Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

I took Judah to the beach.  It was a green flag day (in other words, a safe one, though open water always carries dangers) and we were body surfing along the shore.  I noticed someone further out, but thought nothing of it at first as a lot of people like to go out beyond the breakers and just float, including myself.  Gradually, I noticed that she seemed to be struggling and someone was calling to her from the shore.  "Are you OK?" I yelled.  "I can't touch," she responded.  I turned to Judah and told him to stay by the shore and then swam out to the young woman.  "Can you swim?" I asked.  "No, and my arms are getting tired," she replied.  To her credit though scared, she wasn't panicking.  "It's all right, almost everyone can float.  Just relax and we'll see about getting you back in."  I put my arm around her waist and began side-stroking back to shore. 
 
I glanced at the lifeguard station and saw that they had finally noticed that something was wrong.  One of the two was hopping down from the tower and starting out with a flotation device.  "OK, the lifeguard is on the way.  All we have to do is keep your head above water till they get here."  "OK," she responded.  By the time the lifeguard got to us, I had the woman almost all the way in.  He had her grab the flotation device and asked me, "Are you OK, sir?"  I said yes, and swam back to Judah.  We kept body surfing for another half-hour.  
 
The reason I told that story is not to brag (OK, maybe just a little), but because of the fact that I am not a lifeguard.  I am not a lifeguard, but I saw someone in trouble when the lifeguards were distracted by the hundreds of others in the water, and I went to help her.  It is possible she would have drowned before the official guards saw her.  The church, as a family, is supposed to be looking out for one another.  Yes, we have "lifeguards" in the form of elders and preachers.  Those guards are often busy with all the others "in the water" and might not see the one struggling Christian that you are aware of.  Don't wait for the elders or the preacher to notice.  Do something.  How many passages might we cite? 
 
Gal. 6:1,2  "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. . . Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."  Luke 17:3  "Take heed to yourselves: if thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him."   Heb. 10:24  "and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works"
 
I'm sure a few minutes with a search engine would bring up a dozen more.  If your brother or sister is struggling, do something.  Maybe the best thing you can do is alert the "lifeguard" rather than swimming out yourself, but do something.  Don't allow your brother to drown while you watch, waiting for someone else to act.  
 
Jude 22-23  "And on some have mercy, who are in doubt; and some save, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh."
 
 
Lucas Ward

It’s a classic kids’ comment, one Keith and I make to one another for laughs, but we never really had to deal with it when the boys were little.  Frankly, parents are their own worst enemies about things like this—your children know exactly what they can and cannot get away with long before they can even tell you in words.  If you don’t want to hear that particular whine, then do something about it.
            Yet still I thought of that question when I was working on Psalm 13.  “How long?” David asks, not once, but four times in the first two verses.  It was just as common then as it is now.  Habakkuk’s psalm begins, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear?” Hab 1:2. The martyrs pictured around the throne of God cry out, “O Sovereign Lord...how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Rev. 6:9,10.  “How long” is indeed a common complaint in the scriptures—I found it listed 52 times!
            And the point is this, these people are undergoing not just trials, but long, drawn out trials.  “Time flies when you’re having fun,” we often say, and that means it crawls when you aren’t.
            “It is not under the sharpest, but the longest trials that we are most in danger of fainting,” Andrew Fuller says in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David.  It is so true.  Just last week I nearly lost it over something small and inconsequential. 
            Being married to a deaf man can be extremely frustrating.  Three times in one hour Keith and I had a misunderstanding based totally on the fact that he could not hear what I was saying.  If he could have heard just three words, none of it would have even mattered, but because he couldn’t, it made the situation more and more complex, and more and more exasperating as it went on.  And the reason I couldn’t handle it that morning?  Not because it was three times in one hour, but because we have been dealing with it for fifty-one years now.
            But who am I to complain?  The woman in Luke 8 had her issue of blood for 12 years.  The woman who had the spirit of infirmity in Luke 13 had been suffering for 18 years.  The man who lay at the pool of Bethesda (John 5) had done so for 38 years.  The blind beggar in John 9 had been that way from birth.  Sarah had waited for a child for decades.  The people of God waited for a Messiah for several thousand years!  These people had far more reason than I to ask God, “How long?”
            All of us are prone to ask, “Are we there yet?”  and sometimes the answer does not come in this lifetime.  That may be the most difficult thing to deal with.  Some are born into suffering and never get out of it.  Some, due to random accident or maybe even their own bad choices, suffer for the remaining years of their lives and never see a reason.  God has His plans and we are not always privy to them.    
            But one day we will receive the answer we want to hear: “How long? Now! We are there!”  The waiting will be over, no more suffering of any sort, even the petty little annoyances that no one else can understand, that drive you up a wall on a bad day, that fill you with guilt when your mind clears and you finally recognize just how blessed you truly are. 
            Some day we will arrive, and we won’t be going on any more long difficult journeys ever again.
 
