The Word To Live By:10-19-25
Phil Waggoner
All things are possible to him that believes. Mark 9:23
The Word To Live By: Understand, all of these biblical doctrines that I am discussing are pieces of the main doctrine of “The righteous man shall live by faith.” And if you are a born-again believer then you are the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). Living by faith is a lifestyle. That doesn’t mean you throw out the practical things of life. Before I was married, I had a roommate that thought living by faith meant you didn’t need to have a job, that if you believed hard enough, God would just meet your needs somehow, some way. That somehow and some way was usually me and our other roommate. To his credit, he did also believe that faith came by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, so he did spend a lot of time in the Word and one day came across the scripture in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that says, “If a man doesn’t work, he doesn’t eat.” He immediately repented and went out, and I’ve never known him to not have at least two if not three jobs at the same time since. God didn’t call us to be a fool in our behavior but to be wise and practical. But that doesn’t mean you can’t trust God to show you the practical things to make decisions in and/or intervene in your life when necessary. There will be times in life (maybe every day for a while until you get the hang of living by faith) that “practical” doesn’t pay the bill. That’s when you need the next doctrine that you must know and understand and that is “Nothing is impossible with God,” (Luke 1:37). Paul said in a letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:5) that there are people who hold to a form of godliness but deny the power of God. Stay away from them. Miracles, and the intervention of God to do the impossible in your life, did not end with the death of the Apostles, or at the end of the book of Acts. I expect and believe for God to intervene in my life every day, every time I come up against a situation that is impossible for me to accomplish. Just last week, I was driving on an unfamiliar interstate in an unfamiliar rented RV. I was doing five MPH under the speed limit, about 65 MPH, when a pickup truck came around me doing all of 80. He barely cleared me when he cut back in on a slight curve in the road and stood on his brakes to avoid rearending the car in front of him that was stopped. We’re talking two feet from his bumper when I hit my brakes. The lanes on both sides of mine were stopping so there was no place for me to go. Out of my mouth came, “Praise the Lord!” and we stopped, and not only did I not hit him, but he also avoided the car in front of him (which physics will tell you shouldn’t have happened). My son looked at me wide-eyed and said, “How did you do that?” I said, “I didn’t. That was our version of God parting the Red Sea.” You might be thinking, that wasn’t a miracle of God. You would change your mind if you had been there. My point is, get rid of the doubt and unbelief that says, “God doesn’t or God can’t because …” That’s a lie from the father of lies.
Read through the Bible in a year: Revelation 19; Isaiah 5-6; Psalms 109:20-31;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 19, Luke 12:1-30, Titus 1
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160