All tagged faith
What happens when our faith is at risk? Have you ever contemplated the effect that we have on those around us when we slip into negative behavior or sin? How about the impact we have on our family, church, or Heaven? Even though our Christian walk seems totally personal... it isn't. Our faith has a ripple effect that touches all those around us, and beyond.
What do we imagine our faith to be? How great and unbound can we dream that God is? What binds us to the commonplace, and the everyday isn't God, or our faith, but our own perception of their greatness and possibility. Let me give you a glimpse through the eyes of scripture, Oswald Chambers, Rick Bragg, and me today. Let’s see just how much further we can look into eternity through the eyes of Jesus…
As I read Oswald Chambers this morning, I was touched by the message of offering ourselves to God, and then allowing Him full reign in changing us and perfecting our lives for His service. Chambers used the words of Paul to illustrate that we should present our old self as a drink offering and then allow Him to pour us over the altar.
There are so many things that distract us from our faith and quite often they prevent us from realizing the fullness of that faith, and in their most destructive form, they keep us from giving God complete and unchallenged dominion over our lives. But don’t be afraid because in Jesus Christ there are many other things that are singularly strong enough to change who we are, who we live for, who we would die for, and who ultimately who rules our lives.
My morning reading today led me to contemplate the way I worship and how I treat that worship in conjunction with waiting, and work. I was reminded that it is important, and true, that there is but one God and I am equally convinced that our faith should lead us to a singularity of worship and life as well.
This morning as I read my devotional it struck me that the life of Peter mirrors our own lives in many powerful ways. We are humble before Jesus, yet we boldly speak for Him, we often speak before listening, we have glimpses of strong faith that often fade as we sink while walking on water, and we wrestle with our sinfulness, but there is no similarity more blatantly obvious, nor spiritually disappointing, than when Peter denied Jesus… and when we recognize ourselves in him as he does so. Like Peter we answer the call of Jesus as infants and must mature in our belief and faith.
Today I was contemplating Oswald Chambers' offering for this day, when suddenly I was overcome by the thought that each morning I get up and enter into prayer without really knowing where God will be taking me that day. My life of faith is more than a journey... it's an adventure.
Prayer and the Word of God; they go hand in hand. In the Word we are taught so many things; things like how we were created, how to worship, how to live, how to pray, how to gain forgiveness through Jesus, and how to receive eternal life by believing. We are taught many lessons regarding physical life, and faith, but none is any more important than how to come before our Father God in prayer... It is His will for us.
This morning we are contemplating God's desire for us to commit our lives to Him. We will revisit His desire for us to live and worship Him with zest. Pastor E. M. Bounds described the way we should pray in these words: "True prayer must be aflame." And he wrote that "The Christian life and character need to be on fire." Today we are returning once more to Revelation 3 for the principal scripture of our study.
When we read Psalm 37 as a young person we might see images of life through our parent’s eyes, but it is quite different once we get older and experience age, and aging, ourselves. This is a Psalm written by David when he was an old man, and maybe because of that I listen to it all the more attentively these days... having become older myself, and wiser through the years. For the elderly I say have faith, and for the young I say honor your elders.
I was reading Charles H. Spurgeon this morning and he was writing about our being called away from our homes and comfort, but that God still gives us rest... and how He continued to do this, even in our uncertainty. He used God's Word to Moses to make this point:
“And he said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."”
Exodus 33:14 ESV
I was thrilled by the devotional message I read this morning. In this time of roll your own religion, and with some, an outright disdain for church and assembling with other believers... we are reminded of the importance of togetherness in Hebrews 10, and the impact that our faiths have on each other. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young wrote a song in the 70s called ‘Teach Your Children Well’, and it speaks of a truth about having a code that we pass on to our children… our code as Christians is our Faith, and our belief in God and Jesus Christ. How do we teach it, and are our religious holidays, like Thanksgiving, a perfect times to do so?
Are we waiting to fully understand God before we will allow ourselves to believe? Do we hope he is who scripture says He is, but need more proof? Some of us don’t want to admit that God exists because our own limited intelligence, ability to conceive, or because our lack of understanding who He is, keeps getting in our way. Well, hope is fine, but it isn’t the same thing as faith. Hope is seeing a box, and wanting to believe that God might be in it. Faith is our ability to take the vapor of that hope, and treat it as if it were real. Faith is the first step towards believing… it opens the box in which we have placed our hope that God exists, and allows us to peer inside expectantly. Belief, on the other hand, is seeing the evidence of Him in the box, and realizing that He is not only there in its confines, but is in everything that surrounds it… and abides in us too. So today let’s think about where we are on this path from hope to faith, to belief, and into the eternal presence of God beyond.
Yesterday we spoke of the unpleasant task of discipline within the church, so today I am contemplating a more upbeat and pleasing topic... joy and rejoicing. We tend to think of God in a more serious light, but did you realize that he sings for you?
Today's topic regarding discipline within the Church is one of those very difficult and touchy subjects. The end result could be the separation of someone from a church (or as the Church knows it... Excommunication), or the removal of a local church from the greater Church. As I read my morning devotional, Pastor E. M. Bounds spoke of discipline within our churches like this: