Without Faith….

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6

Faith is taking God seriously. When we doubt Him, we basically doubt His word and His integrity. We end up taking the matters in our own hands and taking God lightly. The scripture tells us that the only way to please God is to believe Him.

The greater our need for control, the easier our faith can be shaken. Control shows itself in variety of ways. We have a need to understand what God is doing. It makes us nervous and insecure when we don’t know what He is doing. Adverse circumstances can also make us anxious. They cause us to need assurance that God hasn’t forgotten about us. Sometimes our theology is challenged. If others are doing things that we don’t understand or don’t line up with our theology, it makes us question what we believe or what they believe.

The longer I walk with the Lord, I am less confident of understanding my God and the world. In the past, I put a great deal of weight in my understanding. It was my security blanket that kept me warm and comforted. If I knew what God was doing, then I felt close to God and thought of myself as one of his confidants. Those of us who are prophetic, we are even more prone to desiring to understand what God is doing. I am learning to focus more on His character.

In the last couple of years, God has allowed me not to understand a lot of things. I have seen hurtful things, observed losses in others’ lives, and cried about various challenges and injustices. I don’t have a lot of answers for other people. I don’t encourage them with the certainty that I used to. I am more comfortable with not knowing, and I don’t try to fix it for others.

Walking with God is not an equation to be solved. God gives us the Holy Spirit to be our helper. He also has truth and principles that we can put to work in our lives in order to do well in life. However, we can’t use His word as an equation. A+B does not always equal C. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it equals D or E. Sometimes the equation is not solved for months or years. This is when our faith is truly tested. Are we putting faith in God’s principles or do we put faith in God?

The enemy tries to intervene in this process and whisper to us, “Why bother believing!?” Many Christians lose hope in this part of the process because they don’t understand. They get discouraged or confused, and they become unsure of what they believe. We need to fight this spiritually.  If our faith is only strong to the degree that we understand what God is doing, then we are on a shaky ground. We don’t want our faith to easily crumble under pressure. Lord help us!

Lord, we pray today that you would give us the grace to purely believe you. We desire To trust your integrity, love, and goodness whether we understand all things or not. Amen!