Kingdom Principle:  Faith is the foothold of the Kingdom, rooted in the heart.

1 Samuel 15:34 – 16:13 Psalm 20 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17 Mark 4:26-34

This week’s post is written by Kimberly Harp –   It has long been my desire to have others contributing to this blog, and today this desire has been realized. Thank you Kimberly for following your heart – it is beautiful. 

I have grown up a part of the church. I attended Sunday School, youth group, and private Christian school so to say the least, I know the “answers”. I know that 90% of the time the “answer” is Jesus. For the other 10 percent, I attended seminary and earned my Masters degree. Yet still, just last week the answers weren’t enough. I felt depressed, worth less and lonely and the answers that I knew to be true in my mind were not changing those feelings.

Wait, maybe it’s about the heart.

I have trained faithfully and rigorously for long races. I lost weight and three dress sizes in nine months. I disciplined my body and got into the best shape of my life. Yet still, I find myself standing next to another woman questioning if all that discipline was good enough. My medals attained fall short when I let comparison creep in and notice that my body is not what the world says it should be.

Wait, maybe it’s about the heart.

Faith is the foothold of the Kingdom. And faith is deeply a matter of the heart. It is by faith that we discover our identity, authority and motivation in our lives.

In I Samuel 16, we find Samuel mourning over Saul until he is told by God to anoint the new king of Israel. He goes to the house of Jesse and upon seeing the eldest brother thinks…this is the one to be anointed but God stops him and says, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things the people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (16:7) Samuel sees all seven sons before he asks if there are any more…and God chooses the most unlikely, the youngest, the one out tending to the sheep because of his heart.

The apostle Paul writes that we have a choice- “you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.” (2 Cor. 5:12) He continues to write that “if we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.” (2 Cor. 5:13). How often we try to have the right mind for those around us… How often we are focused on what is seen rather than what is in the heart.

The evil one is real. He is fighting for our footholds- whether that foothold be of the mind, body or deeper in our hearts. We have a placement already won for our foothold- it is our faith in Jesus Christ. “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Often the pressure to have all the right answers can get overwhelming. There is a pressure to be what we think others want us to be…. a weight upon us coming from the lies of the enemy. In faith, we need to breathe in His grace. Renounce the lies. And from the heart, exhale praise to the Lord of Lords. This takes faith. It is rooting us deep in a foothold of the Kingdom. When those footholds get loose, we breathe again. We choose faith again. We remember that though we feel small like a “mustard seed” (Mark 4:31) we can be who God created us to be, live with His authority as our own and be motivated to advance the Kingdom in love.