FAITH

So, I just want to start off this blog by saying thank you so much to all my readers for waiting patiently for me to put out new content. I really appreciate it and I'm so thankful for each and every one of you who take the time out of your day to read this content and integrate it into your daily lives. A big big shout out to all of you for real. I pray that these posts are helping you all grow spiritually and making you ask the hard questions about this life and the life to come. Now, without further ado lets' get into this weeks blog which is based on Faith.

Faith is a very broad term in Christianity that can mean multiple things at once or just one thing in general. In this blog I'll talk about the different interpretations of faith and my personal experience of the word itself.

In the Christian walk Faith can be used to describe your personal level of belief, for example how much faith do you have in God? The word is used often this way throughout scripture when talking about things that are unseen, future events and things that you cannot tangibly touch. The word Faith comes up a lot in the New Testament especially in the Gospel. When Jesus is performing miracles he would often say beforehand to the person do you believe that you can be healed or after he'd perform a miracle he would say go in peace your faith has saved you. You might be wondering why did the Lord mention faith so much or ask about it before he performed miracles and afterwards? I believe the Lord said it to put emphasis on the importance of having faith, if you ask for something from God yet don't believe in your heart that it will happen it wont. You have to believe in what you ask for. Believe that even though you don't see it now you will in the future. Believe that the God you serve can do anything and everything. Having this kind of Faith in God is so important because it will see you through life and I mean that. I can not tell you the amount of times that I've experienced pain, loss, loneliness and confusion but Faith in the cross of Christ saw me through. I knew at that present time things weren't looking good, I wasn't good and the people around me sure weren't too good but in spite of all that God would see me through.

When I was younger I didn't have faith in God. I didn't really believe in him you know, he wasn't someone I thought could always be there for me and always love me and never let me down. He was just the God of Sundays, someone I heard about in church but not someone I could have a real personal relationship with. I didn't have the belief that God could see me through the dark times and boy was there a lot of dark times when I was growing up. I used to try and get through those times by myself cause I didn't believe that God would stand by someone like me. I didn't believe that he was who he said he was, that God could be that good and loving and faithful and he would direct all that goodness on me. My lack of belief was at my own detriment, I went through a lot of things that I didn't need to go through. My lack of faith is what let the darkness stay. There's this verse in the word that says without faith it is impossible to please God that you must first believe who he says he is when entering his presence. This verse rings so true in my life when I dwell on it, how can one ask someone for help yet not believe that they can help you (read that again). It doesn't make any sense but then again my life didn't make any sense before I knew Christ.

In Christianity faith can also mean Christianity itself for example instead of saying to someone I'm a Christian woman I could say I'm a woman of faith. Both phrases mean the exact same thing but it's just a different way of getting my point across using the word faith. When faith is used this way it's almost a collective term. You may or may not have heard people say things like "that's my brother/sister in the faith". When people use faith this way their not talking about your level of belief like we talked about previously but Christianity itself. This is generally because Christianity is faith based, the word of God says none of us has seen God yet we believe in him. That is faith. None of you reading this walked the earth in the days of Christ yet you believe he is the Son of God. That is faith. None of you reading this saw the miracles that Jesus Christ performed in the days of old yet you believe they happened. That is faith. Everything pertaining to the Christian walk is believing before seeing and that it is the beautiful thing about faith. You just know that it's true without having seen it with your eyes. There's a verse in the gospel where Jesus is talking to the disciples and says this about faith: ....you believe these things because you have seen them, blessed is he that has not seen yet believes. The very core of Christianity is faith, seeing without believing.

In my youthful days I thought Faith was a joke if I'm being honest with you and myself. I'd go to church with my family most Sundays because it was a Sunday and that was just something that you did on the day. I couldn't make sense of dedicating so much time and effort into a God that I couldn't see with my eyes and touch with my hands you know. I remember hearing about the miracles in the Bible and always trying to rationalise it with my carnal mind like how does five loaves of bread and two fish feed thousands of people? In my mind as a child that just made no sense to me whatsoever. But how could I rationalise the things of the Spirit with the things of the Flesh? The two are opposed to one another, both on two different spectrum's. When I was young seeing was believing till the day I believed what I couldn't see. For those of you who don't know I gave my life to Christ when I was seventeen years old and I've been walking in Faith ever since. It will forever be the best decision of my life, to walk by faith and not by sight.

As always I will leave you beautiful people with scripture from the word of God related to the two definitions of faith.

Matthew 21:22                                                                                                                        And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

Hebrews 11:6                                                                                                                          But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Ephesians 2:8                                                                                                                          For by grace are ye saved through faith; and not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Hebrews 11:1                                                                                                                          Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

1 Corinthians 2:5                                                                                                                     That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Matthew 17:20                                                                                                                        And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.                                                                                                                 

I hope you all were blessed by this weeks post and you all learned something new. I pray that you all continue to grow in your relationships with Christ and stay on the narrow path. For those of you who don't know Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour call upon his name today before it is too late. He will always always be there for you. I hope you know by now that I love you all so much but God loves you a billion times more. Stay safe and have an amazing week.