 So the recording has started and we'll get into some of the chapters that we want to complete today. Let's pray and then we will start off. Maybe Savita, can you lead us? Pray. Our Holy Father, thank you Lord, thank you for this day and this time and this new life in the spirit of my God, I serve you for hence and each if we want, I serve you for hence the guidance, status and spirit of my God, give it to the constitution power. If you are understanding the power of the spirit of my God and I serve you for your hence, especially in the spirit of my God, they always speak us to, throw in the arms, so bless us, give us knowledge. Thank you Father, each if we times this guide us, handle us with this spirit of my God and thank you for giving Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you Savita. So we have a few more chapters left here which I think are more like the understanding about faith we've already received but how to apply faith and some of the connected subjects are what we are looking at. So actually it's not much, maybe I mean we'll see if possible by maybe one more class hopefully and then we can actually complete unless we have a lot of things to talk about and discuss about. So that's how it is. We'll see it depends on the questions that you people ask and the way we are going to examine these subjects. So today we look at the joy, resilience and the rest of faith. So a few more things for us to note like remember we said that Abraham in his journey he gave thanks to God. I think it's Romans 420, giving thanks to God, he was strengthened in his faith. So another aspect for us to note is that when we have faith in our journey there will also be some sense of joy. So what is joy? Joy, how do you define joy? How do you understand what is joy? I'm sure you all know what joy is, you just have to communicate it to me. Happiness. Happiness, true but then you know joy is also it is you can with regard to faith we can say that it is connected to expectation. It's connected to expectation. So joy is happiness, joy is gladness, joy is a sense of feeling light and hopeful. These are all words we can use to describe joy but if you want to understand it maybe an example might help like imagine a child and the parent has told them that they'll buy them chocolate or something like that. So when I come home I will give you chocolate. So then let's say the parent comes home every day at four o'clock. So from three o'clock you can see what joy means because the child is expecting and it's very happy and trusting that okay my parents said or my father or my mother said they will buy me chocolate it's almost three o'clock it's almost three thirty you know it's almost four o'clock so when they come I'm going to get my chocolate. So do you see that that sense of gladness in the in the attitude of that child that is joy okay. So when we talk about faith we said so much about waiting trusting God holding on pressing in fighting you know spiritually in our faith but there is this other aspect of being joyful okay. Now a joyful is it something that we sense in our emotions or is it deeper than that the kind of joy we are speaking about. Is it just our emotions? See even Abraham there are two things we have to understand okay when we talk about the human being I've already said we are three part being we have the body we have the soul and we have the spirit. So the soul will have a lot of emotions we feel happy we feel sad we feel angry all that is part of the soul but in the spirit in the spirit the spirit man there are senses also okay just like the soul has senses the spirit also has senses the spirit can feel the spirit can we will talk about it later but there are abilities of the spirit the way we we talk about you know in our supernatural are we ask did you see anything what is that naturally we are not seeing anything right in our soul we may you know maybe it's a tough day for us and we are not feeling joyful but in the spirit feelings can be different perceptions can be different okay what we sense can be very different so when we ask did you see anything it's generally got to do with the spirit man so the spirit man can see the spirit man can feel the spirit man can sense you got it so similarly when we say joy joy usually has to do with something that is deeper so in the spirit we can have a lot of joy whereas in our soul maybe we are feeling down we are feeling we're not feeling the happiness so to speak okay but joy is from within it's it's from the spirit part of us where even though the circumstances look very tough we know that ultimately God's promise will come through so that is the meaning of joy joy is so much deeper so some we can imagine you know when you look at people like okay a good example Noah if you take up somebody like Noah where it was difficult for him to build the ark it was tough for him to wait for the flood to actually happen but with the insight there is a strength that comes from joy where you're holding on and you're trusting that God will do the miracle you got it so joy is a very very important part of faith for many of us we think about faith as oh faith means it's a struggle Abraham waited 25 years he must have been in pain he must have been an emotional pain okay and he must have not really enjoyed his journey but that's not true just because we are waiting it doesn't mean that we are lacking joy or you know that we cannot rejoice even when we are waiting that rejoicing is from inside okay so we can have joy that's the real meaning of joy there are some passages here which we can read they're very like you know important where Romans 15 13 okay I'll just go through that and the next one somebody can read it so Romans 15 13 it's it's a really encouraging scripture because it says now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit