Faith is powerful

Jul 5, 2012

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English: Clement Stone, Chairman, Combined Ins... — English: Clement Stone, Chairman, Combined Insurance Company of America meets Gerald Ford in the Oval Office. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I heard a preacher talking about his mother battling cancer. She wanted to keep her faith strong and her attitude good, so she used what some people call “props.” Props are anything that you can see, feel, touch, taste, etc. that helps you build your faith. She put up pictures of herself before she was sick, when she was vibrant and healthy. After getting sick she turned a yellow color and lost a lot of weight. If she spent time looking at herself in the mirror, it didn’t help her faith or attitude. Seeing the pictures of herself healthy helped her believe that she could overcome cancer.

She put up a photo of herself riding a horse, having fun and in many different poses. People prayed for her. Slowly she beat cancer and is healthy now and has been for many years.

Another lady I read about had breast cancer. She kept her faith strong by being thankful for her healing that she believed had occurred. Every morning and afternoon she constantly said “thank you for my healing.” In the evening she watched funny movies with her husband because laughter has a healing effect. She was healed of cancer without any chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

I am not suggesting that you avoid medicine; I take medicine when I am sick. But certainly there are people who take medicine and continue to get worse. Others combine prayer and faith with their medicine and heal quickly.

You have heard of placebos. They give a sugar pill to certain people and the real medicine to others in a group. Some people get healed by the placebo. Why do some get healed by placebos? It’s because they have strong faith. I used to think they were suckers. Not anymore. Now I feel they are champions.

Many medical doctors believe that a positive mental attitude overcomes many illnesses. The opposite is also true. My grandmother told me that when she was in the hospital she began to feel depressed. She told the doctor about her feelings and how she wanted to get out of the hospital and go home. He let her go home because he knew the depression was not conducive to healing.

Sam Walton, the man who founded Walmart said “If people believe in themselves, it is amazing what they can accomplish.”

W. Clement Stone, who became rich by selling life insurance because he had powerful faith said “Anything the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Jesus said “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed (very little) you can tell a mountain to move and it will do it. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20 Note: mountain meant difficulty, just as in our modern idiom, “don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.”

Bringing about strong, unwavering faith in your life takes a lot of time. One way to bring about faith is to repeat promises (some people call them affirmations). For example, repeat any of the quotes above. Say it out loud ten times every day and it will strengthen your faith. There are many other things you can do to increase your faith. I wrote a book about that very subject, there is way too much information to write in today’s blog, but I plan to add ideas about this to my blog often.

What do you think, does faith work? Leave a comment or click Press This if you want.

Comments

14 responses to “Faith is powerful”

NotDownOrOut

July 9, 2012

I see, Brad, that you have faith and share with others what you have learned through grace and experience. That’s a wonderful gift you share with the rest of us. Thank you for doing it.

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sowninpeace

July 9, 2012

I find it facinating that people say they dont have enough faith, hope, love etc.for any given situation put before them. God does not expect us to do things he hasnt already taught us and instilled into us. You do not expect a toddler to use the toilet until you have taught him, Nor would you accept him to say that he doesnt have enough faith to do it. You stand by him speaking positive words into his heart YES YOU CAN until he has learned to do it and are relived and proud when he masters it. God stands by us too, through our own “toilet training , so to speak. we need to take our own advice and start speaking postive words to ourselves and maybe then we our belive we already have the faith God has put in our being

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geniientertainmenttv

July 9, 2012

You are absolutely right and I have experienced this many times and met people who use their faith to overcome everyday, it is something we ought to develop and use to live a great life, anything is possible!

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davidstrachan611

July 7, 2012

Jesus was playing Peter at golf and his first drive flew into the deep rough and a rabbit picked up the ball and ran towards the trees and an eagle swooped down and picked up the rabbit and flew off and a lightning bolt came out of a cloud and hit the eagle which dropped the rabbit which let go of the ball which landed on the green and rolled into the hole and Peter said, Jesus, are you here to play golf or just to fool about?

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sweetkrispea

July 6, 2012

Using props and affirmations is a great idea and the same idea has been encouraged for those looking to make any life change such as losing weight, etc. I don’t want to say the survival outcome of the two examples is secondary, but I think these tactics are helpful even if the person does not survive whatever traumatic experience he or she is going through. Death does not mean defeat or that the prop method didn’t work. The person could have experienced emotional healing and achieved a sense of calm in preparation for death. If it improves the quality of life, it is successful, even if death is the end result.

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fiztrainer

July 6, 2012

I truly believe in faith. However, growing up as a Christian, I have come across lots of people who have thought faith to be some quick fix. I like what you said here. “Bringing about strong, unwavering faith in your life takes a lot of time.” “Faith” is not some magical thing you can apply like “Hocus Pocus.” I think you must apply to your faith and that takes a LOT of work. I believe everyone has faith. It’s not the faith we lack, but what we put our faith in. Sometimes, I think we apply the term faith only to positive things, but I think faith applies to whatever we believe. I’ll use weight for instance. If we believe we will never lose weight, we will probably never lose weight no matter how many diets we start. This is the reason it’s hard work. It requires a “renewing of our minds”. We have to change (many times) our mindset to see faith “create” what we are after. I’m not saying it’s that black and white, but I do believe faith is quite powerful. The verse you quoted about having faith as a mustard seed pretty much sums it up.

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Kip Light

July 6, 2012

I’m not positive that faith works ALL the time, because we don’t have knowledge of Heavenly Fathers plan for us. If it is our time to go, then we will go no matter how much faith we have. On the other hand, lack of faith can have an effect on our recovery and certainly will make the time spent ill much worse than it would be with faith.

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sojourner

July 6, 2012

Yes, I believe so. Faith does work. However I don’t know exactly “how” it works. Sometimes when I’m in a very difficult situation, and I exercise faith, I get a favorable result—the fruit of my faith. Yet, sometimes when I’m in not so difficult situations, and I exercise faith, I don’t get any result. It’s somewhat random. I don’t know.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV). Yet, the following verses narrate short stories of Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and other saints. And then in verse 13, the author of Hebrew say, “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised…”

Perhaps “deeper” faith is not about expecting a favorable result in this life. Perhaps faith is about living the life expected of us by God—just like the examples of faith narrated by book that defined the concept of “faith.” They did not received the things promised.

Faith is a difficult subject…yet very interesting. Maybe it requires faith to fully understand how faith works…or perhaps faith is exactly what we need in order to practice faith without the need of fully understanding how it works. Maybe just believing that it works is all that matters.

Thank you very much sir Brad for a very interesting post!
God bless you and your work!
🙂

Arnold

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Reality Of Christ

July 6, 2012

I think so! God does say in his word, “…as a man thinks, that he is..” I also heard of an experiment done with rice where two jars of rice were created and kept at the same temperature and same place. However one jars of rice had hateful words written on it; while the other one had words of love. Each day the people would criticize the one jar and say happy things to the next one. The jar that had all the negative attention on it, blacked and rotted rather quickly. The one that had words of affirmation lived and didn’t blacken or rot for the allotted timeframe.
So yes, I agree!! Word can heal and hurt. There is power in the spoken word. And I believe that literally.

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hannahsperch

July 5, 2012

Through Faith, I was healed of my 40 year habit of smoking cigarettes. I believe in prayer through Faith in Jesus Christ.

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