Faith In The City

"Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses." 1 Timothy 6:12 NIVThis verse has so many layers. When I read it this morning it almost felt like a direct command, and it left me with questions. What does it mean to fight the good fight of faith? What confession did I make, and who were these witnesses? Is this literal, or does it mean something else?I even noticed it says the good fight of THE faith, and I figured there had to be a reason for that little word. There is. In the original Greek, "the faith" means more than my personal trust in God. It means the whole body of Christian belief, the gospel itself. Paul wrote this letter to Timothy while false teachers were twisting the truth in Ephesus, so he was telling Timothy two things at once. Keep trusting God with your life, and protect the faith itself from being corrupted. One small word carries all of that.The word fight is interesting too. Paul used an athletic word, the same root we get agonize from. The devotional I read this morning from Athletes in Action compared being a disciple to being an athlete, and it turns out that comparison is built right into the verse. An athlete decides every day whether to put in the work, the training, and the humility it takes to be great, then works with a team to accomplish a goal. Being a Christian is that same daily decision. It is choosing faith, trusting the Lord, and showing God's character through how we treat and love others.The devotional also reminded me that the faith journey will at times be difficult, messy, and challenging. Paul's words were a reminder that faith sometimes looks like a fight, and it is worth it because it is a fight for goodness, against our own broken nature and against God's enemies in the spiritual realm.And what about that confession? That part is literal. Timothy publicly declared his faith in front of real people, most likely at his baptism, possibly also when the elders laid hands on him and commissioned him for ministry. The very next verse points to Jesus making His own good confession before Pontius Pilate. So when you were baptized, when you claimed Jesus out loud in front of people, you made your good confession too.Here is where it got personal for me. Sometimes fighting means making the right decision when it is not the easiest decision, and I felt challenged with that this very week. Some friends with good intentions advised me to do something, and I told them I did not feel comfortable because that is not how I feel. The old me would have jumped at that opportunity. They gave me good reasons, and I believe those reasons are applicable. But this time I am turning it over to God. I am surrendering it to Him, which is something I have not done in the past. I used to just move forward with whatever sounded like a good idea. Let's go.Sometimes fighting the good fight of faith means we have to love someone who makes it hard to love. It means being gentle when it is in our nature to be harsh, and choosing love when it would be easier to be selfish.It also means being faithful to Jesus over the course of your life, and one of the key ways to do that is spending time with Him every day, reading His word and cultivating that relationship. Sometimes I wish He could just come sit with me so we could have a conversation, back and forth, out loud. Waiting on Him to put things in my heart can be hard. But this morning I sat near my window and looked out at His world. The sky was light blue and clear except for one cloud in the distance that took on a reddish orange glow and stayed in that one spot for the longest time. A squirrel jumped through the trees and looked right at me for a second. The slightest wind moved the leaves. Those are His clouds. That is His squirrel. He created all of it and allowed it to exist in this exact moment, and I felt close to Him watching it.Sometimes this journey feels lonely, quiet, and even scary. Sometimes I wonder if people will believe me because of my past, if they know I am being authentic and that this is not for a like or a follow. But we are not fighting alone. God is always with us, and when we draw near to Him, He empowers us with the strength we need to keep going. I find that reassuring. And I am still excited, because this is what I want to do.So today, fight the good fight. Make the right decision even when it is not the easy one. Love the person who is hard to love. Draw near to Him and let Him strengthen you. You made your confession. Now take hold of the life He called you to.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

For most of my life I did not rest. I worked. I cooked every dish for every holiday. I cleaned until every single thing was done. By the time I was finished I was too exhausted to even eat, or I ate because I was so tired I thought food would give me what I had actually taken from myself. It never did. What I needed was rest. I just did not know how to give it to myself.Then I came across this verse."God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." Genesis 2:3A narrator on Collide's devotional pointed out something I had never connected before. Rest, in this verse, means Sabbath. God was not tired. He did not need recovery. He built rest into the rhythm of creation on purpose, as an example for us. Work is not the whole story. Rest is part of the design, not a reward you earn after you have proven yourself.Another narrator took it further, and this is the part I am still working through, so let me break it down the way I am starting to understand it.Under the old covenant, Sabbath was a commandment. Work six days, rest on the seventh. That rhythm pointed forward to something bigger, to Jesus. Scripture calls him Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8), which means he does not just observe rest, he defines what it actually means.Here is the shift. Under the law, the order was work, then rest. You earned your rest by finishing your labor. Once Jesus came, the order flipped. We do not work to earn rest anymore. We go to him first. We rest in what he already finished on the cross, and then we work from that place of rest, not to earn anything but because we are already secure in him. Hebrews 4 talks about this too, a rest that remains for God's people, entered through faith and not through our own effort.So it is no longer work then rest under our own strength. It is rest in him, then work that flows from that rest, fueled by his Spirit and his love, for his glory instead of our own approval.This is exactly what I have been relearning in real time. I just did not have the language for it yet. I used to think I had to earn my breaks, finish the to-do list, then maybe I get to sit down. Now I take fifteen to twenty minutes between projects to walk around, get water, use the bathroom, whatever gives me a minute before I go back in. I am learning to build breathing room into my calendar between meetings instead of going from one straight into the next. I am intentionally limiting when I make myself available to clients, because working five days a week does not mean I owe every single hour of those five days to someone else.A devotional called A Rhythm of Rest said it this way. God's rest was never about laziness or exhaustion. It was about showing us a pattern, work followed by rest and reflection, chosen on purpose and not collapsed into out of necessity. The invitation is to choose the rhythm of our Maker over a routine driven by exhaustion.If you are the type who feels guilty for stopping, ask yourself where that guilt is actually coming from. Is it Jesus asking you to prove something, or is it a habit you built before you knew there was another way to live. Grace already answered that question.That is the rhythm I am choosing now. Not because I have earned it. Because he already gave it to me.