PASTOR DARRYL BAKER

Hebrews 5:13-14
13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

One of the most important truths in the life of a believer is to fully understand the gift of righteousness, which means you have been made right with God, and therefore have rights as a child of God. Anyone who teaches that a believer is not righteous is not teaching you the Truth of God’s Word. A vital key to understanding this truth is found in the above verses of scripture. If you live on the milk of the Word only, you will lack understanding of this powerful truth.

The milk of the Word is needed in our life, and in fact we are told as a newborn baby would desire milk, so we are to desire the pure milk of God’s Word (1 Peter 2:2). The milk of the Word is sitting under the teaching of the Word of God. But for us to take the milk and see it become solid food, we must become a doer of what it says we now have and can do as a new creation in Christ.

Notice in verse 14 above solid food belongs to those who through practice of God’s Word mature as a believer, dominated by their spirit man. When this happens you will walk in a clear understanding of what is good and what is evil, knowing the deceptive lies of satan. So, make sure you have a pastor teaching you the pure milk of God’s Word, revealing who you now are in Christ, and act upon that Word, putting those truths into practice in your life. As you do, you will clearly see the lies of the enemy and can walk in the freedom you have already been given.

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Christian Faith Fellowship – Ponder Texas

Matthew 2:1-2
1 Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea when Herod was king. After Jesus’ birth wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem.
2 They asked, “Where is the one who was born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star rising and have come to worship him.”

The wise men who came to worship Jesus had known of the prophecy in Numbers 24:17, that a Star would appear and lead them to this King of the Jews. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, they asked where He was to be born. Herod called the chief priests and scribes together to find out, for they were experts of the Old Testament scriptures, and would therefore know where His birthplace would be. They told Herod He was to be born in Bethlehem.

You would think those priests and scribes hearing from the wise men that the King, the Messiah had been born, would have wanted to go and see the One for whom they had waited for. But they did not go to see if this was the Messiah, and they showed little to no interest in finding out. Why? Because they were more interested in knowing about Him, rather than knowing Him. Sad to say many believers today are content with just knowing about Him and not really making the effort to know Him personally. They are to busy with other things.

The wise men were different. When they got to Bethlehem and found the King of kings, they worshiped Him and gave offerings unto Him. The word worship means to adore, and to bow down in reverence to one who is superior. Don’t forget why He came. It was so we could get to know Him and our Heavenly Father, not just to know about Him. Make knowing Him your priority in life, for those who are wise still seek Him today.

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Christian Faith Fellowship – Ponder Texas

1 Thessalonians 5:6, 8
6 Therefore, we must not fall asleep like other people, but we must stay awake and be sober.
8 Since we belong to the day, we must be sober. We must put on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

Here in 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul is warning believers not to fall asleep as some do. To fall asleep refers to becoming spiritually lazy, falling back into a flesh ruled life instead of a spirit governed life. A spirit governed life is not allowing the old flesh nature to rule you. That would be going back to a life of darkness and not walking in the light of the new life we have been given.

In verse eight he reveals three things you must put on and keep on to stay awake. The first of these three is faith as a breastplate. Simply put, faith is trusting in God, not yourself. Faith is what made us right with God. Colossians 2:6 teaches us as we have received Christ, so walk in Him. We made an initial decision to give our life to Jesus and accept the salvation He offered us, now we need to daily make choices choosing to give up our life for Him, receiving the help He provides to walk according to our new nature within.

Next, he refers to love as a breastplate as well. We need to make the choice daily to walk in the love He has given to us. When we choose to treat others the way we would want to be treated, we choose the way of light instead of darkness. You also need to maintain the hope of your salvation, which means to never lose sight of the Lord’s return. The hope of our salvation is in knowing what is ahead for us when Jesus returns. This hope will help you to keep your focus on our Savior instead of ourselves. Maintain these three key areas for your life and they will help you to stay awake and not fall back into darkness.

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Christian Faith Fellowship – Ponder Texas

Hebrews 10:23
We must continue to hold firmly to our declaration of faith. The one who made the promise is faithful.

