A Lesson in Faith
By Vince J. Mack
Faith is a fruit of the Spirit, and it is so important to our lives as believers because we can’t please God without it. Romans 12:3 tells us that God has given every person a measure of faith, and by this we can be completely confident that we have it. In other words, every person has a certain amount of faith that comes standard with human packaging, but having faith is an entirely different reality from living by the faith that was present in Jesus Christ when he walked the earth. Faith is required to do anything and everything. It takes faith to get up from the chair you may be sitting in right now and take a step in any direction. No one can do anything unless they believe it can be done. Once we put the energy of effort behind it, this believing it can be done is an exercise in faith. So, we have the faith that allows us to move throughout our daily lives, but there’s also a higher faith that we know as the faith of Jesus Christ. This is the faith we need in order to walk in the Spirit of Christ and to live in the way God has commanded.
Hebrews 11 is considered by many to be the faith chapter of New Testament scriptures. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, and it is the evidence of things not seen. Faith is the title deed for our confident expectations. I like to think of faith as a place holder in our hearts and minds for the thing we’ve prayed to receive, because we’re to hold this prayer request in our hearts and minds confidently until it actually materializes in our lives. In this way, faith becomes a celebration even before the party starts. We celebrate in the right now, because even though the tangible evidence isn’t visible, our faith in God’s goodness, power, and love assures us of receipt.
Most of us generally think of faith as an instrument that delivers the goodies we’ve prayed for. We see it as the supernatural connection that allows the transfer of blessings from God to us, but as we mature in the Lord Jesus Christ, our faith in him should develop depth and grow as well. It is no longer about what we receive or what we can do with our own strength and mobility, as we mature it becomes more about what we can do through Christ.
James 2:17(NKJV) tells us, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” God is telling us that our faith must be backed up with action; because without action, faith is completely ineffective. So, the very nature of faith is expressed through the energy and effort we put behind our beliefs, but there’s some confusion that has crept around this. Many of us have several goals we’d like to accomplish—goals like becoming more physically fit, getting married, choosing a different career path, or acquiring greater financial prosperity. God tells us in His Word that He wants us to have a good life, good health, and He wants our souls to prosper. He wants the best for us, and we figure that formulating a plan to go after these things is the right approach. One of the realities we face very quickly is that our measure of faith isn’t enough to push our dreams and goals to the finish line.
Operating in the lane of the portion of our own faith often gets translated to operating according to our own personal agendas and what suits us. This could mean that although we do some really positive things for ourselves and possibly others, ultimately the situation still doesn’t turn out the way we expect. We assumed our efforts were the right course of action to back our faith and that by engaging these actions we’d get what we wanted, but that didn’t happen, and we got disappointed. This is usually the place where many of us think that we didn’t have enough faith or that Heavenly Father didn’t cooperate with our plans. The truth is that we assumed He’d take a back seat to our plans and that we could be the driver, but God can never, ever be put in the back seat of anything. He’s the Creator of all! He will always be the Head, and any failure on our parts to honor Him as such will cause disappointment.
Spiritual maturity means that we not only change lanes, but we move to a higher plain. We must move from the lane of our own plans to the path we were always meant to be on. Proverbs 14:12(NLT) tells us, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” Most of us know a little something about the path that seems right, because we’ve been on it and have experienced its destruction. Proverbs 3:6(NLT) instructs us, “Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” If we seek the Lord’s Will and be obedient to it, He will place us on a path that moves us from operating by our will and set us on a higher spiritual plain where we begin to walk hand-in-hand in partnership with Him and His Will. It’s the plain where all things work together for our good because we’re walking in His purpose.
When we look at situations and circumstances with our physical eyesight, sometimes we panic because we can’t see how things are going to work out. 2Corinthians 5:7 encourages us to shift gears. It tells us to walk by faith and not by our physical eyesight. On a higher spiritual plain and through the faith of Jesus Christ, we’ll have the spiritual vision to see what the Father sees. It’s no longer about what we want to do. Our faith in Christ is totally about what he wants to do in, by, with, and through us. The faith we have in our own ability takes a back seat. We begin to see the faith of Jesus Christ as the power of the Spirit working in us to complete the work we’ve been assigned to do.
It’s not that God called us with a holy calling just so we can be workers. That’s not it at all. We’re not servants, we’re sons! We’re co-heirs with Jesus Christ—living, moving, and being like him. Romans 8:14(NKJV) says, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” We are God’s children, and as His children, He is training us to be like His Son, Jesus Christ. As we change lanes from our agenda to God’s agenda, we’ll gain a higher vantage point. From there we can very clearly see that God’s heart is to build an intimate relationship with us. With every obedient step we take, we’re proving His Will and growing into the sons and daughters that He has destined us to be.
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