It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. Deuteronomy 31:8.                                
 
Dene Ward
 

This is why you should invest in a numberless Bible.

Segmenting [the Bible into chapters and verses] may have been a boon for checking references, but it was otherwise a disaster.  It encouraged proof-texting, obscured the integrity of narratives, and dismembered cohesive discourses under the control of inspired authors into fragments manipulated by uninspired readers. 

Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

It was almost amusing when it happened. 
            Many years ago at one of the congregations where Keith preached, one of the older men made it a point to say to him, “I know you are a hard worker.  But you still have small children at home.  You need to make sure you spend time with them.” 
            We appreciated that.  Keith was a hard worker, spending at least 30 hours a week with the Word, just as Paul told Timothy and Titus they needed to be doing as young evangelists, plus the four hours preaching and teaching in the assembly every week, and then holding Bible studies, usually in the evenings, with interested people, or looking for more interested folks as he passed out flyers and meeting announcements, sent out and graded correspondence courses, and wrote articles in the local paper.  I often met him at the local pond loaded down with old towels and blankets, especially in the winter, for a baptism.  He seldom worked less than 60 hours a week.
            Yet not long afterward, the same man’s wife came up to him and scolded him because he had missed putting an article in the paper the week we moved from one house to another.  Everything else was done, but something had to give that week, and he preferred that one article not be written rather than his boys not have time with their father.
            I fear too many churches are more like the wife of that couple than the husband.  Especially if a man is supported mainly by other churches, the pressure is felt, even if it isn’t applied.  Then there are the men who do not even need that pressure to avoid their obligations at home, using the same excuse.  Here is what Jesus had to say about that. 
            And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' But you say, 'If a man tells his father or his mother, "Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban"' (that is, given to God)-- then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do."  Mark 7:9-13.
            Those people got out of their financial obligations to their elderly parents by claiming their money was “given to God,” whether or not it ever actually made it to the Temple coffers! 
            “And many such things you do,” Jesus tacked on the end of that. .”  As long as you can say you are using it for God, whatever “it” is, you don’t have to give it to anyone else.  Tell me that saying your time is given to God (Corban) so it’s all right if you don’t spend enough of it with your children to teach them basic skills of life, to discuss the Word of God “when you walk and talk,” to just listen to their childish concerns and give them the fatherly wisdom they crave, or enough time to nurture your relationship with the wife whom you have come to take for granted, aren’t “such things."
            I have seen old pioneer preachers lauded for sacrificing their family lives to go off for months at a time to preach the gospel.  I am not sure the Lord would have been among their admirers.  If they were single, fine, but choosing to have a family places other obligations on you.  Isn’t that what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7?  I would rather you be like me (single) so you do not have the obligations that having a family puts on you, duties which God does expect you to fulfill.  Paul certainly didn’t say those obligations were negated by spiritual things.
            Churches need to look at their preachers’ schedules for this reason:  see if he is raising his children; see if he is spending time with his wife.  The Lord made a family with both a mother and a father present in the home.  He made the woman to be a help not a substitute father.  Jesus said, “Don’t blame what you do for God as the reason you neglect your family obligations.”  He says you make void the Word of God when you do that.  Churches, do you want to be a party, or perhaps the main cause, for a man to make void the Word of God?
            And we can also say this applies to anyone who hides behind “spiritual things” to avoid his family responsibilities—he is calling his family, “Corban.”
            We call the argument about “quality time” between working mothers and their children a “myth.”  Quality time can only happen when a quantity of time is being spent.  What applies to mothers, certainly applies to fathers too.  Jesus seems to agree.
  
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4.  Read that without the parenthetical statement—just the underlined words.
 
