The Lifted Warrior
Designed for new and young believers in Christ, this weekly podcast equips you with essential spiritual tools to navigate daily struggles and uphold Christian values. Each episode offers practical strategies to strengthen your faith and stay committed to a life fully submitted to Jesus. Join us as we encourage and empower you to stand firm in your walk with Christ.
The Lifted Warrior
Building Faith: The Importance of Fellowship
Have you ever wondered why your faith seems to waver despite your best intentions? The answer might be simpler—and more challenging—than you think.
Drawing from Noah's extraordinary journey, this episode explores how true fellowship with God serves as the essential foundation for unshakable faith. Through Noah's example, we discover that walking closely with God—being in genuine proximity and honest communication—precedes and enables the kind of faith that can weather life's most devastating storms.
Many of us struggle with inconsistency not because we lack desire, but because we haven't prioritized authentic fellowship with our Creator. We've substituted performance-based spirituality for genuine relationship, trying to have faith without the vulnerability of true communion with God. The result? Faith that crumbles when faced with real challenges.
This conversation delves into the uncomfortable truth that our hearts can be deceptively resistant to God's work. We explore how true prayer isn't about eloquence or spiritual performance but about revealing our struggles and allowing God to address their root causes. Through vulnerable fellowship, we gain the clarity to hear God's specific direction for our lives rather than simply mimicking others' journeys.
What does fellowship with God produce? First, growing obedience as we naturally align with His will. Second, divine favor—not necessarily material prosperity, but supernatural assistance in fulfilling our purpose. Noah found favor with God through fellowship, and this favor preserved him when destruction overwhelmed everyone else.
Ready to build faith that stands firm when everything around you collapses? It begins with honest fellowship. Join us as we explore how to cultivate this life-changing communion with God.
what's up, guys, and welcome back to the lifted warrior podcast. My name is cam and I'm your host, and I am happy, so happy, to be back here with you guys. Man, it's been a couple of weeks, um, and in those couple of weeks, man, me and my wife went on vacation. Uh, we had some much needed time away and together, uh, we took my daughter down to, um, not tamp, but Clearwater and some other beaches down there and we just had a really good time spending some time together as a family.
Speaker 1:Also, during that, man just been really working on I say myself, but not necessarily just working on myself working on getting to a more consistent place, not just with God, but within my routine, within my career, within, you know, my day-to-day just trying to get back to a more consistent place. Well, one thing that's that I'm really big on is just consistency. But enough about me, enough about what I got going on, let's get into this. Man, so, if you have been following us, what we have been doing recently, or what we just recently opened up into, is just talking about faith and the importance of it, just because of the lack that I've seen of not just of faith but putting our faith in the wrong things, more so than just not having faith at all, and so, to combat that man, what God was really showing me is that we really just need to hammer faith, just hammer faith, just hammer faith, just hammer faith. If this is your first time here, I want to welcome you back to the Lifted Warrior podcast, where, once every two weeks, I give you wisdom and biblical strength concerning life's daily issues, so if this is something that you're interested in, you're in the right place.
Speaker 1:So, again, like I said, we left off talking about faith. We left off talking about, you know, putting our faith in the right things, and how this great falling away that we're seeing. The remedy to that is just faith. It's proper faith more than anything, though, and so the Bible gives us a very clear way in order to build our faith, or a very clear prerequisite, or very clear like this is how you do it. It says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, and so that's what we're going to do. We're going to go take a look at different people within the Bible. We're going to go, take a look at their lives, what they did and what faith enabled them to do, and we're going to start in the Old Testament. We're going to start with one of the first people that you see who have faith, and that's Noah.
Speaker 1:Now, noah is not the first person in the Bible that's accounted to being a faithful man or being one that walked with God, but he is the first one that we kind of get a detail into his life. And so let's just hop into it. And if we first just looking at Noah, and what even just his name means and it means relief. It means that God, he was the one to give relief to the, not the destruction, but relief to the wickedness that was already in the earth. See, at this point the earth was very wicked. There was. The Bible said that there was nobody on the earth that was righteous, and God was just like he was tired of it. He said, hey, I'm sorry, I made them, I'm just going to destroy it all. But then when we get introduced to Noah not the first time, but when we get introduced to him as it concerns his righteousness and as it concerns what he did for God, we see that when God mentions him, it says that but I found favor with Noah, so what? But I found favor with Noah. So what was it about the faith that Noah had? What was it that made him find favor with God? Let's look into it.
