FAITH by Eze Chukwu
When I was preaching at Assemblies of God Nigeria Isele Uku sectional headquarter on the topic titled “faith needed to receive from God”. The Holy Spirit laid it in my heart to write about the word “FAITH”. Merriam Webster’s and thesaurus defined faith as 1 a: allegiance to duty or a person: loyalty b (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God. The word loyalty is what most Christians ignore when they talk about faith. The word faith has three attributes which are belief, trust and loyalty, the most important in all of these is loyalty. But many people stops just at belief and trust. I remember when I was working at LSMC and, Dr. Okey Onuzo was teaching us in one of the yearly Holy Communion service for Life Support Medical Center Staffs. At that time I was just coming closer to the Lord, while Dr. Onuzo was teaching the word of God, I was operating my handset and I felt a sharp pain in my stomach and I heard gentle voice spoke to me and said “my son is teaching you what you don’t know and you are busy playing” I sensed it was the Lord speaking to me, I stopped what I was doing and muttered a prayer of repentance, immediately the pain left. Since then I leant to be loyal to any man of God that’s speaking the word of God. Respecting any man of woman who is leading in service of gathering of the Children of God, is expression of loyalty to God which is faith in reality of it. The bible said we are saved by faith, and before you will be saved you must do these two things which involve action and feeling, (1) to confess with your mouth that “Jesus is the Lord” (2) and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Romans 10:9. Your expression of loyalty is to obediently tell someone that Jesus is the Lord and to believe it in your heart. Most Christians just believe in their hearts that Jesus is the Lord and they are too ashamed to tell it to their friends and family. The most important aspect of faith is the action part, the “doing” without which no one will ever mention you as a faithful person, no matter how you feel, is your actions that will justify the positivity of your feeling (faith), that is why those who are mentioned in the book of Hebrew chapter 11 as men of faith are those who took actions, not those who had great convictions without actions. James 2:24 says “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone”. That’s why I believe that loyalty is most important aspect of faith because it leads into action. So I challenge you today to start going to services on time, obey who ever that’s leading the service, study the bible and tell your friends and family about your faith as an expression of your loyalty to Christ. That is the type of faith that brings about miracles.
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