What state is your faith in? October 13, 2017, we had a one night conference to address our faith and to teach us how to make our faith unshakeable! The following are the notes that I took throughout the conference, where we enjoyed listening to 3 godly women: Valerie Howe, Kristi Neace and Brenda Poinsett. I hope you are blessed in the passing of this wisdom.
The Bible tells us in Luke 10:27 that "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."
What does that even look like?
Our hearts are deceitful things! God warns us about this in His word.(Jeremiah 17:9) We are told in many places to control our emotions. We are to "be angry and sin not," "be slow to anger", "put on the whole armor", "walk in the spirit" and so many more! Our actions and words show the inner condition of our hearts. If we have been hurt in some way, you can usually tell by how our attitude, tone, body language, and words change. There are times when we have felt brokenness. We have been hurt by someone's words or actions and we feel irredeemable. In this state of brokenness, we must remember 3 things:
God is good
God loves you
God will never leave you or forsake you.
When we get into this place of feeling unlovable, useless, unwanted; we find that God is still there. He is seeking to strengthen the relationship between Him and us. He wants us to bring it ALL to Him.
One definition that I found for soul is "a person's total self". We are to love our Lord with our total self. We are to love Him with everything we've got! And we are to do this all the time, not just when things are going well. We are to love Him in good times, bad times, grief, joy. We are to love His people, His nature, His work and His goodness. We are to keep our focus on Him in all things!
How do we do this?
1. Prayer - pray through every situation, good or bad. Pray honestly! God already knows what you are thinking, so be honest with him and tell Him about it.
2. Worship - We find ourselves rumbling about all the bad far more than we praise Him for how He is working in and through our lives. This life is not about us, its about Him and we should praise Him, even when we don't feel like it.
3. Fasting and feasting - The Bible says "when you fast", not if, but when. Fasting brings us face to face with God. God has laid Himself out for us like a feast. We are to feast on His word, peace and grace.
4. Pruning - Now this involves pain and we don't like it. But pruning is necessary to help us be more fruitful for the Father's work/will. He does this in our lives out of love, to make us more beautiful and useful in the kingdom. We just feel the pain, instead of focusing on God's plan.
John 15:2 "Every branch tin me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit."
- There are things in our lives that He must prune away. These may be things that we love, thrive in, and we are bearing fruit in.
- He doesn't do this to be mean, but to bring life and a more abundant harvest.
5. Rest - a gift from God. We should take these times of rest to look back and marvel at the work the Lord has done. This time should rejuvenate us. Lord, breathe life into these dry bones.
Where does our strength come from? We are to draw our strength from God through prayer and reading Scripture. We are able to build that strength by relying on God and trusting in Him.
"What joy for whose strength is in the Lord"
"The joy of the Lord is my strength"
"peace that passeth all understanding will strengthen you"
Our mind is our command center and Satan will take every opportunity to try to attack us right there! Here are the ways he tries to do just that:
1. Fear - Judges 6:11-24 tells us the story of Gideon. v.12 says, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." God calls Gideon a warrior...while he is hiding away! This is because the Almighty has already won the battle with the enemy! Even when we are hiding in our fear, God knows our potential and reassures us that the victory is already won. We must simply be ready to step out of our comfort zone and TRUST.
2. Doubt - We doubt His power. v13 Gideon is wondering where God is in his situation.
We doubt His goodness and ability. Even when we know the truths of God, doubt can cause us to fall apart. When we start to believe the lies whispered in our ears by the enemy, we need to pour it out at His feet! Take our thoughts captive.
3. Distraction - Just try and have a quiet time...right?! Then the phone rings, the kids(or animals) demand our attention, our notifications start to ding and our mind begins to wander.
For Gideon, he was distracted by signs. For us we get distracted:
- by God's glory: so caught up in the goodness of God that we forget to move!
- by what others would think: we need to be bold in our faith and not act it out in the dark.
4. Control - we have our own ideas and we tend to try and give God suggestions of how we think he should handle our situations. In Gideon's story, He showed us that His thoughts are not ours, He has different ways of doing things, just to prove His power to us by sometimes doing things that don't make sense to prove that He can work through any circumstance.
So, how do we love our neighbors as ourselves? And how does all of this build our faith and make it unshakeable?
1. Love to serve God
- We work hard to please God and to prove that we love Him by doing what He says.
- Sometimes we feel that we have to serve Him.
- Sometimes we fight what He asks us to do.
God always wins! He is the BOSS. And it is not always in a way that makes us happy, because it is all about His will, and His way!
W must surrender our will to God's will. Peace comes when we serve God with a willing passion to serve. We step out in faith and in turn our faith is strengthened.
2. Love Jesus
- Our plans will fail, people will fail us and we may get some false assurances from people we trust.
- we feel hurt, betrayed and sometimes we will get depressed in our journey.
- we can walk away from church and ministries...but we can never walk away from Jesus and His sacrifice on that cross.
- It goes from serving and doing the "right" thing ... to a real relationship with Jesus
3. Love God's word
Hebrews 4:12 tells us " For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."
- When we deeply study the word of God in can come alive!
- The Spirit moves in us
- As our faith grows, God reveals His word to us in new and exciting ways!
Loving your neighbor is all about grace!
- church members, family, friends, strangers, yourself, etc
- these people are not always easy to love, Amen?
But doing so enables us to be more like God. When we can look passed the things our fleshly minds see in people and look at them through the eyes of the Father, we are able to love them the way that God calls us to love. That is much easier said than done! And we can talk about it all day long, but until we put it into action, we cannot receive this unshakeable faith.
