8) Every believer wants to be blessed by the Lord and some believers want to be even used as instruments in His hands. God may bless us and even use us as His instruments, but at the same time He may have no pleasure or delight in us (Heb. 11:6). If God blesses us in something or allows us to serve Him in something, it is always owing to His Grace, but it does not mean that He must have pleasure or delight in us. Sometimes even in His true servant, there may be some reservation, complain, doubt, uncertainty regarding the Lord, which then stands in the way of His pleasure or delight in such servant. So, there exists something much greater and more important than God’s blessing or our service to the Lord – it is His pleasure, delight, gracefulness and joy in us alone! And this factor of pleasure, delight, gracefulness and joy is the question of our faith. Because that Word of God does not say that “without faith it is impossible to get blessings from the Lord or to do some work for the Lord”, but it says that “without faith we cannot please God or cause Him a true pleasure, delight, joy”. After all, the Lord is using also devils to do His Will because He has “the keys” (power) of death and the Hades (Rev. 1:18). But He will never have any plea­sure or delight in devils.

Faith is also a very important basis for the fruit of the Spirit as well as for all the virtues of God. Love rests on faith. We will never love a person, whom we do not believe. Joy rests on faith. We know how miserable we may be when we lose our faith or begin to have doubts and questions. We are truly happy and joyful only when our faith is clear, living and strong. Peace rests on faith. Where there is no faith, there is no peace, serenity or calmness. Meekness rests on faith. The opposite of meekness is the desire to compel our things and convictions, to assert our own selves, do all things from ourselves, hold tooth and-nail onto our reasons, defend ourselves, etc. True faith undermines all these selfish deeds and acts. Patience rests on faith. These two spiritual virtues are, in fact, connected and go hand-in-hand in the Word of God as well as the other spiritual virtues – hope, per­se­verance, kindness, goodness, etc. All God’s virtues rest on the basis of faith  (1Thes. 1:3/ 2Thes. 1:4/ 1Tim. 6: 11/ 2Tim. 3:10/ Tit. 2:2/ Heb. 6:12/ Jam. 1:3/ 2Pet. 1:5-8/ Rev. 2:19 + 13:10).

Faith is the center of gravity, the focal point, the essence of the very Character of God Almighty. Faith and Light are, in effect, the same, it is possible to put equal sign between them since we also know that GOD IS LIGHT and there is no darkness in Him (1Jn. 1:5). On the basis of the above, we may also say that GOD IS FAITH since, in addition to light, faith is also reality and truth. Therefore, a weakness or lack of spiritual faith may be inter­preted not only as doubting God, but also as disrespecting His Character, as an invitation to mistrusting and even defaming God’s Character. “Yea, hath God said…?” (Gen. 3:1) We do not necessarily sin against God by a direct opposition to His Word, but we may be very arrogant and defame His Character by stupid questions! Actually we may not even speak out these questions before other persons, it is sufficient when we ask them in our own heart. And this is, in fact, rather simple because we always want in our heart, even unconsciously want, the faith to be something else than faith trying to substitute it by something, anything, what our physical or soulish senses can easily identify, register, under­stand. But the faith, which the Holy Spirit gives to the conscience of our spirit, will always remain the same faith and nothing will change it! Our senses are unable to change our conscience and thus also faith, which is in it. And our conscience cannot be bribed or by­passed, nor can we negotiate with it.

Sometimes the Lord gives us faith, which He foreknows that we are unable to do even if we wanted. Our task then is to see and come to the same conclusion and start with the Lord a process where He would enable us to do that newly given faith by deepening our initial, partial or outright inadequate faith. Almost nobody in Christianity is doing this that I know and I myself was not doing it in this way. When I saw before me a task, which was somehow “impossible” and no “normal man” would undertake such a thing, I was seeking in myself something, some faith, which would assure me that if the Lord of Heaven and Earth wants something like that, then a way and power must exist how to reach that goal irrespective of my logic, imaginations or worries. Typical example of the above was my fight with the Canadian Embassy in Prague and with the representatives of the Liberal Go­vernment in Canada to get to Canada the persons of Jiří and Marta Žoha and this despite the stupidity of Jiří Žoha at the Embassy during his interview where they refused their visas unconditionally. I believe that nobody would have done what I did. But I won and they came. That they returned home to the Czech Republic prematurely and also returned to Satan and started to reward my good with their evil, this is not my problem; this is the matter of their wicked hearts.

