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.

And if he can deceive you into doubt then he has effectively robbed you of your faith. Your faith is going to be challenged and tried and tested by his reasoning and by his logic and by his lies. He is a liar. And it worked with Adam and Eve and it works with human being after human being. So be on guard and be watchful.

The devil will attack God’s character. He will try to cast a shadow on God’s character and suggest that God has lied, God is deceptive, God’s not faithful, you can’t count on Him and you can’t be sure of what He meant. He will come to you and ask you questions; why did God do this, why didn’t He do that, why hasn’t this already happened, what about this, what about what happened with so and so, and he is trying to get you to doubt God’s character and God’s dependability and God’s faithfulness. One of the greatest tests and trials of faith is when you don’t know why you are in the middle of tests and trials. How could this happen you ask?

There are many sad cases of people who used to teach and believe that it’s God’s will to heal everyone, to work miracles and do what He’s always done. But because they prayed for somebody and they didn’t make it, or they tried to stand with somebody and it didn’t turn out right, they ask, “why?” and they start to let doubt come in. Sometimes in those cases those faith strippers cause them to lose their faith and quit preaching the truth, and back off from the word and faith, because they don’t know why.

Some people are mad at God. They let one of those faith strippers strip them and they listened to the devil and they were robbed.

You may not know why but know that God is good and know that He is faithful. And know that He is fair and just and just knowing those basic things will get you through some tough times and some pressure times of some of these faith strippers. And if you’ll just hold onto your faith in God, God will prove that you were right to trust Him. He’ll prove it to you, He’ll demonstrate it to you, it’ll come to pass and you will see that you were not made ashamed in trusting God.

Another faith stripper that the enemy will use is he will emphasize and try to pull you to look and feel and walk by sight. He’ll try you in the area of your senses. He’ll try to get you to look at what’s going on and push buttons to make you feel things, and because that contradicts what God has told you it can strip your faith away just like that. If he can get you to focus on the circumstances long enough, especially when they contradict what God has told you, it starts to chip away at your faith. If you are believing God for something, you don’t need to focus on what things look like because most times they will look contrary to what God says in His Word.

You cannot fix your mind on the problem; what you do or don’t see, what you feel or don’t feel and what is contrary to what God told you. Remember the scripture in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “for we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen, for the things that are seen are temporal and the things that are not seen are eternal.”

That is good news. So are you seeing some things that you don’t like? Have you been feeling some things that you don’t like? The bible says it is temporary. Temporary, Temporary!! Oh, it’s real, it’s there. Yes, you’ve got a problem. But you have got a bigger God. Greater is He that is in me than He that is in the world!

So remember, the enemy will work to wear you down and wear you out. Many a person started out good. They started out zealous and with faith in their heart. They took off on the race that we are running. But then hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months turned into years. They feel like they are out in the middle of ‘they don’t know where’ and like they are walking on a tightrope. Their shoes are feeling raggedy and they are thirsty and dry and the sun is beating down on their head, and many a soul has given up their faith. We’ve all been there at one time or another. There is only one thing that will get you through the tests, trials, and tribulations in life. And that is your faith. And faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing the word of God. Never let a day go by where the word of God is not going in your ears and coming out of your mouth. It will take you through to victory every time.

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