Time after time I’ve seen people cry out to God because they are in trouble, but as soon as the trouble goes away, they lose interest in God.
This is ‘temporary faith’ operating for a short time because of a strong felt need. It is not the same as ‘saving faith’ which begins with a sense of need, but never goes away.
Temporary ‘faith’ is illustrated in the Old Testament exodus. When God put plagues on the Egyptians, they were convinced. We see this Psalm 105:28, speaking of one of the plagues. “He sent darkness, and made it dark; and they did not rebel against His word.”
“They” refers to the people of Egypt. They were ready to do what God wanted, but as soon as the plague was lifted, their ‘faith’ vanished and they refused His commands.
Psalm 107 gives several examples of the temporary faith of Israel. Verses 10-14 say, “Those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, bound in affliction and irons—because they rebelled against the words of God, and despised the counsel of the Most High, therefore He brought down their heart with labor; they fell down, and there was none to help. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their chains in pieces.”
They knew God, but because they were not obeying Him, they were in darkness, not literally as the Egyptians were in that ninth plague, but in spiritual darkness. This means they were clueless about the will and work of God and blind to their own sinful state and need.
They were also sitting “in the shadow of death” which is not about being close to dying but about their fear, and their ignorance of God’s power to deliver them from eternal death, a far greater concern than physical death.
So God sent a wake-up call in the form of hard labor. He got their attention and they cried out to Him. Then He brought them out of their trouble and lifted their burdens. For a little while, they celebrated and had ‘faith,’ but after a time went back to doing their own thing and disobeying Him. This cycle repeated itself and for centuries they alternated between trusting God and rebellion against Him.
Christians, blessed with saving faith can also struggle with the temporary kind. When things go well, it is easy to trust God, even take His blessings for granted. When troubles come (which God uses also for our good), trusting God is more difficult.
This is because of a failure to grasp the difference between that kind of trust and the kind that Ephesians 2:8 describes: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
The faith that comes to us as a gift is not based on my human ability to trust. It is the faith that Christ brought with Him when He came into my life—His faith. While various translations differ, the New Testament has verses that reveal how saving faith originates with Him, for example, Revelation 14:12, “Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”
Sometimes I have trouble trusting God. These Scriptures show me that my problem is the same old, same old. Instead of letting Him be my Savior, I’m trying to do it myself. But my ‘faith’ is like the Egyptians and the Israelites; it sticks around only when necessary. His faith is enduring and eternal; by it I can trust God all the time and for everything.
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