Faith and Prostitutes

Shift Your Focus… Now here’s something you don’t hear in the same sentence very often: faith and prostitutes.

But that’s what is so great about faith: It transforms prostitutes—and every other kind of dirty rotten sinner, which is what we all were, by the way—into people worthy of God’s Great Hall of Faith.

Just look at some of the people who adorn the Great Hall in Hebrews 11:

Noah—a drunkard (and a naked, angry drunk at that. Read the story for yourself in Genesis 9:21-27)

Abraham—a liar

Jacob—a deceiver and world-class manipulator

Joseph—an ex-con

Moses—a murderer

Gideon—a coward

Samson—a profligate

Jephthah—a reject

David—an adulterer

And if you are a person who lives by faith, one day your name, along with those already mentioned, will be added to the Great Hall.  Just imagine that list looking something like this:

Rahab—a prostitute

You—a (feel free to fill in the blank)

We’re in pretty good company, aren’t we? But that’s what is so great about faith. It trumps our past, sets us aright with God, transforms our character, enables spiritual heroism and guarantees our place in God’s Great Hall of Faith.

Whatever has happened in your past, whoever you are in the present, however limited your future may look, your faith will change everything. So stop what you are doing and start stepping out by faith.

What is faith? It is to passionately, fully, riskily, boldly believe God, then ruthlessly live your life accordingly.  Simply put, it is to believe who God is and obey what God has said.

“By faith!” That phrase is used twenty times in this one chapter. Make that the defining characteristic of your life. Pursue faith until faith possesses you.

It will change everything—and add your name to the other unlikelies already in the Hall!

“Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.” ~Corrie Ten Boom

Prayer… Lord, I believe. Now destroy my unbelief until there is nothing left of me but the fingerprints of faith.