Speaker 0 00:00:00 This podcast is brought to you by Dr. Alfonzo Brown and as a product of guiding life ministries, that podia.com. Hey, when you think of all the amazing gifts and weapons of spiritual warfare that God could have given us, why do you think he gave us the word and told us to use this practice, which he calls faith. Now we all know God is the most intelligent and most powerful of all beings. So there must be something to this concept of faith that he believes it can help us to solve all the things that we all face. And he gave us great examples in the apostles, the prophets, and of course his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So join me today in this episode of life's lessons and God,
Speaker 1 00:00:59 As we attempt to tackle the issue of faith, what it means and how we should use it. I'm Dr. <inaudible> and thank you for joining.
Speaker 2 00:01:21 And I'm going to borrow, um, my texts today from first Peter five and verse seven. And according to the new international version, it reads, cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Now, this is a powerful and important scripture. It tells us to cast all of our anxiety. Not some of it, it doesn't say, Oh, just do what you feel comfortable with. And then whatever's left over. It says to give it to God. And the reason why I want us to meditate on the fact that this scripture is telling us to cast all of Ang anxiety on him. Because oftentimes we feel that if we can't do it on our own, and somehow we are defective and many times, um, if the enemy of our souls works against us, by making us feel like we're less, this happens and join an excerpt from a book that I've been reading, it's called you are the beloved it's daily meditation.
Speaker 2 00:02:38 Since one rain, when, and in his book, he talks about the trap of self connection. And I'll just quote what it says here. It says over the years, I've come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection success, popularity and power indeed present a great imitation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the March larger temptation itself rejection we had when we have come to believing in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, it's self rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone or abandoned, I find myself thinking, well, that proves once again that I am a nobody, my dark side says I am no good. I deserve to be pushed aside for gotten rejected and abandoned self rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that clauses, the beloved being the beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. So for my listeners today, I want to say, do you understand? And you get, now I'll read this phrase again.
Speaker 2 00:04:06 As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me as soon as I'm rejected, left alone or abandoned, I find myself thinking, well, that proves once again that I am in nobody, my dark side says I am no good. I deserve to be pushed around for gotten rejected and abandoned. That leads to the culture of self rejection. For me, I have personally experienced this multiple times and experience it. Oftentimes when people that I care about most, and one of the reasons why it hurts so much when it happens is because I often think of myself as a given person, um, all my life from a very young age, I've tried my best to not just think about myself, but to think about others. I go out of my way to support others. And oftentimes we'll place the needs of others, of myself as God asks us to what I found.
Speaker 2 00:05:05 However, in my adult life is that a lot of times, it seems like once you can no longer provide given need for someone, or they have a disagreement with you, then they very quickly and very comfortably feel easy, casting you aside and dismissing you. This often leads me to those periods of introspection. And self-reflection where I feel as if I don't have any through friends. And I think what's being described here by our offer. It's that we have to start at our core and believe that we are beloved. And unlike humans, God, doesn't just love us and care for us because of what we can do for him, what our abilities are. He loves us and cares for us just as we are. Oftentimes as humans, we put a tremendous amount of care and concern on what people can do for us. And also perceptions of what people look like.
Speaker 2 00:06:11 We often don't acknowledge people's talents, their gifts, their blessings, until they've made it so to speed. And, you know, I often told people, especially people that I love very much, and I don't see them for their perfect sense. I see them for where they are now and what they can become. And even though where they are now might not be something that's desirable, it's that love for where they're going and what they can become that potential and enables me to keep loving them and to not only love them, but to pray and act in ways to encourage them so that they continue to have that for myself. But I've learned that, you know, even though someone might reject you and say that, you know, you're not worth anything, you have to believe that you are, we all have to spend what we call this alone time.
Speaker 2 00:07:10 This is the time when you're by yourself. But realize that even though you might have an alone time, God doesn't have any alone time. God is always looking for you. If you don't believe that. So the case, and we'll talk about this at another time. When I, I challenge you to read the story of the prodigal son, the other, in that parable who represents God, he didn't just wait back. No, he ran to his son. He had everything. But the one thing that he desired, which was communication connection with his son, he ran out to meet his son and to bring him home. And when we pray to God and we think about him, it brings us back to this verse in first, Peter five and seven. Again, it's just to cast all your anxiety on him because he cares. So one of the concepts that I'm going to talk about again, and again and again, as we do this series is I'm going to mention and talk about need to maintain faith and not only to maintain Bay, which is the belief point, but it's to maintain action because faith combined with action yields results, it takes the supernatural and brings it into the natural.
