“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” (NLT)
Faith always means risk. Everything in life is a risk. Ecclesiastes 10:8 says, “When you work in a quarry, stones might fall and crush you! When you chop wood, there is danger with each stroke of your ax! Such are the risks of life” (NLT). There’s nothing we can do that doesn’t have some element of risk in it.
But the greatest risk of all is how we relate to other people and how we relate to God – the risk to do something about those relationships. Mark 12:30 says, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength” (NLT). You take a risk when you love with all your heart. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Jesus reminded us that one of the greatest mistakes we can make is to play it safe with our lives. He said, “If you try to keep your life for yourself, you’ll lose it.”
You probably remember the part in the third Indiana Jones movie where Indiana Jones came to the edge of a cliff. He was challenged to step out over the cliff even though he couldn't see a bridge beforehand. That's not a bad picture of genuine faith. Faith is stepping out and doing what God has asked you to do when you can't see what will happen in the end. You don't know exactly what God's going to do in the end, but you know he’s asking you to step out in faith.
Many times we’ll come to the edge of faith in our own lives. We’re not sure where things are headed. Maybe it is a decision to start a relationship with Jesus for the first time. Maybe you need to trust him with a business decision or something related to a relationship. There is a risk in stepping out in faith. Who will you trust? Will you trust in the Lord with all your heart? What if you’re wrong? Is it really God telling you to take the step of faith?
Practice the 80/20 principle If you'll do the 80 percent of God's will that's clear in the Bible, he'll show you the 20 percent that's not clear. In other words, love your neighbor. Spend time in God's Word. Talk to God in prayer. Spend time with God's people. Love your family. Love your kids. Protect the way that you speak to people. Be kind in your relationships. Be patient. Do the 80 percent that’s clear, and God will show you the rest.
So take the risk. Trust God with everything you have. Do what God has told you to do in His Word. Then, when God challenges you with a risk of faith, you’ll be more confident to do what God tells you to do.
Saddleback Resources offers a small group Bible study related to these devotionals: The Invisible War-Winning the Battle of Temptation.
© Copyright 2011 Tom Holladay. Used by permission.
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Faith Means Relying on God by Tom Holladay |
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“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:6 NLT)
Anytime we demonstrate faith, we’re relying on something. When you sit in a chair, you’re relying on the chair’s manufacturer to produce something that will hold you up. When you’re on the freeway, you’re relying on every other driver around you.
Faith in God means we rely on him and depend on his reliability. Having faith means realizing that God is bigger, greater, and better than me – and he loves me greatly.
Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death” (NLT). That's the problem with relying on yourself. We’re often wrong. Human intuition is not always reliable. In fact, it’s just good enough to make us think we’re right – even when we’re not.
Genuine faith is relying on God's direction and on who he is. God is reliable. He knows what you need, and he wants to meet those needs. Unfortunately, we think we know better. We think we have a better plan. We want to use our logic and get to the answer in a way that makes us look good – and doesn’t require risk. But God wants us to grow, so he takes us a different way.
Many times in Scripture, God asks us to do what doesn’t make sense to our logic. For example, Mark 10:43 says, “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant” (NLT). To most people, that verse doesn’t make sense; you’d think great people would have others serving them. Jesus says it’s the other way around – the great people are the ones serving others. I need to trust what God says about greatness, not what I think.
God also says we’re to honor him by giving the first 10 percent of our income back to him. By our reason, that doesn’t make much sense to us. But we’re to lean on God’s understanding, not our own.
Because we trust him, we obey what he says – even if it doesn’t make sense to us.
Tom Holladay is a teaching pastor at Saddleback Church and author of The Relationship Principles of Jesus.
Saddleback Resources offers a small group Bible study related to these devotionals: The Invisible War-Winning the Battle of Temptation.
© Copyright 2011 Tom Holladay. Used by permission.
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Faith is Activated When We Act by Tom Holladay |
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“Always obey the Lord and you will be happy. If you are stubborn, you will be ruined.” (Proverbs 28:14 GNB)
Faith isn’t just something you talk about. It’s something you do. Faith is only activated when we act. We have faith in God when we do what he says.
Proverbs 28:14 says, “Always obey the Lord and you will be happy. If you are stubborn, you will be ruined” (GNB). Obedience and stubbornness are two sides of the same coin. Obedience brings joy, but our stubbornness makes us miserable.
