This week I decided to share with you one of the coolest things I got to do this year! My Pastor saw something in me and my growth that he set me a challenge to preach at my church before the year was up. Of course I jumped at the challenge, my goal this year was to say yes to God and not fear, because I have quickly learned that if God puts you in a situation that aligns with His will, He will always see you through because He will never set you up for failure! Of course I had plenty of ideas of things I wanted to cover, but ultimately I prayed over it and let God lead me. With the support of my Pastor I decided I wanted to cover the topic of faith and God’s faithfulness. So as the year is coming to a close, and as we reflect on the madness that seems to be following us into the new year, I think this is a great time to share this with you. I hope that it will instil a renewed faith and strengthen you to hold on in these difficult times! This is gonna be my last post of the year, as I take some time to get my life together for this Christmas. See you all in the new year and God bless you for reading and following this little old blog! Get your cup of tea or coffee and get comfortable, this is gonna be a long one.
I read a book this year by Jackie Hill Perry called “Hollier Then Thou” and the question she asked was this “do you realise how we live is the evidence of what we believe about God?” instantly my mind was blown because I had never thought of it like that! What we believe about God is directly linked to our faith! But what is faith exactly? HEBREWS 11:1 “NOW FAITH IS CONFIDENCE IN WHAT WE HOPE FOR AND ASSURANCE ABOUT WHAT WE DO NOT SEE.” To simply put it, faith is acting like God is telling the truth! But how do we know that God is telling the truth?….TRUST! How we trust God and what we trust God with is a good indicator of the depth of our relationship with him! Now we are all in a relationship with someone, whether it’s your partner, friend, family or a work colleague. We all have different levels of trust in these relationships. If we use your partner as an example, when you met them you didn’t instantly trust them with your life, you got to know them over time, you learned about what they liked and disliked, you learned each others love language! It’s through taking that time to get to know them you learned their character and they became trustworthy! So it’s exactly the same with God! Through our relationship, the more time we spend with Him and get to know his true nature, we understand his character, He becomes reliable, He becomes trustworthy! This is what makes our relational Father so good! We already know that God can not lie, it says so in HEBREWS 6:18, so we can trust and believe that God is telling the truth! So now we can put it into action, proving our faith so that we please God, as it says in HEBREW 11:6 “AND WITHOUT FAITH IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE GOD.” We live in a society that says “to see it, is to believe it!” but God is telling us “to believe it, even if we don’t see it!” That is faith!
Faith is measured by the steps of our feet, not by our feelings. We can sometimes forget our feelings are not facts, as we already know our hearts can be deceitful! The society today is all about doing what you feel without consequence, if you feel like a cat today and a dog tomorrow the culture says yes! Do you! live your best life! The culture makes our feelings fact, which is dangerous, because its no longer based in truth! So to walk based on what we “feel” and not by faith in the integrity of God’s word which is truth makes no sense! Many of our faith based decisions go against our feelings and gut instinct! It’s important to really understand what it means to have faith, so what better example to use than Abraham!
HEBREWS 11:8-10 “BY FAITH ABRAHAM, WHEN CALLED TO GO TO A PLACE HE WOULD LATER RECEIVE AS HIS INHERITANCE, OBEYED AND WENT, EVEN THOUGH HE DID NOT KNOW WHERE HE WAS GOING. BY FAITH HE MADE HIS HOME IN THE PROMISED LAND LIKE A STRANGER IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY; HE LIVED IN TENTS, AS DID ISAAC AND JACOB, WHO WERE HEIRS WITH HIM OF THE SAME PROMISE. FOR HE WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS, WHOSE ARCHITECT AND BUILDER IS GOD.” When God called on Abraham to leave all he knew, his family, all he had, his home, all his comforts, Abraham was 75 years old! (how comforting to know that God will use you at any age!) Abraham didn’t question God! He didn’t say ” sorry God, now is not a good time, this doesn’t fit in with my plans” instead he “moved”, he acted, because he knew God’s plan is always better! Remember faith=action, and action is obedience! God made all these promises to Abraham, He promised to make him into a great nation, to bless him, to make his name great, he would be a blessing, and all who blessed him would be blessed, all who cursed him would be cursed, all people on earth would be blessed through him (this includes us!) he would have numerous offspring, too many to count, and like him they were all promised land! God gave Abraham a look at the building plans of his future, and at 75 years old Abraham believed it!
HEBREWS 11:10 “FOR HE WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS, WHOSE ARCHITECT AND BUILDER IS GOD.” Abraham’s focus was on what was from above! How many of us can honestly say the same?! It’s so easy to get caught up in the here and now, what we have and what we don’t have! The culture we live in tells us we don’t have enough, we shouldn’t be content, we should look for more! But look at Abraham, he left his comforts, his familiarity, to live in tents like a stranger in a foreign country, all because he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God! Abraham had a 25 year wait before he saw a small part of God’s promise come to pass, but still he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God! That is some wait! 25yrs is a long time, that kind of wait can cause one to doubt if God is still faithful, you have to have a lot of faith to stay hopeful for that amount of time! But the waiting period is important! The waiting is where we are refined! Where we grow spiritually! It’s where we are often tested, where God is making sure we are ready! It took 25 years for Abraham to be ready to come into his promise, and in that time Abraham lied about his wife being his sister, not once but twice for self preservation, and he had a baby outside his marriage, all of these occasions happened when Abraham took his eyes of God’s providence and timing, a cautionary tale for all who try to control what God has planned for them! It’s fair to say that Abraham wasn’t perfect! But during all those ups and downs God remained faithful to him and Abraham never stopped looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God!
Often in life we come to a crossroads where we don’t know or even understand where God is taking us, sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t so bright! But if we only focus on what we can see and overlook the spiritual, we will become discouraged! Remember God is spirit, and that is how He operates at times! We are not meant to know God’s every move! We are not meant to understand his timing and how he operates! Those are the mysteries of God, to know all will make us God, and there can only be one God! Remember one day is like a thousand years to God, so how we understand time will never match up with God and His time line, we need to be ok with that! This is why He is so pleased when we move in true faith! Don’t become so practical that you stop believing in God’s promise! Yes, you also have a promise! Some of you might be in your “Abraham” wait, but just know that as God is preparing the promise for you, He is also preparing YOU for the promise! So focus on THE BUILDER, THE ARCHITECT! Don’t get caught up in the worldliness of society, because worldliness is just the exclusion of God! Don’t exchange your eternity with your father for a few “good” years on this pit stop called earth! Look beyond what this earth has to offer you, and remember God is the architect of opportunities in your life! He is the foundation and builder of your future! Trust in your Father, He doesn’t lie! Seek him more and see what that mustard seed of faith can do!
ROMANS 4:16 “SO THE PROMISE IS RECEIVED BY FAITH. IT IS GIVEN AS A FREE GIFT. AND WE ARE ALL CERTAIN TO RECEIVE IT, WHETHER OR NOT WE LIVE ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF MOSES, IF WE HAVE FAITH LIKE ABRAHAMS. FOR ABRAHAM IS THE FATHER OF ALL WHO BELIEVE.”
MY CONVICTIONS 