Faith: it Can Move Mountains

Matthew 17:20 “ Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Faith as small as a mustard seed. Wow, that is small. I wish that I had faith bigger than that. How do we grow the fruit of faith to pass that size. I think my only answer to that would be prayer. Pray for more faith.

I know that its hard to have faith sometimes. But I believe that everything happens for a reason. Right now my struggle is paying for this semester of college. I have no clue how it will be done, but I’ve got to have faith that it will. I have to believe that if I’m meant to be here, then God will provide a way for me to stay. Its hard to have this faith, and sometimes my situation makes me want to cry, but ultimately I know that he is in control. And if I cant get it paid, then I’m not meant to be here. He opens and closes doors for a reason.

Matthew 6:25-34 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

This is the passage I have to remember when  start worrying about finances and stuff. God loves me enough to take care of me, so I don’t need to worry. I have to have faith that he will follow through.

Faith: Blind Believing

So diving into the fruit of faith, there a couple of things to point out. Faith, essentially, is one thing. But it can be divided among things that make it kind of different. There is a faith in the way you trust a chair to hold you up when you sit on it, or faith in the shower to give you water. Then there is a faith in people. Believing that someone will be there for you, or that they won’t lie to you, or cheat on you. This faith can be a faith in God as well. We believe that God will be there for us, because he says he will. Faith that he will care for us and never forsake us.

But then there is a completely blind faith in believing that God is real. This is the faith we have to have before we can have the faith that he’ll help us, because if we don’t believe that he even exist, then how can we believe that he loves us.This is the kind of faith that takes a bit of leap. Once we have this faith, then the faith in him has to begin. Believing that he’ll do as he has promised to do.

We live by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7

Fruit 2: Faith

It’s been a little longer than two weeks since I started growing patience. It went pretty smoothly in the beginning, but I believe these upcoming college days will test me immensely. I can feel myself tensing up, and I’m afraid I may snap on my best friends soon. But the beauty of growing fruit is getting to use them.

I decided that the second fruit should be faith, because faith is something I could really use right now. The basic definition of faith is belief. I usually put my faith in people pretty quickly. I’m one to trust till shown I was wrong instead of having to have my trust in someone build overtime. Faith in people is one thing, but faith in God is another.

Now, I’d say I have a pretty strong faith in God, but its about to be challenged. School, is a challenging place, especially financially. Believing that God will provide, is a hard thing to do especially when it looks hopeless. But hopeless situations are where he can work his best.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

Annoyance

OK, so  it is technically week two and I should have moved onto the second fruit I want to start growing, but I’m not quite done with patience.

I want to point out annoyance. Annoyance is pretty closely related to anger, but not quite the same thing. Being annoyed usually leads to anger.

A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.   Proverbs 12:16

Above is my favorite verse. Its one of the few verse I’ve learned on my own for personal reason. My brother enjoys annoying me. It’s usually mutual. But he is really really good at pushing my buttons. The important thing to remember is to use patience to not show the anger from being annoyed. It’s pretty difficult.

That’s all I really had to say upon the subject. But I wanted to add something about anger. There is a thing called righteous anger, which is not often what kind of anger we get. But even with righteous anger, we need to be careful with how it expressed.

I’m going to end this post with some more verses (all from Proverbs, so I think Solomon would agree with me) upon this past weeks subject:

A fool always loses his temper, But a wise man holds it back. Proverbs 29:11

Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city. Proverbs 16:32

A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel. Proverbs 15:18

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. Proverbs 37:8

Anger

I’d like to think that I’m patient, but I realize that I’m not usually. I get mad easily. I’d like to say it runs in my genes, but that’s not an excuse. Anger is one of the biggest foes of patience.

In fact the Bible tells us “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” in James 1:19.

And in Proverbs 14:17, “A quick-tempered person does foolish things, and the one who devises evil schemes is hated.”

In Psalms 37:8 it says “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.”

Ephesians 4:26-17 says “’In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”

Anger is something that isn’t easy to ignore. When it comes, it just boils under and we just feel like we have to let it out. This is where patience comes into play. A lot of the times, the things that anger us the most, are pretty petty. If we can be patient enough not to blow up, then it could solve a lot of relationship problems.

I personally can say that I am quick to anger when it comes to my rabbit. I love Nosey to death, but sometimes, he knows exactly what buttons to push. He knows he’s not supposed get on top of his cage, yet every night he persist to get up there. And when he hops down, he takes everything down with him. I know he knows better because when I look at him, his ears go down knowing I’m going to scold him. When he’s down then he proceeds to give me kisses, and then I forgive the adorable bugger, but he has been my biggest test all week. Second to Nosey, my brother makes me the maddest, but I’ll delve more into that in the next post.

Anger tends to strike when we are stressed as well. I remember around finals time last semester snapping at my friend because she was freaking out about a cd and her bed posts. Being stressed is like a taught spring ready to release with the littlest of movement. It is in these times that we need to step back and ask God for peace and calm, so that we can perform with out tearing someone’s head off.

Week 1: Patience

For the first week, I’ve decided to grow patience. I looked verses on patience, and most of them had to do with waiting for the Lord. I decided to look up the definition to better define what I am trying to achieve. The definition I found was “bearing provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship,pain, etc., with fortitude and calm and without complaint,anger, or the like.” So basically calmness in situation where calm is not what I want to feel.

I’ve decided to make a list of questions to ask myself at the end of each day:

1. Did I ask God to help me patient today?
2. Did I use patience in every situation today?
3. Were there any times that I could’ve been more patient?
4. Even if I didn’t show it on the outside, were there any times that I felt inpatient in my heart?

Today, I think went pretty well. But since it’s only day 1 out of like 70…  

Introduction

I was just reading around in my Bible, thinking about what I had learned this past weekend, when I came across the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. I remembered someone preaching about how the Fruit of the Spirit are not gifts but have to be grown. They used the verse from John 15:5 stating “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” Well I've heard this before, a lot, but I never really gave it much thought. Putting two together, I realize that we must grow the fruit of the spirit ourselves, with the spirit's help of course.

Thus it came to my mind, to start a fruit challenge. Each week, I'll be choosing a new fruit to work on producing in my life. As each week goes on, I'll add a new one, while continuing to work on the one before. I'll be journaling each day (in my personal journal and sometimes on here) to assess what I've learned, what I've struggled with, and what wasn't so bad. I expect some fruit to be harder than others. I’ll read all I can in the Bible about the fruit of the week along with my normal devotional.   Additionally, I'll be asking God to help me with this fruit, which, knowing him, he'll give plenty of opportunity to use it.

I'd like to challenge you, whoever you are, to do this challenge with me. Talk to me about it, and keep me accountable to keep going through with it. I'm hoping something amazing will come out of it.