STEPPING STOOLS OF FAITH
I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for peace and not disaster plans to give you a future filled with hope.
Everyone faces difficult situations almost daily. Doors close, people are hateful, feelings of no justice, the why me’s. It is very difficult to go an entire 24 hour period without feeling some type of depressed attitude due to the circumstances around you. I want to talk to you today about the way God uses the negative things in your life to boost you more towards Him. As you already know God orchestrated every single that has happened or will happen in your life time. He knew the day you were born, all the seconds in between and the final breath you will take. He plans every single thing you will go through good or bad. He doesn’t produce the bad, but he allows the devil to send negative energy into your life to test your ability to trust and have faith in Jesus Christ.
Our suffering is light and temporary and is producing for us an eternal glory that is greater than anything we can imagine.
We have all had someone talk badly about us, treat us negative or belittle us to others. We have all had our feelings hurt by people who supposedly loved or cared about us. After these things happen we often say, “Why did they hurt me so bad, why did God allow them to do this to me?” God uses negative people more than positive people to boost our walk with Him. If we are only surrounded by positive people all the time it will simply cause us to remain seated exactly where we are at. When we are faced with a tough situation where someone has bruised our self-esteem it causes us to dig deeper into our faith for forgiveness. God understands the pain and doesn’t want us to necessarily hurt, but he does want our walk to gain more and more strength in trusting and believing in His words of wisdom.
I will give thanks to you because I have been so amazingly and miraculously made. Your works are miraculous, and my soul is fully aware of this.
The doors that close simply mean that God has another opportunity with bigger and better blessings. The person that is rude to you makes you cling to your faith and dig deeper in God’s word for understanding. The job that didn’t pan out simply means God has a better job. The house you wanted so bad and didn’t get means God has a better house in a better location perfectly designed for you. The health report didn’t go exactly the way you wanted? God has blessings in store for you or for you to be a blessing for someone else. The income isn’t where you want it to be, God is teaching you a lesson about money to put your faith in God and not the acts of evil. Your child is acting up in school and you don’t understand why you are dealing with such a tiresome situation. God wants your attention on the child, and to let go of distracting extracurricular activities. A relationship ended that you felt was truly the “right one?” God moved that person that wasn’t your molded and groomed spiritual spouse out of the way to make a place for the perfect mate for you. Family members are treating you unfair? God wants you to recognize those around you that truly care about you and be thankful for them. You feel lost and alone, depressed and tired all the time? God wants you to jump up and jump into your faith, believing that Jesus Christ took a lot of pain to die for you and me. We owe it to Jesus to suffer through, stand up and move forward.
Brothers and sisters, I can’t consider myself a winner yet. This is what I do: I don’t look back, I lengthen my stride, and 14I run straight toward the goal to win the prize that God’s heavenly call offers in Christ Jesus
Don’t tread throughout your life trying to justify all the negative things that happen to you. Simply remain focused on the fact that God loves you as his son or daughter unconditionally. He wants only the best for you. He wants you to reach your divine destiny he has orchestrated for your life. Whatever happens along the way whether it is good or bad, is a step needed to reach your destination. If you start looking at all the negative situations as not setbacks, but setups for your future you will live life more abundantly. You will see the negative times as God reaching into your life and grooming you for your destiny. If we always remain the same, stable in our faith and never face any trying moments we are very limited in our ability to trust God. When we hit our knees and have nowhere else to go but up, our opportunities to trust God are limitless. The next time you see a negative situation arise in your life, look up and thank God that he is pruning you for something amazing. The stronger your faith the more blessings he will pour over your life. However, being strong in your faith is not something you can just order online and have it shipped to you. You have to receive the tests, beat down the brokenness and stand up firm in a stronger state than you started off in. God loves you the way you are but he refuses to leave you that way.
The following is written, “I believed; therefore, I spoke.” We have that same spirit of faith. We also believe; therefore, we also speak.
Think back in your life at all the things you have been through, and where you are today. If you have mountain moving faith just as God, you will see that you have overcome every single trial you were faced with. If you dig deep into the feelings & emotions that surrounded that trial, you will notice that you are much stronger now. The trial not only pushed you forward in your faith but it molded you to handle more challenging faith building tasks. What got you down the first time will not affect you if it were to resurface again. God uses the hurt & pain of a trial to build our trust, our courage and our Godly armor that surrounds our lives. Trusting God means understanding that days filled with nothing but good are merely future days in Heaven. We are not in Heaven currently so the testing of faith, trials & tribulations, knock downs, setbacks are all a part of Gods plan to groom you into the amazing angel you will one day be. God needs us to reflect positive images of Christ and to truly believe that everything that happens in our lives is not by chance but of God. Once we understand this principle, accept it and trust God completely he will then use our faith to build another.
A person may plan his own journey, but the Lord directs his steps.
If someone sees you going through a horrific obstacle and you remain faithful to God, trusting, believing and never lowering your guard to self-pity, they will be moved. They will question you as to how you are so strong in such a bad situation. They will make comments like, “I don’t see how you are standing with all that you have been through!” You won’t see that you have done that much, because God has shown you the ability to trust & believe deeper, but you are different. You have been removed from one part of your life’s course and placed on a higher course because of your faith. The ones that seem amazed at your strength are merely longing for the same strength. Share your amazing strength with them and tell them you haven’t always been this strong, but by the grace & mercy of Jesus Christ you are where you are today. They won’t be able to fathom the extent of this grace & mercy until they are tested themself, but they have just witnessed the man leading the plan, God. You have stepped into your missionary adventure planted by God to help others see direction towards His amazing & unconditional love. To a person who has no one, God is everything and needed more than you will ever know. A person has to know that life is tough and we will face hard times, but there is one person who will never fail us, abandon us or leave us and that is God.
