Latest / WholeHeart Conversations / Exercise Your Faith
Transcript
- 0:00Constance Lavonice: Last week we discussed going all in with God.
- 0:05Constance Lavonice: In order to go all in with God, we have to exercise our faith.
- 0:12Constance Lavonice: Hebrews 11:1 says, faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.
- 0:21Constance Lavonice: Faith is believing that God is who He says He is and He will do what He says He will do.
- 0:32Constance Lavonice: Welcome to Whole Heart Conversations.
- 0:35Constance Lavonice: This is a podcast for women discussing biblical faith, mental health, and whole heart, spirit, soul, and body resilience.
- 0:46Constance Lavonice: I'm your host, Constance Lavonice.
- 0:50Constance Lavonice: When you Google the word exercise, you find that it's a physical or mental activity done to stay healthy, improve strength, or practice a skill.
- 1:05Constance Lavonice: We practice physical exercise to build muscle, improve stamina, tone and shape our bodies, to improve our balance and coordination, to overall improve our health.
- 1:24Constance Lavonice: And in mental health counseling, exercise is added to our counseling plans, sometimes to decrease anxiety and also to decrease depression.
- 1:39Constance Lavonice: Mentally, we stimulate our minds when we learn new things, such as languages, or we participate in crossword puzzles or reading for educational purposes.
- 1:56Constance Lavonice: Some of us become quite disciplined in exercising because we know it's good for us.
- 2:05Constance Lavonice: Spiritually, God desires for us to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness.
- 2:15Constance Lavonice: First Timothy chapter 4: 7 says to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, for bodily training is slightly beneficial, but godliness is beneficial for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
- 2:40Constance Lavonice: You exercise your faith when you became a Christian and you believed in Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
- 2:51Constance Lavonice: When you received his spirit, John 10: 10, Jesus says that I have come to give you life and life more abundantly.
- 3:06Constance Lavonice: So when you received his spirit, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, you received his power.
- 3:16Constance Lavonice: So are you utilizing your faith to experience a more abundant or fulfilling life, to practice resiliency despite the circumstances, to have more of the things that God has promised us in his word: his peace, his joy, his assurance, his presence, his love, his patience, his kindness and goodness, and his wisdom, all the things, the fruit of the spirit that we have, that's listed in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 through 23, the fruit of the spirit, but then we have even more, such as God's wisdom, that we have the source of wisdom within us at all times.
- 4:26Constance Lavonice: And by his divine power, we have everything we need for life and godliness.
- 4:36Constance Lavonice: That's Second Peter chapter one, verse three.
- 4:41Constance Lavonice: So we exercise our faith when we apply God's word to everything we do, the way we think, the way we speak, the way we act, and how we respond.
- 5:02Constance Lavonice: So what does that look like?
- 5:05Constance Lavonice: For me, God delivered me from a spirit of fear.
- 5:13Constance Lavonice: Now we can have fear.
- 5:16Constance Lavonice: Fear is a signal to a possible danger, but God does not give us a spirit of fear, and I had a spirit of fear to many different things.
- 5:31Constance Lavonice: But one of the ways it manifested was that I was afraid to walk around my neighborhood, around the block alone, because I was afraid of dogs, and not just afraid of dogs, but specifically afraid of being bitten by a dog.
- 5:54Constance Lavonice: So I've been in my neighborhood for more than 20 years now, and I had never walked around the block alone.
- 6:04Constance Lavonice: God delivered me from that fear, and God wanted me to exercise my faith.
- 6:13Constance Lavonice: So, how did I exercise my faith that my Lord and Savior is with me and I do not have the spirit of fear, but of power that's within me?
- 6:27Constance Lavonice: I walked around the block alone.
- 6:30Constance Lavonice: So instead of being fearful, God gave me the ability through the Holy Spirit to begin to walk around the block in my neighborhood and stop avoiding experiencing all that my neighborhood has to offer by walking around the block.
- 6:57Constance Lavonice: So I walked around the block.
- 7:00Constance Lavonice: My husband and I teach Sunday school class with young adults, college students, people from the age of 18 through 25.
- 7:14Constance Lavonice: And this past Sunday, one of our students came to class and he basically said, You know, I don't want to be here.
- 7:22Constance Lavonice: I don't even know why I'm here.
- 7:24Constance Lavonice: I don't want to be here.
- 7:26Constance Lavonice: One of my friends, I just found out that one of my friends, someone he went to school with, died.
- 7:33Constance Lavonice: So he was saying, I don't want to be here.