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I read 1 John 3:20 this morning. If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. It made me think about something I have wrestled with more than once.Sometimes the guilt I feel is the enemy trying to convince me I am less than who God made me to be. That is real. But then there is the other version. The version where I actually did something I should not have done, and the guilt shows up because of that specific choice. I started asking myself, is that condemnation? Or is that just checking myself? Auditing myself?The more I dug into it, the clearer the difference became.Checking myself, auditing myself, thinking I could have handled that differently, that is conviction. Conviction points at a choice. It says here is what you did, here is what you can do instead next time, here is the repair. It leaves the door open. It always includes a way forward.Condemnation is different. Condemnation does not stop at the choice. It goes after the person. It says you are a bad person. It says you are not redeemable. It takes one moment and turns it into a life sentence.Romans 8:1 settles this for me every time. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God does not deal in condemnation for His people. He deals in correction, in grace, in redemption. So if what I am feeling has no exit, no redemption, no way forward, that is not from Him.That is what 1 John 3:20 is actually saying. Even when your own heart is loud, even when it is telling you that you are too far gone, God is greater than that voice. He knows everything about you, including the thing you are ashamed of, and He still is not condemning you.So when I feel that heaviness now, I ask myself one question. Is this pointing me to a specific action so I can grow, or is this trying to convince me that I am unredeemable? If it is the first one, I take it to God and I make the adjustment. If it is the second one, I recognize it for what it is and I remind myself of the truth in Romans 8:1.You are allowed to check yourself. You are allowed to look at a moment and think about what you could have done differently. That is growth. It is not condemnation. It is Him growing you.But you are never allowed to let anything convince you that you are unredeemable. That is not conviction. That is a lie, and it is not one He is telling you.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I built a prayer corner in my room. Credit to an account called God Bless Her on Instagram for part of the inspiration, but I already had plants sitting in that corner before she posted anything. I added white lights. My favorite candle and incense, both made from onyx. Genuine gemstones. Some tea lights. I am working toward a full prayer wall next, framed prayers on the wall above it all. Every time I walk into that room, especially at night, I love it. It is peaceful. It is inviting. That is what I mean when I say I architect my atmosphere.Then I was listening to the Bible Recap, day 187, 2 Kings 14, and the reading mentioned a king who did not remove the high places, so people kept going there to offer sacrifices and burn incense. My stomach dropped a little. The way it was worded made it sound like both things, the sacrifice and the incense, were treated as wrong. That made me think about my own corner. Was I doing something God is against?That question made me dig deeper.Incense was never the problem. God commanded it. There was a specific altar built just for incense, and the priests burned it every single day as an offering to Him (Exodus 30:1-8). The smoke itself was never the sin.The high places were a different issue entirely. Before the temple was built, people worshipped God all over the place, wherever felt convenient. A lot of those same sites had already been used for Baal and Asherah worship. Once God established the temple in Jerusalem as the one place for corporate worship (Deuteronomy 12), the high places were supposed to be removed. Most kings did not remove them, which is why you keep reading he did right in the eyes of the Lord, but the high places were not removed. People kept mixing true worship with leftover idol worship in the same spot. That mixing is what scripture keeps flagging. Not the candle. Not the incense. The location, and what it was tangled up with.My prayer corner is not a high place. It is not dedicated to another god, and it is not replacing anywhere I am supposed to be worshipping instead. If anything it lines up with what Jesus said in Matthew 6:6, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret. That is exactly what I built.The gemstones matter to me for a reason I did not expect to have to defend. They come out of the earth. God made the earth. There is something beautiful about the fact that stones this stunning came out of dirt and rock. Using something He made to build a space that points me back to Him is not idolatry. It is the opposite of it.The only thing I am watching for, and the only thing anyone building a space like this should watch for, is whether the object ever starts to feel like it carries power on its own. If the candle becomes the thing that makes me feel close to God instead of a tool that helps me focus so I can feel Him, that is the line. Right now I am nowhere near it. My corner does exactly what it was built to do. It draws me in, it quiets me down, and it points me straight to Him.