Heavenly Father we worship You; King of kings we honor You; our Redeemer, we bow down before You in all surrender, we worship You in all Your majesty, because You are our God, You are our Father, without You we are nothing, blessed be Your name forever in Jesus name.
Thank You Lord because You love us so much, much more than we can ever imagine; You are so kind, You are so merciful, blessed be Your name Father in Jesus name.
Lord we thank You because over 2,000 years ago to this day, You sent Your only Son on a journey to the cross of Calvary to pay all our debts, to take away all our sins, to set us free and that is why today we can stand before You to worship You, to say with confidence that we belong to You, thank You Father in the name of Jesus.
Our Savior and Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ, we thank You for loving us so much, for releasing Yourself for our sake, may Your sacrifice not be in vain in our lives in the name of Jesus. Father, even as we share together at this time, even as we remember the blessings of Calvary, we pray God that all the blessings shall become ours more than ever before in the name of Jesus.
Father please this morning, speak to every man, every woman, every child, every adult in a way that only You can and take away all our troubles in the name of Jesus, thank You everlasting Father, in Jesus mighty name we pray.
Welcome to church this morning, welcome to Palm Sunday! I want to thank our father in the Lord, the Pastor in charge of the province, Pastor Tunde Netufo, for this privilege of standing before you this morning, I bring you greetings from him, praise God!
Particularly, I have the instruction of our daddy to apologize to all of us – all of you particularly for the shifting of yesterday’s Economic Summit at very short notice; a lot has gone into it but due to factors beyond our control, we had to shift it to some other time in the future, so we apologize for the inconveniences we’ve suffered, the Bible says all things work together for good for those who love God, praise God!
It shall be well with you; all that you need to know, to survive, not only at this time but even beyond, God will give unto you in the name of Jesus. So we are really sorry for that, we apologize but I know that very soon, something better will happen in Jesus name.
Let’s please open our Bibles to Mark 4: 35 – 41, but as we do so, let me also welcome us to this Palm Sunday; Palm Sunday, if you look at the scriptures, particularly Matthew 21, you will see the story of how our Lord Jesus Christ rode on that donkey triumphantly into Jerusalem on that glorious day, beginning the journey of love, going into Jerusalem to release Himself, that week is the week that we know as the holy week; He rode into Jerusalem, He was arrested, He was tried, give a kangaroo trial, convicted and He went to the cross where He released His life to be taken for you and I, praise the living Jesus!
For this reason, believers, we can say that we are saved and we are delivered and we have victory over all the battles of the enemy. So as we remember Palm Sunday, the significance of that is to always remember the love of Christ, to meditate upon it and see how we can reciprocate it back to Him and also how we can also exemplify that sacrifice ourselves to our fellow men. Unless you do that, the effort of Christ will be in vain in our lives and I pray it will not be so in Jesus name.
So as we mark Palm Sunday today, it goes beyond the ceremony; the important thing for us to take away is to reflect on the love of the One who loved us so much that even when we were sinners and undeserving, He gave His life for us out of love, and so love must be our watchword, our lifestyle even as believers. May the love of Christ forever endure in our lives in the name of Jesus.
But this morning we want to look at one of the factors that make us entitled to the blessings of the Calvary, one of the factors without which we cannot appropriate the sacrifice of Christ and that’s why we are looking this morning at this scripture and the topic that we are going to talk about.
So let’s look at Mark 4: 35 – 41, “And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side. (This was Christ speaking; they had just finished a crusade where there was a multitude of people who came to hear the word of God). and then He said to His disciples, let us pass over unto the other side.
36 And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. 37 And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. 38 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: (so Jesus was with them, as soon as they entered He was tired, He was weary from the crusade and then He went into a sound sleep) and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
39 And he arose, (as He will arise to somebody here this morning in the name of Jesus) and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still (may every storm in your life be still this morning in the name of Jesus). And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? 41 And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him”? Praise God!
I declare and I decree that God will do something so unique in your life that even you will say what manner of Man is this? That men will see you and say what kind of God are you serving that can do so much for you? That will be your testimony in the name of Jesus.