so it describes who God is so we say God is a God of love God is a God of peace Jehovah Shalom okay so we know the nature of God God is righteousness so you know Jehovah Sikkenu there are many names that describe God who he is we get an understanding when you read the name of God or the actions of God the nature of God becomes very clear to us what kind of a God is he we can understand here Romans 15 13 is a beautiful scripture which says may the God of hope okay so that's amazing because God gives hope where there is no hope who can give hope only God can give hope and the scriptures tell us that the God we serve is a God of hope right so there is nothing like a dead end situation for God even if it is a dead end situation he is able to change it because with God there are many possibilities he is the God of the impossible so here is a name that we see about God what is that God of hope okay God of hope and Paul writes he writes may the God of hope fill you with all joy see when there is hope what is hope we discussed earlier what is hope the simplest understanding of hope what is hope just hope is expectation yeah hope is expectation thing correct hope is we also said joyful expectation right this is like so many chapters behind so should we just stop and ask you guys to go back revise and come back or what shall we do you remember right did we talk about it or not not sure okay all right so hope is a joyful expectation we expect from God but what is the difference between hope and faith okay very good yeah so now faith is the substance of things the you know the things that we hope for it says so faith is in the now hope is in the future got it faith is in the now hope is in the future hope is a joyful expectation and it is connected with faith but faith and hope are different got it faith is just a joyful expectation so the scriptures tell us that joy is also very much a part of the faith journey we can all be so joyful we can all be so happy even though we are trusting God for you know some miracles or some breakthroughs in the future so it is really from within it's really from within so someone can please read first Peter chapter one versus seven through nine that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that varies though it is tasted by fire may be found to praise honor and glory at the revelations of Jesus Christ whom having not seen you love though now you do not see him yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory receiving the end of your faith the salvation of your souls okay so this just reminds us that when we have faith in God the outcome is joyful okay the ultimate result is joyful so that is the reason we can still hold on in faith now it may seem like holding on in faith is quite tough you know the best example for something like this is a mother who sort of carries her child in her womb for nine months it's it's like it's faith right like they're trusting God that everything will be well the child will be well but ultimately what is the outcome outcome is very joyful because the child is there and you know the mother's finally happy so that's how faith and joy look when we are journeying it may seem somewhat hard but still in our spirit we can rejoice but we must always keep our eyes on the results okay so when we keep our eyes on the results the journey or the race becomes easier somewhat easier so we need about Jesus this is in the book of Hebrews they have not given the reference over here I think Hebrews 12 where it says that Jesus endured the cross okay because of the joy set before him so what is that what is the example of Jesus do you think it was a very happy experience for Jesus to go on the cross no but it says Jesus went to the cross because of the joy set before him what kind of joy can be there to you know if you go on the cross think about it what joy can you get out of it to go to the cross see the journey is hard Jesus has to go to the cross okay but he did it because of the joy set before him or he looked at the outcome later on so that's why he did it okay tough journey but eyes are fixed on the results got it that's what we are saying right now even about faith and joy that's what we are saying we are saying the genuineness of your faith being much more precious and gold that perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to praise honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ that simply means the faith that we have now there is a good outcome or a good result that faith is going to see okay and it is going to give God the glory so the results are good the journey is hard okay now my question to you is Jesus lived like that it was a hard journey but there was joy set before him so what is it that made him happy when he looked at the future joy of overcoming okay good what else do you think made him happy joy of salvation of many people yes so the joy of saving the whole world imagine what a wonderful result right so he was happy about that he was so happy about that then anything else that made him so happy you can imagine he has to go on the cross full of pain people are saying evil things it's very hard but something else was giving him the joy and that is in his mind he is thinking what is going to be the result of all this pain which I'm enduring so salvation overcoming what else finished yeah so complete complete the the father's assignment right it makes us happy okay God gave me this one lifetime I did what the father asked me to do so I'm happy so Jesus was happy about that anything else okay could we say that he was also happy that he was going to be with the father finally everything is over he was separated from the father right but he's going back to be with the father so that also made him very joyful so the point is you see the journey can be