Sunday Devotional Levels of Faith, Trains and Coffee In my life I have noticed different levels of faith at different times. Like many, the honeymoon period when you first get saved is a time of great faith. Having now been able to see the Kingdom of Heaven, it is such a great surprise when all one’s friends don’t immediately get saved when you tell them the truth about the Kingdom. The important thing to remember, of course, is that the individual must have faith, not necessarily his or her friends. I would pray for unusual things because God gave me a gift of faith. Having been taught that one should step out in faith, I would look for an action for my faith. For example, if I were late for a class at the Royal Academy of Music, I would pray that I would be able to run to the end of the road and jump and that I would land on a bus that would take me to college. Not being able to see around the corner, and not knowing the bus routes, I would set off and jump. I indeed landed on the back of a bus, the route-master busses that you have in London, which have an open, small platform on the back, which was traveling to a stop right outside my college. What laughter I would have when this would happen. One night I was traveling on a bus that was coming back from the north of England. I really wanted a cup of coffee, but it was 1:30 in the morning. Again, in looking for an action, I asked God if He would put a cup of coffee into my hand if I closed my eyes and stuck my hand up into the air in the shape of a cup. As I closed my eyes and raised my hand, somebody put a cup of coffee into my hand. The only problem was that it did not contain sugar. Maybe I should have asked for that, as well! The difficulty, though, is that faith, like coffee can go cold. After a while the number of miracles I saw began to fade. It was as if it would have been hard for me to pray for my coffee to be warm right after I had made it. Why did my faith fade? When Peter first started walking on the water, he was looking at Jesus; he started to sink when he started looking at the effects of the boisterous wind instead of looking at Jesus. Often we can spend too much time looking at television or other attractions. If we look at those things too much or look at the wrong things, our faith will deteriorate. Our relationship with Jesus changes as we get older. The effervescence of the honeymoon love we once had for Him changes to a stronger, trusting love that emanates from the adversities of life. It was important for me to understand that my level of faith had been given to me as a gift. For me to understand people with different gifts and talents, I needed to see my life as a Christian without that faith. That type of faith was removed but then given back to me in a different way. I can say that my faith has gone through a maturing process with less frivolity, but it still leads me to pray for some unusually hard things.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 11:30:01 +0000