God’s promise for Week 2:
“Be bold and strong! Banish fear and doubt! For remember, the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." (Josh 1:9 MSG)
For those who want further Scripture reading each day here are a couple of suggestions:
-Read one Psalm a day and meditate on it.
-Read a chapter or part of a chapter out of Acts or Matthew or Hebrews each day, focusing on the idea of faith.
Day 11
“Jesus said: “No procrastination! No backward looks. You can’t put off God’s kingdom till tomorrow. Seize the day!" Luke 9:62 MSG
Spiritual laziness: Why is it that we can find time for everything but reading the Bible? If we believe that “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt 4:4), how many of us are starving to death? How many of us are really ‘alive’ right now when, though our stomachs are full, we are spiritually wasting away? For me, spiritual laziness is a HUGE barrier to faith, not because I don’t believe what God promises in His Word, but because I simply don’t know what He says because I don’t read it! Faith really is so painfully simple, yet, I’m embarrassed to say, I complicate it ridiculously. I so often wonder why God feels distant, why I feel stressed out, why I’m afraid, when the answer is almost always the same: I’m not spending time in God’s Word every day. It is the key to faith, yet it is the most neglected habit in my life. God’s Word is our manual for the Christian life, yet most of us are blindly stumbling through it because we are not familiar with what that manual says. If “faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of Christ" (Rom 10:17 NASB), it is no wonder that so many of us struggle with weak faith. We can talk all day about faith, but if we don’t master this one simple concept, we will remain in our doubts, being tossed around by the winds of life. I know I have to become more disciplined in this area, what about you? Let’s agree together today that we will make it the number one priority to read God’s word and talk to Him about it every day. Let’s gently but firmly hold each other accountable. Let our first question, when listening to each other’s struggles, be: “Are you spending time with God every day?"
And let’s pray together that as we take this step, God will come through with his power and help us in our weakness.
Prayer:
Lord, I am weak in this area of daily spending time with you. Be strong for me. Amen.
In Faith:
Remember to pray for your “hopeless cases"!
