We’re halfway through October, and we want to try something a little different for our mid-month check-in. Pick one area of your walk with God that you want to be stronger in by the end of this month. Keep it simple and specific. Maybe you want to become more consistent in prayer. Maybe you need to spend more time in the Word instead of only reaching for it when you need an answer. Maybe you want to become quicker to obey when God speaks. Maybe you need to work on controlling your thoughts or your words. Maybe you want to become more intentional about sharing Jesus with the people around you. Whatever it is, don’t choose five things. Choose one. Then decide what you are actually going to do about it for the rest of October. If you want to grow in the Word, decide when you’re going to read it. If it’s prayer, make room for it in your day. If it’s obedience, stop postponing the thing you already know to do. If it’s your thoughts, choose the Scriptures you’re going to use to renew your mind. This is what we want ITC to be about. Not simply learning more, but training ourselves to live what we’re learning. Share your one area with us below, along with the practical step you’re going to take. Then at the end of the month, we can come back and see what changed.

Every miracle in the Bible has something in common: It started with a problem someone couldn’t solve. That sounds obvious, but it changes the way we look at the impossible situations in our own lives. In this devotional video, Esther takes us back to Jesus and what His life actually reveals about the heart of the Father. Hebrews 1:3 calls Jesus “the exact imprint of His nature.” So when we see Jesus healing the sick, setting people free, loving the broken, and bringing light into darkness, we aren’t simply reading stories about what happened 2,000 years ago. We are learning what God is like. That gives us something very practical to work on. Before you watch THIS VIDEO, identify one situation in your life that currently feels impossible. Maybe you’ve tried everything you know to do. Maybe you’ve been praying about it for years. Maybe you’ve even started adjusting your expectations because nothing seems to be changing. Write it down. Then, as Esther teaches, pay attention to what you learn about the character of God through Jesus. Instead of studying the size of your problem, spend some time studying the One you’re trusting with it. When you’re finished, go back to what you wrote down and answer this question: What does Jesus reveal about the Father that changes the way I see this situation? That’s what we want to learn to do together. Not deny what we’re facing, but train ourselves to see it through what we know about Him.

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to spend more time talking about a problem than speaking God's Word over it? We can describe exactly how big the mountain is, how long it's been there, and everything we've tried to do about it. We can believe God is powerful and still find ourselves waiting for something to change before we begin exercising our faith. But Jesus gave us a different instruction. In Mark 11:23, He said, “Whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.” In THIS WEEK’S DEVOTIONAL, we're taking what we've been learning about faith and putting it into action. Jesus didn't tell us to spend our lives studying the mountain. He taught us to speak to it. Our confidence isn't in how many times we say something or how strongly we feel about it. Our confidence is in the Word of God and the One who promised. Here's what we want to challenge you to do this week. Find one Scripture that speaks to a mountain you're facing and begin using it in your daily life. Don't just read it once and move on. Spend time understanding what God has said, allow it to become established in your heart, and begin speaking in agreement with His Word. And remember what happened with the fig tree. Jesus spoke to it before the disciples could see the results. Don't allow the absence of immediate visible change to determine whether you continue believing. It's time to stop giving the mountain so much attention and start giving God's Word the authority it deserves.

There is a progression we’ve been walking through in this chapter. The Word produces faith. Faith produces action. And mature faith eventually produces something many people don’t associate with faith at all: Rest. Hebrews connects unbelief with failing to enter God’s rest. Why? Because when we actually trust what God has said, we no longer have to live frantically trying to make everything happen ourselves. That doesn’t make faith passive. Quite the opposite. Faith gives us the confidence to obey God boldly while resting in the fact that He is responsible for fulfilling His Word. And when faith becomes established, we stop living like victims of every circumstance that comes against us. Ephesians 6:16 calls faith a shield capable of extinguishing the fiery arrows of the enemy. So as we close THIS CHAPTER, don’t simply ask, “Do I have faith?” Ask: Is my faith growing? Is it rooted in the Word? Is it producing obedience? Is it overcoming fear? Is it bringing me into rest? And if you discover an area where the answer is no, you already know where to go. “Faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.” — Romans 10:17 Go back to the source. Open the Word this week specifically around the area where you have struggled to believe. Stay there. Study it. Speak it. Let it correct you. Let it renew your thinking. Don’t try to manufacture more faith. Feed the faith you have. The same Word that gave birth to it will make it strong.

We’ve spent a lot of time in this series talking about the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus. But there’s an important question that has to come out of everything we’ve learned: What do we do with the time we have? In this final teaching, Aaron goes into Luke 19 and Matthew 24 and looks at what Jesus taught His followers to do while waiting for His return. One of the things we want to challenge you to pay attention to is the idea of stewardship. God has entrusted something to every one of us. Your assignment may not look like someone else’s. Your gifts may be different. Your opportunities may be different. But none of us have been called to simply wait for Jesus to return. So after you go through THIS TEACHING, take a personal inventory. Write down three things God has entrusted to you. They could be people, gifts, resources, opportunities, an area of ministry, or something specific He has asked you to do. Then look at each one and ask: Am I being faithful with this right now? If the answer is no in one area, don’t make it complicated. Identify one thing you can do this week to begin being faithful with what God has already put in your hands. That’s how we want to finish this series. Not simply knowing more about what is coming, but allowing what we’ve learned to change how we live until He comes.