Greg Laurie Daily Devotion - July 1, 2010

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Believing God

And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. 
—Hebrews 11:6

There always will be people who will tell you that you are going to fail, that you never will amount to anything. I had a teacher who wrote on my report card, "Greg Laurie will never amount to anything, because all he does is sit in class all day long and look out the window and daydream and draw cartoons." Was it true that I did those things? Absolutely. But I wasn't real encouraged when I read what my teacher wrote on my report card.

Yet throughout my ministry I have heard the same kind of things. I was 20 years old when we started what is known today as Harvest Christian Fellowship, and people said, "You can't start a church. You are too young. That will never work. You are not qualified." Later, when we started our crusade ministry, people said, "Oh, that won't work. Crusades are over with. No one wants to go to crusades anymore." Everything we have done, we have had our opposition and our naysayers. In fact at this point in life, I have come to expect it. If I don't get opposition I wonder what is wrong. Where are the critics? Where are the people telling us we can't do this?

I am not advocating false bravado. I am not saying that we should be presumptuous. But I am saying that as followers of Christ, we should take some steps of faith and see what God will do. I would rather try and fail than never try at all.

Some people always will be critical and throw a wet blanket on everything. And sadly for those people, things seldom happen. But for the ones who are willing to take the risks, God can do some pretty amazing things. What risk is He asking you to take today?

Copyright © 2010 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved. 
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

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