Author: Comfort O. Opoku

Faith is like an inner voice that keeps reminding us about the positive outlook of our life, and it helps us to keep going irrespective of the situation in our life. “Faith is unseen but felt”. Faith is hope when all seems lost. -Catherine Pulsifier In a glimpse of what life makes you see on earth, where will you turn your hope in order to have unwavering assurance of the things you want to have or the things you wish to have or the challenges you might be entangled with that you wished never existed. Every individual person has a way of handling things around him or herself, irrespective of who the person is and what he or she has attained in life. We always have something going on, on the good side or on the bad side. You consider some things in your life, and you realize that there were some circumstances you found yourself  but you were able to channel your focus and your faith to turn it around for your good. Probably the good you were expecting of the outcome was not good enough, but it is still good. In a space of time, instances around you will either prompt you or caution you about the things in life .We are of different attributes, attitudes and background, someone’s level of understanding will be different from others depending on the way and how the person responds to it. We live in a dispensation called life where everything that happens is not scripted. Things happen by their own means, sometimes wondering about the circumstances surrounding them. In a world that we live in, not everything that we can control. There are some instances where things occur and you totally don’t have any hand in it or perhaps didn’t even have it in mind.

Many times, people sit down and think about some perspective seasons in their life and come to the conclusion that they still have not got everything right yet. You reach such stage in your life and your inner self will be wondering, what is it left for me to do again? You are still not satisfied, don’t worry that’s normal to think that way in response to human nature, you feel incomplete upon all the things you have achieved or something you don’t have. Individually, with respect to human nature, people always feel that there’s more to do and that’s why people want to go to school. That’s why people want lucrative jobs. Even though you have a degree, you still want to go and do your masters, your PHD and other courses of interest. Even though you have a job, you still have a keen interest in having another good job offer with a good paycheck. We all want to possess something. That’s why very often you hear people say, I have a car. I have a house, I have a business, I have a company, I have a phone, I have a laptop.

We start to put our faith in these things, thinking that they will completes our life but it doesn’t. Your job, your car, your house cannot be guaranteed to give you a perfect life. You can lose your job anytime, you can have an accident with your car at any moment. Your car can have a fault at any moment. It doesn’t matter the type of car you are using. You can lose your house at any point in time in your life, whether through an accident or some financial crisis. With all this layout of uncertainty most people put their faith in it. I am  not saying you should not live your life without these things. No! That’s totally out of context. You certainly need these things to enhance your life, yeah no doubt about that, I can’t imagine the world without a car, house,or job. I mean, life will obviously be difficult and a hell to live in, but we prioritize these things too much to the extent that it deviates our initial intention of our motives. For instance, you have a current job that is not paying much, in fact you struggle with paying your bills.

You pray and ask God, he should let you get a good job opportunity that will make you have a good life. So you start applying to some companies, just hoping that at least one or two companies will call you for an interview. They did and you got a job. Your personal motive for getting the job was to be able to pay off your bills, invest some and probably with time you establish a foundation that could help people whose current situation was your previous situation. But guess what, when the money in your account began to increase in value, you forgot your motives, and started living an unnecessarily lavish lifestyle. It was like heaven at the beginning but didn’t last for long because as time went by you were buying things that you could not afford which led you into debt. This totally makes you come back to zero, even lower than where you started, all because of deviation of motives.This Scenario Stated above is just to throw more light on some diverse ways that sometimes lead people into some avoidable situations.https://enerriseinspi.com/index.php/2022/06/09/be-the-hero-in-your-life-because-nobody-will/

Life is full of surprises and twists. We do not know what will happen in the next second. But still, we continue to live our lives. One of the tools that can help us is our FAITH. In the biblical context “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1). Since we are talking about Faith, permit me to make you understand it profusely with a story to illuminate your mind and thoughts on Faith.

“THE SCULPTOR’S FAITH”.

The story is titled “THE SCULPTOR’S FAITH”. It was a remote area best known for sculpture shops. There lived a father and a son. Father was a sculptor and had a shop. He never made any profits from the shop. In his free time, the father used to teach his son the art of sculpture. While teaching the art, he also taught him about work ethics and the faith one should have in his work. He told his son, “we are not selling as many sculptures as we wanted, but one day our work will reach the right people. From that day, there will be no looking back”.

As time passed, his son learned the complete art of sculpturing. He was helping his father along with his studies. Other sculptors in the area closed their shops and went for other jobs. They used to advise the father “leave this work and look for any source of income. You will never earn from this. But the father continued selling the sculptures. One day, a business man was traveling in his car and saw the sculptures shining like gold in the rays of the sun. He visited the shop and explored the sculptures. Then he told the father “These sculptures look great. They have high demand in other countries. Can we both do business together? You make the sculpture, and I sell it “. Father and son were happy with the offer from the businessman. They agreed to the idea. They started making more sculptures and soon their business grew multi-fold. www.winnersstory.com

The undisputed moral of the story is when we pursue something in life, the first step is to have complete Faith in it. There will be challenges during the process, but if you have Faith you can succeed. Sometimes you are blown away by the struggles, the challenges, the difficulties, you need to still ride on despite everything. Keep pushing despite not being able to sell much, keep pushing despite not being able to make enough sales, keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing till you meet your target. Never stop. Don’t let the circumstances around you define you. If the sculptor allowed the circumstances around him to define his life, he would’ve also closed his shop like what others did, but he didn’t allow that to happen. Some of us are in a process or period of reaching our target and goals, but we have lost sight because of the noises and circumstances that surround us. So we do not know where we are going. Sometimes you are in doubt about the decision you make. Allow yourself to be in the process, through that process you will learn. You will learn how to endure, how to be determined, how to be focused, how to withstand temptation or challenges that come your way.

Never stop believing in yourself, never stop having Faith in God. In any positive thing that you are doing, never stop believing that you will make it. If the sculptor honestly believed in his art, then what is stopping you from believing in yours? The moment you stop believing in yourself and not having faith in God, is the day you start to die because anything you do, you are in disbelief and this will sum up to self-doubt and self-low-esteem. This will not make your life progressive but regressive and at the end of the day you start blaming the people around you for all your problems and predicaments. You start to be filled with jealousy of anything that comes your way. Forgive yourself for that recent failure, wrong thing you said, missed opportunity, learn to forgive yourself. The next day will be better, that day will be your breakthrough. Don’t give up just because things are hard. Things are always hard before they get better, keep your Faith alive. The only way you can guarantee failure is by quitting. If you never quit, you will never fail and mind you God is never asleep on your dream to make it a reality, so don’t think he is because he does not sleep nor slumber.