Andy Stanley - Five Things God Uses to Grow Your Faith Participants Guide

Imagine for a moment that you had absolute, perfect faith and confidence in Godin a personal God who knew your name and always heard your prayers. Even when life was rocky and things werent going your way, even when circumstances only got worse... imagine if the natural response in your mind and heart would be, Gods in control; hes going to work this out; he always leverages bad things for good purpose; and he has a perfect plan for my life. So Ill just wait patiently and see what he has in store for me.

Think how different your life would be. Imagine your insecurities being replaced by increased confidence. Imagine the ability to remain calm when facing temptations and adversity, even tragedy. Youd wake up every day knowing God was absolutely bigger than all of that, always there to walk beside you through whatever you encountered. Youd have no fear for your family, your career, your relationships, your marriage, and your finances.

Wouldnt that be amazing?

Maybe youve met people like that. They seem to have this mind-boggling, bulletproof, unshakable trust in God, even when theyre going through horrible ordeals. Theres something inescapably attractive about them, and we wish we had faith as strong as theirs. But we can also feel irritated. Wed like to try to rattle their childlike faith, to bring them back to the real world with the rest of us. We want to tap them on the shoulder: Hey, theres more information you havent thought about. Its just so hard to believe anyone could have such absolute confidence in God.

But thats exactly what God wants for all of us. He wants to explode our faith into something extraordinary. He wants us to have absolute confidence in him that influences every single facet of our lives.

And hes at work to make it happen.

So hows he doing it?

Over the years, some things have become clear to me and to those who work with me in ministry. As weve observed people and listened to literally hundreds of them describe their faith journeys, five things kept popping up in their stories. These five seem to be the things God uses repeatedly to grow peoples faith.

Well take a close look at all five in the weeks to come, but let me briefly introduce you to them.

First, theres the kind of practical teaching in which truth from the Bible comes alive with startling relevance to our everyday lives.

Then providential relationshipsGod puts people in our paths that shape us and influence us in extraordinary ways.

Third, when we exercise private disciplines, like prayer, personal time in the Bible, and even generosity, God uses them to deepen our relationship with him.

Fourth, God provides opportunities for personal ministry where we step outside our comfort zones to serve othersand end up receiving the biggest benefits ourselves.

And finally, pivotal circumstancessomething big happens, usually something unplanned, unexpected, and unwanted, and suddenly our lives and the way we think about God are changed forever.

Now you wont find these five things tucked into some list somewhere in the Bible. And there may even be other significant elements besides these five that you would want to include. But in our experience and through observations over many years, these five in particular are ones that God uses consistently to take peoples trust and confidence in him to new levels.

And since trust is the key to any healthy relationship, the result is that these people experience a new closeness with their Father in heaven. Their faith enters a different dimensionit becomes personal.

Thats what God wants to do for all of us. So lets discover more about these five things he uses to expand our faith.

SESSION 1
BIG Faith

Its all about trust.

Right now, God isnt calling us to perfect behavior or to more knowledge about him, but to a relationship with him. And every healthy relationship is built on trust.

As we read the accounts of Jesus life in the Bible, we see that he wasnt recognized and accepted by the most religious peoplethose who knew the Old Testament best, and who were recognized by others as being the best behaved. Their relationships with God were lacking in moment-by-moment dependence and trust.

Jesus pointed out their lack, and he found others who demonstrated in an astonishing way the kind of personal trust that God wants all of us to experience with him. This is about the simplicity of faithand about Gods commitment to expand this kind of confidence in him in our own hearts and lives.

DISCUSSION STARTER

Do you know people whose faith in God is so strong that you could sometimes describe it as amazing? What is it that makes their confidence in God so strong?

VIDEO OVERVIEW
For Session 1 of the DVD

God wants to take us to a new level of big faithextraordinary trust and confidence in him.