10/31/2025
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 Him for where you are right now because in your misery God is expanding the breadth of your faith. It is in such times that our faith isn’t tested... it is stretched as we reach desperately for His hand. Remember when the disciples of Jesus had just failed... when 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, but they hadn’t exercised even a mustard seed of the faith that He had been distilling in them and which would have given them the power to cast out this devil. To them it might have looked like they had failed but their faith was actually being stretched. Jesus was telling them that their horizon of belief and faith needed to be expanded.
I read Pastor Oswald Chambers as he described the process of expanding our faith. He used the life of a new Christian as an example as he spoke of what happens when the sheer excitement and newness of faith suddenly seem to vanish and we feel like they have taken Jesus with them. 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 and growth of our faith. He is writing about boiling the dependence on our own common sense out of our unrefined faith. Yesterday we spoke of God Sense, but until we let go of our own, then we can’t possibly grasp hold of His. In this process He might initially seem to be reducing the volume of our faith, not increasing it, that is, until we have tasted the refined essence of faith that His process has produced in us.
My wife makes 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 a 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 says “mmmm, that is good!”, at this point our faith is sealed in us.
As humans, we hate being boiled, and yet once we have been we praise God for who we have become in faith. Interestingly enough, as new Christians we quake at the thought of heat being applied to us because we doubt our ability to withstand it. But after those first few hours have passed and we have become saints, then we find ourselves praising Him each time we feel the heat rising. We know the faith that God’s rendering process will produce, and we long for it.
Job had this 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 faith filled Chili Sauce that had been carefully preserved and was ready for the State Fair. He had that taste of Jesus which 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 do His will and even die for Him. Job was “mmmm, good”, He was ready tom win 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 same mustard seed of faith... the small seed that contained the full DNA of a complete and mature plant. He contained the entire DNA string of perfect faith just as a newborn baby has the DNA of a full-grown adult at birth, and even since the moment of its conception.
So, what is the heat that is being applied to our faith today? Are we facing the heat of a divorce, a lost loved one, trouble on the job, cancer, or some other intense temperature that is meant to render our faith? Whatever it is, God has not abandoned us! We should trust in Him and know that the heat He allows to be applied to us will never be so intense as to fatally scald or burn us to spiritual death. He will merely keep us at that perfect rendering temperature until we reach “mmmm, that’s good” flavor, and then He will remove the source of the heat and seal our now intensified faith within us. Do you trust Him in this? Can you praise Him as your life, and the faith it contains, boils?
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for all the effort you put into 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” when you taste 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 know that I too will be able to 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 is rendered and takes on 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 loving cup.
“Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!"”
Mark 9:24 ESV
Rich Forbes