Facts and Faith

On April 28, 2025   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Romans 10: 17

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

The facts don’t count. You’ve heard me say this before. It’s what you believe about the facts that matters. I watched a movie recently in which the school system had replaced the textbooks with new books which had “corrected” history as you and I know it. In reality, there are people today who do not believe humans have travelled to the moon or who do not believe the Egyptian pyramids are real. Watching the movie and observing characters’ absolute belief in their position made me realize the facts don’t matter. It is what you believe that matters. How does one get a non-believer to believe? The reality is that exposure to facts does not transform unbelief in the heart of someone determined not to believe. You can show scientific data, pictures, live accounts, personal experiences and none of it matters if a person is disinclined to believe. The question, therefore, becomes, what do we believe. What do we choose to believe? Where is your authority for what you believe?

I am a believer. I choose to believe. I am neither cynical nor skeptical. Why? Faith is the business of believing. In truth, it is the business of believing when there may not be evidence. Sometimes the facts are even against you. Perhaps you feel pain in a joint, but you know The Word says you are healed. The fact is, you feel pain, but what is the truth? You must choose what to believe. Is the Bible your authority? Do you believe Jesus meant what he said? The choice is not whether you feel pain or whether you are healed. The choice is, when in the midst of pain or discomfort, do you believe you are healed, or do you believe you are not? Faith is found in the midst of pain, not in its absence.

I know many, many Christians who are cynics rather than believers. When faced with new information, their first reaction is doubt. Perhaps it is in their DNA to be skeptical. They begin from a point of cynicism and then must coax themselves out of doubt and skepticism. It is a much more challenging way to live, but they are rarely duped. As an example, one day a fellow came into our law office asking for $20 to get a taxi to get home. He promised he would pay pack the twenty. My partner was steadfast in his refusal although I was inclined to give it to the fellow. “He’ll never pay it back,” my partner said. Still, I leaned towards giving it to him and did. Of course, we never saw that guy again. My law partner was less inclined to fall for a scheme or false promise. I, on the other hand, have never regretted giving that fellow the money.

It is easier for me to trust. It is easier for me to hope for a good outcome than people like my former law partner. Some people just are not faith based. I think that makes life more of a challenge because doubt, cynicism and skepticism undermine everything that faith tries to give us.

As I ruminate, I ask myself, if we are not prone to belief, then how does that affect our Christianity which is a faith based belief system. How do we know God is real? Isn’t it only because we believe? Who is Christ? Is there really a Christ? You see, the hinge pin of our religion, for lack of a better term, is belief. Therefore, we must endeavor to broaden our capacity to believe.

Now we come to the heart of the matter. If one wishes to live in hope, how does one alter their outlook? The only answer I know is to have more of oneself intertwined with Jesus. That comes from spending more time with him and this process begins, as it seems it always must, with time in the Word. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God.

Perhaps some of us are prone to be people of hope and faith while others are us are designed to be wary. I believe, though, if I am to be more engaged with the living person of Jesus Christ, then I am going to have to live further and further out of my comfort zone. I believe we all must jump out of the boat and walk to where he is as Peter did (Matthew 14: 29). Remember, though, what happened to Peter. He got out of the boat and walked on the water towards Jesus but once he took notice of the facts, i.e. the wind and the waves, he began to sink. Jesus said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

You recognize that the facts didn’t matter. The same wind was blowing when Peter got out of the boat and yet he walked on the water. What changed? Peter’s focus changed. When his hope was set on walking to Jesus, the truth aligned and he walked on the water. When his focus shifted to doubt, he manifested his fear and sank. Both outcomes were his for the choosing.

This reality is ours as well. Now you understand why I choose to believe and hope even if I risk being duped or made a fool of. I would rather hope and believe, chasing good outcomes, than doubt and mistrust and perhaps miss out on a chance at something better.