The Lord is the one who is going ahead of you. He will be with you. He won’t abandon you or leave you. So don’t be afraid or terrified
Remember as it says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “for when I am weak, then I am strong.” Trials are needed to grow your faith. When you ask God for faith, he will supply that faith, but it doesn’t come free. Faith is built by increased burdens, trials and discomforts. You are not necessarily showing your strength when you remain on the same steady path following Jesus, however when he tests you with burdens you become weak, but strong at the same time. You know that you need to keep pushing through to make it to the other side of the trial, so you keeping digging your heals in and pressing forward. You are weak because the trials have affected your mental state, but your eagerness and faith in God to keep pressing forward is showing your strength. When your burdens are increased your strength guides you to carry a heavier burden down the road. Unshakable faith comes from having your faith shaken. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” No one is perfect but our God, but we gain more and more notches to our Christian belt when we overcome a weakness. The burden produces not only strength in us to surpass all other obstacles, but it allows us to remain steadfast in our trust for God even when we are weak.
A righteous person may fall seven times, but he gets up again. However, in a disaster wicked people fall.
Don’t think of every single trial as God not caring about you, he loves you so much you cannot even visualize. God sends blessings every single time he turns towards you, even if the blessing isn’t in the form of pleasure & delight. The trial or suffering is a blessing; it is just merely in disguise and congested by our own emotions seeing the corruption in the situation. Have you even been in a situation and something happened that knocked you to your knees. You didn’t ever think you would overcome that situation, but you did somehow, someway. When you look back on that situation you will find that it was a blessing in disguise because it boosted you from where you were to where you needed to be. You needed to be moved to line up with Gods perfect plan for your life. Don’t fight the motions of Gods desires & plans for your life. No man can surpass the notions of God and the plans he has to set forth. You will go where God intends for you to go, if you will just relax, let go and let God. The way that people get into trouble is when they let their own emotions & feelings interfere with the plans God has going forward. They get impatient and want “quick fixes” to their issues, take matters into their own hands and make a huge mess out of things. God lets them make the mistakes, because it causes spiritual growth and trust in the end. It would be so much easier to just wait on God to lead you into the blessing rather than becoming hard headed and self-led.
We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God—those whom he has called according to his plan.
I know waiting on God is very trying and can be very emotional. I have been praying about an issue I currently have going on. I prayed about it to God and I was supposed to let it go, however I still find myself trying to control the situation. I keep looking for answers to the prayer, trying to get that quick fix, because I am too impatient and need to be in control. It’s not the easiest thing to do when you give the reigns over to God and fully trust in him for his answers. It means letting go of the situation completely, and relying on God for all the answers. It can make you feel as though you are spiraling forward with no direction in site. If may make you feel that you are going to hit a brick wall or lose everything if you don’t figure something out, quick. God tells us to trust him for answers that are a part of our divine destiny. The fact is that if God doesn’t supply you with the answer that you “feel” you needed, than that feeling was merely a want instead of a need. God will supply you with the best outcome for your situation and will bless you beyond measures when you give up completely and trust that he has your best interest at heart. It’s a very scary thing to start initially, but once you pray for the fear and unknown to pass, God will provide you with the confidence to spring forward with every single step. Let go and truly let God handle all your life’s issues. We will find out together that life is not so stressful, hectic or chaotic when we just let God do what he wants with our lives and stop making God go around our feelings & emotions to find our heart.
Not everything that the world offers—physical gratification, greed, and extravagant lifestyles—comes from the Father. It comes from the world, and 17the world and its evil desires are passing away. But the person who does what God wants lives forever.
God loves you only wants the best for you, he would never set you up to fail. He wants to promote you to be a successful Christian, spreading his word around to many. He wants you to be of sound mind and judgment always thinking of what he would do in any situation. Lead by example, trust in God, build your faith and remain steadfast in your prayers. Listen, God made you, molded you perfectly in your mother’s womb. God designed your life from day one until your final resting day. God knows everything you will say or do over your lifetime and he has planned for every single obstacles & trial. God knows you need him, desire to love him and seek him daily. He makes a path for you to follow and it’s very simple to line your life up with the walk of the righteous. All you have to do is remain on the path he places you on from the time you were born. Let no corruption, hatred, unbelief, or evil take you from your path. Always ask yourself, “is this of God?” If the answer is no, run like the wind. Only participate in life activities that are boosting of your spiritual growth. Believe in God and all he has in store for your life. Believe in your divine destiny. Believe the words that the Bible state clear and directly. Be honest with yourself and all those around you. If you fall off track with your personal walk with Jesus Christ, pick yourself up, do not be ashamed of falling, and start back on the path God has predestined for you to travel. Never lose sight of what is most important. Always place God first in your life and at the center of every single relationship.
If it is not of God it just shouldn’t be.
In all things, great and small, God loves us all,
Kylie Davis Note:
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