More on Faith...

Why does faith please God so much and why is faith that which Jesus says He will look for when He comes?

There are a variety of answers to this, but the one I'd like to highlight here is that faith focuses on God, thereby placing Him at the center of any and all situations.

Practically speaking, when I focus my attention fully on something/someone, I can't give attention to other things/people. So when I devote my attention and energy to looking at God and listening to Him in His Word by His Spirit, the flesh with its doubts and fears has to yield.

I think that often we as followers of the Lord Jesus hear something like what I've just said above and immediately conclude that we can't focus on God; we've tried it many times and our minds wander and the inner distracting voices scream all the louder. We come away from a time of trying to devote our attention and energy to focusing on God feeling more like a failure than if we hadn't tried.

I see two major strategies that the enemy uses to keep God's people from faith (focus on God):

1. Convince us to give up altogether; or,
2. Convince us to settle for going through the motions of prayer without fighting to encounter God; we do this in order to soothe our conscience or to impress God and others.

We don't have to take either of these common routes. I believe there is a struggle to get to faith (focus on God) that God is pleased for us to engage in. He isn't displeased with the fact that we have to fight to get our attention fixed on Him; He knows better than we do how weak we are as fallen humans, and He promises that He will be found by those who seek for Him with all their heart (Jeremiah 29).

I've perhaps shared this before, but I often think of this in terms of a small child who cannot walk yet but wants to reach mother. Because Mom is across the room, the baby can't get to her on his own, but what he can do is to reach and cry for her. A good mother doesn't punish the child for wanting her but rather runs to catch him up in her arms; and so if we human parents who are evil have enough care to respond to our children's cries, how much more will the heavenly Father respond to us and our cries for Him?!

I want to encourage you to not give up on "reaching" for faith (focus on God). He delights in every little "reaching" gesture you make towards Him. You may not have a sense of great release and soaring emotions in the moment, but He loves it that you want Him and in due time, you will reap what you are sowing by faith now.

Here's a practical way for you to start, if you need a bit of help:

1. Take a Scripture such as Revelation 15:3 - "Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!"
2. Important next step: ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten your mind and emotions as you take time to focus. You can't focus on God without the help of His Spirit!
   
3. Ponder each phrase, starting with the phrases that speak of Who He is and what He is like: "Lord God the Almighty" and "just and true are your ways" and "King of the nations." These statements about who He is are absolutely imperative to focus on because an understanding of His nature and character is necessary in order for faith to rise and take hold of truth for your particular situation. You aren't dealing with just anyone but with the Creator and Lord and Lover of all creation, including humans. Then meditate on His works and what the Holy Spirit through the Apostle John says about His works.
4. It's important to do some concrete things as you are doing this; write out the phrases and any cross references that may come to you; pray them back to God; sing them to Him directly. You may want to write out your own paraphrase of the verse.
5. This particular verse is the song that the overcomers will sing in the midst of great and terrible judgments that are being administered on the earth by the Lord at the end of the age; we prepare for that day by declaring and singing the same truth now about our own present circumstances and those that we see all around us. So I would suggest that you say/sing this Scripture over your own circumstances, declaring the goodness and perfect ways of God in the midst of what is going on that doesn't appear good and perfect.
   
6. Share realities about God's nature and His ways and works with someone else - this is critical for faith to grow; it must be spoken out to another person.
   
7. Finally, DO NOT allow yourself to be discouraged if you have to rein in your scattered thoughts many times during a time of focusing on the Lord. It takes time to develop a habit of focusing on Him, and He knows that about us and isn't offended by our struggle.

Better than doing this on your own is finding someone else who will do it too; if you can find someone who will do it a couple of times a week on their own while you do it on your own and share your discoveries by phone or by email (if you can't in person), your faith will grow much faster.

The Lord bless you, and may His Spirit, Who never loses focus on the Father and Son, empower you to live and walk by faith one day at a time.

Will He Find Faith?

