August 10, 2025, Message by Stevin Johnson
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right. So it’s oftentimes it’s interesting, right? I like Kevin, I love Kevin, and I’m glad to help him out when he’s gone. And it’s good to get up here and share my thoughts, but I feel like I’m literally preaching to the choir. So as we go through this tonight, I’m just going to kind of touch on things that I think we all know. Maybe sometimes we’ve forgotten them and we need a little reminder. I don’t know. I won’t go with the average ages in here, but, you know, for the most part, we’ve all been around and seen a few things, and there’s some that haven’t. You’re a spring chicken, Grandma.
So one of my life verses is Proverbs 3:5-6. It’s one that I’ve… I don’t even remember how far back it is that I first learned that one, but I was a young person, probably not even a teenager when I remembered this one. And it’s always stuck with me.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6, NIV)
I found that for tonight it’s kind of appropriate. It wasn’t where I started for tonight’s sermon and talk, but it fell into place as I want to talk about faith and what faith is. And I did have to go back to school this week to learn some things about faith. But fortunately for me, I have a live-in teacher who’s very good at what she does. She taught me about nouns and verbs, and I’m able to sort things out.
So faith and trust, and faith foundations and trust. Trust comes from faith. Without trust, there can be no faith.
I don’t know about everybody else, but I tend to, I guess, give people the benefit of the doubt. And I trust early on until you give me a reason not to trust you. I know other people can be quite opposite. They don’t trust anybody until somebody has proven themselves trustworthy. I think both extremes can be a little risky, but I know that that’s the extreme I live at. But for me, my problem, the trust part, is if I trust you and then you betray that trust. I don’t have the grace that Jesus has, and I have to work really hard to be gracious once you’ve broken that trust with me.
But staying on the topic of faith, faith generally stems from believing in someone or something. Somebody has proven themselves worthy to you. And I think as we, who are all believers in here, go out and evangelize or minister to people who are not believers, faith, they got to have faith in us that we’ve earned through trust. They believe in what we, we don’t have anything ill towards them, and we are good for our word, and we’re not going to lead them astray.
It is something that people have. That’s the noun part, right? Everybody has, you can have faith. And I think much like having a belief, like if you choose to believe that God is real and exists and Jesus came and lived on the earth, much like faith, you have a choice in faith. You have faith in something. I think everybody does. It’s either faith in yourself and who you are and everything you’re about, or it can be faith in somebody else or something else. Some that might be a science and other things.
And faith and faithfulness. Faithfulness is the action part. That’s the action part of faith. We can be faithful to our friends and family, loyalty, faithful. They can trust in us. They can believe in us that we’re going to be good for our word. We have faithfulness. We have faithfulness. Be faithful towards God because of His Word and who He is and who He says he is.
And you can have faith in just about anything. Some people that don’t have faith in God, they have faith in themselves. They have faith in an object that that object, that idol that they worship and have faith in, whether it’s a talisman they wear around their neck or whatever, that is going to be something they can believe in and they can trust in to have effect in their life. And it can have a profound impact, the things you place your faith in.
Okay, the troubles with faith, the world would be glad to tell each of us to have faith in it. And I think we saw that during the COVID pandemic. Everybody wanted us to have faith that they had the right solution for that problem. They want you to have faith in a person. And that faith is a hollow faith without, if you don’t have trust in that. Because a lot of people didn’t trust in the vaccination or they didn’t trust in people who were the leaders that were telling them that it was, things were good for them or they needed this, you know, do things that were contrary to what they believed in and what, and who they trusted.
But generally, the world’s faith is a distraction from God, to have faith in what the world tells you to have faith in.
As I was thinking about that, I was thinking this distraction comes from the prince of this world, Satan, who’s glad to take away your faith in God and distract you from having faith in God, and tell you to have faith in science, tell you to have faith in the person down the street who’s telling you lies and misleading you. And that faith is hollow because once that trust is broken and that belief is gone, what’s left?
