HOW DO WE STRENGTHEN OUR FAITH IN GOD?
We strengthen our faith in God by reminders of God’s greatness, faithfulness and love.
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
(Romans 10:17)
Satan is the enemy of our soul. His goal is to get the Christian to focus on themselves, on people, or on the things of the world, so that they will be spiritually ineffective in their warfare against him and his dark forces. When God’s children walk in spiritual victory, joy and harmony with each other, Satan is in trouble. He uses fear, deception and temptation to turn our hearts and minds away from God and His power. The more we think on self, people and things, the more fear we will have; and fear is a hindrance to faith.
Every time we direct our attention toward the Lord and His Word, our faith grows. All through the Bible we see that, in spite of man and their weaknesses and failures, God never fails. We see men being unfaithful and unreliable while God is always perfectly faithful. Men break promises but God never does.
Even though we do not understand everything in the Bible, we always gain a sense that God is good and always wins. Notice that when the book of Revelation pronounces a blessing on those who read it, it does not say you have to understand all of it to get the blessing. No one fully understands Revelation; but, we get the strong assurance that when we are “in Christ,” we will win.
Our enemy has attacked America with a religion called “secular humanism.” It sounds like “humanitarian” but it is not. Basically, humanism is a way of looking at life as if God does not exist. It is based on the doctrine of evolution and the philosophy that “life just happens.” Our society is flooded with books, newspapers, films and broadcast media which portray life and society as if there is no God. This results in a dark fatalism. It leads to depression, witchcraft, new-age religion, abortion, sodomy, suicide, drunkenness and other perversions.
On the other hand, we build our spirit and develop our faith by things that remind us of God and His power, His purity and His purposes. We build faith by reading and hearing the Word through preaching and teaching, by worshipping with other believers, by genuine Christian fellowship and by prayer and fasting.
The more we include God in our thinking the more we can stimulate our faith. Faith is belief in God, reliance on His Word and absolute confidence in eternal values. Everything about God is good. The only way the enemy can get us to turn against God is to distract us and to cause us to be preoccupied with something else. It is important to develop a focus on God and to remind each other of Him every day, because He is good. To know Him is to love Him; and to love Him is to obey Him.
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