Flourishing Faith in the Face of Difficult Decisions

As Christians, we are faced with many difficult decisions. Decisions on how to lead our family, our business, and our church, decisions on how to best love our family and friends, decisions on what is the right thing to do at work or in our neighborhood, decisions on how to best fight the temptations of sins and decisions on how to effectively engage our neighbors and community with the gospel. Personally, it often depends where I am in my faith in God that will determine how I will face those decisions. It really comes down to believing the Gospel. If I am resting in Jesus’ love for me expressed in his life and work then I can face the hard decisions with confidence.

As we live our life, we can’t separate God’s grace and our faith. They are inseparably linked. The faith we have in Jesus is not available without God’s grace, and this grace can only be accessed through faith in Jesus. It is only through God’s merciful initiative and preserving grace that we are given the opportunity to walk by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7), to flourish in our faith (Romans 1:17; Hebrews 10:38) and to please God by our faith (Hebrews 11:6).

Abram in Genesis 14, his faith did not flourish because he followed some set of principles but as he trusted the God of grace. His faith flourished because he believed that God was intimately involved in his daily life. He grew to experience that whatever he faced in life that God’s promise, presence, power and provision was his. This is true for us in Jesus Christ. We are able to flourish in our faith as we rest and believe Jesus love for us. Because of his work on our behalf, we too have his promise that affirms we are his forever children, we have his presence that provides us peace amidst life storms, we have his power that frees us to godly living amidst a self-saturated culture, and we have his provision that satisfies our deepest longings. The God of grace enables as to become and overcome by faith in Jesus.

To learn more on Genesis 14, check out the sermon, Flourishing Faith in the Face of Difficult Decisions, at our website www.cityofhopechurch.net.