Why is it that the one thing God calls us to do is often the hardest thing for us to actually do? There is no more simple or comprehensive command for a Christian than to have faith in God. When then do we struggle to believe, even after God’s repeated demonstrations of His love, goodness, and sufficiency?
Recently my wife and I moved across the country. It was a monumental occasion for us in our marriage together. As we came closer and closer to the moving date the pressure seemed to mount on our shoulders from all the ‘stuff’ that we needed to get done. And, as always, pressure’s bedfellow is stress. You would think that in these moments, during ‘crunch-time’, Christians would find themselves in a state of perfect peace due to their faith and trust in the Lord. I wish I could say that was the case with me as we came to our important transition.
Jesus has used this experience to show me yet again that I need to trust him in all things. That doesn’t mean trust him as a second or third option; that means trust him from start to finish. In the moments where the stress was at its worst and things seemed to be falling apart — including my faith — Jesus proved himself once more that he is alive and his grace is sufficient.
Do we trust in him in all things? Is faith our first response in all life’s matters? If not so, ask Jesus to shed his light in any dark recess of your heart where fear and doubt may linger. The one who has definitively dealt with death is more than able to deal with all of the issue of life as well.
You’ve given a great testimony, Sean… thanks for sharing your heart and your journey with Christ. This is where the rubber meets road and our faith becomes real. Like you, when I look back on my life, I see moments of stress/pressure where the Lord was trying to teach me to trust him more… there’s a learning curve in Christian maturity that we’re all on. I’ve recently turned back to the Pentatucah and begun reading the story of Abraham, and I see there a man whose faith in God grew over a lifetime–sometimes it was deep, other times it was shallow, but by the time we reach Chap 22–his faith is proven in the deepest sense. I see the Hagar’s and Abimelechs in my life, but I want to be ready for the Isaac’s down the road. The Lord’s taught me a lot through my failings to trust.
This came to mind when I saw that passage –
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
“Having referred to faith in the last two verses of Chapter 10 as essential to the true follower of Christ, to his life and finally to his salvation, the Apostle now goes on to define faith. While it may seem that the whole of this present chapter is a kind of digression and constitutes a complete tractate in itself, its link with what precedes can be found in the call for patience of 10:36. The relation between faith and patience is well established in other Epistles (Romans 4:18, Titus 2:2, and James 1:3, for example).
“The Christian has complete confidence in what God has promised him (II Peter 1:4). These promises, the object of his hope, have reality (II Corinthians 1:20), and they become reality or acquire substance (‘hypostasis’ in Greek) through faith. In his chapter “on Faith,” St. John of Damascus defines faith as undoubting and unambiguous hope alike of what God has promised and of the good issue of our prayers. The first [faith], therefore, belongs to our will, while the second [evidence or proof] is of the gifts of the Spirit [Galatians 5:5].
“For the Christian, faith is superior to knowledge, for it is the means by which he knows the invisible (“things not seen”), and response to their real existence follows. On the other hand, things not seen force their acceptance on the observer: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope…” (Romans 8:24). So, faith offers the evidence of the existence of the things which the believer has not seen, but hope for through the testimony and promises of God, and through those to whom God has spoken. Faith overcomes any uncertainty that there might be in the things hoped for (see Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book II, chap. ii).
- from The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary, Dmitri Royster, 2003