This is Living
Your life is a sermon… an unspoken testimony. You have what it takes to live successfully and to be a person that God can use to change people’s lives. So what kind of life creates an effective message that can be heard?
We need to be willing to go through the process of growth. Growth increases our capacity, and gets us over our insecurities. We can’t do it in our own strength though. It requires faith.
Hebrews chapter 11 tells us about the legacies that the Heroes of Faith left. Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David and many others overcame great challenges. They weren’t Marvel super heroes with supernatural power but rather normal men and women with fears and faults like you and me. Clearly, it wasn’t their own strength that caused their victories. It was faith in God that enabled them to do amazing feats: conquer kingdoms, overcome lions, quench fires, and win battles when overwhelmingly outnumbered (Heb. 11:33–34).
It is easy to have faith when everything is going well. And it is also easy to doubt and be distracted by your insecurities when things aren’t going well. The key to living large is to walk in faith all the time… through the good and bad. We don’t need to try and live up to other peoples’ expectations or put pressure on ourselves to be someone we’re not. But instead we can live with faith, believing that what God said in His Word is true.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:1-2 MSG)
Walking in this level of faith will cause you to grow in your spiritual life and influence. And when your life is growing for the good, people will begin to notice. Your life’s testimony will share about the goodness and faithfulness of God.
We can live fearlessly and uncompromisingly because of what God has done for us. Sometimes God places us in situations where we’re uncomfortable just so we stretch ourselves a little bit more. But be determined! It is an opportunity for us to use our faith and grow. You will only fail if you quit. God will always be there for us when we step out in faith and obey what he says in the Bible.
-Janis
