Kingdom Faith #8: Fix Your Eyes on Jesus — Faith, Believing and the Stall

Kingdom faith keeps its eyes on Jesus, not on the problem. In this eighth message of the series, the pastor brings the teaching “a little bit tighter”: faith is the gift God gives through His Word, believing is what we do with it, and holding Jesus precious is what keeps both alive when the heat is on. Using a flashlight, a family heirloom and a slow-smoked pork shoulder, he shows why delays are not denials and why who you believe God to be is who He will be to you. This message follows Kingdom Faith #5: Faith and Believing — Faith in Jesus, Not Faith for Things.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, the Scripture behind each point (NKJV on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for living kingdom faith this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was preached at NTC Ministries and posted on September 16, 2025, as the closing teaching of the Kingdom Faith series; the pastor announces that a new series on our heavenly Father begins the following week. He says the Lord had “a long talk” with him about tightening the teaching, so this message is partly a review and partly a sharper focus on where our attention belongs.

He opens with a hospital conversation. After a small surgery, he talked with a nurse who resisted the gospel and asked why the world is so corrupt. He explained that corruption came in through disobedience to God, and that God placed humanity in a fallen world on purpose, with faith as the way to overcome it.

Kingdom Faith Fixes Its Eyes on Jesus

The pastor explains that God did not put a rebel in paradise; Satan was cast down to this earth, and then Adam was created there on purpose. Adam could have kept fellowshipping with God, acted on his faith and overcome temptation, but he did not. Jesus, the last Adam, stayed focused and did only what He saw the Father do. On the cross He disarmed principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them (Colossians 2:14–15).

So Jesus is our focal point. Hebrews 12:1–3 tells us to lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and to run with endurance, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. The pastor reads it from a modern translation that calls Jesus the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, he says, changes how we pray. Many prayers are just complaints: God, this is bad, the devil is after me. Prayer is going to God and letting His strength, love and power into us, because in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). The weight that slows us down is a lack of faith, since whatever is not from faith is sin (Romans 14:23).

He uses a simple picture. When you face the sun, it is warm and bright, but a shadow falls behind you. Turn around and all you see is the shadow. What frightens people is only a shadow, and the remedy is to turn back around, which is what repentance means. He adds that when a tornado destroys a trailer park, people call it an act of God, but God never did that. His thoughts toward every person are of peace and not of evil, to give a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

Faith Is a Noun, Believing Is a Verb

Why does God’s good will not simply happen? Because we play a part, the pastor says, and that is why He gives us faith along with the gift of righteousness. Romans 10:6–10 says the righteousness of faith does not ask who will go up to heaven or down to the deep to do it for us. It speaks: confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved.

He explains that the word saved is all-encompassing: healed, delivered, freed, prospered, filled with love, joy and hope. That is why we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). Complaining about the test, he says, is not a testimony; it is just moaning. Then he restates the core of last week’s lesson: faith is a noun that comes by hearing God’s Word, but believing is a verb.

The table below follows the examples he gives of how the two work together:

For healing, 1 Peter 2:24 says that by His stripes you were healed, past tense. James 5:14–15 then tells the sick to call the elders, and the prayer of faith will save the sick. For finances, Psalm 112:3 promises wealth and riches in the house of the righteous, and Luke 6:38 gives the verb: “Give, and it will be given to you.”

He illustrates with a flashlight. The battery holds potential power, but nothing shines until you slide the switch and close the circuit; then the power becomes kinetic and the bulb lights. Many people ask why God, who has all power, is not doing anything for them. Flip the switch, he says: make contact with Jesus by doing what He says. He also notes that people of faith are often criticized by people who have no faith and only complain about the problem.

Holding Jesus Precious

The pastor says the key that keeps out negativity, grumbling and complaining is holding Jesus precious. 1 Peter 2:7 says that to you who believe, He is precious, but He is not precious to those who refuse to follow Him. When we act in faith and see Him bring us through problem after problem, He becomes more precious all the time.

He compares it to a family heirloom, such as an inherited wedding ring. The diamond is what makes it precious; lose the diamond and the band is scrap. He recalls Fay Markwart, a brilliant gemologist who helped him start the school and write its first curriculum; the school library bears her name. She taught him that the more valuable the gem, the more prongs hold it. You would never trust a ten-carat diamond to three prongs.

