7) The hardest thing in the world is – FAITH! The whole Christianity rests on this one word! Faith is the new beginning where man is born-again into a new life and he is written into the Book of Life. By faith man continues in the whole process of the salvation of his soul. The salvation of our soul is the end of our faith (1Pet. 1:9). Faith is the key to everything in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and with Our Heavenly Father. Everything in our Christian life is the question of our faith and it is also the focal point of our spiritual war. All our Christianity turns on faith and our destiny, our future life with God or our future death without God, depends on faith. Immediately after our redemption, we all are called to a life of faith, hence, we should “look into the eyes” of this fact in detail right from the beginning. We must definitely deal with the question of faith as there is no step or phase or aspect in the life of a child of God from the very beginning to the very end, which would not be the matter of faith! It will thus help us to a great extend, if we now look to the eyes of this fact, receive the fact with all importance and will not try to evade it or put it somewhere on a shelf to gather dust there.
What is the key for understanding faith? Where does it come from, how it gets into our soul so we could use it there for our salvation and fellowship with God? Well, firstly: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). We may add here that the things unseen are eternal (2Cor. 4:18). Its Author and Finisher is Jesus Christ (Heb. 12:2). Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit at our redemption (1Cor. 12:7-9) and it should also become a fruit of the Holy Spirit in our spirit during the process of our salvation, if we continue toward our perfection (Heb. 6:1/Gal. 5:22,23). Faith is spiritual and that’s why we cannot possibly “fabricate” it in our soul or understand it by our intellect. Faith can only be received and understood by our heart. Man that has his heart closed can be neither redeemed nor saved since his closed heart is doomed! Hence, by faith we are redeemed (Rom. 10:10) and by faith we are also saved (Eph. 2:8).
Faith is first deposited into our spirit (conscience) by the Spirit of God and from there it gets into our soul – specifically into our heart (see “Truth about Salvation” and diagrams). The key to the understanding of its transfer from our spirit into our heart is absolutely dependent on the Word of God, because, the WORD OF GOD IS PIERCING EVEN TO THE DIVIDING ASUNDER OF SOUL AND SPIRIT (Heb. 4:12b)! What does that mean? Here it is a matter of CONQUERING OUR SOUL FROM OUR SPIRIT – AND THIS IS THE SALVATION OF OUR SOUL! We are not saved by our head, intellect, discussions, debates, reasoning or explanations, speculations or even teachings; but by our heart and faith! Therefore, a closed heart leads to destruction and its owner is doomed. Intellectual activities are not in themselves bad or totally unuseful so we would not go into other extreme. But they are only a step to a spiritual growth and change and to the final victory. For if we would stay only with them, we would arrive nowhere except to our death. The question is whether we are able to discern our heart from our mind, what comes out of our heart and what from our mind. If we cannot discern our heart from our mind, we have a problem and need help from the Lord. We can only discern our heart where it knows itself, for example, its bitterness (Pr. 14:10), because bitterness does not dwell in the head.
Faith is power, therefore, to him that believes everything is possible! (Mk. 9:23/ Lk. 17:6) It has power with God, over Satan and devils, and has power over the world (1Jn. 5:4). Our faith may vary, be weakened and it may fall “to the bottom” when it is not used for the Lord’s Purposes. At such times, we ourselves are “at the bottom”, secretive and, as it were, locked into ourselves, unable of anything. Our war of faith rages precisely in the area of the Lord’s Purposes, Intentions and Desires on one hand, and our purposes, intentions and desires on the other hand. If we would have only the Lord’s Purposes and Intentions in our soul, and these would have precedence and would rule us, we would live in peace and in victory every minute of our earthly life. Therefore, even in this war it is quite clear that the most difficult thing in our life is to get our ego, that is, our own self, out of the way. Because, our ego always fabricates and speculates and combines and imagines that the Lord must act exactly as our stupid mind expects, as it considers things logically, as if the Lord would be limited by lour logic. After all, this also explains why the Lord chose faith as the instrument of our Salvation and not our brain and logic!
Faith usually operates and acts quietly, almost imperceptibly, without any great roaring power or thunder & lightning and it is almost impossible to uncover how the Lord answers faith. This also applies to the fact where the Lord protected and preserved His Church from being destroyed for all those centuries when great powers of evil and darkness tried to destroy and annihilate everything that He built in this world. And we do not even know how the Lord did it and when. Hence, even if we are in a “hopeless” situation expecting the Lord to do some exceptionally miraculous thing, it may never happen. But what the Lord has in His intention and plan, it will happen… if we believe Him and will act according to that faith. The Lord always has wiser plans, then we have and also wiser ways how to implement those plans. Hence, even if our faith comes from Him and shows the light about a certain fact, that does not mean that we know how that faith ought to be realized and when. And this also applies to His Word. When the Lord says: “Ask and ye shall receive” (Mt. 7:7 + 21:22, etc.), yet, nowhere in the Scripture will you find the answer “how will you receive and when will you receive”! True? But you will receive… when you ask in faith.
Relative to the above facts, we can also say that faith is, at the same time, the point of the greatest weakness in human nature, and we will find that out sooner or later. Because the strength of faith in God’s Nature and weakness of faith in our human nature cannot coexist in a real unity, they exist in contradictions and are one against the other. Faith is also a mystery, which we cannot discover by any mental instrument or understand it. We can only keep the mystery of faith in our spirit and specifically in our clean conscience (1Tim. 3:8,9). Though our heart is able to receive faith and also understand it, but it may not always understand its mystery.
Another problem that concerns us and our faith is a simple yet important fact that we are UNABLE to believe what we do not see, feel, touch or do not understand. True? Is here a solution? There is, otherwise we would not be here today and you could never read these lines. After all, this is the main problem of the whole Church, not only our personal problem. Hence, it is highly desirable that the Lord would give us His Light in solving this problem as well.
I repeat: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence (proof) of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). This is very nice, but what shall we do with it when we are UNABLE to “believe this faith”? Faith is also light in which we see, what physically we cannot see and in which we hope for that, which according to our logic may be absolutely hopeless! The Lord gives us faith with every problem when we look at HIM and not at the problem! From our conscience, faith gets into our heart – provided that it is open and also WILLING to receive it and believe it. The basic fact to which I am now coming is that Our Lord does not wait for our ABILITY to believe, only for our WILLINGNESS to believe! Consequently, HE–GOD works in our being so that we would BE WILLING to do His Pleasure (Phil. 2:13), that is, His Will, because His Pleasure is a part of His Will. Without faith, we cannot do His Pleasure under any circumstances. That’s why He is working in us, so that we would be, firstly, willing to receive into our heart His Faith, which contains in itself His Will and Pleasure, And secondly, believe it and BE WILLING to do that faith. As soon as He finds in our heart willingness, then GOD provides the necessary ABILITY in us to do that faith! I hope that all of us know that without faith we cannot please God. And he that is coming to God must believe that God is. And not only that, but that GOD IS A REWARDER of them that diligently seek Him! (Heb. 11:6)
We were always willing to live our life according to our desires, expectations and pleasure. God never forbade to us our pleasures, nor has He considered all of them sinful. But God has to work in us so that we would be willing to do ALSO His Pleasure, because for that purpose we were created – for His Pleasure and not only for ours! (Rev. 4:11) God’s main Pleasure is that we would be saved, perfected, His sons and daughters, and live with Him for ever in an unimaginable bliss, joy, happiness, peace, without fear, without stresses and problems. Is this a bad Pleasure? Is this also our pleasure?
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To be continued next week
brother Hanola
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