All in Faith, Prayer, Work
You confessed your sins, accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, and were baptized. You felt the joy of that moment of great faith and salvation as it ripples through you and lifted you high, but what have you done in the months and years since? What place Has your faith taken in your life; has it fallen to second place, third place, or further than that? To Jesus you are still as important and loved as the moment you first believed... can you say the same about Him?
How do you believe? Do you believe because you have leaned on your own understanding, and reasoned Jesus Christ to be true, or do you believe because your heart has led you to him? Faith and belief that flow from our own reasoning places God in the realm of man, but faith and belief welling up into us out of the depths of our hearts is delivered from the realm of God through Jesus Christ. Who rules your faith?
Do you want to improve your prayer life, to pray in joy, to pray without ceasing, or to find the ear of God with your words... but try as you might you fall short of during your attempts? Do you find yourself going through the motions as you retreat to your prayer closet only to return empty and unsatisfied? Perhaps the problem isn’t in your praying at all... perhaps it is in your faith.
Do you have a loved one who is sick today, perhaps even unto death? Have you done all that you know how to do for them? In desperation have you at long last uttered a prayer to Jesus asking Him for a healing? Maybe this sick one is you. If this is happening in your life then surrender yourself to Jesus Christ, praying first for faith, and belief... this is the ointment that heals us.
Do you exercise your faith in fullness, or is God required to constantly remind you of its importance? Do you place what you do for Him ahead of who He is in you? If so then perhaps your holiness and power have followed suit. Are you wanting to reinvigorate the miracle working faith that we see in the apostles, then stoke the fire of your faith.
Are we waiting on the return of Jesus Christ? I’m not talking about saying “come quickly Lord Jesus” in one breath, and then at the next moment saying “but not right now.” I am speaking of the longing of your spirit for the imminent return of the Lord... as if you were a child awaiting gifts on Christmas morning.
When you are sick with a cold and you pray for healing, then go to the pharmacy to get medicines to treat your runny nose, cough and fever, where do you then place the trust for your healing? We are meant to do what we can to take good care of our bodies, but when we call on both physical and spiritual remedies, do we allow the physical ones to overshadow the spiritual ones? Does your faith supplement the cough syrup, or does the cough syrup supplement your faith?
I realized as I sat quietly in my living room chair, that I was mourning much more than the death of a president, but also the passing of a sense of goodness and honor, that in my youth symbolized the United States, and that made our flag venerable; our country and her values worth dying for. I Looked at this goodness, and the noble cause of freedom, through eyes filled with tears and realized that it all poured out from our exercise of faith, and how if that faith could be destroyed then the rest of those things we once valued so deeply would surrender themselves quietly.
Do you follow after men, or Jesus Christ? Do you put your faith in the hands of those who appear pious and tell you about what Jesus said, or in Jesus who said these things Himself, lived this way, and has given us these commandments? Do you place your relationship in the hands of men who die, and depend, as we do, on Jesus to lift them again from the dead, or in Christ himself who laid His own life down and picked it back up again? He who lives forever at the right hand of God.
When you gave your life to Christ, did you become a changed person? Did you join with all those who had come before you in reestablishing your life, and allowing Jesus to give you a fresh start? Did you follow Jesus into a righteous and holy life of worshipping God with a His saints? We are meant to leave behind those things that once defined us and become like Christ... Godly, righteous, Holy. Are you wandering alone?
How do we worship and have faith in the Father and the Son? Do we go about doing the physical things that identify us as religious, and leave the inner, spiritual, things of faith to quietly stagnate? God made us to be both physical and spiritual beings, but didn’t He make the physical first, and then breathe the spirit into it? As we grow in faith is our body fully formed, but our spiritual self lagging behind?
Are you filled with the joy that only Jesus and God can give you? Even in those times when you suffer or mourn is there an underlying joy that others see in how you approach those things? When we have grasped the gospel of Jesus Christ, and brought God into our hearts as Lord and Master, joy bubbles up in us like a flood. This is the mark of our faith, and is easily seen by those around us. Have you received that seal of joy?
We serve the one true God, the creator of the universe, do you wait on Him today, and the return of Jesus Christ, just as Abraham and Moses waited on Him, and the first coming of the Messiah in theirs? Do you pray and wait on Him, knowing that He will answer your prayers? Do you faithfully expect His presence to be known not only in your lifetime, but in your life, because He calls to you, and knocks at your door even now? This is the moment of our faith, and the promise which thrills us. He to whom Jesus prayed, and to whom He taught us to pray, desires a relationship with us.
Do you weep in your prayer closet and ask for a certain thing day, after day, after day? Does your heart break in the midst of your supplication , and yet you have faith in God to answer... are your prayers lifted up yet again, and the tears run down your face once more? Do those around you say “stop praying, it isn’t going to happen”, but you continue to cling to hope, and trust in God? This is what Jesus taught us to do. This is the evidence of faith.
Do you practice your faith? Practice is one of those words with more than a single meaning, but I am talking about our doing something repetitively in order to improve how well you do it, or to do something regularly. If this is how you approach your faith, is that really enough? By way of example, how did Noah, or Abraham approach their faith? Did they simply practice it, or did they live it... walk in it... trust it?