Strengthening Our Faith Muscle

"And without faith, it is impossible to please God" – Hebrews 11:6

Do you regularly strengthen your "faith muscle"?  All the time, we need strengthening of our faith.  Just as it’s healthy to go to the gym and build muscle mass, (it prevents osteoporosis) it’s spiritually healthy for us to build our faith muscle. (And, it prevents the drying of our spiritual bones, A.K.A. DISCOURAGEMENT!)  (Ezekiel 37:11)

But, sometimes in life circumstances can get the better of us.  When one thing happens after another, we lose the ability to BELIEVE.  When these times come, we need our brothers and sisters who do have faith for the situation to pray and believe for us.  This will strengthen our faith - even for the most languid in spirit.  We need to continually stay in a place of faith in order to allow God to work.  God cannot work in a situation where there is no faith.  Faith is the precursor to God’s action on our behalf.  It is the fertile ground necessary for the miraculous to occur.  It is in faith that we are "alive in Christ."

Gunnar Olsen, a Christian businessman in Sweden tells a story called "The Plastic Bag Story."  At one time he owned a packing business, and during this time he received a large order for some plastic bags.  After receiving the shipment, the warehouse manager had informed Gunnar that the bags were sealed shut!  On a Friday, they checked all the boxes of bags - and every one of them had melted together.

Well, as you can imagine, it caused quite a panic.  Gunnar’s brother who also worked with him became very upset and Gunnar asked him to go play golf. His brother was incredulous - but Gunnar knew it would not be a good idea for his brother to be around.  He needed to be filled with faith for the situation, and he knew his brother was afraid.

Gunnar and his family went to the warehouse the following Saturday and stood in a circle praying together.  After they had prayed his daughter spoke up, "I think we should pray for the boxes!  God wouldn't want these bags to be sealed." So they did.  They laid hands on all 3,000 boxes of them.

The following Monday, they checked the bags.  They were unsealed, as if nothing had ever happened. 

The enemy wants nothing more than to STEAL our seeds of faith.  If he does that, he knows he can discourage us, and make us feel completely devoid of hope.  But, this is not what God wants for us!  God wants us to be full of faith – all the time!  However, in order to have faith in our lives we must want it – and we must learn to activate it.

Are you strengthening your "faith muscle"?

Giving Up

"Yes, I am afraid that when I come again, God will humble me in your presence. And I will be grieved because many of you have not given up your old sins. You have not repented of your impurity, sexual immorality, and eagerness for lustful pleasure." -2 Corinthians 12:21

In a day where we do what "feels right" and tend to look to movie stars and musicians as a compass for what is morally acceptable, we balk at the idea that there may be such thing as a plumb line for morality; that there may be such a thing as absolute truth.

"Well, God didn’t mean that for today's time," we say. "That's so old-fashioned."  "That may be true for you but not for me."  "Do you really expect me to live like that? Surely you don't mean for me to do that."  Sometimes it's all too easy to excuse away the very thing that brings power to our faith. 

But the reality is, there are things we will need to give up in order to make room for God in our lives - so that we can experience more of Him in our lives.

I remember a time when every "room" in my heart was filled - it was filled with anger, hurt, disappointment, and bitterness. I had a small little space in the closet of my heart where I had allowed God to live. But God brought someone into my life to help me see that if I really wanted to follow Jesus, I had to give up those things to make room for Him.  And what a difference it made!  Once I repented and renounced those things in my life, they were replaced by God’s peace, love and joy.  I felt so much lighter, like a burden had been lifted. 

Once we get a true revelation of the sacrifice Jesus made, any sacrifice He requires of us pales in comparison.  “Of course, Lord,” we’ll say.  There is nothing that compares to His love for us, nothing that even comes close.

Is there anything you need to give up in order to make more room for Him?   I pray we each have the strength to give up things in our lives, so that we can experience the fullness of His love and power within us.

The Work Behind the Scenes

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." -Matthew 6:5&6

 

J. John, a gifted and creative Christian speaker told a story once about preparing the way for a sermon he was going to preach. He felt the Lord impress upon him to pray fervently the night before the meeting. In the morning, as he began to think about what he would share, the Lord told him, "The work is already done." 

"How could the work already have been done?" he asked God. But as he got up to speak, he only needed to speak several words that the Holy Spirit had impressed upon his heart, and the entire place was completely overtaken by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because he had been obedient in prayer in the secret place, God moved mightily in the meeting, with many coming to repentance that day. 

