Where Is Your Faith?
Luke 8:25a(KJV) - And he said unto them, Where is your faith?.....
I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine. We both come from families with legacies in the ministry. We were trying to figure out what happened over the last few decades as signs and wonders dropped off significantly in The Church. What changed? The Bible still says the same thing now as it did then. The Holy Spirit is the same yesterday, today and forever more. God's Will concerning healing, deliverance, supernatural provision and protection has not changed. So what changed?
Our faith. Our capacity for believing God has decreased drastically in our generation. The kinds of things that our forefathers believed God for were astronomically greater than much of what we currently believe. Many of us can barely trust God to heal a headache so we're a long way from believing God for the miraculous. It's easy for us to read The Bible and believe what God did for other people thousands of years ago. It's also easy for us to read books and believe what God did for people generations ago. However, believing that He'll do the same for us is a whole different thing.
Luke 18:8b(KJV) - .... Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
When Jesus finally returns to earth, is He going to find faith? I surely hope so. Let's be honest here. If He returned right now how much faith is He really going to find? Do we even have the faith to believe that His return is imminent or have we stopped believing that too? Many of us have been so scarred by encounters with worldly individuals who claim to base all of their decisions on logic and physical evidence that we've put our faith aside in an effort to fit in. Maybe that's another aspect of the Identity Crisis I wrote about yesterday. In an effort to fit in with the world we have distanced ourselves from our faith. So what could possibly have happened?
1 Corinthians 13:13(AMP) - And so faith, hope, love abide [faith—conviction and belief respecting man’s relation to God and divine things; hope—joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation; love—true affection for God and man, growing out of God’s love for and in us], these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Apostle Paul outlined faith, hope and love as three abiding characteristics of The Church. When all is said and done these three must be found among us. At the core of our identity as believers are the pillars of faith (our belief in God's Word and the actions which back it up), hope (our expectation that God will do whatever He says) and love. However, of these three, love is the master key, not our human love but God's love for and in us.
Galatians 5:6(KJV) - For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.
Our faith can only work if God's love is working through us. Apostle John said in 1 John 4:19; "We love him, because he first loved us." If we can't believe in God's love for us, we'll struggle to love Him back and we'll definitely struggle to love each other. Most importantly, if we can't believe in God's love we can't really believe in God's Word because faith works by love. We have to believe that God loves us enough to keep His Word or else we have nothing to base our faith on. Words alone are not enough because we live in a culture where words can have little to no value and that has affected us.
Yes, we know what God said in The Bible and in some cases we know what The Holy Spirit is saying right now but will He really do it in our lives? The answer is yes and the reason is because He loves us. His love is the reason why He will keep His Word. Believe the love and you'll believe The Word. Faith works by God's love so outside of God's love faith won't work. All we'll have is words and nothing to back them up. This brings up an even bigger point.
Daniel 12:4(KJV) - But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
If faith was such a major building block of The Church how have we survived with such a gaping hole in our infrastructure? What have we patched it with? Knowledge! In our generation, knowledge is king. We have so much information that somehow we've been duped into thinking that knowing stuff alone can fill the gap left behind by our lack of faith. I've never heard or read as much revelation as what is available today. We have churches all over the place, Christian television, radio, books, websites, podcasts, streaming video and smartphone apps. If we want knowledge about God we have it. We pride ourselves in how much we know.
Back in The Bible days, the Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes were exclusive groups of scholars who lorded over people because of their knowledge. Now The Bible is written in every translation imaginable and there are concordances, commentaries, adaptations and Bible dictionaries available to all of us. Hence, Bible scholars are everywhere. We probably spend more time arguing about doctrine than we do believing God's truth and acting on it.
Are the gifts of the spirit for today? Should we speak in tongues in public? Should worship services be boisterous or mellow? Should a preacher be a preacher-teacher or a teacher-preacher? Should Christians prosper, be broke or find a happy medium somewhere? Should The Church expect to walk in divine health or is sickness part of God's plan for our lives? Does The Bible really take a stand against homosexuality or should we translate the words differently to make it acceptable within The Church? Should we keep The Sabbath? Should we tithe? Should The Church get involved in political and social issues?
These are all valid questions but while we debate them sick Christians have more faith in doctors and pharmacists than they do in Jesus. While we argue over the preaching styles of popular televangelists, many people in our churches are demon possessed and we don't even recognize it. Instead of casting out devils, some of us argue about whether or not these people could be demon possessed in the first place.
How much we know about God means nothing if we can't believe God. How much we know about The Bible means nothing if we can't believe what's in The Bible. How much we know about The Holy Spirit means nothing if we don't know The Holy Spirit. It's 2014. It's time for us to do what we know we can do and should be doing. It's time for us to do what Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:7, walk by faith and not by sight. We are Christians. We don't believe what we see, we see what we believe.
Mark 16:15-18(KJV) - And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
The signs don't follow the preaching of the gospel. The signs follow them that believe. Preaching the gospel is not enough. We have to believe it too. Where is your faith?
Tags: Atlanta,
Body,
Church,
cracked,
Donnell,
door,
Duncan,
Faith,
Foundation,
Georgia,
Midtown,
Science,
Tech,
The