Tag Archives: faith

Never Give Up!

Posted on by

Prior to the pandemic, a woman I had known for several years passed away. I didn’t consider her a friend, but she was certainly an acquaintance for whom our meeting was very purposeful. Indirectly, she taught me many lessons that have been important to my spiritual journey in Christ. I learned them from observing her actions and from those she depended on for help. Towards the end of her life, she was very miserable and depressed. She seemed to give up even before her condition worsened, and because she did, people around her, including those responsible for her care, seemed to give up too. This was the last lesson I would learn from her, and I made sure to learn it well. Never give up. Even when others abandon hope, fight the good fight of faith.

The Apostle Paul tells us in 1Timothy 6:12 that faith is indeed a good fight! It begins in our hearts, gets its momentum in our minds, and soars with the actions we take to back it. The thing is, many of us think we have it when we really don’t understand what it is. We don’t understand why we’ve been given this potent spiritual substance, and more importantly, many of us haven’t studied God’s Word to know exactly how we should apply it. As a young adult believer, just learning some of the deep truths of God’s Word, initially I thought faith was the way to get God’s goodies. I had been badgered severely by the evil one and his cohorts, and I thought my whole life would be one big struggle. When I learned about having faith in God through the Lord Jesus Christ, I just about jumped right out of my skin! It literally blew my socks off, and I was changed forever.

I had lost my job, had my car repossessed, and was down to ketchup sandwiches—that’s all I had in the frig. Things were really bad, and I couldn’t see a way out. I had no clue that human beings could live with God’s power. The notion had never occurred to me. I felt helpless and hopeless. It popped into my head on more than one occasion that I was being punished, but I couldn’t quite figure out what for. I knew that I wasn’t perfect, but I was being dragged through the mud and my circumstances seemed to be getting worse by the day. God opened my eyes to His Word through wonderful individuals that were willing and relentless to teach me to walk by faith.

John 10:10(NKJV) was a pivotal verse for me. In it, Jesus Christ said, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” I felt that my life was far from abundant, but as I started to believe that God’s Will was for me to have a more than abundant existence, I could sense a shift internally. As I began to build my relationship with God, my faith in Him increased and soon the internal shift in my thoughts and feelings made its way into my external circumstances.

Hebrew 11:1 tells us that faith is the title deed to what we hope for, and it is the evidence that we have the thing we’ve prayed to receive even before it shows up. We must believe in what we can’t see. 2Corinthians 5:7 tells us that we must walk by faith and not by sight. We also must learn that our faith must be expressed through the love of Christ. Spiritual maturity beckons us to leave the ‘kid in a candy store’ mentality behind, because it’s an attitude where our focus is mainly consumed with what we want. Intimacy in our relationship with God demands that our focus is on His purpose and fulfilling His plan for our individual lives.

This means that as our faith and spiritual maturity increase, some of the things we’ve held on to so tightly will need to be released. The woman that passed away hit this lesson home for me. I don’t know this for a fact, but it seemed to me that she had spent a great deal of her life being bitter. She complained a lot and had an opinion about everything, and when she didn’t like something, her words could be harsh and biting. I believed this had been her pattern of behavior for a very long time. Whether by receiving a revelation from the Spirit or by an encounter with a believer that had called her out on her stuff, this woman tried in her later years to change her behavior a bit and release some of those negative patterns. She had an epiphany of sorts and must have saw a reflection of who she had groomed herself to be, and she didn’t like what she saw.

She showed me an up-close and personal portrait of what it looks like to spend a lifetime knowing about God, but not spend a lifetime getting to know who He is through Christ. She hadn’t made that intimate connection with Heavenly Father through His Son, and therefore, she hadn’t learned to walk by faith. She didn’t know that a person can believe God to live a good life and actually have one. She hadn’t believed in the miraculous, didn’t think it showed up in people’s lives like it did in mine. And when the circumstances of her life called for her to trust Him to show up in an amazing way, her mind and heart couldn’t make the leap of faith required.

If you and I are not tenaciously, confidently, and exuberantly overwhelmed with joy about the faith that Jesus Christ has given us, then we haven’t truly discovered what faith is. It is potent beyond what you and I can imagine, and in the words of our Master Jesus in Mark 11:23, if we truly believe, through faith in God, mountains can be moved.

