God Increases My Faith

Hello Friends,

Do you know if you are walking in active faith toward God’s involvement in your personal life? Do you know how to combine specific works with your faith so you can believe for God’s supernatural intervention in your life? Do you know that the Lord wants to help you in many of the day to day needs and concerns you have?

I’ve been sharing with you my earlier processes in coming to the Lord and allowing Him to work in my life. In this note, I want to tell you about my very first awareness when I activated the mustard seed of faith God gave me to believe Him to do something in my life. It was around the middle of July 1984 just a few months after God flipped the light switch of my conscience, allowing me to see my true spiritual condition, effectively bringing me to a surrender of my life to the lordship of Jesus Christ. My awareness of God’s hand in my life and His presence surrounding my life was growing every day. I was amazed that I no longer felt alone. I knew God was surrounding my life. I was in awe that the God of the universe was interested in me! A desire was growing bigger and bigger in me to invite Him into my whole life! God gave me a good starting place when I began to weary of regular cortizone shots in my elbow to relieve the pain. This is the story I want to share with you today.

Even though it seems such a small thing now, at the time it seemed huge to me to believe for a miracle healing from pain in my elbow. I had already dropped my water glass a few times, and I had a toddler to carry too, which made my weakened elbow a real nuisance. I happened to see a book title somewhere that grabbed my attention as it told the story of someone’s miraculous healing. I had never heard of God healing anyone, and it really got me to thinking about God not just existing out there somewhere detached from His creation, but that He might be personal, and that He might be personal with me.

I hadn’t yet read my new Bible that Jim had given me for Christmas right after my Cursillo, just eight months earlier, and so I didn’t know anything about it yet. He offered to show me how to look for Scriptures in his new concordance and find them in the Bible. I found several verses that encouraged faith for healing and typed them up on my typewriter, folding the paper to carry in my purse. I planned to rehearse these verses to encourage my belief that Jesus would heal my elbow. I even chose a day, a month out, when I knew I’d be alone in my car going to a seminar. I planned to recite my Scriptures and pray asking God to remove the pain from my elbow. Wow! This was huge to me! We had never heard any faith teachings, and we weren’t even in a church that read the Bible! We had never heard of God being personal or caring about such small, insignificant things. Yet, God was giving me actions to combine with my little mustard seed of faith to trust Him for His involvement with my concern. He had given me a practical way to activate my faith to cooperate with Him in a two-way relationship!

When the day arrived on August 11th, I was full of anticipation and expectation. Driving down the freeway, I began to quote my memory verses and layed my hand on my elbow praying for Jesus to remove the pain. In that instant I felt a fire go into my elbow and pull the pain out. I was amazed and so grateful. I continued to thank God and give Him glory for this small (but big to me at that time) supernatural intervention in my life.

While this was a small beginning, my faith had come alive! I wanted to begin to believe God for many more important matters of my life. I was growing in holy desires, and so I turned my faith toward my parenting, to allow God to parent me so I could learn how to parent my children. As I obeyed the promptings of the Holy Spirit when He corrected me and gave me personal instruction, I noticed my faith growing. I went on to believe the Lord for other small healing needs, like an abscessed tooth, a cyst on my eye, and becoming free of lifelong strongholds all in the first three years of knowing Him. God’s favor seemed to surround my life, and I began to feel quite blessed with the fruit of following the Lord by the Holy Spirit in faith, trusting God for every outcome, every need, every prayer…

The Lord tells us not to despise the day of small beginnings, and there’s a reason for that. We are weak human beings, with many, many limitations, but when we invite God’s involvement into the concerns of our life, even the small ones, He will honor our faith according to His will.

What concern can you bring to the Good Lord? How about asking Him for specific actions to combine with your faith? He wants to be involved in your concerns!

“So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.”~ 2 Peter 1:5-9 The Message

I’ve developed five mini coaching programs, Making Heart-Level Connections, to help you to connect into your inner growth processes where God is at work. The newest program available in our eStore is “Your Faith.” I’ve targeted the specific disconnects people usually have in their understanding about how God works to develop their faith. This program is loaded with personal testimonies of God’s interventions in our lives!

Here’s what a couple participants have shared:

“This has been one of the best programs in my mind. This program was key to making things click in my understanding in practically living out my faith. I really appreciated the first call and really came to understand how repentance and putting off fear is truly the key to faith. I understand the statement “Perfect love casts out fear” much better. This program has also been key to seeing how God is already working in my life, and how I can believe in the work He is doing and have faith that He will continue to work. The real-life examples were so practical and helpful for understanding how God works through our faith in so many practical ways. I am seeking the Lord in several practical situations and have made a list of prayers and hopes for them. The Lord is working. Thank you so much for all of your time and prayers and truth.” ~ Melanie C.

“The faith program has helped me understand what I have been experiencing to some degree, but has opened up a greater understanding of how to intentionally view and approach life from this point forward. I have a greater desire to activate faith and press into a faith process with the Lord. I look forward to listening again to the audios and rereading the article and Facebook conversations, which will probably be many, many times. Thank you so much for your investment!” ~ Nancy B.

The “Making Heart Level Connections” coaching programs have been so well received! Barbie and I are excited to see the real changes taking place in the participants. We are currently in live session with “The Holy Spirit” program, which will be available in about a month.

In the meantime, if  you want to get started in Making Heart-Level Connections, you can purchase the first three programs “Your Conscience”, “God’s Moral Law”, “Your Heart Desires”, and “Your Faith” from one of our eStores. Each program comes with all the same materials as their live versions: 4 hrs of audio discussions, topic specific eArticles, questionnaires, plus an edited version of the private Fb discussions that we had with the participants.

We hope to encourage more of our LOLACHE members to participate in these personal and dynamic programs, and toward that end, we have produced an audio of testimonies given by coaching program participants on the LOLACHE members’ site. You can find it here.

Click Here to Learn More about the programs in Making Heart-Level Connections

Go Here to get the program “Your Conscience”! Regular price is $63.00. LOLACHE members pay only $47.00!

Go Here to get the program “God’s Moral Law”! Regular price is $63.00. LOLACHE members pay only $47.00!

Go Here to get the program “Your Heart Desires”! Regular price is $63.00. LOLACHE members pay only $47.00!

Go Here to get the program “Your Faith” Regular price is $63.00. LOLACHE members pay only $47.00!

Grateful to be in the Lord’s service,

Marilyn Howshall for Lifestyle of Learning™ Ministries

[Lifestyle of Learning™/LOLACHE eNewsletter ~ August 8, 2012, Issue 30]