's look at the tragedy of Judges chapter 2. Uh, it's not simply that one generation forgot God. The tragedy is that they had every reason to remember him. That's that's the wild part. And it's easy for us to sit back and look at the story and go, man, like their grandparents and their parents, they just witnessed all these miracles. It's like how could they forget God? I wouldn't have forgot God. But we are all sinful and fall short of the glory of God. So uh I wouldn't put it past us cuz we constantly we are in constant rebellion to God. U but thank thank Jesus for you thank God for sending his only son down to die for our sins so that we may have the free gifts of eternal lives and you know forgiveness and we're washed by his blood. Anyways, um, you know, they grew up hearing these stories about the Exodus, the crossing of the Jordan River, the fall of Jericho, Moses parting the Red Sea. Uh, they inherited a land that God had promised a generation earlier that was before them. Inherited or and and they benefited off these victories that they did not earn, right? That they never had to fight for, go through the ringer for, right? Um, you can look at the things that they were just you know basically given or blessed by they're you know obviously blessed by God but they were given by the previous generation. Uh, the testimony of God's miracles, the leadership of Joshua, the covenant promises, a spiritual heritage unlike any other nation on earth. Uh, yet Judges says they did not know the Lord. Uh, they knew all these stories but they but they didn't know the go who the God was behind these stories, right? They never spent true intentional time with God. And you know, we can easily say that we're Christians uh and and live at the surface level, but if we if we don't go deeper with our faith and spend intentional time with Jesus and prayer and in his word, uh do we really know him? Uh, we can you know, we can say we know him, but do we really know who he is, you know, the God behind all these miracles that we're constantly hearing about and reading about in the Bible. Um, you know, what had been a personal uh what had been personal for Joshua's generation have become historical for theirs.

Um, let's see. I have a lot of notes in here. I don't know if I want to go through all of them. Um, now let's look at the important part. Let's look at you know we hear the story. We hear about this generation um prior to the generation who had experienced all these miracles and you know completely forgot about God. Let's look at how do how do we actually build a faith that lasts. I think it's part we all been waiting for. So uh when you study believers who remain faithful throughout their lives, you or I guess we we notice a a a common theme in their characteristics. A lasting faith requires five things. I have five things if if you're taking notes or whatever, but listen to this. A lasting faith requires five things. Consistent time in God's word, a regular prayer. That is huge because it is so easy to get caught up in the the you know the speed of life and everything that's happening happening around us where we don't make time for prayer. Prayer is so important and it's so incredibly powerful. It's I think it's the most underrated thing in our faith is prayer because that's us literally talking to God, having conversation with the Lord, telling him the things on our heart and and the things that that are heavy on us in our lives. And you know, he wants to hear about the victories that we're experiencing too, right? Uh third, a biblical community. Community so is so important because when we start to isolate ourselves, that that's when temptation creeps in and that's when we start compromising with sin and then we end up rebelling against God willingly. Uh fourth, obedience when it is costly, right? Not just obedience when it's convenient. It's easy to have that. It's easy to um, you know, act like and put on this you know, this act that you're walking in obedience with God. God sees right through us, right through our wicked hearts. And um, you know, that's why it's it's it's pivotal to have obedience when it is costly, not just convenient. And then lastly, a true personal relationship with Jesus. And I think all four of those kind of tie into what a real personal relationship with Jesus looks like. Uh faith that lasts is rarely built in dramatic moments. More often it is built through thousands of ordinary acts of faithfulness over time.

Biblical lessons we can get from this. What caused faith to decline? Uh spiritual comfort or also known as complacency in our faith with Jesus. Forgetfulness, uh not remembering uh God's faithfulness and things that he's constantly done for us and and does for us daily that we take for granted. Uh lack of personal conviction. You know, the more we drift away from Jesus and the more we rebel against him willingly, uh our hearts get hardened and we we no longer feel the Holy Spirit and we no longer feel that conviction that we used to feel for the sins that we would commit. Uh the gradual drift, uh the compromise, uh the you know, how much we tolerate uh a sin or just sin as a whole, and then failure to truly know God and just swimming at the surface level, which I'm, you know, I'm huge on that. Do not swim at do not stay at the surface level. Uh, you know, we all know, you know, it's easy to listen to an inspiring message where, you know, someone teaches or preach preaches about, you know, how much God loves us and, you know, and he's made these a table for us. You know, they use just fancy metaphors to just sound smart. You know, it's easy cuz that sounds good and amazing. And it's true. You know, a lot of it's true. Like, they're not lying. It's true. God is God is so good. He's great and he loves us. Yes. But let's truly get to know God. Let's dive deeper in our faith. Let's learn the facts. Let's look at the biblical history uh of Jesus of all these characters in the Bible. Let's look at historical facts that all the cross references that tie in with the Bible that true that prove that it is true and and historically accurate, right? Learn everything about God and his people and his his children, right?

What builds a faith that lasts? Personal relationship with God, right? Uh daily dependence upon him. We need to uh build our faith so strong in Jesus that we cannot go a day without him. That we are so dependent on him that we need him every single uh hour, minute, second of our lives. A consistent exposure to scripture. Know God's word. There is power in God's word. Whenever you're feeling tempted, uh, you know, whatever your favorite verse is, uh repeat it. Say it out loud. Um, there there's there's power there's power in the name Jesus and there's power in his word. Intentional obedience, not just when it's convenient. U obedience when it's costly. And then lastly, genuine conviction rather than yeah, just genuine conviction. I'll leave it at that.