very hard but what is in our minds about the outcome that really really matters because we can be joyful in faith knowing that this hard journey is worth it okay it's worth the trouble it's worth the difficulties it's worth the pain that we are going through because inside in our spirit there is joy something good is going to come out of this faith journey so that's how you know faith and joy look but for that we need to have the right perspective when we are thinking correct then everything makes sense but when we are not thinking correct when we say that oh God is not answering me how much longer you know we ask questions like that but we are we are not keeping our attention on the results that God is showing us okay so then what happens when we start asking all these the wrong questions our faith will weaken okay our faith will begin to weaken so I'm not saying that you know as human beings we don't have our weaknesses of course we do sometimes but the even if we go into that mode quickly you got to come back and say okay God you know I'm sorry I know why you have asked me to do this there is a good result there is a good outcome so being joyful in our journey of faith is possible got it just because we are waiting or just because we are trusting God for a breakthrough which is coming later imagine all believers right all are in faith all are waiting for some of the other promises of God okay which maybe for many years they are waiting so if everyone is waiting if and all of them are you know sad because oh still God is not done it will be such a sad crowd isn't it every believer is a sad or depressed because God is not doing today he's only going to do tomorrow but that's not how it is supposed to be all of us can be very joyful even when we are waiting for God's promises to be fulfilled tomorrow where does that come from where does that joy come from where does the joy come from from within okay from within it comes from God it comes from spending time with God it comes from spending time in the world but it comes from within okay we can be so joyful okay let's move on anything else about the joy that you want to ask or discuss we can talk about it do you think it's practical it's possible to be joyful okay fine so hopefully we'll all be joyful right okay good now let's move on the next section here says resilience of faith so resilience simply means the ability to like come back okay so if you if you know like rubber bands we use our we use rubber bands you stretch it and then it still kind of comes back and it has good capacity it can be stretched for really long but still it won't break it'll it'll be fine so it depends on the resilience of the substance that we are using maybe there is some material which you can stretch a lot and it won't break it won't tear but maybe there are some materials that you just stretch a little bit and they break so if it breaks we say it has no resilience but if it can be stretched and it will not lose its integrity we say this material has resilience okay so in the same way in our journey with the Lord resilience simply means that you know sometimes when we come under pressure or stress are we still in that place of faith before God is the question or let's say if somebody is weak in their faith the first thing that goes wrong they'll say oh forget it God God is not faithful to me you know God doesn't care about me this and that because they're weak their faith is so weak something happened the you know the rubber band just snapped it's not that good material but if our faith is resilient it means when we are going through our journey there are a lot of stresses stress means pressure okay all kinds of pressure maybe we are going through persecution for believing in Christ okay family is persecuting workplace people are saying all kinds of things or you know our friends are commenting about us and saying oh what is this you became a holy person they may say all kinds of things so what does this do to us it adds to our stress right adds to the pressure or maybe for the sake of righteousness we have to make some decisions okay some wrong things are going on in our friend circle and we say okay fine I have to make a choice I'm going to leave these friends and I'm just going to protect my mind okay right company good company it's it's very tough because you are letting go of what you are used to you got it but these things are adding pressure to your your kind of your daily living your your lifestyle okay or disciplines in in the word of God things like okay I have to spend time in the word I have to spend time in prayer or fasting so tough right sometimes and we feel like how can I do this it's too much I'm feeling stretched you know more and more pressure but the thing is if our faith is strong we can we can be resilient meaning we can remain our faith can remain strong in the midst of all these circumstances right but if our faith is weak the first thing that happens we break the faith will just break you got it but resilience is very important for faith because you know it's a reality that we will go through a lot of challenges you know people may even question us they will say oh you're saying God God God will answer God will heal why this person didn't get any answer why that person didn't get any didn't get healed so does that mean that God is not working so maybe there are questions that people may ask or we ourselves are asking questions or challenging times we are trusting God we are doing things you know in the right way and because of that we may be going through a financial crisis you got it then in those times it's so tough where really it's like how we read in first Peter chapter one he says the gentleness of your faith meaning faith is being tested okay I don't know if I told told us this earlier but when gold