Andy

1 2 FAI H IN ACTION... Expanded and Updated for the 21st Century Church By Nora Fozard 1 To From 3 4 I would like to dedicate this book, first of all, to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Without His wisdom, direction, and guidance, this book would not have been possible. To my wonderful husband Donald, my eight children and their spouses, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, thank you for your love and support. Special thanks to Estella Pitt for all her hard work and a job well done. 5 6 Table of Contents Introduction................................................................. 9 How to Use This Book.............................................. 11 A Few Words About Words...................................... 13 Faith: A Daily Journey................................................ 15 Faith in Action............................................................. 123 Scriptures to Build Your Faith................................... 157 Your Personal Faith in Action Log Book................ 193 Things to Remember.................................................. 203 Conclusion.................................................................... 209 7 8 Introduction In this life, we find ourselves encountering many situations that cause us to lose faith in the God that created us. To the believer, we know that God is with us, but at times, because of our limitations, we lack the faith we need to believe God. When we read the word of God, which is His manifested mind, it causes us to be encouraged. It somehow boosts the faith we have and strengthens us to go on. The unbeliever, not having the true knowledge of Christ but realizing there is a God, can reach out and seek relief from trying situations and, through that realization, experience a peace that comes not from man but from God. Feeling His love through His Word, through faith we are able to accept Him in our heart. In this book, I want to encourage your heart as God has encouraged mine. May you find the strength that you need by putting your “Faith in action!” Nora Fozard 9 10 How to Use This Book I’ve organized this book in five sections. The first section, “Faith, A Daily Journey,” contains daily reflections about how we live in faith. There are sixty different messages, enough for two months of devotions. The second section, “Faith in Action,” gives you a month of daily actions you can take to build your faith. The third section, “Scriptures to Build Your Faith,” includes encouraging Bible verses about faith, prayer, and your identity as the person God made you to be. The fourth section, “Your Personal Faith in Action Log Book,” gives you a place to make notes about some of the faith steps you take and how you see God respond. It’s organized in different categories to help you think about the many ways you are growing in your faith. Finally, I’ve left you a few encouragements that I enjoy myself. Use them any way you like: open for some uplift, copy onto a sticky note for your mirror or laptop, or whatever you like to do to remind yourself that God is powering your faith. Through your faith, God is changing our world. 11 12 A Few Words About Words Different Christian churches sometimes use words differently from each other. Here are a few words that this book may use in ways unfamiliar to you. Confess: In court, people confess their guilt. In some churches, people confess their sins. In the Bible, people confess out loud both their sins and their beliefs. In this book, when I encourage you to confess something, I’m urging you to say out loud something you believe—or even something God has promised that you’re still trying to believe. Faith: There are two kinds of faith. One is our human faith—the confidence we have in the outcome of our actions. This kind of faith leads us to do what we can see needs to be done. The God kind of faith is a gift to us. Without God giving us that kind of faith, our human faith doesn’t get us very far. Think about blowing a bubble with bubble gum. Human faith is what chews the gum and blows. The God kind of faith is the gum itself. Without it, there would be no bubbles! With human faith alone, we don’t get where God wants us to go. 13 Savior: We don’t use this word much in everyday life. There are a few people we might call “saviors” in our everyday world: the firefighter who got your kids out of the house just in the nick of time or the neighbor who hollered at them before they got too high up a tree. The Free dictionary says a savior is someone who saves people from danger or destruction. Jesus is our Savior because He saved us from the power of evil and from lives darkened by evil. Most 21st century people don’t like to talk about sin, but that’s what Jesus rescues us from— our own sin and the need to keep on sinning. The more people Jesus rescues from sin, the less sin there is in the world to hurt people. Sin: This is another word we don’t use much everyday! Sin describes everything that stands between us and our God, who is perfect and holy. We mostly think about sin as wrong actions—lying or cheating. But we can’t act out of sin without having wrong beliefs that direct our behavior. A passing bad thought isn’t the same thing as a wrong belief. You can turn away a bad thought, but a bad belief is something you hang onto. And hanging onto a bad belief makes it sin, too. 14 Fai h: A Day Journey 15 Faith In Action Faith never walks without leaving landmarks. Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]. G od has left so many faith landmarks in my life, more than I can tell you here. So I’ll just tell you one story about a night the Lord kept me and my sister safe from a crazy man who was chasing us in his truck. We were headed to a revival all the way over in Pittsboro that night, which was about thirty miles from where we lived. When we were getting close, we realized we were low on gas. So we pulled into a gas station, and I went inside to prepay. 