Counting the Faith Promises

“God honors faith – stubborn faith – that sees His PROMISE and looks to that alone. We can only imagine how bystanders today, watching these holy men of God march on, (the Levites carrying the Ark into the Promised Land) would say, ‘You will never catch me running that risk! That ark will be swept away!’ Yet ‘the priests…stood firm on dry ground.”

“Oh, for the kind of faith that will move ahead, leaving God to fulfill His promise when He sees fit! Fellow Levites, let us shoulder our load, without looking as though were carrying God’s coffin. It is the ark of the living God! Sing as you march toward the flood!”

“One of the distinguishing marks of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament church was the spirit of boldness. One of the great essential qualities of the kind of faith that will attempt great things for God and expect great things from God is holy boldness and daring. When dealing with a supernatural Being and taking things from Him that are humanly impossible, it is actually easier for us to take a lot than it is to take a little. And it is easier to stand in a place of bold trust than in a place where we cautiously and timidly cling to the shore.”

~ Streams in the Desert, March 28

As I count the 1000 Gifts each day, recount them each week, I chronicle His goodness to me, to us. I list His mercies, His blessings, even the hardships that He uses to mold and shape a mother, a family. I slowly write a journal of faith and as I look back I see glimpses of nearly a year and a half of gift-counting, record-keeping. Half a dozen words or less bring back a memory otherwise forgotten in the day-to-day busyness. And as we face new trials, ones we are not in now but will surely come because in this world we will have trouble, I can come back to the record of His faithfulness and know He has not forgotten us, will not ever forget us.

Clearly seeing God’s hand in my life, recording it, gives that bold faith that allows me to carry on in the face of human impossibility. Sharing stories gives encouragement, boldness to others. We leave a legacy of faith by recounting what He has done, is doing in our everyday lives – the big and the small, the mundane and the significant – because for most of us, it is in the daily pressure of life that God’s grace is worked out in us.