Speaker 1:And if we're looking at the verse where it kind of describes Noah, if we're looking at Genesis 6 and 9, and the first thing that we see is if we're looking at the King James version translation, it says, as Noah walking with God is what it brings up, and what stood out to me there was that it was saying that he walked with him, and in the translation that I actually read myself, which is the New Living Translation, it says that he had fellowship. And so I was wondering, like God, what was so important about this fellowship? What was so important about walking with you that allowed him to be the one and his family and his bloodline to be the family and bloodline that you decided, okay, yeah, I can restart the earth with these people, I can restart humanity with them. What was it? But if we're looking at what it means, just as it is as him walking with God, it's him being in close proximity. It's him being in close proximity with God. It's him spending time with God. It's him walking with him. It's him talking with him. It's him getting to know God and getting to know the reason for whatever it is that he's telling him to do. It's getting to know the person behind the action and it's just that. It's, you know, and, like I said, in other translations it reads as fellowship and it's just a.
Speaker 1:It just stuck out to me like a sore thumb, like the prerequisite to our faith or the first thing that we have to have in order. If we're ever going to build a strong faith, the first thing that we have to do is first begin to get in close proximity and get in close fellowship with God. And I personally believe excuse me, I personally believe that a lot of us aren't walking in the level of faith that we aspire to. A lot of us aren't believing God the way that we want to. A lot of us aren't walking with him or, excuse me, aren't trusting in him the way that we want to. It's simply because we do not spend enough time with him. It's not because your heart isn't in the right place. It's not because you don't have the right tools. It's not because you know your faith doesn't work. It's not because your heart isn't in the right place. It's not because you don't have the right tools. It's not because you know your faith doesn't work. It's not because this works for everybody else, but it doesn't work for you. No, none of that is true. But the main thing that is true is that you were just not spending enough time with him.
Speaker 1:And I can speak for myself, man. One of the things that I've been doing, I told you I've been, you know, while I've been away, I've been trying to be more consistent with different things, but one of the main things that I've been trying to be more consistent in is just being in proximity with God, in whatever fashion that looks like. And what I mean by proximity and I'm going to get to this later but what I mean by proximity is not just oh, I'm praying like I do, or I'm praying like the person that prays on Sunday morning, or I'm singing and I'm trying to worship like the worship leader on Sunday morning. No, it's coming to a place of fellowship with God where I'm airing out the parts of me that doesn't want him. I'm airing out the parts that say, hey, you know, god, I want to be fully with you, but there's parts of me that, when I come to sit down and read my Bible, that don't want to do it. There's parts of me that, when I come to pray, that it makes it hard.
Speaker 1:And what I found is in those moments where I'm being that honest and I'm being that real with God and I'm allowing him into the places of my heart that have not yet been transformed. It often leads to some of the the places of my heart that have not yet been transformed. It often leads to some of the deepest places of prayer I've ever been in. It often leads to some of the deepest moments of study, some of the deepest moments of reflection that I've ever been in, where God can be honest with me and say hey, I know that you're not where you want to be and I'm here for that, but this is why. This is why you feel that way. This is why, when you try to put your faith towards something, it seems like it's not working. This is why, when you go out and you begin to try to do the things that I've asked you to do, that it becomes hard. And it's not just because you're facing spiritual opposition yes, that's true but it's also because you're facing the opposition within your own heart. I didn't even think I was going to get to this.
Speaker 1:But I was sitting and talking with my wife one day this past week actually, and we were talking about, you know, just people falling away from God or not even falling away from God, but like falling away from their faith and not not living up to the standard that their own standard of faith right. And one thing that I had to come to a realization and I'm still coming to that realization is that we have to understand just how wicked our own hearts are. Our own hearts will try to deceive us and pull us away from God. Our own hearts will tell us that, hey, you prayed yesterday. You know, you prayed really hard yesterday. You don't have to go so hard today. Or, hey, you got in your word real good yesterday. You can still glean from that and it's okay. It's really not. It's our hearts being deceitful. It's the parts of our hearts, the parts of our bodies, the parts of our flesh that have not been transformed, that are really seeking to pull us away from God, that are seeking to disobey God. And so we have to understand just how deceitful even our own hearts can be and reel that thing back in.
