Canelo Cowboy Church – Page 4 – Canelo Cowboy Church

Words from the Pastor
Where do you put your faith brothers and sisters? I mean, I know and understand that if you are reading this you must have some sort of faith in something. Why else would you read something titled, “Words from the Pastor?” And actually, we have to have some sort of faith in something to even sit down in a chair! How do you know that the chair is going to hold you up once you do sit in it? A few years back I did a funeral service for an Army paratrooper. His family told me that he didn’t have any faith. But I knew that he did! He had to have faith in his parachute every time he jumped out of that airplane. And he had to have faith in the person that packed his chute, that they knew what they were doing. And all of these things, whether it’s sitting down in a chair to trusting the parachute packer and/or your parachute, takes blind faith!
Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” So, it takes faith to actually please God! And how do we actually please Him? Number one is acknowledging that Jesus is Lord and that He is the only way to salvation. God sent His Son to the earth to redeem us from sin and death and to show us the way to heaven through His forgiveness of our sin. Now we have to have faith to pray the sinner’s prayer and accept Christ as our Savior, and His grace will save us. We are now a child of the King through FAITH in Jesus Christ. It’s as simple as that. So, we need to have faith to obtain eternal life. Faith is belief in something and a requirement to possess other things, like eternal life.
I read somewhere this quote: “We can trust a puzzle manufacturer to put every piece of the puzzle in the box when we purchase a new puzzle, but we have trouble trusting the Creator of the universe to know what is best in our lives.” That truly takes faith doesn’t it brothers and sisters? When hard things start to happen in our lives (And I will guarantee you that hard things will happen in our lives!!), where do we, as Christians run too?
I want to challenge you to read the 11th chapter of Hebrews. It is called the “Faith Chapter.” The writer talks about a lot of the Old Testament saints and the faith they had in God. God asked them to do some really bizarre things, like building a boat miles from any navigable waters. He asked them to trust Him for a child even though they were close to 100 years old. He asks them to then sacrifice that same child on and alter just to prove how much faith they had in Him. There are multiple stories of people that had faith in God. Now were these people perfect? Did they ever make mistakes? Of course they weren’t perfect and of course they made mistakes, but their faith made them a righteous and a holy people.
How about you? Are you following God’s lead and allowing Him to build your faith? Are you going through hard times and allowing God to grow you, or are you kicking and screaming and asking God to remove your burden? Please, have faith that God knows what He’s doing. He loves you and wants all of the pieces of your puzzle to fit together. I promise.
Please let me know if you need anything. You pray for me and I’ll pray for you. Naomi and I love you all. -Pastor Steve
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