Faith is such a critical element in the Christian life from the beginning all the way to the end. Faith in God is something that every believer in Christ has to work upon constantly due to our fallen nature, which predisposes us to certain negative feelings that can potentially hinder us from exercising the kind of unwavering faith required by God (James 1:6).
As humans, we tend to allow the things that we see with our own natural eyes to control our way of thinking in a big way. Well, it’s quite natural and normal but allowing what we’re seeing to dominate our thinking is the wrong way to live because this life is filled with uncertainties. For instance, if things are heading in the wrong direction despite our most sincere effort to turn them around; we have a natural tendency to lose hope and give up.
On the other hand, God is telling us not to rely on the picture we receive from our sight regardless of how dire and disturbing things may be. Additionally, God is telling us to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). The truth is that God always works in a mysterious way contrary to the picture regarding the situation we get into our mind.
Faith means that it doesn’t matter how bad your current situation is, you’ll trust God anyway. What matters is what God says in His Word in response to that current problem. Most importantly, what matters is the fact that God is exceedingly greater than every challenge that we can ever face in this life.
Our Faith in God is Completely Dependent on His Infallible Word.
Faith is also something that cannot be addressed in its fullness without the Word of God being involved because the Word is the main source of our faith. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ (Romans 10:17).
The reality is that you cannot exercise faith in something that you’ve never seen, experienced, touched, or heard of. Beloved, we’re serving a God that we’ve never seen or touched but at the same time, we’re commanded by Him to trust Him in everything just as if we were able to see Him face to face. One thing that we should never do is to allow our inability to both see and touch Him to hinder us from trusting Him because His presence is infinitely more real than our surroundings.
God has chosen to reveal Himself to us through the means of His written Word. Thereby, we can look at His Word and learn about how He operates, His character, His faithfulness, His ability to provide for all our needs, and so on. The Word of God becomes the very element that we can rely on heavily with respect to trusting Him.
If you have a problem with the Word, you automatically have a problem with God Himself. If you can’t depend upon the Word, you can’t trust God either. It all starts with the priority that you place on the significance of Scripture in your life. How you view Scripture is representative of how you view God Himself. He has given us a weapon that’s very powerful. Besides, there are no other weapons that can even come close in regards to how powerful the Word of God is.
Evidently, we’re living in a wicked world filled with confusion, deception, crime, immorality, unbelief, you name it. Even though these things are running rampant in our today’s society, which seems to indicate that the Word of God is not having any effect at all. However, keep in mind that the Word is eternal, and it will reverse and prevail over any of these things mentioned above.
As believers, we have such a potent weapon that we can totally depend on for sustenance and guidance in a very troubling and a highly volatile world. Therefore, when we’re discouraged, let down, rejected, depressed, and so forth, we can find great comfort in the wonderful promises found in the Word of God.
What Does it Mean to Exercise Faith in God?
In fact, it all starts by laying a hold of the promises that God has made in His Word. The promises that God has made to us must become our main objective. We have to allow God to bring us to a higher dimension where we won’t allow life’s circumstances to completely carry us away to the extent that we become as hopeless as unsaved people.
Did you know that exercising faith in God is expressed by bypassing our own human feelings and tendencies associated with our current situation? When facing a terrible crisis, God is not expecting us to act like some type of superman or superwoman because of the fact that we’re mere human beings with natural feelings. No matter how hard we may try to trust God, our natural feelings such as fear, anxiety, panic, doubt, worry, and so forth will always surface.
The question is that how do we draw the line in the midst of a horrible crisis with respect to our willingness to trust God? The thing is that after being hit by a major crisis; there isn’t really anything that we can do to undo that. Consequently, we’re going to have to deal with it anyway. What’s truly going to make the difference is our attitude toward God in the midst of that crisis.
Exercising faith in God is rested solely on making hard decisions that go way beyond our human nature. Most importantly, when trusting God in difficult situations, we must allow our faith in Him to supersede our natural feelings. Then His peace will flow through us like a mighty river in order to guard our hearts and emotions (Philippians 4:7).
Trusting God can even compel us to make decisions that don’t even make sense to us humanly speaking. Perhaps, you are struggling with an extremely unpleasant situation, but what pleases God is when you say that you may not know what to do in order to overcome; nevertheless, you’ll trust God no matter what. You stop focusing on the severity of the problem by shifting your focus on who God is, how He operates, along with what He is able to do in response to that issue if you place your trust in Him (Isaiah 40:28, Matthew 6:30-32).
Conclusion
Finally, it doesn’t matter how dreadful a situation may be, we can still trust God on top of that if we choose to. It’s a tough choice that we have to make between allowing ourselves to become completely overwhelmed or exhausted by life’s issues, which will then lead to discouragement, doubt, and unbelief or inviting God to take over.
Lastly, trusting God also implies acknowledging our inability and inadequacy to deal with our problems by relying on God’s power. Trusting God is based on us humbling ourselves to Him. By doing so, we can certainly look beyond the challenges we’re facing with a firm assurance that God we’ll see us through.
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