Speaker 1:Let me get back into my notes, man, I try not to be loose when I'm with you guys. I try to be dialed in so that it can be sharp to the point and get it over with right. So if we're just looking at fellowship because we moved from, you know, just walking with God and being in close proximity with him but if we're looking at fellowship, one of the biggest things is that it's a friendly association, especially with people who share one's interests, and so that one interest that we have to share is that one interest of righteousness and salvation with God, our Father. If our one interest is not that, if our one interest is in whatever the promise of God that he gave us is, if our one interest is in whoever God told us we would be, then we will stray away from spending time with him in order that we may accomplish what he told us to do without the suffering that comes with it. I'll say that again when our focus is not on spending time with God, it's not on being, it's not on his righteousness and being reconciled back unto him, but it's on anything other than that. If it's on building ourselves into who he has called us to be, if it's on building the ministry that he's called us to build if it's on doing anything outside of his righteousness and being reconciled back to him. We will do everything and anything else to get away from the suffering and the endurance that comes with the purpose on our lives.
Speaker 1:How can I say this? I'm a perfect example. Why do I say that? Because I know the call on my life. I know that God has called me to ministry. I know that he's called me to digital ministry. I know that God has called me to ministry. I know that he's called me to digital ministry. I know that he's called me to this podcast right.
Speaker 1:And so there's been times where my focus has been more on the minister that he called me to be than being in close proximity with him. And so my mind and my own selfish ambition has gotten me into places where I was striving and where I was doing things to circumvent the process and the proximity that I needed to be with God in order for what he had planned to take place. And so what am I saying? I'm saying your flesh will always try to take the easy route when your focus is not on one's interest. What is that one's interest Again? That one interest that we need to be focused on to stay in proper fellowship with God is his righteousness and being reconciled back unto him. It's his righteousness and being reconciled back unto him.
Speaker 1:Without that, nothing else that we do matters, nothing else that we put our focus on, nothing else that even God has told us to do. I know is great. I know you're going to be the next big thing. I know you got power in your hands. I know you can see 30 years into the distance. But without your focus being on Jesus Christ, none of that matters, man. None of it would matter. And not only will none of it matter, but you will circumvent the true process that God had for you. Yeah, you'll do great things if you focus on that. Trust me, you will. I'm not saying you won't. You'll do great things, but the true power that God wanted for you, which was your own soul being right, will be circumvented. It'll be cut out because you went around the process.
Speaker 1:So again, fellowship is friendly association, especially with people who share one's interests. And just looking at Noah, right, if we're looking at his life, one of the first things that it says before it gets into the point where God says that you know he called Noah and said and revealed to him that, hey, I'm about to release a great flood and all those things. It said that he was in fellowship or that he was walking with God. And with that in mind, we have to understand that it is fellowship with God that leads, or that breathes, into faith. And it's telling us something very powerful about that fellowship. And I mentioned a lot of this, but these are some key points that God was giving me as I was sitting down before starting the live or starting the video.
Speaker 1:It's that without being in proximity with or walking with God, it is impossible to have faith in him. And it's impossible to have faith in him because without that fellowship, you can't hear him. Without me being in proximity, I'll just keep using myself as an example. But without me being in proximity, it's easy for me to not even hear what God can be saying about my own life, about what he wants me to speak about next, about what he wants me to do, about who he wants me to connect with. And when I say connect, I don't mean connect for the sake of ministry or the sake of anything, but like just as a brother. But when I'm not connected to God properly, when I'm not seeking his face when I'm not sitting in proximity with him, then it's impossible for me to hear those things. And with it being impossible for me to hear those things, it's impossible for me to be obedient to those things, which means there's no possibility for faith, and I really wasn't going to go here either.
Speaker 1:But another thing that we do is we put our faith or we put our hope in things that God never revealed to us to put our faith in. God told Noah to build an ark. That doesn't mean he told me to God. Told many pastors within the Atlanta area to build a church. That doesn't mean he called me to do that. But if I put my faith in something that he promised to somebody else because I'm not in proximity with him, but I'm simply going off of what the next person has, then I'm not really acting in faith. I'm acting in either selfish ambition or I'm acting just out of trying to do what the next person did, and a lot of us have done that.
