Over the last few weeks, I have been talking about faith. I hope you have gotten some insight out of the posts. But perhaps you still have your doubts. Maybe the Lord is asking you to take a step forward, but you are hesitant. Fear seems to keep you glued right where you are. Today I am going to share a secret with you. This secret might give you the final push you need to fully embrace faith, move ahead in obedience, and leave fear behind.

The secret to strong faith is this: Faith is not about you. It’s about God.

Too often we allow fear to hold us back because we are focusing on ourselves, our strength, and our capabilities. But here’s the key: if God asks us to do something, we are guaranteed to have Him, His strength, and His capability. There is nothing He can’t handle, so we have nothing to fear. Dr. Charles Stanley often says that our job is to be obedient, and God will take care of the rest. There will be times when what He asks us to do might seem intimidating. But we step forward anyway, because we know He’s got our backs. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, helping us.

When we read about the people with strong faith in the Bible, we can see this secret so clearly. In the various stories I mentioned over the last few weeks, they all had one thing in common. The people were focused on God and His strength. They did not focus on themselves and their own strength. In Hebrews 11:6 it says that it’s impossible to please God without faith. We need to have faith in Him and Him alone. Not ourselves, not our circumstances, not our strength, not anything we can see with the human eye.

However, to get to this point, there’s a second secret I want to share with you: It helps if we know deep in our hearts how amazing God is.

If we don’t really know God, then we might have a hard time trusting Him. If we don’t realize how trustworthy He is, then fear might unpack and make itself at home inside us. So one vital step to keeping our focus on the Lord is to also get to know who He really is.

Here are some of God’s characteristics. I hope this list helps you to see how glorious He is:

• God is love (1 John 4:8)
• God is merciful (Deuteronomy 4:31)
• The Lord is good (Psalm 34:8; Psalm 25:7)
• God is righteous (Psalm 11:7, Psalm 35:28)
• The Lord is forgiving (Psalm 86:5)
• God is faithful (Lamentations 3:23, Psalm 25:10, Psalm 33:4)
• Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)
• The Lord reigns forever (Psalm 9:7)
• He is strong and mighty (Psalm 24:8)
• God is loving (Psalm 25:10)
• His love is unfailing (Psalm 44:26, Psalm 48:9, Psalm 51:1)
• The Lord is awesome (Psalm 47:2)
• God is reliable (Psalm 59:17)
• He is compassionate (Psalm 111:4, Psalm 116:5)
• The Lord is great (Psalm 135:5)
• God is trustworthy (Psalm 145:13)

God really is magnificent! How can we not trust Him when we see just how trustworthy He really is. Once we get a sense of His greatness, this helps strengthen our faith in Him, and in turn helps us to walk in strong faith. Strong faith doesn’t mean we have all the answers or all the strength we need. But we do have the Lord who IS our answer and IS our strength!

© 2020 Bridget A. Thomas

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