Jesus is the truth. He is the light and the life. The more we steadfastly fix our eyes upon him and follow him, the greater our chances of living the abundant life he secured for us. I believe this requires us to spend time reading the Bible. Secondly, we must choose to live in hope rather than skepticism. We must be open to thinking new thoughts and open to new ideas. If we wish to transform ourselves, then we necessarily will have to think differently tomorrow than how we thought yesterday, and that need not be scary when we walk hand in hand with Jesus. Better to hope and try and miss than to have never tried, I say.

Tell me what methods you think we can employ to help ourselves believe bigger.

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Hope

On October 28, 2024   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Hebrews 10: 23

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

Hope is the beginning of faith. Without hope, one will not even look forward to the promise. But we can have great hope and hence great faith because the one who has made promises to us is more than faithful. He is honest and true without the ability to lie. And as we think of Him, our hope grows. We can feed that hope with the Word of God too, and it is just like applying fertilizer and water to a young plant. That Word causes our faith to grow the same as fertilizer and water cause the plant to grow. Our faith then develops and when it reaches maturity, it produces a crop. But it all begins with hope like a small seed faithfully sown.

We are to hold our confession of hope without wavering which means we keep speaking the word of hope and then the word of faith even when we cannot yet see the offshoot of the seed. We hold onto our belief that the seed will produce a plant whether or not we see the evidence of that plant. The evidence is our faith because our confidence is in He who promised. We keep our words (our confession) aligned with our hope and His promise despite any evidence. Then, when the proper time is come, the seed gives forth the plant which then gives forth the fruit.

Keep your hope and keep your faith. Fear not. Trust He who is faithful and worthy of our trust. Don’t dig up your seed with contradictory language, rather keep your confession consistent with His promise for in due time you will reap if you don’t grow weary.

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Bedtime Stories

On February 19, 2024   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Matthew 14: 25

And in the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea.

Do you believe Jesus walked on the water?

Recently, I had a conversation with someone about a well-known preacher who tells good stories. This person did not believe the stories were true. He, like so many others, believes the stories are made up to make a point. The problem with this is that we make the same shift to Bible stories. So, I ask you, is a story a retelling of something that is true and really happened or is it a fabrication?

Allow me to ask another question, please. Were I to witness something marvelous such as Jesus walking on water, how would I convey the experience to others so they know it was an actual experience rather than a made up story? Do words mean what they purport to mean or are they just colors we use to paint a picture? How does one communicate something literal?

So, if you were Matthew and you witnessed this event, how do you tell people about it? I am a believer. I am not a cynic, so I tend to believe the words I read in the Bible. However, you know that many of us translate these events into something imaginative. How then can God ever communicate a literal miracle to us in words we will accept.

When I tell you that I saw the Holy Spirit, are you intrigued and want to hear more or do you think it is a metaphor for something I wish to convey?

My position is this, I don’t think the Bible is a collection of made-up stories compiled so that we can find God. I think it is an instruction manual. I’ve found God. In fact, He wasn’t missing. I was, but He brings in the lost and then gives us the book so that we can grow in faith and in the knowledge of Him. He reveals Himself in the pages and stories of the Bible. However, we will never receive the revelation as long as we think they are only cute, metaphorical stories. Once we embrace the Bible as the living Word of God, accepting is as truth, not fiction, then we can find faith giving strength among its pages.

I challenge you in this. When you read your Bible, see yourself in the writer’s shoes. See the event unfolding before you and imagine what it is to write it down. These folks walked with Jesus. They didn’t need to make up a bunch of stories. They were more concerned with capturing the events for themselves and future generations. Don’t you think you would walk around with a journal if you walked with Jesus. I think we all would.

Embrace the Word. Take it into your heart. Don’t let your brain talk you out of believing. We were called to be believers and it starts here.

Let our coaching team help you: Iveyministries.org.