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I told my best friend something the other day and she pushed back on me right away. I said God is not supposed to be our backup plan, He is supposed to be our first move. Think about it like Batman and Robin. We act like we are Batman, handling everything ourselves, and God is just Robin standing by in case we need Him. It is actually the other way around. He is Batman. We are Robin. And I think we forget that more than we realize. I brought this up to two people this week, actually. My best friend, and someone else I am close with but would not call one of my inner circle. Both of them carry that same weight, that need to grind, strategize, and force things into place before they let God move first. They do not give themselves a chance to breathe and let Him do what He does best. My verse of the day brought all of this back into focus. Matthew 19:26 says, "With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible." I found myself asking what Jesus was actually talking about when He said that, because that verse gets pulled out of context a lot. People hear "all things are possible with God" and think it means they can ask Him for anything, especially something selfish, and expect it to just happen. The devotional that walked me through this explained the real context. Jesus was talking to a young man who asked how to get eternal life. Jesus told him to give up everything he owned. The man could not do it. He failed the test, not because God asked too much, but because loving Jesus requires everything we are. We cannot split our love between Him and something else. The bigger point is this. We cannot earn salvation. We cannot work hard enough, grind long enough, or strategize well enough to achieve it on our own. We can only be saved through God, through what Jesus already did. That is the impossible thing being talked about. Not our to-do list. Our ability to save ourselves. That shifted something for me. If I cannot save myself, why do I keep trying to carry everything else myself too? Why do I keep acting like God is my backup instead of my starting point? The devotional asked me to reflect on what might be keeping me from loving Jesus with my whole heart. A relationship. A possession. A mindset. A show I watch more than I open my Bible. Unforgiveness or bitterness sitting somewhere in my heart that I have not dealt with. I prayed and asked God to search my heart and reveal anything standing between us. I am asking Him to keep doing that, because I know there is always something He is refining in me. So here is what I am doing today. I am thanking God for continuing to search my heart. I am asking Him to reveal what is keeping me from loving Jesus better, from surrendering completely. And I am praying that once those things are revealed, I actually surrender them instead of just noticing them and moving on. If you are the friend who grinds so hard you forget to let God cook, this is your reminder. He is Batman. You are Robin. Let Him lead. Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I told my best friend the other day that God is the plan, not the backup plan. I said it kind of joking, like He is Batman and I am just Robin. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I actually needed to hear that myself.Today's verse of the day is Matthew 19:26. Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." It is one of those verses that gets pulled out and used as a blank check. People quote it to mean God can do anything I ask, so I can ask for anything I want.But that is not what Jesus was talking about.The devotional I read this morning, Jesus Does the Impossible, walked through the verses right before this one. A young man came to Jesus and asked what he needed to do to get eternal life. Jesus told him to sell everything he owned and follow Him. The young man walked away sad because he had a lot of stuff and he was not willing to let go of it.That is the context for "with man this is impossible." Jesus was not talking about wish fulfillment. He was talking about salvation. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot work hard enough, be good enough, or hustle hard enough to earn eternal life. Salvation only happens because God made a way through Jesus. It was never something we could achieve on our own strength.That makes me think about myself, because I know exactly what it feels like to try to do something in my own strength that was never meant to be carried alone.The devotional asked me to reflect on what is keeping me from loving Jesus with my whole heart. Is it a relationship. Is it possessions. Is it a mindset. Is it even something as small as a TV show. Is there unforgiveness or bitterness sitting in my heart that I have not dealt with. I read that question and it made me want to dig deeper into my own life more than I expected it to.So I prayed and asked God to keep searching my heart. I asked Him to reveal anything in me that is keeping me from loving Him fully, from surrendering completely to Him. And I am believing that once those things are revealed, I will actually let them go.Here is where the Batman and Robin thing comes back in. I told my friend that God is like Batman and I am the sidekick, Robin. I said it as a joke but it is actually true. We treat God like the backup plan. We grind, we strive, we strategize, and then if none of that works we ask God to step in and fix it. But He was never supposed to be the backup. He is supposed to be the one we go to first.I have people close to me who feel like they have to strive so hard for everything. They grind and plan and force things to happen because they do not feel safe letting God do His part. I understand it because I have done it too. But grace is not grind. Abide is not strive. Somewhere along the way we forgot that we get to let Him cook.So today I am not asking God for something impossible in the way people usually mean it. I am asking Him to search my heart, to show me what I am still holding onto in my own strength, and to help me actually hand it over instead of just saying I did.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Proverbs 19:17 says whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward them for what they have done. The more I read that verse, the more I understand what it is really saying. God is pleased when we are kind to people who have nothing to give us back. He treats it like we handed the gift straight to Him, and He remembers it.I watched a movie recently that made this hit home in a hard way. It followed people who were mean spirited toward the homeless, not just unkind but violent. They pushed people out of the only home they had, stole from them, beat them, and one homeless man was killed. It was difficult to keep watching. I kept asking myself who could treat another human being that way.One of the people doing the most damage in that movie ended up homeless himself by the end. I was not surprised. You can call it karma if you want, or maybe there is a more faith based word for it, but I do believe this. You cannot spend your life mistreating people and expect your own peace and blessing to last forever.I thought about a conversation I had with my brother once about someone who is rich, powerful, and influential. I told him I felt sorry for that man because of how he treats foreigners, the poor, and the widowed in his own country. My brother said not to feel sorry for him because he has money and power. I understood what he meant, but I still stand by what I said. No one with real joy in their life can treat people that way. I do not care how much money is in the bank account. I still pray for people like that, because something is missing in them that money cannot fix.The devotional I read this morning, narrated by Jennie Allen, said that when we care for the poor and needy we are actually caring for God, and that it feels amazing to know that is what we are doing in the moment. I found myself thinking about how good that would feel, to really know in real time that caring for someone in front of you is the same as caring for Jesus Himself.That same devotional talked about being poor in spirit, not just poor financially or materially. Poor in spirit means someone who feels spiritually empty, discouraged, or far from God even if their bank account looks fine. