gladitudes

Sometimes there are these moments in life where I question my ability to continue moving forward. It’s like I’m on a journey and ahead of me is a mountain and the closer I get the bigger it seems. I gaze at the mountain and begin to fret wondering how I will ever be able to scale it or at least how will I ever do it without injury or defeat.

I guess that is a little bit of where I am and have been. In these moments my need for help—my desperation for grace and salvation—becomes so apparent that I often find myself crippled with anxiety or overjoyed at the fulfillment of my need. I find (and am finding) that my deepest moments of despair can be the greatest opportunities to learn to trust God and find peace and joy in Him.

Now, if you’re a Christian and especially if you’ve been one for any period of time, this will sound very cliché. The notion of crying to God when we’re at the end of our rope and finding His grace there is common. What I am finding, though, is that when I actually find myself at the end of my rope, I don’t know what to do. I haven’t been here that much and all the sermons, books, and teachings on trusting God through trials seem to be just vague shadows in my mind. I’m on that border of the lands of theory and reality. The land of theory where the solution is a cliché is comfortable and familiar to me; the land of reality where one must take each step by faith instead of by reciting a phrase to make things right is unfamiliar and scary to me.

But in this land where I must walk by faith and not rely on what my eyes tell me or my heart wants me to believe, I find there is overwhelming peace and joy. These not, though, because of the faith I’m expressing, but completely because of the one in whom I am expressing the faith.

Isaiah 30:18 (NASB) says,

Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you,
And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you
For the LORD is a God of justice;
How blessed are all those who long for Him.

God wants to give us grace and he wants to show us compassion! How often we stumble in the dark instead of just reaching for His hand? We forfeit such grace in doing this.

Psalm 43:5 (ESV) says,

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
   and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
   my salvation and my God.

Again, why do we get down? Why do we fear? God is worth trusting! We must believe it!

And finally, Psalm 44:3 says,

They did not conquer the land with their swords;
   it was not their own strong arm that gave them victory.
It was your right hand and strong arm
   and the blinding light from your face that helped them,
   for you loved them.

The reality at the end of the day is that victory only comes at the hand of the Lord. Our success is totally up to Him. If we only would seek Him and look to Him when we’re in trouble, we would live lives that would be so much more peaceful and so much more full of joy.

Psalm 16:11 (ESV):

You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Here are three verses, how they’ve challenged me, then my overwhelming conviction at the end.

Mark 6:5-6
«And because of their unbelief, he couldn’t do any miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief.»­

There is something about when we don’t trust/believe God, that keeps him from really working powerfully in our lives. I am not completely sure why this is, but it is true. (I have a few ideas about this, but I’ll have to write about it later if you want…)

Mark 9:17-19, 22-24
«One of the men in the crowd spoke up and said, “Teacher, I brought my son so you could heal him. He is possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. 18 And whenever this spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground. Then he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it.”
19 Jesus said to them, “You faithless people! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.”
[...]
22 The spirit often throws him into the fire or into water, trying to kill him. Have mercy on us and help us, if you can.
23 “What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.”
24 The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”»

There have been, I think, a lot of messages given on this passage, yet it doesn’t loose any power for me. The disciples didn’t have enough faith to drive out the evil spirit in the boy. To this Jesus seemed frustrated and almost annoyed, “How long must I put up with you?” He asked. Then, the boy’s father’s lack of faith shows through in how he asks Jesus to heal his child. He says, “Have mercy on us and help us, if you can.” (emphasis mine, of course). This too, it seems, frustrates Jesus. He replies, “What do you mean, ‘If I can’? Anything is possible if a person believes.” Jesus seems appalled at this comment; I almost read an implied “are you kidding me?” between the lines there.

The point of this passage, I believe, are in Jesus’ words as he says, “Anything is possible if a person believes.” Quick, a little gut check: do you believe that? I’m not talking intellectually—we probably all believe it intellectually—but practically, in your everyday life (everyday prayer life?), do you believe it? That anything is possible?

Okay, last one:

Mark 11:23-24
«I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. 24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.»

Again, a well-known passage. It’s pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t talk about it a lot, just again that question: do we really believe this? If faith is expressed in action, do you think you have faith in this promise? How does this promise change or inform you actions?

The final thing I want to write is I have become convicted about how much of God’s word I just simply don’t believe. I believe it in my head, but in my heart I fail to. I have heard verses that say “ask for anything in prayer and it will be yours”, I’ve tried without significant faith, and because of my lack of faith I’ve not seen the power of God. Instead of fighting for greater faith, I’VE SETTLED FOR A POWERLESS CHRISTIAN LIFE. I’ve learned to explain away the promises I don’t have faith to live by. I’ve developed a habit of adding conditions to God’s promises that ARE NOT THERE, to make myself feel better when I don’t enough faith to live by them.

I am so convicted that this is really wicked of me. In a real sense, as I don’t believe what God says is true about himself, it’s like making a false god. The sickening thing is the false god I often choose to believe in, is weak and uninvolved. Brothers and sisters, our God is not weak and he surely is not uninvolved in our lives. Let’s really work at believing what he says is true and experiencing Him in the full glory of his power by accepting all of His promises at face value and most importantly by really living by them.

Thanks for reading this, it’s a pretty significant lesson I’m learning and it blesses me greatly to be able to write it down and solidify it in my own mind. I hope you’re blessed by it too.

Today in my quiet time, I sort of had a break through. Let me share it with you:

I was reading in Numbers. Toward the end of Numbers 9, it is talking about how the Israelites, while wandering in the desert after they left Egypt, would be led by God in the form of a pilar of cloud or a pilar of fire. Whenever the cloud or fire would move, they would move. Sometimes they would stay for a few days somewhere, sometimes a week, sometimes only overnight. But, they would always follow God where ever he had them go.

Verses 22-23 say, “Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set out; but when it lifted, they would set out. ²³At the LORD’s command they encamped, and at the LORD’s command they set out. They obeyed the LORD’s order, in accordance with his command through Moses.”

When I read this, it was somewhat convicting for me. It made me think, “Do I follow God like this–staying only at his command and moving only in order to follow him?” The reality, no doubt, is that I oftentimes do not.

As I thought further about it, I began to ask myself, why is it that I don’t follow God like this? I am convinced that the reason that I (and other Christians) do not follow God in this fully dependant manner is because it takes faith and faith makes us uncomfortable. See, faith is believing God when we aren’t sure of what will happen. I think all too often, I “obey” God by doing that things that I can understand and do on my own strength. Obeying God in this way doesn’t take faith at all–it just takes will. Obeying God when I don’t understand what he’s doing or why he’s asking me to do it requires me to really depend on God. This, friends, is real faith.

Someone once described it to me by saying, “Faith is putting yourself in a position, where if God didn’t come through for you, you would be screwed.” Now, that’s somewhat brash, but I think it is true. Am I willing to put myself out on the line to obey God and stop just doing what I already know I can do?