From Pity to Praise

Faith is not about the struggle to conjure up belief, but rather resting in the finished work of Jesus, acknowledging that strength comes from God, not perfect effort.

While trials and trouble will happen, faith is the assurance and trust in God’s promises, which often happens when we help our unbelief by relying on His grace rather than our own strength.

Faith is easy, it’s the resting that can become hard. It’s about trusting God’s power rather than relying on ourselves.

Even when we doubt God’s promises, He welcomes our honesty. In Mark 9:23-24 this is seen, “Yeshua said to him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out with tears, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

The object of faith is to focus on trusting Jesus, not the intensity of our own feelings.

We must remember that the role of any trial is not intended to break us, but to build endurance and maturity.

Jesus promises us that His burden is light. This means true faith brings peace, rather than struggle.

In the world the strong often rule over the weak. In God’s kingdom, the principles that govern are the proper use of strength and power are different.

Strength is not given so that we can strut down the street like a rooster or peacock, drawing attention to ourselves. Strength is an asset that God enables us to be a part of so we can help others, not to rule over or exploit them.

Romans 15:1 tells us, “Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak and not to please ourselves.”

I think it is power that corrupts people and causes them to forget God, and brings out the worst in people.

If we stay humble before God and use the power He gives us wisely and for His glory, God can trust us with much. It’s important to remember that we keep the right perspective on power and strength.

The Bible is full of examples of people who acknowledged their need and dependence on God. As long as they remembered that God was the source, and the strength they received was for His glory, everything went well.

A perfect example was Samson, He was dedicated to God from birth and was granted incredible, supernatural physical strength to fight the Philistines. But his arrogance and self-indulgence led him to treat His gift for his own personal power rather then stewardship from God. He lived a life of carelessness, pursuing women and acting on his own whims. He revealed the secret of his strength and his long hair. The consequence of that was when he didn’t realize God had left him when Delilah the philistine cutoff his hair, he didn’t realize God had left him. His strength vanished, and he was captured, blinded, and made to grind grain in prison. He repented and turned back to God, but accepted the consequences of his actions. (Judges 16).

The opposite of Samson was Paul. When Paul was troubled over a messenger of Satan, which he called the thorn of the flesh, he cried out to God to help. And God’s response was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest on me ” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Paul had become at the end of himself, and there he found strength from God. His weakness was turned to strength.

As we follow Jesus, we don’t need to fear that God will condemn us or look down on us because of our weaknesses. Jesus empathizes with and offers us comfort and support. Hebrews 5:15 tells us, “We don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who had been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.”

It might seem a bit paradoxical when we consider the power weakness relationship in the Bible, but remember that God is the one who will ultimately reconcile all things and make all things right. Those who arrogantly want power in a godless way will someday find themselves brought to nothing. But those who humble themselves before God and acknowledge their profound need for Him will find themselves being strengthened.

Is it possible that your thought life is holding you back? I’ve seen lots of people succeed or fail, and it always goes back to one thing. Change, how much they changed their thought life.

“Sow a thousand, reap an action. Sow an act, reap an habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character reap a destiny” -anonymous

I can remember certain aha moments when my mind envisioned something bigger than I had ever dreamed. I can remember times when I felt like a failure and encouraged myself with my thoughts. Every time, it seemed like a butt was either holding me captive or catapult me into a new dimension.

To have a successful thought life there are four secrets to know:

1. Capture your thoughts

Isn’t it funny how a negative thought can come into your mind out of the blue? Sometimes we wonder if Satan has access to our thoughts. He does. Even Paul spoke about doing spiritual warfare over our thoughts. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 tells us “For our weapons of warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every though captive to the obedience of Christ.”

When you listen to your inner conversations, are your thoughts constantly fearful? Are they hopeless? Are they jealous? Cast them down, take them captive. say out loud, “Satan, you are a liar. These are not thoughts of God Word. I remove them from my mind.

2. Check your friends

Probably the greatest battle is your friends. You may have friends whose negative mindset tries to limit yours. Jesus’s brothers were always negative about who He was. Peter tried to stop Him from His mission. Be careful whose thoughts you are giving access to your mind. Whether it is your friends, social media, or television.

3. Remove the grooves

Neuroscientists tell us that our thoughts, travel in grooves in our brain. Our memories from trees, whose branches are filled with feelings of good and bad moments. We automatically think in those groves, because that’s what easiest.