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 5:3 when He says blessed are the poor in spirit, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Being poor in spirit is not a bad thing to admit. It is actually the starting point for God to fill you.The devotional also talked about living an openhearted life. To me that means staying willing to give, help, and notice people even when it costs you comfort or convenience. It is the opposite of protecting your peace so hard that you stop seeing the people around you who need something from you.Matthew 25 backs this up completely. Feeding the hungry, clothing the needy, welcoming strangers, and visiting the sick and incarcerated are all listed as ways we serve Jesus directly. And 1 John 3:17 asks a question that convicts me every time. If someone has enough to live well and sees their brother or sister in need but shows no compassion, how can God's love be in that person?There is no specific action step attached to this one for me today. It is more of an invitation to look at how I treat the poor, whether they are poor financially, materially, or in spirit, and ask if I am loving them the way I would treat Jesus if He walked into the room. If we all lived that way, I do not know how different eternal life would even need to feel, because we would already be living in a kind of peace right here.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

This week I got tested on something I thought I had already handled. There is someone in my life I find hard to love right now. Not because they have done anything dramatic. Their comments and their energy just do not sit right with me, and my first instinct was to pull back. Distance myself. Remove them from my circle.I put on a good face. I acted like it was fine. But in my heart I was struggling, and that night I prayed and asked God to remove whatever was standing between me and loving that person the way He asks me to. That prayer came from a devotional reading through The Bible Recap, and it followed me around for the rest of the day.That same week I read Galatians 5:13. "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather serve one another humbly in love." I have read the Bible multiple times and I do not remember this verse ever standing out to me before. That surprised me, because it feels like something we should be taught the moment we come to faith and reminded of constantly.The translation I read explains indulging the flesh as giving into our sinful nature, the fear, the pride, the insecurity, and the need for approval that drives us before we know Jesus. Once we accept Him, we are free from that. We do not have to earn our worth or prove ourselves to God. We are already accepted, loved, and secure.Here is what got me. Freedom was never meant to be about us. It was given so we could serve other people, not so we could protect our own comfort. Jesus had every right to skip that towel and basin the night He washed His disciples' feet. He is the Son of God. Instead He knelt down and served the people He loved, including the one who was about to betray Him. If He can do that, loving someone whose comments annoy me should not be this hard.I also learned something about the word sin that changed how I see it. The original Greek word behind sin means to miss the mark. It comes from archery, from an arrow that did not hit the center of the target. In that sport, close does not count. You either hit the mark or you missed it. Every time I choose selfishness over humility, or hold a grudge instead of extending grace, I am missing the mark God set for me. Freedom asks more of me than comfort does, and that is the whole point.So what do I do with someone I find hard to love? I am learning the answer is not to avoid them and call it wisdom. It is to pray for them, refuse to gossip or complain about them, and love them even from a distance if that is what the season requires. Grudges and bitterness do not hurt the other person nearly as much as they hurt the one carrying them. I know that. I am still working on living like I know it.Freedom in Christ is not permission to do whatever protects me. It is permission to stop performing, stop proving, and start serving, even the people who make that hard. That is the freedom Galatians 5:13 is describing, and it is the freedom I am asking God to help me actually use.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I read Amos 5:24 this morning and it would not let me go. Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream. I have read that verse before, but today it stopped me in a way I needed to slow down and actually think about.I started wondering how often the Bible talks about justice. Turns out it is a lot. Righteousness alone shows up hundreds of times depending on the translation, and when justice and righteousness are paired together like they are in Amos, that combination shows up close to fifty times across the Old Testament. That is not a coincidence. In Hebrew poetry, repetition is the underline. It is God saying pay attention, this matters.So I went digging into the context. Amos was speaking to the northern kingdom of Israel during a season where, on the surface, they looked fine. They were showing up. They were sacrificing. They were going through the religious motions. But underneath all that performance, they had neglected the poor, tolerated corrupt courts, and turned their eyes away from injustice happening right in front of them. Some were even worshiping idols on the side. God was not impressed with their performance. He told them flat out that their worship meant nothing to Him while they were allowing oppression to continue.That is the part that stopped me. God is saying justice is not a suggestion. It is not a nice idea for the people who happen to care about that kind of thing. It is a divine demand. It is not political. It is spiritual. It is foundational to how His government operates on earth, and our worship cannot be separated from how we treat the people around us.The river image is what got me thinking the most. Water does not ask for permission to move. It does not wait for the right moment or check if conditions are convenient. It just goes. It finds the dry places and fills them. That is what God