Before going into this week's theme, I want to let you know that I've decided to continue on with writing these little devotional thoughts for awhile more; if/when we switch back to reviewing books, I'll give you sufficient time to be able to order whatever the next book is.

Luke 18:8b - "...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" This was asked by Jesus Himself in the context of teaching His disciples about the end of the age and emphasizing the need of persevering, unceasing prayer in the face of all that will be happening then. As we are approaching the end of the age, it's really important that we know what Jesus says to those who will be living then; so this question about His finding faith on the earth is critical for us.

As with all of these simple devotional topics, this topic is massive and it's tempting to want to go deeply into the topic. However, I will treat it simply and trust the Holy Spirit to take you wherever He wants to take you with the little that I share. The following are some implications to Jesus' question in Luke 18:

• First of all, the mere question that Jesus asks implies that faith is of utmost importance to the Lord and is what He will look for when He returns. I don't believe this refers to the faith of a past initial experience by which I was united to the Lord Jesus through the work of the cross and the Holy Spirit. I believe it is speaking of present, living faith. As one of my spiritual leaders says, "What a believer does is believe..." We are to be believing God all the time and as we do, we are built up in the faith and prepared to be faith-full at the end of the age when our faith is tested as never before.
• What is faith? One way of seeing it is that faith is wholeheartedly agreeing with God; in other words, it's an embracing of Him and His truth to the point of actually taking the risk of living as though it is true! It's an expression of trust in Who He is and what He does. It is choosing to live as though He and His Word are correct even when everything around me screams that He is not true. It is expressed in our decisions and in our talk.
• How do we get faith? Faith can't be cranked up somehow by some kind of spiritual gymnastics. Romans 10 tells us that faith comes by hearing the word of Christ; in other words, we must get to know Him intimately so that we trust Him and His words; the Scripture is where we discover what He is like and what He has done and promises to do, so we must be in the Scriptures regularly with an attitude of submission to the Holy Spirit (prayer and fasting are important if we want to get living understanding of the Word, of Jesus). I believe that another way that faith grows in us is to lean strongly on the reality that Jesus Himself is praying that our faith will not fail when the test comes. What a boost to faith when we stop long enough to enjoy this truth and take the time to let it seep deeply into our inner heart and mind.

The reason it matters that I grow in faith is that when I slip into unbelief and fear, I am not in harmony with God's ways and resort to all kinds of fleshly solutions, bringing about destructive consequences rather than the life of Jesus. I've observed this in myself and am asking the Holy Spirit to alert me to when fear and unbelief are pushing me towards the flesh. We have plenty of evidence in Scripture and in our own lives of where the flesh takes us and what it produces in pain and difficulty.

We get this short life now to grow in love and faith in God and to learn to live as though we truly believe Him; no promise of His comes into being without faith, and I love it that it's not primarily about how I feel in a given moment or a given situation but about the hard core decisions that I make in alignment with His character and His works because I trust that what He says is more true than all the circumstances and feelings that swirl about me.

The testings we go through now are to prepare us for that which is yet to come to test our faith at the end of the age. When He comes, He will be looking for those with living, persevering faith who have stayed true to Him without offense.

So Lord, come and "kiss" our hearts with Your Word as we look into it. Give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to us in these critical days; give us a spirit of prayer as we approach Your Word so that it penetrates deeply and does its good work of creating faith within us. Thank You for Your Word and for the power of Your Spirit to interpret it to us and to make Jesus known to us.

Son or Slave?

I'm asking the Holy Spirit to give me greater understanding and revelation about what it means to be a good daughter of a perfect Father...it's a prayer I have prayed at the start of this new year, and I'm asking Him to help me know how to walk this out in the realities of daily life. A key verse for me related to this is from Galatians 4:7 - "So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God."


