12/22/2023
Are we struggling with whether we will give ourselves completely to Jesus, and fully believe in God? Have we been reasoning and reading scripture without moving an inch closer to believing? If so, then we should quit listening to your own intellect, calm ourselves, and then open our ears to the still small voice of God that calls us to “Come.” Hearing God isn’t a matter of intellectual reasoning on our part; it is being inexplicably drawn by the Lord.
“And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"”
1 Kings 19:13 ESV
To surrender our own intellect, and will, in order to believe in something purely out of faith is contrary to our worldly human nature. Faith in something unproven flies in the face of our own academic and intellectual pride; it demands that we give ourselves over to something other than our own self-determination and understanding... it requires us to set aside our will, and to lean on God’s will, in order to believe. Yet this is exactly what Jesus tells us we must do once we have been called to Him...
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—”
John 6:44-45 ESV
“Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.””
Matthew 19:21 ESV
So, for our faith to ignite, we must listen as God draws us to Jesus and himself. In this moment, when we accept our spiritual vulnerability by leaning on what we cannot see, we find that we are clothed completely in Him and have no need for our old physical apparel any longer. This is incredibly hard for people who gather their self-worth from their intellect, and are ruled by reasoning alone, but for those who lean on God, and into their unseen spirituality, it is amazingly fulfilling and wonderful to have abandoned one’s own will.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV
Something I find interesting is how many new Christians will set aside their reasoning, and answer the call of God only to begin, almost immediately, to pick their own will up again as they attempt to justify, in scientific and human reasoning, God’s call of faith. This is akin to wanting to see air, and only leads to discontent or the abandonment of one’s faith. On the other hand, if one takes his newfound faith as fact, and then bases his future reasoning on it, he will find a peace and joy that he never knew existed. Oswald Chambers speaks to such understanding of conversion when he writes these words:
“Every man is made to reach out beyond his grasp. It is God who draws me, and my relationship to Him in the first place is a personal one, not an intellectual one. I am introduced into the relationship by the miracle of God and my own will to believe, then I begin to get an intelligent appreciation and understanding of the wonder of the transaction.” - Oswald Chambers
We can never doubt that we are clothed by God... unless we want to face our spiritual nakedness once more. When we doubt our faith, and our belief ceases to clothe us, then our reliance on the physical is reinstated. Sadly, this happens quite often as the disbelieving world overrules a believer’s spirituality using an argument solely based on what is of the physical world. This is the work of the one who is in the world, and is part and parcel of his counter attack against our faith in God, who is a spirit.
“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4:23-24 ESV
It is the dark one using our conditioned dependence on intellect to argue against the true existence of faith, simply because we can’t see it; he is using the worldly reasoning, that we have been trained to trust above all else since childhood, to undo us. He tempts us to place our intellect first and foremost in our lives once more, but we must remain firm in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, lest we die.
“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.”
John 15:4 NLT
Keep safely in Jesus Christ, and don’t reason yourself out of your faithfulness. Give yourself over to God’s still small voice and then hold to the wonders and miracles of your belief. Receive remembrance and understanding from the Holy Spirit to lead your reasoning. The spiritual things we cannot see are just as real as those we touch every day in the physical world. So, answer God’s call to faith, and believe without wavering.
Prayer:
Father I thank you for calling me to believe. I thank you for my ability to abandon my own intellectual will that is founded solely in the world, and for expanding me into the spiritual realm that is in me, and surrounds me always. I thank you for your Son Jesus Christ that you have lead me into relationship with, and the lessons He teaches me in faith. Holy Father, I hold tight to my belief in you, and resist my own intellectual vanity that seeks to draw me away; replacing my faith with worldly reasoning. Keep me Jesus, and lead me safely, as I travel down the treacherous path between godly spirituality and my earthly desire to see myself solely through the eyes of the world. Strengthen me Lord as I hold to you and place my own self-reliance behind me. Into your hands I commit myself, and no reasoning on my part can overrule you. Blessed are you Lord Jesus, and mighty is our Father who rules both heaven and earth. Holy Spirit open my heart and mind to the reality of my spiritual self, and help me as I pray and do the other things unseen, that increase me in faith. Thus I will lean not on my own understanding but will be kept for all eternity in my Father’s kingdom, and secure in his loving presence… in the presence of the one true God.
“And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
Revelation 4:8 ESV
Rich Forbes