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Wednesday, August 13, 2014

How To Help Strengthen A Friends’ Faith

In review of Psalm 27:13 it says, “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”

Bottom Line:
Don’t give up hope, truly believe that you will live to see the goodness of the Lord, in your life.

What this means to me:
In this life I can keep on going, because I truly believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord as he works in my life. Major crises have the ability to shake my faith. However, it is my faith and my trust in Christ that will keep me going and get me through it.  David, after suffering great loss, including the loss of a child, wrote in Psalm 27:13, “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (NASB). In other words he said that he would have given up if he hadn’t believed in the goodness of God. Even in those situations where life stinks and it seems dark, I’ll need to believe that God is a good God. Even when everything is going wrong in your life, I can still believe in the goodness of God, and with this I can pull through. I need to know and believe that God’s plan for my life is greater than the problem I’m currently going through. Then, I can share my faith in God’s goodness with friends when they are going through a crisis. Friends strengthen their friends’ faith. (I have a lot that I can share with others, especially given my most illness and how God has helped to heal me.) The Bible explains that there is only one place to strengthen my faith. Faith comes from knowing the Word of God. If I know the Bible well, I’m going to have great faith. If I know this book only a little, I’m going to have a little faith. If I don’t know this book at all, then my faith will not be there. The Bible there has more than 7,000 promises made. However it is difficult to to claim them if I don’t know them. In order to increase my faith and to able to handle the rogue winds of life, I’ve got to know the Bible through study, meditation, and memorization. My routine for getting to know God’s word better is to spend some time each weekday morning studying scripture. I use the Daily Hope Devotional from Rick Warren (http://rickwarren.org/devotional) as a spring board for verses to review for the day. I then use biblegateway.com to look up the passage in several different translations. Using the translations, I then try to summarize the overall meaning I find in the different versions/presentations of the word to get the general idea. With this, I then formulate a bottom line (or what does this say), and then start my journalling (recording) with “what this means to me.”  I’ll then use Rick’s commentary to help further delve into the passage and make an application for my life.

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