FAITH

My pastor’s sermon this past Sunday was about faith. It was a message I so desperately needed to hear. The devil was beating the hell into me and I responded with acceptance to a point. I allowed him to control my thoughts and enter my heart but I stop when he wanted me to act. It is part of phil 2:12 that said, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” Well I am definitely working it out with both fear and trembling.

I understand faith without heart is worthless but I guess what I did not realize that “faith is not apart of the Christian life, it is the Christian life.” I realize that this makes so much sense to a certain point of having the believer’s purpose to life. It is as simply as seeking God. Seeking God makes you want to transform your life and sanctify yourself. Seeking God puts in situations where your character is determined and you walk out much better than before. Seeking God makes you a better friend husband or boss. It is so simply and yet so complex at the same time. It is a great thing to reach that conclusion in your walk with God. It brings a good peace to your mind because while I do battle with sin and my emotions I know that in the end victory is assured to me. 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” That all times there is a way out. There are multiple ways out when you think about the tools you have in prayer and in the bible and fellowship.

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. The part of the passage that stuck out the most to me is “we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”. I know I most certainly fail in this regard and this is the cause of a lot of my pain and suffering. Last night a young man said that my will and God’s will is the same. I had to smile and say no my friend sometimes those can be two radically different things. If we can genuinely say that every thought we have is obedient to Christ then maybe but chances are there not. We tend to make our thoughts obedient to our emotions and desires. This is where the pain and suffering comes in. We cannot discern God’s will we like to hope we can but we really can’t fully. We just pray and think and mediate and hope that we can find God’s answer in the scripture he provided us with.

Another thing we tend to do is try to be obedient to rules and people and hope that with obedience to them we create a lasting righteousness. We know through the Israelites that laws and rules do not create a communion with God if anything it helps further push us away from him. True righteousness comes from faith and in that faith is an innate desire to seek God and his word. The process of sanctification that is a result of the process is one of unending beauty. Keeping your thoughts and hearts pure is simply as following and studying scripture. Psalm 119:9 easily states, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word” I’ll end with another verse, “And without faith it is impossible to please God…” (Hebrews 611:6)