is asking His people to be. Not occasional justice. Not justice when it is trending or when it is safe to talk about. Continuous justice. Always moving. Always finding the next dry place.I think about that and then I think about where I land. What am I prioritizing in my own life. Am I actually serving people or am I doing things to be seen doing them. Is what I post and what I give and what I show up for coming from my heart or am I just checking a box so I can say I did something.The devotional made one more point that I cannot stop thinking about. It said something like a small act of justice on earth expands when it reaches heaven. That tracks with how God works everywhere else. He takes the little we offer and multiplies it. If that is true, then the small things actually matter. Showing up for one person. Speaking up in one room. Giving when it costs you something. None of that is wasted.So here is the real question for both of us. What are we prioritizing. Are the things we do coming from our heart or are they for show. And where in our community, our family, our school, our church, is there a dry place we have the power to fill.Peace, Love and Joy alwaysInfinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Some scriptures make sense the moment you read them. Others you understand in your spirit but struggle to explain out loud. Luke 9:24 is one of those for me: whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Jesus will save it.I have read this verse plenty of times and I still had to slow down and actually think through what it was saying.The second half is the easier part. Whoever surrenders what they want, what they have, and what they are chasing in order to follow Jesus actually gains their life, because they gain eternal life. The first half took me back to the story of the wealthy man who asked Jesus what he needed to do to follow Him. Jesus told him to give up his wealth, and the man walked away because he wasn't willing.Here's what I love about following God: He never asked me to give up everything I own. But that story shows something important. The man's unwillingness to let go revealed he wasn't ready to surrender. Following God comes down to the posture of your heart, how attached you are to what you own compared to how attached you are to Him.GOD WANTS YOU TO FLOURISH, NOT JUST SURVIVEOne thing I'm learning is that God never designed His people to live paycheck to paycheck or stuck in poverty. He created us to do more than get by. He created us to flourish. Flourishing goes beyond money, though money is part of how we survive in this world, and God is fine with us having it. He cares about whether we love it more than we love Him.Faith can be your income and your calling at the same time, done with full integrity. I know people who make a living from faith based work without compromising a single thing. The posture of your heart is what matters, regardless of whether you're earning money doing it.DISCIPLESHIP IS THE ACTUAL GOALThere's a word for what following Jesus really requires: discipleship. A disciple is a learner, someone patterning their life after Jesus, not just someone who says they believe in Him.Here's where I actually am with this: I say discipleship is my top goal in life, but my daily choices don't always reflect that it's actually first. That gap between what I say and what I live is something I'm actively working on.Jesus says the next step after choosing to follow Him is denying yourself, which means putting what He wants above what you want. That includes admitting you don't automatically know the right direction for your own life. Discipleship isn't a title. It's closer to a job description, one you accept every single day.DENYING YOURSELF IS A GIFT, NOT A PUNISHMENTDenying yourself might mean letting go of things that feel good right now but are quietly pulling you away from God. People should be able to look at how you live and actually see Him in it. And the gift on the other side of that surrender is eternal life.The devotional I read this through raised a question I'm still thinking through: when we hold onto our own life instead of handing it to Jesus, we miss out on the abundant life He promises. I keep asking myself if that abundant life is only about eternity, or if it's also about the fullness available to us right now. I don't have a clean answer yet, and I think that's okay.WHERE THIS LEAVES USIf you're reading this, take inventory of your own life. Are you living for Christ, or living for what feels good in the moment? That question isn't meant to make you feel bad. It's meant to point you toward Him.The call to action here is simple: commit to following Jesus, no matter how hard the road gets, and ask for the strength to endure while you do it.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I was listening to the book of Obadiah and it hit me that the whole book is really about a family fight. Edom and Israel came from the same bloodline, Esau and Jacob, twin brothers who never got it right with each other. Obadiah is God calling Edom out for how they treated their own blood when Israel was down.That got me thinking about how far back this pattern actually goes. Cain killed his own brother Abel out of jealousy, and that was the first family that ever existed. Isaac and Ishmael were split apart before they were even grown. Jacob and Esau fought over a birthright and a blessing, and that fight followed their descendants for generations, which is exactly what Obadiah is addressing centuries later. Joseph's own brothers hated him enough to sell him into slavery. Even Rachel and Leah competed with each other over a husband and over children.The same two family lines, Jacob's and Esau's, are still the ones people point to when they talk about conflict in that part of the world today. That is not a coincidence to me. That is a wound that started inside one family and never fully healed.It made me think about me and my own brothers. We do not always agree. There have been real issues between us at different points. But if something ever went down, I know at least one of them has my back, and I believe the other one would too, even if he did not agree with what I was doing. They would not let somebody take advantage of me. Disagreement is not the same as abandonment. That is not always how it played out in scripture, and it is not always how it plays out in real families either.So I am left with a real question. Why does the person who should be your first ally so often become the hardest relationship you carry? I do not have a full answer. But I think part of it is that closeness creates the deepest wounds. You cannot be betrayed by someone who was never close enough to hurt you. Cain was not jealous of a stranger. Esau was not robbed by an outsider. Joseph was not sold by men who did not know him. The people who can wound you the most are usually the people who were supposed to be for you from the start.I think God knows