Speaker 2 00:08:27 And what is faith? My ass, we as Christians, we tend to talk about faith. Solid base is the belief that what God says he's going to do, he will do. And where we have problems with faith is that it always hasn't necessarily occurred during our time. And that's okay because God is the author and constructor of time. And time is always the perfect time when your children are young, they want a variety of things and certain things, you know, you can't give to them. You can't put your five-year-old behind the car and say, drive, even though they might want to do that. Cause they see you do that. I believe waiting on God is the same. So when I think of faith, I think of it as those dreams and desires that we're hoping for wishing for. And then the evidence of them is coming.
Speaker 2 00:09:24 It might be in our imagination or in our mind, but through action, prayer and action, we bring them into ING ear. And this is what provides the manifestation of the lesson. So if you want to think of faith and remember what it means, you can think of it as this acronym, faithfully and intentionally fasting him. And what do I mean by that? It means that we are faithfully and intentionally trusting in our Lord and our creator revive those things that he says and that's faith. And we believe in it so much that we act on them. You might say, this is foolishness. Why would I do that? Well, I can maintain that. You do that now. Anyway, when you go to the bank to withdraw money, you take out your money. They slipping in your ATM card, or you write that withdrawal slip. But your expectation is that the money will be there.
Speaker 2 00:10:26 That's faith in the banking system. When you get up in the morning and you go and you eat your breakfast, you expect not to get poisoned. That's faith in the food handler. And the preparation. When you get in your car, you're expected to start. When you're flying a plane, you expect it not to drop out of the sky. That's faith in the mechanics of the vehicle that is transporting you. And if you look at a lot of different things, when you sit in a chair, you expect it's not going to break. When you walk up the stairs in a building, you don't expect the building to collapse. These are all things that we take by faith and our actions. What we do demonstrates, if you did not believe that your car was safe to drive, then you probably would never drive.
Speaker 2 00:11:14 So the issue here is that we have to have faith. And once we have the belief in the dream, we then put actions and we trust in God that he will manifest the promise associated. So here today, as we read our, our verse or meditation, it asks you to meditate on this verse, say it out loud, you know, seven times or more today, and just try to memorize it. It's first Peter five verse seven, and believe it in its entirety. It says, again, cast all of your anxiety on him because he cares for you. If you're worried about, I mean, my children loved me, cast it on him. Do my friends care about me, cast it on him, Lord I'm alone. And I feel weak. I need your help cast it on him. Lord. I can't make this financial demand, cast it on him. He cares for you.
Speaker 2 00:12:08 And just like you have faith. When you demonstrate faith in him, his faith gets activated in you and he will move on your behalf. God is the author and finisher of our faith. It's often in the finish. So I live with you today and be aware of the trap of self rejection. Things will come into your life, which will try to make you feel that you're not worth. And you don't deserve. You'll notice that people are very quick to, we used to call him Jamaica, malice, you, they won't talk to you. They'll put you down and you don't want to go through life. Walking on actions, the Lord, Jesus Christ said he came that they might have life and have life more abundantly. And I tell you, my friend, if you trust in him and you work with him, you will be blessed. You will help you.
Speaker 2 00:13:08 And he will help us to grow. I believe in this, I look to him, let's end this session with a prayer, Lord God, an immigrant's son, the Lord Jesus in whom all power westerns are given. We thank you for your word. And we thank you for this scripture. From first Peter, five or seven, to cast all our anxiety on you because he care us father. And may these words not just be spoken in our lips, but I think get down into our hearts and marinate and help us to overcome the tramp of self-rejection to realize that we are beloved and we are blessed. And if you said it, no one else can move it. No matter how they try to make us feel blessed. We thank you all God. For this time, I pray that these words that I speak bless the hearers of God, where they're spoken in love. And I pray that they do not return empty, but they bless those who hear it and blessed them so that they can get more out of this life, which is another one of the promises that you gave us, that you came, that we would have life and have life more than that until we speak again, my God bless it, father, in the name of your son, the Lord Jesus, by the power of your spirit, that indwells me. We give thanks. Thank you for listening today and join us next week. For another episode of
Speaker 0 00:14:52 Life's lessons in God's word, please subscribe to our podcast at life's lessons. God's word.org, and please visit our
[email protected]. That's guiding life ministries at orgy until next time peace be with you. God's love always.