If you don’t have faith in the One, and kind of, you probably already see we’re leading to, the One that we have the faith in is the only thing that’s going to be a solid choice for us. And faith is a choice.
Faith, we, as I mentioned earlier, we all are going to choose to be faithful or have faith in something. And it’s risky, it’s vulnerable. We see in history guys who were faithful to God and made choices. We can go back to Abraham. We don’t really have any clear, I don’t have ever seen anything clearly written about how Abraham had faith in God, why he had faith in God, why he believed in God.
The best I’ve come to is when we did the biblical history and we read the Bible through historically, just going through the chronological order from Adam down through Noah, Noah’s sons to Abraham. There was not a huge break in the chain of people talking about God from Adam. There’s a few hundred years. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but after looking at that now, that’s where I made that connection, that link that Abraham knew God and he’d been told about God from his father and his grandfather, and his great grandfather passed it on.
So he already had a belief, he already had a bit of a reason to trust, which led him to have faith when God came and talked to him. The God of the universe said, “I want you to pick up and move way over there. I’m going to make you a nation, and you’re going to be powerful, and you’re going to be more numerous than the sand on the shore and the stars in the skies.” If I didn’t already have a knowledge and a belief and a faith and I heard that, I probably wouldn’t go. So I do that as a point that Abraham, that he had faith, and he moved out.
And we see faith all the way down from people making the choice and making it, not a blind faith. Blind faith. I don’t know if there’s, if that’s just a word in a saying that people like to use, “It’s blind faith.” I don’t know that anybody ever really has blind faith.
Excuse me. I can use the example I don’t think it’s blind faith, somebody might think it’s blind faith, but I have faith can’t see him now, but that big brown guy that was on the screen earlier, I actually have faith in him, but not just because he’s a horse, but because of what he has done. I believe in him, and I have faith in him because I trust him to let me know when danger’s around. He’s always been good about that.
When we had a cougar around, and he didn’t bolt and take off, but his ears went up, and he went and looked in a certain direction. I’ve learned from him through trust, belief, and experience to have faith. When he tells me there’s something there, there’s something there.
So as an example of how I reasoned through faith, of having faith in him, the disciples and the martyrs who had faith, they had experience, right? Kind of the same experience. Jesus, right? Jesus was their experience. They walked and they had close the disciples, the 12, the fishermen had close intimacy with Jesus. They saw what he did. They heard his words. He didn’t lead them astray. He did them no wrong.
So their faith and their trust, their trust and their faith, was built up in Him. So that when He ended up going to the cross for us, to save us, and the teachings and what Jesus has said really started to click in those guys, they had faith in Jesus that He said who He was and resurrection was real and what he promised was going to happen. They had enough faith to go to their deaths. They didn’t hold on to their life so dearly as something that was so precious that they would give up their faith.
No, they believed all the way to Stephen is a good example, I think. Getting stoned to death by the Sanhedrin, taking him out because he said, “Look, I see God. He’s right there.” And they started talking about him. He was not afraid. His faith was so strong. It was reasoned. It was reasoned because they’d experienced it, they knew about it, they believed it.
I think everybody’s probably heard of somebody, everybody knows somebody who’s “walked away from the faith.” I don’t know what, I don’t, thinking about that, I don’t really believe there’s a walk away. It was a choice to lose they chose to live by the flesh instead. I think that probably would be a more accurate statement than saying they walked away from the faith because they have that knowledge already. They already know God. They already know the Word. And it wasn’t that they decided that they really didn’t believe that He existed. They can use that and put it in as their bag of tricks of why, but they really just chose to walk away from faith, to choose flesh, fleshly desires of the world. I think that you, I would find it really hard to agree with them that they walked away from the faith.
They might not have had enough faith. I don’t know. I don’t know. People do say I don’t have enough faith or I’m not worthy because of my lack of faith. Too little faith. I can tell you that God can work with any amount of faith that you have. It can be little, it can be large.