Speaker 1:A lot of us have been in a place where you know well, god healed this person because they did this. So I'm going to do that, and while that sounds good, and while you can work yourself up to have pseudo faith in that if God didn't say that that was the way that he was going to heal you, it's not going to happen. And so we? You get hurt because you put your faith in a thing that God never asked you to put your faith into. But but you only know that. You only know what God wanted for you. If you have true fellowship with him, let's keep moving. True fellowship with him, let's keep moving. So we have to make sure that we're staying in close proximity. The same way you have faith in your friends, the same way you have faith in your car, you have faith in whatever it is that you have faith in, the same way you have faith in that. The only reason you have faith in that is because you have close proximity into that. And here's another step forward.
Speaker 1:I'll say that it's impossible to build faith in the classroom. What do I mean? It's impossible to build faith if you are not walking with the thing that you're trying to build your faith in. I'll go a step further. If I'm only reading, the bible says that faith come by hearing, and hearing by the word of god, yes, but if I'm only reading and I'm not putting into action, what the bible is telling me to do, then I don't have faith.
Speaker 1:I have a knowledge, I have an understanding, but I have not enacted my knowledge. I have not converted my knowledge into faith. I can know who god is and not have faith in him. You can know who a police officer is and not have faith in him. I can know who and this is not true but I can know who my father is and not have faith in him. The same way, many of us know who God is and do not have faith in him. Why? Because we not have taken our knowledge of him outside of the classroom into the field. But you have to be able to walk with God. Why? Because we not have taken our knowledge of him outside of the classroom into the field. But you have to be able to walk with God. And I said it again, you have to be able to walk with God, not just sitting in, talking or getting a deeper understanding. Yeah, that's needed, but once you have that understanding, you have to be able to walk with him.
Speaker 1:And I'll say this it was through fellowship and knowing God that Noah was able to get the exact dimensions that the ark would be, and this is going back to me saying that you can't have faith in what somebody else is supposed to do. You're only supposed to have faith in what God told you to do. But you only know that through fellowship. Noah knew the exact dimensions of the ark because he was in fellowship with God, and that fellowship, again, it's what bred faith. Noah knew to get two of every animal, except the ones that were good for eating, but to get seven of those because he was in fellowship with God. Noah trusted putting his family on that boat because he was in fellowship with God.
Speaker 1:And here's the thing the Bible says that this was a wicked time where no man was listening or following God. So he was in fellowship and he was walking with God. Even when it was unpopular, even when everybody else was doing their own thing, even when everybody else was walking the way that they wanted to walk and talking how they wanted to talk, and just saying foolishness and doing foolishness and disregarding anything about God. Noah was fellowshipping with him. And I wonder if we are able to do the same thing, because there are many of us, even in the body of Christ, that we want to walk with God. We want to walk with God, but we aren't fellowshipping with him, despite what everybody else is doing around us. We fellowship when it's convenient, but not at all points.
Speaker 1:And again, I'm not being I'm really not trying to be hard or being critical or being down or dismissive to people, because and I've said it at the top of the show and I'll continue to say this throughout so that it echoes through but I'm a victim of this, not a victim, but I'm a partaker in this as well, where I'm learning and relearning at every point in my life how to be more consistent with God and how to open up and be more real with him, and I just pray that that, even through this, that you, you have the the courage to do the same thing. But let's keep going. It is through fellowship that he yeah, I said that already that he knew which animals, but it was through fellowship that you will be able to remain in Christ Jesus and not fall victim to the storms that are coming to destroy you and those around you. It was through fellowship that Noah was saved. It was through fellowship that he earned favor with God and, because of that, it was through fellowship that Noah was saved. It was through fellowship that he earned favor with God and because of that, it was through that same fellowship that he was able to not partake in the destruction that was coming for the earth.