So we are looking at the message titled “Faith in the Time of Trouble”. I said this is one of the factors that make us to be entitled to the blessings of Calvary, today being Palm Sunday, so we can link it together. It is so because without faith we cannot enjoy the blessings of Calvary.
Ephesians 2: 8 says it is by grace that we are saved through faith; we are saved by grace, but it is through faith that you are saved. Unless you have faith in what Jesus went to do at Calvary, you cannot appropriate the blessings of His sacrifice; so yes, we are saved by grace, but that grace will not become yours unless you have faith that Jesus went to the cross for you and died for your sake, and that everything that He accomplished there has become yours; it is by faith that you claim and receive it, praise the living Jesus!
So what is faith? We are looking at how critical the role faith plays in the lives of believers especially at a time of trouble like this. It is easy for us to all profess to have faith when things are good, when the going is good, when there’s no trouble, everybody professes to have faith, but it is in times of trouble that those who have faith and those who don’t have faith are separated.
Trouble brings forth our faith or faithlessness, praise the living Jesus! And so if you look at the scriptures, most of the work that Jesus Christ did, He was always trying to bring out the factor of faith; no wonder, even the blessing of redemption itself is tied upon faith because without faith, God can do nothing in your life.
Grace has its place, faith has its place; there are things that will come by grace but there are things that will never come without faith, so grace cannot override or substitute for faith. I hear some people preach and say ‘oh, once you have grace’, no, grace has its place and faith has its place, that’s why the Bible says we are saved by grace through faith, praise the living Jesus!
So let’s look at the lives of these Disciples of Christ who were with Him and then trouble still came and see what lessons we can learn. By the way, what is faith? Hebrews 11: 1 defines for us what faith is, it says it is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of that which is not seen; in other words, what you are asking God to do for you, you believe that you have it already even before you see it, hallelujah!
You believe it before you…that’s why it doesn’t make sense unless you have faith. You can’t believe the word of God, the scriptures unless by faith; you can’t believe that Jesus went to the cross and died for you; a Man who didn’t know you physically, who died 2,000 years ago even when you were not contemplated and then you say you see by faith – oh, how could He have died for me? That’s why it is like madness to unbelievers, so it takes faith for you to understand, for you to appreciate the tenets of our faith, praise the living Jesus!
The Bible says faith is the substance of that which is hoped for; you pray for something, you are expecting God to do it but you already believe that it is done; that’s why we say that the sacrifice of God at Calvary is a completed work, in other words, everything that we need today to survive, to exist, to overcome troubles and challenges in our days have already been accomplished by Christ at Calvary, hallelujah!
He’s not just going to answer your prayers today and say okay, I put away your trouble, I put away your sickness, it’s already done at Calvary; all we need to do is to drag them to ourselves by faith, faith is the currency that we spend in the Kingdom of God, it’s the only legal tender. Faith is like oxygen to a man, it is what we breathe and we don’t appreciate it unless there is trouble.
It’s like you don’t appreciate the air that we breathe or the oxygen when you are hale and hearty. We are all breathing in and out now, we don’t even appreciate what is least in our –the air that we breathe is least in our minds, in our , but when trouble comes, when a man is sick and he cannot breathe properly, that’s when he will appreciate the importance of the air that you breathe.
The same thing with faith, when things are going right, we don’t appreciate faith but when trouble comes, that’s when we really know and we understand the importance of faith, praise the living Jesus!
So let’s look at what happened to these disciples; the first point I want us to note in this story is that Satan brings troubles to believers in order to destroy or shake their faith in God so as to make God a liar. Troubles are brought by the devil but God may permit them for His own purpose; when the devil brings a trouble to believers, it is to shake our faith, it is to try to make God a liar, to say no, if you are a believer, this cannot happen; look at the trouble you are having in your marriage, in your finances, in your business, so all the promises of God to you are all lies.
