Faith

Okay, so a few weeks ago when I said I was going to try and keep this up to date, I didn't imagine all the moving of stuff and unpacking I would have to go through as well as all the welcome week stuff and that I would be so busy meeting new people. School is finally settling down and I cleaned out the binder as well as the backpack so that as the 2nd week starts, I am able to stay more organized and get things going smoothly as soon as possible. God is doing amazing things and I know that he is at work in many of the kids here and in my life. This weekend some of the guys and I hung out and talked a little and we learned a lot about each other. Our baseball team sees adversity on the field everyday and each one of us learned about some struggles that our fellow team members face. As individuals, we could judge each other and say we are bad people or that we have made poor choices, or we can hold each other accountable and understand where our fellow "brothers" come from. As I have written about before, the past should not hold us down and when we deal with things with God, He cleans us up and makes us new again. It is not easy to share things with fellow believers face to face but being that we are bonding and forming lifelong friendships, we have to be open and we have to be willing to let each other know what we are struggling with. In regards to being forgiven from God, it takes the faith and willingness to accept responsibility for our decisions otherwise we can never find forgiveness.

Now you may think that I am crazy and that all it takes is to ask forgiveness from God and it is automatically done. Well, let us take a look at Romans 10:9-11 which states, "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the scripture says, 'Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.' " I have been reading Matthew because in one of my classes this semester, we have to read the whole New Testament afresh and if the Romans reference was not enough, let us take a look at Matthew. I have noticed that in Matthew, the central theme seems to be Faith. There are several times in the book when Jesus talks about the faith of people, "Your faith has healed you," or, "According to your faith will it be done to you," and another time, "Go! It will be done just as you believed it would," yet again in Chapter 9, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven." These are just a few examples about how the book's main theme is faith. Without faith we are nothing and Hebrews 11:1 states, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." This verse illustrates the Matthew examples very well in that the people who came to Jesus did not know whether he could actually do what they had heard, but they had faith and even if it was small, they still had what Jesus was looking for. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus states, " 'Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Faith is so crucial to living a life that God is looking for. The disciples had the power to cast out the demons from the little boy but they did not have faith that they could actually do it and we have the power to turn the world around for God but we have to actually believe it is true and have faith that our efforts will bear good fruit. Until we completely grasp this concept, we cannot do anything.

Hopefully these posts will become more of a regular occurrence but we will see how school and baseball goes tomorrow. I hope you are all doing well and if there is anything you would like for me to pray about for you, I will most certainly remember that and please continue to pray for me. I know God is here for me but I still struggle and I still need to hold onto him 100% of the time.

God Bless,

Joseph Robinson