Speaker 1:And I don't know about you, or I don't know if people believe this or not, but once we die, there is a heaven or hell that we're going to be going to, and it's through your fellowship with God that you're going to be able to obtain faith and keep yourself from the destruction of hell. It's through your fellowship with God that you're going to be able to even remove yourself from the destruction that you will see during this lifetime, self from the destruction that you will see during this lifetime. Because one thing I know that on this earth there's a time and season for everything and we will all experience the trials and sufferings of life. But it's through your fellowship and your faith in God that God will save you from a lot of those things. Fellowship is not just a suggestion, but it is the lifeline into eternity. Without fellowship, there is no communication. Without communication, there is no conversion and no promise. And if there is no conversion or no promise, then there is no hope and therefore no faith to be had.
Speaker 1:Fellowship and I'll keep saying this your fellowship with God, your being able to walk with him and coming into close proximity with him, is what is going to be the prerequisite into your faith, into a strong faith, into a unwavering faith, into a faith that is able to look death in the eyes and say, oh death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where is your power? But it's through that fellowship that you know him and that you receive his instruction. So let's keep pushing though. So, knowing how powerful fellowship is with God is through building our faith. How can we stay in constant fellowship with him?
Speaker 1:And there's two things that I'll give, because it's very simple and it's going to sound very remedial. You've heard it before it's nothing, it's nothing, it's no secret. But the first thing is true prayer. And what do I mean by that? I mentioned it at the beginning when I mentioned how I've been coming into a place where my time with God looks different. It doesn't look like what it used to. It's not rehearsed, it's not anything that I can hype myself up for, it's not anything that is, honestly, it's not even pleasant. I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 1:I've come to a place where my prayer with God is a cutting away of myself. It's a revealing the hard places of myself to him and it's very sensitive, like even doing this podcast. Like even doing this podcast, like I almost gave a warning at the top, like if I get sensitive in this, I'm sorry, because that's just kind of where I've been with God recently, where anything that I do for him, like it's not just a reverence, but it's truly like I'm not doing this for myself, I'm not doing this for any recognition, but I'm simply doing this because I want to be right with God. And so if God asks me to do a podcast, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it to my best ability. If God asks me to, you know, just come and sit with him. I'm going to be real with him, even in all of that. When I don't feel like, you know, sitting and talking, I'm just going to sit and say, hey, I don't feel like sitting and talking today, and let God reveal to me the parts of my heart as to why I feel that way. See, here's the thing.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of us have come to a place where we think, well, if I'm not praying the way that my mother prays, or if I'm not praying the way that my pastor prays, or my apostle prays, or or the prophet of God prays, then I'm not praying for real. No, praying is you revealing yourself to God and God revealing himself to you. And it's him saying I knew all of those things that you've been trying to keep from me this whole time. And guess what? I'm still. I'm still wanting to be with you. Not only am I still wanting to be with you, that I'll move everything out of the way in order that I may be able to spend time with you.
Speaker 1:So that's what I mean by true prayer. I don't mean you praying in tongues. I don't mean you going off and you fighting scripture and you yelling and screaming up that scripture yeah, that's good and that's needed and that's powerful. Don't get, get me wrong. But what I mean by true prayer as I mean you reveal the places of your heart where you're not submitted to god and you just straight up tell him like god, hey, I've been struggling with this, I want to be right, but there's this thing that keeps coming up. Every time I want to sit down with you, every time I want to get up early and pray, I can't seem to get out of the bed. Every time I want to pray on my way home, there seems to be other things that distract me. God, help me get past those things.
Speaker 1:And what you will find and I speak from experience. But what you will find is in those moments where you begin to be real with God and tell him hey, god, I love you so much, but there are things that are keeping me from you. He will reveal, yes, that thing has been keeping you from you and this is how it's been directing your entire life. It'd be simple, like, yes, I get what you're saying and I'm so thankful that you revealed it to me so that I can reveal to you how it's destroyed everything in your life. But that comes, that's true fellowship, and it's a hard place for many because we've never heard that. But here's the thing Many ministers, many preachers, many teachers have been telling us this for years. But it gets to a point where you have to internalize it for yourself.
Speaker 1:No, prayer is not a show. No prayer is not me just going off and rambling off everything that I know. No prayer is me simply sitting and talking with God. No prayer is me simply sitting and talking with God. Have a little talk with Jesus, tell him all about your troubles, do that thing and do it consistently and to the point where, yes, you're going to be, it's going to hurt, you're going to be sensitive, it's going to be different things where you feel like God. Why, why does this affect me so much, god? Why do I feel this way? And it's because he's opening the door unto your heart and he's giving you true understanding and true language for who he truly created you to be and just how the enemy has tried to sideswipe you from the purpose and from the promise that he has created you to fulfill. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 1:The second thing is reading.