Many still do not understand the power of their words. They do not realize for example when they say things like my arthritis, my cancer, my diabetes, etc; it is the same as a package being delivered to your front door and you sign for the package, accepting it as yours. Once you do the devil has the right to leave it with you. For faith to work you must believe in your heart what God has said, and you must then speak in line with His Word, holding fast to your confession of faith.

It is vital that when faith is released through our words to stay in faith. That is what this verse in Hebrews is telling us. We must hold fast to our declaration of faith. You must say what God has said. Every promise God has given to us through Christ Jesus He has said is already yours. You must, like God, call those things that be not as if they are already so. Faith believes it receives when you pray, and therefore you declare you already have what you have asked of God.

You never stop declaring what God’s Word says. Your confession does not change. When God gave Abram a promise to be a father of a multitude He changed his name to Abraham, which means father of a multitude. Abraham never went back to calling himself Abram after that. He kept saying what God had said, and he became exactly what God and he had said. Faith will not work unless you hold fast your confession, saying the same thing God says about you.

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Christian Faith Fellowship – Ponder Texas

Titus 3:4-5
4 But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared,
5 not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,

The fourth work of redemption that Christ has completed within the heart of every believer is the work of regeneration. Regeneration is the new birth, the rebirth of the human spirit. When someone puts their faith in Christ and calls upon Him for salvation with repentance, there is a rebirthing of a new spirit man within them. The washing away of the old man and the renewing of the Holy Spirit coming to live within us takes place.

In this area of a believer’s life, the devil tries to convince us that we are who we used to be, we cannot change. He tries to get us to fall for this lie so that we continue to live by the old nature’s habits and ways so that he can keep us in bondage to that old nature. But once the spirit on the inside becomes new, we can now as scripture teaches us, walk in newness of life. Anything about our old outward behavior and way of living can change.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.

You can change anything about your life for you are not who you used to be. A new way of living has come for the believer. We should not continue in our old ways but begin to walk in the footsteps of our Savior. Romans 12:1-2 tells us how. We are to present our bodies unto Him as a living sacrifice, and we are transformed by renewing our minds to the new man on the inside. We are no longer who we used to be! Because of regeneration, we can live a whole new life.

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Christian Faith Fellowship – Ponder Texas

1 John 4:10-11
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

The third area of our redemption that Jesus completed for us is in the work of propitiation. This is one of the areas that satan lies to believers the most, convincing them that God is mad at them and must be punishing them. Many Christians do not understand this redeeming work of propitiation. It means to satisfy the wrath of God by taking the punishment we deserved because of sin. When Jesus bore our sin, He also bore the punishment for our sin.

Because of the sin of Adam in the garden, punishment for that sin had to come. But Jesus was the One who took our punishment. He satisfied the wrath of God toward sin as Isaiah 53:5 tells us, that He was wounded for our rebellious acts, and He was punished so that we could have peace with God. Jesus has become our Advocate with the Father, who is the propitiation for our sin, taking our punishment. When we sin, we may reap bad consequences for sowing to the flesh, but God is not punishing us.

As it states in the verses above, Jesus proved God’s love for us by bearing our punishment, and if God so loved us, we should love one another in the same way. Simply put, we should not punish people for the wrong they do as a believer, and this includes ourselves. We lose our true worth in God when we feel we deserved to be punished for the wrong we have done. We should receive correction, but punishment comes from anger, correction comes from love. God’s wrath (anger) was satisfied by the work of propitiation. God is not angry with us. Because of His love He will correct us by revealing the wrong we have done, but don’t punish yourself or others. Run to the One who loves you.

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Romans 5:10-11
10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
11 And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

The second area of redemption that refers to what God has done within us when we were born again is the work of reconciliation. Notice in the above verse it refers to the fact that we were enemies of God, but God reconciled us through the death of His Son Jesus. An enemy is not your friend. The word reconcile means to make a friend out of an enemy, to be restored to favor with God. Once born again, we now have the best friend we could ever have, God.

The devil tries to convince believers that God is not our friend, and you even hear believers say that they feel God is far from them, but He is as close as their next breath. When we say we feel like God is far from us, we are going by feelings and not by faith. This is what satan wants us to do. Once you start believing this lie, you will struggle to believe in God’s love and in His desire to help you. You will try to find acceptance and worth through people instead of the best friend you already have, Jesus Christ.

