{"id":126,"date":"2018-11-06T16:40:11","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T00:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/migrate.bettersermons.org\/?p=126"},"modified":"2020-06-01T11:40:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T18:40:53","slug":"feeding-the-habit-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/feeding-the-habit-of-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeding the Habit of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"
Feeding the Habit of Faith<\/span><\/div>\n

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Key Passage:<\/strong>\u00a0Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Ephesians 4:14
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\nKey Thought:<\/strong>\u00a0In order to grow into strong and unshakable believers, Christians need to have a daily habit of\u00a0feeding<\/em>\u00a0their faith, considering and embracing our their beliefs.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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How do we continue to believe?\u00a0<\/em>Church members routinely drop out because they lose confidence in the Bible, or they have doubts about the existence of God. Sometimes plain apathy causes them to quit living the Christian life.<\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong>\u00a0Elijah was one of the Bible\u2019s great faith heroes. He stood up to King Ahab for three years; he stood up to the 450 fallen priests of Baal. He faced all of Israel on the top of Carmel as God sent down fire. He magnanimously reconciled with King Ahab and led his former foe 20 miles through the rain to the city gates of Jezreel. THEN . . . he was terrified when threatened by Queen Jezebel. He ran another 100 miles to Beersheba and collapsed in despair. \u201cI have had enough, Lord,\u201d he prays. \u201cTake my life. I am no better than my ancestors.\u201d In the\u00a0Message<\/em>: \u201cI scored a victory for you on Mount Carmel and then ran from a woman.<\/p>\n

What caused this failure of faith? Letdown. Elijah had been so sure Israel was about to turn a corner and return to its Jehovah roots. In addition, the misery of a cold rain can drive many people to doubt and atheism.<\/p>\n

Quote:<\/strong>\u00a0Beatrice Neall writes: \u201cFaith feeds upon the memories of God\u2019s past leading. The valley of depression is Satan\u2019s rut to trip the child of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong>\u00a0John the Baptist proclaimed Jesus\u2019 messiahship with great power. But when imprisoned, doubt and hunger caused him to send a message to his own cousin: \u201cAre you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?\u201d (Matthew 11:2)<\/p>\n

Quote<\/strong>\u00a0from C. S. Lewis: \u201cFaith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods \u2018where they get off,\u2019 you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith\u201d (Mere Christianity<\/em>, pp. 123, 124).<\/p>\n

What do we specifically do? What is the prescription? \u201cThe first step is to recognize the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life.\u00a0We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.<\/em>\u00a0Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed\u201d (Lewis, p. 124).<\/p>\n

Key Thought:<\/strong>\u00a0As we learn key Bible stories, passages, illustrations, memory gems, helpful quotes from leading Christians, they become a mosaic of truth in our lives.<\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong>\u00a0In the 1850s, America was grappling with the issue of slavery\u2014and whether incoming states joining the Union should be slave or free. Lincoln illustrated: if he encountered poisonous snakes in the bed with his children, he had to deal prudently for fear of harming the children. But if he was building a new house, he would certainly\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>find a nest of young snakes and PUT them in the bed with his offspring.<\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong>\u00a0In 1940, England was the final domino between Hitler and total domination of Europe. America could sell her munitions, but England was going bankrupt and had used all its credit. Churchill wrote an impassioned letter to Roosevelt\u2014the world itself was hanging in the balance. Would Nazism overcome them all? Roosevelt responded by offering to simply\u00a0lend<\/em>warships and war materiel to his allies, and used the metaphor of a garden hose. \u201cIf my neighbor\u2019s house is on fire, I don\u2019t insist he give me the $15 I paid for my hose. I simply loan it to him on the proviso that he give it back when the fire goes out.\u201d The Lend-Lease Program eventually passed Congress and Parliament and sent $700 billion to America\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n

It could be argued that \u201cSnakes in the Bed\u201d and \u201cMy Garden Hose\u201d were two stories which saved the world! And Christians need to daily arm themselves with stories and Bible principles which are core to our faith. Just as we daily set the table and feed our bodies, we need to regularly put\u00a0our beliefs<\/em>\u00a0on a plate and set them before our eyes.
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Submitted by David B. Smith.\u00a0<\/span>Better Sermons \u00a9 2005-2007. Click here for\u00a0<\/span>usage guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feeding the Habit of Faith Key Passage:\u00a0Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}