“Church Clture” can be ROUGH – the gossip, the nastiness, the constant behaviour pattern of “being judgemental”. Jesus said it plainly:
“The Sign by which men will know you arenMy Disciples, is that you love one another”.
On that criteria, MOST churches and a LOT of so called self-appointed “God Botherers” do not qualify as Disciples of Jesus. But in some cases, they “get it right”. And they often “get it right” without much more knowledge than Sunday sermons, and little more than “Bible Belt” theology.
One of those areas where the successes have been remarkable is in what is known s “Faith Teaching”. Not everyone likes it. But there have been some amazing miracles. What we will read today, is from Kenneth Hagin, straight out of the US Bible Belt. (He was based in Oklahoma).
What he taught was on some levels, “simple”. We will look at something that seems quite simple. But Kenneth got it from JC Himself – or from someone who could do a very impressive interpretation.
The “method” has FOUR steps in it. Kenneth said that Jesus pointed to the story of David and Goliath as an example of the FOUR STEPS in action.
Those Four Steps are:
SAY It
DO It
RECEIVE It
TELL It
Before he took on Goliath, David talked about what happened when his “opponents” were wild animals.
Then David went and got the stones from the river. He was taking action, action to make what he had said, come nto reality against Goliath.
He got his victory over Goliath. It sounds gruesome, a teenage boy cutting off the head of Goliath. But both armies saw clearly that David had received his victory.
Then came the “Telling” — the story was put into the Bible. That set up many people over the past 3,000 years, to have Faith that God would give them victory over giant problems in their lives.