If you are someone who is easily offended or gets their feelings hurt because of what others may say or do, you are trying to find your worth in the acceptance of others. You don’t need the acceptance of people, because of reconciliation you have been accepted by God. People in your life may come and go, but God said He will never leave you nor forsake you. So declare to yourself in those times of getting your feelings hurt that I have been accepted by God, and that is where my true worth comes from, not from man.

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Romans 5:18
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost one of the most important things ever given to man, his true identity. Our identity came from God, our Creator. Man looking to God’s creation instead of their Creator lost their God given identity. Your identity is where you find you true value and worth in life. Jesus, by giving us a new spirit once we are born again, gave us the ability to regain our identity, our true worth once again from our Creator. There are four redemptive truths fulfilled in what Jesus did that gives us this identity in our God. The first of these four truths is justification

Justification means the act of God declaring men free from guilt and approved by Him, placing us in right standing with God. The devil works at trying to convince you that you are not in right standing with God, and you must therefore work at becoming approved by Him. If he succeeds, he will hinder your faith in receiving what you have a right to. Notice in the above verse it is through one Man’s righteous act that justification has come to us. You don’t work to become right with God, you already are because of what Jesus has done for us.

The devil lies to believers getting them to try and find their value and worth in what they do, instead of what Jesus has already done. No amount of “good works” can make us right with God. Because of justification, we are made the righteousness of God through what Christ has already done for us. Remind yourself, my worth or value in life is not in the works that I do, but in my Creator who has already made me right with Him, and therefore I am approved by God.

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Romans 4:19
And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.

Abraham is known as the father of faith, and we can learn much about our faith walk from his example of walking with God. Our faith is based on what God has said about any given situation in our lives, and our faith is in the One who gave us that Word, and what He has done for us. One of the areas that is misunderstood about faith is in what we are dealing with or facing in the natural circumstances of life. We do not deny they exist, but we are not to consider these circumstances.

Notice Abraham here in Romans 4:17, knowing that God had given him a promise that he and Sarah would have a child, did not consider, or give attention to what was true in the natural. He was almost 100 years old, and Sarah was barren, unable to have children. Abraham did not deny these things to be true, but he did not give his attention to those things. He chose instead to focus on what God had said. Once you know what God’s Word has said about any situation in your life, to walk by faith you must not talk about and think about what is true in the natural. Instead, you must line your confession up with God’s Word.

Some think faith is denying what is seen in the natural, but that is not faith. What is seen is true, but God’s Word is Truth (John 17:17), and if you walk by faith and not by sight, His Truth will change what is true. Too often you have believers that are denying what is true thinking that is faith, or others who continue to focus on what is seen by confessing and talking the problem. Both are wrong. Faith does not deny that something exists, but faith denies its right to stay that way by focusing on the Truth, declaring, and acting on God’s Word. Be like Abraham and don’t consider what you see, consider what God said, and what is seen will change. What are you considering?

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James 2:26
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

One of the most important aspects of walking by faith is found in this verse from the book of James. Many do not realize that if you say you have faith, but you do not act upon the Word of God, then your faith without corresponding action is useless, dead, and devoid of power. Faith must have action to work. One must have their confession and corresponding actions in line with what God’s Word says for faith to work.

Mark 9:23 tells us that all things are possible to them who believe. It did not say all things will come into manifestation because you believe, but they are possible. Romans 10:10 tells us with the heart one believes. You must believe in your heart that what God has said is yours. You cannot doubt in your heart, but once you believe in your heart you must then exercise your faith through action. Faith is acting as if the Word is true because it is.

The great apostle Smith Wigglesworth used to say, “Faith is an act.” For example, if you had a man dying of starvation and you brought him some food and asked him if he believed the food would save him, he would say yes. But if he sat there and did not act upon that belief in faith by eating the food he would die. Many say they are believing God, but that does not mean they are in faith, for if they were, their words and actions would line up with what God’s Word has said, for faith without corresponding action is dead.

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Christian Faith Fellowship – Ponder Texas