My own experience was when our niece came and visited us one summer while we were in California. We were living in Lemoore; we were stationed there. We would go to Spirit West Coast Music Festival in Monterey every summer. And our niece Sarah, who’s now 40 yeah, oofta she was 18, 17 then, I don’t remember, it was a while ago.
But she came, and they would make altar calls. You know, it was an all-day festival, so you could bring your blanket, your food, your coolers, and you throw out wherever you could find a place. You had Christian music artists playing on the main stage and other stages around. But somewhere during the day, they’d always have an altar call.
When they made an altar call, our niece Sarah jumped up and went forward. I was like, wow, that’s awesome, that’s great. Sarah’s going to go get baptized here in Monterey, which was a beautiful place to get baptized.
And at that point, I said a prayer to God and I said, “I want to be just like you, Jesus. Because that moved me to see her going to do that.” I wasn’t ready for that. I mean, I was, but I wasn’t because God had some plans, had some things in store for me that shook my faith, shook my belief, took me down to bedrock, if you will.
And then I deployed. So not only did I have that happen, then I deployed to Japan away from my family. Sean was a wee wee lad. Sydney was on the way. So there was, I was out someplace far, far away. I had guys all around me, but not and I had other believers, which was, well, here’s part of that story as well. It is 1, 2, 3. I think it was 5. I was the first guy in the squadron, and it was my department head tour. So I was in the middle management, if you will, of the squadron, and four other Christians showed up bing, bing, bing, bing, right after me into the squadron.
And we all got together one day, and we’re sitting around just having a good time being together. We all looked at each other and go, what is God doing? This is really weird. This doesn’t happen. You don’t see this in squadrons. In fact, there’s usually not a whole lot of believers in the squadron that or if they are, they’re not going to stand up and say they are. Why? Why are we all here?
I think years later, I figured it out. It was for me, which was cool, because that was a hard time. I was having a hard time.
Why am I telling you that story? Going back to faith. I hadn’t really thought about it. I was, for a lot of years, a very secular Christian. We got married. I started really focusing back on what faith was and what I believed. And it got shaken a little bit. And I found out I didn’t really know everything I thought I knew. But I did have that little bit of faith, and that was enough. I could have said I don’t have enough faith. Maybe that was true, but it was there.
God can work anything with the faith that you got. I think that’s probably an important thing that if you run into anybody to talk about if they do believe, but they’re not sure about their faith. “My faith is weak. I have little faith.” You could say, “You know what? All you need is that much. God will work with the rest. You’re already in there. You believe something and you have faith in something already. So don’t, don’t beat yourself up. Push the ‘I believe’ button.”
We had an “I believe” button in the plane. I don’t know if you guys knew that. It was there. “I believe” button used it a lot. Was that blind faith? No, not really. We knew our systems and we trusted the mechanics and the people who worked on our planes enough that they said, “Hey, sir, this is what I want you to do. I want you to, the jet’s running. I want you to take all your power and turn it off. Leave the engines running, turn off all your electricity.” Okay. “And then wait 10 seconds, turn it all back on.”
So you turn it off. And inside the jet, it’s making all kinds of noises. you’re hearing through your headphones inside your helmet. You can hear the motors going, you know, not really beeps and squeaks, but there’s noises that you’re comfortable with, and you listen.
But when you turn off all the electricity, it gets really quiet. Doesn’t-make-you-feel-good quiet. Something’s not right. And then you turn it all back on, and all the squeaks and everything come back on. And you’re like, you look out at the guy, and you’re like, “And?” He goes, “Is that problem still there?” “No.” “All right, you’re good to go.” What? It’s just the control-alt-delete of your computer. That’s what we did in the plane. Like, okay, I believe. And off the end of the ship, I go.
God is your “I believe” button. If there’s somebody with little faith, just tell them to push it. Push it, say their prayer. It’ll be all right.
Why should we have faith in God? Well, promises, really. He is a faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.
9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. (Deuteronomy 7:9, NIV)
That’s right out of Deuteronomy. It’s a promise. It’s God’s promise that He will be faithful to us. He’ll keep His covenant. He’s faithful.
