The Faith Of Sarah (Kingdom Heroes) Day 4 of 5

The Faith Of Sarah (Kingdom Heroes) Day 4 of 5

“And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.” (Hebrews 11:11) Our next exhibit in the Hall of Heroes illustrates this truth in a dramatic fashion. This hero’s name is Sarah. She started life as Sarai, and she married Abraham, who, again, began life as Abram. God promised both Sarah and Abraham a son. God did this the same time he changed Sarah’s name: As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her (Genesis 17:15-16). Not only was Sarah 90, but she’d been barren her entire life. She’d never conceived or given birth to a child. Her physical capacity to do so was absent, and time was no longer on her side. So this promise from God simply didn’t fit the facts of her life. It wasn’t practical. It’s possible that Sarah’s story resembles your own but in a different way. You could be barren in other forms. Your capacity to experience what God has for you just doesn’t seem to be there. You’re not producing what you thought you would be at this stage in your life. You’re not delivering on the destiny you believed to be yours. You’ve heard Jesus’ promise in John 10:10, when He declared, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” But you don’t see the results of that promise in your everyday life. If that describes your current state of mind, know that Sarah was right where you are. Five times God had told her she was going to have a son. Not only that, but He’d gone on to tell Abraham and her that, through this son, a whole nation would be birthed. Sarah had a vision for a great future. Yet the clock kept taunting her, tempting her to give up and doubt God. If we were to look closely, we’d see that many of our lives look like this—like our ability to be what God wants us to be, to do what God wants us to do, and to achieve what God wants us to achieve no longer exists. Whatever the case, if you feel like too much time has passed to get to experience the fulfillment of Christ’s promise of an abundant and fulfilling life, I encourage you to never let the facts get in the way of your faith. Don’t deny the facts—facts are facts—but just know that faith is never limited to facts alone. Facts always involve what you see. Faith involves what you don’t see.

The Faith Of Abraham (Kingdom Heroes) Day 3 of 5

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8) Your life of faith as a kingdom hero will also involve how you choose to live. We read in Hebrews 11:9 that “by faith [Abraham] lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise.” Abraham made it to the area promised to him, but it was not yet his. Perhaps no discipline in the kingdom hero’s toolbox of faith is greater than the discipline of waiting well. While you’re waiting, God is doing two things related to your life at once. First, He’s preparing the promise for you, and second, He’s preparing you for the promise. Most people delay the promise they’re waiting for because they choose not to cooperate with the learning of the lessons and the spiritual growth God has for them in the interim. That’s what happened to Abraham. He ended up in the Hall of Heroes, but not every decision he made was heroic. He delayed his breakthrough to his first promise by some 25 years. Abraham wasn’t ready. He was still lying, cheating, and even sleeping with his wife’s handmaiden, resulting in a baby born outside God’s will. Before he got his inheritance, Abraham first needed to come to his senses, grow in his faith, and trust God fully—even when it didn’t look like anything was happening. God never wants to give someone a destiny that will cause them to forget Him when they get it. When God delivers on those promises, we often praise Him and then just as quickly forget He did. We forget because we lack the kind of commitment that’s tied to more than what we see and what we get. Like Abraham, we are also to live as foreigners in a strange land. 1 Peter 2:11-12 puts it like this: Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. God doesn’t want any of us to get too attached to the world we live in now. We aren’t to adopt the culture so much that our behavior begins to reflect the common behaviors of the culture. Not only that, but remaining mobile frees us to pursue His plan more fully. If you’re going to walk by faith, you better have on loafers or comfortable shoes, because God can take you on some long and winding paths. Staying tied too closely to your comfort zone will limit what God is able to do both in and through you.