Dene Ward

One afternoon many years ago we stopped at an Olive Garden restaurant for a late lunch.  It was about 2:30, and it would be our only meal of the day. The place was nearly empty, so we were seated at a nice table and an eager young waitress, her order pad and pen held at the ready, came to serve us.
            “We’ll start with bruschetta,” I said. 
            “Huh?  Oh!  You mean brush-etta.”
            No, I thought.  I meant what I said, “Brrroo-skeht-ta.”
            Now, you must understand that I had been teaching Italian aria and art song for a couple dozen years at that time.  My students regularly stood before judges who marked them down on mispronounced Italian, so I had studied everything I could, constantly referencing an Italian pronunciation guide, and checking with other teachers who had sung opera.  I knew exactly how to pronounce “bruschetta.”
            I had learned some lessons the hard way.  I remember one especially embarrassing and painful occasion at state contest.  I don’t recall the exact word, but somewhere in it was the letter sequence “g-i-a.”  I had the student pronounce that as two syllables:  “jee-ah.” 
            “That’s not quite right,” the judge said, as nicely as she could.  The i turns the g into a j.  After that, it has done its work, and is not pronounced.  The syllable is simply “jah,” not “jee-ah.”
            Since we’re into Italian food at this point, let me illustrate it this way:  parmagiana reggiano cheese is pronounced “par-ma-jah-nah reh-jah-no,” NOT “par-ma-jee-ah-nah reh-jee-ah-no,” and that chef named “Giada” is “Jah-da,”  NOT “Jee-ah-dah.”  Pay attention sometime when she says her name herself. 
            Now here is my point:  who should I listen to about how to pronounce Italian—a college student moonlighting at a chain restaurant or the voice judge, a woman who has sung on the operatic stage many years longer than that waitress has been alive, singing Italian for hours at a time, and who can even translate it?
            How do you choose whom to listen to?  Who gets your vote for the one to take advice from?  Is it someone your own age who has as little experience as you do?  Is it perhaps someone older, but whose only qualification in your mind is that s/he is “fun” and “cool,” and a whole lot more so than the other old fuddy-duddies?  Is it someone who gives you the answers you want, who makes everything easy, even things that are not and should not be easy? Is it someone who makes you laugh?  Is it someone who speaks in “bumper sticker?”  Or is it someone who has experienced the ups and downs of life and come through it sane and faithful, someone who may not be able to keep an audience’s attention but can tell you from a heart of concern exactly what you need to hear—whether or not it’s what you want to hear?  Most important of all—is it someone who knows the Word of God inside out and has stuck with it even when it made his own life difficult, who tells you what God says, not what he thinks or feels?
            Mispronouncing Italian is no big deal in most of our lives, but mispronouncing the Word of God can cost you your soul.
 
Listen to advice and accept instruction that you may be wise in your latter end, Prov 19:20.
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Joanne Beckley.

Leviticus 19:18 You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.
 
All of the following can be true of you or me. Please take time to read and consider.
 
Simmering Anger (bearing a grudge) is fed by emotions. Your mind has forgiven a wrong done. You have said the right words, but your heart continues to feed on your hurt. Why? In truth, full forgiveness continues to be withheld. No longer do you feel close to that sister or brother in Christ, and those feelings are destroying any trust toward that person. The days and years go by but simmering anger and remembered hurt is still there. Sadly, by now, only you are suffering.
                                                            
When a person does not let go of real or imagined hurt, repeated, unrealistic, negative thoughts and speech will begin to develop. There will always be a suspicion or the conviction that someone is going to hurt you. And so someone does...and again, another does. Hurt upon hurt, real or imagined, will be fed by a broken angry heart. It is happening and you feel friendless and isolated. Your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire glass of water.
 
Thankfully, God believes and knows your heart and mind can again begin to beat in the united way He has intended. One can indeed completely let go of self, repent, and then truly forgive and forget. Look upward and let God heal a simmering angry heart.
 
Eph 2:2-6 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly [places,] in Christ Jesus,

Ask yourself:
Is my anger based on assuming the best motives?
Is it driven by spiritual concern for others?
Am I grieving in unrighteousness for others and trying to remedy?
Can I trust God to heal me? To no longer live as a child of wrath?
 
 
Letting go of simmering anger is a matter of choice. I will choose to let go!! I will refuse to mentally rehearse past hurts. I will actively seek to heal any breach between us. I will learn again the joy found in loving my brothers and sisters in Christ so that we will be alive together with Christ.
 
Eph 4:1-3, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
 
Eph 4:26 Be angry yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
 
Ps 4:4-5 Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, And trust in the LORD.
 