It is truly a difficult thing for us to continually believe God, not because of what He can do or is willing to do, but because of WHO HE IS. Such faith is testing us on every side and this applies especially during the first number of years of our walk with God. God’s post­ponements, interruptions or delays of things, slowness of actions, seeming con­tra­dict­ions, inconsistencies, discrepancies, opposites, disagreements with things, paradoxes, and do­zens of other things, which “do not sit with us or overwhelmingly bypass our logic and under­standing”, are just few examples. The question is: What shall we do with it? Well, we know that GOD IS, but IS HE truly what He says about Himself that HE IS and as we understand it? Or HE IS NOT what we always tried to understand? Many of our inter­pret­a­tions of His answers to our payers or acts, our arguments or conclusions about things and happenings were steeply different from what we believed that HE IS and what we should believe. Do we always and truly believe that GOD KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING? And this question we can, of course, transfer into the spiritual sphere of our life. Examples?

There exist many things in our spiritual life, growth and perfecting process into the Image of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which should have been removed by the Lord, sometimes even removed a long time ago, even according to our logic! However, to this day the Lord has not removed them – including the matters of our character! If it would be possible at all, our best desire might be that God would make us absolutely sinless right now – but God will never do it! Why not? Because His aim is not that we should stop sinning! Is it logical for us? NO. But according to God, IT IS! You see, He deals with us in the matters of our will and faith and willingness, in the matters of changing and transforming our character to His Image since THIS is the Final Aim of God Our Father (Rom. 8:29). The end of our sin­ning will come automatically with it. And there are assuredly many other things, which we would desire God to do for us – but He does not do them! God has His Own logical rea­sons for it. He focuses on and is faithful primarily to His Own Purposes and Aims and HE IS very consistent in reaching them not only for His Own satisfaction, but also for our own good and glory with Him for ever and ever. Should God make us sinless right now, then our will and faith would become paralyzed, they would stop growing and deve­lop­ing! Our character would stop changing! Every one of us may always have in his soul some “elephants”, which are standing there and do not move and we either do not mind, or do not know what to do with them. It may be pride, worries, greed, uncertainty, in­de­ci­sion, selfish­ness, fear, self-righteousness, impatience, rebellion, laziness, anxiety, disin­te­rest, un­willingness, you name it. Yet, the Lord will not even touch any of the “elephants” while we do not mind them or while we do not know what to do with them. This is precisely the problem in our soul, which the Lord purposely retains there and which WE must resolve and overcome with HIS Wis­dom and power. In other words, our faith and will must grow and become strengthened sufficiently in their activities, so that WE could move and remove those “elephants”… even one by one. This is the way of our perfecting, which means, of our salvation – THROUGH our sinning and falls and repentances!

A thick book could be written about Abraham. The most important and most essential fact from his Christian life of faith was that God seldom showed to him what He was doing or why He was doing it. He gave him tasks and promises, which were either illogical, or paradox­ical or he never saw their fulfilment. It is written that though he (and others) died in faith, he had not received the promises of God and thus the fruit of his faith (Heb. 11: 13,39,40). We definitely do not have even a clue about such faith. Therefore, it is written: “they, which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham… and are blessed with faithful Abraham”, they belong to Christ, which were born of His endeavor and labor and are heirs according to the Promise of God (Gal. 3:7,9,29). Christ’s endeavor, sufferings and labor were also the mater of Christ’s Faith and Will. On the basis of His unwavering Faith and Will, it was prophesied that “He shall see His seed… He shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied” (Is. 53:10,11) “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31). AND GOD IS WITH US!… only we are not always with Him… but the Holy Spirit is working on it. OUR TASK IS TO BELIEVE AND TRUST!

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To be continued next week

brother Hanola

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