So when trouble comes, the purpose of Satan is to make God a liar, is to rubbish our theology, to rubbish what we believe in, but God turns around what the devil means for evil to good, because God uses the same to frustrate the counsel of the enemy and turns it into a good thing for us, that’s why you find that it is only through trouble (most times) that we grow in God’s Kingdom. When the enemy decides to use trouble to bring us down, God frustrates his counsel and then use those troubles to promote us through the faith that we exhibit. Therefore I declare this morning that whatever you are going through right now, it will be a stepping stone to your promotion in the name of Jesus.
These were Disciples of Christ who had been with Him all these while, they had just left the crusade and then they got into the boat, suddenly the devil brought a storm to them. These were people who had seen Jesus miracles, He had healed, He had fed the multitudes with five loaves of bread and two fishes, they had seen everything, they had believed that this Man is a Savior, He’s a miracle worker and suddenly the devil brought a storm.
You would have thought that trouble will be far away from people like these, just like you may wonder today – I’m a child of God, I’m a believer, I don’t commit sin, but why am I having trouble in my marriage? God spoke before I married this man, this woman; why trouble in my business? I pay my tithe; why am I delayed in marriage? Why am I delayed in childbearing? Why am I going through this? Why sickness? I pay my tithe, I’m diligent, I go to church every time, why is it that trouble surrounds me? It’s because the devil wants to mess up your theology, he wants to mess up your faith, he wants to make God a liar in your life but God is always true and He will be true to you in spite of your troubles in the name of Jesus.
So they just left, in fact, they didn’t just leave the presence of Christ, Jesus was with them, what a devil! Jesus was with them and he still brought the storm; you can be with God, you can be with Christ – the first lesson is you can be with God and trouble will still come; the fact that we are believers does not give us immunity against trouble, the only thing is that our faith will give us victory over the trouble. This is why the people with Christ did everything, they were holy men, they were righteous, yet trouble came even when the Master was with them.
So, don’t stop asking yourself ‘why me?’, you can see the lives of the Disciples; so for a believer who has faith in God, the presence of trouble is not an indication of the absence of God in your life, the presence of trouble is not necessarily the indication of sin, it could be but not all the time. For a believer, presence of trouble does not mean that God has ceased to be God in your life, it’s not necessarily indication that you have been forgotten or you are forsaken or that you are less than other people, it’s just an indication that yes, the devil is trying to destroy your testimony, but as long as you are a believer, God is silently in your boat as He was with the Disciples and He will calm the storm at His own set time as He did for the disciples in the name of Jesus.
Second point that I want us to note is that your safest anchor as a believer (in time of trouble) is to ensure that Jesus is with you. Don’t be a believer who is in and out, you must be constantly anchored in Christ because you never know when the devil can come; if he could come when Christ was there, how much when He is not there, who will you call up to? Thank God for the Disciples that Christ was with them when the trouble came; your safest anchor in trouble is anchor of Christ.
When trouble meets you when you are still in faith, that’s why we must be careful to take our hands out of sin, to make sure that we don’t do things that God has not called us to do as believers, because if trouble comes to us at the moment when Christ has separated from us, then you are alone, but if you are sure that you are in Christ, you have faith in Him and trouble comes, you can be sure that you are going to overcome because the solution to that problem is already done at Calvary.
On Palm Sunday when Jesus rode to Calvary, He was going there and He got to Calvary and He accomplished the solution, that’s why the Bible says in Isaiah 53: 5, it says the chastisement of our peace was laid upon Him, and it is in present tense ‘is’, in other words, whatever is likely to bring trouble to us, to disturb our peace, (He said) is already accomplished, so we are just to claim it.
When these troubles come, our own is to stand by faith to make sure that if the devil wants to use circumstances to shift our focus away from what we believe, from the promise of God, but we must ensure that we don’t allow that to happen, we must keep our focus on the word of God and continue to stand in faith because it is only by faith that we can prevail.
So trouble is not a stranger to a believer, trouble is not a curse to a believer, trouble is not indicative of God’s abandonment, trouble only means that what the devil means for evil (because you are a believer), God wants to use to promote you and that will be your portion in the name of Jesus.
