Jesus did not call you out of darkness to remain in the shadows. Stop living the half-baked Christian life and thinking that is good enough. Good enough for what? Our goal should not be just to get to heaven but to be filled with heaven here on earth. “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9 NKJV).
Our faith is meant to be a growing faith, a faith on fire and chasing after the things of God. Our faith is meant to be a journey of ascension, a never-ending increasing level of belief in, and the realization of, the power of God set loose in the life of a believer.
Where there is fire, there is light. John the Baptist said of Jesus, “…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11 NKJV).
I don’t care how long you’ve been a believer or how mature you might think yourself in the faith; you were meant to keep growing to higher levels. So long as you are here on earth, God can yet take you higher. There is no end with an infinite God and no finish line on this side of heaven.
God wants you to graduate to higher levels of believing. Jesus taught, “And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (Matthew 21:22 NKJV).
Perhaps you have settled into a comfortable pattern in your faith. You have the weekly events and the daily exercises all neatly wrapped up in your carefully planned programs. Dare to believe that God is using circumstances in your life to upset your plans and draw you into His own.
“Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes” (Ephesians 3:20 TLB).
Maybe you have flat-lined or fallen, and your faith is weakened and barely there. You might even think yourself unable to go on to a holy place because you think you have no strength or willpower to get you there. You are looking to the wrong source, as it is God alone who can take you places.
The only way to change your life is to let God do it. “Yes, God is working in you to help you want to do what pleases him. Then he gives you the power to do it.” (Philippians 2:13 ICB).
Whether you’re doing poorly in your faith journey or going far with the things of God, be sure that He can take you further. He doesn’t need your help, but He needs your surrender. Don’t let the level of your faith be the level of your strength but only rely on the mighty strength of God.
Don’t give up to anything but God. “Finally, receive your power from the Lord and from his mighty strength” (Ephesians 6:10 NOG).
Your faith journey is not only about going forward but going upward. If you’re not each day stepping into a life closer to the Lord and further from the world, then you are grossly off course. We are not meant to have a stagnant faith but a growing faith that produces more and more fruit each day.
It takes the life of Christ to live your life for Christ. Jesus taught, “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me” (John 15:5 HCSB).
Don’t worry about what plans He has for you. God is not limited by your imagination because it is by His imagination He has planned for your future. This does not mean your future will be easy because when you are sold out for God the world will not want you. And if you are sold out, you won’t want the world.
The more you fit into the world the less you belong in heaven. “Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you” (1 John 2:15 NLT).
There is not one verse in the Bible that says the gifts and the power of God have been turned off. There is not one verse in the Bible that says that God stopped speaking to His children. Be willing to step into a faith in which anything is possible because with God nothing will ever be impossible.
Stop thinking of your calling as a suggestion, but a commandment of God. “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29 NKJV).
Maybe you have become discouraged in your faith because your ministry has not grown or turned out what you had hoped for. God doesn’t need a stadium to reach a people but only a single soul that He would start a fire that blazes from one person to the next.
Kingdom success is not measured by how many you reach, but by your obedience in reaching the one you were called to. “Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, ‘Arise and go…’…So he arose and went…” (Acts 8:26-27 NKJV).
The greatest ministry you can do is to one person, the one who God has put before you. Let your faith lift their faith and let the power of God go before you. Don’t worry about how people judge your faith but only let your faith be a sweet-smelling fragrance before God.
A yielded life gains ground. “…Through our yielded lives he spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God everywhere we go” (2 Corinthians 2:14 TPT).
Blessings to you,
Paul