Acts 9:13
Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem:
Ananias was a great Christian for many reasons, but mainly because he did not let fear stop him from obeying God’s command to meet up with Saul. Saul was one of the most feared men of his day, but God still commanded Ananias to go and help him. One thing that is very evident is that the Lord did not care that Ananias shared his fear with Him, but the Lord still expected Ananias to obey by faith to help Saul. To Ananias’ credit, he went his way to meet Saul despite the fear he had in his heart. His desire to obey God was greater than the fear he had in his heart of Saul, and it was the faith that God knew what He was doing that allowed Ananias to help Saul, the future apostle Paul, grow in the Lord.
There are many ingredients to faith that we must consider. The ingredients of faith are availability, fear, doubt, question, and obedience. You will find all of these ingredients show up when God asks you to do something by faith. However, the key ingredient is obedience. All the other ingredients of faith will stop God from doing great things through your life if you don't obey. Faith is dead without obedience to God. Faith cannot move mountains if you don't obey God to attempt to move the mountains. Faith has always done in the believer what God commanded them to do, but the believer had to obey God before faith became a reality. The biggest question is whether you are willing to obey God despite the fear, doubt, and question about whether you are doing the right thing. Every person of great faith had all the ingredients of faith in their lives, but they obeyed, and that is why they are a person of great faith; they obeyed when the other ingredients told them to wait or hide.
I was talking to a young preacher who wasn’t sure whether he should do something. I asked him if he was afraid of failure, to which he responded that he was afraid that he would fail. I told him that the fact there is fear in what he knew he was supposed to do shows that God has already given him the answer to what he should do. The question is whether he would obey God’s command of faith and step out or disobey God’s command and stay where he was.
When you don't obey faith, you are disobeying God. There is no other way to put this. If God commanded you to do something by faith, you must obey even when you are nervous about failure and scared about what might happen. The fact that you are scared means you must trust God. Nobody has ever failed who trusted God.
What has God asked you to do by faith? The easiest way to know what God wants you to do by faith is to identify what brings out the other ingredients of faith in you. When something you are asked to do brings out fear, doubt, and question, you must realize these things are faith’s identifiers to let you know what God wants you to do, but you must obey if you are to see faith become a reality.
Faith is scary, and the fact that you are scared does not make you a bad person. When fear, doubt, and question present themselves, go to God in prayer and tell Him your fears, but obey in faith. Obedience is taking that first step. The hardest step of faith is the first step of obedience, but once you obey by faith, you will find God always shows up and shows His power to help you do what He asks you to do by faith.
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