So the storm came, but because Jesus was there, the storm went out. This is an indication that no matter how much or how intense the troubles we are going through now, it is only for a temporary moment, hallelujah! It is a temporary moment and it will soon fizzle out like the storm; there’s no trouble that does not have an expiry date: one of the things about faith is that if your faith is constant, faith will always tire out problems, but Bible says if you faint in the day of adversity because your strength is small, because your faith is small, and that’s why we must ensure that no matter what happens, we can lose everything but we should never lose our faith, and that was why Job prevailed, Job survived, because in spite of all that Job went through, he remained standing in his faith in the time of trouble.
It is by faith that we prevail in trouble and if you look at examples in the scriptures, each time that Jesus did a miracle, He would always find a way to draw out the faith, to see the faith level of that beneficiary. In Mark 5, when He healed the woman with the issue of blood, He told her and said daughter, thy faith has made you whole, in other words, thank God you have faith.
I have the power but I need your faith to activate it, thank God you have faith; He said daughter, He didn’t say your presence here made you whole; your faith will make you whole in the name of Jesus. No matter the nature of your sickness or disease or somebody close to you, or the nature of the trouble you are passing through right now, your faith will make you whole in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Another point we can see from that scripture to note is that when trouble comes to a believer and you are in the center of God’s will or you’re obeying His instruction, you are going to survive.
Now, note something in that scripture; it says that Jesus told them let us go to the other side and they went, so they were acting on His instruction yet trouble came; they were in the middle of God’s will, it was Jesus that said go, so they obeyed. You can obey God’s instruction and be in the center of God’s will and yet trouble will come; Jesus knew, but once He declares and says go, it doesn’t matter, whatever is between go and getting there, Jesus will take care of it, He won’t tell you what is in between but once He says go and He’s the One that sent you, you can be sure you are going to get there.
So when you have faith in Him that He’s able to do it without shaking, no matter what you go through, you’ll be confident to say well, after all I’m not on this thing as a frolic, I’m not doing this on my own, I prayed before I married him/her, I heard clearly, so whatever trouble I’m going through in my marriage, I know that I will overcome because I’m acting on the instruction of God. I set up this business because I prayed and I had the leading to set it up, so all these troubles I’m having now is temporary because I heard God, if He spoke and I believe Him, no matter what, I know that the end will be victory.
If God puts you in a position, you didn’t lobby for it but God put you there, there may be shakings, every kind of troubles may come but every time you remember that God put you there and you stand by faith, you can be sure that you are going to overcome. But if God didn’t put you there, you lobbied for it or you started the business because you saw other people doing it and you did it or you’re married to a man because oh, this man has money or this woman, you just went on your own and trouble comes, then you are on your own.
These guys were acting on the instruction of God, He said go; God can give you an instruction and trouble will still follow it, but the thing is that God has His purpose but He will ensure that you get there. You may be battered, when you are acting in the will of God and trouble comes and you have wounds and scars, they become golden scars, those scars become your evidence of faith, the evidence of battle that a champion carries, there’s no champion who has no scar, hallelujah!
A soldier that goes to war and overcomes must have scars even if he doesn’t have a gunshot; while in the bush, there must be piercing by all manner of things, so the scars that we carry as believers are scars of victory, they are scars to be celebrated. In your marriage, in your business, in your career, wherever you go through troubles they will leave scars but these are golden scars, scars of victory.
The troubles you are going through now, the scars will be scars of victory; they will be scars that you can show off as testimony of God’s abundant faith and goodness in your life. They are not scars of shame, they are scars of glory, that will be your portion in Jesus name.
Another lesson we can learn from this, beloved, is that when trouble comes for a believer, what determines whether we survive or not is who we run to. Many of us, sometimes when trouble comes, the moment trouble comes, you know what does the devil want to do apart from the fact that he wants to mess up your believe is that he wants to put you into a state of panic.
Suddenly we panic and we run to the wrong places; the moment trouble comes, the next thing we are thinking of is people who are not even people of faith, you go to an unbeliever. It’s like a married person who has challenges in his marriage and you are going for counsel from somebody who’s not married, or like Pastor told us yesterday; you are a married couple, you live in a house and the landlord and his wife are always quarrelling everyday and beating each other; you have a problem with your wife, you went to tell your landlord, come and help us to settle fight, praise the living Jesus!