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Hang On

On November 27, 2023   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Hebrews 10: 23

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

Why must we hold fast to our confession? Because sometimes it takes some time before our answer arrives just as was the case in Daniel chapter 10. First you must have hope. Then hope gives you reason to pray and develop a confession. Without hope, you won’t even pray. Why would you if there was no hope of answered prayer but we always have reason to hope because our God is faithful.

When you pray, you have reason to expect God to answer that prayer. Yet the answer isn’t always on the doorstep the next morning. So, what shall we do? We enter our confession stage. We are to develop a confession (or profession of faith, if you will) which is consistent with our prayer and with the Word of God. For example, if my prayer was for healing an ankle sprain and my ankle still hurt the next morning, I would begin to confess my healing rather than confessing the pain. My confession might sound like, “My ankle is healed because 1 Peter says that by His stripes I was healed.” Then I am going to hold onto that confession until my ankle manifests its healing. I am not going to start speaking doubt and unbelief because I have faith that God, the one who promised, is faithful. The writer of Hebrews tells us to hold fast without wavering. So, we shouldn’t waffle back and forth. Since He who promised is faithful, we just hang onto our confession of faith until our answer arrives.

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Hideaway 

On October 17, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 46: 1 – 3

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change, and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.

Above the psalmist paints a picture of great natural disasters. I see volcanoes erupting with violent earthquakes. The earth itself is afire while the sea is whipped into a tempest. And yet, through it all we shall not fear for the Lord God is our refuge and our very present help in every time of need.

The Bible is consistent in telling us to “fear not.” Yet there are many times that we do allow fear to persuade our actions. It is not because of disobedience that we fall into fear. It is because we do not have a complete revelation of the power of our God. We are not as connected to his strength as the psalmist was. We have not yet developed our awareness of God as our refuge to the point that we can have unshakeable confidence in His ability to take care of us.

Some have though. During recent calamities there arose stories of the people who were saved because they hid in God. The great and devastating tsunami took many lives but there were those who surfaced to tell us how God protected them. These same kinds of experiences were recounted from survivors of the trade tower attacks and the subway bombings in England. Wherever the forces of evil arise to threaten the children of God, there will be the stories of victory from those who ran into the refuge of their Lord. Let us, therefore, give more attention to the saving strength of our God than to the fear campaign of the wicked. Our God is supreme. His power and love are everlasting. Let us praise and thank Him for all that He is. Let us hide ourselves in Him.

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Will He or Won’t He?

On August 22, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Luke 6: 7

And the scribes and the Pharisees were watching Him closely, to see if He healed on the Sabbath.

On one particular Sabbath Jesus was teaching in the temple. Present was a man with a withered hand. The amazing thing about this scripture to me is that the Pharisees and scribes were not watching to see if Jesus could heal the man with the withered hand. They were watching to see if Jesus would. They were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus.

Interestingly, this is at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He had not even chosen the twelve apostles at this time. None the less, people were certain of His ability to heal. The fact that no one questioned His ability and willingness to heal is an absolute wonder to me. Verse 19 really speaks to this:

And all the multitude were trying to touch Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all.

They expected Jesus to heal them. People flocked to Him in order to be healed and delivered. Here’s my question. Isn’t this the same Jesus that is our Lord and Savior? Isn’t He still alive today? Even Jesus’ enemies expected Him to heal the sick. Their only question was whether or not He would heal on the Sabbath. Well, we certainly don’t have a problem with Jesus healing on the Sabbath if He is going to heal at all, but do we expect Him to heal us? And what would happen if we really did start expecting Him to touch our lives with His power? What if we showed up to church expecting God to touch us? Has the power that was coming from Jesus expired? No, it is the same Holy Spirit. I think it is just that our believing has waned. Stir yourself up. Stir up your faith in the Jesus that does good works. Let us all invite his power back into our lives and our services. Let’s believe in Him again like the people of old and let us receive His goodness and pass it on to others.

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Faith Calls

On May 2, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Luke 18: 40

Jesus stopped and ordered them to bring the man to him.

