Habit

P 2278 A great way to stretch your faith.

/ DVH

Over the years, I’ve learnt that giving is one of the best ways to prayerfully grow our faith. If you are a regular giver and have projects or organisations that you give to, as in offerings – bless you! I’m crazy about generous givers, however they do it. 

However, I have found an interesting way to breakthrough to another level in my faith. It is simple. Give more! No, I have not lost my tiny mind, and yes, I know that is definitely not a favourite subject in these hard times! Most of us need more money … not less…please bear with me.

Human beings can easily settle into a rut. That rut can be an alternative or even a substitute for stretching and expanding our faith, because we think we are already meeting God’s requirements. ←Sadly there is no faith in the previous sentence! The thing is, we can get comfortable even with things like our giving habits. If we already tithe and give special offerings, that means we are probably already giving way above the ‘prescribed’ biblical suggestions.

Although this is a great system, it is still a system. We can get stuck in it and stop using our faith, and give out of habit instead. We need to remember that Jesus is described as the pearl of great price in the bible. We all like to tell Him ‘You are everything to me, Lord’ … then we inadvertently organise our lives to suit our own financial situation, our logic and liking. Living day by day using our faith is neither comfortable or easy. However because He is now Lord of our lives, so He owns everything. Even the stuff we don’t want to think about.

What we really need to pay attention to is whether what we own, can own us!  Realistically speaking we don’t actually own anything … and that even includes the people we love.There is this guy I’ve mentioned before in the gospel of Matthew 13:45,46. He found a precious pearl buried in the ground. He immediately sold everything so he could buy the land it was buried in! He shows us that money is a tool, not an end product. My point is we can easily get stuck in a rut and think that ‘ I‘m already giving above and beyond what is required of me!’  That’s the time to remind ourselves if we want to be guided by the Spirit then most of the time the Holy Spirit’s guidance will probably cost us. 

Meeting the requirements of whatever internal law or agreement we’ve personally settled on, is not walking with Him guiding us – step by step. So my policy in this area, when I realise I’ve become stuck, is to increase what I am giving to an uncomfortable amount.  Actually it is only really uncomfortable because I am stretching my faith by following His plans not mine. Faith is a muscle remember? 

I have applied this lesson for giving above what I’m already giving, many, many times. We pray then we increase that amount permanently, That action made me extremely nervous. In fact I discovered I was fearful in a whole lot of places that I didn’t even know about, simply because they weren’t being stretched. Then I realised had more undiscovered holes in my faith walk than there are on a 18 hole golf course! ⛳️ Eventually I also came to understand that it is not faith if you feel you can control it. Ya might want to think about that. 🧐

At the same time I also learnt that you cannot out-give God. For some reason, after being stretched beyond what I thought I could do, having faith for other things became easier. But whatever I have left monetarily— which, BTW, hardly ever looks like it will be enough —actually stretches further. Sometimes it may only be a few dollars of extra giving, but those few dollars matter. The sacrifice counts. In fact my faith in His ability to sustain my life on less money actually increases my faith everywhere else.

Even though our comfort factor matters greatly to us … another word for comfort could be inactivity. And that is not good, at all! Human beings enjoy having routines, budgets, lists of things we can cross off when done. Unfortunately things like that are novocaine to our faith walk. Our God LOVES adventures. Read the book. Giving is one of the best and easiest ways ever to stretch our faith. Pray, ask the Holy Spirit what to give, and then carry it out.  Forget playing this life safe. Be a risk taker, use your faith.👋🏻

P 2188 Living by faith, hope and love.

/ DVH

1 Thessalonians 1:3: “We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” In many of our minds those things mentioned in this verse in 1 Thessalonians, are merely concepts. However they don’t easily translate into real life. These concepts need to be part of how we live otherwise we will nod our heads in agreement and then forget all about living from this new place.

This verse is an extremely valuable diagnostic tool, when we are doing whatever it is, without stretching and engaging our faith. If it doesn’t stretch us then it isn’t FAITH! Sometimes we do stuff out of obligation or pressure, or to give a good impression. Repent. Even making dinner, going to work, or making a cup of tea can be faith. We do whatever we do, for the Lord Jesus. If we aren’t living that way, then we need to go back and ask for His help and have another go! BTW, this verse is not some sort of escape clause or an excuse – we can’t just go to the pastor and tell him that the Lord didn’t tell us to do whatever it is – so we ain’t doing it!  We are now subject to His instructions, in the bible.

We need to be inspired by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is gentle, lowly in heart, He is obedient and kind. He has a heart of service toward mankind. As we walk with Him that will be the way we think too. He inspires us into these greater works because He loves us all. Any reservations we have about these things provides personal insight into whatever is motivating us. They diagnose our inner human resistance. 

Faith has works, James made that clear.  But those works aren’t simply done to produce or facilitate some sort of end result. Rather, we use our faith to serve Him and others, and that faith is meant to promote His kingdom mentality in us. We use our faith to obey the bible, and Holy Spirit’s inspired leading. When we do things because we’ve been asked to do them by the Lord, the faith we use to carry out the task produces MORE faith. The difficulty is, most of the time, we can actually do whatever it is and not use any faith at all, and that kind of response is more out of convenience, appearances, or duty, or habit. But our faith will produce works that have been prompted by obedience to the word, or the Holy Spirit. 

Perhaps our pastor asks us to go and see and help Sister Mary who is ill. So we carry out this seemingly ordinary task using our faith that the pastor is the leader, and we are serving him, as well as serving our sister, by doing whatever it is. We do what we do as though we were doing it for the Lord Jesus. This is what using our faith to obey, prompted by love for the Lord and others, looks like.

What if we can’t stand Sister Mary and we don’t want to do what the pastor asked us to do? Now we have an opportunity to grow. That’s when we need to go to the Lord and tell Him that we have a wrong attitude, could He please help us? I can’t tell you the result of that scenario, because I don’t know – I just know if my aim is to grow my faith using love – I will have to choose to be transformed in this area. It is no sin to acknowledge that we lack the right motivation, we are all spiritually poor without Christ. We need His riches. It is not a sin to be poor, we just need to admit that we need help. Maybe the pastor can pray for us? 

In my personal experience if I refuse to do something or make excuses, I am probably going to bump into Sister Mary every single time I turn around. Why? God is giving me an opportunity to change my POV. However, please don’t tell Sister Mary you don’t like her … she’s got enough going on already! Go to the Lord and talk to Him about how you feel. Let Him minister His love to you … we can only give away what we have. Now go and do whatever it is anyway and put your feelings aside. This is what living by faith looks like. Avoidance simply postpones the lesson, and trust me, next time it will be harder – because we just hardened our heart!

In order to use our faith we need to line up with the bible – not our feelings. Feelings deceive us – they can be affected by the weather, pizza, or our own personal preferences. They tell us we can’t, when we clearly can, but we just don’t want to! Feelings come and go – the word of our God stands forever. We need to choose to participate in the eternal. Christians do whatever they do, using their faith and hope in His love and power to motivate us through the difficult bits. The Holy Spirit will always help us to persevere despite any personal difficulties. 👋🏻