Grow your own faith

Without faith it's impossible to please God. We NEED faith to be able to follow in Christ foot steps.

email: RuggedTruthGodsWord@gmail.com

God has a super huge plan. We all have to do our part as He assigns to us. 

Transcript

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Hello, brothers and sisters in the Lord. This is Brother Rick, and I hope you all are having a good day and the weather's getting nice your way. It's been warming up over here in North Carolina, and I'm loving it. I've been taking some of the uh books in the Bible for granted. And I I've been reading through Colossians and wow, there's some good stuff there. And it talks a lot about faith in chapter two. And I like to talk about that. Our personal faith. Each person has their own faith. Your faith is what saves you in Christ. You trust Christ with your faith. You believe in Christ with your faith. And you can let Christ use you with your faith. You trust him and let him give you the words you need and the actions you take and just the way of living life. And in Colossians 2.5 it talks about being disciplined and firm in our faith in Christ. And so many people think discipline is a bad word. It's not a bad word, it just means to be serious about it. And we have to be serious about it. Christ has given us this wonderful gift of eternal life. And we need to be sharing the good news, telling others. We don't want to be selfish with this. We let Christ be known. Let his words come out of our mouth. We let our old self stay in the grave and let his beautiful words, his words of wisdom come out of our mouth. And they will. Just pray to him and ask him for what you want to say and how to conduct yourself. And in certain situations, just uh you don't have to just close your eyes. You can you can do it just in your head. If it's a certain situation, a serious situation, you can just and he'll be right there with you. It's a part of keeping the open line of communication right to God through Christ. And the more you use your faith, the more you exert your faith. It's like a muscle that gets stronger. And letting it get stronger is a good thing. Christ can use you more and more. And that's what we're here for. We are here to be used by Christ, to help others find Him, find eternal life. That's what all of this is all about. That's why Christ came to save people, to save everyone, not just the ones that are saved now, and not uh us because we've we've got saved, so we just quit trying to do anything. No, we're supposed to be the great commission from Christ in Matthew 28, 18 to 20. He tells us to go out and to talk to people and tell people and tell them about the good news and baptize people and to teach them to obey Christ because we can't be good enough to make it to God. We just can't. We have to ask Christ to help us and He'll help us grow stronger and uh day by day. It's like getting into a shower. You come home dirty from work, you get into the shower and you start washing off. You wash off a piece at a time, your hands, your arms, and so on. You don't just get automatically cleaned, boom, he we're cleaned by him, but he helps straighten us out, helps clean us up. Like I needed help with smoking. I was saved for a long time and I couldn't quit smoking. He helped me, he helped me quit. He did, because I couldn't do it. And he can help us with the problems we have and the things we have to deal with. Through our faith in Christ, that's what will heal us and help us and teach us and lead us. We trust Christ. And the more we trust him, the stronger our faith gets, and the more he can use us. It's like a snowball going down a hill. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and moving faster and faster. And it's amazing. And like I was saying in in Colossians 2, too, where uh we're being told to learn about uh uh the mystery of God in Christ. I mean that that's I still yet am trying to figure that out. It's I've got it you know pretty good, but and then uh verse 3 of chapter 2 in Colossians, it talks about uh uh all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. He's been given everything by God Almighty, and we've been given the gift of eternal life if we trust God through Christ. Because God lifted Christ up out of the grave after three days, and he could do the same for us if we let him. And while we're living here, we grow our faith and we just trust God more and more, and death won't be so scary. To the unsaved, death is the final blow, and they're scared to death of death, they really are, but we could be scared to death of death, or we could trust Christ. And let's choose to trust Christ because he defeated death, and he'll defeat death for each one of us, each one of us. And again in Colossians 2 and verse 6, it talks about we live our lives in him, in Christ. We're rooted and built up in him, strengthened in our faith. We live in Christ, we grow our faith, we could be more useful to him and to other people that need help. So many of us have different things that have happened to us in our lives, and we could help others that have had similar situations. We could tell them that it is not impossible to overcome these problems like smoking or drug addiction or drinking because others have defeated it through Christ. And through defeating this stuff, we have gratefulness, thankfulness. We show thankfulness to God, and we're very appreciative, and we show our appreciation by helping others, really. I mean, God gave freely to us, and we should give freely to others, just helping and telling people uh how to be saved. We can't save anybody. We just set up the introduction with Christ. We tell them he is the reason for everything. Say during Christmas we talk about he's the reason for the season. Well, he is the reason for the season, he's the reason for every day. We're allowed to draw another breath, speak another word, think another thought because of God. He is good to us, he is merciful. And he loves us, and like a song I heard, and it's beautiful. So he loves us not because we're good or we're worthy, it's because he's merciful. And he is good. That's why he loves us. He has mercy on us, pity on us. If it weren't for that, we would all be doomed. But we just trust that with our faith, with each one's faith as precious. In 1 Peter 1:7, it talks about it being more precious than gold. I mean, and again in Colossians 2 and 12, it talks about buried with Christ through baptism and raised with him through our faith. Our faith and the working of God. God did it, not us. But he allows our faith to grow just by believing and trusting him and using our faith, letting our faith flow, let it be used. And God raised him from the dead, and he'll raise us from the dead. Because everybody has to die. Everybody. Mortality is 100%. And we were dead in our sin, and God made us alive in Christ, as it says in Colossians 2 and 13. And he forgave all of our sins, no matter what we did, all of our sins, anyone can be forgiven of what they've done. Anyone and everyone can. All they have to do is accept that Christ is the Son of God, and that He gave Himself up as a sacrifice for us, a blood sacrifice, which is required to cleanse sin. For God is perfect, and sin cannot be anywhere near him. He doesn't want it. It's putrid to him. And God could do great things through you if you would allow him. We all have to allow him. I don't want to be shaking my finger, but just we all have to just we give ourselves to God more and more each day. We read and we pray and we talk to him, keep a constant line of communication. Just keep talking to him. In 1 Thessalonians 5.17, it talks about pray without ceasing. And that just means keeping an open line of communication going with God. And when you're walking by faith, it's hard to sin then. It can be done, but I tell you what, the guilt is all over you, and you want to repent quickly. So we just keep the open line of communication to God through Christ, and who is God also. And like I said, still working it out in my own head, but just because me being a simple ball of dust with the Holy Spirit in me doesn't trying, and I'm trying to figure it out doesn't mean it ain't so. So it is truly so, it really is so. God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It's three in one. And if you trust Christ, His Holy Spirit is in you, and the faith that you have can grow and be used amazingly to do great things for the Lord. It'll help us start getting the selfishness out of us and teach us to love more and help us to love more. And by loving more, we'll want to help people come to know Him because everyone is on the path to hell. Everyone that doesn't know Christ is on the path to hell. Everyone, everyone, everyone. And I want a burden on myself to just want to talk to people and tell them and explain to them how Christ can help them. And I want my faith to grow, grow, grow like a jack and a bean stalk, a giant vine just to spread everywhere and talk to people. And I think all of us need a revival and let our faith just grow and Christ to use us because time is short and the world is getting more and more wicked, and it's much worse than the days of Noah. So we gotta be getting ready. Well, brothers and sisters, we've got to help our faith to grow by trusting Christ, each one of us. And I'm gonna get off of here. This is Brother Rick, and I pray the good Lord save your souls, and his face shine down upon you. And until next time, I love you in the name of Jesus Christ.