Spiritual Thriving!
What does thriving look like?
Thriving means growing, succeeding, healthy, and increasing.
As believers, we should want experiences in our Christian walk that cause the testing of our faith, hope, and trust in God. As a result of that testing during those experiences, we should also experience thriving in placing faith, hope, and trust in God.
WHAT? Yes, we as believers need to have experiences that cause us to exercise our spiritual muscles of persevering faith, hope, and trust in God. Even though those experiences may not always be enjoyable, we should embrace them and venture into faith, hope, and trust, which will stretch us spiritually.
WHY? The experiences that stretch our spiritual muscles of faith, hope, and trust help make us stronger on our spiritual walk. The faith, hope, and trust exercises help us shed the "excess weight" we may have stored up by relying more on ourselves than God and shed the harmful pride or haughtiness we can so easily integrate into our self-awareness. We need a spiritual challenge, struggle, or "valley of death" experience from time to time to bolster our awareness that, as a believer, we are part of a spiritual team. God our Father, Christ our Savior, and the Holy Spirit, our teacher, as we navigate through the "pastures" of life, there is no "I" in the word team. So, we must stretch our faith, hope, and trust in God as we travel through this life. We cannot get complacent with a false sense of "we've arrived" in striving to be the best Christian we can be.
How do we thrive?
Faith is to believe beyond what it is reasonable to believe. To think beyond what our eyes can see. So, let's increase our faith. The Holy Scriptures in the Book of Hebrews 11:1 declares, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." There is so much more God has for us to see!
Hope is expecting and anticipating that God is active and God's will is occurring in our lives. Jeremiah 17:7 reminds us, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord." So, let's increase our hope by acknowledging that God is active in our lives. God orchestrates events and causes things to happen. We are blessed because of God's actions and because we are in His omniscient presence every day.
Trust means total reliance and dependence on God's character to be active and exceedingly strong daily. So, let's increase our trust in God's character, which is His strength, reputation, honor, and faithfulness to His people. We as believers must give in to the mandate of Proverbs 3, verses 5-6: trust in the LORD with all our hearts, lean not on our understanding, and acknowledge Him in all our ways, and He will direct our path.s
So, let faith, hope, and trust in God thrive in 2025!
Melissa R. Stanley-Senior Pastor
Thriving means growing, succeeding, healthy, and increasing.
As believers, we should want experiences in our Christian walk that cause the testing of our faith, hope, and trust in God. As a result of that testing during those experiences, we should also experience thriving in placing faith, hope, and trust in God.
WHAT? Yes, we as believers need to have experiences that cause us to exercise our spiritual muscles of persevering faith, hope, and trust in God. Even though those experiences may not always be enjoyable, we should embrace them and venture into faith, hope, and trust, which will stretch us spiritually.
WHY? The experiences that stretch our spiritual muscles of faith, hope, and trust help make us stronger on our spiritual walk. The faith, hope, and trust exercises help us shed the "excess weight" we may have stored up by relying more on ourselves than God and shed the harmful pride or haughtiness we can so easily integrate into our self-awareness. We need a spiritual challenge, struggle, or "valley of death" experience from time to time to bolster our awareness that, as a believer, we are part of a spiritual team. God our Father, Christ our Savior, and the Holy Spirit, our teacher, as we navigate through the "pastures" of life, there is no "I" in the word team. So, we must stretch our faith, hope, and trust in God as we travel through this life. We cannot get complacent with a false sense of "we've arrived" in striving to be the best Christian we can be.
How do we thrive?
Faith is to believe beyond what it is reasonable to believe. To think beyond what our eyes can see. So, let's increase our faith. The Holy Scriptures in the Book of Hebrews 11:1 declares, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." There is so much more God has for us to see!
Hope is expecting and anticipating that God is active and God's will is occurring in our lives. Jeremiah 17:7 reminds us, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord." So, let's increase our hope by acknowledging that God is active in our lives. God orchestrates events and causes things to happen. We are blessed because of God's actions and because we are in His omniscient presence every day.
Trust means total reliance and dependence on God's character to be active and exceedingly strong daily. So, let's increase our trust in God's character, which is His strength, reputation, honor, and faithfulness to His people. We as believers must give in to the mandate of Proverbs 3, verses 5-6: trust in the LORD with all our hearts, lean not on our understanding, and acknowledge Him in all our ways, and He will direct our path.s
So, let faith, hope, and trust in God thrive in 2025!
Melissa R. Stanley-Senior Pastor
