Progress Not Perfection | The Deep End

Hey guys, my name is Chris and welcome to The Deep End. Today, I just want to take a few minutes and talk about how to grow faith in small steps. And if you're anything like me, maybe sometimes you feel like your faith just isn't strong enough. It's not like the person of the person, you know, or just can't don't have enough to withstand whatever's going on. If you feel like that, sometimes you're like me, you're not alone. But I got a couple steps that we can do every single day to continue to grow our faith. And I want to read a scripture Romans 117. It says the righteous shall live by faith and the word righteous. To me, that's like I can't feel that that word like righteous thing seems like perfection seems like holiness or whatever. That's just not me. I've made too many mistakes. I've done too many wrongs. I'm not I'm not smart enough. I'm not great enough. But that's not what it means in this context, where righteous is meaning right standing with God. So the right standing shall live by faith, not perfection, not knowing everything, not crossing every T, dotting every I, but by faith, having faith in God and trusting in him. So it's not wishful thinking. It's assurance and reliance on God. I kind of I'm in a chair and I'm sitting here because I'm relying on the chair. I'm trusting that it's going to hold me up. The same thing we have to have with God. And it takes daily building. Faith is like a muscle. We have to we have to strengthen it.

We have to exercise it. So I got two steps for you, but you can take what you can start today. You can use and I exercise this every day and try to pursue it. First one is to seek relationship with God, seek relationship with him. Faith is trust. And if you've ever been in a relationship, you know that you got to have trust in relationship and trust is earned. And it's it's given over time. As you see the person at the word that they're true to their word, what they can what they can do is the same thing with God. So that's what we have to seek relationship. We have to continue to pursue him. So every day we can take that step, whether it's small and just spend a little time in his word or a little time in prayer or a little time in community with other people that are are on a faith journey as well. We have to do that is is a must to strengthen and to grow our faith day by day to seek relationship with him. Second step we can do is we have to take action. Faith isn't just isn't just thinking. It's not just just thinking, just having enough thought about it or anything. You have to actually take action and pursue faith. So you can do that many ways every single day. You can choose the circumstance comes up. You can choose to either worry about it or you can choose to pray about it. You can choose to take it to God and ask him to intervene on something that's going on in your life. If something happens, an offense is taken to you, you can either choose to be mad and hold on to that anger or you can choose to give forgiveness again, just a small step of faith and just trying to take a step a day by day. And these small steps will build strong foundations and say again, small steps will build strong

foundations. So day by day, you, I, we have to do that. We have to pursue these two steps day by day. And and God's going to see each one of those small steps, no matter how small they seem to us, they're significant and they're building on something strong that will last for us for a long time. So again, 117 Romans 117, the righteous shall live by not perfection, not getting it right, not knowing everything, but by pursuing faith day in and day out. So I want to pray for you before we end this time here. So, God, I just I pray that you will continue to help us to take small steps then. And when we stumble and when we fall and when we don't always get it right, I thank you that your forgiveness stands true and that you are not a God that's looking for perfection. And you're OK with our doubts sometimes, but you want us to continue to take steps to grow our faith day by day. And you, so Holy Spirit, I pray that you empower us to to find ways and have more times to seek more relationship and to take actionary steps every single day. In your name, Jesus, we pray, Amen. Thanks for watching The Deep End. I'm Chuck Mingo, one of the pastors at Crossroads, and we would love to come alongside you. If you have a prayer request or you want to reach out to Crossroads, you can do that at prisons at crossroads.net. You can also find that information on our page on the Pando app. And we would love to come alongside of you if you're looking for re-entry support. You can email reentry at the47.org and we would love to come alongside you in that way. Let me pray for you. God, thank you for the person who is watching right now. I thank you that you know them, you see them, and you are for them. And we are for them at Crossroads. And I pray, God, that they would sense that. I pray for joy. I pray for peace. And I pray that they would be able to walk in your power in a unique and fresh way.

In Jesus name, Amen.