Trusting God-exercising faith

By:Eternal Echoes

We went to a prayer partners conference on Saturday for TFM, an evangelistic ministry that Tim and I have worked with and for over the last 17 years. In the morning session Daniel spoke on faith taking Hebrews 11 as his text.

He spoke about our need to be with God, to trust God and the need for God to be able to trust us...he reminded us that God wants us to share our whole lives with him...yes he knows all about them and he knows our needs, but how often are we simply too stubborn or too proud to ask for help.

He went on to say that we should be people who exercise our faith by stepping out in boldness, not ahead of God but having confidence in God, trusting him to meet our needs.

Getting alone with God is key, speaking to him, opening our hearts and lives, disclosing hopes and fears, needs and desires, at the same time having emptied ourselves we should wait on him and allow him to speak to our hearts, allow him to renew our confidence, allow him to equip and inspire us.

He challenged us that the church is in the state it is in today because we have forgotten how to trust God, consequently we do not exercise our faith.

This challenged me deeply, we sang Purify my Heart and tears flowed, but it was not until I got into the swing of this week that the message was really brought home to me. I took a day out yesterday and walked and prayed. During that time God showed me how little I had given myself to him in recent times, how I was trying to hold everything, how I had been struggling through lack of trust, lack of faith. As always though God's desire is to restore and forgive not simply to reveal fault, and I felt myself restored.

This morning when we went to leave to lead a Bible Study the main car would not start, having no time we set off in the smaller one, all the time concern was growing...

As we started to pray about the situation God showed me this;

I often feel like I should have everything under control...budget, cars, housework, family, work;;;everything. When this is not the case I become perplexed and look for blame, often myself! Or I blame others especially Tim (my husband and co-worker), or I blame God, as if he does not care...

Before I could get into the blame loop God stopped me and stepped in, reminding me that we have an enemy the devil who seeks to devour us. When I am angry with myself, or Tim or God, I tend to spiral into a sulky silence...and the prince of this world chalks up another victory!

Don't get me wrong, I am not the kind to find demons behind every bush and blame the devil for every problem, but I don't believe we should ignore his work in the world, and against the purposes of God either.

How do I need to exercise faith then?

First I need to get alone with God, to hear what he has to say about any given situation.

Next I need to act on what I have heard/ received. In boldness !!!

I need to go back and back and back into Gods prescience taking with me concerns difficulties and questions, hearing him again and again.

Lastly I must give him the glory....

My faith is unfit, I need to start exercising it again....small steps will lead to bigger ones, and I hope to be running soon!

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