Nevertheless

I Chronicles 11:4, 5
"David and all the Israelites marched to Jerusalem....The Jebusites who lived there said to David, 'You will not get in here.'  Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion, the City of David."

How much we need a nevertheless kind of faith!  Naysayers will abound in life.  We live in a negative-thinking world.  So many of our dreams of ways to serve God can meet with scepticism.  Even our own hearts can sabotage our best intentions. But we will fail to see miracles in our lives if we heed every caution that wars against our faith. 

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had a nevertheless kind of faith: "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king, but even [nevertheless] if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:17, 18)

To be honest, this kind of faith is not always my default when I am faced with a challenging situation.  I am often likely to weigh the odds against me before I decide whether to proceed or conceed.  In sharing my faith, I can judge whether someone has too many walls up to be open.  Sometimes when I have a particularly difficult conversation to initiate, I decide in advance that it won't do any good and battle with whether to go ahead anyway. Acknowledging obstacles is not the enemy of faith, giving in to them is.  God is always bigger than any obstacle and the only valid quetion to ask ourselves is, "Is it within the will of God?" not "Will it turn out the way I want it to?"

"In my alarm I said, 'I am cut off from your sight!'  Yet ( KJV says, 'nevertheless' instead of 'yet)' you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help."  (Psalm 31:22)