"Finally"

Yesterday, I spoke on James 2:14-26 and putting your faith into action. I also hit on Acts 16:16-18 which says:
16Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved." 18She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her.
I have really been meditating on stepping out in faith. The Christian faith is supposed to be an adventure but we seem to take all of the adventure out and make it a safe walk full of hand rails, parachutes, foam, and every other safety device that we can think of to keep us from getting hurt in the everyday. We pretty much take all of the faith out of it and make it a, well, a ritual. But faith, when excercised with deeds, is exciting.
The Lord gave me a picture. So picture yourself in a fruit tree. The fruit is always out of reach, or on the branches that we know cannot support our weight. We can choose to leave that fruit alone and continue to hold to the trunk of the tree (the Church) or we can let go and crawl out on those limbs and trust God for whatever happens. If we want to see miracles and people getting saved, we have to step out in faith into the unknown of what might happen.
But what will it take to get you there? For Paul, it was after many days of being followed by a demon possessed girl shouting at him and Silas that he finally had enough. Why didn't Paul do something sooner? After all, this girl was a slave to Satan and the men who made money off of her. Whatever the reason, Paul had a "Finally" moment. He "Finally" couldn't take it anymore and turned around casting the demon out.
I pray for us all to have that "Finally" moment where we get fed up with the status quo, mediocrity, complacency, laziness, the sin that has so many people entangled and we say, "Enough is enough," and we begin to live out loud for Jesus putting our faith into action. The world needs men and women to walk in faith, not afraid of what others might think. Who have a "Finally" moment that leads them to greater living for a greater purpose. It will enhance your life and change your family, work place, church, and community.