“[Jesus]said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Come and stand here.’ And he rose and stood there…. And after looking around at them all he said to him, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he did so, and his hand was restored.”
Very often faith comes as we begin to obey God!
The Bible tells us that faith is a gift from God. Faith is not something you conjure up inside yourself. Rather, it is part of God’s grace in your life that he enables you to have faith in him. This is true of saving faith, and also true of faith in the Christian life.
This man didn’t have the faith for his healing, but as he stretched out his hand, faith came! It was in the act of obedience that faith grew. If you sense God leading you into something and you don’t have the faith for it, just take the first step and you will see that God will give you the faith you need for the next step, and then the one after that. Faith comes as we obey!
The more you go through this process of obedience and faith, the more your faith grows. As your faith grows, your joy also grows. In the words of the old hymn: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
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