For the most part, we are pretty familiar with the fact that we must have faith and believe what we pray in order to receive what God has for us. However, sometimes our actions may stray off course with what we have prayed especially when it takes longer for our prayers to be answered than we expected. As a result, we find ourselves engaging in behaviors that are the very opposite of what we have prayed. We must remember to make sure our actions and words remain aligned with our prayers if we truly want to see them fulfilled.

When we pray, our daily behavior must reflect our belief that God’s word will accomplish everything it was sent to accomplish, whether the manifestation is immediate or over time.

Research shows that the average person makes approximately 35,000 decisions a day. Think about it. That’s approximately 2.5 decisions every minute! Imagine if every decision we made was habitually based on the Word of God. Oh, how different our lives and the world would be! When a situation is presented to us, we often speak something about it before we actually do anything. This means we tend to speak into existence what we’re thinking about the decision we’re making. However, when we decide to speak the “reality” of the situation rather than the “potential” of it, then we continue to have what we have rather than what God said we could have.

Looking at the reality of a situation should be for the purpose of seeing beyond it to speak a better solution into our life and future.

Many of us are very familiar with the scripture “I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalms 34:1, KJV). Although I truly believe it is our intention to live by this confession, it is important that we examine whether or not our actual behavior is in alignment. Praising God means that we are willing to extol, rejoice, speak, and even shout about His awesomeness and greatness in our lives. It means we are willing to be thankful at all times in every situation and verbally speak good things about God from our hearts regardless of our circumstances. Continuous praise goes forth from our mouths in the good and challenging times regardless of how we feel. Contingency praise is when we allow our situation and circumstances (or our own knowledge) to determine whether or not we are going to give God the praise He deserves.

Our life’s circumstances should not dictate the intensity of our praise! God is ALWAYS worthy of the greatest praise we can humanly give.  

As much as we would like to think that “faith” is a complex phenomenon, it’s not. Sometimes, we want to be excused from demonstrating faith because it can make us vulnerable and in some cases, just makes us look plain ole’ stupid. Nevertheless, I’ve come to accept that faith is simple, faith is totally required by God, and not having faith in Jesus Christ is sin. In any given situation, we either demonstrate faith or we don’t and we either trust God or we don’t.

Faith puts us on and in the path of God’s blessings requiring us to believe God before He shows us anything visible or tangible.