For thought and meditation

[rl69]

If you have faith as a mustard seed…nothing will be impossible for you. MATTHEW 17:20
We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, and it may be so in the initial stages. But we do not earn anything through faith— faith brings us into the right relationship with God and gives Him His opportunity to work. Yet God frequently has to knock the bottom out of your experience as His saint to get you in direct contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of emotional enjoyment of His blessings. The beginning of your life of faith was very narrow and intense, centered around a small amount of experience that had as much emotion as faith in it, and it was full of light and sweetness. Then God withdrew His conscious blessings to teach you to “walk by faith” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And you are worth much more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight with your thrilling testimony.
Faith by its very nature must be tested and tried. And the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character must be proven as trustworthy in our own minds. Faith being worked out into reality must experience times of unbroken isolation. Never confuse the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life, because a great deal of what we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him— a faith that says, “I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.” The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is— “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

[USMC87]

Amen and thanks for a great lesson.

[Pine Baron]

Thanks rl, another great lesson.

[Blackwater]

But we do not earn anything through faith— faith brings us into the right relationship with God and gives Him His opportunity to work.

What a great lesson today! Almost all our theology and beliefs are based on our understanding of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, and if we get that right, our theology will be greatly improved, not to mention more satisfying. God is NOT some big sugar daddy in the sky that points fingers at sinners and punishes them, and rewards those who speak the right and most beautiful prayers. Christ himself said it'd rain "on the just and the unjust alike," and never promised anything but a hard time to his followers. But the joys experienced along the way so much more than compensate for the bad experiences, that it's a major proof of His love for us. He allows us to experience every facet of life that we can, and it's all intended to make us fuller, more understanding and wiser followers, who can speak with authority on the things that theology and morality always address. One of the best sermons I ever heard was delivered by an old ex-moonshiner, who wore his usual overalls in the pulpit. You really had to be there. You've never seen more genuineness and commitment than that man displayed that night at the revival.

The world if full of paradoxes. If we pay attention to them, we can learn an awful lot, about ourselves, our faith, and the theology involved in it.