“And from the days of John the Baptist until the present time, the kingdom of heaven has endured violent assault, and violent men seize it by force [as a precious prize – a share in the heavenly kingdom is sought with the most ardent zeal and intense exertion]. Matt 11:12 (Amplified)
Any connoisseur worth his salt will tell you that without some basic ingredients, you can never make good soup. Well, the same rule applies when dealing with the issue of cultivating forceful faith, which never fails to achieve its objective. The three Ds that constitutes the essential bedrock of forceful faith are as follows: desperation, determination and dependency.
Forceful faith will impress on you the need to come out of your comfort zone or alter your way of thinking and thus predispose you to accepting change. It will make you so desperate that you will have no choice but to seek God. Desperation forces us to jettison the deplorable status quo in our desire to seek the better outcome on offer from God. So, if you are willing to proceed with things the way they presently are, it is a sure sign that you are not desperate enough and are consequently not ready to receive God’s solution.
Your desperation to see change must necessarily be accompanied by a determination or commitment to leave no stone unturned until you experience that promised change in circumstance. Your determination must feed on your desperation or it would grow tired and ultimately fall short of the desired goal. Desperation provides the incentive to keep moving on, while determination is what keeps you going and enables you to surmount all obstacles to reaching your goal. It keeps your passion burning until you achieve your desired end. However, these two are still not enough to get the job done as you also require dependency.
You have to understand that however desperate and determined we are, nothing is possible without God’s help; hence our dependency on Him. Every year, people have been desperate and determined to do something about their situation. They ended up killing themselves. This is because they lacked dependency on God as the solution to all problems and the source of life. So you have to get to the point where you can sincerely declare like the late Mother Theresa that God is all you want because God is all you have. Where an alternative to God still exists, faith can never be forceful or focused enough to punch a hole through the barrier and achieve its objective. Our surrender to and dependency on God must be total.
Once these three essential ingredients are present, you are a candidate to experience the power of God in your life. The difference between paying lip service to desiring change and actually experiencing change are the 3Ds. So, get desperate and determine never to stop until you reach you goal as you proceed in total dependence on God.
Prayer:
Lord, take me out of my comfort zone. Make me desperate enough to seek your glory. Stiffen my resolve so that I will not stop short of that goal, and cause me to be totally yielded to your will so that I can possess my share of the kingdom your word had made available to me in Jesus name. Amen.