- 7:37Constance Lavonice: He sat there, he listened to the lesson, we talked about the Holy Spirit, and when we had our discussion time, um, he sat to a table alone, and um, my husband gave him a scripture to read.
- 7:54Constance Lavonice: And afterwards, when it was time to go, he volunteered to say the prayers.
- 8:02Constance Lavonice: And he said a beautiful prayer.
- 8:04Constance Lavonice: He exercised his faith.
- 8:07Constance Lavonice: He didn't want to be there, but he didn't follow that voice.
- 8:13Constance Lavonice: Instead, and I think it was through the Holy Spirit that led him.
- 8:17Constance Lavonice: The Holy Spirit led him to come to church that morning, to come to the class, and because he did, he was able to receive a message that resonated with his spirit, that revived his spirit, and he was able to leave with more hope and more peace.
- 8:43Constance Lavonice: And in the process, what he did by being honest was to demonstrate model transparency and authenticity, which allowed the other students to be honest.
- 9:03Constance Lavonice: So that's an example of how exercising your faith looks.
- 9:11Constance Lavonice: If you believe it, then you walk it.
- 9:16Constance Lavonice: He came to church in spite of, in spite of the fact that he didn't want to be there, but something inside of him led him to church and he was revived in his spirit.
- 9:32Constance Lavonice: We had someone else who said, you know, pray for me, pray for me because I need to take a driver's driver's test, and I flunked this driver's test twice.
- 9:48Constance Lavonice: Pray for me.
- 9:50Constance Lavonice: So in conversation, I asked, Well, what's going on when you take the test?
- 9:55Constance Lavonice: And she said, Well, I'm nervous, and I get nervous, and I I just mess up.
- 10:03Constance Lavonice: I know how to drive, but when I take the test, I just get nervous.
- 10:09Constance Lavonice: So this is a believer, a person who has the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ within her.
- 10:18Constance Lavonice: And we don't have the spirit of fear.
- 10:22Constance Lavonice: God doesn't want us to fear and get anxious to the point where we can't think.
- 10:29Constance Lavonice: So we talked about it and we prayed about it.
- 10:33Constance Lavonice: And the next step for her is to exercise her faith by going to the driver's licensing place and taking the test again, this time with the spirit of God, knowing that she has the spirit of God within her, and that God has not given her the spirit of fear, and that God she has the gifts of the spirit inside of her, one of which is peace.
- 11:08Constance Lavonice: Peace is opposite of anxiety, knowing that God will give her the peace that she needs, not to be focused on the person in the car with her, grading her, but the peace to do what she already knows how to do.
- 11:27Constance Lavonice: So she's going to meditate on Philippians four, chapter six.
- 11:35Constance Lavonice: No, that's Philippians four, verses six through eight.
- 11:43Constance Lavonice: Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your request known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.
- 12:05Constance Lavonice: And then she's going to go back and take that driver's test in faith, exercising her faith, and pass.
- 12:17Constance Lavonice: Another thing that I thought about, I used to work in the field of addictions.
- 12:23Constance Lavonice: And I worked in a residential treatment center, and it was based on the 12-step program.
- 12:31Constance Lavonice: And the 12-steps are steps that addicts or alcoholics, people who have problems with alcoholism or addiction to substances, can use.
- 12:46Constance Lavonice: Now it's more spiritual of a program, but when it started, it was based on biblical and spiritual principles.
- 14:29Constance Lavonice: So it's the same thing.
- 14:31Constance Lavonice: And when I was in um working in that field, and even now you will hear the expression: it works if you work it.
- 14:43Constance Lavonice: The Bible works if you work it.
- 14:48Constance Lavonice: It means being intentional every day, applying your faith.
- 14:56Constance Lavonice: And when you apply your faith, it also supports neuroplasticity, which is your brain can change throughout your lifetime.
- 15:10Constance Lavonice: You can create new neural pathways.
- 15:15Constance Lavonice: The more you practice, the more it becomes the default mode of thinking and living.
- 15:23Constance Lavonice: James chapter two, verse twenty six says, faith without works is dead.
- 15:31Constance Lavonice: So if we have faith, we're going to demonstrate works according to our beliefs.
- 15:41Constance Lavonice: So let's exercise our faith to experience more of God.
- 15:48Constance Lavonice: In Abba Father, I thank you for each person listening to this message today.
- 15:56Constance Lavonice: And I pray you will speak to each of their hearts of your desire for all of us to experience more of you by not just talking about faith, but walking in it.