So God is really speaking to me lately. I have been learning so much, and it hasn’t all been easy stuff to learn. I want to share with you one of the things God has revealed to me. It has been something that hurts a little and has made me rethink who I am and who God wants me to be.
Before I get into this, I want you to have a little background on me. If you don’t know, I am a fairly new Christian, so I ask a lot of really basic questions so that I can start understanding Christian terminology and Christian concepts. In this process I make a lot of mistakes. Stick with me…I am learning…
Here we go…
In Hebrews 11:6, it states that without faith it is impossible to please God.
I want to be pleasing to God, so the obvious place to start is by having faith.
So if I want to have faith…I need to ask some questions about faith so that I can to try to understand faith better. So I ask myself questions like…
What is faith?
What does it mean to have faith?
How do I increase my faith?
How will I know I have faith?
How will people know that I have faith?
A combination of the last three questions is what caused me to make a mistake.
In James 2:14-17 it says, What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds. Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
This is some really awesome stuff. It tells me that faith needs to be accompanied by deeds or it is nothing. So faith isn’t something you just talk about. Your faith is something that will completely transform your life to the point where you do good deeds that will help advance the Kingdom of God.
Awesome! I want that.
My mistake is that I took this verse and…well…unintentionally tweaked it a little bit. When I read it I see that if I have faith, then there will be deeds…which means that if there are no deeds, then there is no faith. I make the mistake of thinking that if I do deeds, then I must have faith…but that just isn’t the way it works.
I have been trying to increase my faith completely backwards. I have been trying to do deeds with the hope that I will prove to myself that I have faith, and also that I will prove to others that I have a faith.
God sees me doing this and he knows what my faith is like. He used Galatians 3:3 to ask me, Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you know trying to attain your goal by human effort?
Why is it that I have this amazing glimpse into what God is offering me, and I still go back to try to rely on myself? Why do I have such a strong desire to be so independent? Why do I try to take things into my own hands? Why do I try to use my own strength to accomplish things?
It is foolish.
It is hard to see that this is foolish because I really do have good intentions. I want to do good things. I want to help people and love people. But the problem is that these are still my intentions. What I am doing is acting on my own sight and my own perception of what I believe is right.
But 2 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that we live by faith, not by sight.
So what needs to happen is I need to stop acting on sight. I need to increase my faith so that I can live on that. When your faith increases, then you start to be someone that is different. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul is praising the Thessalonians for their faith. He is so thankful for their strong faith and he praises them because their work is produced by their faith, their labor is prompted by love, and their endurance is inspired by having hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
How do you increase your faith to even get to that point?
I know that you don’t want to do what I did which is that I made the mistake of becoming comfortable. I fell into this comfort zone and I just kind of settled in. Why, because it is hard to think something is off when most people, including myself, look at my faith and believe that it looks good at times. My deeds even look God driven, but ultimately, my perception and your perception aren’t what matter. God’s perception is what matters…which is why in 2 Corinthians 13:5, we are told to examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith, test yourselves. We can’t just settle in and put our faith on autopilot. We need to keep examining our faith and questioning our motives or lack thereof…because we don’t see the whole picture. In fact, we have extremely narrow tunnel vision, and God sees the big picture. He knows are motives, he knows are heart. Sometimes he needs to tell us, I know your deeds, you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die… -Revelation 3:1
So…How do I increase my faith? How do I live by faith? How do I get to that point?
Notice how all these questions revolve around the word I…Maybe that is the problem…I might be getting in the way of what God wants to do. I have been trying to take my faith into my own hands and I have been messing it up.
I am finally slowing down enough to listen for God’s voice…he isn’t telling me to do…do…do. He is telling me to slow down more and listen. He is also saying that he wants to take our relationship to a completely new level, somewhere that I can’t even begin to comprehend. I just need to stay out of the way and let him work in me.
I think he wants us all to slow down and listen for his voice. In Hebrews 12:2 it says that we need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. He will take care of everything if we just slow down, listen, and obey him.
This totally floors me because over and over, God keeps saying to me…
Seek me…
Seek me…
Seek me…
Seek me…
God, in Jeremiah 29:13 you say, you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all you heart. This is my prayer…that you would give us the desire to seek you and to seek you with all our hearts. I pray in the name of Jesus that you would reveal yourself to us. I pray that you would send angels to protect us from the attacks of the enemy. I bind any plans that the enemy has for us in the name of Jesus. Give us the strength to focus our eyes completely on you. Become the center of everything that we do and everything that we are. Thank you for breaking me. Thank you for giving me the strength to persevere. I pray that you will continue to strip all things from me until you are all that is left. I pray that you would continue to make your words part of me. I pray in the name of Jesus that you burn your words into my heart. I pray that you would use these words according to your will. I pray a blessing on all people that read this blog in the name of Jesus Christ. I pray that you would reveal yourself to them. Show them your love. Break their hearts for you. I pray that you will continue to open our eyes. Jesus, I pray that you would continue to challenge and perfect our faith.
