Have you based your faith . . . on what someone else has told you God wants to do for you? on what you have seen Him do for another person? on what you think is fair or loving? on what you think would be in the best interest of those involved? on a doctor’s recommendation for treatment? You and I must pray in faith, or our prayer will not be pleasing to God. If your faith as you pray is based on anything other than faith in God’s specific promise given to you in His Word, then your prayer is on a shaky foundation. So ask God to give you a promise from His Word on which you can pray in faith.
The stronger I grow in faith, the closer I draw to Jesus, the more I learn to love and trust Him alone, the more disgusted, discouraged, depressed, and defeated I become over sin and failure in my life! I am sick of sin! My sin!
But there is hope for me! God’s Word promises “that he who began a good work in [me] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” What I will be like “has not yet been made known. But [I] know that when he appears, [I] shall be like him, for [I] shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2, NIV). Praise God!
One day I will no longer struggle with sin.
I will no longer stumble and fall.
I will no longer falter and fail.
I will no longer be tried and tempted.
One day I will be like Jesus!
When God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7, NIV), all human life became sacred because it came directly from God. Whether a person is a murderer on death row or the most beloved person in town, each one is to be treated with respect if for no other reason than human life comes from God.
Are you prejudiced toward someone? A person of a different race or educational background or economic level? Someone from another culture or denomination or religion? Someone with a different language or social status or skin color? There is absolutely no room for prejudice of any kind in a life that follows the Creator’s directions. All men are created equal, not in abilities or opportunities, but in the eyes of God because all men derive their lives from God.
Medical studies have proven that worry attacks the central nervous system, the circulatory system, and the digestive system of our bodies. Charles Mayo, of the Mayo Clinic, said, “You can worry yourself to death, but you cannot worry yourself to a longer life.”
Noah was exposed to such frightening experiences he could have worried himself to death; after all, he survived the equivalent of a nuclear holocaust. While Sunday school stories conjure up in our minds the picture of Noah as a quaint, folksy, old zookeeper with a plump, rosy-cheeked wife, he was in fact a very strong, courageous man of character and faith who could have been tremendously traumatized by the most violent catastrophe in history.
Surely Noah knew the paralysis of fear and the total paranoia of worry. But he also knew by experience that the God of the storm is also the God of all comfort, able to calm his fears as he kept his faith in God and his focus on God.
The apostle Paul knew the secret of victory when he and Silas were thrown into the inner cell of a prison, their feet fastened in stocks, because they had preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God” (Acts 16:24-25, NIV). As a result of their praise, an earthquake collapsed the prison, the jailor was converted, and they were set free! Paul maintained that spirit of praise until the end of his life when he once again found himself in chains in a Roman prison, yet emphatically declared, “I will continue to rejoice” (Phil 1:18, NIV).
I doubt if, during either of those imprisonments, Paul felt like praising. But he had learned to walk by faith, not by his feelings. And today he commands you and me to exercise our will, making the deliberate, conscious choice to “rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