That is spiritual growth. Hard seasons may break off a prong or two, but you are still holding on to Jesus, and the more precious He becomes, the tighter your hold. Going to church becomes more valuable, not less, and everything the kingdom asks of you becomes important. In that picture, faith is the setting that holds the precious stone.

He ties this to 2 Peter 1:1, addressed “to those who have obtained like precious faith.” The Lord Himself calls our faith precious. That faith is a gift: faith in the One who has overcome death, hell and the grave. Our part is to keep our confidence in Him and keep looking to Jesus.

The Stall and the Fig Tree

Next comes his favorite illustration. He loves smoking meat. A bone-in pork shoulder goes in low and slow at 200 to 225 degrees and usually takes about nine hours, sometimes twelve, to reach 205. Somewhere around 170 to 190 degrees, the temperature simply stops climbing for an hour or two, even though the heat has not changed. Pitmasters call it the stall.

If you do not understand the stall, you pull the meat too early, and it comes out tough and flavorless. During the stall, the connective tissue breaks down and the fat renders out, which is why the finished meat pulls apart without a knife. The same thing happens to believers. You are in the heat, believing God, and nothing seems to change. The Lord is not removing the heat, the pastor says. Keep your eyes on Him and you will come out with a tender heart.

That is why David could say, “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). Look at what Jesus endured, and look where He is seated now. God wants the same for us.

The fig tree in Mark 11:12–14 makes the same point. Jesus, hungry, found leaves but no fruit, and cursed the tree. Peter had seen immediate miracles: a widow’s son raised, Jairus’ daughter raised, a woman healed the moment she touched His hem, a storm stilled with a word. Yet this tree did not wither on the spot. The next day, in Mark 11:20–21, Peter saw it dried up from the roots.

Everything in the kingdom, the pastor teaches, is a root system and an inside job. Things grow from the roots up or die from the roots up, and that can take time. He loves miracles and has seen many, but he has also seen God take time to change his heart: removing anger, giving peace, and turning impatience into “the patience of eternity.” Accusing God of doing nothing, he warns, sounds like making yourself wiser than God.

Jesus’ answer was, “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22–24). The pastor stresses that it is faith in God, not faith for things. Whoever says to the mountain, “Be removed,” and does not doubt, will have whatever he says. Whatever you ask when you pray, believe that you receive it, and you will have it. Even if nothing looks or feels different, you have received it.

He adds that we are saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves (Ephesians 2:8–9). Through righteousness every believer has received the measure of faith, the same faith Jesus walks in. And when we pass through the waters and the fire, God has promised to be with us (Isaiah 43:2).

God Will Be Who You Believe Him to Be

The Christian life, the pastor says, is an endurance race. An endurance course is built with holes and hills you would never normally drive over, and part of the test is your own psyche wanting to quit. But once you finish, you want to go again. With over 8,000 promises in Scripture, he says, believers have targets to aim at, and sin simply means missing the target. If we miss, God does not scold; He picks us up and says, “Let’s try it again.”

Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” Righteousness speaks, just as God created by speaking: “Let there be light”; and there was light (Genesis 1:3). Believers are a chosen generation, His own special people (1 Peter 2:9). Romans 5:3–5 shows that tribulation produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and hope does not disappoint, because God’s love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

That is where loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30) becomes possible. We do not know all our heart, he admits, but the breaking down that happens in the endurance test shows us more of it, and we love Him more. We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Receiving His love is prayer, fellowship and communion.

Then he turns to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14–30, which he reads in a translation that speaks of bags of silver. The servants with five and two invested, risked loss and doubled what they had. The third buried his one because he believed his master was a harsh man who reaped where he had not sown. The pastor points out that a man like that would be called a thief. That servant did not know his master.

His summary: God will be to you whoever you believe Him to be. If you believe He is the one who makes people sick and destroys, you will blame Him when trouble comes, instead of turning the flashlight on yourself. He tells of a man who needed $100 by Friday and said that if God did not provide it, God was a liar. The pastor drove home, gathered a hundred dollars in bills and change and gave it to him, and the man still ended up without the money by Friday.

