Text: 1 Corinthians 16:13
“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong”
Faith itself is a character, it is like a cloth you wear as you journey with God. Faith is that strong belief (complete trust or confidence) in someone or something. For faith to be active in us it has to be effective, cognitive, and practical.
In essence, Faith works with the happenings around you, your readiness to know that all things will work together for your good, and doing what needs to be done regardless of what might be happening around you.James 1:2-4 says,
“Consider it nothing but joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into various trials. Be assured that the testing of your faith [through experience] produces endurance [leading to spiritual maturity, and inner peace]. And let endurance have its perfect result and do a thorough work, so that you may be perfect and completely developed [in your faith], lacking in nothing.”
Walking in Faith is not usually that walk-in-the-park kind of feeling. Sometimes you will be scared. But what faith demands is that you don’t let the thought of the various trials, how you feel or how unreasonable what God is telling you to do, derail you or get the best of you.
Isaiah 55:8 says “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.”
Trusting God might not make sense to you sometimes but you are still to trust God regardless, knowing and believing that his thoughts towards you are of good and not of evil (which are plans for peace and well-being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11.
“Therefore, [inheriting] the promise depends entirely on faith [that is, confident trust in the unseen God], so that it may be given as an act of grace [His unmerited favor and mercy], so that the promise will be [legally] guaranteed to all the descendants [of Abraham]—not only for those [Jewish believers] who keep the Law but also for those [Gentile believers] who share the faith of Abraham, who is the [spiritual] father of us all”(Romans 4:17)