is purified okay did I mention it yeah I think so I mentioned it so the the way metals or gold is purified is they'll they'll raise it to high temperature okay very high temperature when the metal actually melts okay so the faith when when Peter says your faith is tested that's what he means he's saying all the pressures all the difficulties challenges unanswered questions you know delays disappointments everything put together it's almost like the temperature is rising but what happens to the gold or if you consider your faith what happens to your faith we are told that you know the faith only because depending on what kind of faith we are carrying if it is genuine or if it is real faith which we are carrying no amount of pressure stress can break it okay or destroy it it only becomes purer so when gold is raised to very high temperature it it you can purify it it becomes clean okay and you know how they test it anyone have you heard about that how at what point do you kind of understand that the gold is pure now so they say that it becomes so clean without any impurities that when you look at it there is a reflection it's almost like a mirror it becomes like a mirror but you can see a reflection so I mean it is said that that when our faith is tested right and it is pure it's almost like when God looks at our faith God's reflection will be there in that faith you can you can see you know God's character his power his strength in us and in our faith so to that extent actually all these difficulties will only make our faith strong got it so that is the meaning of resilience you know how tough is our faith how tough is it is it tough enough or not and we must have very strong faith resilient nothing should be able to break it nothing should be able to shake it got it so that's the way one must build their faith so how to build this kind of faith so strong yeah exercising our faith so two things we can remember okay feed it it'll become strong when you feed it so if we take two plants just take two plants water one plant don't water the other plant okay do this for four months what is the result put it in a pot okay so not much nutrients and all so then what might happen yeah so whatever you feed will thrive what you don't feed will die got it it's as simple as that and we can use this principle for our benefit feed the faith and starve the unbelief so the more we feed the faith with the word of God with the truth of God what happens we are talking about resilience right strength of our faith it becomes stronger and stronger and stronger okay what happens to unbelief it dies because you're not feeding it every wrong thought that comes to our mind what does you know appall says tearing down every thought why even one wrong thought if it comes it's not in the word of God you say I rebuke you in the name of Jesus I don't agree with this thought this is not what God says about me this is not what God says about my situation so what are you doing you're starving the wrong thought and you're feeding faith then faith will become strong so two things I said one is feed your faith second is as Komal said exercise your faith so the more we exercise our faith the stronger it becomes so these two things as we do keep doing it all the time exercise your faith feed your faith every day make sure feed your faith exercise your faith right we can stretch and how to how to you know stretch our faith by exercising it any any thoughts any examples feed the faith we understand exercise the faith how do you keep exercising your faith more and more in daily life correct okay so in daily life take it as a challenge every day take things as a challenge maybe there is a you know an assignment that we are feeling it's too tough for me take it as a challenge you say okay no but I will believe God I will trust God okay let me pray God please help me give me the wisdom I'm going to try try what did you just do you exercise your faith once right the next time something like that happens exercise your faith again so then what is happening it's as we said right it's like a muscle the more you exercise it just becomes stronger and stronger and stronger and you'll be amazed you know God will keep sending tougher and tougher assignments your way because he knows that you will exercise your faith got it so just take up challenges new challenges even when it comes to you know ministry and I've said this earlier moving in the gifts you know when we say okay what are you seeing come share speak it out what is that it's going to take faith to do it so maybe first time we are feeling so scared but come do it right next time it's little easier because that muscle is already now little bit stretched it's already flexible now the second time it's easier so when it comes to the gifts of the spirit also this is how our faith moving in the gifts becomes stronger because you're using it and using it and using it and using it again and again and again if you don't use it forget about growing it it won't grow many things in ministry are like that if we don't do it if we stop praying for people if we stop you know learning the word and preaching the word it'll be a little more it'll be a little tougher to do it the next time because we have you know it's just like that muscle concept if you don't use your muscles for a long time it'll be weak but when you exercise it it becomes stronger so two things which we have to do to keep our faith stronger what is the first one feed okay feed the faith what is the second one exercise exercise the faith okay just practice these things on a daily basis and we'll find that our faith is very strong very resilient and filled with joy okay fine so I think we'll just go ahead and take a small break we'll come back at 10 o'clock and we'll continue the rest of the content thank you