I have the Joyce Meyer bible, the amplified version. Joyce has little side notes in there, which are interesting to read.
In Hebrews 3 it talks about how Jesus was faithful to the one that appointed Him. Then Joyce goes into an explanation of how the bible talks about Jesus' early years and then there is a time from when He was a toddler to when He was 12 years old that you don't hear about Him. She called these the silent years. She says that the child grew and became strong in spirit and filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him (Luke 2:40). It was during these silent years that He grew in strength, wisdom, and favor. She talks about how this "instant" society that we live in is ruining us. We think that everything coming from God should be instant and easy because everything else in our world is instant and easy. This is where faith comes in. If we want godly strength, wisdom, knowledge, spiritual maturity, and character we need to have our eyes focused on the one (the only one) who can give us these things, and wait.
I watched the movie Faith Like Potatoes last night. I had never heard of this movie before and didn't know what to expect when I started watching it. It is an amazing movie. This man who is hot tempered and gets upset quite often, gives his heart and life to Christ and is completely changed. There are several HUGE trials that him and his family experience, and it is all about his faith. He has this undeniable and strong faith that can move mountains and God shows up. He shows up, not always right away but He shows up.
The main character really goes through some big things. I was thinking about what it would be like to have that faith in my life. To just trust, to just know that whatever the outcome, God is for me and He is always faithful.
What is faith? I believe that the easiest definition is confidence in God. Through whatever trial and tribulation I will have faith, confidence in Him who can and will follow through.
Just think about this for a minute. Let's be real here. Trials and tribulations, these are heartbreaking events in our life. A marriage gone wrong, the loss of a child, the loss of a job, financial ruin, physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, alcoholic abuse... There is so much more but these are some HUGE things. These aren't just little heartaches. Trust Him, He can fix it. We can try to fix it but He can ALWAYS fix it.
It's crazy. My husband and I were looking to purchase our first house. We couldn't afford much at all! We were looking for two years. Every couple weeks we would load up the kids to check out 5-6 houses. We would go into these dumps. No matter if the house needed updates or no matter what was going on with the house it ALWAYS had two things: mold somewhere and HORRIBLE foundation. So, we soon realized that our price range was not so good but that no matter what happened we would not settle for a house that had bad foundation, because well that is just stupid. Oh and a side note, I have $30,000 worth of student loans because I just signed the papers for the 5 years I went to school and didn't really think about what I was doing. Plus credit card debt. So, my husband and I decided that if this is what God wanted He would make it happen. We decided that we wouldn't force it in anyway. So, we kinda stopped looking. If we saw a house that looked decent on the MLS website we would call our agent. Anyways, a few months went by and we looked at the website and there was 9 houses in our price range that looked interesting. We emailed our agent and she responded by saying that 5 of the 9 had accepted offers. I couldn't go look at the 4 so Tom went by himself. There was one house that he was going to skip because it was small. I told him to check it out because it was in the city that was way out of our price range to live in and it had great schools. So the 3 other houses turned out to be more disappointment. He goes to the house that he didnt' think we would be interested in and it is perfect for us. I mean perfect. It is on the small side but nothing we can't handle. There was no mold to be found, and the foundation was stronger than any of the other houses that we have ever looked at. I thought okay well, we will put an offer on the house and just get an inspector in there. He will tell us what is wrong. So, when the inspectors came they told us several small fixable things but had nothing but good things to say about the foundation. AmAzInG! So, now we live in this cute little house (that needs tons of work) in a really nice neighborhood with awesome neighbors. The elementary school is right across the street. And we were able to get the $8,000 tax credit to pay off a lot of our debt. Our mortgage with our taxes and insurance is only about $150 more then what we paid in our little apartment. Woo-woo! God is SOOOO good. Honestly, I had faith that no matter what God said, it would be right. If He had kept telling us no to a house, I would have been okay with that because I trusted Him. In fact when we put the offer in on the house, I had a few people tell us that we should back out and NOT buy the house. I kept praying and felt that God wanted us to go through with it. I am very skeptical to my decisions when other people in my life are telling me that I am wrong. I trust others a lot more then I trust myself. I am learning to trust God over everyone else.
Comments
Post a Comment