Tag: believe

Believe

On By vickleaIn Characteristics of God, God’s blessings, Scripture1 Comment

The word “believe” is an action verb that means (according the the New Oxford American Dictionary) to accept something as true. I believe that the sky is blue and look up and can see that it is, at least when it isn’t raining. It is easier to believe in things we see, touch, and can hear. But what about the spiritual things? How do we get to the place where we can believe without doubting?

When Jairus came to Jesus for healing for his daughter, others came and told Jairus not to keep bothering Jesus since she had already died. Jesus’s reply was to “just have faith.”

An important part of believing in the Lord and His promises is to have faith. In the world where everything is instantly provided, or so it seems, we don’t like to wait. And faith is a hard thing sometimes when we persistently ask God for an answer and we haven’t seen one yet after weeks, months, even years. So, what do we do when we don’t get the answer we want when we want it? We continue to believe.

How do we do that? I don’t know what works in your life, but for me, I reflect on all that God has already done and keep repeating his promises. I remind myself that God doesn’t lie and if He said it, He will do it. It’s hard sometimes to stop whining and start praising, but that is exactly what we need to do. It builds our own faith and helps others to see Jesus in us. Instead of talking to God about what you don’t have yet, thank Him for what He has already done for you. Remember the song “Count Your Blessings” and do that!

We haven’t seen death yet and don’t know what happens when we die. Yet we who are Christians believe in life after death. Why do we believe in what we cannot see? Because God said it, He promised it and He fulfills His promises. In our lifetime, we see many changes, some good and some bad. Life is like a roller coaster ride of curves, twists and hills to climb. But God is right there with us, knowing that we can make it to the end of our race because He and the heavenly host are cheering us on. They believe in us…so we should also believe in the Father to do exactly as He has said. Again, how do we believe? And again, I say, count the promises that God has made to you in your life and already brought to pass. Build your faith on the firm foundation of His Word and His actions for you in the past. Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life.” He didn’t say that He was the resurrection for former believers, the heroes of the faith only and then stopped reaching out to people. No, He uses the present tense. Every day, we are saved from our sins. We were saved (when we accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior), we are being saved (as we walk with Him daily and believe His promises) and one day we will be saved to a new life, to live with Him eternally. Promises made, promises kept! (Politicians use this slogan to point out how good they are to the people, but the only One good who has kept all of His promises is God.)

Do you let God speak to you daily from His word? That’s where His promises are and that’s what helps you to believe. You can feed your faith by centering yourself on God’s word or you can feed your doubt by looking around at your world and all that is not right with it. Notice that the person in this scripture says he believes. What does he do just after his proclamation of belief? He worships. We need to spend time just adoring God for who He is, not just thanking Him for all He has done for us. He is the Creator of the Universe, yet He considered each of us important enough to send His Son to die for us. He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, powerful and holy. Spend some time thinking about who God is…and believe that He wants what is best for you.

Little children believe in Santa and are sad to find out that he isn’t real. Some believe in false gods and one day will face the real God who will judge them for their folly. We have the greatest gift of all…God’s love, His gift of salvation and all of His promises. So, let’s believe together that God will do what He says. He may not answer our prayer with a “yes” but He will answer with what is best for us because He is our Father who loves us. Only believe!

Believe, Receive, Act

On By vickleaIn Admonition, ScriptureLeave a comment

The steps to becoming a Christian can be broken down into these three simple actions. First, you have to believe that God sent His Son to die for you and that He was resurrected, thus making eternity with God the reward.

But if all you do is believe it, that won’t help much. The Bible says that even the demons believe, but they are destined for eternity away from God, not with Him. The next step is very important because it puts you in the driver’s seat of making the right choice. If someone gives you a gift, they have it in their hand and are holding it out to you, and you just walk away, did you receive it? Of course not! That is what God is doing; He gave His Son Jesus and you have to receive the gift of His love, mercy and grace in order to partake of the salvation that He wants to give you. The choice is to turn away from sin, repent and receive the free gift of God. Many people, including some of my family members, think that they are good and don’t do bad things, so that means that when they die, they will go to Heaven. I have multiple friends who believe that if they go to church and confess their sins weekly, they are good to go for eternity. Unfortunately, these people are trying to make up their own rules for getting into God’s presence and He has already firmly established what it takes. He doesn’t expect one thing of one person and another thing of another. Everyone has the same expectations.