He contrasts ignorance, not having the information, with stupidity, having the information but refusing to apply it. Romans 12:1–3 calls us to present our bodies as living sacrifices, be transformed by the renewing of our minds, and not think more highly of ourselves than we ought, for God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. God’s Word will not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11), and He expects that faith to multiply.

He ends with 2 Peter 1:1–4. Grace and peace are multiplied through the knowledge of God, His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and through His exceedingly great and precious promises we become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world. All the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Living Kingdom Faith This Week

The message closes with communion, a “common union” with God through Jesus. The pastor reminds the church that nothing can separate us from His love; in all these things we are more than conquerors (Romans 8:35–37). Here are practical steps for living kingdom faith from this message:

• Turn around from the shadow. When fear rises, deliberately refocus on who Jesus is instead of rehearsing the problem.
• Pray without complaining. Go to God to receive His strength and love, not to recite how bad things are.
• Flip the switch. Pick one promise and act on it: confess it, give, or call for prayer.
• Respect the stall. When nothing seems to change, stay in the heat and let God tenderize your heart rather than pulling out early.
• Add prongs. Thank God for each time He has brought you through, so He becomes more precious and your hold grows stronger.
• Invest your talent. Use what God has given you, even at risk, believing He is a good Master.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Tightening the kingdom faith teaching
• 2:15 Why God put Adam in a fallen world
• 3:32 Jesus, the last Adam, and Hebrews 12
• 6:08 Whatever is not of faith is sin
• 7:37 The sun and the shadow
• 9:05 Romans 10: the righteousness of faith speaks
• 11:37 Faith is a noun, believing is a verb
• 12:42 The flashlight circuit
• 15:07 1 Peter 2:7: Jesus is precious
• 16:16 The heirloom and the prongs
• 18:44 Smoking meat and the stall
• 22:21 Mark 11: the fig tree
• 24:39 Dead from the roots up
• 27:32 You have the faith of God
• 31:12 Believe that you receive
• 33:46 The endurance race and God’s promises
• 36:17 Hebrews 10:23: hold fast the confession
• 39:00 Romans 5: hope does not disappoint
• 42:35 The parable of the talents
• 47:11 God will be who you believe Him to be
• 50:51 Ignorant or stupid? Romans 12
• 53:33 2 Peter 1: like precious faith
• 1:00:00 Communion, a common union

Kingdom Faith Series

This message is part of the Kingdom Faith series at NTC Ministries. Start from the beginning or go back one message:

• First message: Kingdom Faith #2: The Grace of Faith That Receives Every Other Grace
• Previous: Kingdom Faith #5: Faith and Believing — Faith in Jesus, Not Faith for Things
• You are here: Kingdom Faith #8: Fix Your Eyes on Jesus — Faith, Believing and the Stall

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the pastor mean by “false humility”?

He describes people who say they do not want anything from God, they just want God. He calls that false humility, because God wants us to use our faith toward something in order to know Him better. Each time we believe for a promise and see Him fulfill it, He becomes more precious. He gives the example of the church believing for a new sound system and seeing it provided within about a week.

Does a delay mean God has said no?

According to this message, no. The pastor points to the fig tree that Jesus cursed: nothing visible happened that day, but it was already dying from the roots. He says God often works from the roots up, changing our hearts while we wait. The stall in smoking meat is the same idea; the heat is doing its work even when the thermometer is not moving.

What is the next series about?

At the end of this message, the pastor announces that the following week he would begin a new series teaching about our heavenly Father. That fits the thread of this sermon, which keeps returning to knowing how much the Father loves us. As he puts it, it is hard to believe God for great things if you do not know how much He loves you, and peace comes by knowing who God really is.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Hebrews 12:1–3 — looking unto Jesus
• Romans 10:6–10 — the righteousness of faith speaks
• 1 Peter 2:7 — He is precious
• Mark 11:22–24 — have faith in God
• Hebrews 10:23 — hold fast the confession
• Romans 5:3–5 — hope does not disappoint
• Matthew 25:14–30 — the parable of the talents
• Romans 12:1–3 — the measure of faith
• 2 Peter 1:1–4 — exceedingly great and precious promises

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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