Faith Living: Finding Your Purpose

STEVE STRANG

(Master Isolated Images/Freedigitalphotos.net)

Risk is a primary component of faith, and the Bible teaches that without faith it is impossible to please God. In Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus condemned the unfaithful servant who would not risk his talent, but hid it to be safe. Jesus called him “wicked and lazy” and took the talent he had and gave it to the one who had invested his five talents and doubled them.

Regardless of our spiritual level—whether a young person full of the excitement of just following Christ, or one who has enjoyed a measure of success in following your dreams, or one who has followed God for many years and is tempted to coast—God wants us to move into risky living: faith living.

We should believe Him for new mountains to climb, new visions to pursue. That is how we grow and develop our faith and move from “glory to glory.” As my late mentor Jamie Buckingham put it so well, each of us should “attempt something so big that, without God, it’s bound to fail.”

At Issue - Rejection

2 Chronicles 11:13–17

Rejection hurts—when your boss hands you a pink slip, or your husband walks out on you, or a close friend deserts you. 

Rejection makes you doubt your abilities, your worth, your purpose in life. But not all rejection is bad. 

The Levites were rejected by Jeroboam, who wanted to choose his own priests to offer sacrifices to false gods. Painful as the rejection was, it motivated the Levites to move to Jerusalem to serve God there—a change they wouldn’t have made otherwise.