Each individual has to believe and receive on order to have the promise of eternal life.

The third part of salvation is to start doing the things you read in God’s Word that you should be doing. And, it goes without saying, you cannot do what is in God’s Word if you aren’t reading it to find out what is there. If you are making a brand new-to-you recipe and never look at the instructions, the chances that the dish you are making will turn out the way it is supposed to are slim to none. God’s Word is our instruction book for our lives, so if we never read it, how will we know how we are supposed to live. How do we do what it says when we don’t know what it says?

When I was a pre-teen, I remember that one day my mom came to my bedroom door and was talking about something. I had no idea what she said because I didn’t really listen since I was reading or doing homework at the time. I do know that she ended with, “Well, get started and do what I told you to do!” I had no idea what she had told me to do, so I had to ask her, a question that made her very angry since I had missed an entire speech about what she wanted me to accomplish. That’s what it’s like, I think, when God is telling us to do something and we just tune Him out because we are preoccupied with other things. We need to tune into God and His Word and tune out the world and all of its distractions. That way, we can truly LISTEN to what He wants us to do, including how to act and react.

One of the most important instructions in the Bible is to GO. This is a command, not a suggestion. No matter where we are going, we should have in mind that our directive is to make disciples. We cannot follow through if we are not open to the leading of the Holy Spirit who will tell us plainly what to say and to whom, if we are listening. I have discovered that most people don’t have the time or desire to listen to me tell them all about the Roman road to salvation, but they usually listen intently to personal testimony backed up with scripture. Maybe I am doing things all wrong, but I consider what I do to be planting seeds. God will send someone else to plant more seeds and to water and He will harvest. Sometimes, I get the privilege of seeing the person again and planting more seeds or even doing the watering. Whether that is true or not, I hope and pray that what I do is beneficial to building God’s kingdom and fulfilling His command to “go and make disciples.”

Finally, there are a lot of commands in the Bible. We can read them and obey them or we can choose to ignore them and be disobedient. Obey is one of the actions that we are to take once we believe and receive. Seek God and His truth and then act on what He tells you to do. The same God who made you wants to spend eternity with you. It’s your choice. Do you want to believe, receive and act? Dust off your Bible or pick up your phone and install a Bible app. I recommend the YouVersion, but there are many different apps you can use. Just start, take one step at a time in this walk of faith that starts with believing. God bless all who have read this blog post today and may the Lord lead you and guide you to follow His instruction book to eternal life.

Facing Difficult Circumstances

On By vickleaIn Scripture, YouVersion AppLeave a comment

www.bible.com/reading-plans/9114/day/7

We all face difficulties in life; that is part of what life is all about. It is our response to those difficulties that shows others in Whom we believe and put our trust. We can wring our hands, cry and become bitter or we can pray to the Lord who made us that He will fulfill His promises to work things out for us in the best way possible for us. I remember several devotionals in the last year pointed out that God did not lead the Israelites around the Red Sea, thus circumventing the challenge. Instead, He parted the Red Sea and led them through it. Whatever our “Red Sea” might be, God will be with us all the way to the other side if we believe and trust in Him.

Pray, Believe, Receive

On By vickleaIn Scripture2 Comments

Anyone who has followed me on my blog for a while knows that I have a few health problems. Well, actually, maybe more than a few. But I am totally blessed that God has taken care of me and is continuing to watch over me. My attitude of gratitude did not come easily as I spent much time angry about my health conditions and my inability to change them as well as God’s silence on the matters. Then, in 2015, my stroke happened. It was a bad one, or so I was told. If it had not happened at school where I was closer to the hospital and where the school nurse could immediately diagnose me and get help, I would likely not have survived. Coincidence? No…God watching over me.

