Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Faith and Waiting Upon the Lord

A friend on facebook posed the following questions on her status update:
I asked myself after doing my study do we lack faith because we're too distracted and busy and just don't seek God anymore or don't spend enough time with Him? Why were there so many miraculous stories in the Bible but we dont see them today? Our world is not seeing God because we are not attempting anything that ONLY God can do. We have become a self sufficient and self dependent society and forget that God can do things far better.
This is how I replied:

I agree that worldly distractions (as well as faith in money) squelch faith. It says as much in Jesus' parable of the sower in Matthew 13 when the Word is choked by the thorns and that person is then unable to bear fruit. The root of the problem in this example is misplaced faith: pride (too busy for God) and self-reliance (a form of idolatry, ie., faith in self) trump faith in Jesus Christ and Him crucified; who is the sum total remedy for our sinful condition before a Holy God.

When God has a hold of you as His child, His will is to grow your faith so that you will be completely humble and reliant on him. The most common thing that the Lord does to grow your faith in Him is to make you wait. Instant gratification is shallow (and the Lord knows this as evidenced by those of the rocky ground persuasion in that same parable) and so waiting becomes the vehicle that transforms those disciples into the good soil that bears fruit for the Kingdom of God.

All of the old testament heroes of the faith (Hebrews 11) didn't experience the miracle promised of God without going through the dark valley of a trial or the dry desert of waiting for it first. God made Abraham wait 25 years before the son of promise, Isaac, to arrive. If that wasn't enough, God then commanded Abraham to go and sacrifice Isaac to the Lord. The amazing thing is that Abraham never balked at God's commandment to sacrifice Isaac because he had learned that God's Word is sure. God had grown his faith through the waiting and the fulfillment. Thus, Abraham proved his faith by reckoning that God would provide in spite of how grim it looked. I am constantly bewildered by Abraham's act of faith and this is the kind of faith that he wants to grow in me and you! Just be prepared to wait on it!

The church has been waiting for nearly 2000 years for Jesus Christ to return and we know that He will because God's Word is sure. There are many saints that have come before us that fell asleep in Christ waiting expectantly for the greatest miracle of all: Jesus Christ's 2nd advent. The best news is that no believer is going to miss it:

1 Thessalonians 4:14-17 KJV

(14) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. (15) For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. (16) For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: (17) Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

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