Faith Is Getting God's Reasoning On A Matter

If this is your first visit to this blog, I would like to encourage you to go back to the blog on Friday, January 21, 2011 titled, "And Now You Know The "Rest" Of This Story"

I have been laying a foundation on how we need not struggle with our Faith but rest in God as He brings His promises to pass in our lives.  I have come to discover that I have made faith just another form of religious works.  Some of this is based on what I have been taught and some of it occured because of my own beliefs established over time.

What God has been opening up to me as I have availed myself to studying after the message of Grace is a new and exciting revelation of His love. When I first came into the knowledge of Christ, July 21, 1986, I recall a weight lifting off my shoulders upon the revelation of the plan of God through the death, burial & resurrection of His son. I grew up thinking that Jesus' death on the cross was a mistake.  That a cruel world in which Jesus had entered into misunderstood Him, hated Him and eventually killed Him. 

I didn't know that God's plan from the start was to send His son in the world to pay the price for my sins. I didn't realize that because of one man's disobedience, sin entered into the world thus condemning all of us but God sent Jesus into the world so that by one man's obedience, all shall be made righteous.  My understanding was that there was a set of rules to live by; the Ten Commandments.  My understanding was that there were "do's and don't's and the hope was that my good deeds would outweigh my bad deeds when I came to the end of my life.

I wasn't persuaded of the fact that God's plan to save me required Jesus to die on the cross. I had a wrong "reasoning" of life and life eternal. But that all changed on that day in 1986. I suddenly had faith in Christ. It wasn't something I did, it was something that happened to me.  However, over time, I exchanged my set of do's and don't's for a new set of rules. 

I understood that having a relationship with my Lord was necessary to grow in this walk of faith. I measured that relationship on how much I prayed, how much I studied His word, how involved I was in the church, how well I treated my wife, my children, how forgiving I was, how much I gave and how much I sowed finances into others, etc. etc. 

So when I had a need and would want to apply faith to the promises in God's word I would find myself defeated.  Oh, it wasn't that I didn't believe God's word was true. No, my struggle  was "Am I worthy enough for God's word to come to pass in my life". I had heard teachings that if I had unforgiveness, God wouldn't bless me; if I didn't lay down my life for my wife as Christ did for the church, how could I have any confidence that God would hear my prayers.

I would hear teachings about tithing and giving. Good hearted ministers would teach that the tithe belongs to God and that in order to reap a harvest, God would look at what we gave over and above the tithe. That's fine, I accepted that and walked in that.  Then if the financial challenges were still there, I would hear messages about giving with the right attitude or not giving grudginly or giving but not having faith to believe for a return or giving and not properly naming my seed. There were stipulations that needed to be applied to my giving if I wanted to see God bless my need. All of these teachings developed a "works mentality" in me.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against giving. I love to give.  What I discovered was that ever so cunningly, works began to slip back into my belief system. I began to measure my ability to receive God's promises on the conditions of a new set of do's and don't's.  Instead of my righteousness (right standing with God) being based on what Christ had purchased for me, My right standing with God was based on how well I measured my deeds against what I was being taught on how a Christian should act. This is called self-righteousness.

What I am discovering is that my righteousness is based on the finished work of the cross. And with that understanding, I am discovering that I can have faith to recieve God's promises despite my idiosyncracies, my fears, my weaknesses, my failures and so on.

This is why I am driving home the point that faith isn't something we do, it is something that happens to us. Let me try to explain it this way; fear is simply faith in the negative.  If someone puts a gun to your face and demands your wallet, you don't have to confess that you are scared or study up on the subject to be able to be afraid....bless God,  you are scared!  It isn't something you do, it's something that happens to you. Faith works the same way in the positive. We don't have to struggle and hoot and holler and work ourselves into a lather in order to have faith.

If we are going to be able to walk in God's promises, we cannot do this with a self-righteous mentality. We need to find out what God's persuasion or reasonings are. We need to discover that He is faithful to His promises even when we aren't faithful.  This doesn't give us a license to miss it or to sin.It is to empower us to trust God because of Jesus despite ourselves.

I believe it is easy to discover the reasonings of a Loving Father by simply studying the life of Jesus. Look at His life and His ministry, He had compassion on the lost, the hurting, the unloved. He wasn't afraid to eat with the tax collectors. He spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well which was against the custom of the Jews.  When someone cried out to Him for mercy, He didn't withhold it. He healed the blind, the lame, the deaf, raised the dead.  He said if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father. Then before He left us with the promise that He would send a Comforter, One called along side to help us...One Whom He said would be better to have in lieu of Him staying...Yes, after all this He went on to say, " all these things I have done...greater things shall ye do because I go to the Father".

C'mon now....doesn't that just blow your religious circuits?  Let's get God's reasoning...His persuasion on the matters of this world.  Faith says that with God, all things are possible.  Faith says that Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and forever.  Faith says that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Let's get the meditation of how great God's love is for us and we can be overcomers in all that we face, for we can rest in Him for the bible says, The Battle is Mine, saith the Lord.

Tomorrow we will talk about trust.