At the time of my stroke, I could not move any limbs on my right side and could barely stutter out an intelligible word. But what I could do is pray and pray, I did! In the ambulance, I was praying silently to the Lord. The paramedic asked me if I needed something because it seemed I was trying to speak. Well, I did need something (healing) but I wasn’t telling the paramedic. I was talking to God. My husband was late arriving at the hospital because the school nurse had trouble getting him to answer the phone, so I was all alone for a little while. And I prayed, as multiple health workers did their jobs all around me, buzzing about the fact that I was probably having a stroke. The end result was that my husband arrived, I had the option to get a clot-busting shot that could kill me (30% chance) or save my life. My husband called our daughter Hope and together we prayed that the shot would work. It did…but I’m here to tell you that the medication was injected into my body but the Lord did the healing.

I have just been through a series of medical tests and the doctors could not find anything seriously wrong with me except for a reaction to my medication. I feel in my heart and soul that I was healed…God used my symptoms of fainting, vision loss and dizziness to built my faith in Him as I trekked to one specialist after another. In the end, He spoke quietly to me that He had healed me because of His great love for me. Once again, God reached down and touched me, not because of who I am or what I have done but because of Who He is.

My response to God’s grace and mercy is praise and thanksgiving. I am thankful for each day that I get to spend here on earth with my family and friends. God is wonderful to me and abounds in blessings for me. Today, I get to travel again, this time to see my sister who had to move to NC because of her health conditions. If you knew me well, you would know that I dislike traveling. I like the comforts and familiarity of home and would never go anywhere if we did not have family at a distance. Nevertheless, I am blessed to be healthy enough to travel and to get to see my sister who celebrated her birthday this week.

Every day is a miracle. The sights I see around me are evidence of God’s working on the earth. Birds singing, rain falling, squirrels scampering around the bird feeders…all are wonderful signs of God’s creation that He cares for so well. And the best thing is that He has shared it with me to enjoy…and with you! Look around you. You may not see or be aware of God’s miracles, but they are everywhere. Every breath we take is a gift from God. Everything we see is a gift from God. All that we are able to hear is a gift from God. Thus, I have learned and I’m still learning to pray, believe and receive…then to be thankful that I am able to do all of these because of a great and marvelous God who loves me beyond all that I can imagine.

Let God Be God

On By vickleaIn Scripture6 Comments

I recommend that you read the entire chapter in order to get the background for this verse, but I will briefly summarize it for you. The Israelites were in the wilderness moaning about the fact that all they had to eat was manna and they wanted some meat. So, God told Moses He would provide meat for everyone to have daily. Moses pointed out to God that he had over 600,000 people there in the wilderness for him and even if they killed off all the livestock and caught all the fish available, there would not be enough to satisfy the people. The verse above is God’s reply.

Moses seemed to expect less of God because humanly what God had said would take place is impossible. After all, they were in a wilderness, far from civilization. With this one verse, God shows His power once again. To me, it sounds like he is schooling a child who just refuses to learn. But Moses has walked with God for decades by this time. He met with Him in the burning bush, went before Pharoah on God’s behalf and saw all of the miraculous signs God performed and even saw God roll back the Red Sea so they could cross over safely. So, why would he doubt God’s abilities?

I think it’s a little thing called giving human attributes to God. Many men say many things and they cannot actually fulfill what they are saying. We want to believe them, and we may even do so for a while, but then reality hits us. We hear lies every day from politicians, on both sides of the aisle. They promise to represent the people and then get to D.C. and only have their own interests at heart. Our parents promise us a vacation that never happens because money troubles come along. Our friend promises to call, but forgets once she is home again. You get the idea, right? We have been jaded by the people that we are around not to believe what we are told.

However, when God says He can do it, He really can and He really will. He fulfills all of His promises. I think sometimes we put God in a little box on the shelf, take Him down when we need something, tell Him our expectations and then when they don’t occur just as we hoped, we say to ourselves, “Well, of course, He didn’t answer.” That is what’s wrong with our faith. We aren’t letting God be God because we are busy trying to make Him into a man who will disappoint us. But when I let God be God and the prayer is not answered according to my own expectations, I know that God has a better plan for me and trust Him to roll it out for me in His timing.

My prayer for each of you today is that you will let God be God, not giving the Almighty the characteristics of fallen man but realizing that He is a perfect and loving God who desires to bless and have a relationship with us.

Have a blessed and wonderful day, remembering that each day is a gift from your Father in Heaven who wants what is best for you.