The Faith Of Noah (Kingdom Heroes) Day 2 of 5

“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.” (Hebrews 11:7) Many of us fail to live our lives as kingdom heroes simply because our faith has dried up. We go through the motions only to discover that our Christian walk has gone flat. We lack that which transforms the heart of faith to the next level of heroic fruition. James explains this: “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself” (James 2:14-17). James lets us know how to reactivate faith—by combining what we do with what we believe. The work of obedience ignites the reality of faith so we see the invisible spiritual power enter into the visible reality around us. Noah arguably gives us the greatest illustration of faith at work in humanity. His story highlights a man of incredible conviction. He didn’t strive for popular acceptance. He knew God and chose to follow Him closely: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.” Genesis 6:9b Noah lived to please God. He walked with God, similar to the many others who also wound up in the Hall of Heroes. On top of that, Noah was a blameless man. He had integrity with both people and God. As a result, he found favor with God. And God’s favor can do more than bring blessing; it can bring peace. Today, we’re facing an epidemic of indecisiveness in our culture. So many people are simply afraid to make a decision. And the concept of groupthink has become a chokehold. As a result, more often than ever, we as believers fail to move forward based on what God has directed us to do. Just think about what would have happened if Noah had waited for consensus on building the ark. But thankfully, Noah’s faith had been activated. He had a living faith that showed up in what he did, not just in what he said. As a result, his legacy is on display in the Hall of Heroes. His impact has gone down in history as one of the bravest, most courageous to have ever been lived out.

God Is Telling The Truth (Kingdom Heroes) Day 1 of 5

From Kingdom Heroes by Tony Evans on YouVersion “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Before we look closely at the lives who modeled faith as told in Hebrews 11, I want to give you a simple definition of faith: Faith is acting like God is telling the truth. It’s basing  actions on the belief that what He says is true. Faith isn’t merely feeling like God is telling the truth. Nor is it saying God is telling the truth. It is acting like God is telling the truth. “For we live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV) This faith walk is to be done without the requirement of prior visible, empirical evidence to validate it. It is rather to be based on the integrity of God. Faith always includes movement and actions aligned with what you believe to be true. Unless your faith makes it all the way down to your feet, it’s not faith. Rather, it’s an intellectual concept that hasn’t been mixed with action, and nothing concrete will show up in your life. Exercising faith takes God’s involvement in your life from a theory in your mind to a reality in your life. A number of years ago, the church where I serve installed motion-detector lighting, where the lights come on only when motion is detected. Similarly, God will give you the power and light you need when you need it, but He’ll wait until He detects motion on your part. If there’s no movement in faith, there’s no power in your life. God is real. He has great power. But He will not manifest that power in the ways you need Him to until He sees the motion of your life in faith. If there is no movement, His power lies dormant even though it’s there to be accessed at any time. It’s in living a life of faith that we gain God’s approval. “This is what the ancients were commended for.” (Hebrews 11:2) Here’s another way I define faith: Faith is acting like it’s so even when it’s not so, in order that it might be so simply because God said so. It is in living a life of faith, just like the kingdom heroes examined throughout this plan, that we gain God’s approval (Hebrews 11:2).

Turning Setbacks Into Comebacks (The Shift That Changes Everything) Day 5 of 5

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion If there’s anything my life has taught me, it’s this: setbacks are not the end of your story. They often feel final, painful, or discouraging, but God has a way of turning what looks like defeat into the very soil where new beginnings grow. Some of the greatest breakthroughs in my life came right after seasons I thought would break me. I’ve faced times when dreams died, relationships fractured, or opportunities slipped through my fingers. In those moments, I wondered if God had forgotten me. But as I look back, I can see how every setback became a setup for something better—not because the pain vanished instantly, but because God was quietly shaping me in the middle of it. The apostle Paul understood this better than anyone. He faced beatings, imprisonment, persecution, betrayal, and constant danger, yet he wrote, “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed…struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9). His confidence didn’t come from his circumstances; it came from knowing God was working through them. He believed his struggles were producing a glory that far outweighed the pain. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. – Romans 8:18 NIV I’ve found that to be true. When I’ve walked through adversity, God has used those seasons to refine me, redirect me, and rebuild parts of my life that had been neglected. Sometimes He closed doors I was never meant to walk through. Sometimes He strengthened my character in ways success never could. Sometimes He positioned me for assignments I would not have accepted without the struggle. The world sees setbacks as evidence that you’ve failed. God sees them as opportunities to deepen your faith, strengthen your resilience, and prepare you for the next chapter. He’s not finished writing your story, and He hasn’t wasted anything you’ve walked through—not one tear, one disappointment, or one delay. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11 NIV If you’re in a setback season right now, take heart: God specializes in comebacks. Even when you can’t see the path forward, He is working behind the scenes. You might feel struck down, but you are not destroyed. You are being shaped for something greater than you can imagine. Hold on. Keep trusting. Your comeback is already in motion. Ready to take the next step? In The Shift That Changes Everything, I share the full journey, including deeper teaching, more personal stories, and practical tools to help you walk with resilience in every season. Get the book and additional resources at TedPagelMinistries.org.