That’s pretty big coming from the creator of the universe. He says, “I’ll be faithful to you guys. It’s free. It does come with the commandments. You got to follow what I say.”
Some people might push back on that and go, well, what kind of… What is that? Is He telling you you have to have faith in Him or you’re not going to get what He has?
Well, as a parent, you know, we, as parents, use There’s a couple in here I see who have, on the receiving end of what their parents have to say. You know, it’s out of love. The commandments are not to put restrictions on you that are going to hurt you. There are restrictions of love to help you. And if you have faith in us, then it just gets better.
And we’ll be faithful to you if you keep those commandments. And His promises are never broken. His actions that are trustworthy and believable have always been there, and they always continue.
I am not a cessationist. I believe God still does miracles. I still believe He interacts with people. He is a God of relationships. Relationships are not cessation. It’s ongoing. It doesn’t stop. I have a very hard time computing that there’s folks out there who believe that God really kind of stops interacting with us, that He no longer does that, that He no longer has a need to do miracles to get people’s attention. Maybe there’s enough people out there now who can carry His word forward, but I don’t think that’s the God we serve.
I think he does miracles because He loves to do miracles. He loves to help heal people with cancer. He loved, I’m sure he loved telling Julie, “Hey, the prayers of the righteous have healed you.” I bet that gave him great joy to say that. And He would do it for everybody else, for Jamie, for our family.
Faith is healing, healing power. I agree with Kevin that when he talks about why do some people not get healed and some other people do when they have faith and mystery, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that one. But I believe that everybody who has faith can be healed. I don’t know how all that works. You don’t have to have a great amount of faith. Yeah, it was really just believing and accepting His gift and knowing it was there to take.
6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6, NIV)
That’s just kind of, to me, it’s kind of a logical thing. How are you going to receive something if you don’t believe in it and have faith in it? If you don’t believe it actually is out there, it’s hard to not, it’s hard to take something you don’t believe in and have faith in.
And if you go out and actually earnestly seek that person, in this case God, you’re going to find the rewards. He’s already got them out there. If you earnestly seek Him, you’ll find them. So having worked through that one a little bit this week, I think that’s really what it’s saying is you believe in Him and He is real. He’s proven himself. You will see the proof in the existence. You will get that faith and then you will recognize the rewards He has for all those who believe in Him, all His children that He loves. You’ll recognize those rewards as you seek Him.
So what should you do? What do you tell somebody whose faith is a little bit in question? They’re not sure.
I think you do exactly what we talked about earlier. You tell them you only need that little bit of faith and now lean on God. Trust in God. He’s more than capable of handling anything that’s going on in your life. Any doubts, any fears, any problems, He does it testimony wise.
I’m going through family issues. Part of my country kick this week is because my family’s still in Colorado. It’s been getting close to fair time in Colorado, and I started remembering growing up on the farm, wearing my boots and my cowboy hat, and going to the fair and doing all the things that we normally did.
But I have an aging father who’s in a nursing home right now. There were things that were coming into head where he was no longer going to get that treatment unless we could get some paperwork sorted out. It was a long road that was way out there. And I was told, basically, I had a week to get it all straightened out, or he was going to have to be taken out of the nursing home and move back into his home, which is not safe for him because he falls a lot now. It’s just not a healthy environment for him.
I started getting anxious and worrying about it, trying to do all the things that I thought I needed to do, which I did do, and I think it’s okay to do it. But at one point, I had to, had to put my brakes on and go, wait a second. God has never let me down. Everything I’ve ever needed, He’s provided. What am I doing here? Where’s my faith? Why am I not just saying, stop, do the things I can do and leave the rest up to God? So I did. I put the brakes on. I said, nope, I’m not thinking negative thoughts. I’m not doing, you know, getting upset because this may not work out. I’m just going to give it to God and let it go.
