MOUNTAIN MOVING FAITH

The nature of faith is to turn the object of faith – God -- into a present reality. God uses reality – our life’s circumstances -- to educate our faith, to test and approve it in the cauldron of adversity. Faith brings us into right relationship with God by coming against everything that contradicts Him: The World, Our Fleshly Carnal Nature… Self, and The Devil. The greatest expression of faith in the Bible was pinned by Job whose faith in demonstration exceeded even Abraham, the “Father of Faith”: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job lived this expression of his faith, so we need to meditate on it for understanding. First, faith requires some degree of doubt and is fermented... strengthened, in this struggle as we choose faith over doubt. Second, “God doesn't make all things good… God makes good from all things” (J. Chandler). Faith during adversity is to trust in God’s ultimate goodness in spite of any apparent evidence to the contrary, recognizing His ways are above our understanding. And third, faith is the steadfast pursuit of God even when everything around us says He isn’t here, “enduring as seeing Him who is invisible”, not merely pursuing an answer or desired outcome... but pursuing God’s presence. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” God just may... So we must...

The natural byproduct of adversity of any sort, whether physical, financial, relational or emotional, is fear.  Jesus was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief”, and the Apostle Paul said we saints are “appointed” to afflictions and adversity, proving this point by a life filled with pain, hardship, and suffering of every sort. We will all at times hit Speed-Bumps on The Way for God does not always give us overcoming life... sometimes He gives us life as we overcome. The spiritual precept for faithfully enduring difficult times was given to us in God’s word using the Imperative Indicative grammatical construction: A command followed by a statement of fact: Whenever scripture gives us a command it backs it up with a statement of fact that boasters and undergirds the command, making it a grace issue and not merely an issue of obedience to a command. You see, grace enables want it commands. For adversity and fear God’s Imperative Indicative is simple: Fear Not -- the command, For I AM With You -- the statement of fact.   Throughout scripture the Lord’s response to adversity and its step-child fear is the same: “Fear not, for I AM with you.” The grace of God’s presence puts fear to flight! This is why it is essential we pursue God during hard difficult times... during Bad, not merely pursuing an answer or desired outcome, but “enduring as seeing Him who is invisible” -- pursuing God’s presence. God seems to think His presence in the cauldron of adversity is enough to move the mountain of fear releasing in its place His peace that is better than understanding... that is better than knowing why. And He’s right...

Faith is the problem, not that we don’t have enough of it, but that it has become the whipping boy for our misinterpretation of scriptures. We concoct half-truth doctrines then blame our faith when they don’t produce the desired results, asking amiss to satisfy our Self’s lust. Faith is simply to believe in, trust in, rely upon, and cling to God. Having faith is not hard: God gives each of His children a unique measure of faith to enable the “Gifts, Callings, and righteous works” they are predestined to walk in. This faith is the foundation for our Christian life, and must then, of necessity, be inclusive of saving faith, justifying faith, and the condition for the release of divine power in the believer. And it only takes a mustard seed smidgen of faith to get the job done. When we get our doctrine right we will find we had “mountain moving” faith all along, we were just trying to move the wrong mountain: “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” When we petition God according to our will and not His will our faith is reduced to wishful thinking, for He does not hear... and He does not answer...

A SMIDGEN OF FAITH GETS THE JOB DONE

(Job 13:15; Rom. 8:28; Heb. 11:27; Is. 41:10, 53:3; 1 Thess. 3:3; 1 Jn. 5:14-15; Matt. 17:20; Rom. 12:3-8)