Faith Leads to Action

source: http://danielstinson.theworldrace.org/?filename=lets-see-the-power-of-prayer

Announcements:

1) Beware of Christians - Event Showing in West Lafayette on April 24, 2012. (You do not want to miss this. Join the facebook group if you can make it: http://www.facebook.com/events/167040963409647/)

2) www.mywhiteflag.com (coming soon! promise)

Hey all! How have the past few weeks been? It has been a really busy couple of weeks, but God has been at work and He has been moving so much! I really want to encourage each and every one of you to continue to look for God in the everyday because He is definitely working and making Himself known to us each and every day. We just don't hear or see it because our hearts have become calloused and we have become accustomed to the pattern of this world (Acts 28:27, Romans 12:2)This won't be a super long blog post, but I just wanted to take the opportunity tonight to talk about some thoughts that have been on my mind that relate to faith, and more specifically faith leading to action. So let's move to the deep end of the pool because we're about to dive in!

What is faith? What does faith look like in your individual life? What are the ways that you are living by faith, and are there examples in your life where you are completely relying on God? Pause for a second and take some time to answer these questions for yourself. Multiple verses throughout scripture call us to "always be ready to give an answer to the reason why we have hope" or faith (1st Peter 3:15, Colossians 4:6). Have an answer for what faith looks like in your life. You never know when God may call you to tell someone about your faith.

I received a text message the other night that said, "What if we sought God and believed in Him with 100% of who we are." And then it hit me: What if we had 100% faith? The bible clearly says with a tiny faith, we can move mountains. We are so good at allocating our faith to different things. In so many situations, we allow God to have most of the control, but very rarely do we find ourselves in a circumstance where we have to COMPLETELY rely on God for who He is. But God is greater than our circumstances. He is greater than death, temptation, sin, time, human wisdom, success, failure, happiness, and infinitely more. He is supreme in everything. What keeps us back from having complete faith? Here are a few things:

1) Comfort

We live comfortably. Complete faith in God is something that we don't think as comfortable. By human standards, it's not. But I think that if we allowed God to provide for us all that He promises, we would find that we couldn't ever imagine being more comfortable and peaceful than we are when He is holding us in His mighty hands.

2) Fear

We are afraid of the unknown. We are afraid of risk and of possibilites. But this fear is just a lack of faith in God. If we truly believe that God is who He says He is, the only thing we should ever be afraid of is living an insignificant live for His kingdom. He is provident over everything. 1st Corinthians 3:21-22 puts this in a great perspective:

"So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future -- all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God."

We are of Christ, and Christ is of God. We have no reason to be afraid.

3) Self

Since we are young, we are taught to fend for ourselves. We are taught that we are strong enough, smart enough, to be able to handle things on our own. Ephesians 2 says that "you were once dead." The meaning of us being dead is that we cannot do anything on our own strength. We must die to ourselves, and allow Christ to live in us. That is when we discover true strength.

So how does 100% faith lead to action. My roommate and I have a whiteboard in our room (ya it's a pretty sweet set up) and we put verses up that stick out to us. Two verses are currently up on the board that talk exactly about how faith leads to action. 1st Corinthians 4:20 and Proverbs 14:23. Those are as follows, respectively:

"For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of Power."

"All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."

With a faith that is 100% in Christ Jesus, we cannot help but act. The true Kingdom as stated in 1st Corinthians is a matter of power and not just talk. Sometimes our action leads to faith, as we step out in faith to something unknown. What I do know for sure is that when we have a faith that can move the mountains, we ARE going to move mountains because that is what Christ has intended for each of us.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out "This Guy Over Here." As you saw, I added an announcement section to the top of the blog. Be sure that you read those and took note of them! I'd like to start blogging more again, so if you have any ideas about what you want to see in a blogpost, leave it in the comments below or email me at jdaghe@gmail.com!

They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love,

Signing off,

JD

If You Believe..

Hey everyone. Welcome back to "This Guy Over Here." I hope that everyone has had a good transition getting back into the swing of school as this spring semester gets kicked off. Over Christmas break, I had the opportunity to go to Passion Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I was fortunate enough to go last year and that completely rocked me and this year was no different. Passion really helped refocus my image of who God is to me and what He means to me in my daily everyday life. I have been meaning to blog sooner about some of the stuff that God taught me and others that I have talked to at Passion Conference; however, I have spent the past few weeks really diving into what I learned and organizing it into some main points of what I think that you need to hear. This is the first of those main points. Today I will be talking about the topic of "If you believe.."

