This turned out to be a really good weekend. On Friday I was having a tough time. I was filled with doubt and fear. It was a mess! A twitter friend whipped me into shape and then I spent some time in prayer to get myself back together. Yesterday we were going to hear our friend preach. He was being ordained as a minister and yesterday was his first sermon. He did such a great job y'all! I was so proud of him. It was like he looked into my prayer journal and wrote that sermon for me. I am still replaying portions of what he said over in my head, because I needed it so much. His sermon was on faith. Since I grew up in church I've heard sermons on faith a million times. But it's nothing like having your peer break it down to you how they understand it. Some of the thoughts floating in my head from his message:
"Replace the word faith with confidence. Faith is your confidence in God keeping his word. That's why the verse says without faith it's impossible to please God. If you never have any confidence in anything God says, you think He's pleased with that?"
"As Christians a lot of people have this mentality of 'ohhhh if I just have a little bit of faith, hold on to this little bit of faith.' You've been a Christian for 20 years, you don't have enough confidence in God to know He's gonna do what He said yet? You should have enough faith for you and your neighbor!"
"Faithfulness is not loyalty. Look at the parable of the talents. The servant that Jesus called wicked was loyal. He came back to Jesus and brought him back exactly what he was given. That's loyalty. But Jesus wanted him to multiply what he was given. To take what Jesus gave him and produce more to be given out. That's faithfulness."
"Jesus always talked about how he couldn't do many miracles in the town where he was from. Why? Because they people never believed him for anything. All they saw was the man they grew up with. They didn't have any confidence that he could do anything even though many of them had seen and heard of him miracles. Don't let your low expectations be the reason why nothing ever works for you."
He also tought on being fruitful and multiplying but I haven't even had time to fully process that yet, so I won't even try and type that up yet.
Y'all this stuff is going right in my prayer journal after that pitiful doubtful faithless prayer I wrote on Friday. Thank God for his grace and for sending teachers with good word! I'm about to text him and thank him again for teaching on that yesterday because if for nobody else, it was for me! Now I'm mad I didn't pull out my church fan and start waving at him while saying "preach boy" and "that boy is good!" I've always wanted to be one of those "extra" church ladies. LOL
4 comments:
My lack of faith - or confidence - slapped me in the face on Friday. We were having a terrible thunderstorm. Lovegirl was scared and ran and jumped in bed with me crying and shaking. I kept telling her to calm down, stop crying, I was there and she was still freaked. I finally said "Lovegirl, what can I do to make you feel better?" "Pray, Mama, pray!" And so I did. I prayed for the thunderstorm to weaken in intensity and for the lightning to stop striking. And you already know - before I could say "amen," the storm had passed. She was like "I knew God would take this bad storm away if you asked him." My 5 year old child has more faith than I do. I will definitely be spending more time in prayer, study, and meditation.
Thanks I really needed this post.
I too had a tough time last week. I need to get back to studying, meditating and trusting God word. What you said about confidence reasonated with me. Thank you.
Thanks for this and I needed to read Nerdgirl's comment. I don't know y sometimes I have faith and trust God in certain areas but then in one paritcular area my faith is so low, like "He's not going to do that for me." I wonder when and where that doubt came from?
S23
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