And guess what happened within a few days? Boom, boom, boom, boom. Things lined up. My dad’s now in the nursing home. He’s not going to have to leave. The Medicaid came through.
You know, it’s one of those things you just stand around laughing at yourself because, like, I just about drove myself and probably was going to take my family around the corner with me for what reason? When I just, just needed to rely back on my faith and go, God’s got this. He’ll guide me where I need to go. He’ll do what needs to be done. I’m not going to worry about this anymore. Where does that go? Let go and let God handle the things you can’t or don’t understand. That’s it. That’s it.
There’s I love Jamie dearly, but that was, that was a touchy point for us at times. Let go and let God. I think we’re good now. But that was something besides Proverbs 3:5-6 I grew up with. I remember my mom saying, it’s like, just let go and let God, okay? And with childlike faith, I did. I just did that. There were things, problems, and whatnot. Okay, let go. Let God, and He’ll do it. He’ll take care of you. He wants to do that for you. He is a good, good father. We sing that song from Chris Tomlin that we play a lot. He is a good, good father. He wants to do these things for us. He wants to do the things we can’t do ourselves.
There was there’s another one that I remember growing up hearing as well. This one I, I don’t really like that much. What I can’t do for myself, God will do for me. There was a time where I held on to that one. I was like, oh, yeah, do everything myself. And then whatever’s left over I can’t handle, I’ll turn over to God.
Yeah, yeah. Now, now I’m on the other side of the fence of that one. I was like, wait a second. Why? God’s always said he would do things for you. It doesn’t say you shouldn’t do the things He’s giving you brains and power and the ability to do. But you’re kind of making yourself greater than God when you’re like, yeah, whatever I can’t do, I’ll just turn over to God rather than involve Him from the get-go and make it a relational thing, something you do together, which He enjoys very much.
And plant that mustard seed. Going back to little faith. Sophia, have you ever seen a mustard seed? Perhaps processed mustard, you know? Yeah, just a little tiny thing. And I should have gotten a picture of a mustard plant. Huge. For a little tiny seed, this thing is huge. That’s all you need. Plant your little mustard seed and trust in the one who still does miracles. Plant that little thing in there, and then you let it go. You do it. You be obedient to, and you listen prayerfully in meditation, and you follow what you’re instructed to do, but watch that mustard plant grow.
So Ats, I’m going to skip the last slide, but because it’s kind of, I’ve already covered most of that.
Going back around and try to finish this up. I talked a lot about what I think faith looks like, what I think faith is. How do we, as believers, evangelize to somebody who might not have faith, might not believe?
I think we use our experience. We tell them our stories and tell them that there is a God out there who loves them, who loves us so much that we are where we are right now, and we’re in a good spot because we’re loved. We’ve been studying, reading our book Imagine Heaven.
God’s got great things planned for us. We can bring more kingdom here. I’m with Kevin on that. We can bring more of the kingdom here by being good ambassadors and good, more like Jesus every day.
But as far as faith goes, I think we just tell somebody the truth, what we know, tell them to pray and then just stand by, tell them it’ll Just wait. God will answer. Our faith may have to be strong enough for them before they can get the faith they need.
That’s really it. I guess that’s, I’ve preached myself to the point now. I understand my faith may just need to be strong enough for that person who doesn’t believe that I can help them, just to have enough faith to hold on till
And God’s just waiting. We all know God’s waiting to swoop in and scoop that person up because he wants everybody. He doesn’t want to leave anybody behind. Have faith that you make a difference in every person’s life that you touch, because you do.
All right, that’s it. You guys got an early night on Sunday. All right.
So let’s be grateful, our God and our King. Let’s celebrate what He’s done for us that we have faith in and we believe that when He came, lived, taught, gave us things to believe in, showed us what He’s capable of, showed us who He was, and then died on the cross for us, that our sins were forgiven and His broken body and stripes healed us.
Let’s do that, and let’s have a moment of remembrance and gratitude for Him by taking the meal and celebrating our love for Jesus and His love for us.
So come and eat.
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