Banning Liebscher, a youth preacher for Bethel Church and Jesus Culture music, describes the importance of meeting with God in the "secret place": 

"The first call on our life is to be with Jesus. The foundation of a leader is intimacy. It is the 'secret place' lifestyle. You're called to give yourself to a life of prayer; to a secret place lifestyle that no one else knows about... What you put in at the beginning greatly impacts what comes out at the end." 

Sharon Gerlach, intercessor for Divine Exchanges prayer ministries describes this phenomena as being like an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is the ministry we see. But the other 80-90% of the iceberg, the part beneath the surface, is the spiritual work in prayer that makes a big difference. 

Are you engaging in your worship, prayer, reading God's word, and building your relationship with Him behind the scenes? This is the first call on our lives. The quality of everything else in our lives rests on this. We need to be sure we are building our relationship with Him in the secret place, so that we might have maximum impact in the world.

Uproot the Root!

 

Source

"And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.'" -Exodus 34:6-7

Have you ever had a problem that you simply could not get rid of?  Have you ever had something, whether an emotion, a habit, or a particular thought pattern, no matter how hard you tried, you could rid yourself of it - even after confession and repentance? After we become a Christian and we are “born again” this doesn’t mean that our battle with sin is over.  It simply means that we have become “new in Christ.”  (2 Cor 5:17)  Freedom from sin is a journey, as God reveals what is hidden in our hearts, bringing them to light and into His cleaning power.  (1 John 1:7)

Sometimes we may struggle with something that we've "always" seemed to struggle with. This problem may have had an origin long ago – even before we were born.  We may notice that those in our family struggle with similar issues, or perhaps we never even noticed it was a sin before we became a Christian. But as we walk on our journey, and the Holy Spirit begins to reveal certain things to us that were once okay and are now not as okay anymore, we may realize that something has a hold on our life that shouldn’t.

Once I heard a man speak to a church group about his struggles with sexual sin.  He explained to the audience that infidelity and sexual thoughts were something that he had always struggled with, and he had never known life without these issues.  He kept on going through “sin management”, where he confessed and repented for his actions but would see the same issue rear its ugly head 6 to 8 weeks later.

Eventually, this man received a revelation from the Holy Spirit through reading the scripture that “confession” means to “discover the root” and repent of the root in order to get free.  Since he had no recollection of when the issue began, he realized he was not the one who opened this door to sin initially. Only when he confessed the “genesis” of these issues, where they began from his father and grandfather, was he able to become truly free of their influence.

Are there any issues in your life that you struggle with continuously?  Pray and ask God to show you where they may have their root.  He is faithful to forgive and cleanse us so we can have complete freedom in Him!

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace."  -Ephesians 1:7

Pure Vessels

"And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in Him." -1 John 3:5

Are you a pure vessel? Being committed to be a Christian involves a continual process of sanctification, and even more so if you are a teacher of God's word.  (John 17:19, James 3:1)  Although Jesus has paid the price for our sins, and we continually receive His forgiveness, there are still things He will require of us so that we become complete and more like Him.  (James 1:4)  This most often has to do with issues of our hearts. "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life."  -Proverbs 4:23

Recently my husband and I went to a marriage conference and one of the sessions was about transparency.  The couple that was speaking talked about their journey of sanctification, which involved the man getting free from issues of adultery.   This of course caused a lot of strife in their marriage, and even though the man had repented to his wife for those things that had happened long ago, he found himself in "sin management", trying to manage the effects that this spiritual root of sin had on him.

This couple had been invited by a pastor to minister to a group of people at a leadership conference, but before they arrived, they had had an argument.  The man felt convicted that they should not minister to this group of people due to the fact that there was strife in their hearts.  As the pastor introduced him, he told him that they were not prepared to minister, and that their hearts were not pure.  The crowd went completely silent.  After a few moments the pastor held the microphone and repented for times when he and his wife ministered with strife in their hearts.  Ninety percent of the crowd got on their knees to repent and the Holy Spirit ministered to the large crowd for more than an hour.  It was very powerful!

As this couple described what had happened, the woman said that when we minister the truth of the gospel but have strife in our hearts, people can receive a double message:  one of God's truth, but then also of whatever unresolved sin is dwelling in our hearts. 

Are you a pure vessel?  Do you make repentance a regular practice in your life?   Pray that God will reveal and remove anything that may block His grace, light, and power in your life.  His word says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." -1 John 1:9