A funny thing happened on the way from the showers . . .. I was at a bicycle weekend recently. My friends and I were walking back to our campsite after leaving the shower truck and walking by some lovely old homes in Edenton, NC. As we walked past one particular house, there were people sitting on the porch and somehow we began speaking with them. I noticed a crutch leaning against the house and asked to whom it belonged. A woman there said it was hers and without a moment’s hesitation I asked if I could pray for her. I didn’t know her from Adam and didn’t know what her ailment was. I just felt compelled to pray for her, so I did.

As I mounted the porch, she arose telling me she had scoliosis. Well, given one more minute I would have surmised as much for she was bent over. I prayed for her and as I prayed, I felt the Spirit moving. The woman began to pray along with me. I know something happened that day though when I left, she was not standing upright like when Jesus prayed for the woman in Luke 13: 13.

Days later I was thinking about this incident, and something struck me. The two ladies I was walking with each had a need. One has MS and the other has Celiac Disease. I did not have a compulsion to pray for them even though I camped with them all weekend, but I was compelled to pray for a woman I literally was walking by and didn’t know at all. Isn’t that interesting? What was the difference?

Faith calls. Faith pulls. Faith demands. It turns out that the woman with scoliosis, Connie, is a person of faith. In fact, she is the worship leader at her church. The spirit in her sensed the spirit in me and pulled on that anointing whereas the two women with me have no faith for healing.

This was astounding to me. As I pondered this event, I recalled James 5: 14 – 15. It reads, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” The person who is sick is to call for the elders and the prayer offered in faith shall restore the one who is sick. My friends had no faith, but Connie did. Her faith reached right out to me and stopped me in my tracks the way Jesus was often arrested by faith. Isn’t that amazing?

I think too about the woman with the hemorrhage. She, literally, went and pulled on Jesus. There is a lesson here. Your faith heals. Jesus felt power go out of him. He told the woman, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well,” (Matthew 9: 22). That statement causes me to pause. We know God is the healer, but our faith must connect with that healing power and that is when the miracle happens. Even though Jesus didn’t know the woman was there, her faith reached out and took a miracle. Bless God!

Did you know that Jesus couldn’t always work miracles? Mark 6: 5 reads, “And because of their unbelief, he couldn’t do any miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them,” (NLV). As crazy as this first sounds, it does make sense when you recall Revelation 12: 11, “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony.” We would think that the blood of the Lamb is sufficient to overcome all obstacles, but we would be wrong and unbiblical. This scripture is very clear in teaching that overcoming is the product of the blood and the “word of their testimony” or, in other words, the words of our mouth. This reality makes us uncomfortable for two reasons. First, it places responsibility on our shoulders when we just want Jesus to make everything alright for us. Second, it defies our theology. We have been taught God is omnipotent and we took that to mean that He acts independently of us. That just isn’t Biblically sound. There is nothing in the Bible that says that. In fact, it says just the opposite. Psalm 115: 16 says, “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to the sons of men.” God gave us freewill, and He gave us authority and He will not usurp either.

Well, this devotional might speak to a number of different things for you today. One take away for me is that you never know when God is going to move or when and how He is going to teach you something. I would have never guessed that the blessing of the Lord would manifest while I was walking from a shower truck to my tent with a towel slung over my shoulder, but there He was. Ready to bless someone. Oh, but this touches my spirit. Paul told Timothy to be ready in season and out (2 Timothy 4: 2) and brother, I am glad I was ready. We were also taught to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5: 17). That means even when you are not at church and not dressed up.  Be ready to pray at all times.

You can see the implications for an entire message in each of those scriptures as it relates to this experience. So, be ready at any time to minister but also, stir up your faith for whatever you need. Pull on the anointing in your spiritual leaders. If you aren’t calling me or writing me, you are missing an opportunity for God to minister to your need. Be filled and overflowing in Jesus’ name.

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