10/31/2017
Are You Facing trials in your life right now? Does it feel like God has abandoned you and let the world have its way with you? Well praise God for where you are right now because in your misery God is expanding the beam of our faith. It is in such times that our faith isn’t tested... it is stretched as we reach desperately for His hand.
The disciples of Jesus had just failed... they had been unable to cast a devil out of a child. They were feeling sorry for themselves and with their faces drooping, they asked Jesus why they hadn’t succeeded, and He said...
“And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
Matthew 17:20 KJV
The disciples believed in Jesus Christ, but they didn’t have faith that He had instilled in them the power to cast out this devil. Their faith was being stretched. Jesus was telling them that their horizon of belief and faith needed to be expanded.
I read Oswald Chambers as he described the process of expanding our faith. He used the life of a new Christian, and then spoke of what happens when the sheer excitement and newness suddenly seems to vanish... and take Jesus with it. Listen to what he wrote:
“Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sun-spot of experience that had as much of sense as of faith in it, full of light and sweetness, then God withdrew His conscious blessings in order to teach you to walk by faith. You are worth far more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony.” - Oswald Chambers
Chambers is talking about the purification of faith. He is writing about boiling the dependence on common sense out of our unrefined faith. Yesterday we spoke of God Sense, but until we let go of our own, we can’t possibly grasp hold of His. In this process we seem to be reducing the volume of our faith, not increasing it, that is, until we taste it.
My wife makes a homemade Chili Sauce. It is a tried and true recipe that has been handed down in her family from mother to daughter for generations. In the process of making it she mixes all of the ingredients into a very large pot and then brings it to a boil. At first it tastes rather bland, but as it boils and boils over the course of the day it is reduced in volume, but with each passing hour the flavor intensifies. Finally, comes the part of the process that takes the most skill. With the knowledge of exactly what her mother’s Chili Sauce tasted like, she dips her spoon into the mixture, takes a small taste onto her tongue and says “mmmm, that’s it!” Then the pot is removed from the heat and the canning jars are filled. God does this with our faith. He boils it to perfection; until He can taste it and say “mmmm, that’s it!” When we finally taste like Jesus, His taste buds celebrate and He finally says “mmmm, that is good!”, and our faith is sealed in us.
As humans, we hate being boiled, and yet once boiled we praise God for who we have become. Interestingly, as new Christians we quake at the thought of the heat being applied to our faith, but after the hours pass and we become saints, then we find ourselves praising Him even when we feel the heat coming. We know the faith that rendering produces, and we long for it.
Job had that type of “mmmm, good” faith. He had been perfected to the point that God wasn’t afraid to let Satan tempt him. Job was a jar of Chili Sauce faith that had been carefully preserved and was ready for the State Fair. He was that taste of Jesus that God was confident would win the blue ribbon. It was this perfected faith that allowed Job to utter one of the most moving, and profound, phrases in the Bible...
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”
Job 13:15 KJV
Job was not a robot, he had self-awareness and a will of his own, and yet he trusted in God to the point that he was not afraid to die for Him. Job was “mmmm, good”, He was ready for the blue ribbon; he had been rendered down until the taste of his faith was like that of Jesus... even before Jesus had been sent into the world. Job had that mustard seed of faith... the small seed that contained the DNA of a complete and mature plant. He contained the entire DNA string of faith.
So what is the heat that is being applied to your faith today? Are you facing the heat of divorce, losing a loved one, trouble on the job, cancer, or some other intense temperature that is attempting to render your faith? Whatever it is, God has not abandoned you! We should trust in Him, and know that the heat He applies will never be so intense as to scald or burn us. He will merely keep us at that perfect rendering temperature until we reach “mmmm, that’s good”, and then remove the heat, and seal our now intensified faith within us. Do you trust Him? Can you praise Him as your life, and the faith it contains, boils?
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for perfecting my faith, and I praise you in the troubles and adversity that are the heat of my rendering. I trust you Lord to not place more upon me than I can bear, and I long to hear you say “mmmm, that is good” of my faith. Lord Jesus, my heart yearns to have the taste of your faith, and in so doing, to accept the cup of the Father’s will, even as you did. Help me to withstand the simmering of my purification; help me Jesus in my unbelief, and in so doing I too will cast out devils, and my faith will be as the mustard seed of which you spoke. I praise you Father in the bubbling turmoil of this pot, and I sing to you in my suffering as my faith becomes the intense flavor of Christ. Increase me Father, even as you boil me down. Make the least be first as you sip my faithfulness from your spoon.
“Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!"”
Mark 9:24 ESV
Rich Forbes