Making Excellent Choices: Choosing to Live by Faith
/Choosing to live by faith takes courage. It can be scary. Taking a step and not knowing where you’ll go is not for the faint of heart. I’ve met no one who claimed to live by faith as easy and there's a reason for that, because it is not easy. We’ve all heard stories that are unbelievable, while others are easy to see how they would work out. Even though it is scary, in the end choosing to live by faith is worth it.
Making Excellent Choices: Choosing to Live By Faith
The conversation started with these words, “we’ll load the truck with what we need and then well head out”. This wasn’t a one-sided conversation, because fear responded with “there is no housing, what are we going to do, we have no place to stay”. I’ll never forget that day, the day we planned to step out on faith and trust God. After all, He provided the job, He would provide a place to live.
I've been asked, why do I choose to live by faith. I choose to have faith in God because I know Him and what He can do. He always keeps His promises, He has never failed me. (Psalm 9:10) My faith in the Lord is not always where it should be. I have my ugly crying moments. Moments when my faith is weak, moments when I take my eyes off the Lord. We all have those moments; we are all human.
Our head and our heart, two places we can know God. In our head, we know God is true and dependable, but in our heart do we really know it? Until we grow in our personal relationship with God, we will struggle with really knowing Him and what He can do. We will struggle with trusting Him.
I still have moments where I struggle with trusting the Lord. I don't have a perfect life, I still struggle with worry and fear.
Three ways to build your faith:
Bible Reading
– The sweet, precious words found in the Bible were given to us so we could learn more about God. When we ignore reading the Bible, we miss out on growing in faith.
I prayed for faith and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” I had up to this time closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since. ~ D.L. Moody
Others
- Surround yourself with others who live by faith. Pastors, group leaders, and friends are people you can learn from by following their life and watching their faith as it continues to grow.
Prayer
- A simple way of growing faith is by praying for it and journal about it. Keeping a written record of all the answered prayers and reading over them will help boost your faith.
Choosing to Live by Faith
Choosing to live by faith takes action. We have to choose to trust and obey God. Just as
acted in saving baby Moses, we have to act in living by faith. We can say we have faith all we want, but until we take that first step, our words are meaningless. (James 2:20)
Not everyone has great amounts of faith; myself included. While God does mighty things with those with great amounts of faith, He also uses tiny amounts. He even promises mountains can be moved with a tiny amount of faith.(Matthew 17:20)
It wasn’t until after our move back to Georgia, when a man close to me said, “Your move to Montana was foolish, I hope you kick your husband in the rear if he pulls that stunt again”. All I could do was walk away while shaking my head in disbelief.
When you choose to live by faith, you’ll be
criticized
by some people. These are the very people who do not understand the meaning of living by faith. They don’t understand the Lord allows these moments for you to grow and others to learn from. It’s okay for the criticism to be cast, the Lord knows all about it and He will bless you.
Don’t let the naysayers get you down. Discouragement is a huge stumbling block with living by faith. Just remember each step you take, your faith strengthens. If you want your faith to grow, keep stepping – one step at a time.
Ask yourself the question, has God ever failed me? There has never been a time where God failed you (or me). He always keeps His promises. When you need a push in strengthening your faith, remember what God has done for you in the past.
He’s healed broken bodies, He’s provided every need, He’s saved lost souls, and He’s given strength to the weak
– When we are reminded of what God has done, we can rest assure that God still cares about our present life and our future.
We were not quite halfway to Montana when we received a
about a house. The house we prayed for in the right location and price range. It took a step of faith to trust God and his promises when our hope of having a home was nowhere to be found. That step of faith opened the door for us to live His promises. It is a treasured part of our lives and will be an instrument in teaching our future generations.
Our faith honors God, God honors our faith.
Choosing to live by faith is not always easy, but in the end, it is so worth it.
