You gotta have FAITH!!!

I posted this a couple years ago on our church's women's blog-site.  Some of you may have read it but it is a great reminder that I read occasionally to try to refocus when I'm stressed out or worrying about situations in my life...

Some time ago I was lying in bed thinking (okay – so some people might call it worrying) about some challenging events that were occurring in my life and the thought came to me . . . “I can choose to live in my circumstances or I can choose to live in (or by) my FAITH.” It was such an overwhelming thought that I actually reached over and emailed it to myself from my cell phone so that I wouldn’t forget the next morning. Living by FAITH is a choice and one only I can make every day! 2 Corinthians 5:7 says we “walk by faith and not by sight” – the NIV actually says we “LIVE by faith” and I have to tell you there are times when the view of the circumstances I am facing blinds me to the path of faith I should be walking on. Hebrews 11:1 says “FAITH is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Another way the Amplified Bible says it is that “FAITH is perceiving as a real fact what is not revealed to the senses.” To say that we have faith and to actually LIVE by it are two completely things. I can say that I have faith and that I believe that God is going to do all He says He is going to do BUT when I’m actually faced with the circumstances of life, how does my inner (wo)man actually respond to those situations – especially when none of my 5 senses can sense a change around me? Well, that’s where our FAITH actually takes over. Because I am living by the things I cannot see with my physical eyes or touch with my hands, I am leaving my situation in the all-knowing, more than capable hands of the very God who created ME and has known me before my very conception (Psalms 139:13) . It’s hard to actually walk out that belief sometimes but as Christians that is the hope we have. It is the hope that the God of the Universe has plans for me to prosper and not to harm me but plans to give me a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11) and I have to rest in the fact that no matter what is going on around me, He knows and He cares and He will walk through the fire with me. I hope that just as I’ve had to do this week, you will give yourself a Faith-check . . . are you living today in your circumstances or are you choosing to believe that God is in control and LIVE in your FAITH??? The choice is YOUR’S!