Reference scripture: 1 Peter 1:7 – “So that the genuineness of your faith may be tested, your faith which is infinitely more precious than the perishable gold which is tested and purified by fire. This proving of your faith is intended to redound to your praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) is revealed.

Do you understand that your faith and my faith is going to be tried? The word “tried” means proven, tested. Your and my faith is going to be tested, tried, proven. The enemy’s objective in the trial of your faith is that you be stripped of your faith and that you wind up disapproved. But God’s will is that you come out with your faith approved and that your faith becomes stronger and more precious through the process.

The scripture says, your faith is very precious? This is the same word used for the precious blood of Jesus. So what is precious to God? Down here on earth things are precious. Jewels are precious, silver and gold is precious, money is precious, possessions are precious. But what is precious to God? Among other things, our faith is precious to Him. We think of other verses where it says without faith it is impossible to please God. But with faith, you can please Him. Faith pleases God. Faith is valuable to God. When God sees faith in the heart of an individual that pleases Him.

He looks at your faith and He values it. He esteems it. It is important to Him, it is valuable to Him, it’s precious to Him. So if it’s precious to Him it should be precious to you. And if you understand that your faith is precious and valuable to God, you’ll understand that by means of that faith you are an overcomer, you’re more than a conqueror. And who are you overcoming and who are you being more than a conqueror than? The devil, the enemy, and his devices. So understand that your faith is precious to God and your faith is a threat to the enemy.

And that makes you a target. And the enemy whether you realize it or not has targeted your faith. And he works in life to cause situations to come about, to cause pressure to come on you, to cause tribulations, trials, and tests. And by the time you get through these situations he wants you to be completely stripped. There will be schemes and strategies and arrangements of his that will be faith strippers. And he’s designed it so that by the time you get through the test or trial you have absolutely no faith. You’ve cast your confidence away, you’ve lost confidence in God’s word, you’ve lost confidence in God and you are in despair. No hope, no faith, no joy, no peace. And there is nothing more pathetic and pitiful in the world than a completely faithless individual.

But it doesn’t have to turn out that way. Instead of coming out faithless we can come out with our faith having gone through the fire like gold being refined and shining all the brighter and rooted in the word all the deeper and we can come out with our faith stronger instead of being stripped. The final decision is in our hands. Whether we come out with stronger faith or come out with no faith is not up to God and is not up to the devil. It is up to us. The devil is doing some things against us and God will help us but the decision is ours. It is up to us how we come out.

In the book of Genesis we find how the enemy devised a scheme to strip Adam and Eve’s faith. The serpent was very sly and deceitful and he said to Eve, “Hath God said that you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” One of the things that the enemy will do to shake you loose from your faith is he will endeavor to undermine the foundation of your faith which is God’s word. He will challenge you as to what God said to you. And then if you understand what God said to you he will endeavor to remove you from the simplicity of it. He will try to confuse you and get you to misunderstand and make complicated what God said to you. He did it to Eve. He tried to confuse Eve and said to her, “hath God said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Then he told her that she would not surely die because God knows that the day that you eat of the fruit that your eyes will be opened and you will be as God knowing good and evil.

When you get revelation it is real simple. When you are enlightened in the word of God it excites you, it gives you joy. But be on guard because just as sure as you get revelation and you get excited about something that you read in the bible, the enemy will come immediately and he’ll lie to you and tell you, that it is not so. He’ll question you and ask, “what did God tell you?” What are you so excited about? No, you’re wrong, that is not for you, that’s passed away, that’s just for the Jews. Yea, but you don’t qualify, yea but this, yea but that”. And he’ll come and reason with you, he’ll try to rationalize with you, he’ll lie to you, he’ll try to get God’s word away from you. The devil will push every button he can to steal your faith and not believe God. He is persistent. Somehow, someway he’s going to try to stop your faith because if he doesn’t then you have a testimony of victory.

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