Eph 4:31-32 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
 
Col 3:12-14 And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. And beyond all these things [put on] love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

Joanne Beckley

“Lose up to ten pounds the first week!  No dieting!  No exercise!  Eat what you like.  One pill a day will give you the body you have always dreamed of!”
            It’s sad how many people believe those ads.  But it is understandable too.  No one wants to change his lifestyle.  No one wants to go hungry and sweat.  Everyone wants to eat the good stuff and take a magic pill to cure their obesity.
            I know a few people who have that problem with sin too.  They don’t want to change their lives.  They don’t want to admit they even need to change.  They certainly don’t want to make the effort in study, prayer, self-examination, and true repentance.  They think they have the “magic pill,” and here is what it is.
            I can go merrily along if I remember to pray for forgiveness every night, especially for my “secret sins.” 
            I can live my life as I wish as long as I show up Sunday morning and take the Lord’s Supper.
            I can even play at repentance by talking about my imperfections and making statements like, “I know I am a sinner,” so no one can quote 1 John 1:8 at me.
            I have seen it too many times over the years.  I have even done it myself.  I know I am not perfect so a quick prayer for forgiveness every day should take care of the problem.  Far be it from me to actually admit anything specific and work on it.  Have you noticed this about people like that?  Sooner or later they make a statement like this, “If I’ve sinned, I’m sorry.”  They’ve taken yet another diet pill and expect a 15 pound loss of sin in one short minute.
            The real weight loss programs out there are all about accountability.  You show up, you weigh in, you talk about exactly what you have eaten and not eaten, and how much exercise you have or have not had.  Those people tend to lose the weight and keep it off longer.  They understand that this is a lifestyle change, not a magic pill.  And they take responsibility for their actions, both good and bad.
            That’s exactly the way overcoming sin works.  “Confess your faults one to another,” James tells us, “and pray for one another” (5:16)   Everyone participates and everyone helps.
             “Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance,” John told the masses (Matt 3:8).  A quick little prayer or a ritual offering was only the beginning of a lifestyle change that was supposed to be obvious to everyone from then on.
            I’ve heard brethren criticize the Catholic religion as one of convenience.  “You can live as you like as long as you confess every week and do penance.”  Some of us don’t even want to do that much.  Confession is humiliating.  Doing penance is hard work.  It’s far easier to pray for forgiveness every night and show up every Sunday for those few magic bites.  Don’t tell me we aren’t as bad they are—we’re worse!
            Satan is the one who puts out those ads for sin’s magic pills.  Don’t be a “patsy.”  No one is sure where the term came from.  Some suggest it is from the Italian word pazzo.  Do you know what that word means?  “Fool.”  Sounds to me like the perfect word. 
 
For godly sorrow works repentance unto salvation, a repentance which brings no regret: but the sorrow of the world works death. For behold, this selfsame thing, that you were made sorry after a godly sort, what earnest care it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging! In everything you approved yourselves to be pure in the matter. 2 Corinthians 7:10-11.
 
Dene Ward    

This is the third book in the series I have been reading.  I had always known that the Spirit was mentioned in the Old Testament, but never realized how often, nor that there were enough passages to fill a book and even divide into topics.
            The author, Christopher J. H. Wright, covers the Holy Spirit as a creating agent (Gen 1:2, e.g.), as the one who empowers the people of God, especially leaders such as Moses, Saul, and David, as a prophetic spirit who inspires the prophets, and as an anointer.  In each section, he fills the pages with more scriptures than you would typically hear in one sermon. 
            The last section, on the coming Spirit, leaves me a little unsettled, not certain if what I am hearing is truth stated a little differently than I usually hear or perhaps a few things that might not be truth at all.  Be careful there.  But the rest of the book is one huge education in the work of the Holy Spirit all the way back to the beginning.  As with the others in this series, the author has some strong words for those who would take advantage of people with their unsound use of the scriptures, a refreshing change from many theological books.
            This book is published by the InterVarsity Press, and is also available in a three in one volume, which could save you some money.  It is also available on Kindle.
 
Dene Ward

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. I got my first really nasty comment on the blog a few weeks ago.  I know, despite the obviously made up name, that this was not a Christian in any sense of the word.  A Christian would never have used the language he did.  I answered him politely via the email address I had access to, apologizing for his misunderstanding, inviting him to visit again, and have not heard word one back.  I can't help but wonder how surprised he was when he heard from me, and even more when my reaction was probably the last thing expected.
            I understand that this type of thing is called “trolling.”  Someone who has nothing better to do with his life goes combing through blogs and websites and does his best to create a controversy with a quick jab, then sits back to see “what he hath wrought.”  In this case nothing.  One reply by a reader showed his comment to be, not only vulgar, but completely ridiculous.  I did not say what he said I did, and no one else took it that way either.  And you know what?  Solomon’s proverb is shown to be true yet again, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
            The church had trollers to deal with in the first century.  Acts 13,14,15,17, and 21, Rom 16, Gal 1 and 2, several chapters in Timothy, and most of John’s epistles show their sinister attempts to cause controversy and divide the church.  They even followed Paul around from place to place, “poisoning their minds against the brothers” Acts 14:2; “subverting souls” 15:24; “agitating and stirring up” 17:13; “creating obstacles contrary to the doctrine” Rom 16:17; and “distorting the gospel” Gal 1:7.
            And we still have trollers today—people who go from house to house spreading dissatisfaction, who stand in the parking lots campaigning against the leadership of the church, who even have websites devoted to dispensing discontent with spurious arguments and unsubstantiated accusations, usually about their own pet concerns.  And who are the victims?  “The naïve,” Romans 16 tells us, usually those who are young and easily swayed by a handsome fellow who seems far more “with it” than the stodgy old nay-sayers. 
            And how does that passage describe these trollers?  They are “puffed up with conceit,” gathering to themselves a rah-rah club to satisfy their egos.  They “understand nothing” while at the same time claiming to be more enlightened than anyone else.  They have an “unhealthy craving for controversy,” unhealthy for those whose hearts are deceived, unhealthy for the body of Christ, and certainly unhealthy for their own souls.
            Trolling—no, it’s not new, and neither is this:  God hates it every bit as much now as He did two thousand years ago.
 