Last spring, I did a mini-segment called "What if we..." and in one of those posts I tackeled the subject of "What if we... believed?" This post will have some similarities to that, yet I think that this is something that has really been on my heart, and I believe that we need to recognize the urgency of this issue. So, if you get nothing else from this blogpost, or for some odd reason you have to stop reading, make sure to at least read this next sentence:

IF YOU BELIEVE IN THE GOD YOU SAY YOU BELIEVE IN, LIVE LIKE IT.

This is supposed to criticize people, myself included. Some of us have grown up reading the scriptures and have been raised in the Christian Church yet we do nothing on a day to day basis that would tell the world that we are christians. I like to sign off my blogs with the phrase, "They'll know we are christians by our love." What a joke. Now a days, it is more, "They'll know we are christians by our idleness." I must make the disclaimer that there are people out there who are living for God and are chasing after him in such manner of true worship that they are shining their lights brilliantly for the Name of Christ. But on a whole, we have become dead, lukewarm, lacking faith, and idle.

A verse that has really been on my mind a lot recently is 2nd Timothy 1:7:

"For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline."

When we read scriptures like these, are we just reading them or are we taking them to heart and applying them to our lives. Scriptures such as these are the LIVING WORD OF GOD and they appy to each and every one of us. Note that the "S" in Spirit is capitalized. That is because Paul is talking about the Holy Spirit, which God gave to us at Pentacost. This is the same Spirit that rests inside you and I and every other Christian in this world. Through this Spirit, we are given power. The same power that parted the Red Sea, that collapsed the city of Jericho, that killed Goliath, that healed the blind and make the lame walk, that raised Christ from the dead. This same power is given to us by God himself, and we do not even use it. Much more than that, this power is given to us for the sake of being bold and proclaiming the gospel of Christ. The verse very clearly says that the Spirit given to us by God DOES NOT make us timid. Rather, through the power of Christ, we are to stand and declare His resurrection and His salvation.

We also are given love, because the ONLY way to use the power of Christ is through love. In everything that we do, we are to clothe ourselves with love and "take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us." Do we realize that Christ did everything for us out of love? Christ loved us, each and everyone of us, so much that he "died for us while we were still sinners." Talk about the ultimate sacrifice. And we are too afraid to be laughed at, ignored, or rejected on our campuses that we continally refuse to sacrifice for Him? We are given power to be bold and preach the Gospel and love as a vessel through which to preach the Gospel to the world.

Finally, we are given self-discipline. This seems like a weird thing to be given after power and love; however, it completes the first two and ends out the gift of God. For some of you, you know what it feels like to be on fire for God. You may come back from a huge church camp or conference, you may have just been saved, or you may just be on a spiritual high. If you have ever experienced that feeling, then you almost guarenteed know the feeling of coming down off of that spiritual high. Why is it that we always fade back into our everyday lives after we are so on fire for Christ? Well, the third part of this gift takes care of that. Christ gives us self-discipline so that for all times, through eternity, we may continue to MAKE THE MOST of the power and love that He has given us in His Holy Spirit.

I have been reading in Acts, and one verse has really just stood out to me. Acts 4:13 says:

"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus."

How incredible is that, and how challenging should that verse be to our everyday lives. When they (the Sanhedrin- or the lawmakers of our day) saw the COURAGE that Peter and John had, even though they were just two regular guys, they were astonished and took note that they HAD BEEN WITH JESUS. If someone saw your life today, would they be astonished and could they know that you had been with Jesus?

The picture at the beginning is of a clouded sunset with light poking out of the bottom of the picture above the trees. Our campus is currently clouded over. It is overcast. However, there is a glorious sunset that is waiting right behind the darkened clouds, and all it takes is one ray of light to pierce the darkness. Will you be that ray of light? Will you live what you believe in? Let's awake sleepers, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Final words. Be on the lookout for the launching of a new website, http://www.mywhiteflag.com/. It is not up yet so if you click on the link you will go to a empty page; however, it is coming soon to Purdue University and hopefully other campuses. We are raising our white flags in complete surrender to Christ and we want you to join along with us.

Have a great week.

They'll KNOW we are Christians by our Love,
Signing off,


JD