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Do you have questions about the Bible?  Send your question to Pastor Jack at questions@riveroflifefellowship.org and watch for answers here on the website and in our weekly bulletin. 

This week’s question:

Q:  SHOULD A BELIEVER EXPECT TO SUCCEED IN HARD TIMES?

A:  If you study the Word of God, you will discover that most of the examples we have of God’s people succeeding, were in what we would refer to as hopeless times.  Let me give some biblical examples.  Rom 4:18 tells us that “Abraham” who, contrary to hope, in hope believed. It was hopeless under natural circumstances for him and his wife to have a baby at his age, but that was the very time God gave him a miracle. If follow his son Isaac’s story, you will find it was during a severe famine and that God had him sow in the land of the Philistines, which produced a hundredfold return in the same year (Gen 26:12-13). One of my favorite examples is where God’s people (who had been in slavery for 430 years) were delivered during the time of their bondage.  Perhaps you’re thinking ‘Yes, that’s true but it took them 40 years to do it,’ but it was never God’s intention to take forty years.  It was only because they would change their “stinking thinking” that it took so long. Likewise, we do not have to take a long time to succeed if we would simply mix our faith with the promises as well (Heb 4:2).