16 Faith: A Daily Journey This guy was sitting at a table playing cards and he followed me out. He threw his hand at us in a threat, and we knew he was going to follow us. We zipped right out of there without even filling up. We didn’t have any gas, we didn’t have anything, and he’s in his truck right behind us. My sister was so scared, her feet were trembling. “You hold my feet on the gas pedal,” she said. We were going so fast! I could see this star in the sky, and I told her the Lord was saying follow this star … “We can’t go any other way, we have to follow this star.” The star looked like it was moving, slowly moving. The guy in the truck was flying, trying to catch up with us. And that slow-moving star kind of turned toward one particular driveway. There were a lot of trailers in there, and we just pulled in among them. The truck came over the hill flying, he didn’t know where we were. He thought we were far ahead of him and kept racing on. After he got a good ways ahead, we pulled out. We never ran out of gas. We got back onto Chapel Hill Street, found a gas station, and then headed home. 17 Faith In Action Faith always waits patiently, enduring even when the dream is deferred. James 1:4 And let endurance have its perfect result and do a thorough work, so that you may be perfect and completely developed [in your faith], lacking in nothing. A fter we’d had three girls and three boys, I still really wanted another daughter, and I believed God had told me another daughter would come. I got pregnant, then I had a miscarriage. People were telling me terrible things such as I must have sinned or done this or that bad thing to have lost my baby. The Lord told me, “Where this child came from, there are many more.” So, I held onto my faith. It took another two years before I got pregnant again. And then ladies at church began prophesying that it couldn’t be a 18 Faith: A Daily Journey girl. It would be a boy, they said, “because God needs boys in the earth today.” “We’ll see what God says in the ninth month,” I told them. It was a girl, my precious baby daughter Charisma. I’m grateful I endured and held onto faith through my miscarriage, the years of waiting, and those false prophecies, to enjoy fulfilment of the faith dream God gave me. 19 Faith In Action Faith is living in a heavenly atmosphere, full of expectation. Mark 11:23 I assure you and most solemnly say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea!’ and does not doubt in his heart [in God’s unlimited power], but believes that what he says is going to take place, it will be done for him [in accordance with God’s will] S ometimes, we don’t reach out for the potential that’s before us because we think we can’t. If you can’t imagine there’s a road at the end of your street, you won’t go to the end of the street because you think it’s a dead end. But God says all things are possible to those that can believe (Mark 9:23): if you can believe, there’s a possibility you can have it. We have a part to play in finding those potentials. We are partners with Jesus. We do our part and He does His part. That still, small voice within us speaks to us. We might see our 20 Faith: A Daily Journey potential in a book, hear it in a conversation, or see it when we’re walking down the street. And when we see it, that’s the moment to say, “Thank you Jesus! I have my answer!” Come to God expecting a miracle. Expect things to change in your life, and you’ll see things start to change. 21 Faith In Action Faith is a way of life. Galatians 2:20 The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. F aith is how we live our life. That’s important to grab hold of. Faith is about life. Outside of faith, we can only live in a kind of death. And even with faith, if we aren’t living in ways that show faith, that’s death too. Because God tells us “faith without works is dead.” James 2:20 KJV. When people pray but they don’t act, they’re empty and they don’t know how to get full. Working in a workplace where you’re not happy and complaining … that’s a dead work. Asking people to pray for me but I won’t change . . . that’s a dead work. Saying you’re going to do better but you’re still in the same situation . . . that’s a dead work. 22 Faith: A Daily Journey There’s a whole lot of things that live in a world of deadness because they don’t want to change, and they don’t want to act. They don’t choose to live! God sets the same choice before all of us every day: Life or death? It’s up to us. We don’t need to stay in dead works and dead relationships. Things won’t change until we move in faith and let God give us a heart change. Then our faith can become a way of life. 23 Faith In Action Doubt and unbelief are contagious. Stay away. Walk by faith. Hebrews 10:38 But My righteous one [the one justified by faith] shall live by faith [respecting man’s relationship to God and trusting Him]; And if he draws back [shrinking in fear], My soul has no delight in him. I f I pay attention to everything that’s going on around me, I hear all kinds of people saying negative things to me. People stay awfully busy telling each other, “You’ll never do that” or “Don’t be getting above yourself.” I didn’t hear God’s voice over all that defeatism until I started to have a hunger to hear his voice. You hear so much neg- 24 Faith: A Daily Journey ativity you start to believe it. But you can believe God’s truth when you give yourself a chance to hear it. God has laid things out clearly so even a person who doesn’t know Him can understand. When you make up your mind you want to walk by faith, God will teach you how. 25