But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. Titus 3:9-11.
 
Dene Ward

My grandsons love playing in the park.  Their city yard is postage stamp small without room for two active little boys to run around much, so they enjoy a place with swings, slides, jungle gyms and seesaws.  I even get on the seesaws with them, helping with the large weight deficit on their side by using my legs.
            Seesaws may be fun at the playground, but they are not God’s idea of ideal service.  Yes, we may falter once in awhile.  Many passages speak of faith in flux, but as we mature in that faith, the flux should become smaller and smaller.  David speaks of the opposite of a seesaw faith, even when he is running for his life in Psalm 57:7.  My heart is steadfast, O God, or, in several other versions, My heart is fixed.  In a time of fear, when others would have wavered, David is able to keep his faith in God steady. 
            So the question is, how do we avoid the seesaws in life?  First, let’s make it clear—you can’t avoid the park altogether.  I hear people talking about life as if it is always supposed to be fun, always easy, and always good, and something is wrong when anything bad happens.  Nonsense.  We live on an earth that has been cursed because of man’s sin.  When God curses something, he does a bang-up job of it.  To think we would still be living in something resembling Eden is ridiculous. 
            We are all dying from the moment we are born.  Some of us just manage to hang on longer than others.  Some of us catch diseases because they are out there due to sin and Satan.  Some of us are injured.  Some of us have disabilities.  Some of us are never able to lead a normal life.  It has nothing to do with God being mean, or not loving us, or not paying attention to us one way or the other, and everything to do with being alive.  Everyone receives bad news once in awhile—it isn’t out of the ordinary.  Everyone experiences moments of fear and doubt.  We all go through trials.  But just because you are in the park, doesn’t mean you have to get on the seesaw.
            We must have a steadfast faith no matter what happens to us.  The Lord is faithful; He will establish you… 2 Thes 3:3.  Our hearts can be established by grace, Heb 13:9.  But those things are nebulous, nothing we can really lay our hands on in our daily struggles.  Am I supposed to just think real hard about God and grace and somehow get stronger?  Yes, it will help, but God knows we are tethered to this life through tangible things and He gives us plenty of that sort of help as well, help we sometimes do not want to recognize because of the responsibility it places upon us to act. 
            We must be willing to be guided to that steadfastness by faithful leaders, 2 Thes 3:3-5.  We must be willing to obey God’s law, James 1:22-24, and live a life of righteousness, Psa 112:6, before steadfastness makes an appearance.  We must become a part of God’s people and associate with them as much as possible, Heb 10:19-25.  We must study the lives of those who have gone before and imitate their steadfastness, laying aside sin if we hope to endure as they did, Heb 12:1-2.  Every one of those things will keep us off the seesaw.
            Yeah, right, the world says--to change one’s life and become part of God’s people, the church—for some reason those are the very things they will laugh to scorn.  And we fall for what they preach--a Jesus who “loves me as I am” without demanding any change, and divides His body from His being, labeling it a manmade placeholder for the true kingdom to come.  “I can have a relationship with God without having a relationship with anyone else,” we say, and promptly climb aboard the seesaw, Satan laughing gleefully at us from the other end.  Guess what?  That’s who we are having a relationship with.
            Get off the seesaw now before he has you sitting so high up on it, your legs dangling beneath you, that you are unable to reach the grounding your faith needs.  You may still have moments of weakness and doubt, but those things will grow less and less if you make use of the help God has given you.  You can have a steadfast faith, even if it finds you hiding in a cave from your enemies.  My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast…For your steadfast love is great to the heavens; your faithfulness to the clouds Psa 57:7,10
 
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:58.
 
Dene Ward