Living By Faith In The Real World Newsletter -...

I’ve wanted to start a newsletter for a long time to help encourage those of you out there who are doing their best to live by the Word and by faith, which is what pleases God. In the days we live, this is not an easy task and God never promised it would be easy but He does promise to be with us through it. The Word says that the just or righteous (those who have made Jesus Lord of their lives and are committed to doing things His way) shall live by faith.

Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God and those who do must believe that God exists and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. If you look at that scripture carefully, that means you must believe that God not only exists but that He wants to do good things for and to you. And, this is the subject I want to start with because you cannot live by faith and receive from God if you believe He is trying to hurt you or steal from you or keep you down.

Faith requires that you believe in the one you have faith in and have faith in their willingness to do what you have faith in them to do. Bringing it into the natural world, if you go to a friend or a parent or a relative and ask them for something or to do something, you have to have some confidence that they might do what you plan to ask of them. It would be a waste of time to go to someone you know is going to tell you “no.” Doesn’t that make sense?

In the same way, if you ask God for something, you have to have some confidence that He can hear your request and that He might fulfill your request. Otherwise, what is the point of asking? That’s simple logic. So, according to Hebrews 11:6, that means you must believe God exists (Why would you ask something of someone you don’t believe in?) and you must believe when you pray that God will do what you are asking of Him. Again, if you don’t believe He’s going to do anything, what is the point of praying?

Before we go any further with this, the reason that most people have a difficult time receiving from God is not that they don’t believe He exists. The problem is that they are double-minded when they ask of Him. Double-minded means that your heart believes one thing and your head believes another. Most people in this world have been taught that God will hurt them or take from them to teach them something.

Let me ask you something. If you are a parent or if you were a parent, would you give your child some disease to teach them something? Or, would you kill someone they love to hurt them? Now, if you’re a rational, loving human being, your answer will be no. Most of us realize that to do this, you would not be a decent person. I realize that there are parents out there who would hurt you to attempt to teach their child something but I think most of us who are rational human beings understand that doing that is cruel and is not something a parent should do.

Going along with the idea that hurting someone is no way to teach them anything, let’s assume that we got this idea that parents do good to their children not evil from God. Also, let’s deal with another issue. Parents do at times take away privileges to discipline their children and that’s a good thing because teaching children right from wrong will enable them to be productive members of society later. In that same line of thinking, in the Old Testament, God told the Israelites that if they disobeyed Him, there would be consequences and those consequences would be that they would be taken captive by other nations and enslaved. Now, God didn’t do the enslaving, He just told them what the consequences of their sin would be.

Most parents tell their children what the consequences are if they disobey their parents. Some parents have a reward system and the child loses a particular privilege like TV or stereo or an outing with their friends if they do something. I think that’s a pretty reasonable thing to do. That is exactly what God did with the Israelites because He didn’t want them to end up enslaved.

Now, you may think that their punishment was harsh but God was dealing with their eternal lives not just a momentary slip and these people chose to follow other gods so if they did that, He would not protect and provide for them. It would be like your kids deciding that they were going to live under someone else’s roof and have those people take care of and provide for them but expect you to keep doing so as well.

However, just to show how good God is, He gave them an out clause. If they disobeyed and betrayed Him but later realized they’d done wrong, they could cry out to Him and repent and He would take them back and take care of them again. I think that’s pretty reasonable.

The problem these days is that people want to do whatever they want to do and still want God to take care of them. That’s pure stupidity! I realize that there are pretty stupid parents out there who will allow their children to walk all over them and just take it and still give the kid whatever they want. If you’re dumb enough to let your kids do that to you, then you deserve whatever you get because you don’t really love your children if you let them do whatever they want. It’s not good for them or for society as a whole. And, because of parents like that, we have a bunch of out of control teens and young adults who can’t keep a job and who are living off their parents or the government in some way.

The Bible says he who will not work shall not eat. I bet that if someone lets some of these spoiled brats go without food for a few days, they’d change their tune and start working. The idea that the rest of us should support people who don’t want to work is preposterous!

Basically, the point I’m trying to get to is if you think God is both good and evil, you will never really receive from Him because you have to believe that He wants to do good to you not evil in order to receive. You have to expect what you want and you can’t expect goodness if you believe someone is going to do harm. You may be able to expect goodness a little and God will work with you as you are trying to grow but eventually, He expects you to grow up in your faith and believe Him wholeheartedly.
I’ll go into more of this in the next issue next week. Think about what I’ve said and examine your own heart and mind to see where you might be missing it because I can promise you that God is not missing it.

Have a great week!