Do you need prayer for your faith right now? Are you suffering doubt, or find yourself silent in your belief? Maybe you are loudly proclaiming a faith that is more like the skin of an apple than it’s sweet flesh beneath. Do you need prayer for your faith at this moment, and are you uncertain who will pray for you? In seasons such as this Jesus prays for us, and if our faith is the least bit evident, we obey Him, and pray for those around us who might be struggling in their faith.
Are we satisfied with spending our lives as the immature children of God? Do we wish to be nothing more than His ward, and sit upon His knee? Is this how we envision Jesus; as a juvenile child that the Father sent unwittingly, and without understanding, to His death upon the cross? No, we should desire to be growing and maturing in our faith, and love, longing to be like Christ who is the head of the church... the groom.
Do songs come to you in the night? In the dark moments of life are you inspired to write music? Perhaps in those times your instrument is a guitar, cymbals, a lyre, poetry, or maybe your voice, but it could easily be whatever other instrument God has blessed you with. If you are an architect perhaps it is a design, or a carpenter... a new and wonderful staircase, or as a chef a magnificent and delicious culinary delight. Whatever your instrument... only God brings song to us from within our suffering.
Do we obey God’s word, and His commands? Are we attentive to His will, and adhere to His precepts? Or, do we lean on His mercy, grace, and forgiveness in daily contrition for the everyday sustenance of our faith... knowing we fail Him repetitively? Is asking for forgiveness day after day a legitimate substitute for obedience?
Even when things are going our way, and the Lord God is blessing us at every turn, we can experience doubt. This is one of the most frustrating challenges to our faith, and the sharpest tool that Satan has at his disposal. When doubt confronts us do we allow it rattle our belief, or do we face it with the resolve that God is true to His Word, and of unwavering character?
There is something very special about having a meal with someone. When we sit down together and eat it joins us in a very basic way, and this understanding doesn’t escape us... we have business dinners, festival dinners, banquets to honor each other, and so many other celebratory meals that bring us together, but beyond that... we dine at the Lord’s table. When was the last time you dined with Jesus?
What are you wearing today? I am not talking so much about your physical attire, but your spiritual clothing. There are a couple of wonderful verses of scripture regarding how we should dress once we have accepted Jesus as our savior, but do we put on those clothes every day, or do we keep our old uniform of sin and worldliness in our closet... only wearing our faith when it suits us?
Jesus isn’t just a pearl of great value for which we can sell everything in order to possess Him, no, we can hold a pearl in the palm of our hand. Jesus Christ is so much more, He is the glorious peace that never ends, the everlasting moment of ecstasy in which we lose ourselves forever, the joy of God that is without an end, and He is a bottomless well of living water that quenches our eternal thirst. Yes, He is all of these things and so much more. He is the only prize for which our entire life should be deemed worthy of sacrifice... just as God the Father, in His great love, felt we were worth the sacrifice of Christ.
Does the sin in your life eat at you? Do you toss and turn at night until you finally wake in a sweat because your sins have followed you into slumber? Do you count this, and other grieving as pure misery when it is actually the Holy Spirit beckoning you to come... to repent? It is not our conscience, but our spirit that is pained.
How much time do we spend in God’s Word each day? Are we guilty of trivializing the process of study and meditation, neglecting it for the simple process of reading? Although reading God’s Word is important, it is only the beginning, it is the deeper process of mulling it over, and absorbing it that benefits us most.
Have you ever been so put upon, so set upon, or felt so downtrodden in life that you feared God Himself had abandoned you? What did you do in that time of great fear, sorrow, or suffering? What was the state of your faith at that moment? Were you on the verge of turning away from the Lord, or did you seek Him more fervently? Was your faith waining, or was it surging as you leaned upon it?
When we are facing evil, and ruthless, people, what does God require for us to do to secure or deliver ourselves from them? The answer comes back to us in the form of a single word... nothing. Our God is perfectly capable of dealing with those who come against us, and that is indeed His promise. Our task in all of this is to love Him, believe in Him, lean on Him, and praise Him in His victory.
How many times have we almost slipped, or actually fallen in our faith? We are walking along thinking everything is going splendidly, and then whoops... our spiritual feet fly out from under us. It is so unexpected, so sudden, and often occurs without any forethought of impending danger; yet there we are, sitting on our backsides wondering how we got there, and suffering in our need for forgiveness.
God’s will for our lives doesn’t just work for us, it works with us, or in other words, includes us. We are not the boss, nor are we just spectators in God’s plan, but active participants. Sometimes we forget to ask what His will is, and blindly get busy trying to do His spiritual work as we see fit; we begin our efforts only to find that we are working against Him, and that He is now having to perform His work in spite of us.
Once we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, and know God as our Lord, then we begin a transformation into a different person, but as we change we realize that who we once were is never who we were intended to be. As we lose our old self, we strip away the facade, and reveal who God knew us to be all along. The new self we are becoming is God’s perfect creation.