I have learned some things from Frank Lake's book, "Clinical Theology," along this line that I'd like to share; he writes about the difference between the one who is living as a "son" as opposed to one who lives as a "slave" (and this applies to believers in the Lord Jesus):

Fundamentally, Lake says that the person who lives as a "son" views acceptance as a gift while the "slave" views it as a reward. This plays out in the following ways:

1. The "son" is not afraid to be known by those near to him because acceptance is not something he earns but has been given to him freely by the Source of being. Because the "slave" views acceptance as conditional, he must work hard to cover up his weakness and failure in order to gain acceptance by those who are near him. This, of course, makes relating with family and close ones exhausting for the "slave" because of the constant fear that he might get found out and consequently not be accepted.
   
2. For the "son," achievement is "an expression of inner core resources. Work is his free donation. He gives himself and his skills as the overflow of relationships in which he has a kind of 'freehold.'...Success or failure do not affect his essential being."...For the "slave", achievement is "an expression of inner core needs. Work is demanding. He does it to feel better, not because he feels like doing it. He performs it in order to achieve relationships. Therefore his eyes are not wholly on the task itself, but on the effect his doing of it is calculated to produce. He likes to be seen doing it. His very ‘being’ as a person is precariously bound up with the acceptance or rejection of his work."
3. Frank Lake makes a concluding statement regarding the son and the slave that is foundational: for the son, "justification is by faith in another person and their achievement"; for the slave, "justification is by works, one’s own achievement."

The formative years play a huge role in our ability to live and walk as "sons" once we have come into Christ by the work of the Spirit; the good news is that no matter what our formative years have been like, the heavenly Father can "re-form" (or remake) us by the work of the cross and His Spirit as we trust Him as the Source of all being and well-being. I have tasted some of the goodness of my heavenly Father through my good earthly father, but I'm increasingly aware that there is so much more goodness and affection in God my Father that I haven't yet experienced and because of that, I still relate with a slave mentality in some areas.

I have a suspicion that the more I live and walk in this reality of true sonship, the less religion will have a hold over me since religion and slavery walk hand in hand. And so now I am regularly asking the Lord, "How do I walk as Your daughter in this situation?" It's already proving to be quite a venture!

Holy Spirit, You Who know the Father perfectly, would You reveal Him to us so that we can walk more fully in our sonship? We don't know what it means to be children of a perfect Father, so teach us and empower us to live and walk in this relationship. Thank You, dear Lord!

The Fullness of Time...continued

Matthew Berry's comment on my posting last week was right on; the aligning of my own heart and mind to His ways and thoughts is a huge part of what God is preparing as He meticulously sets things and people in place for the sending of His salvation! In the time of waiting for His visible answer to my prayers, He is changing my way of thinking and feeling related to many things. I've watched this happen to me and to others when there has been a long waiting time in prayer.

The more I learn to pray and to persevere in prayer, the more I realize how my thinking is not aligned with His. He uses the pain of unanswered prayer to lead me into His light and truth, and His light and truth lead me to His "holy hill" (Psalm 43:3,4), the place of His dwelling where I am transformed by His loving presence.

This is motivated by His love for me, because He knows that without my soul (my mind, will, and emotions) being increasingly aligned with His mind, His will, and His emotions, I cannot pray rightly (James 4:3), and if God were to answer my prayers before the "fullness of time", I wouldn't even be able to enjoy the answer because of wrong thinking and feeling and desiring. I wouldn't know how to properly "steward" that which God had given me.

I'm learning that it's so worth trusting Him with the waiting time...and it's worth being willing to yield to His ways as I wait. In other words, I'm learning to wait actively rather than passively. To wait actively is to persevere in courageous prayer and to aggressively go after God with an attitude of willingness to change my way of thinking as His light and truth penetrate my darkness and deception by the working of His Spirit.

So once again, take heart that God is at work in you and in your circumstances; give Him your heart each day and purposely submit your mind to His. It's painful to give up old ways of thinking about Him and His kingdom, but in the long run, it's more painful not to! If you will persevere in "sowing to the Spirit" through intentionally yielding to Him as you wait for Him to move, in due time (the fullness of time), you will "reap" His life in you and in many others.

God bless you and keep you and cause His face to shine on you and be gracious to you and give you peace!