Who do you run to when trouble comes as a believer? Look at the examples of the Disciples, when trouble came, they knew that they had Somebody who was greater than the storm even though they were fidgety, even though they were afraid which is normal – normal reaction to trouble but suddenly they remembered, they didn’t begin to say ha, let’s jump into the water, oh, I can swim, we are fishermen. You know many of them were fishermen, if they had reacted to their impulse, they could have said oh, this man is sleeping, leave Him, let’s go, I’m a swimmer and would just jump, especially Peter, you know he likes water.
That’s natural instinct but they said no, we have never seen this Man calms storms before; we have seen Him multiply bread and fish, we have seen Him healed the sick, we don’t know whether He can also calm storm but let’s go to Him anyway. There’s nothing that comes your way that is strange to God; there’s no limitation to the power of God, the things that you have seen Him do, He can do more, hallelujah!
He’s unlimited in His ability; what He did yesterday, He can do it and even do more; God can reveal Himself to you through different dimensions, and the more the trouble comes, the more the dimensions of revelations of our God. When trouble comes for believers, we must see it as an opportunity for God to reveal Himself to us in another dimension. Troubles are the means of our growth in God’s kingdom and faith is our legal tender, hallelujah! Faith is our instrument of survival; so when trouble comes, let it push you to Christ.
The Disciples ran to Christ for solution, Jesus rose up and answered them, hallelujah! Because the Bible says in Psalm 50: 15 that call unto me in the day of trouble, I will answer you. I know that sometimes when trouble comes, it can becloud our faith, it can make us weak, it can make us discouraged, but today I want you to cast away all doubts, He’s still the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, hallelujah! And the Bible says there’s nothing too difficult for Him to do, your case is not unique, that sickness is not unique, that problem is not unique; there’s nothing happening to you or that happened to you that is strange, that was not covered at Calvary.
The blood of Jesus Christ has covered everything; He’s an antidote of all manner of troubles that you have and today, that blood will speak on your behalf in the name of Jesus. So let your trouble push you to Christ; as a matter of fact, one of the lessons to learn is that when trouble comes, God uses it as an opportunity to further bring us closer to Himself. The devil wants to use trouble to separate us from God, but God uses it to further cement our relationship with Him because when trouble comes and we run to Him, we learn more of Him, He teaches us more of His ways, He helps us to develop a better walk with Him.
These Disciples had known Christ before, but see when they ran to Him and He calmed the storm – look at the last verse that we read, it says what manner of Man is this? That means we have not known this Man enough, there’s still more to know about Him, you can never exhaust your knowledge of God, and the way we discover God more is by experience, and most times that experience comes by troubles and challenges, when He begins to reveal Himself in different dimensions.
It’s not enough to read the Bible; when we just read and we meditate, yes, that is theory, that is good, but that is also in our spirit preparing us for the day of trouble so that when trouble comes, those are the things we are going to bring forth by faith and we are going to stand upon them, stand upon the promises of God, stand upon the word of God to proclaim and to declare, to remember what He has promised in His word because faith means that we believe and we agree and we know that what God has promised in His word, He has already done, hallelujah! Every promise that God has made for you, made unto you in His word; everything in your life that you have read and you desire, it shall be yours in the name of Jesus.
In Mark 11: 22, Jesus and His disciples were on the road to Bethany one day, and Bible says that they were hungry and Jesus saw this fig tree, it wasn’t the time for fruits to come on the tree, so Jesus Christ went there and what He saw were leaves and He cursed the fig tree and said no man shall eat fruit from you from today and they left.
The next morning as they were walking by again, they looked at the tree and Peter (I think) said ha, Master, Master, look at the fig that you cursed yesterday, it has gone dry, and Jesus said unto them, if only you have faith, you can command the mountain to move and go into the sea and it will go; He said if you believe, in other words, by faith you can do anything, only if you believe, hallelujah.