Speaker 1:So that's the first thing. The second thing is reading. It's just reading, reading your word and doing it consistently. Doing it consistently, and I'm not saying this as a person that feels like I do it as consistent as I need to. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you about that. But the more consistent you can be with reading your word, but the more consistent you can be with reading your word, the more consistent you can be with reading your Bible, the more easy it will be for you to stay in fellowship. Why? Because you'll see and you'll read scripture where David is like bless the Lord, o my soul, all that is within me, bless his holy name. Why? Because I'm commandending myself to get in communication and into fellowship with him, because I know that without him that I'm nothing.
Speaker 1:You'll begin to see different things. You'll begin to read different scriptures where people are saying, where people are commending themselves to praise the Lord, or they're being so honest with God. They're like God, god, god, did you bring me here to die? Did you bring me here? Did you bring, did you give me this son in order that I may be a mockery? Different things like that that you'll read throughout the scripture and you'll see that these people that we read about, that they had real struggles, that they had real parts of themselves that was hard for them to deal with. You think about Joseph. He's looking at Mary like what you mean? God impregnated you, so much so that an angel had to come and give him instruction. Why? Because he was being honest with himself first, but then also with God in that fellowship. And so read your word so that you can get and see these encounters all throughout the Bible, where there were different people that were having these real talks and having these real conversations and coming to God so that you can do the same, so we see how we can come and how we can get into this fellowship with God.
Speaker 1:But what does it breed? What does this fellowship, what does this faith in him? What does it do for us? One for you, it's going to breed obedience. Amos 3 and 3 says can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction? And what we have to understand is the Holy Spirit is not going to change his direction. So there is but one choice, and that is for you to agree with heaven and walk with him. The Holy Spirit is walking in the way of righteousness. The Holy Spirit is walking in the way of what God has already planned for the earth to happen. The Holy Spirit is walking in that way. And so if you want to be in obedience, or if you want to be in agreement and in fellowship with him, then you have to obey what God has given you to do. You have to obey what he's asking of you. And I'm not saying in this sense, I'm not saying in a sense of sitting down and doing anything or planning anything out. I'm saying simply in the sense of what is he asking of you. Is he asking you to pray? Is he asking you to reveal the part of yourself that you don't want to reveal? Is he asking you to pray? Is he asking you to reveal the part of yourself that you don't want to reveal? Is he asking you to give up a relationship? Is he asking you to give up a job? Is he asking you to go and talk to someone? Whatever it is that he's asking you to do, are you in fellowship with him? Are you walking with him? Because if you are, the more you walk with him, the more you fellowship with God, the more you know him and you know his nature, the more you will be obedient to what it is that he's saying.
Speaker 1:And then here's the second thing Fellowship with God will breed favor. Right before we get more of an introduction into who Noah is, as it's listing off why God wanted to flood the earth, it says. But Noah found favor with the Lord. Favor with God will cause things to turn for you. And I'm really not trying to preach you happy, I'm really not trying to leave this on a high note and make you shout or make you want to go do this. No, because this is a hard thing right.
Speaker 1:But fellowship with God will cause you to have favor. It will cause things to work in your favor that should not work in your favor. It will cause people who don't want to work with you to work with you. It will cause people who want to blaspheme you, who want to down your name, who want to do everything but call you a child of God. It will cause them to be okay. It will cause them to love you. It will cause them to put things into your hand that might not necessarily would have come into your hand any other way.
Speaker 1:But we go, we go wrap up man. So, as we're leaving now, I just simply want to thank you guys For coming back to the show Again. My name is Cameron and we're going through faith. Today we talked about Noah and how it was fellowship that allowed him to Obtain the faith To do what he he did as far as building the ark and restarting humanity. What I want to challenge you with this week is to do the hard thing Reveal the places of yourself that you don't want to reveal to God and allow him to show you why it was hard for you to reveal that place. Again, my name is Cameron. I love you guys, but until next week stay lifted.