So as we all know and hear about you know uh one of the greatest dangers in modern Christianity is confusing exposure to Christianity with true devotion to Christianity. So you know it's easy to scroll doom scroll on reals and look at these inspiring messages be like, oh yeah, God God speaking to me, that's enough scripture for today. Put your phone up. You never open your Bible. Consistent consistent exposure to scripture. You know, not or not not I guess yeah, consistent um study, consistent study in scripture. I don't know how to word it, but that that's how I would word it. Not not just, you know, the typical exposure to Christianity where you hear about it and you you see inspiring reals on on Instagram or Tik Tok and then you say that's another that I would consider that just exposure to Christianity. You're not actually spending time with your father in heaven. You need we need true devotion to Jesus. Uh, because it is possible to attend church regularly, know Bible stories, participate in ministry. Uh, and grow up in a Christian home while never actually knowing who God is, while never having true and genuine devotion to the Lord.

So now I have a couple um just application questions that I do at the end of every video. You can use in Bible studies uh, you know, just to have you open food for thought, you can call it. Uh, is my faith personal or borrowed? You know, is it something, you know, that I truly feel strongly about or is it something, you know, that's kind of forced on me that's kind of, you know, was pushed on me and I kind of just go through the motions daily? Uh, where might spiritual drift be occurring in my life? Where where might I be drifting? Where might might I be compromising uh in certain areas of my life? That's a really good question to reflect on. I can reflect on that one daily. It helps me a lot honestly just to think about uh what habits are strengthening my walk with Jesus. So let's say you know we don't have to only look at the bad things, not I guess not necessarily the bad things, but the weak areas of of our uh walk with Jesus that we need to improve, but you know, we can also reflect on what what good habits are are strengthening my walk with Jesus. You know, am I am I, you know, um being disciplined to my routine daily? Which your routine could be wake up and get on your hands and knees and pray for 5 minutes before you do anything else. You know, whatever routine you might have with in your relationship with Jesus, are you, you know, being disciplined to that? You can reflect on the good things you're doing. Uh, if my environment changed tomorrow, would my faith remain? So, say you're in a you have a really you're really blessed by Jesus as we all are and you're in a good Christian community. If that community changed and if that setting changed, would you give in to the people around you or would or would your faith remain the same?

So to close it off, uh the generation after Joshua knew the stories of God's faithfulness, yet they truly uh yet they never truly came to know God for themselves. It's so pivotal that you don't just hear the stories, that you don't just go to church on Sunday and you know, you get your your cute little notebook out and you take cute little notes. You need to, if you're going to take notes, you need to study those notes. You need to meditate on them. Meditate on God's word. Get on your hands and knees and ask God to speak to you to to show you uh his hand in your life and areas that you need to work on that we all need to work on. Um, I'm not just preaching to the choir either. I am totally aware, you know, I I need to do those things in my life as well. There's so many areas where I can get better. I'm I'm I'm a super flawed uh human, but thank thank God for his son uh for the savior of the world. And you know, we were so blessed to be able to just have full complete access to him. You know, this isn't the old covenant anymore. The veil is torn. We have full access to God. We can get on our hands and knees and talk to him and and speak with him whenever we want. So, you know, it's kind of like the first the first uh episode of the summer, building a faith that lasts. Um, you know, let's let's build our our while we're, you know, while we're here right now. Let's build a strong foundation in our walk with Jesus and our relationship with him so that it it lasts. Uh, let's build it on the rock, not on sand. So, it lasts whenever the storm hits, whenever you face uh trials or challenges. Let's be completely dependent on him, on God. Um, let's not go a day without him. And, uh, yeah, let's have a great summer. Um, you know, let's not just say, hey, you know what, this summer I'm going to I'm going to hit the gym and I'm going to eat healthy and I'm going to work hard and I'm going to, you know, start pursuing Jesus. Like, if we're going to do that, let's do it. And let's make sure we're putting Jesus first. Let's pursue him. If you want to if you want to achieve greatness in anything in this life, put Jesus number one in your life and everything else will be added unto you. That is my biggest piece of advice.

Okay, let's pray. Let's pray it out. Dear heavenly father, God, thank you for uh this message that you've given us. God, uh thank you for your constant blessings uh that we take for granted, Lord. Thank you for another day of life, Lord. Thank you for uh filling our lungs with breath. Lord, I pray and ask, Lord, that you would strengthen the areas uh in our life that uh need to get better, Lord, to strengthen our relationship with you, God. Uh help us to just completely be dependent on you and prioritize you. Uh I ask that you would bless us with guidance Lord, with guidance to truly build our faith uh on a firm foundation, God, which is you, Lord, so that we are not shaken, God, when when when trials and when when life hits, Lord. Thank you, Jesus, for your kindness and your goodness. We pray and ask for for blessings and breakthroughs in our life, Lord. Uh hear uh our prayer. God, I ask that you would reach and and touch any soul, Lord, that needs to hear this video. God, um I ask that you would bless this video and that uh uh it would reach who it needs to reach, God. Thank you for the viewers listening to this. I ask you bless them with the desires of their heart. Um bless them with self-control, with discipline, Lord. Uh um help us to just go all in for you this summer, God. To have the greatest summer of our lives because not because anything else, but because we're going all in for you, God. And that our relationship would be strong with you uh than ever. Thank you, God. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.