FAITH AND PRAYER - STEEMCHURCH

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After spending a long time with his apostles, Jesus asked them, at Caesarea Philippi, “ Who do you say that I am?' This was a personal question and we can imagine the disciples falling silent in face of such a blunt and probably unexpected question, The question remains relevant, even in our time where most of us can claim to have followed Jesus, for many years, perhaps, our lifetime. We will and should confront this question, It is a question of faith and it is directed to each of us, Who do I say Jesus is? How would my life be different without Jesus?, Anyone seeking growth in the Spirit must be able to answer this simple but important questions.

Faith is a gift of God rooted in our experience of him. We can experience the Lord within and around us. How subtle those experiences may be, they Iead us to a conviction and choice, which proclaim that Jesus is Lord. In expressing his own experience, John says,

“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have seen and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life- this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us we declared to you what we have seen and heard so that you may also have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (l John :1-4 ).

Sensing the Lord’s presence and activity everyday makes Jesus, the central priority of our life. Our personal and daily experiences of Jesus, Thus shape our identity as Christians. Articulating this fact in one of his letters

Apostle Paul notes,

"Faith comes from what is heard, and what comes from the word of Christ" (Romans 10: 17).

Indeed, talking about faith, involves reaching out to others bearing witness. Thus, our gifts and skills and talents are means through which we reach out to others, serve them and continue the work which Christ has initiated and now has given us to do. In his own writing, St James points out,

"Faith without good work is dead", (James 2:170).

Faith reaches out to others and this must be one of the means we have for inviting others to follow Jesus.

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Also faith gathers people into a community, as it is not self-enclosed, nor is it self-sufficient; rather, it places us in a relationship with others. Faith therefore, is, an explicit relationship with the Lord which has its roots in our life in God, making it necessary for us to have it, if we wish to grow in the Spirit.

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Deep faith in God calls us to prayer because it is primarily a means of nourishing our relationship with the Lord. If we want to grow in the Spirit, witness to God's work around us and desire to discover and fulfill God's will for us, then, we must be people of prayer. We must invest time and energy to prayer to animate this relationship we have
with our brother, Jesus. We recognize prayer in all forms and as an indispensable channel through which we can remain sensitive to the Lord's presence and activity in our life and world. We must daily lift up our minds and spirit to God, our heavenly Father in prayer, ceaselessly.

To be sure, life in the Spirit means living a life of faith. Indeed, God created us with a capacity Of experiencing a broad range of feelings and thank him we have them. But we cannot depend on them to validate our walk with the Holy Spirit, Tied as they are to our ever-changing circumstances, feeling are unreliable, as an effective instrument to evaluate our relationship with God. The Christian is to live by faith, trusting the trustworthiness of God and not feelings. To walk in the Spirit, we must live according to God 's promise, trusting in the integrity of God, and faith must be a basis and the object of our faith is God.

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The life of Jesus is one of complete dedication to the Father's will. The prayer of Jesus informs us of his union with his Father throughout his life. His most difficult prayer came at the most trying period of his life, in Gethsemane. Realizing he was approaching his own death, he prayed,

"Father, if it is your will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done", (Luke 22:42).

His prayer demonstrated how great the mystery of the will of the Father is. We know that the Father reveals his will, through the Scriptures, through the prophetic gifts, through our own time of prayer and meditation, and through the circumstances of life. Difficult as his will may seem, Christian prayer is marked by surrender to the Father's will in all things.

This the moment of decision for Jesus, the time he was to embrace fully what God would ask of him. He had to commit that hour to prayer. As Christians, prayer serves as a link between mankind and God. For Christians to grow in the Spirit, there should be a form of maintaining and sustaining our relationship with the Lord through a
disciplined life of prayer that has daily, weekly and monthly components. Seeking to do the will of God is the hallmark of Christian maturity, In our prayers, we must move from making our own plans and asking God 'to support it to the point of asking God: what are your plans for me? I would like to be part of them.

Furthermore, Jesus' earthly life was always marked with praying and his apostles followed suit. In all they did Jesus and the apostles committed them to prayer. Living faith calls us to pray: If we believe, then we pray, Our fidelity to prayer is one gauge of the we have assigned to our relationship with the Lord. Our response to Jesus' question,

who do people say, I am?
would proclaim the priority of the Lord Jesus in our life. The answer should be personal and the caliber of our response will become evident most clearly in our daily life, through our ordinary response and the extent to which we allow the Holy Spirit guide our lives. You become spiritual and experience

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God's power as a way of life as a result of faith alone. The Bible clearly teaches that,

"the just shall live by faith”.

so without faith, we cannot please God. The good work of a disciplined Christian, who is also spiritually mature can be as a result of his faith, which seen in his prayer life, obedience to God's will, and witnessing. These are
the principal bases for growth in the Spirit.