The Mountain of Faith

Iam sure that if I asked you to choose Fear or Faith? You would not have much trouble deciding. Most of us would not think twice if given this simple choice. So why does it seem to be so hard.

Fear keeps us from pursuing our dreams, the fear of failure keeps us from trying new things, the fear of disappointing others can be a very discouraging and can cause us to want to give up. Fear can simply destroy us.

 2 Timothy 1:7 says “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.“

So why does fear have such a strong grip on us?

The simple answer is that our faith is not strong enough. We believe the lies. We choose fear over faith every day.

So how do we strengthen our faith? We must follow the road of faith, To Know, To Believe and to Act on our faith.

First we must KNOW the source of our faith. Our faith needs to be based on who God is, what He says about Himself in His Word. We must have faith in the facts. The strengthening of our faith comes from remembering what God has already done. I suggest keeping a journal as you read through the scriptures and as you see God work in your life.

Second we must BELIEVE what God says!

While I was growing up in Venezuela, South America, I had the amazing privilege of watching and listening as my mother worked at translating the bible into a tribal language. She would often experience some difficulty because of missing words in the tribal language. The word “Believe” was one of the words that did not exist in the native language. After some time working with the people to try and find an alternative way of translating this very important concept they came up with, Believe – “To say in your heart It is true!”, I love that! It is not enough just to say it in your head, but to say it with your heart is to believe.

Now we must ACT, God has given us all we need, now we must act without fear and respond to what He has shown us. Don’t let fear keep you from pursuing God’s plan for you.

Decide today to choose FAITH, to Know Him better, to believe what He says and to act on your faith. I will be praying for you.

Having faith in who God has made you and choosing faith when it comes to pursuing something that He has placed before you is foundational. When I was single and did not have a family, having faith was different. My faith was built on the steps that I had taken, every time God came through for me, my faith was strengthened. For example I know that God provides financially for us not just because He says so in His word, but also because I have seen Him provide for my family on the mission field as a child. I also have seen Him provide in miraculous ways for me when I was in Bible college through gifts from others, some of which I had never met. The timing of these events and the exact amounts needed were for me profound provisions from God.

When I got married, I quickly realized that my faith was not her faith. She did not have the same experiences that I did, she did not see how God provided for me so many times. I saw my faith take on a whole new life. I now had to have faith in God that He would bring her along in His time. I had to have faith that He would have to comfort her when I could not. And most profoundly I realized that I needed to have faith in God’s timing. I struggled with the fact that God had given her free will and that the time it would take for her to learn what I had would make for some very difficult trials while I waited. At some point I realized that if I was focusing on what God wanted to do in me, that I wouldn’t have time to think or worry about how long it would take her. As I think about this now, I realize that God used the time I was waiting to teach me patience. It is also very obvious that He taught me many things by using the differences between Cindy and I. Looking back it is evident that God had taught her things about people that I have learned from her. Some of those things I have learned from her have been crucial to who God has made me. I know today that I would not have had so many opportunities to minister to others if not for her outgoing and accepting nature. I have watched her and I have learned what God wanted me to learn. I will continue to watch for years to come, she is quite fascinating, mysterious and worth pursuing.

One of the reasons that we so often choose Fear instead of Faith is that our faith is wrongly placed in the past and in people. How others have treated us in the past greatly affects our faith. But if this is true, then our faith is not in God.

We can not do anything to change the past. As discussed earlier we will need to deal with forgiveness of people in our past who have made it difficult for us to have faith in God.

However we can affect the future of those around us by developing a good balance of understanding of confidence & humility.

Have you noticed that when some one around you comes across as confident, that we have a tendency to want to remind them of humility. Our motives may be pure, our intention could be to make sure they understand that the source of our confidence should always be God, but in the process we are really beating them down. We must be careful to not always identify confidence in others as being self sufficient or prideful. We have so often heard that Pride is wrong and sinful, and rightfully so. I agree that if our source is not Jesus then it is sinful and I understand that this is a daily struggle for many of us to give credit to God, but it is too easy to get stuck here in the condemnation, that is wrong too as we see in

Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus“,

You see there is a good pride, the pride one has in all that God has given him. We should have confidence and be proud to be called children of God. Because He is our source we need to live in confidence, we need to know that we can do great things for Him because He has given us what we need as we see in II Peter 1:3 says “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness”

It is not our job to judge if the confidence in others is of God, It is our job to cheer them on. What if that someone around you has been given gifts by God to be a great man or woman, to be a writer, to be a preacher, a counselor or even the president of the United States and what if all they need is for your words of encouragement to give them wings. What will you do?

Are you regularly encouraging your spouse to pursue their talents or dreams? Do you know what their talents and dreams are?

Read with Me!