Any of us who are Christians probably use the terms "believing in God" or "trusting God" or "having faith" on at least a semi-regular basis. But how often do we live that way? When I look at Biblical standards of what having true faith is, I don't see any person being perfect at it except Jesus. But I definitely see many other Biblical models, old and new testament.
In Daniel 3:14-20, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were about to get tossed into a furnace as a form of public execution for not bowing down to a false God. You know what they told the king who was about to have them murdered? "...We have no need to answer you in this manner. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if not, be it known to you O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up" (vs 16-18). Okay, did you catch that? They are about to burn to death and they say "My God can do anything and I believe he can do this miracle. But even if He chooses not to, I will trust Him anyway." They knew that he loved them and that his heart is good. Do we really trust that?
There's another passage in Hebrews that we commonly call refer to as describing the "heroes of faith." But Hebrews 11 also tells us exactly what faith is. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things visible" (vs 1-3).
Psalm 37:3-4 tells us "Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
So there are several things that go all together with this thing we call faith. You either trust God and who he is and what he's promised and obey him, or you don't. Especially after walking away or struggling with doubt, trusting God is a daily and even moment by moment decision.
"Since we have a great high Priest who has entered heaven, let us hold firmly to what we believe." -Hebrews 4:14 (Read versus 15&16 as well.)
Do you trust God when it doesn't make any sense to? What has God told you to do that you are refusing to obey in? Where are you not trusting God? For me, I had an eye-opening moment earlier. There was a moment in today's sermon where someone said "It doesn't matter how much hurt you've been through. Don't harden your heart." That hit me like a nail driven through my heart. I did that. I hadn't even realized...
Let me give you a little something more than that. My church is currently going through a series called "Before I Die" and today was about (go figure) trusting God. There were these huge chalk boards in the courtyard that they encouraged us to write down what God was telling us to trust him with on, so that the staff could specifically pray over those things. I wrote down things that I would never want to admit to anyone. Not ever. But in faith, I put them on the boards and I'm going to tell you now. I want to dream. To have dreams...not goals, but dreams of things I want to be able to be and do before I die. I currently have absolutely nothing I want to do or to be besides God's hands and feet. I don't have a career in mind or desperately want a family or anything else. And talking with my dear roommate tonight, I realized that a large part of that comes from not trusting that God will follow through on what he promised. (And if you follow my posts at all, you probably are thinking "Doesn't she have an entire post about that?" The answer is yes. I'm far from perfect, dear reader. And I'm walking through a huge stretching/growing process that I feel is incredibly long.) But I don't want to stay there. And I'm not. As I said, it's something I haven't wanted to admit, but that has been growing in me for quite some time.
I wish I had some happy anecdote to end with today, but I don't. I'm in the process of learning how to really trust God and to learn what true faith looks like. I hope you're able to do the same.
