We live in a world where questioning anything to do with religion or faith is considered offensive. Many Christians (in the prophetic movement) ignore any feelings of doubt that they may have and never deal with or confront doubt related to issues of faith. Many have now conflated material wealth with faith and hope. For many in the modern day prophetic movement, there cannot be wealth without a word of blessing and anointing from a prophet or man/woman of God.
Doubt is not comfortable. But don’t ignore it. Be honest with yourself and others about it. Allow the tension you feel in your heart and mind because of your doubt drive you into God’s Word and prayer more regularly. You might just come out on the other side with a greater, deeper, more meaningful understanding of God than you’ve ever had.
As I wrote my book (After I receive) I hoped that many who have become accustomed to shouting “ I receive, i receive, as prophets make declarations of untold wealth and riches ever considered what the next step was after they received whatever was declared.
With this new book ‘I am anchored in Christ; Bring On Euroclydon ) I hoped that those who would read this book would question what faith meant to them but above all look deeper into where they placed their faith. I believe that faith is an anchor and many a times as Christians we just throw our faith anchor into deep dark waters without regard because we are desperate to be rich and want prosperity as a direct result of placing our hopes in a prophet or church leader.
I believe that there is a great difference between hope and faith albeit the two are intrinsically connected. For many in the modern day prophetic movement hope has become the main anchor. Many hope that wealth and riches will come to them because they pray and fast as directed by a prophet or church leader. They hope that life will be full of blessings because they are loyal to the church. They fight to defend their ‘man or woman of god’ one can then conclude they have placed their anchor of faith in their church/denomination and in their chosen leader ( prophet, pastor or overseer).
We are indeed living in very challenging times, an era where matters of hope and faith are so emotionally charged. So do we separate hope and faith or do we change our views?
See, how we view life is critical to what we get out of this life we live. I believe that our minds thought process must align with faith and not just hope. The bible declares in (Hebrew 11:1), “that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the EVIDENCE of things not seen.” This is how we know that faith and hope are both needed for our success in this life.
So how does hope differ from faith ? Faith and hope are defined in the dictionary as follows; Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing or a belief not based on proof and Hope is an optimistic attitude of mind based on an expectation or desire. Faith says it is so now, and hope says in the future it could happen. We need hope and faith, we can look at hope like a stepping stone in elementary school and pure faith as graduate school tests passed. When an individual has no thoughts of faith whatsoever then we must begin depositing hope seeds into their lives. Hope seeds planted in one’s life can be the catalyst for the roots and the foundations of one’s faith walk. Often times we have to introduce hope way before we can even begin to think about serving 12 ounces of faith. At some point in our spiritual growth walk we must come to the graduation ceremony of hope for a particular thing.
Faith being the substance of things hoped for means that we must have a base mindset of faith in order to receive what we need from God. We have to truly know and believe that what we set our minds to believe and focus on is what will come to pass. Hope speaks of the future and faith speaks for the now in life. So once we graduate from hope to faith we will then begin to see the greater fruit of the seeds of our thought process now. We plant seeds everyday even if we think we do not. Our thoughts are our seeds of this life so what are we planting?
Let’s question where our faith is anchored, let’s question in whom our faith is anchored?Let’s begin to allow faith to grow strong through hope and live in our minds. It sounds like a tall order for those who have only lived by hope but let’s challenge ourselves to live by faith today. Faith and hope truly work together for our good.
But in whom is your faith anchored question everything. God’s Word doesn’t say that it’s wrong for you to have questions; however, it’s what you do with those questions that counts.
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