A Faith That Brings Peace & Rest

You know, when I would hear the word "faith" the first emotion this word evoked in me was "disqualification".  My spiritual life has been spent in a church founded on the Word of Faith movement, if you will. There was a tremendous emphasis on FAITH.

Now before you try to guess where this is going let me say that I am not planning on tearing down a church, a minister, a "movement" or anything of that sort. Most of what I am discovering is how I processed and received the Word of God. I may be the only person who developed wrong ideas and understandings about my Heavenly Father and His Word but in case there is someone else out there with the same challenges, I hope to help you today.

 Did you know that in the New Testament, faith is mentioned 229 times and love is mentioned 157 times. I believe God wants us to have an understanding of faith.

So why did I get feelings of disqualification when the topic of faith came up.  Well the question in me would come up, "Will my faith be big enough"?  Do I have "enough faith" to see myself through the challenge. One reason is because I thought that faith was something "I did" in order to get God to do something for me.

Here is how I perceived faith. Jesus paid a great price for me to walk in victory in the area of sin, healing, prosperity, eternal life. In order for me to qualify for these blessings, I needed to receive them "by faith".

Here is how I understood "receiving them by faith" operated. There were certain "do's and don't's" a Christian must adhere to in order to pull those blessings into their life. Don't walk in unforgiveness. Don't have unrepentant sin. Do make certain you are tithing and giving over and above the tithe and when you do give,  make certain you are giving with the right attitude or your prayers won't be answered. Do make sure you are studying the word and praying every day and when you to pray make sure you are praying long enough. I was also instructed on when it is the best time to pray. I could go on but my point is made...

I will say that some of the teachings I was listening to strenghtened these beliefs.  Especially when I heard that if I walk in unforgiveness, I will stop the blessings of God in my life or if I had unrepentant sin in my life I would lack confidence when going before my Heavenly Father with a need and "without faith" or as I reasoned, "without confidence in my qualifying for His blessing" I could not please God. Well, my understanding of sin was not only sins which I commit but also sins of ommission (those things that God would say to do that I was not doing). How can anyone have any confidence in their prayer life if sins of ommision stopped the flow of God's blessing in your life? God's word encourages us to do all that He has commanded us to do. I'm not sure that I know too many Christians that can truthfully say the do all that God says to do in His word.  These could be "sins of ommision".

I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water on this one, we don't want to be in unforgiveness or treat sin ever so lightly however I needed to have a better understanding of His Grace and His plan in the person of Jesus to rightly divide what the word says. For me, when I began to get a better understanding of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant's I found a new freedom in Christ.

I'll be brief but I want you to get a hold of this.  The Old Covenant was a type and shadow of what would come in the new testament. In other words, what was performed under the Law of Moses would be represented in the New Covenant under the Law of Grace. For instance, in the Old Covenant, when it came time for the purification of the sins of the children of Israel, they were instructed to take an young lamb, without spot or blemish and sacrifice it at the altar.

The purpose was this; the spotless, young lamb without blemish was to represent the perfection of the sinless Lamb of God.  The idea of the ceremony would be that the sins of the people would be put upon the Lamb and the perfection and innocence of the Lamb would be put upon the people.

So let's go back to the issue of walking in love.  At the time Jesus walked this earth, we were still under the Law of Moses. The fulfilment of the law (Jesus' death, burial and resurrection had not yet happened). So when Jesus talked about unforgiveness he was dealing with the Pharisee's within the Law. He told them if they did not forgive, then their heavenly father wouldn't forgive them.  This was the law. 

But after Jesus fulfilled the law, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul said, Forgive others BECAUSE you have been forgiven.  It was no longer a commandment- Under law, they were commanded to forgive in order to be forgiven. Under the law of Grace, we are told to forgive BECAUSE we have already been forgiven. It wasn't an act of our doing that qualified us...it was the ultimate act of Jesus that empowers us to forgive others.  It's our choice to forgive but if we are in Christ, we are fogiven.  Yahoooo.


Be blessed today. We will get into more of this later.