But we can plow up those grooves and start over. Plant some new rows so new trees can be planted. Maybe our parents or grandparents thought with certain limitations. But you, we can begin to think of ourselves and totally different dimensions.

4. Renew your mind

For years I have read the Bible, prayed and worked on renewing my mind, from the negative grooves that have been planted in my mind. Slowing my thoughts have transformed more and more into thoughts that come from God.

When we meditate daily on scripture and speak certain verses allowed when they apply to our situation. Our mind begins to renew itself. We can ask God to change our thoughts when they are in conflict with His commands. Changing an old mentality is a slow process to renewal.

But when we stay with it, guard our minds, and expose ourselves to great thinkers, find friends who think like our renewed mind we can begin to think new thoughts. That’s when we begin to change.

“I do not pray the You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” -John 17:15-16

This is what Jesus prayed to the Father. In this prayer, Jesus requested protection and sanctification for His followers rather than their immediate removal from the world.

It’s a tough assignment, to be “in the world, but not of the world.” how come we operate as followers of Jesus in this world without allowing ourselves to belong to it.

This may seem impossible today, but it is clear that we are not to become entangled with the world.

The world is such a great danger to our souls that this danger caused Jesus, the Son of God, to go to the cross to deliver us from it.

The world denoted by the Greek word, “Cosmos,” meaning the world system, which is headed by satan and based on that in of itself, greed, and pride. This is the world that God warns about.

2 Corinthians 4:4 says, “In whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Messiah, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.”

The warnings in scripture are clear. The Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world” It teaches in Galatians 1:4, “Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”

In other words, the world is such a great danger to our souls that it caused Jesus to go to the cross to save us from it.

Throughout the Bible, the lines are definitely drawn between the world of unbelievers and the world of the children of God. In such a way that James 4:4 states, “Do you know that being the world’s friend (this is, loving the things of the world) is being God’s enemy?

So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And Jesus said in John 15:18, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.”

The Bible teaches that those who follow Jesus will face opposition in the world. Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:12, “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” Just as Jesus’s life with all love, concern, and selflessness was a rebuke to the world of His time, so our lives with Jesus abiding in us today bring criticism, opposition, and persecution from those who can not comprehend God’s redemptive grace.

The Bible teaches that we are not to be discouraged by this. We are to consider it as evidence that we are identified with Jesus. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kind of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and we exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.”

The world has entertainment and distractions that permeate the atmosphere as to makes the way of the cross seem antiquated and irreverent, and to make a godly person seem strict or rigid. In much of the world today – entertainment, and media is fostered by the world, the name of God is profaned, sex is glamorized and moral standards are laughed at.

Even, many to follow Jesus are tricked into believing that you cannot enjoy life except as a member of the worldly crowd. The happiest people I know are separated, followers of Jesus. They are not dependent on stimulants, or abuse their bodies to relax their minds. Because with Jesus’s “presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16-11).

Being a follower of Jesus is not a long list of restrictions. It opens the windows to the real joy of living. The world would have us believe that following Jesus is a “killjoy” a dull life, unnatural and abnormal.

But the evidence is to the contrary. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” -John 10:10.

The Bible teaches that worldliness is a force, a spirit, an atmosphere of the cosmos, that is in opposition and contradiction to all who are godly and follow Jesus. It’s goal is selfish pleasure, material success, and the pride of life.

Jesus identified Satan as a prince of this world. Satan employs every device at his command to harass, tempt and thwart the people of God. His attack is relentless. In Ephesians 6:12 Paul writes, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Yet, we are not left defenseless. God provides the power to give us victory over Satan. Paul told us is Romans 8:37, “We are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.” And John wrote in 1 John 4:4, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

We will never overcome Satan and the power of this world system in our human effort or by any deeds of righteousness, no matter how commendable they may be. But we can overcome by the blood of the Lamb.

The Bible instructs us to make a clean break with all the evils of this world and be separated from them. We are not to get the world mix up with following Jesus is. This is where the confusion lies, Jesus, eight with politicians and sinners, nearly everyone he associated with was an outcast. But His relationship with them was not purely social, it was redemptive.

God meant that we are not to mingle with the world, but we are to witness to the world. We are to love the world of people whom God loves. We are too weep with those who weep, suffer with those who suffer, and identify ourselves with the poor, sick, and needy.

As for loving the evil world, and being enamored of the world system of evil, we are to be separated from it.