So when trouble comes at any time for a believer, because we are talking about faith in the time of trouble, faith is our most important ingredient in the time of trouble; faith is what activates God’s power, without faith, God cannot move, that’s why He’s always looking for where faith is, the power of God is always searching for where faith is.
When Jesus met the man who had been sick for 38 years at the pool of Bethsaida, He could have just healed him like that but He asked him, what do you want? He was trying to find out the faith, where is your faith in the time of trouble? We must never get to a point where we will lose our faith or let trouble take away our faith because that is the only thing that God is looking for to connect us to our blessing. Praise the living Jesus!
Then another point to note in that scripture before we close is that Jesus is never too far away, no matter how terrible our situation, no matter how serious the trouble, no matter how it seems that we are alone, Jesus is never too far away for believers. You may not hear Him, you may not see Him, you may look lonely, everybody may have abandoned you, but Jesus is never too far away, He’s always there, all you need to do is to call upon Him and He will answer you. So don’t ever let anybody deceive you that God is far away, God is never far away, He may be silent and quiet as He was in that ship but He’s never far away, all we need to do is to call upon Him; they called upon Him, I believe that even if they had not called upon Jesus, the ship would never have sunk because Jesus was there, that’s why He was sleeping, He knew that the storm would come because He knows everything ahead of time, so the storm was not strange to Jesus.
Jesus knew and yet He slept because He knew that there’s nothing on earth or in heaven that can overcome Him, so even if they didn’t call upon Him, the storm would still have abated, but He had to let them call upon Him not for His own sake but for their sake, so that they can grow their faith, so that they can believe Him more, so that they can know that with faith nothing is impossible, so whatever we are going through now and God is allowing us to go through it, and the miracle that will come is not because of God, it’s because of us.
When one trouble passes away, another will still come. That’s why you find out that when David had killed a lion, he killed a bear, Goliath came; the more you overcome one trouble, another one will come, ‘ah, hey, trouble all the time’, no, it’s because God wants you to grow; by your trouble you will grow and that means you will overcome in the name of Jesus.
Let us rise to our feet; I want to emphasize again that faith is the currency of the believer. The Bible says in Hebrews 11: 6 that without faith you cannot please God; you can’t get something from the God that you cannot please; Hebrews 10: 38 says the just shall live by faith, but if you are not born again, the Bible says in Ephesians 2: 10, we are saved by grace through faith; unless you are saved and Christ knows you, you can’t enjoy the blessings of salvation, you can’t enjoy the power of victory over troubles, you will only be struggling alone because each time you call upon Him, ‘God help me, just help me’, He will say I don’t know you, there’s no connection.
That’s why I want us even as we bow our heads this morning and as we close our eyes… [Altar call]
Psalm 50: 15 says “Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver you, and you will honor Me”; I want you to say Father, I surrender my trouble unto You this morning, please help me in the name of Jesus. Say Father, I call upon You this morning, (I don’t know what trouble you are going through), I’ve heard Your word and I have faith that You already completed it at Calvary, Father give me a testimony now, I know You have already done it, give me a testimony concerning this trouble, in Jesus name we prayed.
Psalm 34: 10 says, “The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing”; say Father, by faith, I declare that from today, by Your sacrifice at Calvary, I will no longer lack anything good. Decree it and declare it, it’s a declaration, it’s not a prayer, it’s not a prayer, you are asserting your right.
Say Lord I know, I decree that from today, no longer will I lack anything good in my life, in my heath, in my finances, in my marriage; declare it. As people of faith, as a people of power, we are to declare and to decree and to command and to possess.
Psalm 37: 25 says I have been young and now I’m old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread; Father in the name of Jesus, thank You Lord for the assurance of Your word this morning; thank You for reminding us of the great work at Calvary, Your finished work; thank You Father because now we know that our afflictions are temporary, that by Your sacrifice at Calvary, our victory is assured.
I declare and I decree for everyone hearing my voice this morning that an end has come to their troubles in the name of Jesus. No more fainting, no more failing, from today it shall be testimonies to the glory of Your name, thank You precious Father, in Jesus mighty name we prayed.