Say my wife and I take a drive, and I take a wrong turn. Both my wife and I notice this wrong turn. My best choice would be to turn around and go the right way. But my stubbornness kicks in. I decide that I'm going to prove that I'm right even if I have to go all the way around the world to get to our destination. The longer I'm stubborn, the further I get from where I need to be. The minute I stop being stubborn and make the U-turn, I get back going in the right direction.
Stubbornness can ruin us. The longer it takes us to do what God has asked us to do, the further we get away from what He wants.
God’s Word is a message to obey, not just hear. James 1:22 says, “Don’t just listen to God’s Word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves” (NLT).
We can come to church every weekend and listen to the Bible and feel very spiritual because we’re listening. When we do that, we’re like the one who goes to a health club and watches people exercise. That doesn’t get you healthy. Reading and listening to God’s Word without acting on it won’t make you more spiritual either. You’re fooling yourself if you think it will. It’s not enough to just say that you agree with what God’s Word says on a subject. You must actually do it. God’s Word is meant to be acted upon.
God wants you to apply the 100 Percent principle. Obey God 100 percent of the time in 100 percent of your life. You can’t be 100 percent obedient in 80 percent of your life. Faith doesn’t work like that.
What part of your life are you not being obedient in? Maybe it’s one little part of your life, or maybe it’s a big chunk. Maybe it’s your entertainment choices. Maybe it’s your sexuality. Maybe it’s food. Maybe it’s a bad habit. It’s not enough to be obedient in 99 percent of your life and disobedient in the other 1 percent.
God wants to change your life. He wants to bless you in that one area you’ve been holding back from him. Will you let him?
Tom Holladay is a teaching pastor at Saddleback Church and author of The Relationship Principles of Jesus.
Saddleback Resources offers a small group Bible study related to these devotionals: The Invisible War-Winning the Battle of Temptation.
© Copyright 2011 Tom Holladay. Used by permission.
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In Faith, Expect God's Best by Tom Holladay |
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“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Psalm 3:5-6 NIV)
God doesn’t promise to make your life perfect and problem-free. Instead, he promises to give you the life you’ve always been meant to have. Only God can do that.
This week, we’ve been looking at faith. Part of having faith in God is expecting him to bless your life. He wants to make your life all it’s meant to be — not all you want it to be, but all he wants it to be. He always has your best interests in mind.
When God asks us to do something, Satan typically reminds us of all we have to give up in order to obey. But that’s only part of the story.
Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!” (NLT). That’s great news! When I trust in God — or take refuge in him — he brings joy. Instead of thinking of what we have to give up when we trust and obey God, the Lord wants us to remember the joy we’ll find when we obey.
My wife and I recently were able to spend some time with our 2 year-old granddaughter, Reese. We can really see this truth in the lives of 2 year-olds. One time, she was swimming in her little toddler pool. Every time she’d get out of the pool and shiver, her grandmother would dry her off. So Reese would walk back to her pool, pour a pitcher of water over herself, and walk back to grandma to get dried off again. That’s a smart girl. She knows where her needs are going to be met. She went back to grandma because she expected grandma to dry her off again. And grandma did — every time!
That’s the kind of relationship God wants with us. It’s what faith is all about — expecting God to act on our behalf.
You might think, “God hasn’t always come through for me. He hasn’t always done what I expected of him.” How could he? God is so much greater than we are. There is so much we don’t understand about God. But I know I can trust him to love me no matter what. God will be here for me from now to eternity. Faith is expecting that even in the midst of what you’re facing now, God will keep loving you and keep being faithful. He’ll keep his plan all the way through eternity.
Psalm 42:11 says, “Oh, my soul, don't be discouraged. Don't be upset. Expect God to act!” (TLB). I've not always gotten what I wanted, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that God has never let me down. He's never failed to act on my behalf when that’s what I’ve needed.
Expect Him to act. He won’t let you down.
Tom Holladay is a teaching pastor at Saddleback Church and author of The Relationship Principles of Jesus.
Saddleback Resources offers a small group Bible study related to these devotionals: The Invisible War-Winning the Battle of Temptation.
© Copyright 2011 Tom Holladay. Used by permission. | | |
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