Kingdom Faith #8 Let God be God

Kingdom Faith Overview

In this eighth installment of the Kingdom Faith series, the pastor of NTC Ministries brings a focused and clarifying message designed to tighten the teaching and bring greater practical understanding to what it means to live by faith. Drawing from Hebrews 12:1-3, Mark 11:22-24, Matthew 25:14-30, Romans 5:3-5, Romans 12:1-3, and 2 Peter 1:1-4, the message centers on a foundational call: let God be God. The pastor explains that faith is not a striving after things, but a confident trust in the person of God Himself. Using vivid analogies including a flashlight circuit, the stall phase of smoking pulled pork, and the parable of the talents, he illustrates how faith begins as a gift of righteousness and grows through endurance. Believers are reminded that God’s thoughts toward every person are good, not evil, and that the promises of Scripture are not fairy tales but finished facts waiting for personal activation. The message challenges listeners to fix their eyes on Jesus, declare the goodness of God openly, and refuse the weight of doubt, fear, and misplaced blame that keeps faith dormant and potential power from becoming active.

Kingdom Faith Outline

• 00:00 – Opening and Series Context: The pastor introduces this session as a tightening and review of the Kingdom Faith series, sharing a personal hospital encounter that frames the sermon’s core tension between worldly corruption and God’s good purposes.
• 08:30 – The First and Last Adam: A theological foundation is laid contrasting Adam’s failure with Jesus the last Adam, who stayed focused on the Father, destroyed principalities on the cross, and now sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand.
• 16:00 – Hebrews 12 and Fixing Your Eyes on Jesus: The pastor unpacks Hebrews 12:1-3, teaching that faith requires stripping off every weight, running with endurance, and keeping attention on Jesus rather than on problems, shadows, or circumstances.
• 25:00 – Faith as a Noun, Believing as a Verb: A key distinction is drawn between faith received from God’s Word and the active response of believing, illustrated through the flashlight circuit analogy showing how potential power becomes active power.
• 33:30 – The Stall and the Endurance Process: Using the analogy of smoking pulled pork and its stall phase, the pastor describes how God uses seasons of apparent stillness to break down the connective tissues of worldly thinking and produce a tender, transformed heart.
• 43:00 – Mark 11 and Having Faith in God: The cursed fig tree passage is examined to show that Jesus had faith in the Father, not merely faith for an outcome. The pastor teaches that believers possess the same quality of faith given through righteousness.
• 51:00 – The Parable of the Talents and Kingdom Increase: Matthew 25:14-30 is expounded to show that God expects multiplication of what He entrusts to His servants. The pastor connects the buried talent to fear-based, small thinking about who God really is.
• 58:30 – Romans 12 and Renewing the Mind: The call to present the body as a living sacrifice and be transformed by a renewed mind is applied to faith, warning against thinking more highly of self than of God’s revealed will and promises.
• 64:00 – 2 Peter 1 and Exceeding Great Promises: The pastor concludes with 2 Peter 1:1-4, showing that God’s divine power has already given believers everything pertaining to life and godliness, and that His exceedingly great and precious promises are the means of partaking in the divine nature.
• 68:00 – Communion and Final Exhortation: The message closes with communion, reminding the congregation that Jesus is the common union between believers and God, and inviting everyone to receive healing, provision, and transformation through active, declared faith.

Scripture References

Hebrews 12:1-3, 1 Peter 2:24, James 5, Luke 6:38, Psalm 112:13, 1 Peter 2:7, 2 Peter 1:1, Mark 11:22-24, Romans 10, Romans 5:3-5, Romans 12:1-3, Matthew 25:14-30, Hebrews 10:23, 2 Peter 1:1-4, 1 John 4

Key Takeaways

• Faith is not primarily about securing things from God but about placing absolute confidence and trust in who God is as a loving Father.
• Faith is a noun received through God’s Word, but believing is the corresponding verb that activates it, just as completing a circuit causes potential power to produce light.
• The seasons where nothing seems to change are often the most spiritually productive, as God uses the stall to break down what connects us to worldly thinking and produce a tender, transformed character.
• Every believer has been given the same quality of faith as Jesus, received as a gift of righteousness, meaning no one lacks the capacity to trust God for His promises.
• God’s thoughts toward every person are entirely good, for peace, hope, and a future, and disasters or suffering are never acts of His hand against mankind.
• The parable of the talents reveals that God expects the faith and gifts He entrusts to believers to multiply, and fearful, inactive faith is treated as a serious failure to know the master.
• Knowing God more deeply through His exceeding great and precious promises is the direct pathway to partaking of the divine nature and escaping the corruption of this world.

Kingdom Faith Notes

Faith in God Not for Things

One of the most clarifying moments in this message is the distinction the pastor draws from Mark 11:22. Jesus did not have faith directed at the fig tree. His faith was in the Father to accomplish what He declared. This shifts the entire framework of how believers approach prayer and trust. Kingdom faith is relational before it is transactional. When faith is rooted in deep knowledge of God’s character and love, outcomes become the natural overflow of a right relationship rather than the desperate goal of a strained performance.

The Flashlight Circuit Illustration

To explain the relationship between faith and believing, the pastor uses the memorable image of a flashlight. A battery holds tremendous potential power, but that power only becomes active when a contact is made to complete the circuit. In the same way, God’s promises contain all the power needed for every human need, but the believer must make contact through obedience and declaration. Hearing the Word builds faith as a possession, but acting on that Word, confessing, giving, calling the elders, is the switch that completes the circuit and releases God’s active power into the situation.

What the Stall Does Inside a Believer

The pulled pork analogy is one of the most pastoral illustrations in the message. During the smoking process, meat reaches a temperature plateau called the stall where no visible progress occurs. Yet internally, connective tissue is breaking down and fat is melting away, producing the tenderness that makes the final result exceptional. Spiritually, God uses these seasons of apparent stillness to work deeply within the believer, dismantling wrong thinking, impatience, fear, and earthly attachments. Those who endure the stall come through with a tender heart, greater patience, and a richer experience of God’s faithfulness.

The Parable of Talents and Fear of God

The servant who buried his talent did not lack resources. He lacked an accurate knowledge of his master. He called the master harsh and a reaper of what he did not plant, a description the other servants never used because they had put their trust into action. The pastor connects this directly to how believers view God today. When people believe God is withholding, punishing, or unreliable, they hide what He has given them. The result is not safety but loss. God expects increase, and the starting point of increase is always an honest and loving knowledge of His generous character.

Exceeding Great Promises as God’s Tool

Second Peter 1:1-4 provides the doctrinal capstone of the message. God’s divine power has already provided everything pertaining to life and godliness, but He channels these realities through His exceeding great and precious promises. When believers engage these promises through faith and declaration, two things happen simultaneously: they receive the provision promised, and they are changed inwardly to partake of the divine nature. The promises are not merely means to an end. They are the relational bridge through which God’s own character is imparted to those who believe and declare what He has said.

Let God Be God in Your Circumstances

The sermon’s title summarizes its most urgent exhortation. Too often believers subtly position themselves as wiser than God, questioning His timing, doubting His goodness when circumstances do not change quickly, or attributing destruction to His hand. The pastor calls this out directly, connecting it to Romans 12 and the need for a renewed mind. When God is allowed to be fully who He is, the source of all good, the giver of faith, the keeper of every promise, believers stop striving and start receiving. Endurance, declaration, and trust become not burdens but the natural posture of those who truly know the Father.

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