Living the balanced life: Faith

Advertisement

PS: In response to messages from my last post HERE  anyone who needs a copy of “The Smart Money Woman” should either inbox me on facebook or drop their email in the comment box for details.

* * *

One of my greatest life desires is to live like Christ- to live a balanced life. I have noticed that we have this tendency to become lopsided in our Christian walk. We tend to accept one side of the coin, practice it and push it to the extreme while completely or partially neglecting the other side.

Being lopsided is a risky place to be in because it causes one to become judgmental. You will begin to see every other person that is not on your side as inferior or wrong and imagine that you are the right one.

Personally, I know how prone I am to live this kind of life and how very different it is from the divine nature I have been called to partake in, that’s why I began to set my mind on letting the Holy Spirit live the balanced life through me and He brought this passage to light:

2 Peter 1:5-8

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you posses these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.

The walk we have been called into is a progressive walk. You don’t get saved and sit down staring around. You move on, you keep moving, you keep adding things to the faith you have in Christ and keep building it up.

What interests me the most is that the bible says if we do these things, we will never be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ. Wow!

That means if you are finding your knowledge of Christ barren or unproductive, it’s because you are not adding to your faith continuously. You stopped at conversion and didn’t proceed to the other beautiful packages, you probably got comfortable at some point and didn’t press on.

The Christian walk is not a boring one where we do the same thing every day, if you understand that there is more to the altar call you answered, you will press on for more and more. I pray God blesses us with so much hunger. We can’t live like tired, lazy, content Christians who are just getting by and hoping that Jesus comes and kidnaps them away.

Faith in Christ ushers you into a deep knowledge of who he is that overflows to virtuous acts of goodness, personal disciple and self control.

As we keep growing in these, we realize we are learning to be patient unlike our fast-paced world that is always zooming off- patient with God and with one another. This will cause us to persevere in living the godly life we have been called to live in this perverse generation while still showing kindness and love both to the saved and the unsaved alike. This is what God wants to reveal in us on this side of eternity.

For the next couple of weeks, we shall be looking at these 8 victuals required for living the balanced life. But let me briefly say this about Faith:

Your faith did not stop when you got saved and believed in Christ and his finished work. You must keep on believing. Faith in Christ is total and continuous; it’s so sad we confine it to ‘spiritual’ things. It encompasses our entire lives, our work, study, family and all.

You should labour to build your faith in Christ and detach yourself from everything or people that stifle your faith.

I remember one day I listened to a message on Total Faith by Pastor Bankie, my faith was so high I thought I would literally walk on water like Peter. I went to work the next day and my colleagues spent the whole day discussing how the country is a mess and we are all at the verge of dying, one even started calling his Uncle in Cameroon to make plans for “shipping” his family over there.#lol

They discussed on how the government is doing absolutely nothing about the recession and the rich are finding their way out; in fact they talked about and all the things that could drain you of your faith.  They made no reference to God’s word and his promises, and all my efforts to convince them to stick with the word proved abortive. In fact, I was almost beginning to agree with them because of the facts; they nearly drained the life out of my faith. Thank God I am learning to choose Faith over facts.

What I am saying is that our feet gets dirty and our hands get muddied from time to time as we walk through life, we come across people and situations that challenge our faith. That’s why we must keep on believing! We must always go back and ‘eat’ again to refuel our faith with the word and keep moving.

To have faith in Christ does not just mean you believe he will save you, it also entails you believe he will carry you through life gallantly. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!

There is just so much to say about faith that I cannot say it all.

I recommend this beautiful book: “He that believes” by Pastor Bankie. Its a short e-book you can read at a sitting and it’ll help you understand what it really means to be a believer. Here’s the link:

He that believes

I believe you are not a hit-and-run Christian but one who is serious and passionate for growth, so I urge you to stick it out with me as we go through these basics one after the other and ingrain them into the very fiber of our being.

He who has called you is faithful, He also will do it! Amen

Cheers to the weekend!

Much Love.