We must believe that #1, God is all powerful, #2, that He is a Rewarder who rewards His children, and #3 that He is WILLING and delighted to use His power to help and bless us through the Lord Jesus Christ! Faith is unleased in a powerful way when our attitude and belief is in line with all three truths. You can’t be lackluster in mind and heart about the faith of Jesus Christ, because if you are, you will not be fully transformed into his likeness. The faith of Jesus Christ is more dynamic, transformative, and powerful than anything we could ever hope to acquire. It is the instrument of change for those belonging to the higher consciousness of his love and light. Romans 10:17 tells us faith comes by hearing the Word of God, and it will perform in direct proportion to our level of enthusiasm, reverence, confidence, and belief in God through Christ.

If we are not thrilled beyond excitement about faith, we are not a match for its potency. If we don’t understand that God has given us the same faith that Jesus Christ had, so we can get some good things done in the earth just like him, then we need more knowledge about Christ. The tenacity, endurance, and hopefulness of which we pursue the faith of Jesus Christ will determine its outcome. If you’re anything like me, you want all that God has in store for you. Let’s not be like the poor lady who thought faith was something you take off the shelf for one day a week for an hour or so. Let’s get real about why we’re here and what we’re supposed to be doing. We were created in the image of God and in the likeness of Christ. Faith defines us, and we must fight to bring our minds and hearts equal to its power.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“Never Give Up!”, written by Fran, edited by PMB for DomesticAbuseAwareness.Org ©2021. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!

Building Faith in Your Dreams

Posted on by

Many of us have faced times when we didn’t think we had what it takes to make our lives work. I’m not talking about minor insecurities that every person feels from time to time. I’m referring to those occasions when you sink in your heart. The disappointment and sadness can take you so low you feel as though you’ll never reach the bottom. It’s a feeling like no other, because you can’t imagine anyone understanding the depth of what you’re experiencing. These are the moments where the risk of giving up on the dream that is in our hearts is greatest. Most of us know that anything worth having is worth working very hard to achieve, and that results are not gleaned unless we put in the time. But when our dreams are attacked at our most vulnerable places, our faith in God is sometimes diminished. This is too costly to the core of our beings, and we’ve got to strengthen our defenses.

In Ephesians 4:23, God tells us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. To renew is to make something new continually. It’s not a one-time deal. Renewing is a habit pattern that must be practiced consistently. Some people think that you can memorize a few scriptures and you’re good to go, but this isn’t so. God has given us each the gift of free-will, and it is a gift that He will never violate. He will never do a take-back or overstep this gift in any way. History proves this. Humanity has done some remarkably horrible things against the Will of God. He commanded us to love our neighbors and to treat them the way we want to be treated, but most of us don’t do this. When we accept God’s Holy Spirit through the Lord Jesus Christ, God doesn’t come inside our body-temples and start throwing all the bad stuff out and putting in all good stuff. No. He made this our responsibility. He commands us in Ephesians 4:23 to feast on the positives of His Word and let it saturate our minds so that we begin to think like Christ.

A parable is a simple story used to pack a punch when it comes to spiritual lessons. It helps us comprehend the lesson in a way that lays a foundation for further wisdom, and it connects with our hearts. It makes the wisdom of the lesson so palatable that we make it a part of us. In Matthew 13, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, used a parable to illustrate the laws of God’s Kingdom and the method by which the gospel is planted. The central character is a farmer. The essential dramatic action is that of sowing, and I would argue that the hero is ‘good ground!’

I call ‘good ground’ the hero because in our Lord’s parable and in life itself, good ground is necessary to produce a good life. Jesus tells us that the farmer scattered some seeds; some fell on a foot path, some fell on shallow ground, some fell among weeds, and others fell on good ground. He later explained that the ground represents the condition of the minds of those that hear the good news of the Gospel. In Matthew 13:22, he said the seeds that fell among the weeds represent those who hear God’s Word, but the message gets crowded out by anxiety and worry about problems, and by being too overly concerned with wealth. Those minds, he said, don’t produce any fruit. That’s not the person you and I want to be.

