4 things that test your faith

“Faith is the only voice God respects” 

1) Faith requires action not reaction
Tears alone do not move God
Desperation does not intimidate God
Manipulation does not control God
Education does not influence God- Mike Murdock

So how then does faith operate? All you have to do is ask Him for what you want and believe that you’ve received it. Why is it so hard a lot of the times? It’s because there are times we don’t…

2) Get rid of the sinful nature
Galatians 5:24 talks about how the sinful nature has been nailed to the cross and crucified (put to death) there. Meaning that we have assumed that responsibility. In other words we understand that, “ ¹⁹ When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension (disagreement), division, ²¹ envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” (Gal 5:19-21). We should stay in the kingdom. Doing so also means getting rid of unforgiveness which leads to bitterness, anger and resentment. 

3) Trust in the Lord
This is the biggest level of faith! Looking at Daniel’s friends in Dan 3:16-18 we see that they had trust. The beauty of trust is that you can never be moved! It doesn’t matter how serious your circumstances are, when you trust in the Lord you are safe. If you are not going through anything drastic enough to position you to a threat of being burned, your situation is small! Proverbs 3:5-6 talks about trusting (have faith in, have every confidence in, believe in, confide in) the Lord with all your heart. Why? Only because real faith says:

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4) Always thank Him
For small and big things. In fact, for everything! Parents teach their kids to always say, “thank you” before they receive something. The interesting part is that they make this an extremely important point. Guess what? God is no different! He too expects us to thank Him as much as possible. Going back to the first point, a practical way to believe you have received what you ask for is by thanking Him. When we do that we gain “confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Hebrews 11:1 (NLT). Every time we pray, the first and last things that should come out of our mouths is word of thanks. How often should we do this? 1 Thess 5:17-18 says, “Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” Psalm 34:1 (NKJV) says, “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth” Putting these together we learn that we should thank the Lord in all circumstances and at all times. You want to move in and growth your faith? Thank Him every single time!

Putting it all together
Operating in faith means asking the Lord for what you need and believing you have already received it before you actually receive it. That means thanking Him as though you already received it and doing so as many times a day as possible. Psalm 119: 164 says, “I will praise you seven times a day because all your regulations are just.” That should be the minimum number of times to thank Him. I encourage you to test this by writing down all answers to your prayers, both big and small. How many can you get answered a month?

NB: Patience plays A HUGE ROLE in growing your faith. Consider this, “And it happened after ten days that the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.” Jeremiah 42:7. To understand it in context read verses 6-8.