this about family, which is why so much of scripture is not just about loving strangers, it is about how we treat the people closest to us. Psalm 133 says how good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. That verse would not need to exist if unity between siblings came easy. God wrote it because He knew how rare it actually is.If you carry a wound from a sibling or a family member who should have been your biggest support, you are not the only one, and you are not imagining how deep that kind of hurt runs. It has been happening since the first family on earth.I am not saying my family has this fully figured out. I am saying I see the pattern now in a way I did not before. Brother against brother is not new. It is not just a modern family problem. It goes all the way back to the beginning, and it shows up in some of the most important stories in the Bible. Maybe the point is not to expect perfect agreement from the people closest to you. Maybe the point is figuring out who still shows up for you even when they do not agree, because that is a different kind of love than the kind that only shows up when it is easy.Peace, Love and Joy always.Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Every time I read Ephesians 3:20-21, I pause. Same verse, same pause, every single time. It happened again this morning and I finally stopped to think about why. The verse says God is able to do far more than we could ever ask, think, or imagine. And the more I think about that, the more it changes the way I plan my life. Think about your biggest, greatest fantasy. The version of your life where everything works out exactly how you wanted it. Now realize that picture is still small compared to what He actually has for you. Not because your imagination is weak, but because He isn't limited to what you can dream up. He knows about resources and possibilities I don't even have a clue exist. I'm sitting here with my own plans and expectations thinking I'm dreaming big, and He's working from a completely different scale. I keep reading this verse because I have big expectations for the rest of my life. I want to believe for more, not less. And what this verse keeps telling me is that wanting more isn't the problem. My ceiling is His floor. He can come in and do it bigger and better than anything I asked for, because He isn't working with what I have. He's working with what He has. This is the same God I wrote about earlier today, the one who delights in me. That's the part that gets me every time. The same God who can do immeasurably more than I could ever imagine, with access to resources and possibilities I can't even comprehend, is the same one who cares about me specifically. My next-door neighbor doesn't know who I am. They don't owe me anything and they're not thinking about me. But He does. He knows me completely. And here's the part that's hard to say out loud. As much as I've messed up, as many things as I've done or said or thought that I'm not proud of, He's still right here in it with me. He didn't step back. He wants me to flourish anyway. Not the polished version of me. Me. That's what makes this verse different from just words on a page. It's not abstract theology. It's personal. The God who has more resources than I can fathom is the same God who looks at someone like me, messy parts included, and still delights in me. It's overwhelming to actually think through that. Not in a bad way. The kind of overwhelming where you have to put the phone down for a second because your heart can't hold the size of it. If you're reading this with big expectations for your life, good. Keep them. Just know they're still too small. And if you're reading this feeling like you've done too much for God to want anything to do with you, that's not how He works. He isn't waiting for you to clean up first. He's already in it with you, wanting more for you than you've even asked for. Peace, Love and Joy always, Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I have read Romans 8:18 before, but something different happened the morning I actually slowed down on it. I always pictured glory as something that gets revealed to me. Something I'll witness one day, like a curtain pulling back. But the verse doesn't say that. It says the glory will be revealed in us. That one word changes everything. If glory is happening in me, then it's not just a future event I'm waiting on. It's something being formed right now, inside the actual suffering I'm walking through. The pain isn't separate from the glory. It's part of how the glory gets built. That hit different once I thought about who wrote this. Paul wrote it. The same Paul who was beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and run out of cities for preaching the gospel. He had every reason to measure his suffering against anything and call it unbearable. Instead he says it's not even worth comparing to what's coming. If Paul can say that with everything he carried, that's not a throwaway line. That's a man who tested this truth against real pain and found it still held. I think about Dr. Bianca Neel's testimony when I read this. She walked through a season that should have broken her, and instead she became a walking, talking testimony that recovery is possible and that prayer works. She didn't get there by ignoring what she went through. She got there by refusing to let the hard season be the loudest voice in the room. God stayed louder. And honestly, that's the invitation for all of us. We are all walking, talking testimonies just by waking up every day. That alone is a miracle. Look around at the people in your life and you'll find someone, maybe yourself, who has dealt with suffering, grief, or injustice that never got a clean explanation. Some questions don't get answered on this side of eternity. This verse doesn't promise you'll understand the why. It promises a perspective that carries you through the season anyway. I think about my own life when I read this. Sexual assault. Unemployment. Living paycheck to paycheck. Seasons of health struggles and pain that didn't make sense at the time. None of that disappeared because I found this verse. But here's what's true now. As I stay focused on God today, I genuinely don't spend much time thinking about those things anymore. I'm excited every day I wake up, because being here still means I have purpose. Whatever I'm walking through is leading somewhere better. Jesus is coming back to finish what He started. When He does, suffering ends. Sickness ends. Pain ends. We join Him in a glory that makes whatever we walked through on earth feel like nothing in comparison. That's not me minimizing what hard seasons cost you. It's Paul telling us the scale is so lopsided in favor of what's coming that the comparison barely makes sense. So if you're in a season right now where the questions aren't getting answered and the pain feels louder than anything else, keep your eyes on Him anyway. Your setbacks