Use it or lose it?

 

Someone I know often says that when God speaks anything to her, she needs to have a sign or a confirmation of it. For instance, if she reads that God will give peace to her children (Isaiah 54:13) then she needs to see her children at peace to fully believe it. This answer to prayer becomes her evidence for faith. The problem with this is the Bible’s description of faith:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

The examples given are about creation and about the faith of OT saints:

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (Hebrews 11:3–7)

Note in each example God is pleased with the faith of His people which came before His rewards for faith. There is no mention of them believing because they were rewarded. Faith is about trusting what God says, even if we cannot see the answer. Our faith is in God’s promises, even before their fulfillment.

There is a divine order concerning this. Today’s reading puts it this way: first, get your facts; second, put faith in those facts; and finally, acknowledge the feelings that come as a result of believing the facts. This order is always followed in earthly matters; but curiously enough in religious matters a great many people reverse this order. They put feelings first, then faith in those feelings, and come to the facts last, looking on them as the result of their feelings.

Last night was my example. I ‘felt’ that a certain team would win the game we watched and even thought that my strong feeling was from God. However, they lost. My ‘faith’ was not based on facts but feelings. A strong ‘I want’ can affect how I read the Bible too, a far more serious error. If I want God to use me in a particular way because I have a strong desire for that thing to happen does not mean God will do it. I need to pay attention to His will and not base my beliefs on my desires.

Today’s reading describe those who say they could easily believe it if only they have the witness in themselves, as the Bible says we are to have. But when is a person to have that inner witness—before he believes, or after?

Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. (1 John 5:10)

The Bible puts the believing first. Is not this because what God says comes first and is our priority and our fact? His words are true, and they come to us as knowledge, not as a feeling that requires proof by giving us some sort of result that is affirmed by a full or partial answer.

As for that, my ‘feelings’ can be based on something false. Just because my children are at peace does not mean that God has been teaching them. They could be at a time in life when everything is going their way. My hope must be in God to fulfill that promise, not in what I can see!

PRAY: Jesus, enable me to always be alert to the idol of feelings or the need to ‘see’ answers before I will trust what You say to me. You are faithful and true to Your word. Everything else is iffy and even fickle. Besides, You also say, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1) not “pay closer attention to how you feel.”

One step forward, two steps back

English explorer William Edward Parry and crew explored the Arctic Ocean. They were walking north according to the stars, but after hours and with exhaustion, they stopped to take their bearings again, only to find they were further south than when they’d started! They were walking on an ice floe that was traveling faster south than they were walking north.

I have days like that. Sometimes it is related to my chore list. I’m trying to purge unwanted items such as old CDs and clothes that don’t fit. However, the more I go down the list, the more stuff I find to add to it. Some days this purging chore seems overwhelming.

Other times the one step forward, two backwards is about the battle with sin. I’ve confessed something God shows me only to realize how much more junk remains on that to-do list. Confess one bad attitude and two more show up.

MacArthur writes about this principle in terms of those who neglect to listen to God and instead of dealing with what they hear, they ignore it and drift past what he calls the harbor of salvation. This is dangerous because it can lead to hardness of heart and eternal judgment. That one step forward is important even if sliding backwards happens. It means taking more steps, moving on in obedience no matter how long it takes to get there. This is about God calling and about sinners arriving at the foot of the cross and salvation.

But it also applies to sanctification. If I do not deal with the sin that He shows me, then I slide backwards into other sin. One step forward is vital, meaning confessing what I’ve done and keeping short accounts with God:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Yet even when that step is taken, my spiritual enemy or my old nature usually tries to drag me down again. It happened yesterday. I had been praying with deeper faith than ever, and the ‘accuser’ hit me with past sin and guilt to the point of despair. Two steps back? It felt more like two hundred. I was hearing lies but it seemed like truth. Then God gave this thought: Is all that biblical? And I realized what I heard was not true, at least in the sense of not being covered by the blood of Christ.

Today’s devotional begins with this statement: “God’s Word is the anchor that will prevent people from drifting past the harbor of salvation” and uses this verse:

Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. (Hebrews 2:1)

At that, my loving Savior had me comparing the accusations of Satan to the truths of God’s Word and I realized that a lie had me stumbling backwards into great doubt and fear. As soon as that came to mind, so also did the truth that countered those lies, truth from the Bible, truth that I already knew but had not put together in the context of those accusations. Immediately, Jesus set me free. The next one step forward was for me a giant step.

This also stresses other important truths. One is that the enemy will never cease in his efforts to prevent God’s people from praying with faith because he knows the power of prayer and how God uses it to do mighty things according to His will. Sometimes those two steps back are the devil’s way of jerking me into prayerlessness.

However, God is even more determined to have His way in my life. He will use all things, even this thing . . .

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:28–29)

Even when it seems I am going backwards, this is not beyond God’s power to use slip-sliding in transforming my life. The words in Hebrews 2:1 are nautical terms. “Pay much closer attention to” and “drift away from” mean “to tie up a ship,” and to speak of a ship that has been carelessly allowed to drift past the harbor because the sailor forgot to attend to the steerage or to chart the wind, tides, and current. MacArthur says this verse could be translated: “We must diligently anchor our lives to the things we have been taught, lest the ship of life drift past” the safe harbor where God wants us to be anchored.

PRAY: I’m so glad, Jesus, that You steer my ship as You also control the storms. You used this latest battle to show me a lie that can be devastating, not just to me but to the faith of Your other children. May I wisely use the truth You used to counter this lie, first in my own thinking and to help others who are drifting because of it.

PONDER: Proverbs 4:20–22. Note the importance of clinging to God’s Word whenever Satan tries to convince me that I’m sliding backwards.