Bible Verse of the Day Thursday October 7th 2021

 Luke 17:5 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

Jesus’ closest followers, the few that He had chosen to become the 12 Apostles, asked Him to increase their faith. The opposite of faith is doubt, which is the natural result of focusing on the obstacles we have to face instead of trusting that the Holy Spirit of God will lead, guide, and direct our every step. Doubt gratifies our desire for self-contentment and self-fulfillment. We don’t open our eyes in the mornings and say to ourselves: “Today, I’m going to doubt God.” Doubt comes along when we focus on worldly matters instead of Godly matters when we fail to begin our days with prayer and God’s Word (Romans 10:17). God wants to see to our every need; He wants to handle all of our problems every day. The problem arises when we decide that we can handle them better than God, and since we can’t even come close to accomplishing that feat, doubt starts to cloud over our daily walk.

Doubting has another consequence that Satan has woven into the fabric of doubt itself. Satan has created the illusion of contagiousness around our doubt to catch as many people as He can in His snare of doubt. The people that we come into contact with every day, our family members, co-workers, the store clerks where we get our morning coffee, our brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus are all affected by our doubt, and in the same manner, we are affected by the doubt of others. It is more contagious than any cold or flu symptoms, and its carrier is our words. (Proverbs 6:2).

To dispel any doubt that we may become ensnared by, let our thoughts and conversation be: I may not understand why I’m going through this trial or tribulation, but I am sure that God knows and that He has a plan and it will turn out for my good and His glory (Romans 8:28). There is an old Native American legend known as the evil and good wolf. The elders of the tribes would tell the young braves that there are two wolves inside of every person, a good wolf, and an evil wolf, and they are always at war with each other. The young braves would ask: “Which one will win the war,” to which the elders of the tribe would say: “the one you feed.” By feeding our faith, we will invariably starve our doubt to death. Robert H. Schuller once said: “Have faith in your faith and doubt your doubts.”James 1:6 says: But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 

Doubting is the line of demarcation that separates belief and unbelief, with a proclivity to the latter. Faith is a most precious gift from God, but if it is not put into use, it will soon fade away from our spiritual sight. The shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16) will extinguish all of the flaming arrows launched our way by Satan, but we have to take it up. We must never forget that the continuation of our faith, like the beginning of our faith, comes from God, and we can do nothing apart from God, but through Him, we can do all things (Philippians 4:13).