are setups. Eternal life is waiting. And the glory being revealed isn't just going to happen to you. It's already being formed in you. Peace, Love and Joy alwaysInfinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Peace is not found in control, but in God.Nicole Salmon said that on a devotional I listened to recently, and it has stayed with me.In peace, I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety. Psalm 4:8 NIVDavid wrote that verse during one of the hardest stretches of his life, with real threats coming at him from every direction. And he could still sleep, because his peace was not tied to his circumstances. It was tied to God.Peter is another example of this. The night before he was scheduled to be executed, chained between two guards in a prison cell, he was sleeping so deeply that an angel had to physically strike him to wake him up. That is what real surrender looks like. Not the absence of danger, but peace that holds steady inside of it.David and Peter both had every reason to lie awake. Neither of them did, because their trust was not in their circumstances changing. It was in God.The devotional walked through something I had never thought about this clearly before. Most of what we worry about is completely outside of our control. And worry does not add a single day to your life. It only takes away from the one you are living right now. When you worry over something you cannot control, you do not gain control. You just gain more worry, more anxiety, and less peace.That is why we are told to surrender our troubles to God instead of carrying them ourselves. He fills the gap between where we are and where we want to be. He is the one with control over everything, especially the things we cannot see coming.The devotional said something else that stopped me: the quality of your sleep is often a reflection of how much you actually trust God. If you are anxious and restless at night, it might mean there is something you have not fully handed over to Him.That one made me think harder than I expected to. I have not felt anxious lately, at least not in any way I could name. But these past couple of nights I have had a hard time falling asleep, even when my body felt tired. So I started asking myself the real question. Was this just my body, or was there something underneath it I had not turned over to God yet.I do not have a tidy answer to that yet. What I do know is I took it straight to Him instead of trying to figure it out on my own first. I am praying that He reveals whatever anxiety might be there, known or unknown to me, and that He removes it. I am trusting that He will fill me with His peace and the assurance that He already has complete control over my future. I am holding onto the promises He has already given me in scripture, trusting Him as my Creator, my Father, and the One who sustains me.In Jesus name. Amen.Peace, Love and Joy always,TanyaInfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Worship in spirit and truth is not a special skill you are missing. It is worship that comes from the heart and is real, not performed.

Matthew 6:33 says to seek His kingdom and His righteousness first, and everything else will be taken care of. It doesn’t mention money, success, power, or even love. Just His kingdom and His righteousness. So what does that actually mean? I was reading this through YouVersion guided scripture, and the narrator, AXIS, asked a question I hadn’t thought about. He asked what “all these things” actually refers to. I assumed it meant His kingdom and righteousness, which led to the real question: what is His kingdom, and what is His righteousness? The answer given was that it means prioritizing the way of being in the world that Jesus modeled. Trusting the Father to generously care for us as we generously care for others. That wasn’t what I would have guessed. This is also why context matters so much when reading scripture. Understanding what was happening before a verse was written changes what it actually means, and sometimes the meaning people assume isn’t the correct one at all. The devotional Seek This First breaks it down further. Instead of worrying about our basic needs, we’re called to seek His kingdom and righteousness first. Worldly things will always fight for our attention. Our schedules fill up, our responsibilities pile on with different levels of urgency, and what we should be seeking instead is the work of the kingdom, which is telling others about the hope of Jesus and teaching what He commanded. Seeking His righteousness means desiring to live the way God intended, according to His word, and making decisions that align with it. That part still feels like a puzzle to me. It’s one thing to say live according to His word. It’s another to actually live it out. And only when we put Him first do the other areas of life make sense. I’ll say this plainly. I don’t fully know if I understand what it means for every area of my life to make sense. Losing my brother still doesn’t make sense to me. But I do believe that once someone fulfills their purpose, their time on earth ends. I think about that a lot when I think about him. I’m in a season of uncertainty and struggle that’s gone on for a long time. I don’t like it. But deep down I know there’s a reason for it, an end to it, and that it’s growing me into something greater. The call to action from the devotional is to think about how you spend your time, and whether you’re worrying about things outside your control. I’m learning this gradually. When I hit a red light while I’m in a rush, my first reaction is still frustration, and then I remind myself I’ll get there when I get there. When my computer is slow and I’m trying to get something done, I get frustrated first, then I ask myself if maybe I’m not supposed to be working on this right now, or what I’m supposed to learn from the delay. I can’t make the computer move faster. I can only decide how I respond to the wait. This isn’t a lesson you learn overnight. It’s one I’m still learning, one red light and one slow loading screen at a time. The devotional also points out that when seeking God becomes your top priority, a desire to tell others about Him naturally overflows. I can testify to that. I’m not out here preaching at people, but I am quicker to talk about what He’s doing, because I genuinely believe everything that happens is for me, not to me. So when something good happens, it’s praise be to God. When someone needs something to go right, it’s let’s pray about this in Jesus’ name. That’s how I share my faith. Not by forcing it, but by living grateful, knowing life isn’t guaranteed, and that I get to live the life I’m living. Peace, Love and Joy always,Tanya / InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Breaking down Hebrews 12:28-29, a verse that sounds simple until you really look at what it is asking. What does it mean to worship with reverence and awe, and why does it call God a consuming fire?