Where are you in your walk of faith? What keeps it growing? Will you have a faith strong enough to meet the challenges ahead?
I pray that these words written here can help you to build your faith stronger!
The Bible tells us in Luke 10:27 that "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."
What does that even look like?
Our hearts are deceitful things! God warns us about this in His word.(Jeremiah 17:9) We are told in many places to control our emotions. We are to "be angry and sin not," "be slow to anger", "put on the whole armor", "walk in the spirit" and so many more! Our actions and words show the inner condition of our hearts. If we have been hurt in some way, you can usually tell by how our attitude, tone, body language, and words change. There are times when we have felt brokenness. We have been hurt by someone's words or actions and we feel irredeemable. In this state of brokenness, we must remember 3 things:
God is good
God loves you
God will never leave you or forsake you.
When we get into this place of feeling unlovable, useless, unwanted; we find that God is still there. He is seeking to strengthen the relationship between Him and us. He wants us to bring it ALL to Him.
One definition that I found for soul is "a person's total self". We are to love our Lord with our total self. We are to love Him with everything we've got! And we are to do this all the time, not just when things are going well. We are to love Him in good times, bad times, grief, joy. We are to love His people, His nature, His work and His goodness. We are to keep our focus on Him in all things!
How do we do this?
1. Prayer - pray through every situation, good or bad. Pray honestly! God already knows what you are thinking, so be honest with him and tell Him about it.
2. Worship - We find ourselves rumbling about all the bad far more than we praise Him for how He is working in and through our lives. This life is not about us, its about Him and we should praise Him, even when we don't feel like it.
3. Fasting and feasting - The Bible says "when you fast", not if, but when. Fasting brings us face to face with God. God has laid Himself out for us like a feast. We are to feast on His word, peace and grace.
4. Pruning - Now this involves pain and we don't like it. But pruning is necessary to help us be more fruitful for the Father's work/will. He does this in our lives out of love, to make us more beautiful and useful in the kingdom. We just feel the pain, instead of focusing on God's plan.
John 15:2 "Every branch tin me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit."
- There are things in our lives that He must prune away. These may be things that we love, thrive in, and we are bearing fruit in.
- He doesn't do this to be mean, but to bring life and a more abundant harvest.
5. Rest - a gift from God. We should take these times of rest to look back and marvel at the work the Lord has done. This time should rejuvenate us. Lord, breathe life into these dry bones.
Where does our strength come from? We are to draw our strength from God through prayer and reading Scripture. We are able to build that strength by relying on God and trusting in Him.
"What joy for whose strength is in the Lord"
"The joy of the Lord is my strength"
"peace that passeth all understanding will strengthen you"
Our mind is our command center and Satan will take every opportunity to try to attack us right there! Here are the ways he tries to do just that:
1. Fear - Judges 6:11-24 tells us the story of Gideon. v.12 says, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." God calls Gideon a warrior...while he is hiding away! This is because the Almighty has already won the battle with the enemy! Even when we are hiding in our fear, God knows our potential and reassures us that the victory is already won. We must simply be ready to step out of our comfort zone and TRUST.
2. Doubt - We doubt His power. v13 Gideon is wondering where God is in his situation.
We doubt His goodness and ability. Even when we know the truths of God, doubt can cause us to fall apart. When we start to believe the lies whispered in our ears by the enemy, we need to pour it out at His feet! Take our thoughts captive.
3. Distraction - Just try and have a quiet time...right?! Then the phone rings, the kids(or animals) demand our attention, our notifications start to ding and our mind begins to wander.
For Gideon, he was distracted by signs. For us we get distracted:
- by God's glory: so caught up in the goodness of God that we forget to move!
- by what others would think: we need to be bold in our faith and not act it out in the dark.
4. Control - we have our own ideas and we tend to try and give God suggestions of how we think he should handle our situations. In Gideon's story, He showed us that His thoughts are not ours, He has different ways of doing things, just to prove His power to us by sometimes doing things that don't make sense to prove that He can work through any circumstance.
So, how do we love our neighbors as ourselves? And how does all of this build our faith and make it unshakeable?
1. Love to serve God
- We work hard to please God and to prove that we love Him by doing what He says.
- Sometimes we feel that we have to serve Him.
- Sometimes we fight what He asks us to do.
God always wins! He is the BOSS. And it is not always in a way that makes us happy, because it is all about His will, and His way!
W must surrender our will to God's will. Peace comes when we serve God with a willing passion to serve. We step out in faith and in turn our faith is strengthened.
2. Love Jesus
- Our plans will fail, people will fail us and we may get some false assurances from people we trust.
- we feel hurt, betrayed and sometimes we will get depressed in our journey.
- we can walk away from church and ministries...but we can never walk away from Jesus and His sacrifice on that cross.
- It goes from serving and doing the "right" thing ... to a real relationship with Jesus
3. Love God's word
Hebrews 4:12 tells us " For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."
- When we deeply study the word of God in can come alive!
- The Spirit moves in us
- As our faith grows, God reveals His word to us in new and exciting ways!
Loving your neighbor is all about grace!
- church members, family, friends, strangers, yourself, etc
- these people are not always easy to love, Amen?
But doing so enables us to be more like God. When we can look passed the things our fleshly minds see in people and look at them through the eyes of the Father, we are able to love them the way that God calls us to love. That is much easier said than done! And we can talk about it all day long, but until we put it into action, we cannot receive this unshakeable faith.
Where are you in your walk of faith? What keeps it growing? Will you have a faith strong enough to meet the challenges ahead?
I pray that these words written here can help you to build your faith stronger!
Comments
Post a Comment