I have been doing a whole lot of soul-searching in the last few months and to be quite honest I do not like what I’ve found. When I was a little girl we used to sing this song,
I don’t know why Jesus loves me
I don’t know why He cares
I don’t know why He sacrificed His life
Oh, but I’m glad, so glad He did
With what I have learned about my shaky walk with Christ and the enormous amount of growth I yet need, I am not only wondering why the Jesus loves me-I want to know why He hasn’t just disowned me!
I am currently on a so-called “faith walk”. What that means is that after a 20 year career as an educator, I found myself without a job. That’s right...the big evangelist who preached many a wall down about trusting the Lord and having faith in God finds that she is in need of a serious faith overhaul and trust makeover. I am appalled at my sometimes lack of faith, fear of failure, and downright sense of hopelessness. It is because I came face to face with my own shredded walk that I now daily reach for complete faith.
I am ashamed to admit this but I am just now learning what I thought I knew for years. Our relationship with Christ has to be like manna rained from heaven. Faith has to fall upon us day by day. It is no wonder the Apostle Paul said he died daily. <1 Corinthians 15:31> He understood as I now do that the word that you received on Sunday will not be the spiritual manna you will need on Monday. Each day brings with it its own revelations from God, its own strengths to create might, its own situations to birth faith, and its own circumstances to build trust. Jesus prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread”. <Matthew 6:11> I now understand with perfect clarity that faith is our bread. We cannot store up faith in our spirit to feed our inner man like can goods in our cupboards to nourish our natural man. If the Lord allowed faith to be stored instead of renewed then we would only ever need faith once. We would only ever need to call upon His name once. We would only ever need to pray once. But it isn’t like that. This walk has to be a day to day promise of love, a day to day leap of courage, and a day to day declaration of conviction that regardless of our internal or external conditions our praise won’t cease, our joy won’t tarnish, and our faith won’t waiver. Guess what, if you die daily, you also live daily. You increase daily. You grow daily.
The Bible states that a double minded person is unstable in ALL of his ways.<James 1:8> What that means is if God is God in your life then He should be God at all times. But if He is only God when things are going well or when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel or the silver lining shining through storm clouds–then you are unstable! Unstable people make God nervous and He will not use you as He desires to do so. He loves you but He cannot use you–not because you are unsure of yourself but because you are unsure of Him. I cried out to God and told Him that I would do anything to have Him use me to the fullest. And He gave me the answer. He said, “The just shall live by faith so keep moving forward”. <Hebrews 10:38> I was shocked. I became insolent like Naaman was with Elijah. <2 Kings 5:11>
I thought surely the Lord would indulge me and tell me something sweet and nice like,”Lo, I am with you always and I’ll never forsake you”. <Matthew 28:20> But the Father turned it back on me and told me to live by faith. He made me accountable. Faith will make you do whatever the Lord has told you to do, whatever He has put on your heart to accomplish. Faith makes the Lord happy to do what He promised, to bring you to that expected end. The Lord so wants to see faith in us that He told us without faith it is impossible to please Him. That means you can preach, fast, pray, sing, worship, invest money, open a business, start a church, or even drive a car but if you do anything, regardless of how wonderful it seems, without faith in God then He is not pleased. Imagine this. The only thing man has ever done that made Jesus cry was failure to have faith in Him. Faith is so important that Jesus told Peter the devil desired to sift him as wheat but that He had prayed for him. <Luke 22:31> Jesus did not pray that Peter would not go through the trial or the tribulation. His prayer for Peter was that his faith would not fail. < My Lord! I feel the presence of the Lord in this place right now!> This is how we know that we can do all things through Christ...it is our FAITH in Christ that gives us the power to dodge failure, dissolve weakness, and disavow uncertainty.
<Philippians 4:13>
I beseech you my little ones to have complete faith in the Lord for it is only then we shall be more than conquerors.
Be Blessed,
Mia
Mia