Recently I was sharing about how it takes more than time to build faith. It takes a lot of help.
What follows are just some things that helped and helps me. Not that I’ve reached the peak and am the great expert on this matter, but looking back and looking around I can certainly see that I’ve only made it here because of the help.
Faith is Intentional: Lots of things happen to me and around me. Lots of them. There are quite a few things that happen that I have little to no control over. The thing is to bear in mind that active faith is something that you intend to do whatever happens. When the ‘whatever happens’ comes around, it’s about that can remind you of the intention. Something stressful happens at work, after the brief reaction of angst, do I remember that this part of me trusting in God and leaning on Him to help me? Do I remember that when the good happens I give thnaks to Him and let it get to His head rather than mine?
He Knows And You Don’t Get – With It: Knowledge is power. I agree. As a result it’s no surprise that I really want to have as much knowledge as I can get. And that’s no bad thing in itself. After all even Peter suggests that one of the supplements for your faith as well as goodness, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection and love is knowledge. In fact Peter encourages us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. So accumulating knowledge is no bad thing. Here’s the kicker, though, God knows more than I do and always will. His perspective on things is literally infinitely better than mine. So I really have a choice. I can quibble over what I don’t know and how unfair all of that is in the moment, or I can refer everything back to the all-knowing One. And referring it to Him I’ll also appreciate that His ways are far beyond my ways. As He knows what He’s doing, it’s best that I remind myself of this when things don’t appear to be going right.
Remember What He Has Done To Raise Your Trust In What He Is Doing And Will Do: The practice of praise is so important in the life of faith. That’s why it’s made no sense to me to have faith in myself. The issue of faith in self or in certain concepts has just been baffling to me because of their … comparatively insubstantial quality. It is so good to go through what God has done. His track record. The scripture is replete with just how much He has done – reading that really should help. As well as that, every day of our lives God does amazing things. You recount your years on earth, you recall how did you make it to this point, you see His hand all over it. So many things that He rescued you from. So many ways that he provided for you. So many people He brought your way and so many people He took out of your way. So many lessons He taught you that makes you better. So many He lessons He taught you that reminds you that without Him your life would truly be nothing. He is not slow in being there for you and showing you that the best way to live is to trust and obey Him. You don’t have to like repeats, but it’s worthwhile checking them out to recall just how faithful He is and that is great reason for us to develop a similar quality ourselves. He said He will do it – He will do it. He has done it before, so we can trust Him to do it again even if all the evidence points otherwise. Something about knowing Him helps considerably.
Life in Christ is about learning and we can take all the help we can get. The help we get is to continue to build our faith in Christ. Faith that endures and helps us to endure.
(Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 