“Do your best to improve your faith.”
2 Peter 1:5 (CEV) Admiral Hyman Rickover was the father of the U.S. nuclear Navy. He once interviewed a Naval Academy graduate and asked him a very direct question: “When you were in school and in all your life, did you always do your best?” The young man started to say “yes” but then realized it wasn’t truthful. “No,” he said, “I didn’t do my best all the time.” Admiral Rickover looked at him with piercing eyes and said, “Why not?” Why not? The question burned in the young man’s heart, and it was a turning point in his life. That young cadet, Jimmy Carter, became the 39th president of the U.S. and wrote a book called Why Not the Best? If you want to give your best to God, there are three things you must do that every soldier understands. 1. You must define what you would die for. Soldiers know there are some things more valuable than their own lives. Even Jesus talked about it: “The greatest love is shown when a person lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 TLB). You measure love not by what people tell you but by their willingness to sacrifice everything they have for something. 2. You must sacrifice your own comfort. Soldiers do this all the time. They serve in extreme circumstances and don’t make much money. They give up a lot of things. You don’t become a great man or woman of God by doing what’s easy or comfortable. You do it by committing to something greater than yourself and then being willing to sacrifice for it. The greater your sacrifice in life, the greater your character will be. “Endure suffering along with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3 NLT). 3. You must eliminate distractions. “No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer” (2 Timothy 2:4 NIV). Soldiers know they can’t be distracted if they want to be ready to respond to a leader’s command. If you want to be great, if you want to be the best you can be, you must start spending more of your time, money, and energy on things that are going to last forever and less time, money, and energy on things that don’t really matter. If you want to give your best to God, why not start with these three steps?
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“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
Hebrews 11:1 (NIV) Faith is visualizing the future. It’s believing before you see it. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (NIV). How will you see what’s happening in your life through eyes of faith? A lot of people say, “I’ll believe it when I see it!” God says the exact opposite is true: “You will see it when you first believe it.” There are many things in life that have to be believed before they can be seen. In 1961, the Soviet Union sent the first cosmonaut into space. When the cosmonaut returned to earth, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared they’d been to space and didn’t see any god there. About 10 months later, the U.S. sent John Glenn into space. He circled the earth three times on his Mercury mission, came back down, and told the world, “I saw God everywhere! I saw his glory in the galaxy. I saw his splendor in the universe. I saw his majesty in the stars.” Which one was right? They both were. Jesus said, “Unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3 NLT). Before there is spiritual transformation in your life, you’re too narrow-minded to see the possibility of what God wants to do in your life. Wernher von Braun, the leading scientist in the early stages of the U.S. space program, said, “There has never been any great accomplishment in history without faith.” It is faith that causes the scientist to believe that we can put a man on the moon. It is faith that causes an architect to design a building because, first, they believe it can be done. It is faith that causes an Olympic athlete to practice and go to the Olympic trials because they believe they can achieve it. It is faith that causes a sculptor or an artist to believe that they can paint a picture or attempt the sculpture. Someone has to believe it before we see it. You can trust God’s promises and his work in your life. Believe in God’s love and care and guidance as you face whatever he has given you today. Believe it, and you will see it. |
AuthorTaken from Daily Hope by Rick Warren. Categories
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