The Bears won but you lost a lot of money because of bad player picks in fantasy football. How can you enjoy a simple sports game when you can no longer pay your bills? Your loved one is diagnosed with terminal cancer and the doctor of oncology projects three months for the cancer to run its course. What will you believe about the outcome? You have lost your job with the tightening market. What will you believe regarding your outcome? You have been betrayed and terribly hurt in the most important relationship in your life and no change is in sight. What will you believe about people like the one who hurt you?
In spite of what people do or how circumstances turn out, faith is so crucial to pleasing God and faith is even more crucial for us to become conquerors in Christ. Our mind is challenged constantly to believe God for victory in the events we face.
It is so important to realize that faith enables your mind to change outcomes! Faith connects our minds to the available power of God’s Word to create “the substance of things hoped for” and when circumstances assault our thoughts, faith produces “the evidence of things not seen”. And even at the risk of being ridiculed perfected faith can empower us to walk on the troubled water of stormy situations to experience the victory nobody fathomed.
So what destroys faith in us? When was the last time you heard someone say: “if I did not have bad luck, I would have no luck at all!” So what is luck? Webster’s dictionary says luck is “the chance happening of an event good or bad.” How many people do you know who speak words of living by chance? Phases may be heard spoken such as: “I bet you it ain’t going to get any better!” “These are the cards I have been dealt” “That’s just how the dice will roll”
Isn’t it unfortunate to observe how seemingly harmless betting/gambling practices can shape our thinking when we are confronted with what to believe when facing trials? In gambling practices, the person who makes a bet on chance is no more than a bystander who wagers their God-given substance and watches for a good outcome with fingers crossed.
With faith, this person is not a bystander, but actually creates a new outcome with God’s help. With faith, the outcome does not take away the person’s substance but it creates new substance. With faith, we do not gain and lose by sight; we always win by creating something by sight that was not there. God’s Word working through our belief has the creation power to make real what we do not see.
So brothers and sisters, let’s not put God to the test anymore by talking about how “our luck is going” rather speak our faith to determine what the end is going to be. Stop conditioning your mind to be bystander by taking a betting position on outcomes - fun or no fun. Dare to believe God’s Word to change your circumstantial outcomes. Dare to be a faith hero who creates new value when all is lost by using the power of God’s Word. Be the mail man who delivers an unseen blessing to someone else’s hurting heart without hope.
Don’t put your blessings up for wager. It is all in your mind – walk by faith and not by dice!
Bless you!