“Great Faith” – Lessons From The Canaanite / Gentile Woman

You’re believing God for something but you haven’t gotten an answer or the answer you desire. How do you respond? Do you give up and walk away or do you persevere, confidently trusting that God will come through for you? There are only two people that I’ve come across in the New Testament that Jesus said had “great faith”. Both were gentiles. Great Faith is something that Jesus wants us to have. Most, if not all the people that Jesus described as having “no or little faith”, were either His disciples, His followers, or people who were very familiar with Him, including those He grew up with in Nazareth and the Pharisees. The people who were ‘closest’ to Christ were often the ones who exhibited the least faith and this is unfortunately still the case today, even in the Churches. This post focuses on the great faith of one who was far from Christ (and the Jews), a Canaanite/gentile woman, and the lessons we can all learn from her. God bless and keep the faith!

Lessons from King Manasseh – The terrible consequences of sin and HOW to repent before God

2 Chr 33 tells the story of King Manasseh, son of faithful King Hezekiah (see previous post). So evil was he that he overturned pretty much all the good acts of his father, acts that had brought Judah so much prosperity. It’s amazing how swiftly the people forgot the goodness of God when life was good and how similarly they lived like pagans in their disobedience to God. This happens time and time again in the Bible, and remains a valid warning for us today when we receive our heart’s desires. That they had an evil ruler also played its part.

The dark side of pride – when we forget our source

God who lifts man high also brings him down. In His word, God has given us the formula to unlock the windows of heaven and how to revel in His blessings. But He’s also often cautioned us about the risk of forgetting the source of our blessings. To help whip us in line is partly why God uses silent/wilderness seasons to refine us like gold, to re-calibrate our focus to Him when we lose track, or to prepare us for the next level of our walk with Him (e.g. Moses, Joseph, David, Job, Paul, Jesus etc.).