courage

Few people realize just how closely connected faith and forgiveness are. Jesus taught about that connection in His sermon on mountain-moving faith that's recorded in Mark 11:22-26.

He said, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive" (verses 24-25).

One thing the world needs to see is good examples. They need to see believers walk in love and purity and faith in their homes, in their schools and in their businesses.

Living a life of faith takes courage. Most people don’t realize it, but it does! It takes courage to stand up in the face of sickness and declare you’re healed by the stripes of Jesus. It takes courage to believe for prosperity and put your last dime in the offering plate when poverty is staring you in the face. There are going to be some days when you’d rather pull the covers over your head and hide than take another faith stand against the devil. But you can’t. Because the battle of faith isn’t fought once and then forgotten.

Words won’t work without faith any more than faith will work without words! It takes them both to put the law of faith in motion.

Many believers don’t realize that. They’ll continually speak words of doubt and unbelief, then they’ll jump up one day and say a couple of faith words and expect mountains to move—and to their dismay, they don’t.

Why not?

Years ago the devil started a rumor. He told a few Christians that as long as they lived in the world, they had to suffer as the world did. He told them they had to share the diseases and the defeat, the poverty and the failure of those around them.

It was a crafty lie—and it worked. Believers accepted it and began to spread it among themselves. You may have even heard it yourself. If so, I want to help you put that rumor to rest today. I want to help you get the facts straight once and for all.

Courage comes from trusting God. It can’t be mentally drummed up. It comes from believing what God says regardless of what the circumstances look like. Courage comes from faith!

Where does discouragement come from? From fear and unbelief. It comes when you listen to the devil’s lies about what God is not going to do for you.

Spiritual bumps and bruises. Inner aches and pains that just don't seem to go away. Most all of us know what it's like to suffer from them but too few of us know just what to do about them.

We limp along, hoping somehow those hidden wounds will magically stop hurting, thinking that maybe (with a little extra sleep or an extra helping of dessert) that nagging sense of depression will finally disappear.

But does it ever happen that way? No!

I know. I've been there.

How does the devil see you? Does he see you as a terrifying and mighty warrior of God...or does he see you as a wimp he can whip in a minute?

The answer to that question depends on you. I realized that one day as I was studying the children of Israel and their failure to enter the Promised Land. The key to their failure is found in these words: “And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

When I first learned to cast my cares on the Lord, I was down in south Texas preaching a meeting that no one was coming to. I’m telling you, people were staying away from that meeting by the thousands; and after a service or two with just the preacher, one or two others and me in attendance, I was starting to sweat it. But the Lord said, Cast that care on Me, so I did.

Naturally speaking, this is a terrifying world we’re living in today. A world that staggers from one disaster to another. Almost daily we hear about wars, about the dangers of nuclear weapons and chemical warfare, about oil spills and earthquakes and floods, about diseases on the rise and crime sweeping through our cities.

But in the midst of it all, God is promising to be a refuge and a fortress to those who will trust and dwell in Him.

“But, Gloria,” you might say, “He made that promise thousands of years ago when things weren’t in as desperate shape as they are today!”