Let’s start off with a word of prayer, Amen.

“Lord Jesus, we give thanks to you for your word, we pray that you’ll increase our capacity, let us know our destiny in you, so that we follow you all the days of our life. Thank you Jesus, in your name we pray, Amen! Hallelujah!”

A few weeks back we had our first bible sharing session, where we got everyone to share something from the bible that we’ve received throughout that week. I praise and give thanks to God for your willingness to meditate on the word of God. So I shared with you guys about Capacity.

Capacity extent of how much God can use you in His plan. So the first week, I manage to tell you guys that capacity can measured by this formula:

Capacity= Prayer x faith x Perseverance

After that week, we didn’t manage to have any EG meetings on Sunday, but I’ve posted a word document on the EG blog page, showing the second part of this Capacity thing I’m telling you about. So today, I’m going to touch on Faith and Perseverance at the same time.

So what is perseverance? Perseverance is being able to maintain to a purpose or a goal even in times of difficulties. Even when you felt that you’re in your deepest valley, are you still able to keep your focus on God? Even throughout times of difficulties, you are still able to have the same faith level in God, if not higher, that is persevering!

You guys know sailing? It is a sport that depends a lot on wind. Imagine we all go sailing today, bright sunny day, gentle wind, good weather. So we set off on our sailing boat, sailing from Singapore to Pula Ubin. We started off, and the wind was for us, blowing towards Pula Ubin, pushing our sailing boat closer and closer to Pula Ubin. But halfway through the wind changes it’s blowing direction, it is now against us. So what now? Are we going to just sit on the boat and crying, start grumbling about the wind? If we were to do that, we will never reach Pula Ubin. We will be blown off to somewhere else.

When we are sailing in the boat of our life and when the wind starts blowing against us. Our Christian life is not that smooth anymore, we start to face persecution, we face difficulties, are we just going to give up? No, we are not! We are going to persevere through all these and keep our focus on God! Amen!

In our life, we have many problems flooding into our world, seem like you’re drowning in all your problems, but persevere, keep your focus on God, and he will bring you out of it, You can rise above all your problems! God says in His words (NLT) :

“When you go through deep waters and great troubles, I will be with you.”

So in your deep waters, great troubles, don’t give up! Persevere through it and know that God is with you.

But as human beings, we all need assurance. When we persevere through the darkest times, we need something to grab on, we need perhaps a beam of light to help us, to guide us out of our darkness. And this beam of light that will help us, that will guide us is God Himself. His spirit that dwell among us. But we can’t see the holy as a person, standing in front of us every time.

So that is where faith comes in. In the bible it says in Hebrews 11:1:

“Now faith is the substance of things hope for, evidence of things unseen.”

In another word, the evidence of the presence of the spirit, can be seen through faith. When the spirit is here, there is faith here. When the spirit is there, there is faith there. Because faith is the evidence for the spirit, who is unseen.

So in order for us to persevere through whatever we’re going through now, We need to have the spirit in us, to guide us. And in order to have the spirit in us, we need to have faith in us.

So bottom line is: “To persevere, the must be spirit. To have the spirit, there must faith.”

How do we get faith? There are two easy ways. First way, you guys know it. It is obtained through reading the word of God. In the bible it says in Romans 10:17 (NKJV):

“Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.”

Second way is to have a relationship with God. Because the bible says in John 1:1 (NIV)

“In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”

So having a close relationship with God, strengthens your faith in the same way as reading His word. That’s why if you Love Jess, you must Love His word. One last illustration and we will end.

Look at the example of Joshua, in Joshua 11:6 (NKJV):

“Do not be afraid because of them, for tomorrow about this time i will deliver all of them slain before Israel.”

When we start the act of persevere, it shows that we have reached our limit of expectations. Our problems are causing us discomfort, that is the time when we need faith, the time where we need to speak the word of God.

Look, Joshua is fighting a war, and the war is beginning to excide his expectations. Joshua, being a man of faith, he started to fear, he is starting to feel the discomfort in it. And he looked to God, and God says: “...For tomorrow about this time...” God didn’t say, straight away I’ll deliver them, God requires Joshua to stretch his faith, persevering till the next day.

God requires us to persevere with faith in Him. So from today on, Let’s serve God in a greater way, by increasing in our areas of prayer, faith and perseverance! Amen!