Faith

In Matthew 17:20 ( KJV ) the bible says:

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you

I heard a story the other week on the radio that made me think of this verse. The story goes something like this:

One summer in a certain town the land had gotten dry from lack of rain. The garden that a young girl and her mother had was withering and dying due to the lack of water. One night when the mother was putting the young girl to bed and they where kneeling to pray the both realized that they needed rain and so they prayed to God that it would rain the next day. The next morning as the little girl was on her way out the door to catch the school bus her mother saw that she was carring her umberal. The mother asked her daughter why she was taking her umbrela to school as the weather man had no rain in the forcast for that day and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The girl replied by asking "didn't we pray for rain?". The young girl took her umbrela to school that day.

This story made me think and ask myself how often do I pray for someone or some issue in my own life and fail to do what the young girl in the story above did. How many times to I actually put Faith behind my prayers and actually believe that God will take care of the problem. Now no we can't order God around but he does say he does hear us and that he is concerned with our lives and problems. He tells us to pray to God and to lift each other up in prayer.

Are you Discourged ?

Are you bearing a load or burden and are at your wits end about what to do? I have been there before, let me share some verses with you about that.

Proverbs 16:3 says

Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established.

Psalms 37:5 says

Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

These verses speak of living for God with your whole life and trusting in him for the needs that arise in the walk of life. In Matthew 6:25-34 God tells us not to worry about the needs that we have but to seek his kingdom first and foremost with everything we have and he will see to it that our needs are met. I have seen this work in my own life. For example a few years ago the car I had at the time gave up the ghost on me as the engine was going to need to be rebuilt before it could be used anymore. That very same week that I found that out God opened the door for me to buy a new(used) car with less miles on it and with a sound engine at a price that was not much more then having the engine rebuilt in my current car. Not only was it a better bang for the buck so to speak but it was a car model that I had seen years before that I very much wanted to own but never expected to.

God really does take care of his children. That example above is only one of many that I have seen God perform in my life and in the life of others. So if you are discouraged right now. Just commit that problem to Him and trust Him. He will give you peace, take care of what ever that situation is and will make sure that your needs are met.

Are we truly content ?

Here in America we have what people call the "American Dream" which basically today is looked at as having money and things. Christians might refer to a Christian who has those things and has everything going their way as a Christian who is blessed by God and who must be right with God. But is that true ? Is being right with God and serving him being blessed by God ?

It is true that God says that he will supply all a Christians needs and in Psalms David says that he has never seen God's people go hungry. However take a look at some scripture here that I've been reading this morning.

In Exodus 20:17 the Bible says "Thou shalt not covet..." meaning that we should be content with what we have and not desire to have what somebody else has. Paul put it this way in Phil 4:11-12

"11b. For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. 12. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need."

 Take a look at your life, as I did. Can you honestly say that you believe that you are committed to serving God even if you do not have the "blessings of God" as some would say?

Take a look at Job for an example right after God gave Satan the chance to take everything Job had away from him. Job was very blessed, he probably had everything to make his life comfortable and everything he did prospered. But when everything in is life was taken away read what he said in Job 1:21

"Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."

Even though Job had lost everything he had. He still praised God and was just as content in serving Him as he was before, despite the fact that he now had very little.

Could we say that we might do the same ?