In Matthew 13:23, Jesus said the seeds that fell on good soil represent those who truly soak in the Word of God and understand it. They connect to it in a way that transforms them. They change their thoughts and begin to produce a harvest that is multiplied many times over. Our minds are the soil, and the soil incubates the dream. That’s why you and I must tune out the chatter of negativity and nurture our dreams with faith in the richness of God’s Word.

God has placed the dream in our hearts, and He wants to protect it. Heavenly Father speaks to us and encourages us through His Word. To build up strength in our inner spirits, we must put on the positives of God’s Word daily. He tells us to renew our minds to it so that while our dreams are incubating, they are nurtured like seeds that fall on good ground. Life is not perfect, and the attacks may still sting, but they will not steal our dreams if we continue to build our faith and keep our defenses strong through God’s Word.■

Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

“Building Faith in Your Dreams” written by Fran, edited by PMB for DomesticAbuseAwareness.Org ©2018. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!

“If You Feeling Froggy, Jump!”

Posted on by

“If you feeling froggy, jump!” Back in the day, you wouldn’t say those words to someone unless you were confident in your ability to back them up. It was a dare—a challenge—an invitation to sho’nuff throw-down on the playground. And after you duked it out (if it came to that), you would have solidified your reputation. If you were a smaller kid with glasses, like my cousin, Steve, and you were looking to make your mark, a lot of mileage could be gleaned from making a dare like this. The thing is, it only worked if you were serious. The other kids could smell your bluff if you weren’t prepared to do battle during recess and back up all that talk.

Faith can sniff out a bluff talker in less time than it takes to blink an eye. Lots of folks will tell you they’re believing God to receive one thing or another. Maybe it’s a single sister or brother praying to cross paths with the quality person they will ultimately call hubby or wifey. Many of us are praying about our finances. We’re on the grind every day, but the 9 to 5 just ain’t cuttin’ it; and some of us are facing circumstances that are much more serious. We need the intervention of God’s miraculous power in a major way. Whatever the need, whether it’s finances, good relationships, better health, or an improved well-being in every area of our existence; faith is required. We need it to move us from point A to point B, and its necessary to go higher and progress further in every aspect of our lives.

James 2:24 says that just as the body without the spirit is dead, faith without works is dead as well. This tells us something extremely important about faith, it doesn’t respond to our whims. Faith responds to authority. Hebrews 11:1(NKJV) gives us the definition of faith. It says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is a substance. We can’t see it, but it’s a heavyweight. God has given it to us to get some things done in the earth. Faith is the title deed to what we’ve prayed to receive even before it has arrived on the scene. In other words, a bluff just ain’t going to cut it. We have to believe in the Father’s love so much that we don’t doubt for one second that He loves us, wants to see us blessed, and is willing and able to do just that…to bless us!

If you felt froggy enough to jump, it meant that not only were you willing to go toe to toe, but you most likely would dive in first. If you got caught brawling it out, you’d take the blame in the principal’s office for instigating things. My cousin, Steve, was never in trouble and was the last person you’d ever expect to see in front of the principal, but he was tired of this one kid who’d snatch his glasses, and then hide them. He got to a point where he was no longer going to be afraid to fight. He was ready to put it all on the line.

For those seeking to stand with the spiritual armor that God has provided through Christ, we put it all on the line every day, but we brawl with faith! Challenges are unavoidable in life, and we can’t bluff our way to victory; we have to get froggy when it comes to anything that seeks to separate us from the life God desires us to have. James 1:2-4 The Message (MSG) tells us exactly how to do it, “2-4 Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

Trying to get out of something prematurely is the same as trying to meet a challenge with undeveloped confidence. It’s shaky ground, where a person doesn’t really believe that God will back their steps. It’s when your mouth is trying to write a check that your heart isn’t prepared to cash. Deep down, this person isn’t in the faith for the long haul, and the devil can smell it. Best not to play that game. Instead, get cemented in the real deal—the all-in commitment to God. That’s when you get froggy with any challenge the enemy throws your way. You’ll fight the good fight of faith, and Jesus will make sure you always win. ■

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

 “If You Feeling Froggy, Jump!” written by Fran for DomesticAbuseAwareness.Org ©2018. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!