Convictions

What single attitude could turn your life around? What is this attitude that stands behind the reality of progress?

Ari Davis of Boston owned a factory that manufactured tools and instruments. One day he said to his associates, “Why are bothering yourself with a knitting machine? Why don’t you make a sewing machine?” That question was overheard by the nineteen-year-old Elias Howe who accepted the challenge.

No one else took this challenge seriously…except the young Howe. This question haunted him day and night until he resolved he would be the one to discover and build a sewing machine.

He had an almost insane conviction that it could be done and he could do it! He nearly starved in the process of designing, experimenting and building the machine. In fact he may have starved had it not been for some friends who came to his rescue to help with his living expenses.

The Power of Conviction

Finally, in July of 1845, the sewing machine was completed and proved its practicality by sewing the seams of two men’s wool suits! It could sew 300 perfectly matched stitches a minute. The mechanism he invented was nearly perfect and remains today the way sewing machines are being built. It happened all because one young man had the conviction it could be done and he could do it!

The Apostle Paul lived with the same kind of convictions. He even wrote it down for us to read, “This One Thing I Do.” Today’s world is filled with people who are lost without convictions! What do you stand for in your life? Is it the Word of God, or something else? Your convictions will direct your life.

“We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 1:3).