I’m very excited by this week’s topic, one that is very important to me personally. It was great to see the views of yesterday’s post. I love it when I get feedback that tells me people needed to hear what I have to say. It was through the pushing of a friend, who I’m looking forward to working with on a few motivational projects that I decided to work on this week’s topic. While meeting on Friday with my friend, Jessica Rector, we were talking about this week’s theme. I told her that I had looked into doing this theme for weeks, but have waited because I did not feel I was ready for it. She convinced me to do it and I see now that she was right.
Well today I want to show you how faith and fear can be total opposites. This past weekend I took some action in a few areas that I have not worked on before. It got me to thinking of how many times I refused to take action to make things happen. Sunday I went out roller skating with some friends and found it to be a great learning experience for me to use in many of the topics that I write about. I put my skates on, then slowly moved towards the floor. It has been seven, maybe even eight years, since I have been on skates. I had to make a big step down to start skating and that made me nervous, but once I decided to give myself the first push, it took all of about ten minutes for me to be comfortable on wheels again.
I took the action based on the faith that I knew how to do this. As a teen I was a weekly regular at the skate rink in my town. In my early 20s I actually worked a few events to help out around the rink.
As I looked at my own actions out on the skate floor I watched as others – young and old, new skaters, pro skaters – rode those wheels around the rink. For those young skaters who rolled around with fear, you could see they had a parent helping them; some of the older people moved very slowly hanging onto walls, or asking friends to go with them. They had the walkers with wheels on the bottom of them for you to hold onto as you wheeled around the rink.
When we think of the actions of faith, or the fear of what might or might not happen our thinking shows in how we approach a situation. If you decide to act on faith, you take the step out, take action; if you are still living with fear you tend to rely on the actions of someone else who has faith. That’s the basis for my thinking that faith is your own actions; fear requires other’ actions.
If you never decide to step out and take the actions needed to strengthen your own faith, and only choose to ask others to take action you will continue your walk in fear and never gain the faith that is needed.
I first started looking at this when another friend mentioned on FaceBook a worry that their partner might be losing a job. Many at the company were facing layoffs and the fear was they might be next. They put the words out to ask for prayer. Yet when they were presented with some options that could help their situation they backed away in fear. I’m not saying that each time we ask for prayer we are asking in fear, but the actions that follow are what should be an indicator as to your personal stand on fear versus faith.
If you are asking for prayer and not willing to take action, but ask others to take action on your behalf, then you have fear driving you. To overcome this you must take a step out in faith, just like I did to head out to the roller rink floor. If you ask others to make the choices for you, it will never get you what you want.
This reminds me of the time my friend Tim prayed for me over a personal battle I was having, a health issue where I was dealing with breathing and coughing problem for months. I was also dealing with a lack of faith in my personal walk. Before praying over me, Tim told me something he tells everyone before prayer. “I can pray for you, but it’s your faith that will heal you, not my prayer:” That was something I had never heard, but it has stuck to me since then.
So are you relying on the actions of others, or are you relying on your own actions in whatever circumstance you are going through? If you do not take that first step with faith you will be stuck in a constant state of fear until you do. So what’s your faith step today?
I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. It’s time for you to step out in faith and live the life you always wanted, to love what you do and those you share life with. Let’s get your plan started to become the RockStar in your world today.
