Becoming a Man of Unwavering Faith Read Free Page B

the apostles weren’t bigger than life—they were flesh and blood just like you and me. Somehow, because they’re in the Bible, we think they weren’t like us. But that’s not true. They were ordinary men, with wives and children and bills and all of life’s challenges.
    In the book of 1 Kings 17 and 18, the Old Testament prophet Elijah was a man of great faith, one whom I admire deeply, but the apostle James tells that he also “was a man with a nature like ours” (James 5:17; 1 Kings 17:1).
Nature
means “passions and sufferings.” He was an ordinary man just like you and me, subject to the same passions we have.
    Yet Elijah had such great faith that
when he prayed that it wouldn’t rain, it didn’t… for three and half years!
“And he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit” (James 5:17–18; 1 Kings 18:42–45).
    You’re probably thinking,
Pastor Osteen, how can a person have enough faith to stop the rain—period? Let alone for three and half years.
    To answer that, let’s start where the Word of God starts. The Bible says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). It also states that without faith in God, it’s impossible to be born again or to go to heaven: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God
, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).
    So that we all have the same capacity to receive the gift of salvation, God has given each of us the same measure of faith. The apostle Paul wrote,
“God has dealt to each one a measure of faith”
(Romans 12:3). God wants everyperson to come to saving faith, and we all start out with the same measure, the same size of faith—enough capacity to bring us to salvation.
    Know what the Word says, take it to God in faith, and believe He will cause it to come to pass in your life.
    Once we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, through our salvation we “become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and we can never be more righteous than that. We cannot grow in righteousness.
    But we can and must grow in faith. Clearly, the Bible says, “Your faith is growing more and more” (2 Thessalonians 1:3 NIV ). To become a man of unwavering faith requires that you grow mightily in your faith as Elijah did in his life.
H OW F AITH G ROWS
    The more you use your arms and legs, the more you walk and jog and exercise, the stronger and fitter your muscles become. But if you don’t use a muscle, you’ll lose it.
    That’s the way faith is. Faith willgrow as you use it. The more you use it, the stronger it grows. But this growth is a gradual process.
    You aren’t disappointed in a baby because he can’t stand or run a marathon. You don’t expect a baby to do that, but you do expect the child to grow, become stronger, start crawling, then pull himself up and hold on to things, and finally to take a step or two. Eventually, you know the child will be able to walk and run.
    That’s the way your faith is. It grows gradually as you use it. Many people make the mistake of trying to jump up and run in their faith life when they are just babies learning to crawl.
    I asked a man one time, “What do you do?” He said, “I don’t work. I just live by faith.” It was no surprise to me that he was deep in debt. That kind of behavior is not faith; it’s ignorance. The Bible says if any man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
    I remember when my congregation and I began to believe God for our first new buildings. Our first sanctuary had been converted from a feed store and seated 234 people. In 1969, I had been having great evangelistic meetings all across the country, and things