Amazing Faith; It Doesn’t Come Easy: There are many Christians who did at one time, or still do grant that God is “able” to do great and mighty things, but are not so sure that He is “willing” to intervene on their behalf with these miracles. Let me tell you now, to know God is to be assured of His absolute willingness to intervene on your part. When the leper appealed to Jesus for healing he too wondered, not if Jesus ‘could’ but if Jesus ‘would’ heal him. “Lord, if thou are willing, thou can make me clean.” And what was Jesus immediate reply? He corrected the leper of his mistaken concept with the words “I am willing, be cleaned”! There are three Hebrew men who knew this “confidence in God” very well. From their story of them versus King Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace we learn three important lessons on faith. 1. Faith is always confronted with a choice: The choice for these three young men was no easy one, nor will it be for us. Often it is an agonizing experience. Nebuchadnezzar did not demand that the men deny their faith, only that they bow to his image as well. We see this sort of thing also with the early church. The mere offering of a pinch of incense to the emperor would have spared many a martyr from being sentenced to death. However, faith in God does not share the place of prominence with anything else, king or idol! Real faith is costly! 2. Faith always involves a risk: If there were no risk involved, no faith is necessary. If we can see the path ahead, we are walking by sight. Abraham (the father of the faithful) went out “not knowing where he went.” He was willing to risk it all on God. We exercise faith only when the road ahead is not clear, only when we are so placed that we have no alternative if God were to let us down. We always like to have an alternative ready, but there is always a risk in the pathway of true faith. For the three Hebrew men they were so completely in the trust of God, that God rewarded them with such secret plans of grace and blessing that they could have never dreamed of! 3. Faith always encounters opposition: The pathway of faith is not colorful beauty, it is blood marked. For the three men it was being burned alive in a furnace (seven times the normal temperature nonetheless). Abraham advanced from one test to another, each more difficult than the last. There was always opposition to be overcome, and difficulty to be overlapped. Instead of complaining about the difficulties we meet, we should rejoice at the fresh opportunity they afford for us to exercise our faith! If we are advancing in the walk of faith, we can expect to encounter more opposition. How else could faith grow? -J .Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Maturity -God Bless
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 00:26:30 +0000
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