I have started reading the Bible all the way through more times than I can count. Most of those attempts stopped somewhere in Genesis. So when I tell you I have read this part before and never seen it the way I am seeing it now, that is saying something.Adam and Eve ate the fruit they were told not to eat. The moment they did, they knew they were naked, and they hid. God comes looking for them and asks how they knew they were naked in the first place. They were hiding to cover themselves, which if you think about it, is the opposite of what we should do when we mess up. Hiding feels natural. Running toward God does not. But running toward him is what he is actually asking for.Here is the part that got me. God does not judge them for it. He does not chastise them or tell them how wrong they were. He asks one question, and then he makes coverings for them.The word for what he made is kethonet. Royal robes. He could have given them something basic. They had nothing to offer, no skill to make a covering themselves. They had been walking around enjoying the garden, not preparing for this. God did not make them earn it or figure it out. He gave them his best while they were standing there in the aftermath of their biggest mistake.That is what real love looks like. Not overlooking the sin. Responding to it with patience, abundance, and kindness instead of condemnation.This is exactly what 1 John 1:9 is telling us. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." Faithful. Not occasionally generous. Faithful, every time we come to him honest about what we have done.He knew we would sin before we ever did. That is why he sent his son. Christ took the weight so we would not have to carry shame or guilt as a permanent address. We are free. And that freedom is not a free pass to keep doing the same thing. It is supposed to push us to live different, to walk in who he made us to be, knowing we are forgiven and chasing righteousness anyway.So if there is something in your head telling you that you are too far gone, that you have messed up too many times, that is not God talking. Let it go. Lean into him. Let him purify you from it. He already made your covering. He made it royal, not because you earned it, but because that is who he is.Take a minute today. Whatever it is you are carrying, forgive yourself for it. Ask God to forgive you. Forgive the people who wronged you too, because we cannot ask for grace we are not willing to extend. Then thank him. Thank him for the forgiveness, for making you his child, for the freedom you already have. Ask him for the courage to actually walk in it.Peace, Love and Joy always,Tanya / InfiniteFaithandFavor.com#InfiniteFaithandFavor #ComeAsYouAre #GraceNotGrind #ChristianWomen #FaithInAction

The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him.Psalm 103:13 NLTToday is Father's Day, and for the first time I said happy Father's Day to my Heavenly Father. There's a scripture that says He's a father to the fatherless, and that's what makes Him different. If you don't know your earthly father, if the relationship was never what it should have been, if he's passed, or if he just wasn't available to you for whatever reason, you still have a Father. The best Father you could ever have. He does for you everything you'd expect an earthly father to do, but elevated. On a different level.I read a devotional that walked through what fathers do for their kids at every stage. Baby, child, teenager. They provide. They clothe. They feed. They discipline. They comfort. They play, teach, listen, guide, forgive, empower. It pointed to Matthew 7:9-11, where Jesus asks what father would give his child a stone when they ask for bread, or a snake when they ask for fish. If we, as flawed as we are, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Father in heaven give good gifts to us.Here's where it got me. The devotional said a parent's love for their child can only be compared to God's love for us, and even then, it's a mere shadow. I think about that next to the parable of the mustard seed, where Jesus says even a faith that small can move mountains. As much as I love my son, I believe what I feel for him is the mustard seed next to what God feels for him. My love is the seed. His love is the whole tree.I also want to clear something up while I'm here. Scripture tells us to fear the Lord, and I think that word trips people up. When I read fear, I used to picture being scared, the way you're scared of the dark or scared of getting hurt. That's not it. Fear of the Lord is reverence. It's respect. It's standing in front of something so much bigger than you and finally understanding the size of the room you're in.The devotional closed with something I needed. If you're feeling loss, if you feel like you've messed up, if you're heartbroken or defeated, God wants to meet you exactly where you are. Sometimes that looks like Him leading you toward life. Sometimes it's mercy. Sometimes it's just the reminder that you are still His child, and He is still available to you.It also asked us to pray that God would reveal any untruths or half-truths that have kept us from Him, to help us break down the walls we've built, and to restore the kind of trust we had as children. Simple trust. The kind that doesn't ask questions before it reaches for the hand that's holding it.Peace, Love and Joy always,TanyaInfiniteFaithandFavor.com