Graphene Faith

By Candace E. Hall

If you show God your faith, He will show you His power!

Faith comes from hearing the Good News about Jesus Christ. Faith is our shield. It’s our deliverance. It’s our healing and our righteousness. Faith activates our promises, and it’s impossible to please God without it. So let’s build it!

Graphene is the name for a honeycomb sheet of carbon atoms that is said to be the strongest and most promising material on earth. It is nearly transparent, yet flexible enough to cover a football field. Graphene is more conductive than copper, and when narrow holes are inserted, rushing water can flow through, purifying it of all other contaminants. So what if our faith could be described using these same characteristics? What kind of faith covers, is transparent, flexible, conductive, promising, and strong as steel? Graphene faith!

Life can be overwhelming most of the time, but that doesn’t have to be the end of your story. This book will empower you to set unrealistic expectations to the side and learn simple and practical ways to love, serve, live, and lead in faith—Graphene Faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639038008

Book preview

Chapter 1

Greater Grace: Covering Faith

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

—Hebrews 4:16 (NIV)

When I think about grace, I envision myself slowly approaching the throne of God. I am tired, weak, broken, and heavy burdened, but I keep pressing on, pushing forward, thinking that if I can just make it to my destination, everything is going to be all rig ht. As I move closer, I can see Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father, and I can tell from the look on their faces that they are expecting me. As I continue to move forward, I glance down at myself, and I notice that I am dressed in all white with a colored scarf around my neck. The scarf appears to be pretty on the outside, laced with beautiful colors. I abruptly realize just how heavy this beautiful scarf is upon my shoulders. This colorful scarf is like a weight that painfully reflects the issues and emotions of my life. Black symbolizes strife and tribulation, blue seeps depression and loneliness. Red reaps anger and resentment. Pink shows shame and guilt. Green represents jealousy, envy, and greed; and yellow trickles fear and anxiousness.

I kneel before the throne as if it is my rightful place. I can feel Jesus as He lays His hand upon my shoulder. His mouth never says a word, but His touch says, I will take it. He picks up the scarf underhandedly with His palms facing upward. He grasps the colored scarf tightly; it is covering the scars on His hands. I watched intently as Jesus slowly begins to pull the scarf from the center to the end. It is as if when each colored section of the scarf passes over His scars, they become as white as snow. When His hand reaches the end of the scarf, it is completely white. With eyes of admiration and a heart full of gratefulness, I humbly bow before Him. I feel Him place the scarf back upon my shoulders, but this time it was as light as a feather. And when it touches my shoulders, I feel a gentle flow of peace fall upon me from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. I knew it was the same scarf, but Jesus transformed it. Not only was it light and beautifying, but it was also strengthening and empowering. It encouraged me to rise up and go, not back the way I came but forward. Thank God for His throne of grace and mercy, the place where we can be renewed daily. This is that vulnerable place where we come to the end of ourselves but only scratch the surface of where God begins. This is the place where God meets us and exchanges our strife for harmony and turns our depression and loneliness into joy. Only God is qualified to take the ugly and messiness of fear, anger, jealousy, and greed and turn it into beautiful endless expressions of peace, unpretentious love, and generosity.

The Surrender

When I was younger, growing up in Kentucky, my summers would always consist of at least one week of Vacation Bible School. During this time, all the kids of the church would attend and complete multiple Bible lessons and activities throughout the week. At the end of the week, there was a strong push for the children to dedicate their lives to Christ. You knew it was that time when the elders of the church placed chairs in front of the pulpit in the presence of all the Vacation Bible School teachers and attendees. They would give a mini sermon that seemed to last just as long as a regular sermon and invited the kids to come up, sit in the chair, confess your sins, invite Christ into your life, and be baptized.

The end of the week was approaching. My cousin and I were talking about taking the chair or dedicating our lives to Christ when the time came at the end of the session. My mother overheard our conversation, came into the room, and said something so unexpected to us. She looked intently at my cousin and me. We searched her eyes for approval and encouragement, but instead, we found caution and concern. She said, "Be careful about being so anxious to take that chair. Once you surrender to God, He will never let you go." At the time, I really couldn’t comprehend the weight of that statement, but I did take the chair that day. As I grew older and began to walk this journey with Christ, only then did I begin to scratch the surface of what she truly meant.

When I think back over my life, the thing that I am most grateful for is God’s grace and mercy toward me as a young adult. This was a time in my life when I was doing absolutely nothing that I should have been doing and becoming an expert on everything I shouldn’t have been doing. I was raised in the church, but somehow I find myself looking back in the mirror at a nineteen-year-old unwed mother who does not even attend church on Sundays. Nope, not even on Easter or Christmas. Church was the last place I wanted to be. I was working two jobs in order to make ends meet, and with those two jobs, according to the government system, I made too much money for welfare, qualified only for the minimal amount in food stamps, which equaled to barely making enough to take care of my son. No matter how hard I worked, I could never seem to get ahead. I was up to my eyeballs in credit card debt and cash advances. You know the old saying robbing Peter to pay Paul? Yeah, that. I felt so low. I was tired of working and tired of life in general. I was too young for this mess. This is not how I imagined my life to be.

It was late one Saturday night, and I had just made it home from my second job beyond exhausted. I can remember not