Powerful Faith

God give each man a portion of faith (Rom 12:3).  Sometimes we find it hard to believe in those things that would make our faith successful on this earth.  One important thing to believe in is that the Christian is dead to sin, and alive in Christ (Rom 6:2-8). Most Christians are relieved to know their past sins are behind them, though they may struggle with their present sins.  Yet it is true: in Jesus we have power over our sins. 

There are things in our lives that circumvent God’s power.  At times sin may be more attractive to us than becoming a new person in Christ.  The cravings of our body, lusts of our eyes, and all that we can accomplish in this life (1 Jn 1:16) may seem better than overcoming sin.  When this is true, we lose the power of Christ in our lives, for we have been insincere in our longing to be like Him.

Jesus does not ask us for an acknowledgement of Him: He has asked us to be His Bride.  He gave us His Holy Spirit to prepare us, in holiness, to be like Him.  Jesus died so that we might live, and overcome the powers at work in us that bring spiritual death.  If we love our carnal nature and the world more than His life in us we will have a useless faith, and like the foolish virgins, we will be unprepared for a life with Christ.

The power of faith is believing first that we have died to sin and now live a new life in Him.  We must all put the love of the world and of our own personal lives behind us.  We not only overcome sin daily, but the powerful force of evil in our lives, satan.  We overcome him “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of (our) testimony” and do not love our earthly lives so much that we would cling to them when faced with death (Rev 12:11). This is our witness: Jesus gave us power over sin when He purchased us with His blood. 

Our faith should encompass Jesus’ provision for power over sin and over the love of the world.  Living each day, we will find ourselves choosing to embrace this new life in Christ, or turning away from it, back to our former way of living. It becomes a question of faith, then.  Do we believe unto salvation? Do we want to leave sin and the world behind? We cannot have the new life in Christ and our old life also.  Today let us be sincere in our faith, taking the power over sin as the greatest gift of all, for then our faith will find its use in changing us into His image.  And our faith will prepare us to spend all eternity with Him. Amen.