How You Live Matters: Choosing Faith Over Fear

Life is full of choices. Making decisions is one of the most challenging endeavors we face everyday.

What influences how you make decisions? Are you more motivated by fear or by faith? It’s important to know what drives you to make decisions because how you live matters.

Do you think the time is right for you to live in secure and lavishly covered homes when My house still lies in a heap of rubble?Think very carefully about your choices. You have planted a large crop, but your harvest is small. You have food to eat, but it is never enough to satisfy. You have something to drink, but you are never filled. You have clothes to wear, but they are not enough to keep you warm. You earn a salary, but the money runs out quickly, as if there are holes in your pocket. Think very carefully about your choices.

Haggai 1:4-8 (The Voice)

What do you based your decisions on? Feelings, your own plans for your life, something else?

How can you tell if you make godly decisions?

Are You Living By Fear?

Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.

Even in laughter the heart may ache, and rejoicing may end in grief.

Proverbs 14:10; 13 (NIV)

Do people know your heart? Do people know the bitterness, pain, disappointment you feel?

What are you afraid to expose about your heart to people?

Keeping in those feelings makes you live in fear and makes you distant from God.

See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.

Hebrews 12:15 (NIV)

When you live based on fear, it’s easy to make decisions based on the past.

How has your decision to hold onto the past affected your relationship with your family, friends and God?

If you were able to let go of the past, how would your relationships change with people?

Decisions to Live By Faith

But that does not mean we want to dominate you by telling you how to put your faith into practice. We want to work together with you so you will be full of joy, for it is by your own faith that you stand firm.

2 Corinthians 1:24 (NLT)

How hard do you work to build your own faith? Do you work on your faith daily? How seriously do you take your faith?

“Your own faith is what will make you stand firm” – Do you leach faith from other people or build faith from your own relationship with God?

In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

1 John 5:3-5 (NIV)

Choosing faith starts with keeping to his word. Do you find the Bible to be burdensome? It only feels burdensome when you are fearful and unbelieving.

What leap of faith do you need to take?

Personal Faith = Spiritual Catalyst

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.

Luke 15:1 (NLT)

A catalyst is defined as a person or thing that precipitates an event or change, and whose talk, enthusiasm, or energy causes others to be more friendly, enthusiastic, or energetic.

Jesus was a spiritual catalyst because he had great faith!

He believed, and as a result, others believed!

Therefore, being conscious of fearing the Lord with respect and reverence, we seek to win people over [to persuade them]. But what sort of persons we are is plainly recognized and thoroughly understood by God, and I hope that it is plainly recognized and thoroughly understood also by your consciences (your inborn discernment).

2 Corinthians 5:11 (AMP)

Choosing faith matters because without it you can’t help people and show them God.

Would you say God knows you by your faith? Does your life inspire the people around you?

3 Simple Ways to Build Personal Faith:

1. Take Action in the areas where you are lacking faith (James 2:14-26)
2. Pray: Ask God to increase your faith (Matthew 7:7-11)
3. Personal Bible Study: Make it purposeful (Romans 10:17)