Sunday, September 20, 2009

Building Your Faith

One thing I love and enjoy about my sweetie is our similar passion to build people up, to encourage people. We both love to encourage and be there for people, listen to them and sometimes even try and fix things or give words of wisdom. We have big hearts, but we also face a little frustration as well, dealing with people who come to us.

We talked about how people come to us about the same problems over and over and over...until I thought of an awesome real life, PRACTICAL example.

Habitat for Humanity
is a wonderful Christian non-profit ministry focused on building houses for people in need of decent shelter. But they do not simply build houses and then GIVE them away. Nooo.

They require a certain number of hours of WORK to be put in by the future homeowners and require them to pay monthly mortgage payments and a downpayment, which helps Habitat to continue to build new houses for other families. So in other words, they require the homeowners take OWNERSHIP and INVEST in their new home by helping to BUILD their home. It's almost fact that people appreciate things more when they play an active role in it as opposed to someone giving it to them. You definitely appreciate things more when you work for it!

Not only do they require the homeowners to take OWNERSHIP and INVEST, but they also GIVE BACK to the very same organization that helped them to get that house through paying their mortgage to Habitat. So they are taught to invest and then reinvest in others. They are blessed to be a blessing.

I say all of this to say, it is almost USELESS to build someone else's faith up over time if they are not building it up as well. We should ALL be reading the Word to build ourselves up in faith, and not just simply relying on our pastors or those around us to build up our faith without us having a role in it! This is an ACTIVE FAITH, where our PARTICIPATION is required. This is not passive growth, like plants, who just need water to grow. No no, we MUST play a part in building ourselves up, we MUST learn to encourage ourselves and to build our faith! We cannot simply just go to church and be spoonfed and call up elders/pastors/friends stronger in the faith whenever we are going through something. It is okay every now and then to do that, but at some point you MUST learn to get past that stage and mature in your walk with Christ!

For those stronger in your faith (because we ALL have a measure of faith-Romans 12:6, some of us more than others), build up/edify your brothers and sisters in Christ but also encourage them to build up their own faith as well.

Ok I think that is all for now. lol. I'll have a more normal post next time, I'll try! lol

1 comment:

  1. It's like the "Teach a man to fish..." parabole

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